There's so much that goes into creating a paperback book as a self-published author. You wouldn't know unless you get into it yourself. 

Not only do you have to make a billion decisions you never thought you'd ever have to make (the color of the roses is red, but what KIND of red?), but you also have to decide how much of it you're doing yourself, and how much of it you're hiring out.

It's not easy peasy when you have a bunch of other people involved even if they are all super nice people. Life can happen. There can be delays. Some freelancers might not always update you on everything unless you ask, and they're not being mean.

As a book lover, I wanted to create the book lover's book as much as I financially could. Pretty cover, pretty formatting, and bonus content illustrations. The only thing that I couldn't figure out in time, and within my mental capacity, was the map.

Between Roses has a world of three layers and at the time, I couldn't even figure out myself, how I would sketch it and then make it make sense so that I could show it to artists and tell them to draw it.

If I can't explain it, it's not going to work out. Instead, I decided to have even more illustrations in my book. Well, that meant working with three different illustrators. Three very different people on very different time zones.

I also hired out a cover artist and formatter. 

Now, you may be wondering, "Enna, you make all your covers on Wattpad. Why can't you do your own for your book?" 

Well, yes, I probably could, but cover artists have the licensed font and images and whatnot, and I'm not sure about my Wattpad covers. I do always only use stock photos provided by PicMonkey and font by them as well, but you never know.

Cover artists are sure to have font and images which can be used legally because they do it as a profession. I just make covers for a hobby.

The formatting. Omg, I never realized what goes into that. How everything looks in paperback is different from E-book. Thank goodness I was able to book the same formatter I used for the E-book. Very lovely person and easy to work with. She's going to be my go-to formatter from here on. The quality is great and the for me, the price was affordable and reasonable.

Another thing that I didn't realize when it comes to a paperback is that in order for the cover artist to create the right width for the spine, I need to have all the formatting done and I can only have all that done if I get all the illustrations.

OMG

Everything going on at almost the same time... SIGH

So, that was the situation for some months and it was stressful, but I got through it, learned a lot, and know now what might have been a better way to go about things.

And now, the book will be released June 14.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FB9KZ7SB

You're gonna have to put that in manually. One thing: that's the older cover version. But the new one looks just as awesome.