I wrote a mystery that my literary writing group told me wasn’t very good. But when my friends who are mystery readers liked it, I began to think maybe it wasn’t so bad. Then one friend told me she was infatuated with my characters and another said it was going to be great. Well that really put me to thinking about self-publishing this mystery.

Self-publishing isn’t easy. Did I want to put my mystery in Kindle? Have it be a paperback? Hardcover? There’s Ingram Spark and Create Space (Amazon) – both offer self-publishing.

To gain more information, I joined Ingram Spark’s blog. Their first blog was about ‘metadata,’ which they said I need it for my strategic marketing plan. (As if I have one.) Metadata is about the title, subtitle, price, publication date, ISBN and any other information so readers can find your book.

Your metadata should be as descriptive as possible, including elements such as what genre the book fits into, who is telling the story, and keywords or information that will appeal to the intended audience.

Specific descriptive information that includes terms like “beach read,” “Italian cookbook,” or “authoritative biography” will help put the book title on the radar of readers who are looking for a certain kind of book.

Now I have to join Ingram and create a name that is NOT Indie. So I’ve been thinking about names. SJP Words; SJP Bookworm; SJP Woodworks; SJP Press (sounds like I’m a publisher). The reason I need a name is because people might have questions or God forbid complaints. That way they can contact me.

I also need some ISBN numbers. One for Kindle, Nook and other readers. Another for softcover. And the last for hardcover.

Plus I need a good book description so readers will know what the book is about. In my case, it’s just about a woman who disappears. It just so happens that the woman is the ex-wife of a mobster and someone is following one of the people who are investigating.

All this just because I wrote a mystery.

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Sue Powers is essentially a short story writer. She often asks herself what business does she have writing and publishing a mystery? Yet she has – it’s called She’s Not There. And she’s writing another mystery!