Self Skills Future 1: Kindle Direct Published!

Ovidia--every other Tuesday

And I'm (almost) self-published!!

I've submitted my first piece ever (short story) to Kindle Direct Publish!

And completed the first Self Skills Future course I set myself.

For anyone who's not in Singapore, Singapore Skills Future is a government initiative that helps fund mid and late career people (you have to be at least 40 years old to get Skills Future credits) wanting to upskill or reskill themselves.

What this means in practical terms is, if you want to take a (approved) course, your Skills Future credits can subsidise up to $500 of the course fees a year.
Courses in practical IT and coding are encouraged, but most of my (60+ year old) friends have been using their Skills Future credits on courses like photography, pottery, cooking, wine appreciation, hair cutting, barista skills and basic plumbing (pipes, not bladders).

I love the idea of committing to learning something. But none of the courses offered appealed to me--what I really wanted to learn more about is self-publishing, but I couldn't find anything in that line.

So--since I was in that liminal two week space between submitting a manuscript and getting editorial feedback--I decided to create a Self Skills Future course for myself.

I couldn't create a course framework or steps because I didn't know what was involved, so I decided I would set myself goals and and work backwards.

Goals:
1. Set up a Kindle Direct Publish account
2. Upload a story and prepare it (cover, formatting etc) for publication
3. Publish it and sell 1 copy

Sounds simple enough, right? Easy enough to tackle in 10 days? (ie two weeks with weekends off)...

Day 1: Setting up my Kindle Direct Publish account. Definitely not as simple as I’d thought it would be.
Or rather, setting up the Kindle Direct Publish account was easy. What I found more complicated was figuring out what my Tax Identification Number is (in Singapore seems to be my Identity Card number)
I learned how much I didn't know about multi-currency bank accounts.
I also learned I ought to download Kindle Create on Mac first so that I can make my manuscript "flowable" in different formats.
(spent a few hours trying to figure out what 'flowable' means. Decided to shelve that until something stops flowing.)
Realised that the children's story I thought of starting with wouldn't work as my first experiment (both too long and too short) and decided to come up with a short story so that I can go through the whole process from beginning to end within a clear category.

Day 2: Okay I will write a short story. A mystery story? It's just a placeholder, it doesn't have to be fantastic, but what's on the Internet lives forever, so I don't want to put out something lame.
Then I realise I should first find out if I can publish and sell short stories via KDP.
Apparently yes. I can indeed publish individual short stories as ‘Kindle Singles’. (Shows my ignorance that I didn’t know this!) Bought/ borrowed and downloaded four stories to see what’s being sold as Kindle Singles.
Figured it would give me a chance to look at covers too.
Karin Slaughter’s Cold, Cold Heart: photograph cover
Abby Jimenez’s The Fall Risk : a pastel cartoon cover—I liked this cover best of all the ones I saw actually.
Greer Hendrick’s The Sublet : a photo realistic cover with city background
Jane Green’s When We Were Friends: graphic drawing party background. I liked this cover too.
Of these stories, I liked The Fall Risk the best. So maybe a cartoon cover?

Day 3: I learned that Kindle Singles have been discontinued.
Ended up re-downloading and playing Minecraft (I deleted it when I was doing the final draft of Tembusu) and found and managed to breed turtles and pandas for the first time.

Day 4: I learned that you Can publish short stories on KDP. It's just the Kindle Singles programme that's been discontinued. So let's go for it!
I see that 'Kindle Create' is the preferred formatting so I download Kindle Create... but can't find any of my files. Why?
Part of me wants to give up and binge on Sakamoto Days but I've signed myself up for this SSF course is and I’m Singaporean enough to complete what I sign up for unless there’s really good reason to quit.

Day 5: Not much sleep last night but I figured out the problem.
Apparently all my files are stored in the iCloud and Kindle Create is an older application (built using older APIs or frameworks) and expects to work with a traditional, fixed, POSIX-style file path on the local drive (e.g., /Users/username/Documents/file.doc).
I was. thinking maybe I should have signed up for that code writing course after all.
But I found a workaround: create a Synthetic Path. The problem is, I'm working on a Mac and Apple actively discourages external apps from accessing the ~/Library/ directory for document storage.
It's like they're allowing me to hide my bodies in the basement, but not allowing me to retrieve them because the stairs are too rickety and my hired ghouls refuse to use the modern hydraulic lift.

Day 6: Okay, I can access the test files I've planted. But there's nothing in them because I haven't written my story yet.

Days 7-9: Writing my short story. Aiming for 4,000 to 5,000 words. Starting out, I meant it to be a quick short story but brainstorming characters got me to thinking about a new series with Su Lin's granddaughter who's this middle aged lady writing books based on her late grandmother's journals... who just happens to be Rosie (Aunty) Lee's cousin... yes. I know. Too many rabbit holes. But this is one of the things I love best about writing... isn't it?

Day 10: Feeding bamboo to baby pandas and sea grass to baby turtles. Also managed to saddle a horse and ride around.
Realised I don't have a cover and dug out my Procreate.

Day 11: Sketched cover in Procreate and coloured it in. Got two Freida McFadden stories to read: The Inmate and Death Row. And WOW they are Good. Would be totally intimidated and ready to give up on this project and on writing forever, except that I remind myself my goal here is not to write the best short story ever, but to learn to self publish something on KDP. So I polish my story and polish my cover...

Day 12: Went for Vinyasa Flow class and came back feeling more hopeful about things. Meant to get straight back to polishing stuff but got distracted by relatives/ in laws and their issues. All people I’m very fond of. But still--issues.

Day 13: My eyes are really tired and stinging. The bright side is: I discovered that I can (on Mac using Scrivener) use ‘Edit/ Speech/ Start Reading’ and have my text read out to me.
I don’t love the AI voice but I can shut my eyes while listening and only look at the screen when doing edits which helps a lot! Another thing I’ve learned!

Day 14: I'm hitting upload and publish!

Only to discover it may take up to 72 hours to load. So Part 3 (sell 1 copy) will have to wait.

But overall--a successful Self Skills Future course completed!

I signed up and learned to navigate Kindle Direct Publish and Kindle Create, learned to export from Procreate, wrote a 6000+word short story (that might hold the seed of a new series), and learned I can get my computer to read my words back to me so I can rest my eyes.
Yes, I enjoyed my limited time challenge. And yes, I'd like to do this again, but maybe after taking a break!