Before I wrap things up with the making of Sunny, I’m sure some people are wondering why I skipped making an audiobook version, given what an incredibly popular form of literary consumption it now is. And the truth is that I had no good option at my disposal for this first book of the year: I can’t afford to hire a freelance team, since the goal of this book is to have an upfront budget as close to zero as possible; I didn’t want to use the AI voice option that now exists at Audible, because sheesh, have you listened to those things? Do you really want a voice like that reading your book out to your audience?; and I have the equipment to do it myself, but I don’t have it set up yet, and wanted to concentrate with this first book on simply getting it out the door relatively complete. Later this year, I’ll be setting up a home studio using my laptop and a Blue Yeti podcast-quality microphone, and hopefully at that point I can come back and release an audiobook of Sunny that I voiced and engineered myself for free.

And then secondly, I’m sure some people are asking why I didn’t bother doing any promotion, advertising, or other marketing for the book, which is such a crucial part of the self-publishing process. And the answer there is that I’m saving my money and labor for later in the year, on books where it’s more crucial for self-publishers to spend money on advertising; namely, I’m planning on writing two romance novels later this year, since so many of my clients work in that genre, and at that point will go the whole route of buying advertising, getting involved with book giveaway clubs, entering some contests, and more. To be clear, I’m mostly self-publishing these books so that I can then write about the self-publishing process at my freelancing website; so it doesn’t really matter to me how much any of these titles particularly sell. I’ll be doing promotional work for the romance novels simply so I can show other romance novelists how to do it, but not because I’m specifically trying to increase sales of the books to X or Y a level.

So with that, this brings an end to the self-publishing journey of It’s Always Sunny Around Here, from its first spark of life as an online Google Docs file I was updating each day to its final, polished paperback book form in the hands of a purchasing public. I hope this has given other self-publishers some good information and advice; and I hope it’s helped inspire wannabe self-publishers to take the plunge. You can spend thousands of dollars to put out a book—and you will spend thousands if you want to make it a bestseller—but as my guide here has shown you, you don’t have to if you don’t want. I spent literally zero dollars upfront publishing Sunny, using entirely free software except for Microsoft Word (which you could easily replace with the free Google Docs, Open Office, or others), a process that encompassed two months of writing, two months of editing and designing, and a four-month window in between. I could do it, so you can too. Best of luck, and please drop me a line at ilikejason@gmail.com and let me know when it’s out.

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