I often find myself feeling like I have two people living inside my head, with each one struggling with the other for supremacy.

On one side is the Artist, the guy who just wants to sits down at his laptop, have a hot “mug o’ Joe” beside him, and be left alone to write all afternoon. This is the guy who sits at the desk in the house by the fireplace, occasionally goes out to his neighborhood Starbucks or indie coffee-house (a big shout-out to Coffee Oasis in Port Orchard, WA!), but mainly keeps to himself and does what he does best: WRITE! As a writer, I consider myself an artist first and foremost. I paint pictures, creates images, and characters and events. But instead of painting with pigments on canvas, I paint pictures with words, that convey that picture into the mind of the reader. It is the epitome of sublime satisfaction and artistic achievement.

On the other side, is that other guy, the Business Man. The Entrepreneur. The guy who keeps the books, balances the bank account, keeps track of the money. Money comes in; money goes out. he’s the guy who keeps it all straight — not just for him, but for Uncle Sam as well. You know Uncle Sam. He’s our poor uncle. We send him money every year, right?

The Business Man is also the guy who handles all the technical aspects of being an indie publisher. This is a perplexing, frustrating, and time-consuming endeavor. Luckily, it is not something I have to spend time and energy on every day. But I spent the ENTIRE AFTERNOON today dealing with these repellent, cringe-worthy, but important tasks.

When I published NOCTURNAL, I did so through Amazon’s Create Space tool. I published the e-book exclusively through Kindle, since Kindle is the most widely read e-book format in the world. And the trade paperback was (and still is!) available through Amazon, one of the most dominant e-commerce sites on the planet.

Good to go, right?

WRONG.

You see, you can’t get your Amazon-published book stocked in bookstores. There’s specific technical reasons for this. I won’t bore you with them here, but you can email me if you want to know, and I will be happy to explain it. But suffice to say, if you publish through Amazon’s services, Barnes and Noble won’t touch it, and neither will the smaller indie booksellers, or libraries, or anyone else, for that matter. So that’s a problem, right? That’s sales that aren’t happening, and potential readers not getting their hands on NOCTURNAL, which means I’m not growing my reader base that way I should be growing it.

Problem, right?

Enter Ingrahm Spark! This is a new self-publishing tool, similar to Create Space and Kindle, except you actually purchase an ISBN for each format you plan to publish in. It’s a bit pricey at $85.00 each, but the value you get in return makes it worth it. Through Ingrahm, Spark, I can get books into Barnes and Noble brick-and-mortar stores, indie bookstores, iTunes, iBooks, Barnes and Noble.com, and I can be stocked in countries throughout the Americas, Western Europe and even Australia.

So the Business Guy won out today. I had been planning this switchover for a while now, but had been procrastinating. Not that I was afraid or anything, I just figured it would have a very high “PITA factor” (PITA = Pain In The Ass), which it did. But I sucked it up and did the grunt work to make it happen. Got all the agreements signed, uploaded all the pertinent files in the proper formats, etc. Now the sites review process begins. If all goes well, NOCTURNAL should be available through Ingrahm Spark in a week or so. That’s a good thing. There are a lot of writers, both high-profile and obscure, who call the Pacific Northwest home. The Barnes and Nobles up here like to showcase local writers, and my nearest Barnes and Noble has assured me they will showcase my book as soon as it becomes available in their computer system database, which means Ingrahm Spark.

This is the plight of the indie author. It’s not enough to simply write the damn book. You do your own editing, publishing, marketing, and promotions. You cough up the dough to make these things happen. Your publisher can’t do it for you because YOU ARE YOUR OWN PUBLISHER.

The important thing is, I got done. The ball is in Ingrahm Spark’s court now. Tomorrow, I have an appointment with ENT at Madigan Army Hospital. I’m still in aftercare for my throat cancer. But after that, when I get back home, I’m definitely going to let the Artist out of his cage and left him roam free.

Or at least, let him stretch his legs for a while.