The mystery behind my cover for LAW...

by Brittany Geragotelis

Hi all!

I've got a full week of posts just itching to be read, so let's get started!

The wonderfully amazing Melissa Walker just did a cover story about Life's a Witch on her uber-popular book website! She was so sweet about it and is helping to spread the word that LAW will be available in paperback and ebook format on December 8th! I'd like to thank Melissa for including me and hope you'll all take some time out of your busy Monday back after Thanksgiving to read up! In the interview, I talk about the inspiration behind my cover and praise my talented designer Toni Misthos for her creativity and skill, because without her this book wouldn't be the same!

5x5,
B.

Road to Self Publishing: Starting Your Company

by Brittany Geragotelis

Hey all!

Learning what it takes to publish a book has been a real trip so far. I always thought it was just going to involve me deciding to publish it myself and then, POOF!, it would be ready and out there. But there's SO much more that goes into it than that.

One of those things is the need to create your own business. When I was first setting up my account with CreateSpace, I saw that one of the first things they require you to do is set up a business of some sort. This is because if you're going to be collecting royalties, they need to send all earnings to the IRS and that means you need a tax ID number for your new venture.

Sooooo, one of the first things I had to do before uploading my book to CreateSpace, was start an LLC. Luckily, my boyfriend has been through this before (with his brother for the movies they make), so he was nice enough to get online and fill out the request for an LLC for me. We got ours out of Delaware, but you can get them from any state. After you fill out the forms, you get a temporary license until you're approved and they send you the official papers.

Less than a week later, I was the proud Owner of Book Slayer Productions, LLC!

Of course, along with that, I also needed a business bank account, so that all my future profits would have a place to go and would be connected to my new business. That was relatively easy, too. All I needed was the proof that I'd started the business and some seed money.

Once I'd created my LLC and opened up my checking account, I was ready to finish setting up my account....and closer to publishing my book!

5x5,
B.

Road to Self Publishing: Choosing a Publisher

by Brittany Geragotelis

Hey all!

So, one of the most important decisions you'll have to make in your journey to self-publishing, is choosing a Publisher. Luckily, there are plenty of services out there for a person to choose from, and we're in a great place in the publishing world right now that we have the ability to choose a print-on-demand option, which means no out-of-pocket costs. Or low out-of-pocket costs, depending on which service you go with. And with most of these publishing companies, you'll have other services at your disposal (for a price) if you need/want them.

Now, when it came time for me to choose a publisher, I was really only considering two companies: Lulu.com and Amazon.com. After doing some research into both, I realized that with Lulu, there were set-up fees (a couple grand), along with distribution fees I'd have to shell out up-front before the book was set to be published. Amazon, however, had no up-front costs and seemed to pay a decent percentage of the profits (the big upside to self-publishing!). Amazon also has the appeal of their audience. (Who DOESN'T already buy their books on amazon.com?)

So, I turned to Amazon's self-publishing service, called CreateSpace to publish LAW.

There were a few things I had to do before I was able to upload my book for publication (I'll talk more about that in my next blog), but once I was ready to upload, things went pretty quickly. Like I mentioned before, you can choose to use Amazon's services for a fee if you would like. They have people who can create a professional book cover if you need one, you can get access to professional editors, you can pay to have a book trailer made and even sign up for a team of PR/publicity people help market your book when it comes out. Luckily, I already have access to all of those talented and intelligent kinds of people, so I didn't have to pay anything extra to publish my book. But it's nice that the services are there if you need them.

Amazon makes it really easy to upload and format your book, too. In fact, all you have to do, is choose the size of your book, download a template, then copy and paste your book into it. After that, I just did a little formatting and tweaking and it was ready to be made into a PDF. The only other thing I had to do, was to have my book cover/spine/back of the book created by my designer. For this, she had to figure out the dimensions of the book based on the size and number of pages and then design it from back to front.

Now, I ran into some issues with uploading my PDF's, but with one phone call, I was able to get one-on-one help from an amazon associate. Their customer service is top-notch and the woman I talked to was very helpful and even uploaded my PDF's for me when I couldn't do it. This was a big draw to working with Amazon on such a personal endeavor. I really liked having access to help along the way if I needed it.

After that, I finished up a few things and it was all done! Within about 12 hours, I had been cleared to print and ordered my review copy. Now, I'm expecting my first copy of my book less than a week after I hit publish.

I can't wait to see what the final product looks like and tell you all about my experience!

If you guys have any questions for me, please send 'em! I'd love to help answer any questions you may have about self-publishing!

5x5,
B.

Road to Self Publishing: Covering your butt

by Brittany Geragotelis

Hey all!

As promised, now that I've had a week off of work and am completely on top of my launch party plans, I finally have some time to write down my experiences so far in my journey to self-publishing Life's a Witch.

Today, we're going to tackle the tough question of lawyering up before letting your book go to print. Right after I made the decision to publish LAW myself, I knew that I wanted to do things the right way. And for me, that included having a lawyer look at my book and council me on what could stay in the book and what needed to go. In other words, I don't want to get sued.

So, I started by talking to one lawyer about it and he told me it would cost me around $5,000-$10,000 to have someone look at it. I have to admit, I was SHOCKED at how expensive it would be just to have someone read my book and tell me what could potentially get me into trouble. And frankly, I don't have that kind of money laying around to pay a lawyer. But I knew I had to cover my butt in some way.

Luckily, my good friend's mom is a lawyer and an avid reader, and she offered to take a look at LAW for free and then tell me what may get me into trouble if I kept it in. In the end, I ended up changing quite a bit (I'm big into using pop culture in my books), including my crack about Lady Gaga really being a witch. That one killed me to take out, but no way am I chancing getting sued by the Gaga. So, I took all her suggestions (along with a few of her edits) and incorporated them into the final version of my book.

Now, do you HAVE to have a lawyer look at your book before you publish it? Probably not. BUT I have to say that I feel a lot safer knowing that I've taken strides against leaving myself open to litigation. Even in fiction, a person has to be careful about using real people's names and likeness'. I did, however, recently meet another self-published author and asked him if he had someone look it over before he published and he said that he didn't. He felt confident that the disclaimer at the beginning of the book was enough to keep him safe from legal problems. Whether or not that's true, I'm not sure...I'm not a lawyer, after all. But for me, getting a lawyer to cover me was something I felt safest doing.

Has anyone else self-published? What do you guys think?

5x5,
B.

Look HOT in Life's a Witch gear!

by Brittany Geragotelis

Hey all!

Sorry I've been internet silent the past few weeks, but ever since I decided to publish Life's a Witch myself and got the ball rolling on all the details, I've been seriously swamped. There's so much to get done before my launch party (yes, I'm throwing myself a party...and don't I deserve it?), and I promise that while I'm off of work next week, I'll make sure to catch you up on all the details.

But for now, I need your help...

For my launch party, I'm going to have promotional T-shirts made, and I'm toying with a bunch of different phrases. Some are cute; others are edgy; a few are just silly. BUT since you all helped me to choose the name of my main character in LAW (Hello, Hadley), I figured I'd ask you all to help out one more time.

I'm sure you're wondering....but Britt, what's in it for me? Well....I promise that after this launch is over, I'll create a similar version for sale on cafe press, so you can all be honorary twitches, too!

So, help a girl out and let me know which slogan is your favorite. Leave your choices and comments below....and if you can come up with a phrase better than these and I choose to use it instead, I'll send you a free shirt!

Okay, here are your choices:

*What a twitch
*Life's a Witch...and then you fly!
*Wanna see my magic wand?
*Life's a Witch
*Team Cleri
*Witches Brew: the official drink of Salem
*Show me your magic and I'll show you mine
*Hex and the City
*My wand's bigger than yours
*Do you believe in magic?
*Kids, don't try this spell at home...
*This is your brain on magic...
*Are you a good witch or a bad witch?
*Honorary twitch
*Twitch for life

Let me know what you think!

5x5,
B.

The biggest day of my life....so far.

by Brittany Geragotelis

So, I've been hard at work over the past three weeks, trying to put some stuff in motion in order to publish Life's a Witch myself in December. This has included but is not limited to: hiring a lawyer (to let me know what parts of the book might get me sued...no more suggesting that Lady Gaga is really a witch. :( ); filing the paperwork for the copyright of the book; writing a bonus chapter for the print version (a little something extra for my die-hard fans!); writing my acknowledgments (there are a LOT of people I need to thank for getting me here); starting an LLC so I can be on the up and up with the IRS; and finally, deciding on a launch date.

That's actually what I wanted to talk to you about. I'd like to officially announce that Life's a Witch will go on sale (for all who care to buy it!) through Amazon worldwide on December 8th! Just in time for the holidays (and x-mas presents, hint, hint!).

Of course, no book launch would be complete without a launch party....and that's what I'm doing now. Planning my party. I'm so excited about it, and Wattpad has been kind enough to help me out with some of the details, including drumming up a little publicity for the book as well as hooking me up with a space to throw the party! I'm such a lucky girl and really don't know who to thank first for making all of this possible. In a way, this party will be my thank you to all those who've had a hand in getting me to where I am today. And if that's not enough—there's still space left in my acknowledgements!

So, that's the scoop, kiddos. Life's a Witch goes on-sale nationwide December 8th, with a kick-butt bonus chapter! Tell your friends!

5x5,
B.

Scary Movie Countdown

by Brittany Geragotelis

Hey all!

Halloween's over for this year (a fact I'm both sad and happy about—don't even get me started on the whole slutty costume bonanza I had to walk through to get home from work last night. It was whore-ifying.), but that doesn't mean the scary stuff has to end just yet. Just so you don't have to go cold-turkey, here's a list of my top 20 scary movies of all time. I've listed them in order of my faves, given a synopsis of each flick as well as some behind the scenes fun facts. You'll never guess what made it to #1!

5x5,
B.