I feel so honored that so many of you have shown such enthusiasm for me and the printing of my book: Scents of War! For those who may not have heard the story, last November, during NaNoWriMo, I participated in Hatteras, Inc.’s Twitter campaign. I completely forgot about it until June when I heard that I won the campaign!

25 copies of my book were going to be printed for free!

At this point in my writing journey, I had completed the last round of edits after my beta readers finished reading, but I wasn’t doing anything with my book. In my head, I thought it was time to find an agent and I sent out a couple query letters which became rejections, but I wasn’t actively pursuing publishing. In fact, I was thinking it probably wasn’t worth publishing.

Many of you know that I now have a chronic illness (since Dec. 2020) and since developing this illness, my writing has taken a back burner. But I did have a book practically ready. So, when I got that email, I went to work.

I still had to format the book to be printed and I still had to create a cover for it and all the other little things, like the acknowledgement pages and copyright pages, etc. And it was summertime. My boys were home and we were camping and traveling. But by the end of July, I finally had something to print. I had so much fun designing and drawing a Kindroot for my cover and thanks to Karen, was able to figure out how to put it onto the background I’d chosen.

True to their word, Hatteras, Inc. delivered 25 beautiful copies of my book last week! Most of these copies were already reserved for the people who have helped me the most throughout my writing journey, but that means that all you wonderful people who would like to buy a copy of my book aren’t able to . . . yet.

I have decided that since I’ve had so much interest in my book that I will self-publish it. Here’s an example of a response from one of the 25 that received my book this week:

I’m halfway through your book, and having a hard time putting it down when I need to cook, etc. for Mom. (hand over face emoji).

Marcyne Guyer

Reviews like this are so encouraging and help me to step back from all my nitpicking and doubts about publishing.

So, I’m working on getting quotes and buying an ISBN, maybe 2 ISBNs if there’s enough interest in an audiobook as well. I would like to do another edit of the book as well, seeing as I’ve found a couple of minor errors and would like to fix them before printing any more copies. I will also need to figure out the best way to sell my book, via this blog/website (maybe I need to transfer to a website instead of a blog), bookstores, amazon?, etc. As you can see there are many questions to be answered. But rest assured, I’m working on finding those answers and hope to have Scents of War available for purchase before the end of the year.

What can you do while you wait for your copy? Spread the word. Let me know just how much interest there is so I know how many books to print (I would really like to print through Hatteras but there are more upfront costs than if I were to print through Amazon). Knowing how many books to print beforehand will help reduce those costs. So, if you’re interested in pre-ordering a copy email me at jenn.guyer@gmail.com, subject line: Pre-Order Scents of War.

Thank you all for sticking with me through the last 5 years of my writing journey! Here’s to many more!