self publishing in medical purgatory

Medical purgatory :  no  mans land  in between medical school and residency, few medical students have been there and all generally dread it because it is  uncharted  and unknown territory. 

If someone told me a year ago that I would have to take a significant break in my medical training and in between would be self publishing my novel while going on residency interviews yet again, I would have lost consciousness. That is after I threw a colossal spiritual tantrum where I would have told God,
“Kill me! kill me now! my life is over! ” You know, and other things along those lines. 😀

But this period of my life has shown me that God will not take you through what you cant handle. He has said he will strengthen and harden you to difficulty. I learned through this process that Gods strength in me is everlasting. Now nothing can faze me. If it cant kill God it cant kill me. Someone I know calls me  the “teflon Don”  :). Nothing sticks baby!

Anyway my journey to self publication is quite premature and I made decisions swiftly. I finished the very first draft of my book when I graduated last year, then really had no time to spare or polish the manuscript for a year. When I went back to it , I had to prepare for the horror of an exam called Step 3 so STILL was pushed to the back burner. I eventually got round to it in October and I  had a very steep learning curve.

My first obstacle was how to publish a novel when I was erm…. “financially challenged” and had the very expensive expense of travelling around the country  for residency interviews coming up . One thing I had to learn QUICKLY was that information was my  friend . When I did some research , I found out that  the biggest expense would be editing the novel.  This is especially important because the quality of the novel depends on this.  There is so much information available and many services being offered. Prices range from 500-10,000.  You have to make sure some of these “services” are not scams There are services for everything under the sun, services to self publish, services to promote your book, services to edit etc. But  I didn’t have to worry about that,  aint no one can scam someone who is ‘financially evolving”.

Then I read a book that suggested using beta readers and then reinvesting in your product by re -releasing an edited version when you start making enough. Since competition is stiff it will probably be a long time before that time comes. So I got creative and got a few better readers by joining critique groups,  talking to people and then God placed people who could edit for me basically for free. Then someone referred me to fiverr.com, a website where you basically can get any service you want for 5 dollars.

So I did just that and I have learned that I  may not have the might of a publishing company behind me  but I have God so I thought to myself  “Eniola go for it” So I did.  
And like Esther if I perish I perish but what if I don’t?