When I started writing my novel, A Girl’s Guide to Chicago, I never knew how the book would turn out, if I would finish, it or let alone even published it.

But I did.

Writing a novel is something I’ve always wanted to accomplish. Now that I have written my first novel it has definitely sparked something in me. I’m so proud of all the hard work I put into this book and I truly LOVED the whole process.

I decided to self-publish this novel for a few reasons. First, because my novel is very niche, being focused on Chicago, and second, because I do really enjoy the challenge of marketing my book. I want to learn everything I can about marketing my first book.

But let me tell you, it’s hard work.

A very different kind of hard work than the time, creativity, character building, plot development, chapter flow, sentence structure, basically all the things that make a great novel.

Marketing a novel is summed up as, as much as you LOVE your own book, trying to get others to see your book the same way is very difficult. It’s not impossible. However, I’m figuring out every possible way to be creative while also continuing to research daily about all the different ways I can get my book out there.

I’m not afraid to admit that I’ve already made some mistakes and definitely would do some things differently next time. But that’s okay! It’s a learning process and going forward I now know what to do and what not do.

With that being said, now that I have written, A Girl’s Guide to Chicago, I’m very excited to start the process again. I’m currently working on an outline for my next novel. Yay! But, my next novel will not be about Chicago.

Currently, most of my book marketing is focused around my blog, girlsguidechicago.com, which works perfectly hand in hand because the two are very closely related. However, since my next novel is not based in Chicago and I want to also focus more on all things writing, sharing my future novel updates, press, etc, I thought I needed a proper author website.