I was just a writer. All I ever wanted to be was a writer and all I ever planned on being was a writer. Even last spring, when I decided it was time to start focusing on the goal. Even last summer, when my aunt and I started Owl and Zebra Press to publish my first novel. (For the rest of this entry, assume “I” is my aunt and I.) I was just a self-employed writer becoming a self-published author. Right?

Wrong.

I have been walking through the self-/indy-pub steps since around August of 2012. I already had a book, but it needed a hefty re-write. Other than that, I had a couple of self-pub how-to books and a year-so-far full of rejections and failures and bummers. So I read those books, I plowed into the rewrite, and I started making to-do lists and penning in goals on the calendar.

It is now February of 2013, and let me tell you something. I wrote the book, I did my job confronting edits. But I have also published a book. I designed it. I photographed for it. I made the cover. I created several websites, a blog, fan pages, and other blog presence platforms. I edited. I keyed. I found the money to buy ISBNs. I got a PO Box and I do the mailing. I opened all the accounts we needed: email, printing, office supplies, ebook production… I do the accounting. I do the scheduling and field the calls, emails, etc. I am public affairs. I am marketing. I am sales. I am planning the launch and pounding the real and virtual streets. I even started dressing nicer. I started a publishing company.

I am a publisher.

I’m not saying I didn’t publish my own book, but after all that work, I am proud and ready to say my book was published by a publisher, too: me! I’m also not saying I published 100 books. One so far, hopefully two more in the next year. You have to start somewhere.

I started a business. Not a fake one. A real one. I will pay my taxes and everything. So I should get to say it: I am an author-slash-publisher-slash-entrepreneur.