The Often Convoluted Road to Indie Publishing a Book

I’m finally done. Galleys proofed, cover finalized, acknowledgements made. I’m ready to publish my book! I’ll have a link up soon, but in the meantime, you might be interested in hearing what all goes into it.
1. Write a manuscript (ms). Think it’s done. Have some people read it and tell you it’s not done.
2. Be sad. Get sucked into a harrowing, exhausting and soul-crushing job and let the ms go on the back burner for, oh, two years.
3. Attend a writing retreat and receive some advice on how to re-order the narrative. Stay up all night moving post-it notes around on a white board.
4. Rewrite the novel based on the post-it notes arrangement.
5. Have some more people read it. They like it better, but it’s still not done.
6. Back-burner it again (see step 2, re soul-crushing job).
7. Leave the job and start airplane mechanic school.
8. Realize you’re tired of being one of those people with a novel on a hard drive somewhere and decide to indie-publish it just as soon as possible.
9. Hire an editor.
10. Argue halfheartedly with the editor because you don’t like being told what to do.
11. Do what the editor says to do.
12. Take a crash course in social media, e-publishing, and indie book marketing.
13. Hire a proofreader. Over a period of a month, painstakingly explain to the proofreader the difference between proofing and (poor) editing. Get a proofed copy, eventually.
14. Open up an Amazon author account.
15. Open up a Createspace author account.
16. Do a crash course in ebook formatting and print book interior design. (Note to all aspiring writers – don’t waste your time putting drop caps into your ebook. They’ll all have to come out.)
17. Resist the urge to put curlicues everywhere inside your print edition.
18. Put in one curlicue, under the title, and promptly remove it after Createspace says it looks pixelated.
19. Briefly mourn the curlicue.
20. Format your ebook. Put it up in the online Kindle previewer. Format some more. Preview. Format. Preview. Format. Preview. Formatpreviewformatpreviewformatpreview.
21. Format your print book. Put it up on the online CreateSpace previewer. Format some more. Read some how-to articles and realize you have committed the faux pas of left justification and weird spacing (but not excessive application of curlicues).
22. Format some more. Get fancy with drop caps.
23. Bang on Word to try to get the chapter headings and page number headers centered.
24. Look at existing, professionally published books to see how they do it. Try to decide if your own interior looks weird in comparison. Obsess a little.
25. Format some more.
26. Set up files for print proof.
27. Print proof arrives. Swoon at the sight of very own book, with a cover and binding and everything.
28. Proof the proof. Amazingly, there are still typos. (How?!?! Why!?!?)
29. Tussle with cover designer.
30. Enlist a friend to help with eleventh-hour cover design issues.
31. Order the final proof.
32. While you’re waiting for the final proof to arrive, write a blog post about the process.