Musically speaking, the album is finished. It’s passed the car speaker test and the crappy laptop speaker test. There’s going to be a “liner notes” track recorded for people who buy the digital release, but the music has been mastered and is now finished.

Now comes the hard part: getting it ready for distribution.

I thought I would be going with CD Baby. Well, I still am, sort of. I’m actually going with Disc Makers. They handle the front end of things, as in printing physical copies. They then turn over the album to their “sister” company, CD Baby (who they own), who will make the album available to iTunes, Amazon, and so on.

I need jewel case art for folks who buy CDs, and that’s being worked on in Denmark. The “liner notes” track will be recorded via an overseas link to England. (Bits of the music have been beta tested in Russia and Australia, making this a truly intercontinental project.) Once these two items are done, it’ll be time to start submitting things to Disc Makers.

If you ever plan on doing this yourself, please note: DIY album publishing is not cheap. An order of 20 Jewel Case CDs plus everything else runs over $200. It’s much cheaper to go with a digital-only release, but I’m dealing with special circumstances. I’ll keep you up to date on the progress.