What now?! :)

Alright hello everyone this is my first post here. Partly Bragging and asking a couple of questions.

So I just finished my first Novel, officially I've been working on it for several years, but I wrote pretty much all of it in the last year. I has been a VERY LONG journey, I've been pacing my self to finish it and suddenly it was done, I felt very proud of myself but was kinda disappointed at how anticlimactic it was. I finished it @ noon and by the time I told anyone about it it was hours later, during said time my over-the-top obsessing brain started throw catapults at me, I imagined every single situation of how sucky it could be or wonderful.

Regardless of all this, now what?

Here's a the deal, I live in Egypt, my book is written in English language, I'm hoping to publish it locally in printed edition and also ebook online, hopefully even printed edition in other countries, but I don't know where to start. This is the part I'm not very good at. I don't know if I should take the self-publishing route or the traditional one, each poses their own challenges as I understand, money wise, and so on.

I also have a big problem promoting my work, I'm great with computers and internet in general, but I'm not that great when it comes to social networking, have some friends on facebook, just created a new twitter, I created a website... etc, but I'm not feeling it, don't know how to go from yeah sure I wrote something, to having a considerable number of fans.

Ironically my late father was a famous Author here in the country and my sister too she just had her third book published, its a collection of short stories in Arabic language.

Ok I would be happy to answer any questions, wouldn't mind giving any advice on what I've learned so far (not that much :)) and I'm looking for some guidance here.

oh and this is a Sci-Fi book called "The Chain: Soul of the Undone" it's around 580 pages (147,000 pages)

here's the website:
http://amr-maverick.weebly.com/

also
https://twitter.com/Amr_MaVeRicK
http://figment.com/users/374842-Amr-Fathy

thanks :)

If your father and your sister are famous authors, you really should be asking them. :-) However, as an unfamous, self-published sci-fi writer I can tell you that marketing your own book is much harder than writing it in the first place. And if you expect to make any money or have a "considerable number of fans" you are going to have to get very good at marketing.

I looked at your website, and as a retired computer science professor I'd give it an A+. In addition, the pieces of your writing that are present are extremely interesting. It seems to be the kind of sci-fi that I am interested in. Check out my own website if you'd like, www.thefifthprophet.com. Personally, I'll put the book on my to read list. However, I can't tell if it is a downer or not? Maybe you don't want to give that away, but the "chain the insane" line makes me wary.

Joining LibraryThing is a good first step for your social networking. Looking forward to hearing more from you.