After getting the 4 book Guild Series completed and published, I thought for sure I had this whole thing down to a science…. well, except for the advertising part. That’s a whole other can of worms that is proving harder to figure out that the projects in my senior year Physics class.
Writing has proven to be the easiest part of the self-publishing process, even more so with the most recent developments. In July, I contacted a cover designer to work with me on the Urban Fantasy series I’m putting out next. They put together a cover for the first book that was pretty good. I’d give it a 7 out of 10. For the price I paid, it was fantastic.
In the middle of August, I reached out again to start work on the second cover, planning to ask for the third in September so I could have the first three books ready to put in the store for the November release of book 1. Within a week, I received the first draft of the cover. It was decent, but there were a few things I wanted to change so I sent that request off.
Then I waited… and waited… and waited. Over three weeks, I sent five messages checking in to see if there was any updates on the requested changes. Zero response. After a month, I threw in the towel and cut my losses.
I’ve found a new company to work on the covers, but to keep them cohesive I asked them to do a new cover for book one. The first draft of that cover arrived this morning, and I can’t tell you how floored I was. It was so much better than the finished cover from the previous company. So maybe this will have turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
Anyway, if you’ve wondered at my month of silence, it was mostly because I was dealing with things like this. The back room stuff you never see or hear about when a book is published. It sometimes seems like there are a hundred and one tasks to complete between finishing a first draft and actually publishing the book. And every one of those tasks can be a stumbling block to slow you down.
It’s not going to stop me, and with luck it won’t even delay me that much. I’m still hoping to have Lost Souls ready to go live in late November. With luck, I’ll even have book 2 ready to go up for pre-order by the release date.