Tag: routine

Wild Wednesday

So Jenny Elliott – Friend, Intern, all around I cannot live without her in my life type person…asked me what the list was for the anthology publication. (The To-do List that is)

I told her it is the same for each book…and I sat and thought about what that means for the anthologies, for my books, and for each book I work with.

  1. I need a front and rear cover to work with.
  2. I need a clean formatted and edited manuscript to work with.
  3. I need a blurb, and an author list.
  4. I need a Release date.

I often am the designer for the covers my company publishes. That makes having them easier. There are a couple of authors that provide their own covers but most just go with the ones I make.

The authors often just send me the written stories. I put in the formatting and edit it as I go. Many of them have the writing edited before I see it, but not all. Formatting is putting in order – Title page, a copyright page, Contents, Chapters, About the Author, About the Publisher.

Some authors write their blurbs, some expect me to write it. Either way, It is not as difficult as writing the entire story. The author list is an obvious thing…

The release date is based on how many others I have in the calendar at a time. The limitation is mostly me. I can only do so many of these at a time.

Okay I have the manuscript…now what? I use Draft2digital, Amazon, Google Play Books all for Ebooks. D2d has the best expanded Distribution. Amazon has the best reach in general. Google….well…why not? I do Not Like D2d’s Print. So for print I use Amazon and Barnes and Nobles press.

Then I have to deal with Marketing. I try to do the same type of images for every book. Do I always manage it? No, not really. I have way too much going on…and often this is where I drop balls. Ideally, I want for each book to do a cover reveal image set. I want to do 3 teaser images. I also want to share an about the author image for each book. Now the last one can be made once and often reshared for multiple books. An Author does not often change their bio. Mine has changed perhaps once a year. Mostly because I have changed where I am focused. Some authors never need to change theirs. I also like to occasionally do “Coming Soon” images…for example….

It’s simple and really only gives the link and the cover. This gives people the urge to go check it out. Then once you have them…spread those images everywhere.

So that is a peek into my world.

Tuesday…what more can I say?

The last couple of days have been a whirling shitshow. I am completely out of my routine. Today I am dealing with an enormous amount of laundry…and the various dishes that are actually normal for my house. I am squeezing in doctors appointments and errands. I somehow want to attempt to write today. I am an ambitious soul after all. The end of the month is coming quite quickly, and I have two anthologies and an indie author publishing in October.

I am already preparing for kid’s week – The first week in December. We have books planned by A.R. Clayton, D.W. Storer, C.M. Snow, Raz T. Slasher, and 2 by me. (One picture book and one middle grade). I feel like It is going to be a good offering this year. The first Call is out for the spring anthology. And I have submitted a poem and a flash piece of Serena’s to various places. Some things are just falling into place. I will let you know as I hear about the submissions and the results there.

It’s Six o’clock do you know where your blogger is?

The next few months are going to be busy for me. (Yes I seem to do that to myself a lot) So, as I am sitting here trying to get all my weekend work caught up, I realize that my poor blog is AGAIN neglected. Friday we are releasing Andrew McDowell‘s second edition of Mystical Greenwood. That means I am trying to gather images and activities for the release day on our Facebook Party Room group. I have things I am trying to put together for the Fae Corps Blog…again to get everyone possible to see his book.

That is just the first thing I am doing. Then, I have our Halloween Anthology. This year it is called Darkness Screams. It received so many outstanding submissions that I split it to accommodate the quality of stories. (I have done this before with other anthologies)

So I am neck-deep in editing, Marketing image creation, and formatting for these two. I give myself two months to do this with each anthology because I have a routine. Once approved I invite the author/artist to join the company discord. I have each anthology set up in a private room within the channel. This allows Files to be shared and questions answered easier. I ask everyone to sign a contract (So I can legally publish their story/art/ poetry and they have protections of their copyright) I ask for a bio written in 3rd person and an image to represent them. (I say an image because I have had a few who gave me photoshopped images, due to personal reasons. ) Then I sit down and put together a rough draft of the anthology. I don’t worry in the first rough about perfect formatting or having it be edited and polished. After I get a feel for how the anthology will flow, I feel like I am more capable to suggest edits. Yeah, that seems so silly…the grammar will not change based on how it fits in the book, right? Actually, it might. It will help me to see the story on its own instead of trying to place it mentally in an imaginary book. I send the suggestions to the author and give them a deadline for when I need to see the finished copy.

Then I start while waiting for the stories to come back…to make images to catch the interest of possible readers. I do (For most of the anthologies) a cover reveal, A author/artist list for each anthology, A image to represent each story, and a meet the author/artist graphic. That can be quite the undertaking. In Darkness screams that is 3 graphics just to list the author/artist in each one. I, as you can see above, combined the cover reveals. I have already today done the story graphics for each book.

I still have more to do just for the anthologies… Then I have another book we are releasing in October. The third book in Ashira Dayta’s Magick Saga. (The cover reveal should be happening soon on Fae corps Blog. I am quite proud of that cover) It releases on October 31st. I have to do some images for marketing it as well.

Then I have other projects that are ongoing and need my attention. (For example Formatting for a Poetry book by NK – Titled Valley of Thoughts. We are supposed to be releasing that next year. Editing for Ruan Bradford Wright’s Novel Toe-Rag which is expected to release in February. Writing my own poetry and prose books. And just being a mom and person who has housework that is not getting done more often than not.)

I honestly intend to do this blog every week..but I end up overwhelmed. I think I will just post some of my poetry this week. I thank you for your patience. I swear I am not forgetting y’all.