Ups and Downs of a New Book #IWSG #booksky

A new book is nothing but ups and downs. And if you don’t have a fixed home/work schedule, it can take over. Internet research rabbit holes are just as bad for losing days at a time.

This is my Insecure Writers Support Group post, in which we share our successes and failures as writers, our insecurities, in fact. Anyone can join in, just sign up at the IWSG Sign-up page, write a blog post on the first Wednesday of the month, and go back to that sign up page to link with everyone else–or a goodly sample. Our host is Alex J Cavanaugh, and cohosting this month are:

 Rebecca Douglass, Natalie Aguirre,Cathrina Constantine, and Louise Barbour

Ups and Downs: part 1, the text

We talk about editing a lot. Some people love it, some hate it. Some just remain very insecure about it! I see plenty of guidance about editing, and that still doesn’t tell me whether the book is any good in the first place.

And however much you polish the text, get your grammar right, use your dialogue tags correctly, put scenes that start one way and end the other (something happens in them), and all the other tricks for the trade, if the story sucks, you’re done.

I now have a beautifully edited book. The problem with it is a lack of plot, and that is deliberate. I’m still not sure whether anyone will want to buy it, but I see it as something extra for fans of my orichalcum miners, Big Pete and the Swede. The answer to all their questions: how did it all start?

So I decided I might as well publish the meandering tales of their lives from student to wealth, which were great fun to write, and really an act of love from my perspective. Hanging out with these guys is just great fun.

You should read it. Every time I start another pass I enjoy it, and so do my beta readers, thank goodness.

Ups and Downs: part 2, the cover.

I have learnt a lot about covers in the last month. Mostly from Derek Murphy. A long time ago I discovered his simple tool for putting your covers together in a nice marketing picture. When I looked this time, I found a whole lot more.

Including a quick assessment ‘Does Your Cover Suck?’ To which the answer, of course, was ‘yes’.

Reading between the lines I think my problem is that I’m a dinosaur. I don’t move with the times, and I prefer the styles I’ve always liked. So having made a nice new cover for the book (which now had a title, the Quest for Orichalcum) it was in the style of the books in the series I published ten years ago.

My worst fault was using old-fashioned fonts. I should be using whizz-bang smart fonts, just right for my genre. To do that I could use his cover creator tool and free templates (which work on Windows, and with Photoshop). Er, yes. I’m on Mac, and I use something else which I’ve been using for so long I’m loathe to give up, now that I finally have got the hang of it.

Eventually, I picked up on what he was saying in his videos (there’s loads of really good stuff on his sites, I recommend a browse), looked at the scifi books coming out at present, and picked a style I liked. Got the best font I could out of those available to me and…..

It got 6/10 instead of 4/10 on the anti-Suck scale, so I decided that was good enough for me, as I wasn’t going to get closer without modern fonts.

Ups and Downs: part 3, the series

Then I thought about the rest of the series. If this didn’t look like the others, would established readers want them?

Solution…

Yes, new ebook covers for the series.

These got 6s and 7s on the suck-ometer. Zanzibar’s Rings does best because it has a planet. Corsair does well because it liked the colour contrasts and the dragonfly. It wanted the Perihelix to ‘pop’ more, but I liked them all.

Then I thought: I have a stock of paperbacks with the old covers, and with the publisher I use, if I do new covers I’ll need new ISBNs. Not so for the ebooks.

So I now have ebook covers, and paperback covers, and never the twain shall meet, although it might confuse Amazon. I’m not planning to make a paperback of the new book, but it wouldn’t hurt to put it together just in case…

Sidetrack: I put the new covers on the Kindle books: the Perihelix got a file error for the manuscript. Given that it’s over seven years old, I’ll give it a little bit of editing before uploading a new one 😀

Ups and Downs: part 4, the credits

I’m very keen on giving artists credit for their work. Most of the photos I’ve used from the internet are free use from NASA/JPL-Caltech (thank you, NASA and JPL). The one I was planning to use for Corsair on the new book got a thumbs down from friends, so I checked on pixabay for something I liked. I like it a lot so thank you cliverinne for this lovely scene. Then there’s the picture for the second book, which was originally an inspiration for a dragonfly flash fiction, a random picture choice from Chuck Wendig’s weekly prompts. It would look great on the cover, I thought.

So… I found the original tale in my archives from May 16. I found Chuck Wendig’s prompts for April/May 16 (also in his archive), which showed the random picture thing was from Photo.net. I found Photo.net, and searched on landscape images (the only filter available other than artist’s name). Then I worked out where the ones started that had been loaded prior to May 16.

I am currently on page 1450 of 5807–50 images per page–looking for the owner of this lovely picture… It’s quite restful, last thing before bed.

Ups and Downs: part 5, the badges and banners

And when I wasn’t looking for credits, I was playing with badges and banners. And realising that the Smashwords July Sale (see yesterday’s post) was just the thing to remind people of the Viridian System Series, and promote the new book…

So I built some banners and badges, and thought I should put a link on them to the book page, but smashwords links are so long…until I remembered Bitly short ones… Another rabbit hole successfully escaped from.

Ups and Downs: the end

Please buy my book. Please let other people know about my book. Please steal the badges, the banners, stick them in a post with links to the Viridian series books, ask me for an interview, for anything you like…

In fact, steal as many of the resources as you like on this page and do a blog post about it (ideally between 12th July and 12 August, but any time after is fine. There’s a rafflecopter included to help you get more visitors, too.

And remember how long it actually takes to publish an ebook even when it’s finally beautifully edited, and your lovely cover designer has finally delivered the goods.

And by now I hope I’ve remembered to send a newsletter to my subscribers. (I have, but I just realised that I didnt give them their discount code for a copy during the pre-sale period. D’oh. If you got my newsletter, the coupon code for you to buy it cut-price is CN24E and expires on 16 August. If you’d like my newsletter, go to the pre-sale page, sign up, and get the book cut-price. If you just use the code as an IWSG member, please review it 🙂 )

Thank you for reading this far…

Question of the Month

Is there a genre you haven’t tried writing in yet that you really want to try? If so, do you plan on trying it?

The trouble with scifi is that you can write just about any genre and set it on another planet. My problem is setting them in a realistic real world. No, I don’t like this world enough to set a good story on it. Although there is still the nascent ‘art appreciating lady who is currently running a cafe in a small town in France’ …