Thank You For Ten Update, Again

tyunglebower ♦ April 14, 2014 ♦ 1 Comment

Here’s what’s going on lately with Thank You For Ten: Short Fiction About a Little Theater.

To begin with, I’ve narrowed down my cover choices to three. in theory that could go on forever, and more covers could show up all the time. (I’m going with a pre-made one of a kind cover for this project.) But at some point I need to cut off the considering, and make a choice. Narrowing it down to three finalists will expedite that process. Two of them are just designs and one of them has an image on it. I’ll make that decision by next Monday.

A word on pre-made covers. I don’t know if I will use them with every project, but my impression of them is that if you go to the right place and do a little homework, they can work just as well as a custom design, and for far less money. I don’t agree that in order to show the world I’m serious about my project i need to prove how much money I’ve invested in it. How much money I invest is my business, not the consumer’s. Besides, the true investment is time and attention when it comes to a book, isn’t it? The day may come when I hire a designer for a cover. But for this first self-published venture, I find that any of the three finalists I’ve chosen, plus many others, would work. Covers are important because they are what grab the attention of a reader as they scroll through their electronic device of choice, looking for a book to get lost in. But the fact that they are important doesn’t mean that they have to be the most expensive and time consuming aspect of your book in order for them to be effective.

If you’re pondering self-publishing for the first time, don’t get caught up in book cover elitism. If you can design your own, or can afford to tell someone else exactly what you want, that is great. But if not, you can do worse than solid an effective. I don’t think the entire nature of the book has to be revealed by the cover, and i think that’s an unnecessary but increasingly common bar that the community has set for authors. If it’s balanced, eye catching and professional, and doesn’t stand in direct conflict with the type of book you’ve written (a vampire cover for a book with no vampires) you’ll be fine. Come back next week to hear more about my final selection.

I’m also in the process of giving each story another proofreading pass. This is I believe the fourth pass, and I am on the fourth story. (Out of ten, of course.) It can be tedious, but of course necessary. So far I’ve not had to correct much, and what I have corrected has been structural. Wrong words or two many spaces, etc. I think it unlikely at this point that I will edit any of the stories for content or plot at this stage. They are all set in that department. My bigger concern, as I’ve mention in previous posts, is whether or not my epub formatting stuff will look right. Again, you can’t really check for that before you upload something to a site to sell it. I can check links, make sure there are no tabs in the document and that sort of thing, but in the end it is going to be an act of blind faith as to whether the document will looking like a readable ebook or not. That truly is the second most nerve wracking thing about this.

The most nerve wracking is of course the marketing angle. I’ve been sharing my adventure in producing this collection here on the blog with all of you. (Hoping my followers on this blog will be checking out a copy. Let me here from you guys, please!) I also tweet about it quite a bit. I have a few other things here and there up my sleeve. But I know I won’t be able to do the massive marketing campaigns that some fellow indy authors have done. Not yet, anyway. Perhaps in the future. But even if I had more money to do more things, there are certain tactics I’d never be good at. So I am working to compensate for that by finding alternative ways to go about it. I don’t quite have to worry about all of that yet, but I have been dipping my toes in here and there.

It all starts with an official launch of the book. I hope to have selected that date to announce to you in the next two weeks. A price for the collection as well.

Am I excited for all of this? I don’t think that is the word yet. There is so much to do still, and so much to figure out. And much of it is so new to me, even though my scale of operations is no where near as big as that of some authors. But I’m hoping that the excitement for releasing the volume will build. I believe it will.

In the mean time, I’d like to hear any thoughts or advice you have about my endeavor. So please, if you’re reading this, leave me some comments. Or if you don’t want to do that, email  me at tyunglebower@gmx.com or tweet at me @TyUnglebower. I could use the support as I continue the journey.