Progress is being made on the latest MS; I’ve just completed editing the second draft of Fester Descent. The story’s tight, but could still use plenty of polishing. One polishing, coming up – but it’s also time to think about publishing and (UGH!) marketing the book.
I’ve already reached out to an editor who I’ve worked with before. She’s being cagey, as editors sometimes do. However, she did a bang-up job on Fester, and I’d rather work with her again than take my chances picking one randomly from Reedsy. That worked out very poorly on Laughingstock, and I’m not eager to recreate that experience.
While that drama is playing out, I’m looking at cover art – one of the most fun parts of self-publishing – mainly because I’m the one pointing our errors and demanding changes! No, it’s great to see how a written work will be represented graphically.
I found an organization that claimed that it could produce a professional-looking cover for a hundred bucks. Well, that just about fits my budget, so I thought I’d give it a go. (I’ll let you know the name of this organization once I’m satisfied with the work.) One bit of concern – will they use AI to create the artwork? There is a checkbox on the intake form about whether you want to avoid AI-generated content. It does not, however, specifically state that they won’t use AI if you check that box. I guess we’ll see.
Of course, conveying the intent of the book to the cover artists involved summarizing the book, which is something that many authors struggle with. I know I sure do. It needs to be done, so I got on it. Besides, this is just a clumsy explanation, but it will eventually morph into a reasonably decent back over blurb, and – eventually – a well-crafted Amazon Ads description.
I did submit an idea for a cover, based on some of the more interesting elements in the narrative. I asked the artists to create a cover that incorporates these three elements:
- A brothel
- An M50A1 tank
- Upwards of three (3) monkeys
I’d like to think that a book cover with these elements just screams “great read!” Or maybe it will be something else entirely. We’ll see – stay tuned!
