Thursday, June 23, 2011

38 Days to Book's Release

Whew! Last night I sent an electronically signed contract and all the other forms, including the 'promo' pieces:

A 25-word blog line (what's the catchiest short sentence you can come up with to gain a reader's interest in your book?). Mine? What would you do – spy on others so you could publicly betray their secrets, or expose a secret that could destroy you? What do you think?
Wording for the back cover and for website blurb (No more than three paragraphs, and I went with the same three paragraphs paraphrased from the story). Mine: Magic makes you different, makes others look on you with suspicion. Many think those having such strangeness are dangerous, threatening, and also somehow undeserving of such a ‘gift.’ What Bertok had not related when the bishop gave him this mission was his greatest, most buried secret--he possessed such an unnatural ability. Now he must use his magic against others, expose them, and hope he would not be caught.
And a book excerpt of no more than 3 pages for the website. Too much information to give what I sent in here.


Sounds easy, doesn't it? I find it's one of the hardest parts of book management, harder than writing the manuscript, and I have some marketing background! These are the words that catch a reader's interest. I've made mistakes in this venue before. The promo pieces done yesterday were all selected in a matter of hours and reworked for what I thought presented this work best. I may have to revisit these words as this book goes through edits. Luckily, my publisher knows I'm in a crunch. I think they believe I can pull this off, and I know they will work with my changes up to the last minute. I hate last minutes and I'm sure they do to, so any changes will be completed long before the last minute.

Today I mailed in the printed copies of the contract. Now I'm going to search for images to use on my cover.

Wings lets me do my own covers, which I enjoy doing, and which I think make my stories stand out as part of a group and mine. What do you think? Are my covers up to par or should I let a cover artist do them? I have to say here, my other two publishers don't allow authors to do their covers because they like a specific look for their publishing houses, but I'm extremely pleased with the results.

With all this going on, I can also tell I'll be doing a lot of walking to relieve stress.

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