Cover Design

by Jonathan on July 17, 2022

I’m not gonna lie, this is probably the step that will take me the most time. My full time job is as a software engineer, and I have a decent bit of experience as a graphic designer from when I was a solo web developer, doing all the graphics for all of my own products.

As such, I feel like I can make the cover myself – but I’m also absolutely sure I’m not the first author to self-publish who believes that, and the current state of the market is such that you can’t fly by with a mediocre, noticeably sub-par book cover. So, I’m taking my time to do market research, see what covers are like in my genre (man, I love local libraries and online bookstores). This provides two benefits – I can see what readers expect a book cover to look like in my genre, and I have base material with which to, as objectively as possible, compare my design efforts to ensure they are up to snuff.

I’m taking this on while my editor is going through the copyedit of my manuscript, and my optimistic self is hoping I can have the cover done (or close) by the time the edit is done at the end of this month.

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It’s all about the ISBNs

by Jonathan on June 24, 2022

Now that the final self-edit is complete, I’ve moved on to actually figuring out how to get that massive bit of text compiled and formatted into what you, Dear Reader, expect when you’re reading an book on your phone/Kindle/paperback/whatever.

Since I’m using Scrivener (and have been since 2006 or so), compiling the book into various formats appears to be as easy using the “Compile for Export or Print” option. This pops up a modal where you can select various formats, and hopefully that ends up getting me most of the way there.

But, I also have hope that this book will make it into print, and that means I need an ISBN. This is a Brave New World for me, so recently I’ve been digging into how ISBNs are used, where to get them, and how much they cost.

One important factor to note, you can get a free ISBN from Amazon or DraftToDigital, but there are strings attached I’d rather not have to mess with, so I’ll be paying for a block of ISBNs to use as I see fit.

Once I’m comfortable with the process of formatting my novel, and happy with the results, with relevant ISBNs associated with the various formats I’ll be making available (PDF, ePub, mobi, etc) then it will be on to…

Cover design! Onward and upward~

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Progress!

June 20, 2022

So, about seven weeks after the last update, I’ve now finished the “final” self-edit of my first book. Woohoo! That didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it might. There’s still a lot more to do, of course. Got to get the cover done, find and hire an editor (waffling on this one, to […]

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Life

April 30, 2022

It’s hard to believe more than twelve years have passed since I last posted here (the prior post was written in December 2010, but wasn’t actually posted – I’ve done so now and kept the original timestamp for posterity’s sake). So much has happened since then that can best be described as Life™. Even so, […]

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Slogging through the No’s

December 30, 2010

Yes. My time of rejection has come. I’ve now sent out my book to five literary agents and one publisher. The good news? There are still two literary agents who haven’t rejected my novel yet.I always knew this was how the game played. Every reference book, website and other source I’ve seen has stated that […]

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Reincarnation

November 17, 2009

A few days ago I was at an SCBWI Tokyo event for children’s book writers, and heard this really exceptional quote from Alvina Ling, Senior Editor at the Little, Brown and Company publishing house: “Published authors aren’t necessarily the best writers – just the ones who didn’t quit.” That really struck a chord with me, […]

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Great googly moogly!

October 7, 2008

It’s always encouraging when you pick up a manuscript you’ve been setting aside for several months…and it ends up being better than you remember. I’m completely biased, of course, but The Stonemen’s Legacy isn’t total crap after all. Apart from a few doofy sections that need to be spruced up a bit, it was remarkably […]

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Back on track

April 7, 2008

Just got back from reading a friend’s blog. Ara Burklund is a rather amazing writer who is literally on the cusp of breaking into that most-holy-of-holy places we all want to be…Getting Published. Less I be misunderstood, she’s not quite there (yet), but just by looking at her writing regimen it will come as no […]

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Writing, writing, and more writing…

March 22, 2008

At least, that’s what I’d like to have been doing the entire time I’ve not been posting here. Truth is, being the man of the house, I feel compelled to provide my family with a few niceties such as food and shelter – writing, most unfortunately, doesn’t yet enable me to do that. So, for […]

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Distractions

November 18, 2007

So I was sitting in front of my laptop last night, working on a new site I had dreamed up, and suddenly realized I’d spent the better part of the last week working on it with no real progress, and without getting even so much as five pages of writing done. That’s when I realized, […]

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