The Publication Process, Part 1

Why a part one?  There are so many elements to taking a book from concept to publication, and I wanted to feature one that was particularly new and exciting for me.

I've been writing since I was a little kid.  In my black and white composition notebooks, which I always thought I'd fill with a story, but only got three chapters in each time, I'd leave the first page to be my "cover".  At eight, this usually involved some very detailed half-human looking figures and animals (because my characters always had a trusty dog sidekick to rely on).  By the time I was twelve, covers consisted of girls and their horses, neither being all that terribly drawn (I've always been quite the artist...).  Then, once I hit sixteen, I stopped making covers because I could never quite capture the picture in my mind on the page.  Stories began with just the title and "Chapter One," and from there I continued.

Fast forward to The Ducal Detective project.  This whole endeavor came out of the need to understand the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing process because I want to use KDP to publish my beloved fantasy trilogy "Battleground Eden".  But like a parent sending their kid off to school, I want the best experience possible for my brain-child, and thus, thought I'd do a dry run with a difference story.  Somehow, I managed to create a whole new cast of characters and a twisting little mystery and low-and-behold, The Ducal Detective was born.

But what to do for a cover?  I very well couldn't draw a woman and her horse and call it good.  So I enlisted the help of the internet.  I went to Upwork.com, a site that allows you to post work for freelancers.  After putting up a proposal for my book, telling the world that I was in need of a graphic artist for an ebook cover about a royal detective, Mihail Uvarov, an artist in the Ukraine, reached out and put a bid on the project.  After looking at his work, I connected with him and we were off to the races.  I gave him a vague "I feel like this might be a good" idea for a cover, and he came back with something that knocked my socks off, enough to have me showing it around to my friends, repeatedly, asking "Isn't this so cool?"  Of course, there were tweaks that needed to be made, and Mihail readily made them, but that his first draft was just so on point really, really impressed me.  The fact that I was chatting with someone in the Ukraine about what elements should be on a fantasy detective cover just blows my mind.   The world is a really cool place.

So now, I am well versed in the creation of book covers, another skill I've learned along this journey to publication.  My experience was great, and I think I've alleviated most of the jitters I have regarding pushing forward on Battleground Eden (more to come about this series in the next post).  

Now, just to figure out the cover for that series. I guess a woman and her horse could work...

Arms around, 

S.B.