I'm finally there. The end of the book
has become reality. Cover of Darkness is finished, proofread, and
ready for distribution. I call this point in the process: The
Transition. Why do I call it this? Well, there is the formation of a
book, the sitting down and sketching out of characters, plot, story
arcs and the so forth, and most writers excel at this foundry of
creation. We live for it, we sit behind our keyboards and pound away
until before we know it, we have a manuscript. We are skilled at
this, that's why we call ourselves writers. Some of us went to school
for it, some of us have been writing since we were children, but all of us can
put together a manuscript for better or for worse.
Once we put together one of these
things, we are in a state of flux. Because here there are many
decisions that can be made. It can go into percolation...which is on
the shelf, or on the hard drive...to wait until we forget much of the
heat that went into it, and then re-edit it with, hopefully, fresh
eyes. Or it can move on in the process. It can go to a professional
editor, proofreader, beta-reader or other editorial professionals, lurching its way toward distribution. I consider this process more
of a 'creationism' and is on 'this' side of the process. That's
because we are abundantly familiar with this procedure and are largely
comfortable with it. Some of us can't take criticism and this can be
painful when the manuscript moves into other hands. But it's still on
this side of the fence.
I will get into the other side later.
Then there comes The Transition. This
is the mechanics of the machine, the churning muscles beneath the
skin. This is where we do what we do because we have to. We have to
find formatting and formatting companies, book creation, standard
printing or print of demand, book cover design, outlet and
distribution choices, all the meat and potatoes that bring the book
into either an ebook format or physical book. This is the bewildering
hurricane of jargon, choices, and options that come at you in
dizzying cyclone of information. A great deal of reading goes on at
this point, a great deal of digestion. You learn everything from book
binding, ISBN numbers, cover design, it goes on an on and in some
depth until you go round and round and come out here.
This is where I'm at, The Transition,
and it's terrifying because you don't want to make a mistake that
will cost you dearly. Every decision that you make has far reaching
implications in the cycle of your book. If you survive The
Transition, if you are not bilked out of tons of money, if you get
what you paid for, if the quality of your final product makes you
proud, you survived and can move on to the other side of the fence.
The other side is also fraught with the
same trials and tribulations. But worry about that later, because
if you don't have any experience with The Transition, you'll probably
have even less with “Marketing your book” which is the other side
of what we do. I break this entire process up into three zones so
that in totality it doesn't seem so daunting.
I'm sitting behind my computer,
fielding emails from my cover designer, ebook and paperback formatter, ISBN website
and distributor. Survival and success is in the future, and I will
chronicle the rest of my journey on these pages as I go along.
Gregory
