Theos Rising Update # 8

Usually, as a book gets closer to publication, I share little things I learned while formatting. I’ve learned most of my formatting from what others have posted about it, so posting my own hurdles and how I was able to fix them is my way of giving back to the author/indie-publishing community.

However, in a twist of fate, Theos Rising didn’t throw me any unexpected curves while formatting. I’m still expecting it to surprise me with something because, to date, there’s always something.

Instead, Theos Rising threw up an obstacle in an entirely different field from what I was expecting. This one I should have seen coming. If you’ve spent any time in the publishing industry, you know that the process takes time. From the initial writing, to editing, to formatting, to artwork and cover design, to printing, to marketing – *Breathe* – I could go on. I think in the traditional industry, they expect publication from the time of manuscript acceptance to the book hitting shelves to be about two years. That’s right. Two years. That doesn’t even include the initial writing of the rough draft or first edits.

Anyway, one of the reasons the process takes so long is there are a lot of people involved and you have to plan ahead for everyone’s schedules to line up. With my recent move and everything it entailed, I dropped the ball on this. I’d touched base with both the cover designer and the illustrations artist last year, but failed to double-check with them during my recent move.

This is entirely on me. I’m well aware of how busy both Justin, the cover designer/artist, and Esther, the illustrator, are. So when I finally reached out to them again, both Justin and Esther were leery of adding another thing to their plates right now. Esther really wanted to. Even started the illustrations. But I just hadn’t given her the lead time she needed for such a large project. Justin took a look at the cover idea I sent him and is fitting it into his already crazy schedule. (From what I’ve seen so far, this cover might be my favorite to date. It’s not quite done yet, but I’ll definitely be sharing it soon!)

So, all that said, I have a cover designer but no illustrator. In Quaking Soul, Esther created fun little drawings for each of my chapter headings. I’d hoped for her to do the same with Theos Rising. Without her, I had to go back to the drawing board. I’m an artist with words, not with pictures. I’ll go into what finally happened in my next post as covering it now will make this post really long.

But here are my tips this time for book production:

Plan well ahead for every step of the process and add buffer time to what you do plan. I’ve had really good interactions with the artists I’ve worked with but it’s not an uncommon comment that artists often take longer than expected to produce the artwork.Contact people early. The more time you can give others, including editors and not just artists, the less stressful the process is.

All this seems obvious, but it’s amazing how easily time disappears when you’re planning a project as large as publishing a book.

Blessings,

Jennifer

P.S. We’re still on track for a tentative June 15th publication. I say tentative because I’ve seen the printer take anywhere from a week to ship proofs to six weeks. If it’s a week, yay, June 15th. If it’s six, well dang, I’ll have to push the publication date. Fingers crossed for a week. =)

Some previous posts on formatting:

Technical Mumbo JumboLet’s Talk Details Part 1 and Part 2  (Note: I did run into the issue discussed in part 2 about losing page numbers while formatting Theos Rising. Thankfully, just moving the images a tiny bit this time fixed the issue.)Quaking Soul Update 6