One of my son’s was just visiting with his wife and daughter (and grandchild-to-be). He was asking me about my author journey and where I was at. I explained to him about waiting for the layout and how I expected to hear back some time in the next week. I also told him about the covers and how I was waiting now for round two. One day after he asked me I now have the new set of covers in hand and the first draft of the internal layout.

The new covers looks great. I got another set of 5. One cover is completely out of the running for me but then there are the other four which I have personally ranked. Now its time for some assistance. Using a hand picked group of people from several of my target demographics (wow, sounding really professional here) I got ratings from 1-5 on the covers. Wouldn’t you know that for some people, the cover that I absolutely hated was either top pick or in the top 3. Another rule of thumb is to listen to your audience. Well, my top two covers were in the top two for most of the reviewers. There was a third cover in the mix that I was able to eliminate based on lack of popularity among the masses. So going with the top two covers I polled an even more paired down grouping of reviewers and they picked the cover that I would have considered to be the runner up.

All was not lost. Looking at the cover there was a way to make it number one. It would need a few tweaks. So I went back to the graphics team and explained what the tweaks were and what I would like to see. I’m waiting for for a response back on them to see if I like what I actually suggested!

But, since I also received the interior layout… TAG! I’m “it” again. Time to go through the layout and see how things looks and make sure that all of my content is as I expect it to be. Once I approve the copy after this round of reviews, it becomes the final authoritative draft and any changes that I need to have make are outside of the scope of what is included in the contract. Being really careful here.

I had a meeting with the Digital Director today. I think a lot of his job, with you best interest in mind as well, is to upsell services. We talked about such things as then E-book, ways to get marketing out about your book, author interviews, books tours, Websites and other other digital presence.

Rule #1: Know what is included in your package. The guy who I talked to was open to questions about my current contract and answered them all honestly. While his job was to upsell, he did not put any pressure on me to buy any extra services, but simply advised as to what they were and how they could help me. One of the main tools was the author website. It costs a few duckets to have them build and manage a website for you. Fortunately for me, that is one of the things that I can do myself. In an earlier life I use to build websites for folks. That was before the days of content management systems and you had do really know HTML and CSS. Now content management systems like WordPress (which this site is built with) take a lot of the hassle out of that for you. I would recommend getting some help if you have never done it before, but if you are really good at following directions you might be able to save yourself a buck or two. If you happen upon this thread and you have some questions, I am more than willing to provide answers.

I was also advised by the digital director about how to increase my revenues and ways that I can make 100% profit if I choose to manage certain things in sales myself. Just bear in mind that some things are worth paying a small percentage in services so that you don’t have the headache. So listen carefully to the deals they have to offer and pick up on the things that you need. A good company is really just trying to help you in your journey. Atmosphere Press is one of those good companies. Check them out at http://www.atmospherepress.com

The book cover options have arrived. Its time to to put a face to my book! This is the day that I’ve been waiting for!

This a lot of great works… BUT… OH NO! The character being depicted is all wrong for my book. The concepts are good but the character looks nothing like the the description that I provided. I am dreading having to contact the graphics guys, but this needs to be fixed.

Wow! All of that worry over nothing. As I said before this team is awesome. Their response when I told them the character just did not fit was:

“Got it! No worries, we’ll give a go to a new round. It often takes a while to find a good fit, so no sweat—we’ll find the right match!”

OK, I can deal with that.

Now that they armed with exactly what I feel they have missed from my narrative, the graphics department is taking another stab at the covers. Can’t wait to see the next round.