| Book covers, beta reading and magnets Hello – Like most people, December is busy for me, but I’ve managed a fair bit of progress on the writing and publishing, and blimey it’s a steep learning curve. That said, I’m thoroughly enjoying the experience, which is something at least 🙂 Beta Reading – I sent out the manuscript of The Fisher Queen (Book 1 of the trilogy) to a bunch of friends and family, as well as two professional beta-readers (yep, it’s a thing). If you’ve read it and fed back, I can’t thank you enough, whatever you thought of it, good or bad, it’s been invaluable. Based on the collated feedback, I’ve decided that Book 1 needs another draft (I’m now on Draft 4!), rather than just minor tweaks. This is my first book and, like anything I suppose, it takes practice. Each draft gets better, but I’m definitely building the plane as it’s in their air. Book 2 is on Draft 3 and Book 3 is on Draft 2 (confusingly), once I’m done with the re-draft of Book 1, I’ll pass through both of those again to deal with any knock-on effects of the changes. Editing is not writing, and it’s a dull slog much of the time I can tell you 🙂  Cover Art What do you think? (above, obvs) Back when I was naively optimistic about how long this would all take, I commissioned a piece of artwork for the cover of Book 1. I rather like it, but I’d love to know what you think. Whether I end up actually using it for the book cover or not remains to be seen, people really do judge books by their cover, it’s probably the most important investment to make. It’s got to be the best it can be, and I have some time. I might try some other ideas and generally let it sit in my mind for a while before deciding. Either way, I’ll still use the image, for my website, social media, and so on.As a rough idea, if I did use it for the cover, it would likely look something like this:  Launch Date Due to the beta-reading feedback and me deciding to go for another pass, it’s likely the launch will go back a little. I’m still confident the first book will released in the first half of 2026, but I’ve realised that pandering to my natural impatience is a bad idea. It’ll release when it’s ready and when I think it’s as good as it can be. I’ve spent 3 years writing the damn thing, a little more time now is no big deal. Reader Magnet Prequel A reader magnet, as I found out recently, is a thing you use, usually a giveaway of some kind, to get potential readers to engage with you, in my case getting them to sign up to this newsletter. Newsletters are a crucial part of creating any kind of reader base as an author, pretty much every expert/podcast/online-random says so, so I want to try and build it up as best I can prior to the release of the first book. The general consensus in the publishing and writing groups where I now lurk online seems to be that the best reader magnet for an unpublished author is a free short story, something connected to the world I’ve created. They read it, hopefully like the sound of it, and sign up. They can always unsubscribe, so it’s very much a freebie. So that’s what I’ve done. I have a taciturn, quiet but very dangerous character named Finn in my trilogy, who is rather old at the time, so I wrote a short prequel story about his life, and how he came to be doing what he does when readers meet him in the books. As you’re already subscribed, you’ll get it (if you want), so keep an eye out for an email with a link to the story.Thank you for reading, it’s much appreciated. Feel free to reply, I’m always interested to know what you think 🙂 |