A Rational Arrangement: editing complete!

[rowyn]

As I was doing my usual aimless webbrowsing this morning, I thought, "I should do something more productive. Like edit A Rational Arrangement ... oh wait, I'm done with that."

Right.

I declared last night that I was going to stop poking at A Rational Arrangement now, and officially handed it off to alinsa, who'd volunteered to typeset it for me ages ago.

My plan for the story from here goes something like this:

* Serialize it on LJ and Dreamwidth (under my existing Rowyn accounts). The serial will run three times a week, for 250 or so posts. (Come to think of it, I actually do have to poke at the manuscript some more to divide it into posts.)
* Possibly serialize it some other places at the same time, such as tumblr, or on its own site.  "Its own site" does not seem worth the effort of creating; almost everyone I know who has their own domain complains about the effort required maintaining it and its unreliability. But maybe something will change my mind on this. All the cool kids have their own sites, after all.
* Create a cover for it.
* Not long after starting the serial (maybe a month?), release it as an ebook, so that people who don't want to wait for each post can buy it.

Possibly-optional steps:

* Set up a micro business for self-publishing purposes.  I don't know how important this is, but some sources say it's useful for tax purposes to have your writing under its own business, and it doesn't seem like it'd hurt. Should research.
* Buy some ISBNs. Some of my friends who self-publish say you don't need to do this any more, and some of them still do it, so I should presumably research it further.

The cover is the part that feels like the most work, at this point. I don't particularly want to commission a professional artist to do a cover, for various reasons. The two biggest reasons are: (a) I don't think the book's odds of profitability justify the expense of a pro cover. It's a niche product for a niche genre and (b) I have no good ideas that would require a pro artist. I have been trying to picture how I'd illustrate the book in standard "here are the protagonists" romance style, and I got nothin'.

I have  one idea for a cover that I like, which would be "smallish photograph of three overlapping wedding bands, against a dark background, with book title the dominant element." I might need to pay a photographer for this. I dunno. Presumably it'd be cheaper than paying for a cover painting, at least. This style of cover is popular in YA, which my book isn't, which is the main downside to it. The main upside is that I like it, unlike everything else I can think of.

I have no actual design programs. I will play around with ideas in ArtRage and see what I come up with.

I plan to publish the book under a pseudonym, probably "L. Rowyn". This would save me the trouble of getting social media account names that match my author name. Also, assuming I ever publish non-romance books, I'll probably do so under a different name anyway. Not out of a desire for anonymity, but because the markets are different enough that I think a different 'brand' makes sense.

I am probably forgetting some steps. What am I forgetting?

Also: yay! I finished editing a book! I've never declared victory on editing before. Exciting. \o/

Comments

[alinsa.livejournal.com]

Okay, so, the references I could find quickly in my notes:

"Makeover tip #2" at http://blog.smashwords.com/2013/03/six-tips-to-read-reader-tea-leaves-how.html ("a few sales a day" to "NYT bestseller", supposedly due to a cover change)

Joe Konrath (who claims to have now sold over 1 million ebooks) has a "things that helped me sell my books" article up at http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2013/02/how-to-sell-ebooks.html, the cover is his #1 item.

Not specifically on covers, but there's a pretty good site, "Why Isn't My Book Selling?" that had a professional looking at people's books and offering feedback on why they weren't selling. Covers are pretty frequently mentioned, though. Alas, no longer updated, but I thought there was some pretty good stuff on the site in general: http://booknotselling.blogspot.com/

[rowyn]

The thing about book marketing is: no one really knows what sells books. Other industries have a much better handle on how to market their products than the book industry does. The book industry is a bunch of "collective wisdom says but we have no actual evidence that this is true, just our gut feeling and personal inclination".

And sure, buying a $2000 cover might give my book a better chance of not ending up in the long tail, but my personal suspicion is it's something like a 10-20% better chance. Yes, there are plenty of books with terrible covers that don't sell. There are also thousands of books with awesome covers that also don't sell.

I may be willing to make that bet on Silver Scales, when the time comes, but I dunno about A Rational Arrangement.

The good news (for your "you should shell out 100 times your expected ROI by having a pro do the cover" argument ) is that I came up with a way to illustrate Justin, Wisteria, and Nikola together that'd be indicative of the book's genre and would generally look good if done by a real artist. Which does increase my odds of hiring a real artist. -_-