So, back in the spring, I got really ambitious and published a book that I’d been working on for a few years. Initially, it seemed like an easy process. Write the book, make some sort of cover, then publish it on Amazon. And so I did. I tried to convince friends and family members that they’d like my book and sat back and waited for the publishing fairy to recognize how good my book was and bring me readers.
Annnnnd that did not work. After waiting for some time, I started looking for people to help me figure out why my book wasn’t doing anything. And, believe it or not, I found most of the answers on Facebook. I joined a dozen writing groups and lurked around like a weirdo and learned. Oh man I learned.
In general, I pulled away three important facts. 1. My cover was horrible. No, seriously, it was absolutely not up to any industry standard. Lucky for me, we had an artist friend, Josh Warlick, and he put together a phenomenal cover for me.
You can see the two covers side by side below. Yes, I’m aware that my cover seems to just be a weird line drawing on some sort of textured background. It’s why I hired Josh.
We actually made a short video about how Josh went about making the cover. Even he couldn’t find nice things to say about my cover. If you’d like to see it, click here.
2. Even though I’d proof-read it a thousand times, there were still typos. The prose and story line were sloppy in parts and lacking in others. Cue, my editor. Katie came on and polished my book until it shone. And finally, I’d planned to write 6 really long books, but that doesn’t go over so well in e-books. So I did some surgery and cut my huge book in half.
The result? Two new, shiny, ready to go books! It’s a bit of a bummer that I didn’t start out this way because I ended up wasting a good six months having to go back through and fix things at the request of my editor, but now, I actually feel pretty proud of what I’ve produced.
Today, Steve and I put The Frightened Fox up onto all of the major servers. It’s out there doing it’s thing, and I couldn’t be happier. It just goes to show that passion, know-how, and elbow grease individually won’t get you where you want to go, but if you put them all together, well, you’ll at least make some progress.
Now without further ado~ here’s the new cover for The Frightened Fox!
Are you blown away? Right?
If you want to read the story, which I will say, has really gotten one heck of a face lift since the last time I put it out there, go to: https://books2read.com/thefrightenedfox
Also, after a lot of consideration, we decided to put The Moxy Byrd out for free. Why? Mostly because I’m a very new indie author and it’s a good way to let people check me out. If you want a free copy of it, you can get it here: https://books2read.com/themoxybyrd
We put together a couple of videos with Josh Warlick, my cover designer that walk through how he came up with the covers. The first one also includes a short section where he’s making fun of my rather shoddy cover attempt. If you’d like to see them, click here.
For anyone who’s interested in getting free stuff, I have a newsletter. If you join, you will pretty much just get free stuff and occasional updates about when new books are coming out. Currently, newsletter subscribers have access to what we’re calling “The Revolutionary Vault”. Steve’s taken all of Josh’s fantastic covers and turned them into phone and computer backgrounds. There’s also a free story that tells about Simon Greggory’s childhood. If you’d like to join the newsletter, please click the link below!
Annnnnd that did not work. After waiting for some time, I started looking for people to help me figure out why my book wasn’t doing anything. And, believe it or not, I found most of the answers on Facebook. I joined a dozen writing groups and lurked around like a weirdo and learned. Oh man I learned.
In general, I pulled away three important facts. Firs of all, my cover was horrible. No, seriously, it was absolutely not up to any industry standard. Lucky for me, we had an artist friend, Josh Warlick, and he put together a phenomenal cover for me. But not before some good-natured ribbing about how bad my cover was. He was not wrong. In fact, here’s a quick reminder of the old cover. You can also watch a short clip of Josh explaining how he figured out how to fix my messed up cover here.
The next thing I learned was that even though I’d proof-read it a thousand times, there were still problems within my story. There were typos. The prose and story line were sloppy in parts and lacking in others. Cue, my editor. Katie came on and polished my book until it shone.
Finally, I’d planned to write 6 really long books, but that doesn’t go over so well in e-books. So I did some surgery and cut my huge book in half.
The result? Two new, shiny, ready to go books! It’s a bit of a bummer that I didn’t start out this way because I ended up wasting a good six months having to go back through and fix things at the request of my editor, but now, I actually feel pretty proud of what I’ve produced.
Today, Steve and I put The Frightened Fox up onto all of the major servers. It’s out there doing it’s thing, and I couldn’t be happier. It just goes to show that passion, know-how, and elbow grease individually won’t get you where you want to go, but if you put them all together, well, you’ll at least make some progress.
Now without further ado~ here’s the new cover for The Frightened Fox!
Are you blown away? Right? Luckily, this time I didn’t try making the cover first on my own. Can you imagine? It would have invoked nightmares, I’m certain.
If you want to read the story, which I will say, has really gotten one heck of a face lift since the last time I put it out there, go to: https://books2read.com/thefrightenedfox
Also, after a lot of consideration, we decided to put The Moxy Byrd out for free. Why? Mostly because I’m a very new indie author and it’s a good way to let people check me out. If you want a free copy of it, you can get it here: https://books2read.com/themoxybyrd
For anyone who’s interested in getting free stuff, I have a newsletter. I swear that I won’t spam you. We have a toddler coming home on the 9th, it’ll be amazing if I have time to send out an email every quarter. Newsletter subscribers have access to what we’re calling “The Revolutionary Vault”. Steve’s taken all of Josh’s fantastic covers and turned them into phone and computer backgrounds. There’s also a free story that tells about Simon Greggory’s childhood. If you’d like to join the newsletter, please click here!
And that’s all my updates for today. Oh, except my youngest son will officially be home with us on November 9th! We’re all ecstatic and crazy nervous. But mostly ecstatic!
Have a great week and keep fighting for what’s right!
Miranda New 