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Silly Me

January 19, 2012 by in category Archives tagged as , , , , ,
Okay, show of hands. How many of you thought once the book was through final edits and in the publisher’s fair hands, your job was done? You could rest on your laurels, take a few weeks off, visit with friends, then start the next NYT best seller.

Come on, be honest. At least in the beginning of your writing career? Yeah, me too. I understood the blood, sweat and tears expended in book production, but the rest of it–cover, production, advertising–that was the publisher’s job.

Pretty heavy duty fall when you found out otherwise, wasn’t it? I know I was thoroughly gob smacked (great expression, don’t you think) when I found out only a select few authors got the champagne and caviar treatment from their publishers. The rest were relegated to mid list unless or until they were noticed.

Somehow, when I wasn’t looking, along came the digital age of publishing. Seems like there were indie publishers everywhere, and it was a whole new world. Harder in a lot of ways but at the same time there was a very real feeling of being in control of your own destiny.

Gulp.

Along with sending in a spectacular book, you now have to plan and implement your sales campaign, and build your own buzz. So you set up a blog and/or website, you join writer’s groups if you weren’t already a member, and you push push push your book.

Double gulp.

You can also have serious input into your cover, your blurb, who does your reviews. Now that’s a bit more promising. Might even call it positive. Unless you go into brain freeze at the thought of writing a blurb, or your artistic abilities stop with a rousing game of Hangman. Even so, having read many times about the disappointment in poorly executed book covers (and having snickered at many of them when the author wasn’t looking) cover input is truly in the plus column for me.

Enough to off set the rest of the promotional requirements? Well, maybe not but it is a huge rush to get credit for the artwork on the cover as well as the writing inside. Or in the case of My Killer My Love, to share credit. I knew what I wanted the cover to look like, but I went into another brain freeze when it came time to put it together.

And (sigh) the same thing happened when I tried to put a trailer together. I took this great class, broke down the story into quick bits, started looking for images. Sadly, I am prone to the “ooooh shiny object” syndrome and can become easily sidetracked on any search, thereby losing many hours of what should be writing time. Once I found the images I wanted, yep you guessed it, chilled frontal lobes.

At this point it was time to move forward with this book since I signed a contract with Black Opal Books for the next story. So my Christmas present to myself was an inquiry to Lex Valentine, who put a trailer together for me with no muss, no fuss. I’ll be doing the same with Teach Me To Forget (if we keep that title). In the meantime I’m back to writing.

Really need to do something about the temperature of my gray matter and I don’t mean what’s on top of my head. Especially since that’s silver, as anyone with an artistic eye will tell you.
Oh, yeah, the book trailer: MY KILLER MY LOVE book trailer

Monica Stoner writes as Mona Karel.  Read more on her blog,  Discover the Enchantment in Romance  or buy her books from Black Opal Books.  

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