Well, I sent out almost enough query letters to Literary Agents. Who all failed to recognize that they were dealing with an author of Pulitzer prize-winning potential and a novel which was the decade’s greatest literary work.

This group failure actually tends to validate the Literary Agents role. I certainly haven’t written a great literary work instead, I have written a book with barely believable characters and almost feasible plot lines and as an  ‘I will write a book one-day’ author, I would have difficulty differentiating between a Pulitzer and a Raffle prize. I am not disparaging myself; I have written the sort of book I enjoy reading. Given that I accept that riches will not flow through my endeavours, what else would I do?

I sadly can’t even blame the Query itself, I had a few bites but they decided the bait, my book, was not for them.

So now my planned timeline demanded that I self-publish, and now the trouble starts…

These are the things that I figure need consideration, I only plan to touch on them here but hope to flesh them out as the blog grows.

After hours of circular research, I tired of waving at myself across the diameter of my endeavours and decided a decision needed to be made somewhere. So I decided to pay for the production of a cover.

This was a good decision, not intrinsically so, but because it unwound my circle giving me a chronology. (You may have deduced if you have read previous blogs, that I like order, even if I am incapable of maintaining it.)

So from the cover I needed to know the following:

The size of the book.
The title and sub-title
The Authors name (Pseudonym or not?)
A concept of who my audience was and how to attract them.
A starting idea for a design

Front
Back
Spine


A synopsis for the graphic artist, (he claimed that he would be influenced by it)

I further had to consider:

Where I would self-publish, (each has a differing design requirement.)
ISBN numbers and Barcodes.
If I was planning to use the graphics in promotional material.
As I was planning a series, should I create a series template?
Was I going to create an Authors website so it could be referenced in the published work?

So as you can see, all this thinking was good for me. Now I have a track to run on I hope I will no longer get dizzy.

I hope to cover each of the above in following blogs.