Who knew there was so much more to do after you wrote your book? Doesn’t a fairy show up and poof! it’s ready to go on the shelf? I’m not even talking about the cover here.
Here are some of the things that you need to consider before putting your book baby out in the world:
- Dedication: is there someone out there that inspired you? In my mind, having a book dedicated to you is up there with someone naming a star after you. It doesn’t get more special than that!
- Acknowledgements: Who helped you along the way? If you were smart, you wrote these folks down somewhere as you were working on your project so you can tell them all thank you. Sometimes it’s not a person, it’s an organization that you want to highlight here.
- Epigraph: This is a quote that is meaningful to your work. I love reading these in other people’s books. They can be very inspirational.
- Foreword: Are you going to write a letter to your readers, or have someone else write one? This is a great opportunity to direct readers to your website, or invite them to join your mailing list, or let them know about other books you’ve written.
- ISBN: You’re going to need one to publish your book. If you are only going to sell your books on Amazon, they will give you one of theirs, but it only works on Amazon. If later on, you decide to sell your books someplace else, like Ingram Spark or Barnes and Noble, you’ll have to get a different one anyway. You can purchase these at Bowker. You can purchase just one, but they are cheaper in blocks of 10 or more. Ebooks don’t require one, but paper- and hardback books do.
- Author Bio: You are going to have to tell people a little about yourself. Don’t be shy, this is marketing, not bragging.
- Blurb: A blurb is a little synopsis about your book that helps readers decide if they want to pick up your book. It is usually about three paragraphs. The first paragraph has the hook, sets up the main character’s emotional state at the beginning of the book, the inciting incident, and the first cliffhanger (what is the huge thing that happens in the middle). The second paragraph tells how the character’s emotional state is changing as the stakes build and ends with another cliffhanger. The last paragraph is your selling paragraph where you pull quotes from reviews, give adjectives to describe how good the book is, and invite the reader to purchase the book.
- Page numbers and other small details: Where are you going to put the page numbers? Top, bottom, middle, side? How big are the gutters (the space in the middle where the binding is)? How wide are the margins? Are you going to have names for your chapters or just numbers? Are you going to put drop-caps at the beginning of each chapter?
Ahhh! There is so much to think about! Never fear, I have a solution! Almost all of this list can be taken care of for you by the good folks at Reedsy.com. And it’s FREE! The only thing they don’t do there is the ISBNs. You can even write your book on their platform. If you choose to write it in Word, or something else, you can import it and it still works. I’ve done it both ways. I like how it looks when they finish. When you export the final product, you can choose either ebook or print-read PDF files. I’m re-doing all of my Traveling Trunk books through them so that the reader experience is seamless.
Let me know if you have any questions I can answer or any other topics you would like to see me cover!