October was something of a scattered month as I bounced between editing, formatting, back cover blurb/cover art, and miscellaneous publishing prep work. There are so many things that need to be done at this stage, and I've found myself moving back and forth between tasks depending on my mood and what is needed at the moment.
Let's break it down!
Editing: This is still the number one priority, as there are several important steps that cannot be triggered until this phase is done. Currently, my sister (who has experience as an editor and has a great eye for prose) is reading through the book and giving her editing notes. I've been going through the chapters as she finishes them, making changes accordingly.
Formatting: While I wait for editing, I've also been working on the formatting. This includes working on the front and back matter of the book (things like dedication, acknowledgements, author bio, maps, etc.) and deciding on formatting settings (such as font, chapter stylizations, margins, etc.).
A lot of this work has already been done, as I got a head start on front/back matter earlier this year, and the formatting settings were already decided in book 1. Mostly, my work has been uploading the actual book to get an idea of page count, finalizing front/back matter, and addressing formatting issues/decisions as they arise.
Back Cover Blurb: With the actual art for the cover finally done, I turned my attention to the back cover blurb. I had already written a few drafts of it back in January, so now it was just a matter of refining the blurb and choosing a quote from the book to go with it.
The blurb for book 2 is less crucial than the blurb for book 1 as readers are presumably already invested in the series, but it is still a challenging task to condense the premise of an entire book into a concise, intriguing few paragraphs. But after a lot of fine-tuning, I finally settled on a final version and sent it to Miblart!
Cover Art: Speaking of Miblart, now that they have the art files they have begun working on the typography. Since most of the font is already decided from book 1, it's just a matter of getting the positioning and colour right, and tweaking a few of the custom letters for the new title. I received my first two versions of the book with font, and it's looking great so far!
Miscellaneous: There are always a handful of miscellaneous jobs that need doing as a self-published author. In this case, I've mostly worked on things connected to book 1: signing up for book fairs, attempting to get the book 1 ebook available in libraries, fixing a couple errors and uploading new files, and so forth.
