Or more relevantly, how many people does it take to make a book? I suppose it might take only one, but I doubt it. The words of Hillary Clinton “It takes a Village…” seem more appropriate. If one writer could produce a book unaided, it would mean they would have to not only write the book, but edit it, proofread it, format it, design a cover and put those ideas onto a graphic formatted to work for a book cover, print it, distribute it, publicize it, develop a social media presence and a brand…it’s exhausting just to think about all it takes to produce a book and I’ve probably left out a few steps.
If a writer publishes traditionally, add an agent but leave formatting, cover creation, printing, and distribution to the publisher. It used to be that writers could turn over editing and publicity to the publisher, too, but increasingly even a traditionally published author has to present an edited and proofread copy to the publisher and is expected to take on a great deal of the publicizing of their book. If a writer publishes themselves or goes with a small press, they can look forward to being hands-on for the whole process.
I write, and have ideas about the cover design I want, but that’s as far as my skills go, so I rely on my village. Producing my books starts with a content editor who tells me if what I’ve written makes sense or if there are holes in the story. He looks for inconsistencies, too. I remember him asking why the final chapter of “What Lucy Heard” didn’t match the rest of the book. That was a shocker, but one I corrected before the book went to my copy editor who can’ t understand why I never get the spelling of Mercedes correct, important since my protagonist drives a sunshine yellow Mercedes. She even had a close call in it in “The Corpse’s Secret Life.” You’d think that after typing about the car so many times, I’d have the spelling down, but you’d be mistaken.
While my copy editor is correcting my misspellings and improper or lacking punctuation, my formatter makes sure thing like gutters are placed correctly so the wide one is in the book’s center insuring readers don’t have to pry books open to read them and that page numbers are accurate and flow.
Where I really need help is with covers. I usually have a cover in mind before I start writing, but the gap between my hand-drawn sketch and a book cover is vast. Thank you, Isabella and Julie, for taking my barely understandable ideas and making them into proper-looking and dimensionally-correct covers that my printer can use.
I have discovered that, even with all that effort, the best way to spot a typo is to proudly send a copy of a new book off to the Library of Congress, their “fee” for an LLC number, which guarantees you or a reader will spot it.
For distribution, I rely on Amazon and local bookstores and beg readers to ask their local libraries to purchase the books, which they will do if a book is requested often enough.
Then the getting-the -word-out work begins and seems to never end. When I published my first book, “The Death Contingency,” it seemed all I needed to do for publicity was find a hook and put the book up on Goodreads offering some sort of incentive for readers and reviewers to find it. My hook was that I was the only working realtor writing real estate mysteries. I was interviewed by CNN, made Costco Magazine, had featured stories about my book in local newspapers, was interviewed on local radio and TV stations, and hit several other big promotional channels. That was before 11,500 books were published every day in the United States. Competition from AI generated books is increasing dramatically, too, so much so that, Amazon has just put a limit of no more than two book submissions per week from any author to try and limit them.
So, with “A Faire to Remember” coming out today in print and e-book format on Amazon, I’m beginning publicity step one by letting you know it’s available and asking you to consider adding it to your TBR pile. You can find it and all my other books at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Nancy+Lynn+Jarvis&i=stripbooks&x=0&y=0&ref=nb_ss_b
