Good morning and welcome to a new week of possibilities!
In this post I’m going to talk about the next step in getting my book published through Page Publishing Inc. Just a couple of days after I was told that Page Publishing had agreed to publish my book I received an email from my Publication Coordinator Lana to request a little bit of my time to talk about the next steps. I was so excited and responded to the email right away. Lana was amazing on that first day and still is. She has responded to all of my questions quickly and is very thorough. During our first chat she gave me a list of things, that I’m calling homework, that needed to be completed before my editor could get started. Those items are list below.
- Completed (up to date) manuscript
- Dedication, TOC, Acknowledgement (if you are adding one)
- Editing Questionnaire
- About the Author
- Back Cover Summary
The completed (up to date) manuscript seemed easy. Heck I had gone through several editing rounds of my book but something about the way it was stated made me want to go through it again. I took a couple of weeks, which she said was perfectly fine, to go through it once more. She stated that after it’s submitted you can’t change it until the editing phase. Being an author, I’m always messing with the book, thinking there is just one tiny thing more to change. Taking my hands off of it and sending it in was harder than I imagined.
I hadn’t even thought about writing a dedication or acknowledgements section. When I went through trying to get published the traditional way I already had a query package put together that included my query letter, which is essentially the same thing as a back cover summary, and I had already been blogging so I had my About the Author written up. What’s not on the list is you can choose to write an Author’s Notes section at the end of the book which I totally decided I wanted to do. This gave me the chance to let my readers know where this whole idea of where Lorelei and her world came from. With traditional publishing you would have someone to help you through the actual writing of these items but Page Publishing leaves that totally up to you. Lana was great though and gave me ideas on where I could find examples that would help. I did ask if my editor would still edit these items after they were completed and Lana said yes they would. I spent a lot of time searching Amazon books that were in my genre.
Later on when you finish the editing phase and go on to the Page Design phase I was asked if I wanted to add an Author’s Photo. I hand’t thought of that either. I googled what an Author’s photo should look like and apparently there is more to it than just taking a selfie. I found myself unprepared. I didn’t have a photo already and the world was deep into this Covid-19 pandemic. My hair was a mess because we couldn’t even see a hair stylist and the possibility of getting a professional photo was out too. Lana was great again! I told her I wouldn’t be able to get the photo for another couple of weeks but she said we could continue on to the Page Design phase and then send in the photo as a correction. I had my daughter take some photos right after I got back from getting my hair done, and the one you see on this blog is the one I chose to submit as my author photo.
At first getting all of these items together was a bit overwhelming. There are no time crunches though, as Lana explained, so this helped a lot. With the homework stage completed the next step is the Editing Phase. I’m curious and worried at the same time. Will I even be able to see my writing through all of the edits or will there not be that many? LOL Only time will tell. I was told that it could take a couple of months to hear back from the editor.
Luckily we can fast forward because I’m behind on my blogging and the editing phase is complete. Next week I will be giving an update on how the editing phase went.
Dodie,
This is awesome news!! I am so excited for you! I can’t wait to read the finished book!
Sara