The Audiobook (part two)

Part Two of the audiobook chronicles.

I've been waiting to blog further about the audiobook until we had gotten further into the process.

Part One is here: https://ellenwritesdogs.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-audiobook.html

When I last posted about the audiobook, Casey Turner, my chosen narrator went off to read the book's PDF. (At that time, it still wasn't officially published yet and the ARCs were no longer the most recent version). Some time later, we met via a Google Hangouts video conference (highly recommended). Earlier, Casey explained to me how she handled differentiating the voices with a whole bunch of different highlighting over the PDF by using the iAnnotate app on her iPad. 

We spent a long time talking about the main characters voices and how they would be distinguished. (One male character very low, the other average. One female character relatively low and other other one a little higher but not much.) Also, how the dogs might sound and that I didn't want them to sound cutesy (she didn't either). The dogs' lines are very short and telepathic. What's tricky is that the dogs sound like what their person thinks they might sound like. 

We did have to talk about words and places that I had made up, like Choran or what does "pffft" sound like and do I really care about whether the "t" is pronounced. (I didn't. I wanted what works as a performance.) I studied directing in college, so I tend to look for talented people, and give them a lot of latitude. Given that I can't be there, I actually didn't have a lot of choice in that manner. I have to trust her judgement, which is just fine. If you don't trust the work of the people working for you, you will lose your mind. I assure you.

I did have her read to me some sections that were important to me. She kept telling me there was no way she could match what happens in the studio. I got that. I just wanted to get the idea and that was plenty, and I could tell that it was going to work well. 

In a later phone call, we went over one of the dog sections because it there was a lot of back and forth between a dog and his human in a very stressful situation. Listeners are going to be very opinionated about it, so I felt we had to do our best on it.

Then the studio worked out staffing and a schedule for recording. 
I had been referred to Casey and Bill (William Dufris)  the owner of Mind's Eye Productions (MindsEyeProductions.com, contact: wdufris@gmail.com), at the same time.
Bill's name should sound familiar. He was the voice of Bob-the-Builder and has narrated over 400 audiobooks including the marathon 42h43m Cryptonomicron (by Neil Stephenson).

Each audio book has a Producer, Engineer/Director, Narrator, and a Quality Control person.

Producer: William Dufris
Engineer/Director:  Karlyn Daigle
Narrator: Casey Turner
QC: Katie Flood

Big ginormous thanks go to Katie as she found an issue later in the book that two proofreaders and two editors missed.

It took two weeks to record (3 sessions per week, more than that kind-of thrashes the narrator's voice) and then a set of mp3s (one per chapter) was sent to me for review. I then spent a solid weekend listening to the book with the book's PDF in front of me and I got to fill out a proof sheet with any corrections. The reason it's important to work out in advance on what you think a character should sound like is that I don't get to say I don't like a character interpretation. What I get to write down is errors in deviation from the text, or to fix the book's editorial errors/changes, or if I hear something weird (I didn't - it was already proofed), and I've asked for a couple of shouted words to be louder.

Now it will go back in for this last fix-it session and then it will get sent to me again.

Book Published July 9th, and Other Projects

Pursuits Unknown was officially published on Tues July 9th. Some genius at Amazon figured out how to get many of the books delivered on that day precisely, which is probably why the pub day wasn't on a Monday.

My publisher was very nice to arrange for sunflowers to appear that day. I like arranging flowers so it was simple enough to make then look presentable, take a photo, and send a thank you photo to them.

While the paper version is printed and is now out, we are still working on the audiobook, and any minor changes that we discover we need to do can always be worked back into the Kindle version. (This modern world.)

Another thing is that I am guest blogging too which I really enjoy as it makes me consider topics I might not of thought to blog myself.

One is that She Writes asked me to blog about How to Write an Animal Character.
https://www.shewrites.com/blog/view/2869395/how-to-write-an-animal-character
I need to check to see if I can put a copy of this in this blog.

I will be the first one to say I'm no expert, but apparently having created a world like my fictional world qualifies me to at least talk about how I go about it which seems fair enough albeit self indulgent.

Speculative Fiction also sent over a long set of 14 in-depth questions for me to go along with the part that they already posted about the book.

There are other blogging opportunities, but they are more nebulous.

I am trying not to pay too much attention to Good Reads. They are kind of a rough, impatient crowd and are not professional reviewers like Kirkus is. (Hint a professional review includes enough detail about the book that you can tell they've read the book. GR has no such requirement.) My marketing people tell me that GR is much more about readers than writers and I can ignore them if I like. I've made use of GR as a reader in the past, so I find this a little disappointing but probably the reality. I really need to focus on my work and not outside opinion.

Kirkus Reviews warms up to Hybrid Publishing

Kirkus Reviews is a long standing (since 1933) book review magazine. Pursuits Unknown has a positive Kirkus review which we're very grateful for. (They are infamous for being "cranky".) A positive Kirkus review carries a fair bit of weight.

They have been slow to accept the idea of hybrid publishing as they have been on the traditional side of publishing for decades.

This is an interview with Brooke Warner who is the headhoncho at She Writes Press which is very closely associated with Spark Press. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/writers-center/publishing/hybrid-publisher-seeking-elevate-womens-voices/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_campaign=hots_facebook&fbclid=IwAR108GhikZd3NXwAw9i6TrT1DydPg583IXQBAnSULJIgD0Ad65Q63LQXTm0

Books Are Heavy, Let's Give Some Away

When I was in college the most arduous problem to moving was the hundreds of books. A friend of mine once prophetically said, "I want one reloadable book." He got his wish. I've been trying to keep fewer physical books these days, but even though I try to donate all the fiction to the library and keep the Kindle/Audible versions, I still have a ridiculous number of reference and "pretty" books.

Now I have gone and written a book and because I've chosen to do hybrid publishing, I get to pay for the printing and shipping of my books. This is a good, albeit expensive thing. Did you know that a box of 24 books weighs 28 pounds? I know, I lifted one.

I'm starting with 750 books, which is over 31 boxes of books, and it over $700 to ship from the printer to the warehouse. (I've chosen to have 36 books which is one and a half boxes, delivered directly to me) which is a separate shipping fee.

-----

So now I have 36 books. What the heck am I going to do with them? That's a rhetorical question. I am not into selling my own book, as I don't want to compete with the Amazon version of me (if you will), or offend those that have already bought the book. The dog sports communities often hold raffles at their events, so many of these are going to be given away in raffles or benefit auctions. The cool thing about raffles is people have a long time to look at and talk about the book long before it's given away. Everyone else is doing your publicity. This is called "buzz" and it's a very good thing indeed. Win-win just for the cost of a few books.

So after just a few personal conversations at a dog trial and about four emails, I have homes for 24 books. I signed them all with a varying set of pithy little phrases like
"Read this with your pooch" or "The nose knows" and my name and they are ready to go.

The only trouble is that because I'm not physically there to introduce the book, I need to make a little postcard that summarizes a part of https://ellenclary.org. So we're back to old school. I've make the screenshots, now I need to remember my graphic arts training and arrange them on the page. After about an hour of stealing from my own web site it was ready to go.

Then I get to decide whether just to leave it as 8.5x11 page or make postcards. I did buy a new printer, so I could do either if I bought card stock. the printer probably has a margin which is unfortunate, but I probably don't want to have to hand trim everything though I could do that down at Kinkos. Not sure. This might be a fun debate to start among my Facebook friends who are very tolerant of geeky issues.

I just used ordinary paper as they're just going along with the books as off-line information.

Getting Used to Twitter

While I've been signed up on Twitter for a while, I've never been at peace with it. Instead i hang out on Facebook where I have (well, had) a manageable friends list and for the most part only posted to those friends. There was a time where I could go through my friends list and verify that i had met each person in the flesh at least once. Such were the days. Now with my participation in Facebook groups I have friends that I've never met in person which has taken a lot of getting used to. If someone is close to me geographically and we get on really well I arrange to meet up with that person for lunch just to have a face-to-face conversation which I really love.

But this only works along the west coast where I live. My friends circle has increased and my professional circle seems to be particularly fond of choosing those that are more that an incidental two hour drive away or don't live in a city that I already travel to. In fact, they are more than a two hour plane ride. Fortunately, there is video conferencing which I'm well used to from my work, and I've spent a lot of time on Google Hangouts and Zoom. I should also get used to Apple Facetime, but like many, I don't particularly like how I look in HD, and I look fine in most photographs.

And now, I have a novel coming out. I need to reach out to readers and not my well-protected Facebook friends list. So I now have an author page on Facebook (Hi there. I don't know how to talk to you yet.) And I have to get used to tweeting to the world. Eeek. AND I can't edit tweets, I can only delete them. Half of my Facebook posts are edited because of a typo or unclear wording. That's just crazy that we can't edit tweets. It's certainly technically possible.

So now I have a new skill to learn. How to talk to actual strangers in just 280 characters. One reason I rarely used Twitter is the old 140 character limit. Drove me nuts and I just said 'Fine, forget it.' Now I don't have that excuse.

Now what to say. I'm a writer, so just retweeting is not really my thing though it's a great way to get started. I need to create content. I actually have little trouble with Facebook addiction because I'm the one doing the talking half the time. I'm not caught up in that never ending stream of post after post which can depress you after a while. (There is research out there on this, but I don't have it at hand.) i just have to learn to ignore noise and there is a lot of it on Twitter. I have to focus on what I want to say and listen to what someone is trying to tell me. It's probably just as well we have to be brief.

The Actual Book Arrives

A month before publication, my copies of my book have arrived. The actual book. Not an Advance Reader Copy. Now I have to find a place for 40 pounds of books (two boxes). A lot of them will be give-aways at raffles. I don't think I want to sell many books myself as I'd honestly rather leave Amazon to do the heavy lifting, and I don't want to compete with myself.

Now the hard part. since they won't be addressed to a particular person, I have to sign the give-aways with a general dog-related saying and my name. I've come up with some (not telling what), but I need to find more.

This is a good problem to have.

Song Writing Maybe

I probably will have to write a song in my next book (haven't decided yet). I keep making song writing harder than it actually is. I keep thinking there's a mystery to it, but when I look at songs I realize that isn't the case with the words. 

Unless you're talking about someone who sounds like a poet. Then things get much more complicated. Examples would be Anna Nalick, Alanis Morissette, and Amy Rae, but creepy cool Garbage songs like #1 Crush are pretty straightforward. As long as I don't think about the fact that #1 Crush is 24 years old. Eeek. #1 Crush is a perfect paean to obsession and stalking. For writers it's pretty inspirational. 

Here are the lyrics.

https://www.google.com/search?q=%231+crush+lyrics&oq=%231+crush+lyr&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j69i61l2.5231j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

The Audiobook (part one)

I'm a huge audiobook fan, so I've always wanted to coordinate creating one.

Audiobooks are not yet a She Writes Press thing, but they were kind enough to put on a presentation by Michele Cobb, who does audiobook marketing for Forte Business Consulting, and Audible narrator Tavia Gilbert.I learned a lot from it and later contacted them both directly. I wound up hiring Michele for some marketing mostly because I needed her advice.

From those contacts, they gave me names of other narrators and I went through their samples on Audible. I came up with a list of four who I wanted to hear more from and contacted them all separately.

I then looked through my book and found a short two page chapter that had five of the main characters talking. While my book does not involve other languages, or different sounding accents, it does have over ten distinct voices, so it is not a beginner narrator book by any standard.

Some basics to keep in mind. 
 - Audiobooks are billed "Per Finished Hour" (PFH).
 - There are aprox. 9300 words per hour. (9000-9500 is the actual range).
 - Every narrator uses a different PFH rate. $250-$500 more than covers the ranges I was quoted.
 - Most narrators these days have their own studios or producers that they work with. For the business nuts and bolts, you will be talking with the producer or the narrator.
 - The roles involved are narrator, producer, sound engineer/director, and Quality Control (QC) person. All of this is covered in the PFH rate.

I contacted my narrators directly through referral email. Your experience may vary. You can also contact audiobook studio instead, but I am more comfortable starting with the narrators.

So the narrators all gave me a short audition of the piece that I chose, which is Chapter 13 where Harris is scolding them for not actually successfully obtaining DNA samples.

Now it was time to agonize. There were pros and cons to all of them and each time I played them, I felt differently. I played them for my copy-editor and she picked two that worked well for her and told me to pick from there. After a lot of debate I went with a narrator who wasn't as well-known on Audible (hence not as immediately recognizable), but has immense talents as an actor and is moving more into voiceover work. She's also really easy for me to work with, and handles the range of voices well, and swears she is not considering a career change any time soon (this is a series, so it's an important question for me.)

Talented narrators can handle all the voices in your book. You are not required to cast multiple voiceover artists though you certainly could if you wished to set a lot of money on fire. If you have a book as all encompassing as "The Help", then certainly consider multiple cast member, but it will cost you.

Now the talking stage begins, as I and the narrator (I'll name her later in the process) hash out what each character sounds like - some of them I have opinions on what they should sound like, others I am leaving up to her. She is off reading the book, and I am coming up with short character sketches of several of the characters for her.

So far, this has been the most enjoyable part of the publishing experience.

A Review by Kirkus

My publicist has sent copies of my book (the ARCs) to reviewers. I already have a Kirkus review because I chose to pay for them to read it and give their opinion. In general, they liked it which is excellent new and the publisher now has a quote then can put on the back of the book just as it goes off to the printer.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/ellen-clary/pursuits-unknown/

I should say the reviewer got a lot of the finer details incorrect, like they're not robotics researchers, but instead nanobot researchers, and my religious group is not really a cult, but, in general, it was fine.

The quote the publisher is going to use is particularly choice: 

    "The plot, which combines technology with religious zealotry, is pleasurably creepy"

The ARCs are here!

The Advance Reader Copies of my book Pursuits Unknown have arrived. For the first time, I get to hold my book in my hand and open it and read what I wrote. If you've never before experienced it, it's a pretty unique feeling. I know I'll get used to it, but I wish I could hang on to this "wow" feeling.

The publicist has ordered 50 of them that will get sent to reviewers. I haven't heard much further about this and I'm a little afraid to ask about them. I did pay for a Kirkus review and I'm trying not to worry about that either. The idea is that even if the review isn't that great, that there will likely be something in in that they can quote.

In the meantime, I'm supposed to be looking through my copies and see if there are any further corrections (I get one more chance.) I am pretty tired of revising, so I was completely convinced that we don't have any and then I look for a quote and I see a phrase that isn't quite right, and I see a line where the layout could be better. Argh. It never ends.

I need to check with my Advance Readers to see if there are any further publishable quotes they'd like to submit to me. Quotes now would go to the Amazon listing. I don't think I can mess around with the cover now.

Then there is one final PDF to approve that is the one that goes to the printer. You do have to pay attention here as my copy didn't have my most recent change, so that had to get fixed at the end.

ARCs - Advance Reader Copies

My editor tells me my Advance Reader Copies (ARCs) are ready and how many would I like for myself. Having never in my life been asked such a question, I'm back to being Bambi in the car headlights, but the publisher has done all this before, and tells me that most authors only order a few like 5-10 for themselves. Unsure, I order three (and later order three more). They are more expensive than what the book will actually be, because it's a different printing process.

The ARCs are mostly for the publicist to send out to reviewers. They order 50 copies. I haven't written much about the publicity part of this, but will.

For those keep track of publishing costs. I pay for the book printing, both the ARCs and the main runs.

Later the ARCs arrive:
It's a WHOA! moment. What I've written is an actual book. It's a dizzying experience to open a book and see something you have written. I post of photo of the three books to Facebook.

The Back Cover

While the book is being laid out, the back cover gets separately created.

The backcover is the marriage of the description and any blurbs you'd like to see on it.

They sent me the edited description and ask for which blurbs I'd like to see. I send them two and then the have a go at it and send it to me. I whine because they did edit them some, but after some back and forth they convince me, so I ok it.

The Designed Layout

Now the text of my book leaves the land of Microsoft Word and goes to the layout people. It's their job to position the text properly on the page. It's now set up to be put in a book and is a PDF file. Even numbered pages will be laid out differently than the odd numbered one.

At this point our only job is to look for errors that hadn't been fixed before. My copy-editor carefully goes through the whole thing and makes a list of 10 changes. We then made a list (in MS Word) of the priority of the changes 1. 2. 3. in order of importance. They gave us lengthy instructions on how to request changes. We had to specify the paragraph and which sentence. Change "old sentence" to "new sentence."  It's a very careful, exacting process and I'm glad that we didn't have a lot of changes.

Remarkably the turn around was minutes and I have a full PDF copy of the book to be.

Getting "Blurbs"

A "blurb" is a publishable comment from someone who has read all or most of your book.

It's a delicate chicken/egg problem. First off all you have to have completed at least a fairly recent and readable draft of your book. Then you have to find someone willing to read it and make comments that will be published in the book or on Amazon. What's really awkward about the whole process is that the person with the most recognizable name wins. These people will be in your Advance Reader group, but they get special status from you. You have to get the book to them in a format they are comfortable with and then you have to regularly ask them about it, without nagging them. People who have done this dance before are by far the best subjects as they get it. Be super nice to these people. You need them.

Advance Readers also called Beta Readers or even Alpha Readers and those brave souls who have agreed to read your book ahead of time to tell you if it's even a workable story.

Getting the book to them in the best of cases merely means emailing them a PDF that they can then load onto their Kindle or Tablet. If your Advance Reader needs a physical copy they you get the unfortunate job of having a book created at the copy shop. Remember college and all those heavy pamphlet books that you had to read? That's exactly it.

Blurbs will be at the bottom of your back cover, or can be on the inside depending on the publisher.

Sales Team Tweaking of Comparables and Description

The publisher's sales team heard me about not wanting my book classed as a mystery.

To that end they and my editor have come up with an alternative set of books for them to use as sales comparables. Again a sales comparable is something vaguely close to the book but is not a bestseller. Given I find this exercise really difficult I am deeply grateful for any input about it. They give me a list of four and say choose three. I don't remember how I made the choice, but it was not a difficult one. After some debate with my editor, we decide that having one mystery on the list is ok. 

Then they come up with: "The sales team wants us to emphasize the sci-fi aspect of the book in the description. I’ve reviewed it and made adjustments that I think emphasize the sci-fi aspect and also heighten the stakes so people will be able to tell it’s a thriller rather than a mystery. "

I am excited to see that they actually care about the differences and want to push them. 
One thing that I'm not that good about is to make something intriguing you have to give some information away. What the sales team has come with does give away more information, and I ask my editor's opinion if it's too much of a giveaway. She then goes and spends time talking with her boss, and after some debate, they decide that it doesn't give too much away. Ok, works for me.

The Proofread

A proofreader is not supposed to be an editor. Their job is to make the text work at a very fine level of detail. Every comma, semi-colon, dash. Every paragraph has to be indented or not indented just right. It's a job for a very detailed person.

They will make edits if it makes sense to do so to help the sense of a sentence, but it is not their main job. If a proofreader is doing too much copy-editing, they will stop and tell the publisher it needs a copy-edit first.

To send if off the publisher we first had to save it as a Microsoft Word document and then go over everything to make sure the conversion worked as expected. It did for the most part, or so we thought. One thing the Google Docs to Microsoft Word conversion did not handle well is to change the quote marks to be smart quotes instead of a regular straight up and down quote. 
A regular quote mark looks like:  "
A curly opening quote mark looks like: “
A curly closing quote mark looks like: ”

Our proofreader very kindly fixed many of them for us. I use Google Docs for computer code also which require straight quotes, so it is turned off in my version.

The proofreader was also kind enough to note a couple of sections that read awkwardly. These were sections that I was aware off and wasn't sure how well they'd work, so I let a dev editor of the publisher's choosing have a go at it. It wasn't the best choice, but she was able to give me enough feedback where I could rework those sections. It was something of a necessary pain. We actually did a repeat proofread and it's a better book because of the process. It did slip the published date by three months, but it was well worth it.

There were some things that I had to defend more than once. I like chapter titles. Apparently they are out of favor these days. Whatever. I like them and they help me a lot. So after about two go rounds about "Yes, I want to keep them." they stayed.

Ironing out Details

My publisher is trying to workout the finer details of pitching the book and preparing it for being listed on Amazon. 

We worked out the final details of the official description. This goes to the sales people, and to Amazon. I eventually chose to use it for the backcover as well but that was later.

I sent them a photo of myself. I'm a photographer, so I was able to take some that I actually liked.

They wanted to know what chapters they could use as "Sample Chapters." Usually that is the first or an early chapter. I chose the first chapter.

Somewhere along the line I remembered that I hadn't submitted my acknowledgements when I submitted the manuscript. Duh. We were so focused on getting the copy-editing done that I just completely neglected to do that. Their preference is for it to have been submitted along with the manuscript so it could be proofread, but they told me the other times I could submit it.

The Tip Sheet

My publisher had me create a "Tip sheet."

A tip sheet is what the publisher's sales people use to market your book.
This is before you have submitted your full manuscript to the publisher, so what they've seen so far are just bits and pieces of the work.
This can lead to all sorts of mis-interpretations and back and forth.

The trouble I have is that my characters are police-related search and rescue people. They may investigate things, but they are not "sleuths." I have already lost count of the number of times I've said: "It's not a mystery." Those that design the documents that are intended to assist sales staff are big into categories. For example: Oh, it's a female sleuth. I say: No, not really, no one is dead. So it's a cute dog story? Well, not directly. It's not intended to be cute.
It will made me a little crazy.

First thing you have to come up with is a description and from there you create a sales "hook."

The description is 200 words max that is what goes on Amazon and will resemble what eventually appears on the back cover.

It answers questions like

• Who is your character?
• What makes them unique?
• What happens to them? What is their mission/quest in this book?
• What is at stake? What could go wrong if the quest is not successful (being vague and scary is ok here).

The hook is the description condensed down to two action packed sentences.

The one for Pursuits Unknown is or was (I don't have access to it any further):

Amy, a search-and-rescue agent, and her telepathic kelpie-shepherd mix dog Lars locate a missing scientist who is reported to have an Alzheimer’s-like disease, only to discover that someone wants to steal his research for potentially ominous purposes.

Then you get to come up with selling points for your book. Mine are:

• Forty-four percent of Americans own a dog
• 43 million households own a dog
• Dog Ownership Up 29% in Past Decade
• More Millennials own pets than Baby Boomers, yet as Baby Boomers age the likelihood of their getting a pet increases, and they are spending more on their pets.
• BarkBox’s Facebook “Dog Mom Rap” has had over 58 million views
https://www.facebook.com/barkbox/videos/1373890232647024/
• There is a lack of dog-related fiction, especially science fiction

Now you get to think about who your audience it.
Mine is varied, but is basically:

• Dog-owning adults
• Science fiction fans
• Tech geeks

I had to intervene about putting mystery readers in the list. There is some cross-over, but I don't know if you can rely on them.

You have to write a short 4-5 sentence bio for yourself.

Any social media presence you're willing to share. I'm still struggling with what to do on this.

Your author website if you have one. What is hilarious is that I know how to do web design, but I'm going to pay to have a basic one done, because I'm starting a new job and won't have time.

Then the harder part. You have to come up with a list of sales comparative titles, but they can't be best sellers. This drove me crazy. With the help of a friend we finally came up with three. The big problem is later on, your publicist will want comparative titles but they can be best sellers.

 Then a list of keywords that will help someone searching for your book.
   dog, telepathy, dog behavior, dog learning, police procedural, etc, etc.

Plus "Blurbs" which are short statement of people who have read your book. Most of the time you won't have any at this point.

And lastly, you should choose a list of three BISACs.
Which means: Book Industry Standards and Communications
Which is a number associated with the subject category of your book.
I choose these but they got changed later:

FIC028010      FICTION / Science Fiction / Action & Adventure
FIC031010      FICTION / Thrillers / Crime
FIC009100      FICTION / Fantasy / Action & Adventure
FIC067000      FICTION / Animals

Copy Editing

I am very fortunate that I have a copy-editor as a friend. I insist that she charge me fairly, but it's very handy that I can have her just look at sections when I need it. Usually when you hire a copy-editor you "hand" then the text and they go through the whole thing. I don't even know how to do that.

I work in Google Docs which is great for collaborative work. Once I finished the first draft I had her start working on it. I a terrible about commas, so she spent a lot of time adding them in and flagging certain sections that we should talk about.

This went on for days and days which is normal and we had many conversations about certain sections. Some of the problem sections I chose to leave because I liked them and honestly didn't know how to deal with them. (I later did deal with them.)

Weeks of back and for and back again. It was a perfect way to work and I can't fathom making it work in one go. If I had to do it that way they a lot of the text would not be as good.

After a lot of tweaking, conversations, and lunches, it was finally ready to go to the proofreader.

The Cover Design

Well it's looking like they were not able to get ellenclary.com unfortunately though I need to double check. It's likely I will use ellenclary.org. ellenclary.com is just sitting there parked on the internet.

A few things I need to blog about on the publishing process. One big back and forth was the cover design. I filled out some information on what I wanted it to look like. One huge requirement of mine is that the cover had to be drawn and not based on stock photography. This is science fiction where you almost never see photographs. It's always drawings. After some internal debate at the publisher they asked me if it would be ok to split the cost of hiring an illustrator as doing so would put us over budget. I readily agreed once I saw the website of the illustrator. He's really good and his name is Ben Perini.

Then I gave them a description of what I had in mind and I even took photos of myself in scenes I have envisioned. I forgot to tell them that the character is a little slimmer than me and taller, so we had to go through that revision but the scene he came up with was good.

A few things I didn't realize. The scene has to be a night time scene. I said: "But they usually work during the day." The coordinator assured me that if it were during the day it would just look like a woman taking her dog on a walk. Oh. Ok, so forget verisimilitude. That works.

Then there were assumptions that wouldn't work for the world I created. She was carrying a flashlight. What? No, if anything it would be a headlamp. Then she was carrying a leash. No that's not right. Telepathic dogs. They usually didn't use leashes except for show. Then the shoes didn't look right, oh and stop tucking in the pants. This isn't the military. I'm still not thrilled with the text, but I decided after some tweaks that I needed to stop and just let them work.

After lots of back and forth suddenly there was a cover that I liked. It was actually very cool to see. It looked like an actual book.