WIP Wednesday – A Writer’s Work

…is never done!

So, I spent a few days (and what felt like a billion eye-crossing hours) in Photoshop working on my ebook cover for The Lockwood Collection.

That, my friends, was just the beginning.

My first attempts were laughable at best. I had an idea for the cover, but I just couldn’t get it to look like anything other than a jumbled mess.

But, I kept at it, found some online tutorials, learned some new tricks, and in the end, came up with what I think is my coolest cover yet.

After that, there was the 3D book cover (luckily I found a Photoshop action for that). Then creating the book’s page on my website (complete with all the buy links to various online bookstores), which also needed a corresponding slide image for my homepage. Then I made a new Facebook cover photo to promote the book, plus a mini book ad to share on social media.

Then, the uploading. Sure, most of that was copying and pasting the book descriptions and such – and even though I uploaded directly to the Kindle store, I used Draft2Digital to hit up Kobo, B&N, Scribd and the Apple store (saves me time and frustration). But it all takes time, you see.

Then…Patreon. There are the update posts, where I announce releases or rewards to the general public, plus ones for patrons.

And that doesn’t take into account all the extras (like behind-the-scenes posts like Inklings; Altered Words poems – which time in and of themselves to “find” a poem in any given work; Spirited Tales, which not only take time to write & edit but to also translate into video format; plus this month I’m giving out a free flash fiction tale, which I’ve also had to write, edit, format, make an ebook cover and blog posts for).

Cripes. I’m exhausted. I spent 5 hours today alone making, pre-posting and scheduling promotional things – and some of the graphic design work was already done. It was just a matter of tweaking and making various images & pre-writing patron perks.

I’m not complaining, really I’m not. I just wanted to offer a glimpse into the self-publishing side of things. I’m sure there are other things I’m not doing, doing poorly, or forgetting about (no matter how many checklists and Google Calendar reminders I set for myself).

Writing the story – coming up with the idea, adding characters & setting, making it MAKE SENSE, making sure it’s entertaining –  is a whole other can of worms.

But as you can see, there is a lot going on behind-the-scenes, not just for me but all of my fellow writers. We work hard, man. But boy, do we love it.

Except for the stories that fall flat, the self doubt, the low sales, the unruly characters…

🙂