Hey Trusty Women Like Us Followers--
Happy Friday, and I thought, since it’s been a while, I’d update on where we are on what looks like will be a July 26th publication date. The last couple of weeks have mostly been about my going through the final copy edit of the manuscript. To give you an idea of how much work is involved, take a look at this!
Pretty much every page is covered in notes! A special shout-out to the fine folks at Girl Friday Productions -- these are the people who are doing the nuts and bolts production of the book, and it’s a fascinating process. Meanwhile, any questions I may have are answered promptly and thoroughly. I think these guys are just as committed to putting out the best book possible as I am, and I am very grateful for the work they’ve done so far -- even if there’s still a ways to go.
What else is happening? Well, cover design is pretty much done, except for...wait for it...blurbs! Two fine, upstanding authors for whom I have the utmost respect have agreed to give blurbs for the book cover, and I can’t wait to share them with you, so stay tuned for that.
But wait, there’s more!! I have also been busy creating a new author website, the book itself is up for pre-order on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads and, I believe, ibooks as well. Plus I have a Goodreads author page. All of these are still somewhat under construction, so I wouldn’t go check them out yet, but soon!!
Next week I will be turning the manuscript back in, so that will be it for making any edits and changes, which is kind of scary, but I guess at some point it’s time to just let go. Then it will be getting down to business on a lot of marketing issues. Whew. Ok, that’s a lot, huh? So hope everybody has a great Friday, and a great weekend too.
JP
Happening in just three short weeks, from May 30-June 5, we (Drinkshares: Last Call* and the Inkshares* staff) will be co-hosting an event we have affectionately deemed _“DraftFest”.
The purpose of this week long event is to highlight drafts that show great potential, but have not received the attention they deserve because they are not yet in the sales campaign portion of their project. The goal of this fest is to generate buzz for these projects by following, reviewing, commenting, and recommending these projects on Inkshares, Facebook, and Twitter. All Inkshares authors are welcome to participate by submitting their drafts for review, but we will be making a special effort to bring special attention to new and undiscovered talent, as well as bringing new readers to Inkshares to check out these projects. On Saturday, the last day of the event, DLC will air a special livecast to talk about drafting
Many authors have totally bypassed the draft portion of the project stage, jumping straight to the pre-sales campaign with a manuscript, work in progress, or as little as an idea. While this works well for some, the draft stage of the process is a valuable stage of the publishing process, allowing you to flesh out ideas, get feedback, and most importantly, generate exposure for your project without the stress of having to push sales.
Even if you don’t have a draft, but have an idea for an upcoming project (or, dusting off an old project idea), we encourage you to create a project page and enter your idea for review by our community.
If you would like to enter your draft into our pool of projects to be highlighted, please tweet us @DrinksharesLC with the project title and link to the project page, including #amdrafting. (Hint: If your link is waaaay long, use Bitly to shorten your link to a tweet friendly length :wink: )
If you don’t have a draft or an idea ready to draft, but you would still like to participate, please feel free to take this week to check out the projects and authors on our list and help them by following and giving feedback.
We are lining up several cool prizes which we plan to use as raffle prizes for participants, both readers and writers. If you are interested in donating merch, books, or services as prizes, please tweet@rebekkaleber or DM me on Inkshares.
Please join us May 30-June 5 for what we expect to be a fun, productive, and fulfilling week!