Publishing my novel, Part 2

My novel, Midnight Dreary: A Raven Mystery, is now available for pre-order, but it’s still going through growing pains. While I have the cover designed, I need to let my cover designer know how many pages it will be to size it for print. I must wait for the formatting in order to give her those numbers. Much of publishing is a waiting game at times, but my folks are all great to work with!

While I am working on the final files, I also needed to write out my dedication, acknowledgements, and biographical information. Those were easy. I have to thank the people who helped bring the book into reality and helped me refine and correct it. My dedication was a little more personal. I recently lost my father-in-law, a wonderful man who was an important influence in our lives. I dedicated the book to him. I will always miss him.

Then came the dreaded blurb. Ask any author, and their most dreaded task is writing a blurb. You want to give the reader enough to make them intrigued by the book, but not enough to give away the mystery of it. You want to bring them into the story. You want them to read your book. It is a surprisingly tiring task.

Once my draft for my blurb was written, I posted it to an author Facebook group for feedback. This is something I have learned as I go along. Never write a blurb without help. It will be terrible.

This too needs to be sent to my wonderful cover artist to add to the back of the cover. It also needs to go up on Amazon for my pre-order. And then I’ll need to update my website too. Sigh.