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Making a Graphic Novel: 5 Lessons Learned from Failure

This entry is part [part not set] of 1 in the series Web­comics & Graph­ic Novels

My debut nov­el, GOLIATH FALLEN, has gone through sev­er­al phas­es dur­ing its long, long devel­op­ment his­to­ry. Per­haps the most promi­nent one was the time I ditched the book out­right and tried mak­ing a graph­ic nov­el instead. What trig­gered such a dras­tic mea­sure? Hon­est­ly, burnout was a big part of it. Writ­ing became a lone­ly and slow endeav­or, and I was grow­ing more and more des­per­ate to final­ly get the book published.

This fatigue appar­ent­ly led me to be open to new ideas. The idea of a graph­ic nov­el actu­al­ly stemmed from exter­nal feed­back. A com­mon refrain from my cri­tique part­ners was that my nar­ra­tive style was very “visu­al.” That was the true catalyst.

The idea was sim­ple: if my nar­ra­tive style is so visu­al, it should eas­i­ly trans­late to a graph­ic nov­el. Cre­at­ing it should also be eas­i­er, quick­er, and more seri­al­iz­able than an actu­al nov­el. Truth­ful­ly, I’m still strug­gling to com­pre­hend how such an idea sound­ed even remote­ly rea­son­able at some point.

Goliath Fall­en, Chap­ter One cover

Need­less to say, it failed spec­tac­u­lar­ly. I lacked the expe­ri­ence, man­pow­er, dis­ci­pline, and willpow­er to see it through. Sure, I did­n’t have to write thou­sands of words per chap­ter (I could just illus­trate things). But, I still had to write a script and assume oth­er roles like draw­ing, let­ter­ing, and for­mat­ting. I gave up on the endeav­or about two issues and six­ty pages in.

It was a long and wind­ing road of rub­ble I walked bare­foot through until final­ly real­iz­ing that the work­load would end up killing me. And that’s no joke—my health notably declined due to lack of sleep, poor nutri­tion, and a hor­ri­ble work-life bal­ance. If any­thing, this expe­ri­ence only cement­ed my respect for pro­fes­sion­al com­ic book artists. It amazes me that some­one can deliv­er 30-page issues (or even 120-page tomes in the case of man­ga) in the span of a mere month.

While gru­el­ing, the project wasn’t fruit­less. I learned a ton dur­ing that year, and I think some of my insights are worth shar­ing. So, here I bring you my top five lessons learned from try­ing (and fail­ing) at mak­ing a graph­ic novel.

1. Ensure the script is finished

Graph­ic nov­els (and com­ic books) fol­low a script. We don’t just sit down to draw pan­els with­out a clear guide of what’s going to hap­pen. Impro­vis­ing a graph­ic nov­el is buy­ing our­selves a tick­et to Pain City at a dis­count. And that’s if we’re work­ing alone. If we have an artist, they’ll prob­a­bly laugh in our face.

Goliath Fall­en Graph­ic Nov­el (Chap­ter One, The Juno Mission)

Like it or not, every good graph­ic nov­el starts with a fin­ished writ­ten script. And when I say “fin­ished,” I mean fin­ished. That includes edit­ing, revis­ing, proof­read­ing, and every­thing else involved in pub­lish­ing an actu­al book. This is crit­i­cal because if changes are made lat­er on, that means we’ll have to redraw entire pages. If we’re sev­er­al pages in, a change at the begin­ning of the script means we’ll have to throw the entire issue in the garbage and start over.

Trust me—you don’t want to be in that position.

I was but a rook­ie the first time I marked my script “ready to go.” In real­i­ty, it was far from it. Redraw­ing 30 pages is no joke. Plan to spend a rea­son­able amount of time on the script so that it’s air­tight once the draw­ing starts. I know this is espe­cial­ly hard as writ­ers tend to get stuck in edit­ing and rewrit­ing. Take your time, but just remem­ber: the draw­ing starts when the writ­ing stops. In terms of bud­get­ing, redraw­ing pages our­selves will only cost us time (and years off our life expectan­cy). If we’re work­ing with an artist for hire, how­ev­er, redraws will drain our bud­get in a snap.

2. Keep the art style simple

Whether we’re self-pub­lish­ing or work­ing with a tra­di­tion­al house, we’ll always be on a sched­ule. We might even be under a con­tract to meet cer­tain dead­lines. As for me, I was self-pub­lish­ing my nov­el as a web­com­ic and releas­ing pages twice a week.

Build­ing a sus­tained read­er­ship and attract­ing organ­ic traf­fic to a web­com­ic is a lot of work. And those eye­balls can be gone in a flash if the sched­ule isn’t close­ly fol­lowed. Inter­net read­ers in par­tic­u­lar take this very seri­ous­ly. If you’re not suf­fi­cient­ly feed­ing their con­tent diet when they expect it, they’ll move on to one of the thou­sands of oth­er web­comics. In the tra­di­tion­al world, miss­ing dead­lines could be even more con­se­quen­tial (and may even result in a breach of contract).

Com­plex, intri­cate art takes time. To opti­mize effi­cien­cy and meet dead­lines (self-imposed or oth­er­wise), it’s best to stick with a sim­ple art style. The style I employed in the graph­ic nov­el ver­sion of Goliath Fall­en was inspired by Dave Gib­bon’s Watch­men illus­tra­tions (and clas­sic Amer­i­can com­ic books in gen­er­al). And while I loved Gibbon’s style, I had­n’t count­ed on it doom­ing my project.

It was sim­ply too elab­o­rate, and my out­put was at most two six-to-eight-pan­el pages a week. Two pages a week! And it heav­i­ly depend­ed on the com­plex­i­ty of the scenes and back­grounds. Even if I released the pages as com­ic strips, I was still churn­ing out too lit­tle con­tent for a whole sev­en days. At that rate, I’d be lucky to fin­ish by my sev­en­ti­eth birth­day (not real­ly, but you get the idea).

Goliath Fall­en Graph­ic Nov­el (Chap­ter One, Intro)

Remem­ber, it does­n’t mat­ter if it takes a week to draw a page. No mat­ter how much detail or effort is put into it, it will be read in sec­onds by readers.

The truth of the mat­ter is that the art style of our graph­ic nov­el isn’t even that impor­tant. One Punch Man’s orig­i­nal web­com­ic looked like doo­dles on a nap­kin, and yet it still launched into the stratos­phere and gar­nered a seis­mic fol­low­ing. It was lat­er remas­tered into the man­ga we know and love today. The art style did­n’t have to be a mas­ter­piece of con­tem­po­rary art; it only had to be good enough to trans­mit the sto­ry effec­tive­ly. Mean­while, the graph­ic nov­el ver­sion of Goliath Fall­en had a kick­ass art style (if I do say so myself), but it was so hard to pro­duce that I could­n’t keep up. I was work­ing prac­ti­cal­ly 24/7 to pro­duce just two pages a week, which was sim­ply absurd. 

After I quit the project, I read Scott McCloud’s Mak­ing Comics (an essen­tial read), in which he cov­ers this exact issue in depth. If I had a time machine, I would go back and read that book before I even con­sid­ered the idea of a graph­ic nov­el in the first place.

3. Prepare a content buffer

Pos­si­bly the biggest mis­take I made when mak­ing a graph­ic nov­el was not hav­ing a con­tent buffer. I pub­lished pages as I fin­ished them. But, I was aver­ag­ing one or two pages a week, so that should be fine, right? Most def­i­nite­ly not. If life got in the way (and it always does), that meant that I did­n’t have any­thing to post, and I’d miss my upload days. Tak­ing a few days off when I was start­ing to feel burned out was com­plete­ly out of the ques­tion. My read­ers were count­ing on me, and they want­ed to know what was next in the story.

After miss­ing a dead­line, the only way to catch up is to sim­ply find the time and work the nights away. If we don’t make time, work will accu­mu­late until we don’t have a life any­more. We’ll remain pris­on­ers of our own cre­ation (as dra­mat­ic as that might sound).

Goliath Fall­en Graph­ic Nov­el (Chap­ter Two, The Fair)

The key take­away here is to always be ahead of sched­ule. Retain three months of con­tent as a  buffer if pos­si­ble. With that much of a buffer, we should be able to con­sis­tent­ly meet our update days even when life gets in the way. The amount of pre­pared con­tent we’ll need will always depend on the type of graph­ic nov­el we’re mak­ing. Just make sure you have enough con­tent to keep your sched­ule steady should the apoc­a­lypse come tomorrow.

4. Don’t go solo; work with a team

The graph­ic nov­el ver­sion of Goliath Fall­en was pro­duced by a team of one. I spent an entire year work­ing all by myself out­lin­ing, script­ing, pen­cil­ing, ink­ing, let­ter­ing, for­mat­ting, and who knows what else. It was an insur­mount­able amount of work, and, admit­ted­ly, I should­n’t have gone at it alone. This was the sec­ond key mis­take (along with my rather intri­cate art style) that end­ed up doom­ing my graph­ic novel.

If resources allow, nev­er go solo. While I can draw, I should’ve teamed up with an artist to do that part for me. That would’ve giv­en me col­lec­tive months of my time back to allow me to focus more on writ­ing. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. While that’s very cliché advice, it’s nonethe­less true.

For nat­ur­al-born illus­tra­tors, relin­quish­ing con­trol over the design process can be tough. There’s a cer­tain pride in see­ing our illus­tra­tions in the graph­ic nov­el that car­ries our name. So while out­sourc­ing may mean that we might not get the glo­ry all to our­selves, it at least gives us the con­fi­dence to know that we have the time to get the work done and fin­ish our graph­ic nov­el. The glo­ry will only come if the project is actu­al­ly fin­ished and released to the world.

Even just hav­ing anoth­er indi­vid­ual to pass ideas by is itself supreme­ly valu­able. We’re more like­ly to wind up with a bet­ter end prod­uct just by receiv­ing this feed­back ear­ly on in the process of writ­ing a graph­ic nov­el. My stub­born­ness, unfor­tu­nate­ly, got the best of me, and I just did every­thing myself. Don’t make the same mis­take I did.

If bud­get is a con­cern, there are some alter­na­tive approach­es you can try. Some graph­ic nov­el authors have found suc­cess in offer­ing to bring on illus­tra­tors as co-authors and share roy­al­ties if it ends up being a hit. Many com­ic book projects work this way. You could also just hire some­one to take your sketch­es and col­orize them (instead of pay­ing them to illus­trate from start to fin­ish). At the very least, a sol­id team should be com­prised of both a writer and an artist.

5. Master your tools

The tools we use to cre­ate our graph­ic nov­el (writ­ing, draw­ing, let­ter­ing, etc.) should be exact­ly that—tools. They’re meant to make our lives eas­i­er, not the oth­er way around. Sure, we can buy expen­sive pro­grams such as Adobe Cre­ative Cloud at a whop­ping $30–50 per month, but if we don’t know how to use them, they’ll only serve to hin­der our graph­ic nov­el process. It’s essen­tial that by the time we com­mit to a plan, we know our tools well. It’s worth­while to spend time learn­ing them.

I’m not say­ing that it’s imper­a­tive to know every sin­gle short­cut there is. That’s not rea­son­able. Aim for a skillset where you at least feel com­fort­able and in con­trol. Less time spent try­ing to con­fig­ure dig­i­tal inks means more time avail­able to actu­al­ly work on our graph­ic novels. 

Always choose a simple art style when making a graphic novel.

Before div­ing into online tuto­ri­als and cheat sheets, start by mak­ing a list of the tools you’ll need. These can include pro­grams for draw­ing, let­ter­ing, and pub­lish­ing. In my case, it was Clip Stu­dio Paint (draw­ing), Adobe Illus­tra­tor (let­ter­ing), and InDe­sign (pub­lish­ing). Once we have our suite estab­lished, then we can start the learn­ing process. There are a num­ber of use­ful pro­grams out there, includ­ing Skill­share and YouTube videos that are sur­pris­ing­ly com­pre­hen­sive. Don’t wait until you’re on a tight dead­line to start read­ing through forums on how to blur col­ors or resize an art­board (like I did). 

Final thoughts

My own year-long graph­ic nov­el jour­ney was one of the most frus­trat­ing peri­ods of my pro­fes­sion­al life. Over that time, I learned there’s a true art in mak­ing a graph­ic novel—and I’m not just refer­ring to the draw­ings inside. Draft­ing a script ahead of time, select­ing the right art style, prepar­ing a con­tent buffer, work­ing with a team, and mas­ter­ing the tools of the trade are just a few con­sid­er­a­tions to ensure a more seam­less and suc­cess­ful project.

Although the graph­ic nov­el ver­sion of Goliath Fall­en doesn’t exist in its entire­ty today, the process was insight­ful and reward­ing. It also forced me to reck­on with my per­son­al weak­ness­es as an author and illus­tra­tor. It is my hope that my unfil­tered per­spec­tive here does­n’t dis­cour­age you. I just want you to avoid the same mis­takes I did and start off your own graph­ic nov­el jour­ney on the right foot. I can attest to the joy of see­ing the fin­ished pages of my own graph­ic nov­el come together.

Giv­en that this project account­ed for a whole year of inten­sive work, I have quite a bit to talk about. I’m con­sid­er­ing writ­ing more about the expe­ri­ence. Let me know what you think. Would you like to hear the whole story?

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How Self-Publishing on a Budget Made Me Write a Better Book

This entry is part [part not set] of 8 in the series Pub­lish­ing Goliath Fallen

I recent­ly real­ized that my post about find­ing an edi­tor for my nov­el, GOLIATH FALLEN, had skipped a cru­cial ele­ment of the jour­ney: the fact that self-pub­lish­ing on a bud­get helped me cut a third of my man­u­script, which, unex­pect­ed­ly, result­ed in a bet­ter book. 

Edi­tors com­mon­ly charge by page or word count. As a result, total edit­ing costs will depend on the length of the man­u­script. With my book clock­ing in at a whop­ping 92,500 words, I’m fac­ing edit­ing costs of $2,700 at a mod­est $0.03 per word. How­ev­er, my nov­el was­n’t always that length. It used to be a mind-bog­gling 150,000+ words. The new­ly reduced length was the result of a four-month rewrite cam­paign after real­iz­ing that hir­ing an edi­tor would have cost me a kid­ney. The cheap­est quote I received based on the orig­i­nal draft was $4,500. And if I want­ed devel­op­men­tal edit­ing, that would’ve run a whop­ping $9,000, which is triple my ini­tial esti­mate and sev­er­al months’ worth of rent where I live (Cos­ta Rica.)

I was between a rock and a hard place, and the only way out was a painful one. After six years of writ­ing and declar­ing my draft com­plete, I had no choice but to dive back in and “make it shorter.”

Pictured: me editing my manuscript during "The Big Rewrite."
Pic­tured: me edit­ing my book dur­ing “The Big Rewrite.”

Finishing the book is only the beginning

“Make it short­er” sounds like a vague, unac­tion­able thing a pub­lish­er would tell you after review­ing the phone book you just wrote. It leaves you with absolute­ly no clue where to start. It’s a frus­trat­ing real­iza­tion to have after you fin­ish writ­ing your book. Real­is­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, how­ev­er, a debut nov­el of such dimen­sions also has an abysmal chance of get­ting pub­lished. I might also seem like I’m self-pub­lish­ing because no agents would take my nov­el. I haven’t seri­ous­ly queried this book yet, so I can’t say that’s the case.

Some fel­low writ­ers might relate to my plight here. I was forced to revis­it the beloved man­u­script I had been writ­ing for years and trim not only a few sen­tences but cut entire scenes, reor­ga­nize or remove chap­ters, or even take out char­ac­ters com­plete­ly. They said self-pub­lish­ing on a bud­get was hard, but this was sim­ply soul-crushing.

Pic­ture me sit­ting at my desk, hands on my head, look­ing down in despair, sweat­ing from this dread­ful real­iza­tion, and try­ing to find a way out of this inescapable abyss. Dra­mat­ic? Yes. Accu­rate? Also yes. I had been writ­ing for so long and was so excit­ed to get this book out. But now, how long would it be before it’s tru­ly ready?

Tough feedback is the best kind of feedback

One day, I shared this real­iza­tion that my book need­ed trim­ming with one of my most trust­ed beta read­ers. As it turns out, she already had the same con­sid­er­a­tion, but it was hard for her to put it into con­cise, action­able feed­back. One point she men­tioned was my overuse of char­ac­ter reac­tions between dia­logue. After some self-intro­spec­tion, I real­ized I do this uncon­scious­ly because I write as if I was watch­ing a movie. This beta read­er hint­ed that I could eas­i­ly remove all that fluff with­out alter­ing the end prod­uct. I re-read the first chap­ters to con­firm her real­iza­tion and found plen­ty of pas­sages like the following:

“Is… is that it?” Casper stut­tered.
Vik­tor could almost hear the rusty cogs of his brain crunch­ing, pro­cess­ing the sit­u­a­tion. A sen­tence left his mouth by its own will: “Go. Wake up the others.”

That pas­sage is way longer than it needs to be. It’s rid­dled with descrip­tions that don’t add enough to jus­ti­fy their exis­tence. Instead, it could be eas­i­ly rewrit­ten to some­thing like:

“Is—is that it?” Casper said.
Vik­tor froze, his mind rac­ing. “Go. Wake up the others.”

This revised pas­sage is clean­er, crisper, and about 20 words few­er. With a few sim­ple changes, it’s easy to see how I could work my way through my man­u­script to trim the edges with­out los­ing integrity.

Around the time my man­u­script was avail­able to beta read­ers, I also received crit­i­cal feed­back from my peers at the NYC Writ­ers Cri­tique Group. Specif­i­cal­ly, one mem­ber said, “I’m 30,000 words in, and not a lot has hap­pened”. I had­n’t under­stood what they meant ini­tial­ly, but they were right nonethe­less. This real­iza­tion was a big pill to swallow—a big pill of hard, cold truth. 

And so, with this fresh per­spec­tive, I sailed off into a long, long jour­ney. I start­ed by read­ing my entire man­u­script yet again. But this time, I read it not as a writer but as a read­er. My fel­low writ­ers know how hard it is to swap your frame of ref­er­ence like that. How do you detach from your cre­ation in order to objec­tive­ly read it like just anoth­er book? For me, it was a three-step process:

  1. Put the book away for a month.
  2. Re-read the entire book, but force myself not to edit a sin­gle word.
  3. Put the book away for anoth­er month.

The sec­ond step is the def­i­n­i­tion of tor­ture. If I had read my book right from the word edi­tor, I don’t think I could’ve resist­ed the temp­ta­tion to edit it. With this in mind, I export­ed it as a PDF so that I could­n’t edit it but could add com­ments in bouts of weakness.

How self-publishing on a budget improved my manuscript

On that last read-through of my book, my fresh eyes did­n’t only catch an exor­bi­tant amount of fluff but they also dis­cov­ered plen­ty of unnec­es­sary descrip­tions, triv­ial dia­logue, and scenes that need­ed to either be trimmed or cut out alto­geth­er. Not even two chap­ters in, I start­ed get­ting “writer’s itch,” or that uncon­trol­lable urge to get down to edit­ing. I cursed that pesky, read-only PDF more times than I could count. But once I was done read­ing, I stuck to the plan and put my book away before a mon­th’s long vaca­tion in order to detox.

When the time came to get back to work, that last edit­ing pass turned into a full rewrite as my hun­dreds of com­ments in the PDF had fore­cast­ed. It took three months to parse through the entire text, and by the end, my man­u­script was an entire­ly dif­fer­ent beast (and 58,000 words lean­er). The pac­ing of the nar­ra­tive ben­e­fit­ed the most from this, result­ing in bet­ter tran­si­tions between dia­logue and action scenes. My proud­est moment was prun­ing the intro­duc­to­ry arc to four chap­ters instead of five, or 8,600 words instead of 18,000. It’s sup­posed to be an intro­duc­to­ry arc, not a novella.

Final thoughts

After star­ing down the bar­rel of thou­sands of dol­lars in poten­tial edit­ing costs, I was forced to take a sec­ond look at my debut nov­el. Armed with crit­i­cal feed­back from read­ers and fel­low writ­ers, I embarked on a four-month-long jour­ney deep into my char­ac­ters, plot­line, and chap­ters. Despite the ini­tial despair and frus­tra­tion, every­thing turned out well in the end. The fact that my lim­it­ed bud­get helped me not only save on the costs of an edi­tor, but I also was able to shave unnec­es­sary fluff from begin­ning to end, result­ing in an over­all clean­er, stream­lined nov­el. I could­n’t help but chuck­le at the irony that self-pub­lish­ing on a bud­get actu­al­ly led me to write a bet­ter book.

If you’re a writer, I hope my per­ils made you feel a lit­tle less alone in the mis­ery that can some­times accom­pa­ny edit­ing your own self-pub­lished book. If you’re just a read­er, well, per­haps you enjoyed a lit­tle bit of schaden­freude after read­ing my experience.

Please feel free to share your own self-edit­ing expe­ri­ences in the com­ments below. Have you ever had a real­iza­tion in the late stages of edit­ing that almost made you quit writ­ing? How did you over­come it?

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The Final Frontier: Finding the Right Book Description Writer

This entry is part [part not set] of 8 in the series Pub­lish­ing Goliath Fallen

Now that I’ve found a great edi­tor for my self-pub­lished nov­el, GOLIATH FALLEN, the next step is to find a book descrip­tion writer. Back when I start­ed out­lin­ing the steps in my self-pub­lish­ing jour­ney, hir­ing a book descrip­tion (aka book blurb) writer did­n’t even slight­ly cross my mind. How­ev­er, this indi­vid­ual, who­ev­er they end up being, is as cru­cial as the edi­tor and cov­er artist. Writ­ing a sol­id blurb is no easy feat, and I have tried it before. How the heck had­n’t I thought of hir­ing an expert on that until now?

Realizing my needs

The book descrip­tion includes just enough about what is going to hap­pen in the book, to make the read­er yearn for answers to all the ques­tions flit­ting through his or her mind…if the author has suc­ceed­ed in writ­ing a cap­ti­vat­ing description.

Excerpt from “How to Write a Book Descrip­tion that Attracts Read­ers” on SelfPublishing.com

It’s the book descrip­tion that’s print­ed on the back cov­er and in the ebook list­ing. And, not to be an alarmist, but it can make or break a book launch. You can have a killer cov­er, but if the descrip­tion sucks, your book will sink down into the abyss of the mil­lions of oth­ers com­pet­ing for the reader’s attention.

Since I had shared Goliath Fall­en with beta read­ers on sites like Wattpad, I had already tried writ­ing my own descrip­tion and real­ized how freak­ing hard it is. Only but a few authors have that gift of sum­ma­riz­ing their intri­cate, fleshed-out plot full of twists and turns and com­plex, mul­ti-dimen­sion­al char­ac­ters into a few para­graphs that can entice a prospec­tive read­er. Writ­ing a good book descrip­tion is an art in itself, and I was deter­mined to find the right pro­fes­sion­al for the job. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Reedsy was­n’t so help­ful this time around. I received a total of only four results when I searched the site for free­lancers spe­cial­iz­ing in “meta­da­ta and blurb opti­miza­tion,” as it’s called. Not great, but they did offer a com­pre­hen­sive arti­cle on writ­ing a book descrip­tion your­self. But, again, I had already tried that and spec­tac­u­lar­ly failed (at least in my opinion).

Finding my book description writer

While I was brows­ing the web for book edi­tor rec­om­men­da­tions (and what to look for in find­ing the right edi­tor), I stum­bled upon “My favorite 21 peo­ple in self-pub­lish­ing,” an arti­cle by Derek Mur­phy from Cre­ativin­die. It’s full of great rec­om­men­da­tions on inspi­ra­tional authors, mar­keters, book edi­tors, cov­er artists, and… book descrip­tion writ­ers! It was there where I dis­cov­ered Bryan Cohen from Best Page For­ward. 

Bryan sure sounds like he can sell stuff, and from what I’ve read, his book descrip­tions deliv­er results. I usu­al­ly approach ser­vices that sound too good to be true with cau­tion, so I ran a quick Google search on him.

After some dig­ging, I stum­bled upon this interview/workshop video on YouTube where Bryan com­ments on the indus­try, the process of writ­ing an effec­tive book descrip­tion, and book mar­ket­ing. From hear­ing him talk, it was clear to me that he knows his stuff very well. I fig­ured it couldn’t hurt to at least reach out to him for more information.

At the time of writ­ing, Bryan’s price tag is $297. This includes one book descrip­tion and an addi­tion­al ten descrip­tions I can use for ads. Com­pared to edit­ing and cov­er design costs, this amount seems rea­son­able for such an impor­tant element.

Making up my mind

I could spend more time look­ing for oth­er book descrip­tion writ­ers, but:

  • I haven’t found any­thing but good com­ments on Bryan, and I know he can do the job well.
  • It’s been a long road get­ting to this point, and I’m eager to final­ly see my book on the shelves.

With that said, I’m plan­ning to book Bryan in the com­ing days and come back to share our results!

With my book descrip­tion writer in place, I’ve final­ly round­ed out my self-pub­lish­ing crew. I’m hop­ing for the best as back­fill­ing any of these roles (the book edi­tor, the cov­er artist, and the book descrip­tion writer) would be painful. Any­ways, I’m off to update my ini­tial, very opti­mistic budget.

Stay tuned for the next entry in this series on self-pub­lish­ing my novel!

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Finding a Book Editor for a (Potential) Bestseller

This entry is part [part not set] of 8 in the series Pub­lish­ing Goliath Fallen

So far in my series on pub­lish­ing GOLIATH FALLEN, I’ve cov­ered my bud­get­ing process and how I plan to get my book cov­er designed. Now, the time has come to find my bat­tle buddy—the book edi­tor. Find­ing an artist for my cov­er was­n’t an easy task; it required me to hone my vision and fig­ure out exact­ly what I need­ed. After fum­bling my way through Reedsy and talk­ing with lots of peo­ple for days on end, I final­ly found a great design­er to move for­ward with. As expect­ed, find­ing an edi­tor did­n’t get one bit eas­i­er. This is the per­son who will dis­sect my draft and help me (hope­ful­ly) craft a best­seller, so it was crit­i­cal I find the right person.

The writer and the book editor, like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
“There is no book so bad… that it does not have some­thing good in it.” — uniron­i­cal­ly, Don Quixote

I have a few things to con­sid­er before set­tling on a book editor:

  • I suf­fer from impos­tor syn­drome — My man­u­script has its flaws, but it has received praise from its beta read­ers. Still, it’s irra­tional­ly hard for me to con­vince myself that it’s good enough in its cur­rent form. 
  • I’m a non-native Eng­lish speak­er writ­ing a sci­ence-fic­tion epic in Eng­lish — My beta read­ers have point­ed out plen­ty of pas­sages that either read awk­ward­ly or just out right don’t make sense. I need to ensure these kinks are ironed out. 
  • I’m writ­ing sci­ence fic­tion — My man­u­script leans a bit heavy into physics, engi­neer­ing, mea­sure­ments, and oth­er sub­jects that are spe­cif­ic to the genre. I want to make sure this lan­guage is acces­si­ble to casu­al readers.
  • I’m a per­fec­tion­ist — It’s cliché for an author, but it’s true. I have a high stan­dard for qual­i­ty, and I refuse to set­tle for less.

These are the chal­lenges I’m look­ing to over­come with the aid of a tal­ent­ed book edi­tor. I need some­one to help me set­tle my inse­cu­ri­ties, tight­en up my writ­ing, and erase the awk­ward­ness. How­ev­er, such a thor­ough, pre­mi­um book edit­ing ser­vice sounds like it will sure­ly drain my bank account (insert cash reg­is­ter sound effects here).

Figuring out my needs (again)

Book edit­ing involves mul­ti­ple phas­es, each with its own spe­cif­ic set of tasks. I turned to Google to fig­ure out what a typ­i­cal edit­ing process entails, which helped me under­stand what I actu­al­ly need from a book edi­tor (to the best of my knowledge):

  • Devel­op­men­tal edit­ing — Dur­ing this phase, the edi­tor reads the entire book address­ing struc­tur­al ele­ments like plot, nar­ra­tive, char­ac­ters, pace, etc. They dis­sect the sto­ry, break it down, and put it back togeth­er into some­thing that actu­al­ly makes sense. Devel­op­men­tal edit­ing is rec­om­mend­ed if you’re not entire­ly sure of your sto­ry or if you haven’t received enough feed­back yet.
  • Copy edit­ing — The edi­tor goes through the book revis­ing sen­tences, vocab­u­lary, syn­tax, and gram­mar to ensure every­thing is styl­is­ti­cal­ly sound. This is the awk­ward­ness eraser.
  • Proof­read­ing — Once every­thing is said and done, the edi­tor reads the whole thing one last time to check that noth­ing has been left out and that it’s ready for publishing.

Whether each of these phas­es is required or not depends on the project. Con­sid­er­ing the list of chal­lenges and needs men­tioned above, GOLIATH FALLEN requires the whole she­bang, which means I can expect to spend around $0.06 per word. Giv­en that Goliath Fall­en is 92,500 words, that would trans­late to $5,500 in edit­ing costs.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, that’s way out of my bud­get. Not los­ing hope, I paid anoth­er vis­it to Reedsy, a free­lanc­ing plat­form for self-pub­lished authors.  I found the tal­ent­ed Ale­jan­dro Coluc­ci there for my book cov­er, and I thought I would try my luck again to find a qual­i­fied book edi­tor as well. Quotes for a nov­el of my length ranged between $600 and $1,200, and, in some cas­es, includ­ed devel­op­men­tal feed­back in the form of inline com­ments. This price was bet­ter than I expect­ed, but I wasn’t real­ly feel­ing it. Also, I real­ized it’s cru­cial to search for an edi­tor who spe­cial­izes in the genre of my book. This is espe­cial­ly true in sci­ence fic­tion, where the edi­tor should be able to com­ment on any incon­sis­ten­cies in world­build­ing and the sci­ence itself. With this in mind, I nar­rowed my search to only sci­ence-fic­tion editors.

Finding my book editor

I found some real­ly good options on Reedsy and oth­er free­lancer plat­forms, but it was Philip Athans who real­ly caught my atten­tion. His track record as an edi­tor and writer is impres­sive, from work­ing with sci-fi heavy­weights like R.A Sal­va­tore as man­ag­ing edi­tor at Wiz­ards of the Coast to writ­ing a best­seller nov­el that’s set in the D&D uni­verse. Need­less to say, a new­bie like me could ben­e­fit from his spe­cif­ic experience.

His edit­ing process sound­ed very col­lab­o­ra­tive and includes devel­op­men­tal edit­ing, copy edit­ing, a Skype call, help with a query let­ter (if required), and oth­er addi­tion­al materials—all for only $0.03 a word. Quite a bar­gain if you ask me!

I’m a strong believ­er that things need to “feel right,” and since I first con­tact­ed Philip, it has indeed felt right. He was very nice, pro­fes­sion­al, and patient, and he took the time to answer all my ques­tions (like with my cov­er artist). I request­ed a sam­ple edit, and it was very thor­ough with all his sug­ges­tions hit­ting on the spot. I took some time to con­sid­er his offer, since, after all, it’s a good chunk of cash. But, in the end, it “felt right,” so I end­ed up hir­ing him. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, his sched­ule was pret­ty jam-packed until the end of 2021, but hey, Goliath Fall­en has been in the works for over six years; it can wait a few more months. And actu­al­ly, the tim­ing will work out bet­ter that way. I’m still wait­ing for feed­back from my cri­tique part­ners at New York City Writer’s Cri­tique Group, and I will need time to incor­po­rate their sug­ges­tions and give my draft one last pass before it’s ready for my editor.

Alright, so that’s one less thing to wor­ry about. Next up, I need to find a stel­lar blurb writer. Stay tuned for updates on the book edit­ing process as it unfolds.

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The Hunt for a Wicked Book Cover

This entry is part [part not set] of 8 in the series Pub­lish­ing Goliath Fallen

One thing that excites me the most about self-pub­lish­ing my book, GOLIATH FALLEN, is design­ing the cov­er. They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cov­er. But, when I con­sid­er how my book will appear next to heavy­weights like To Sleep On A Sea of Stars, The Mar­t­ian, Dark Mat­ter, or lit­er­al­ly any fan­ta­sy nov­el, I would pre­fer not to take my chances. I need a cov­er wor­thy of the six years of hard work I’ve put into writ­ing this book. Design­ing a book cov­er is by no means an easy task, so I pre­fer to hand it off to a professional.

My current book cover

As I men­tioned in my pre­vi­ous post, I’ve been shar­ing my draft on sites like Wattpad to get my book in front of beta read­ers and do some infor­mal mar­ket­ing. I used a cov­er I put togeth­er in Can­va with art designed by the incred­i­bly tal­ent­ed @naked.monkey and some basic let­ter­ing. This cov­er went through a few iter­a­tions using the same art but with dif­fer­ent col­or grad­ing to test what worked bet­ter to attract read­ers. Here’s the lat­est ver­sion, which received very pos­i­tive feed­back on Wattpad and led to almost dou­ble the num­ber of month­ly reads:

Goliath Fallen's current book cover

When I saw @naked.monkey’s Astronot piece, I fell in love at first sight. The art cap­tured the mood of my sto­ry to per­fec­tion: dev­as­ta­tion, iso­la­tion, urgency. I did­n’t hes­i­tate a sec­ond in reach­ing out to him to ask for per­mis­sion to use it for my book cov­er. He was kind enough to license it to me for non-prof­it pur­pos­es for a small fee. I added the let­ter­ing myself, which is quite basic giv­en that I’m not a pro­fes­sion­al design­er. Goliath Fall­en could become a best­seller, but this cov­er will always have a spe­cial place in my heart. How­ev­er, the time for an update is here. To pub­lish on Ama­zon KDP (or any oth­er dig­i­tal store), I need art that I can use com­mer­cial­ly for both ebook and paper­back ver­sions. The lat­ter is trick­i­er since it includes the entire jack­et: front, back, spine, and interior.

Finding a wicked book cover artist

I start­ed my hunt for a cov­er design­er on Reedsy. If I thought pick­ing a show or movie to watch on Net­flix was over­whelm­ing and time-inten­sive, find­ing the right free­lancer on sites like these is an almost insur­mount­able task. I’ve nev­er com­mis­sioned work on a free­lance plat­form before, and it proved to be a scary endeav­or. I spent hours brows­ing through the count­less pro­files that showed up in my search results until I even­tu­al­ly stum­bled upon Ale­jan­dro Coluc­ci. I almost fell from my chair when I saw his port­fo­lio. His illus­tra­tions are sim­ply mind-bog­gling. They’re hand-drawn and full of strik­ing, emo­tion­al detail. This one, in par­tic­u­lar, caught my attention:

Alejandro Colucci's mind-numbing art

Like, are you kid­ding me? That’s Ger­ald of Riv­ia. It took me a while to real­ize Ale­jan­dro had also designed the first cov­er for The Witch­er series. I was ecsta­t­ic to find him on Reedsy and open to new clients. Not only is he tal­ent­ed beyond descrip­tion, but he was also super nice, hum­ble, and easy­go­ing when I reached out to him. He answered all of my ques­tions and even con­sid­ered my sketch­es. (Some clients try to hijack cre­ative con­trol from the artist, which is a big no-no.)

As I expect­ed, Ale­jan­dro’s quote was in the upper end of my bud­get­ed range, but it’ll be worth every pen­ny if my book cov­er ends up look­ing any­thing like what he’s pro­duced pre­vi­ous­ly. After fill­ing his inbox with ques­tions and receiv­ing sat­is­fy­ing answers and peace of mind, I seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty to work with him. I no longer need to look any fur­ther. I pro­vid­ed him with a detailed brief doc­u­ment, ref­er­ence images, and descrip­tions, and I’m now on pins and nee­dles wait­ing to see how it will turn out.

So, there you have it—our first item from the list is now crossed off. I have to admit, it has been as much work and as exhaust­ing as I expect­ed it to be. But, I know it will all be worth it in the end.

Stay tuned for a cov­er reveal!

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Budgeting for my Self-published Book (First Try)

This entry is part [part not set] of 8 in the series Pub­lish­ing Goliath Fallen

As I con­clud­ed in my last post, I’ve decid­ed to self-pub­lish GOLIATH FALLEN. Bless my soul, Hugh Howey. With that deci­sion now behind me, the next step is to do some bud­get­ing for my book to see whether this is even fea­si­ble. I must reit­er­ate that I’m a non-native Eng­lish speak­er writ­ing a nov­el in Eng­lish, which will only make things hard­er on my wallet.

Huell Babineaux
“I got­ta do it, man” — Huell Babineaux, Break­ing Bad

Figuring out my needs

After some research and reflec­tion, this is what I believe I will need to bud­get for to get my book ready for publishing:

  • Copy and sub­stan­tial edit­ing — I’m pret­ty self-aware of my Eng­lish pro­fi­cien­cy. While I’m con­fi­dent I can write a book that makes sense, some phras­ing might read awk­ward­ly. I try my best to make dia­logue feel as nat­ur­al as pos­si­ble, but it’s impos­si­ble for me to write it from the per­spec­tive of a native speak­er. I’ve found Gram­marly and ProWritin­gAid to be price­less, essen­tial tools to check my gram­mar and strength­en my writ­ing, but they can only take you so far. With this in mind, I’ll need to hire a pro to pol­ish the rough edges.
  • A badass cov­er — I’ve been pub­lish­ing my draft on Wattpad to gain ini­tial impres­sions and get my name in front of a com­mu­ni­ty of read­ers and writ­ers like myself. On the plat­form, I used a cov­er I designed in Can­va with art from the incred­i­bly tal­ent­ed @naked.monkey, who was nice enough to license it to me for non-prof­it pur­pos­es for a small fee. (Always com­pen­sate and cred­it oth­er peo­ple’s hard work.) As much as I love that cov­er, I’ll have to com­mis­sion a new one for ebook and print dis­tri­b­u­tion due to com­mer­cial license limitations.
  • A badass blurb (aka the “book descrip­tion”) — Writ­ing com­pelling, effec­tive book descrip­tions is a tal­ent that few writ­ers have. Those who are good at it actu­al­ly build entire careers writ­ing descrip­tions for oth­ers. Per­son­al­ly, I am ter­ri­ble at writ­ing blurbs, which isn’t a great skill to lack when the appeal of a book weighs on the blurb as much as the cov­er (if not even more).

Okay, that sums up what I need to bud­get for pri­or to pub­lish­ing. Post-pub­lish expens­es (ARCs, pro­mos, etc.) are a top­ic for a lat­er day.

Adding up the numbers

It took me a few days to fig­ure out how much these expens­es would cost. Here’s what I’m budgeting:

Ser­vice
Rate
Copy edit­ing
$2,750 — $5,500
Cov­er design
$350 — $800
Blurb
$350
Total
$3,900 — $6,300

Edit­ing is very expen­sive, espe­cial­ly for a 92,000-word book like GOLIATH FALLEN. Depend­ing on where you look, a good edi­tor can be even more expen­sive than you thought pos­si­ble. I’m stay­ing opti­mistic and bud­get­ing $2,750 for the task of copy edit­ing. If I can get a full edit­ing com­bo (devel­op­men­tal edit­ing, 2‑pass copy edit­ing, and proof­read­ing), I’d have to bud­get clos­er to the $5,000 range. Luck­i­ly, I’ve been able to run my nov­el through sev­er­al cri­tique part­ners who have helped me with most of the devel­op­men­tal aspects. Who knows, maybe I can find an edi­tor who has mer­cy on my soul.

As for the cov­er, I’ll plan to go all out as that’s one of the first things the read­er will notice while brows­ing Ama­zon. They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cov­er, but many lit­er­al­ly do. I want it to look pro­fes­sion­al, so I’ll plan to bud­get accord­ing­ly. I’m aim­ing to pay a design­er between $350 on the low end up to a whop­ping $800 (and some­thing tells me I’ll end up find­ing out this high end is actu­al­ly the low end).

So, there you have it! That’s my very opti­mistic bud­get so far. I’ll start reach­ing out for some quotes and come back with an updat­ed table once I have more pre­cise estimates.

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Self-publishing my Debut Novel Just for the Thrills

This entry is part [part not set] of 8 in the series Pub­lish­ing Goliath Fallen

As GOLIATH FALLEN goes through the last stages of edit­ing, the time for an impor­tant deci­sion has come: either self-pub­lish­ing my nov­el or go the tra­di­tion­al route. It’s a deci­sion every author will have to make soon­er or lat­er, and it’s not an easy one at that—especially for a debut nov­el. The stakes are high. Once self-pub­lished, my book will be out there for­ev­er. If it ends up sink­ing in the sea of self-pub­lished erot­ic fic­tion that Ama­zon has become, there’s lit­tle chance that a tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­er will pick it up. But, if I go tra­di­tion­al, it will be months of query­ing agents, and I might lose cre­ative con­trol once it’s sold.

Goliath Fall­en rep­re­sents six years of hard work, so it’s not a deci­sion I take lightly.

Self-publishing my debut novel cover.

Doing the research

Before mak­ing a choice, I turned to Google for val­i­da­tion like the respon­si­ble adult I am. Most advice I found came to a sim­i­lar con­clu­sion: if you have a plat­form and a sol­id mar­ket­ing game, there’s a far greater chance your book will do well if you self-pub­lish. Oth­er­wise, going tra­di­tion­al might make more sense.

How­ev­er, sign­ing up with a tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­er might not be what one expects. It turns out that unless it’s one of the Big 5, there’s a chance your pub­lish­er will only mar­ket your book in a lim­it­ed way (if they mar­ket it at all). In those cas­es, mar­ket­ing is still up to the author. Some agents might not even bat an eye at your query unless you already have an estab­lished plat­form you can lean on.

On the oth­er hand, there’s the bud­get. Tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­ers cov­er all pro­duc­tion costs, includ­ing edit­ing, for­mat­ting, cov­er design, and dis­tri­b­u­tion. If self-pub­lish­ing, all those costs would come out of your own pock­et. And trust me, it gets expen­sive, espe­cial­ly for a 92,500-word tome such as Goliath Fall­en. That would make a strong case for going traditional.

In my case, there are some extra fac­tors to con­sid­er. As a non-native Eng­lish speak­er, I would­n’t risk query­ing agents before a pro­fes­sion­al edi­tor revis­es my man­u­script. So, I would have to cov­er the enor­mous expense that edit­ing rep­re­sents anyway.

Making a decision

The more I inves­ti­gate, the more com­plex the deci­sion becomes. So, before I go insane, I’ve decid­ed to take a dif­fer­ent angle: pick the one I find the most exciting.

I know for a fact that I suck at mar­ket­ing. On the oth­er hand, I also know that I suck even more at query­ing agents—I find the expe­ri­ence sim­ply daunting.

It’s a mat­ter of try­ing what I suck less at, I guess.

I find learn­ing about the self-pub­lish­ing process (mar­ket­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion, pric­ing, for­mat­ting, build­ing a team, etc.) very intrigu­ing. I feel exhaust­ed just think­ing about it, but it still seems like an appeal­ing expe­ri­ence. Even if my book crash­es and burns, I built all that myself, and that sounds quite rewarding.

With that said, I’ve cho­sen to self-pub­lish Goliath Fallen. 

I’ll have to ramp up my sav­ings to cov­er the expens­es, but it will all be worth it.

So, onto the next step: fig­ure out the budget! 

Stay tuned for updates as I go through this jour­ney from some­body who knows noth­ing about pub­lish­ing to (fin­gers crossed) land­ing on a best­seller list.

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