In this, the last of my Behind The Book blog posts, I’m going to talk about all the things that happen after the book is done. Or at least, unconnected to me writing the book. 

Things like:

• The Cover
• Publication Prep
• Reviewers
• Promotion
• Launch Day!
• What Happens Next…

I loved it, instantly. And in fact replied to tell her that I had just that moment found Lucifer the llama on sale in John Lewis!

As always, there were a few tweaks with the cover, but mostly it stayed consistent up to the cover reveal, and beyond. In fact, it was up on my website, on the sites on online sellers, in all the promo images Orion’s lovely marketing department designed…

And then I received my author copies, and realised there’d been a last minute change! Spot the difference below.

(NB: Normally this would have been absolutely discussed with me beforehand, but this was right at the peak of the pandemic, and somehow got missed!)

Publication Prep

Once the copy edits were approved, the book was sent to typesetting. The next time I saw it, it looked like a real, honest-to-God book on my screen. It’s a magical moment, where the ramblings of my brain are transformed into something real.

Of course, it’s still full of typos and errors, so this is where I read through it very carefully to try and catch any last mistakes. As usual, I sent this draft to one or two grammar pedant friends to check over, too. We have a rule. Any mistakes they spot before the deadline I set, they tell me about immediately so I can fix them. Any they find after that deadline, they never mention to me, ever. In fact, they pretend they don’t exist.

This is the only way I can stay sane during this process.

I know it’s virtually impossible for any text to be 100% error free, and yet that is totally what I expect from my books. Still, any typos that make it past me, the proof reader, my editor, the copy editor and my grammar and spelling fiend friends, probably deserve their place in printed history.

At this point, I compiled a table of all the changes I needed to be made to the final version. For Seashell Island, this was only eight pages long, which actually isn’t all that bad, for me… As you can see from the screenshot, many are actually just small changes that make things flow or read better. But there are always a few typos in there too!

Then, nervously, peeping through my fingers, I hit send. And the book was done.

 Seashell Island: The Audiobook

Another fun thing at this stage: I got an email from the Audiobook team at my publisher with a few suggested narrators for the audio version of Summer on Seashell Island! I lost a very enjoyable afternoon listening to samples and trying to imagine each of the actors voicing Miranda, Leo and Juliet. I have to say, I was spoilt for choice. If you want to hear a sample of the finished product, head to Audible!

Promotion

I think most people know that, these days, a lot of the work of promoting a book falls on the author, rather than the publisher. (Unless you’re a Big Name Writer, which I most definitely am not!)

Since Britain went into lockdown, and many publishing employees were put on furlough, right when we started looking at the promotion for Seashell Island, that was more the case than ever this time around!

The publishers provided me with some pretty graphics (see above), and got the book in the hands of newspaper reviewers and sent out press releases (which was brilliant)… but after that I was pretty much on my own. 

With forty books under my belt, you’d think I’d have got this promo thing sorted, but it’s still very much a learning curve. It doesn’t help that platforms and best practice change so quickly either, so what worked for the last book might not work for this one. And without immediate sales data, it’s very hard to evaluate what works and what doesn’t. 

So instead, I’ve learned not to beat myself up too much about it, and to follow my own set of rules for book promotion. 

My rules for book promotion:

• Focus on the platforms I actually like using (for me, this is Instagram and Facebook. I just cannot get the hang of Twitter)
• Use them to try and get to know readers and other writers
• Post about things other than my book, too
• Share the things about my book that make me smile, or would make me want to read it

That’s basically it. Some days I do better than others, but I try not to let it get too overwhelming. 

Launch Day!

Even after so many books, release day is always a big deal for me. I try to share my excitement with my readers, and hope that they’re excited too. My absolute favourite thing is when readers send me photos of themselves with the book! 

It’s also nerve-racking, waiting to hear what they think of the finished book. There is a lot of chocolate and tea consumed on release day. 

What happens next?

And then it’s out there in the world, and there’s not a lot more I can do. I still share posts about it, of course, though!

But I’m also always acutely aware that one book is not a career, and you’re only ever as good as your last book. Which means it’s time to write another, even better one.

Back to the keyboard it is!

Any Questions?

Have you enjoyed this peek behind the scenes of the story of a book? I’d love to hear from you if you have, or if you have any more questions I haven’t answered. Why not leave me a comment, or drop me an email?