So by now you’ve probably noticed the cover for my first book is obnoxiously splashed all over the website (look left! Look right!). This is because I am so very, very excited to have it.
When I first decided to indie publish, it seemed like there were a thousand things to learn. On the one hand, the process is relatively simple: write book, edit book, get cover, upload book to retailers, sell book. On the other hand, there is a lot of hidden work that goes into all of that.
Writing the book is hard enough. Then there’s the self-edit. Then there’s finding an editor(s) you will mesh well with, working with their schedule, etc, all while dealing with the typical crippling self-doubt that no one will like what you’ve written and you will have invested a lot of time and money into something that won’t work out.
If you’re going to format the book yourself, there’s learning that as well, and then there’s the marketing side of things which involves, at the very least, building a website. To a tech-luddite such as myself, this website has been a giant sinkhole for my time. It’s taken me hours and hours to do what someone else probably could have done in one or two, but I’m one of those people who has to be able to do everything themselves, usually to the detriment of my sanity. (I literally cooked all the food for my own wedding and had to ask my best friend to delegate tasks for me because I knew I couldn’t do everything myself but also couldn’t stop).
All of which is to say I was getting a little worn-down and feeling like I wasn’t really making any progress toward my goal of getting my first book out there. I knew it wasn’t true, but I was in the waiting stage (the editor’s schedule doesn’t open up for a month or so), and there wasn’t anything more I could do except keep writing the next book.
So I decided to go ahead and order the cover. At this point I was so stressed out that when I had to fill out the questionnaire form asking what I wanted in a cover my mind went entirely blank and the only words that came to mind were: Nice? Pretty? I didn’t know what I wanted, I just wanted a good cover I could be proud of.
Somehow, I threw together answers to the questionnaire, overflowing with numerous apologies to the designer unfortunate enough to be handed the mess, fully expecting to get a reply something along the lines of, “What do you expect us to do with this?”
Instead, I got the cover you see one week later, and it was everything I didn’t know I wanted. I’ve never really understood when authors talked about wanting to cry when they saw their first book cover. You guys, I get it now. I stared at it pretty much all day. Like, literally, I took out my phone every half an hour at work to just look at it. Having this one, tangible thing go right relieved so much pressure, and now whenever I get stressed out I just pull it up and look at it.
Maybe one day the thrill will wear off. I hope not.