August 2018

I am working on my daily writing prompts as well as outlining three adventure novels and working a full time job, so my original publishing date plans have changed. Book one was planned for early December, book two for late January, and book three for March or April. Very optimistic, but I was expecting to have a final draft of book one go to editing by early October.

I want to start writing the first draft of book one on September 1st, with a goal of a complete first draft by the end of October. I will write book two in November, for NaNoWriMo, and then I plan to spend a few weeks in early December rewriting the first draft of book one. I will pass that off to some friends and family before I create a "final" draft and send it off for developmental edits. I should have it back by the end of January, with rewrites and beta readers taking up February and March of 2019. Line editing, followed by proof reading should occur in April, but may take two months so I will probably schedule formatting for June, and a July launch for book one.

During this time, I will be working on book two as well, with it lagging a couple of months behind book one for each step. This means that if book one is published in July, book two will be sent for line edits and posted for pre-order at the same time.

The Official Tom and Piper Adventures website has been setup, a design is in place, and I have been experimenting with various forms and page content. I am happy with the design, but writing good content is difficult when the books are not complete and the author does not want to give too much away. The main landing page will include the sales copy from the first book, so it may be the last page to be completed. The "Their World" page will discuss the character's world and will feature are from the first book. There will be a "give-away" section for ARC registration and a "contact the author" page. Other pages, like privacy policy , about the author, blogs, etc will be tested but may not still be there when the first good goes on sale.

I have a fun plan related to newsletters too, but I do not want to give away the surprise.

I registered a pair of domains today, and had them point to my existing hosting account.

The Official Website for Tom and Piper Books: tomandpiperadventures.com

This will be a marketing website, primarily to promote the books among potential readers. I have a lot to learn about publishing, but most successful authors say that marketing has to start long before the book releases. I do not have any content or a design at the moment, but that will change as I work on the site over August. My goal is to have a basic site ready in September so that the official website is well established before anyone starts to look. 

The main sections for the site will probably be something like this:

Home Page

The World of Tom and Piper

Other Tom and Piper Books

Registration for Advance Reader Copies

Eventually, I will want to have Excerpts from the books, giveaways and contests, etc. For now, I have setup some placeholder pages and am working on design. With a basic design in place I can start working on decent content.

Parked short domain: tomandpiper.com

Both domains point to the same website for now.

I have been giving a lot of thought to the title of my "untitled middle-grade" adventure. I did not worry about it before; I always assumed the title would jump out at me as I wrote. Adventures for children, even older children, need to have a title that clearly tells them "Read me, I am exactly the kind of book you want."

The original story was going to center on a male protagonist named Bill, but when it became an adventure for younger readers I felt I could write about a boy-girl team more effectively. A coworker suggested the name "Piper" for the girl, and I had already kind of settled on "Tom" for the boy.

The Adventures of Tom and Piper: Ghost Ship

Tom and Piper Adventures: Book One, The Ghost Ship

Tom and Piper in the Adventure of the Ghost Ship

Ghost Ship: A Tom and Piper Adventure

Ghost Ship: A Tom and Piper Novel

Ghost Ship: A Tom and Piper Book

The Ghost Ship: A New Tom and Piper Adventure

Keywords are an important aspect of naming a series (less so a standalone novel), and "adventure" is more descriptive than something like "novel" or "book", so I wrote off the titles that did not include "adventure".

I put Tom's name first in the title for a few reasons, but mainly because I am male and feel like it will be easier for me to write from that viewpoint (I am an aspiring author with no experience writing from a female POV as I write this). I have not done the research yet, but I feel like young boys are going to be a bigger market for these adventures and I fear that "the adventures of Piper and Tom" might not sound as interesting to them. I never liked Nancy Drew novels when I was a child, but I loved Hardy Boyse, for example. 

A Tom and Piper Adventure

The Tom and Piper Adventures

The Adventures of Tom and Piper

The question is, will readers a year from now like any of these?

I placed my second order with the artist, and once again he did not disappoint.

The illustration turned out much more cheerful than I expected, and it did not really match how I imagined the scene, but I was blown away nonetheless. To my eye, this is the kind of art that sells books to children and young teens.

I am left with a dilemma, though.

My book was really targeted at adults and young adults. By leaving out swearing, sex, and unnecessary violence, I thought I could appeal to a wider audience. I started reading adult science-fiction and fantasy at the age of twelve, and children that age are bright enough to understand adult fiction. Unfortunately, the artwork is more suitable to pre-teen adventure novels than grim young adult post-apocalyptic fiction. Yes, it was not going to be too grim, but how can I possibly have artwork like this in a book targeted at jaded young adults?

I love the art direction, so I think I am going to scrap the outline I have and start over as a dedicated adventure series for middle-grade readers. I have no idea what this means for my market as I was researching adult science-fiction categories on amazon, but I think it will work for my debut series. I still plan on launching the first book with book two on pre-order and having book three ready to go before book two launches.

My original plan was to launch book one in December, but the extra six months should result in a much better book.

Amazon allows a three-month pre-order, so it will be safe to put it up in May. I will be concentrating on amazon for this series, so the books will not be available on other platforms for the first six months to a year.

 I have selected an artist to work with!

The winning entry is pictured here, and I was very happy with how it turned out. The centipede is larger and more menacing than I planned, clearly showing the danger. This artist uses an anime-like style to his work, which suits my taste and should make the illustrations appeal to a wider audien

I will not post the losing entries because one of them was terrible. Well, terrible is probably unfair, but it appeared to be targeted at a pre-school audience. The other losing entry is quite good, so I will probably work with the artist on some different books in the future.

The winning illustration is one of many I will need for the current book. I have not broken the story into chapters yet, but I imagine there will be at least fifteen. I will also need chapter images for the second book because I plan on having book two available for pre-order when book one goes on sale.

I should discuss the finances a bit, since my original budget of $1000 per book was grossly optimistic. Roughly speaking, I need to budget $400 per book for interior art. Editing will cost around $1000 per book, perhaps $1500 if I order a full developmental edit. Professional covers are going to cost about $400 per book, and formatting (for print and kindle) another $100 per book. This means that I will need about $2000 to publish each book, not counting any overages, promotions, or ad spend. I plan to dedicate a few posts to detailing the financials in more detail.

Anyway, I ordered another illustration from the winning artist, and plan spread the orders out to one per week so that the artist is not overworked between now and December.

I have spent a few days looking at sample illustrations on a few online marketplaces where artists can be hired. I am planning on ordering chapter illustrations, so the artist I work with will need to be able to draw a basic scene from that chapter, then do it again for twelve to twenty more chapters. And perhaps as many as eight or ten books in the series. I may need a single artist to commit to creating two hundred illustrations, so hiring the right artist is critically important.

Why a single artist? If I write a series of novels, I want the illustrations to be consistent throughout them. This probably means a single artist, but I could hire a team and still have consistency in tone, in how characters look, and in how the theme is approached. I also do not want to micro-manage the artist because I believe they need creative freedom to do their best work. And let me be honest, I am no artist, and I will not know how to illustrate better than any artist I hire.

Artist Contest

I hired three illustrators to create a scene from my first novel. The cost, a little over $100, is an investment that I am happy to spend to sample their work. 

I gave each the same somewhat vague criteria (a child, dressed in rags, is attacked by a giant centipede), and I am now waiting to see what they come up with. If none of them "win," I will contact three more artists and do this again. If one of them stands out, I will start ordering illustrations based on my scene list. If more than one of the artists stand out, I will use them on different series or perhaps to create promotional artwork.

So far, all three asked me questions about the background (they are in a basement of an abandoned building), props (they can be holding a burning torch, they do not wear shoes), and about the centipede (no violence, the image needs to show the scene before the centipede attacks). And now, we wait for results.

I have to admit that I am very excited to take this step, particularly since I am personally very busy this month and am not able to make any progress on the actual writing.