I received the first draft of the layout for my next book, Walking with the Muse, yesterday from the book designer, Lubosh Cech. There’s nothing quite like the process of seeing your book being born step-by-step. It’s a completely different kind of joy than posting your writing online—in book form it seems more formal, more permanent, and has more gravitas in general.
This is my tenth book over the last three decades. This time there’s been much less stress and more excitement and anticipation. This process, the joy of creation, is such that the entire world with its worries and obligations just seem to melt away. A big part of this has been learning to trust myself and trusting the designer I’m working with. This is the fourth book that Lubosh has designed for me over the past decade. I was introduced to him through a mutual friend who used to write on this platform but left long ago.
This week will be spent proofing the first draft of the interior design, looking at different iterations of the cover, and working on a marketing campaign. I’m not going to rush this one. It won’t be released until I know in my heart everything is ready.
One sizable stumbling block for indie authors publishing through Amazon has always been not having the option of allowing preorders for paperback books. Amazon offers the preorder option only for Kindle and I’ll never understand why. If anyone knows a workaround to this I’d be thrilled to learn what it is.
My goal with this book will be to get as many reader reviews on Amazon as possible. Verified reviews are what triggers Amazon’s algorithm to start suggesting your book to more people on the platform and raises visibility tremendously. Amazon’s algorithm is getting more and more stringent in regard to this and it stops indie book sales before they can even get started.
This, I’m convinced, is why my last book, (Poetry from the Edge of the Apocalypse) didn’t sell as well as expected. Just one verified review on Amazon meant that the book remained basically invisible. Any tips on how to get more reviews would be greatly appreciated.
Also, many thanks to all of you (especially @honeydue) who posted reviews of this book elsewhere! This allowed many people to find the book who wouldn’t have otherwise.
It’s going to be a very busy week for me. My head will surely be spinning by the end of it. I leave you today with the A Note from the Author page that will appear in Walking with the Muse:
A Note from the Author
This book has been more than thirty years in the making.
It began in a high school English class, with a short, comedic piece about failing my driver's test — an awkward, anxious sixteen-year-old trying to look cool behind the wheel of an enormous 1978 Dodge Monaco. That first spark of delight at making readers laugh never left me. The journey deepened in 2006, when I took C. Michael Curtis's short fiction course. Under Michael’s sharp eye and generous guidance, my writing diverted to a more serious path.
In the years since, the short story has become one of my great literary loves — compact, intimate, capable of holding an entire world in just a few pages. Editing this collection, I found myself transported back to the exact moment each story was born and who I was when I wrote them. Revisiting them felt less like work and more like a reunion.
Through every false start, every quiet triumph, every late night of revision, one thing has stayed constant: the Muse. The Muse has walked beside me all these years — patient, insistent, and full of grace. This book is the written record of our long relationship.
Thank you for walking this path with us. There's so much of me in these stories, and I hope reading them brings you the same joy they've brought me. I am, without question, the luckiest man alive to call this my life's work.
Most days I really do feel like the luckiest man alive and I thank you all for the part you've played in this process. The support, encouragement, and kindness you've shown me here in the past decade has meant the world to this indie author.
All for now. Make this a wonderful day.
Hi Eric,
I know that feeling — it never gets old compared to other things in our lives and still stays fresh in the mind, at least, for me. It's a kind of birth from your own flesh and soul and I know the disappointment when it doesn't get the response you hoped for and the sadness when you feel you could have done more. I empathize with your desire to take your time to get it right, to make it perfect — it's the pride in the art that drives us forward and gives us the satisfaction of creating something new that has never existed before. Congratulations!
I totally agree! I've always been in such a rush to get the books out there and go on to the next project that I think the marketing (more than anything else) suffered because of it. Thank you!
Trusting the process does not mean believing everything will work out exactly as planned.
Man, I find short stories a real challenge! Keeping it tight and to the point is never easy, is it? I'm so happy for you, my friend. Congratulations!! I look forward to reading this one.
They were so difficult for me at first. The course I took by C. Michael Curtis in 2006 helped a lot but listening to the New Yorker Fiction podcast probably helped more than anything. I think listening to all the short fiction from that podcast rewired my brain. Even when I write longer form things now I view each chapter as its own short story and it's opened up a whole new world. Thank you my friend!
Congratulations on being close to releasing your tenth book! We are actually going to attempt to release a book later this year for my wife, the goal is not as much to get it trending in her case, but to lend additional legitimacy to her Executive Upleveling Business so Amazon might work for that :)
Thanks! That's exciting! I wish you well on that. They say if you're a business person publishing a book is now what having business cards used to be. I think it's so much more than that though.
I like that you approach the launch of your creative enterprise with a business sense. This is quite exciting. I have never used a book designer (probably why my books never took off), but I never imagined I would make money. I just had to write the books. From beginning to end I formatted the books and published them. For only one book (a memoir) I hired a graduate student to created a cover...$50. It was a lovely cover but didn't make a difference, and eventually I decided to take that book down. It was too personal for the world the read.
My Chinese art/history book was a real challenge formatting. It had color illustrations. At the bottom of each page I had a small picture as an accent. Included were also Chinese characters. Oh my, what a headache. But, the finished product looked great :)) Because I never expected to make money, I didn't want to abuse the family budget by paying for services.
Good luck! Your writing is great. The thoughts you express in your poems relevant to all our lives. I'm sure the book will do well.
I didn't always used to be that way. : ) I've never used to enjoy the marketing but I've grown to view it as a challenge now. The first book I used a professional designer for was The Perfect Pause—once I did I was hooked. It's saved me so much time, especially when dealing with things like photo/file formatting issues with Amazon. I still do some of the initial conceptual cover design but then hand it over to Lubosh as his starting point. We've worked together on so many projects now that it all unfolds naturally and effortlessly. Thanks so much! I'm rereading the second draft of the entire manuscript this week and making notes. It was tough picking out the eleven stories that will be included from all the stories I've written but any more than that I felt like would be testing the limits of the modern attention span. : )
It takes courage to write, to put ourselves out there for others to judge. It takes another level of courage to ask people to buy what we have produced. I don't think I have the second level :) It takes the fun away when people say no. Only once in my life did I ever ask for a raise at work, despite the many jobs I held and the fact that my employers valued me. I just don't like, "NO". I admire your enterprise and confidence.
I like your spirit and attitude toward this book. A writer's career requires inspiration, creativity, but also maintaining optimism. I see that you not only trust the process, but you're also enjoying it, and that's fundamental. I sincerely hope your work finds more readers and reviews. Sending you a hug.
I have to say this is the first time a book release has felt so relaxed and natural—like it doesn't matter whether it succeeds or fails. It's such a better mind-space to be in than feeling anxious and worried about it. Thank you very much my friend!
Theme of my graduation work was short story :)
Very cool! What was it about?
Short story in general, even smaller edition called short short story in Croatian literature. Basic book around everything I wrote about here was book of writer Edo Popović: Ponoćni boogie (Midnight boogie in english). Maybe there is also english edition of this book.
Edit: I found only German version on internet
I hope you are able to get some more momentum with this one than the other. That really sucks they have made it so hard!
I appreciate it! Amazon has become a whole lot like social media these days—it's more and more difficult to get visibility. It's partially the algo and partially the sheer number of voices that want to be heard.
That about figures!
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