Jacqueline C. Thomas - Romance Novelist

Archives for August 2020

How to Write a Book Blurb & An Author Bio: The Journey to Publishing Continues

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Last week, I shared some exciting news, that Quarantine Stories is going to be my first self-published book. This week the journey continues as I work my way towards publishing what I hope will be the first of many successful books. Last Thursday, I sent my manuscript off to my copyeditor, all 96K words of it! Holy moly that might be my longest manuscript to date. (I tend to stay between 80-90K.) Just prior to sending it off, I reread through each story, adding little things that I wanted to, that enhance the stories. It seemed that after I published each one originally, I’d have this great idea or little piece to put into each work to make it more special, but the story was already published live. For the book version, I actually put these fun details into the stories, and it made my romantic heart swoon.

Once the manuscript was off, I took a dig deep breath and relaxed for half a second before I set onto my next task, starting to envision what the cover will look like. As someone who works in marketing and PR this sets my creative mind into overdrive. I’d been thinking about what a cover would look like for months, and then one afternoon it came to me. I sketched it as quickly as possible. I mean when you think about it, how to you convey twenty-five unique love stories on one cover without using something generic, like a face mask, or graphics of germs in this case? Well, I think I have figured it out, but you will all have to wait, as I work on getting the concept into reality. Super cool and exciting though!

I’ve also worked on the dreaded author bio, and book blurb for the book. I have known so many incredibly talented authors who are amazing, prolific writers, but when you ask them to write about themselves they clam-up. Isn’t it funny how life works? Thankfully, I didn’t find this task too difficult but I found a great resource online that helped me demystify it all. This great post from the ReedsyBlog gave me great guidance, and I actually ended up with a bio that I like.

I also had to write the dust jacket description of the book in this past week. As a marketer this should be relatively easy, ha! I’ve never written a blurb for a story collection before. I also don’t ready many short story collections so I didn’t know what a good bio would look like for one. So I set off to Google and did some research. I found a really fun blurb generator, but it didn’t really suit my needs, so I kept looking. I’ll go back and play with the blurb generator later, it looks like a lot of fun.

I actually did find a useful guide on the website Writer’s Write. What a great name for a website for writers! They gave this guidance on how to construct a book blurb for a collection of short stories, and it was easy. In full disclosure, I wrote a blurb and then I went looking for advice to spice up what I already had. Upon reading this article I scratched what I originally had and started from scratch using their method, and it came out really well!

I also started the marketing plan for the book. So far this has been pretty easy, as it is my profession. I’ve also had developments in that regard as well. As of this Friday, I will technically be unemployed. However, this is not a sad or bad thing. My kids are home e-learning, and in between math lessons, and spelling tests I’ll be writing and marketing my upcoming book. I look forward to seeing where this time will take me creatively as well.

My First Publish Book Coming Soon

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The Journey to Print is LONG

I told myself when I finished Grad school, I’d have all the time in the world to write. Little did I know that the entire world would be in a state of chaos in the spring. In the meantime I was furloughed from work and I struggled just to have the drive to finish publishing Quarantine stories. Then I was called back to work, and I truly didn’t have time to write. Still I continued to write on, publishing stories as they came along. Meanwhile, I’d push the stories out to social media to promote them when I published.

I started writing them in early April at the beginning of the lockdown and I was surprised at the response I got from them. I pushed myself to keep writing through one of the most difficult times of my life. My husband also really encouraged me, and by encouraged I mean handed me my laptop and coffee, saying I couldn’t come out of my room until the story was finished. He’s an excellent cheerleader and I’m grateful for him.

Meanwhile I continued to publish these small love stories. To me, they seemed like a small piece of love and hope in a world that has become scary and uncertain. Creating moments of love, connections to one another, and hope for the future seemed like a small way I could help during this difficult time. Now, please don’t understand my intent here, I know I am not a best selling author (yet, hopefully) so my Quarantine Stories haven’t had a massive reach. Yet, as I published I got feedback from complete strangers that they loved the stories, or it brought them hope.

Around the time I published my fifteenth story, I started to get messages on social media from fellow authors and readers suggesting that I put the collection into an eBook and self-publish. I had not initially been open to the idea because I had read that unless your sales are wildly successful that self-publishing actually hurt your chances of publishing via a traditional route. I’ve been seeking representation for some time now, and have even had a few bites on the Twitter pitch contests, but I haven’t grabbed that brass ring of signing with an agent yet.

I was discussing this with my husband again, and he turned to me and said, “Babe, you have nine novels written and they’re just sitting on your computer. Start sharing them with the world.” I knew he was right. I have been writing almost nonstop since I wrote my first novel four years ago. I didn’t know where to start, and he suggested Qurantine Stories. I felt so stupid, so many people had told me to put them into a book too, but suddenly it clicked.

I am very lucky to have such wonderful resources in Twitter’s #WritingCommunity who offered excellent advice, and family that has been down the self publishing route. My husband just published his first book, called Adventures in Anglotopa. We’ve also published several smaller guidebooks over the years for our business Anglotopia. Yet, through all of this self publishing, I never thought to publish my fiction on my own.

Having made a career marketing and PR, I know how to market a product. I now have to make a marketing plan for my own book, and a cover, and typeset of a book. SO MANY Decisions! I also realized that why would anyone want to buy a book that is essentially published online for free? I knew that I did not want to pull the stories down off of the website either. The more I thought about it, it became clearer.

Quarantine Stories- the book, will have five or so additional quarantine stories that are not published on the website. Furthermore the published stories will have additional pieces to them, in the book, that aren’t on the website. This seemed simple enough, but let me tell you, this has been a mammoth undertaking.

So as I type this today, I am finishing up my first full edit through before the manuscript goes to my supremely talented copyeditor. From there I’ll take the next step towards design, then a full marketing plan and onward after that. Like anyone putting out any creative endeavor out into the world, I hope it’s successful. Wish me luck!

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