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Working for the Man

I’ve mentioned more than once that I’ve been working on a book for 47North, a science fiction and fantasy publisher owned by Amazon. I even wrote an article for Unstressed Syllables explaining how to submit a book to an Amazon imprint. That has been one of my most popular posts there.

But I don’t think I’ve ever shared the story of how I ended up with a traditional publishing contract. There are some restrictions in the contract as to what details I can share, but the story’s mine to tell. So here we go.

Submission guidelines

I told the story in the aforementioned article, but last January I decided that I wanted to get something published by 47North. I’ve really loved the control (and profit) available through self-publishing, but the one big thing I lack is advertising. I’m making enough revenue now that I could afford to pay for some promotion, but I wouldn’t really know what is worthwhile. And I don’t want to spend the time on trial and error.

Meanwhile, several of the standouts in the self-pub community were crowing about their deals with Amazon imprints. Amazon is far more responsive to author needs than New York publishers. They offer much fairer contracts (in a lot of ways) and pay approximately twice the royalties you’d get from anyone out of Manhattan.That’s not sharing secrets from my contract, that was the buzz about Amazon publishing before I ever heard from them.

So I decided to do a deal. As I said, I’ve been most satisfied with self-publishing, and I had no intention of quitting. Instead, I hoped to sell a book or two to Amazon, experience the traditional publishing process for the sake of my bucket list, and then watch while their promotion spilled over into new loyal readers (and more profit) for all my other books.

As it happens, nothing came of my carefully-crafted submission. It got lost in the slush pile. Instead, someone from Amazon contacted me spontaneously in May because they’d noticed how well Taming Fire was selling. He was clearly surprised to hear that I had contacted them way back in January.

Still, everything worked out. We had a phone call to discuss what they could offer and what I was looking for. I took care to stress my commitment to Consortium Books, and they had no problem with that. None at all. Obviously they’d hoped I would want to republish my proven series through them, but when I said that was impossible, they were still just as interested in hearing what else I had to offer.

And that was…nothing. Between Consortium Books and Draft2Digital, we’ve gotten really good at publishing, so everything that I had ready to publish was already published. I did mention a new property in a new universe that I had started for a class last spring.

It was 15,000 words (which would qualify as a short story) and an outline, but that was enough to interest them. They didn’t even ask to see the pages. They signed me to a three-book deal on an outline.

That’s a big deal. It happens all the time for big-name authors–guys like Stephen King and James Patterson–and sometimes for midlist writers who’ve been working with the same publisher for a long time. But mostly publishers won’t even start to talk about a contract until they’ve seen a complete manuscript.

And here I got a three-book contract on an outline. I’m still a little bit in shock at that. I’m big time.

Deadlines

Of course, that meant I still had to write the book. And I had to write it good enough to justify the advance they paid me back in June. I had no doubt that I could do it, but that was still a stressful pressure hanging over my summer.

My busy summer. See, in June I hired my first (paid) employees at Consortium Books. We have an Acquisitions Editor and a Senior Editor, plus a Marketing Director hired in September. So I spent my summer on such inescapable chores as payroll taxes, group health insurance, and pursuing our nonprofit status.

I planned to get that stuff hammered out quickly, then set my employees to work while I turned my attention to the book. I figured if I took two months on chores, I’d still have two months to write the draft (August and September), and all of October for revisions before I mailed the book off for my November 1st deadline.

That…didn’t quite work out. I started June with 15,000 words of story written, and when October rolled around, I still had 15,000 words.

Even then, I was slow to start. Day after day slipped by when I had no more than a couple hundred words to show for all my effort, and I needed to be doing about 2,000 a day for all of October.

As I fell further and further behind, I kept trying to jump start my process. I would dedicate more and more hours to writing (or, as it so often turned out, not writing). I rebuilt my outline repeatedly. I spent a lot of time psycho-analyzing myself and tried a dozen different solutions.

My wife just kept reminding me, with more faith in me than I’ve ever had in myself, “You’ll get it done at the last minute. You always get it done at the last minute, and it’s always wonderful.”

And, of course, she was right. Look for Oberon’s Dreams on bookstore shelves in May. And watch for updates here in the meantime; I’d love to do a cover reveal once we have final art, if they’ll let me.

As for me, I’m going to keep putting in the long hours, now that I’ve found a schedule that works for me. I’m really hoping I can write and publish at least two new books in the time it takes Amazon to publish the one I just delivered.

Any votes on which two new books I should write?

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I Always Knew this Day Would Come!

I’ve been sued.

It’s not as exciting as it could have been (and surely will be in the future). This time, it’s a small-claims matter.

Way back in 2002, when I first graduated and discovered with a shock that I had to get a job, I found a Tech Writing gig in Tulsa. We relocated up there, rented out a duplex for a couple years, and then bought a cute little three-bedroom house with the expectation we’d be trapped in Tulsa for decades yet.

Three years later I landed an incredible job with the FAA in Oklahoma City, and we moved away. But to our great dismay, we couldn’t sell the house. We hired a lousy realtor who did next to nothing to promote it for the length of her 90-day contract, and by that point we were broke from paying two mortgages, so we panicked and started looking for a renter.

That became a pattern. We’d get renters for six months to a year, that would end badly, we’d waste a weekend and a couple thousand bucks trying to fix up the place, then try listing it for sale (because we are not doing this ever again!), and after 90 days on the market we’d be suffering so much financially that we tried finding renters again.

We’ve been through four realtors and three property managers, and now our last property manager is suing us. In the months that this drama has been unfolding, we’ve gotten a referral for a wonderful new realtor, listed the house for sale, watched 90 days slip quietly past with no interest from buyers, and…now we’re looking for a new property manager.

I kinda hate this house. It was a wonderful first home, and that kinda just makes me hate it all the more. It’s a great deal and a great property. I can’t imagine why we can’t sell it.

And now I’ve been sued. Awesome.

Ultimately, this lawsuit is small potatoes. Given the ambitious nature of my business plans in a notoriously litigious industry (intellectual property), I’m definitely going to end up sued again. So I’ll just consider this practice, find out how the process goes, and try to make the most of it.

Meantime…anyone out there looking for a newly-renovated starter home in a quiet neighborhood? Let me sell it to you. Cheap.

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Advance Reading Copy of Myth Reaver (Noir Viking Fantasy)

I mentioned this yesterday, but wanted to give it the full attention it deserves. So here’s my official grand announcement:

Someone decided to merge a neo-noir fantasy epic with a Viking saga…and nailed it. And I got to help.

Joshua Unruh is my Marketing Czar at Consortium of Books, and we’ve just completed acquisitions for Saga of the Myth Reaver: Downfall. Here’s the product description:

Noir: Everyday men and women drowning in the murky, corrupt waters of their own flaws.

Saga: Peerless heroes fighting epic battles yet ultimately doomed to fail.

At the crossroads of these two literary traditions stands the Saga of the Myth Reaver.

 

The Nine Worlds have never seen a hero like Finn Styrrsson. Blessed with an unmatched thirst for victory and the supernatural strength and vigor to slake it, Finn might have been the greatest warrior-king his people had ever known. But he was born the youngest of eight princes with a conniving eldest brother who won’t abide the threat Finn poses to his rule. Despite Finn’s unfailing loyalty, he is forced from his home to forge a new destiny.

Already a powerful warrior and deadly reaver, Finn discovers that he above all others is equipped to kill the monsters, the giants, the myths that besiege Midgard. He becomes the Myth Reaver and a living legend.

Yet despite his prowess and fame–indeed because of them–Finn never wins that which he most desires. He never finds a home. After a lifetime spent battling dread monsters and shining demigods, Finn realizes that in all the Nine Worlds, there is only one enemy whose defeat can give him the renown he so richly deserves.

Whether it’s in search of glory or a glorious death, Finn always overlooks his true enemy. That mistake will be his downfall.

We’d like to start the book off with some positive word-of-mouth, so if the premise sounds interesting and you’d be willing to provide a helpful book review, leave a comment below (with a valid email address). We’ll send free ARCs to the first 100 people who ask.

Update!

The book is now live at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo! That means we’re no longer offering the ARC, but you can pick up your own official copy for just 99 cents.

Check it out, and be sure to leave a review!

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Meanwhile, in Oklahoma City…

A title like that really shouldn’t be followed with fascinating tidbits, should it? But life has been action-packed around here lately, and it’s only getting more interesting by the minute.

Here are some highlights:

Most of my books are now available on Kobo!

That means you can get DRM-free ePubs even if you’re not living the in the US. (I hadn’t realized Barnes and Noble made that restriction). We’re working on getting all the Consortium Books library up there, and will have it shortly.

Draft2Digital (my new e-book publishing platform) is…functional! Sort of!

Man, that should really sound more exciting than it does. As of yesterday afternoon, we can now add new book projects, input all the basic sales data, upload a source document (Word or Google Docs), and then generate a beautifully-formatted e-book. We haven’t integrated the tools to publish that book to our various vendors yet, but I’ve done proof of concept and tying all the pieces together shouldn’t be too hard.

I just signed a three-book deal with Amazon’s sci-fi fantasy publishing imprint, 47North! (Yes, these all get exclamation marks. If they didn’t deserve exclamation marks, they wouldn’t be news.)

That was actually last Wednesday, but Amazon has agreed to publish and promote three books in the World of Auric superhero-fantasy series. I’m really looking forward to experiencing the (somewhat) traditional publishing process, and especially to the promotional partnership Amazon can provide.

And while I was writing this post, I was contacted by an anime production group interested in developing the Dragonprince’s Heir into a feature film, or possibly a series!

I have no idea how much interest you would have in seeing that, but I find the idea fascinating. And, of course, it gives me an opportunity to find new readers in another market altogether. That some exciting stuff!

And, finally, I recently approved our next title from Consortium Books, Myth Reaver: Downfall, by Joshua Unruh!

It’s neo-noir Viking fantasy, which means it’s huge and dramatic and all kinds of grim. If any of that sounds at all interesting to you, you’ll probably love the book. It’s epic in scale and tone, and perfectly executed. I’m so proud to have been a part of this story’s development.

I really wanted to mention this one sooner, but I saved it to the end because it comes with an offer! Draft2Digital will be building us an Advance Reading Copy of Myth Reaver: Downfall sometime tomorrow, and Josh offered to let me share copies with my readers.

I’ll probably make a separate post about that tomorrow (if I can find the time), but if you’ve read this far, you can get a head start. Leave a comment below asking for an ARC of some grim Viking fantasy, and I’ll make sure you get one.

Now…I guess I’d better get back to work!

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Discipline(s)

You may not know this about me, but I’m a programmer. It took him years, but one of my best friends from college finally convinced me to try my hand at it…well, a decade ago, now.

He found the right language for me (Python), and then my interest in tedious videogames sealed the deal. Most of the hours I’ve spent programming have gone toward automating or enhancing the games I was playing–whether I was writing a page-scraper to play a browser game for me or developing AddOns for World of Warcraft.

Anyway! The programming I’m doing now is focused much more on my writing and publishing. I’m helping maintain an e-book conversion and production tool, collecting and drawing some pretty cool sales reports with those same skills I used to hack old browser games, and even developing a couple commercial-level projects on the side for friends.

I set aside some time on Saturday to do just that. The project is…well, from the outside, it’s pretty boring. It’s a tool for easily, quickly, and accurately applying contextual labels to large batches of image files. But to me, it’s just a series of puzzles.

  • My friend says he needs to be able to handle non-numeric page numbers. I growl at the absurdity of the request (“non-numeric numbers”? really?), then figure out how to make my program handle that.
  • My friend says he needs to be able to make duplicates of all subsets containing more than 100 images. It’s a tedious process for him to count and copy and rename. It’s three lines of code for me.
  • My friend says he needs to be able to Undo when he makes a mistake (and it would be nice to save old copies of his data file just in case something bad happens to the working copy)….

When he brought up that last one, I shrugged and nodded. “No problem. That’s a normal thing in programming. To keep from wasting storage space, instead of saving lots of old copies of the data, we’ll just save the original document plus a list of changes. That way you can calculate the ‘current’ version by adding all the changes to the original, and you can revert to older versions just leaving out some of the changes.”

That really is an utterly normal thing in programming. Happens all the time. It’s a smart way to do things. And, hey, any program you use regularly supports Undo and Redo, right? How hard could it be?

So Saturday afternoon, when Xander was taking a nap and Annabelle was reading in her room, I settled down with the laptop to add revision history to my program.

Turns out…it’s not easy. I couldn’t find a standard library (where someone else had already done the work for me). I couldn’t find good examples. I had all the starting points, but they didn’t give me quite the information I’d expected to get, and I spent hours trying to figure out how to turn what I did get into something useful.

I spent six hours on it. In retrospect, that’s probably a pretty respectable time, but going in, I really expected it to be a half-hour job. After all, thousands of people do this sort of thing every day. I’m not a professional programmer, but I know all the basics (and I’m pretty good at the things I do often). Something so standard should have just made sense to me. That’s what I expected, anyway.

Anyway! The cool news is that I did end up getting it to work (after giving up completely on two separate occasions). Not only that, but I built my solution into a standalone file, so now I can incorporate that into any other program I want. For me, at least, it will be a half-hour task to add revision history to future projects.

I’ve been thinking about that experience a lot this week, because it carries a strong parallel with another one from the same weekend. On Sunday morning, I started outlining a Sherlock Holmes-style short story for my Auric’s Valiants series. The character is one we’d wanted in that universe from the start and, again, I’d just taken it for granted that I could whip up a Sherlock Holmes-style short story.

I did make it easier for myself by getting the whole Sherlock Holmes series on audiobook. I’ve been working my way through the series for weeks now, and it’s really good stuff. I admire the way Doyle balances the distant, refined narration with the visceral, evocative premises.

The stories have strong, consistent structure to them. That helps a lot. There are some pretty reliable elements, like the size of the cast, the number (and order) of clues, the misdirections, and so on. I felt like I could pretty easily mimic that structure, substituting in my own characters and setting.

But when I started outlining a short story in my scribblebook, expecting it to take about a page, I quickly discovered that the inputs didn’t automatically lead to the output. In fact, it turns out most of what goes into a great Sherlock Holmes story has nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes (or Dr. Watson). It took me fifteen pages of scribbling and a lot more energetic thinking than I ever expected it would, just to come up with an effective plot for a Sherlock Holmes story.

And I haven’t even started on the style and tone–the actual storytelling. Luckily, that’s the part I know how to do. It’s just like my programming problem Saturday: A given writing project can be a huge challenge for me, even as a professional writer, just to get to the point where I can do my kind of writing within the project.

But once I’m there, I’m virtually done. It might have taken me six hours to figure out the outline, but I’ll only need half that much time at a keyboard to get the actual story written. And now that I’ve figured it out, I can reuse it in future projects.

That sort of thing is fascinating to me. I love seeing the parallels between my disciplines. Just one of the many things I love about my job.

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“New Media” Empires

I just started a new hashtag on Twitter: #NewMediaEmpires. Apparently it’s something much on my mind.

A couple weeks ago I had a dream that I was at a party–some Comic-Con social thing straight out of that last season of The Guild–when Felicia Day came up to me at the bar. She was the party’s glittering hostess, and for whatever reason, she really wanted me to dance with her.

I turned her down and (since this was my dream) she was pretty devastated. As a consolation, I invited her to sit with me and compare notes on our New Media empires. She settled for that, and we had a delightful conversation into the wee hours.

Then last night–just now, really–I dreamed that I ran into Jim Gaffigan in the parking lot of an Olive Garden. I heard someone mention that he was there, and I went searching for him like some kind of crazed fan. But as soon as I found him, he cocked his head and said, “Hey, aren’t you that Aaron guy?”

We settled into a pleasant conversation about our New Media empires. As we went, Nathan Fillion wandered up (clearly there at Olive Garden with Jim Gaffigan), and I started suggesting to Jim in some not-so-subtle ways that he needed to introduce us. Jim played dumb, as though he couldn’t understand why I might want to know Nathan.

“I’m just saying,” I told the comic, “If you knew anyone who was interested in working on some New Media projects, it could be fun. Especially somebody plugged into the geek community. Somebody interested in science fiction. Somebody funny and serious and cool. Maybe…I dunno…somebody who knows Felicia Day?”

The whole time (since this was my dream), Nathan Fillion was bouncing on his toes, waiting excitedly for Jim Gaffigan to introduce us.

Sometime later, we three were gathered around an Endless Salad Bowl, munching on breadsticks and discussing our empires. Nathan asked me about my goals. I shrugged and said, “Oh, you know. Standard rich-and-famous contract.”

Jim looked surprised (and a little offended). Nathan said (in a fatherly kind of way), “You can’t just be in the business to get rich and famous.”

I shook my head. “I want to be rich so I can pursue my projects without regard to profitability. I want to be famous so I can have a voice in this rapidly-changing world. I want to make better things, and I want to make things better.”

And (since this was my dream), they were startled by my brilliance and burst into spontaneous applause.

I have no reason to suspect Jim and Nathan know each other, or that either of them eats at Olive Garden (and certainly no reason to think Felicia would ask me to dance). I’m also well aware that hearing about other people’s dreams can be devastatingly boring. Still, it gives you a bit of an idea where my head’s at.

Standard rich-and-famous contract, please!

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Works in Progress

I’ve spent most of July being a businessman. I’ve been shopping group insurance coverage for my editors and me, trying to find someone reliable to handle payroll and corporate taxes, and running board meetings.

Most of the writing I’ve done recently has been on a formal business plan. Fun.

But it’s all to the good. You might remember how glad I was to stop working out of Starbucks and start working out of an office. That office was a tiny, temporary space just to get me a desk. Now that we have editors on staff and are working to hire a whole handful of new folks, we need more space.

And we’ve found the perfect space. It’s a two-story open retail space in the midtown/arts district. We’ve drawn up plans that include a public art gallery, a little bookstore for our products, a wide open work area for our Writers and Programmers, a raised studio with direct sunlight for our Painters and Photographers, and (eventually) a dedicated recording studio for our Musicians.

It’s gorgeous. It’s also a huge financial commitment. So I’ve been very busy crunching numbers and making best guesses (and worst-case scenarios) and planning for the future. I had to convince my board of directors that we could (and should) afford the place, and now I have to convince the building owners to take us on as tenants.

It was an interesting board meeting. Once we’d finished the agenda items, it settled into more of a casual discussion as one of the directors asked me how I planned to handle the conflicting job responsibilities of producing new novels and running the company.

I smiled sweetly and explained that I’m still producing new novels in my free time. I’m a full-time CEO, and it’s everything I can do to manage that job.

This experience is so far from anything I ever expected for my life. It’s incredible. It’s stressful and tedious at times and often incredibly uncreative, but it’s also big. It’s important. I’m not just telling stories; I’m building a new media empire.

That’s not to say I’m done telling stories. Hah! I am still producing new novels in my free time. I’ve been hard at work on a short story in the World of Auric, a dragonrider novella featuring Daven, and a brand new epic novel (which I hope to get written this fall) featuring Daven’s son Damion.

I’m also hard at work as publisher and coach. In just the last week I’ve helped workshop Courtney’s sequel to Rethana’s Surrender, Joshua’s epic viking fantasy Myth Reaver: Downfall, and Jessie’s adventure fantasy, The City of Orphans. And then there are the dragonrider collaborations. But that’s a story for another time.

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Afterword

Dear Readers,
This is not the end. It’s an end, but there’s still plenty more to tell.

The final book in the Dragonprince Trilogy has been available in e-book form for most of a week now. Within a few hours of its release, it was on the Science Fiction and Fantasy bestseller list at Amazon. It’s already sold nearly a thousand copies, and thanks to my fans who requested Advance Reading Copies, it boasted a bunch of customer reviews from day one.

Unfortunately…they’re not all friendly reviews. Some of them are genuine critiques of the story’s style–“The ending felt rushed” or “This minor character seemed totally pointless” or “I hated the protagonist”–but overall, the resounding complaint boils down to this:

“You didn’t tell the story I wanted you to tell.”

That is agonizing feedback for a storyteller. It’s almost impossible to fix. My readers like my stories because of my style, and part of that style is choosing the boundaries and progression of narratives. When I choose how to tell a story, I always think long and hard about everything that goes into it, and I choose the method that will make the most interesting story I can possibly tell.

In this case, I chose to tell the end of the Dragonprince story from the perspective of Daven’s son Taryn, fifteen years after the events of The Dragonswarm. I knew that would be a surprise to my readers. I hoped it would be a good surprise (and as of this writing, most of my reviewers say it was). I’m certain it was a necessary one.

Because I wanted to tell the story of the Dragonprince. I wanted to tell the story of the boy who rose to power, chose to use that power fighting monsters instead of men, and then followed through on that commitment, whatever the cost. I could have told that story from Daven’s perspective, but as you’ll know if you’ve read the book, it would have been a tortuous and miserable experience.

But I don’t think very many of my readers are frustrated with how I chose to end the story. Mostly, they seem to be frustrated that I ended the story. Maybe it really did take fifteen years before we saw the true conclusion to the story that started when Othin challenged the shepherd swordsman in front of his friends. Maybe the story of the end needed to be told from Taryn’s perspective. But that doesn’t mean I should have skipped straight there. Right? What about all the interesting things that happened to Daven in between?

Some readers have suggested that The Dragonprince’s Heir is really Book Four (or Book One in a new trilogy about Taryn), and they’re going to hold out hope for a real Book Three.

I understand the frustration my readers might have felt thinking that this was the last story I would ever have to tell about Daven. I’m sad to think how few of those disappointed readers will ever make it here to read this. I wish I could have done a better job communicating my long-term intentions, but I will make what amends I can.

I promise you this:

I’m not finished with these characters.

It has always been my intention to develop a separate “Dragonriders of the Tower” series within the fifteen-year gap between The Dragonswarm and The Dragonprince’s Heir. You will get to see Daven wielding some of that incredible power he’d harnessed by the end of Book Two.

You will get to see Lareth convince Garrett Dain to risk his life in an attempt to reproduce Daven’s bonding experience. You will get to see the high-flying, action-packed adventures of the men and women who spend five years battling the dragonswarm until there is not a waking wyrm anywhere in the whole Ardain.

But I can promise this, too:

Daven’s war with the dragonswarm is not the most interesting story I have to tell.

It’s a good one, but it’s just a drop in the bucket. I also have stories to tell of the FirstKing (who built the nation Daven fought so hard to protect), and of the primitive people who first invited evil (and, with it, great magic) into the world.

And Daven’s sons are going to change the world. Among themselves, Taryn, Damion, and Isaiah shape much of the next thousand years (with the help of Caleb’s Order Knights, of course).

I’ve been dreaming up the stories of this world my whole life, and I’d be happy to spend the rest of it writing them down. Before the summer is over, I’ll have another Daven story for you (if only a novella).

This is not the end. It’s just a handful of beginnings. Thank you for joining me on the voyage.

Sincerely,
Aaron Pogue

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It’s Out!

I know a lot of you have been anxiously awaiting the news, so I’ll go ahead and share that right up front:

The Dragonprince’s Heir (The Dragonprince Trilogy, #3) is now available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can read the official release announcement here. (And if you’re interested, you can sign up for new release notifications so you’ll get those announcements by email.)

Rethana’s Surrender

You might have noticed that this release is a little crowded. I’m busy talking up the much-anticipated release of the conclusion to my fantasy trilogy, and I also keep mentioning my friend Courtney’s book at the same time.

That’s by design. I was sitting in a publishing meeting with the other staff at Consortium Books last January talking about the June release of this book, and I said, “Let’s publish Courtney’s at the same time.”

Everyone looked at me and said, “You’re crazy. That’s too much work.”

But here’s why I suggested it:

  • The book is good. Really good. Better than anything I’ve written yet.
  • Only a few hundred people have ever heard of Courtney Cantrell, and getting noticed as a writer is hard.

Courtney needs to be noticed, and you guys need to read her book. This isn’t a marketing thing; it’s an Art thing. The world needs more high fantasy the way Courtney does it.

So pick up a copy of Rethana’s Surrender while you’re grabbing The Dragonprince’s Heir. We’re selling Rethana’s Surrender super cheap, so it won’t set you back much, and in exchange you’ll get to meet some rich, engaging characters and take your first steps into a fantasy world that promises to be fascinating for years to come.

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Finding Art

Last week was a frantic one for me. Well…that’s barely an interesting statement, because all my weeks are frantic. So let’s focus on the particular theme that dominated last week’s frenzy:

Art.

Specifically cover art. I’m publishing two books on Tuesday–one of my own, and one of my friend’s that was hugely influential to me. There’s a lot riding on the success of these two books, and when last week started, I had no cover art for them at all.

That’s terrifying. Publishing a book is a different beast from writing a book, and within that process, the cover art is probably the most challenging element. It takes time. It takes skills that I don’t have. And to do it right, it really takes enough different skillsets that it usually requires coordination among several talented people.

In our organization, we usually have an “illustrator”–often a painter or a photographer–to make the beautiful background, and a “designer” to choose the crop, the title elements, the “trade dress” that turns a work of art into a book cover.

Rethana’s Surrender

We’d planned to hire a somewhat famous professional cover artist for Courtney’s book, but over the course of May, that plan unraveled. Between problems with his availability and our business model, we had to abandon the partnership at the last moment. That left us scrambling to find a replacement who would not only do professional-quality work, but who could do it in three weeks.

In the end, the art we received was gorgeous, but our artist had to cancel or postpone a lot of existing work to meet our needs. (And we had to pay way more than we wanted to because of the rush.)

The Dragonprince’s heir

We hit similar problems with my own book. We’d made arrangement last December with the artist who’d done my previous covers–Courtney, as it happens–but between the demands of getting her book ready and other complications in her life, she wasn’t able to complete it.

She did a breathtaking landscape for me as a background, but she never made it to the foreground–adding Caleb and Taryn, who were supposed to be the main focus of the scene.

It was Tuesday when I received the digital copy of that painting. Tuesday…one week before the book was supposed to come out!

And the artist who made that beautiful painting for Courtney was all used up. Lucky for us, she was able to recommend some friends, and among them I found someone willing and able to do the work on such ridiculously short notice.

Oh, and he did ridiculously good work, too.

Fan Art

But the whole time I spent searching through these fantasy art galleries, looking at fan art from a hundred universes I’ve never heard of, I kept thinking how silly it was that I was working so hard to find someone who could do my stories justice.

I have thousands of fans devouring the series. Surely there’s someone among them with those same talents–someone who already knows these characters and the stories’ themes nearly as well as I do (and probably visualizes them even more vividly than I can).

Maybe it’s only because I got my start working in an artists’ cooperative, but I love the idea of using fan art for covers. That might be tricky for unreleased works, but one of the big advantages of digital publishing is that it’s cheap and easy to release new editions. If I had the art to use, I could put out new editions of Taming Fire with a featured-cover-of-the-month.

So consider that a standing offer. No, a plea! If you’re a fan, I’d love to see your art (whether or not you want to let me use it).

If you know an artist who might be interested, get them hooked on my books. We can make my job easier and make the World of the FirstKing a prettier place. What’s not to love?

In the meantime, treat yourself to a browse through Adele’s and Lane’s gorgeous galleries, and let them know what good work they did on our covers.

And come back Tuesday. That’s when the magic happens.