Recounting My Writing Journey: Chapter 8, Part 3/3

Hi everyone! Happy weekend, and thank you all for your patience. As you may have noticed, the link to this blog has changed, because I FINALLY upgraded my website (it's been a long time coming) and changed my domain name. But on this blog, we'll continue business as usual.

Today, I'll be going over the third category of things I've learned in the process of writing, editing, and producing ​Bound: design, publishing, and marketing. Let's get into it!

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Graphic Design
Oh, boy, did I learn a lot of things in the graphic design realm while working on this book. I talked about this a bit in part 2/3, but I did a handful of new things when it came to designing my book and marking for this release. I worked through...

• Cover Design, learning better strategies for manipulating images, utilizing digital textures, and creating my own font for the book
• Interior Design, creating graphics for the title page, chapter headers, and page breaks (as well as designing the map within the book)
• Promotional Graphics Design, where I tried to pick a theme (or a handful of themes) to utilize in my social media promotions. This included background images that I could use more widely, but also designs that were more specific to whatever I would post about that day.

KickStarter Campaign
I'm certain I will write a post about all the many, many things I learned in my time running Bound's book launch and sequel production KickStarter campaign, as well as things I plan to do differently in the future. But here are the highlights for you now. 

In the process of setting up this campaign, I did a lot of planning ahead. I planned and prepped in the early mornings and late evenings for months, creating videos and promo images for all the book merch I wanted to create. I created my KickStarter account and got my reward tiers created with the lists of items I wanted to include within each tier. This process took a TON of organizing, but it was also one of the coolest experiences I've had in my author career thus far, and through this KickStarter, I was able to produce all kinds of awesome book merch to promote the book, including stickers, bookmarks, art prints, book themed boxes, and I was even able to bring to life a dice gambling game that I created for the book. 

Through this KickStarter campaign, I also was able to learn how to ship items out of the country. 


Running Giveaways
Since I started my Instagram account back in 2018, I've seen many authors run giveaway campaigns to boost visibility for their books. While I've always thought that was a super cool way to engage the community, I never thought about trying it myself, until I saw how many people were interested in Bound's release. In the last two weeks of my KickStarter campaign, I was able to run two giveaways, and the process was awesome. 

I got new followers who were interested in the book and sharing with their friends and followers, and I was able to get my book to some people who otherwise might not have even known about it. 

I will absolutely be doing more giveaways in the future. It was an incredible experience that allowed me to connect with the community, engage with new readers, and honestly, I had a ton of fun getting the books and merch together. In my future giveaways, I'd love to make little themed bundles for my readers to receive. 


​Adjusting Metadata
This is an area that, I'll admit, I've always had a harder time with, and although I've learned a TON throughout the course of my author career, there is still plenty of room for improvement. One resource that helped me tremendously was Maria Secoy's The Truly Successful Author. In this book, Secoy covers metadata in today's context, and was so helpful for me to wrap my brain around what I can do with my book's metadata. 

While I've put in metadata for every book I've published, Bound was the first book where I really thought methodically about what my metadata was doing, and adjusted it mindfully. I was much more intentional with my keywords and book tropes, I created a handful of blurbs and book summaries to work with, and I focused more on choosing the most accurate genres and subgenera. 

After going through this process with a better perspective, I was able to go in and adjust my metadata for all of my other books. 


Connecting With Bookstores
While there are a ton of things that were new or different within the publishing journey I took for Bound, getting connected with Barnes and Noble has to be one of the biggest changes. This was something that I have been the most afraid of since I started my publishing journey back in 2017. 

I started trying to connect with local bookstores and libraries back in January with the release of Especially You, but I didn't hear anything back from my request. I was able to attend a handful of book signings for other authors throughout the year, and seeing them in that setting gave me the courage I needed to keep reaching out.

One day, on a regular trip to Barnes and Noble with my family, I asked the lady at checkout what it would take to set up a book signing with their location. She informed me that I would need to call the manager and ask. So I did, and the manager gave me an email address to reach out to. 

The manager at that location was the first to respond and schedule a book signing with me, but she also offered for me to sell my book in store, and even gave me more information on what I can do to get my books in Barnes and Noble on a widespread scale. 

After that, I had the confidence I needed to get in touch with other bookstore locations in the area, and I was able to get a handful of other author events on the schedule. If you'd like to attend any of these future events, check back on my Upcoming Releases and Events page for more information. 

Upcoming Releases and Events

Thank you all for joining me on this long and winding journey!