My third publication, Into The Light, was released on 1st December 2022, which also makes it my third publication in a single year. However, it was the first time I felt like I had produced a proper book; despite it being the shortest of my anthologies thus far, it is the first book to only have one author and the first book in which I had complete creative control. I was given no draft, save a word count, and its creation was only part of the overall completed project, so I had the opportunity to try out some new processes I’d been considering.
Alys and I had worked together on both Poisoned Roots and Withered Roots, so I was already familiar with her narrative voice and writing style. Also, as mentioned in our interview, Alys was already interested in continuing to write about women like Arianrhod, which was featured in Withered Roots. I approached her with the same idea – revamping the traditional tales of Welsh culture through a queer modern feminist lens. She knew what she wanted to write, and I had no reason to intervene.
It was probably mid summer when she sent me the first drafts – we both had other assignments due on top of this project, which had a longer deadline. Reading through the first pass of a piece of content will (hopefully!) never not bring me joy, especially if it’s a project that both I and the author are passionate about! And because of how she writes, Alys’ work rarely gets more than one round of editing, picking up on the occasional dropped full stop or missed apostrophe.
Placing the text was also a breeze – I started out on InDesign as I still had a free membership to Adobe Creative Cloud with university, but come September I moved over to Affinity, an off-the-shelf, single payment equivalent which works, in my humble opinion, better than InDesign.
The cover design was also a painless experience. Aligning the cover with the genre and subject of the content is key – it is the first point of contact and the main focus of the marketing. So my thinking went something like this:
We have 11th century myths who are sometimes seen as deities.
You know who else has deities? The Greeks (famously).
How are those deities represented in art?
They always seem relaxed and posed and intricate – I wonder if there is a name for that.
There is! Art nouveau!
Wouldn’t this be cool in a tarot style cover, with the four women in each corner and the name in the middle…
Fiverr seemed like the best place to find someone to produce a cover – there is a wide variety of talent to sift through, but seeing as I already had a draft design, finding and choosing someone was easier.
There were only a few options of freelancers to choose from, and Elena was clearly the best: and she did an amazing job. We discussed the project, I sent her the draft design and some character images, and soon enough we had the beautiful cover you see today. I wanted to include Alys in the designing process too, so she was sent all the updates to make sure it was aligning with our vision. There were no large changes that needed to be made (which speaks to Elena’s skill and talent rather than my brief), save a font alteration.
We also extended the cover size a little to accommodate KDP’s margins.
Putting together the final product was easy – making sure the stories were in the order given to me by Alys, and including the glossary and pronunciation guide, uploading it to KDP, ordering a single copy (go read this if you want to hear that story) as a last precaution, and simply making sure everything was set. Whilst I was finishing the final product, I was also attempting to complete my dissertation, so marketing and the publication launch took a backseat – thankfully, Alys understood. Because of these setbacks, we missed the opportunity to hold a proper, in-person launch event as Alys moved to Spain to teach English, so instead we opted for an interview which ended up being much more comfortable and casual.
Other marketing was quickly put in place before the launch day too. We only had about a month to attract attention and establish pre-orders, so I drew up some simple, text-based Instagram posts that would hopefully entice an audience and still maintain mystery; this included a piece-by-piece cover reveal, launch day reveal, and author involvement. Alys also got involved by posting the same posts on her personal Instagram, which reached a small audience of family and friends.
The marketing process isn’t over yet; attending book fairs and festivals is key to reaching new audiences, networking with new clients and industry professionals, and establishing the brand; contacting distributors will get the book into bookstores; and maintaining a social media presence will grow the audience we already have. So there’s still a lot more to do!
To get yourself a copy of Into The Light, go to our shop!