The what-happens-after-the-first-draft saga continues.
Once you’ve rewritten your manuscript, so you’ve shown rather than told, then added detail and honed your language, you could be ready to turn over your manuscript to a professional line editor (unless you want to bring in some beta readers first). The line editor will raise the language by another notch or three and make sure it’s as effective as possible.
The line editor you choose could be your writing coach if they do editing or someone else. The benefit of going with your writing coach is that they will have been immersed in the project and have a real feel for you and your project, which will influence the edit. The benefit of going with someone else is that they will not have seen the manuscript before and, therefore, will bring a fresh perspective and reaction.
Expect the line edit to take at least three weeks.
Cover Design
At this stage (if not before as long as you’ve settled on your book title and front cover matter), you will want to start the cover design process since that usually takes about a month assuming the book designer can fit you into her schedule right away. If you decide to go with Incubation Press, we have different packages geared to different budgets and needs. Most authors probably don’t require a custom cover. It’s amazing how beautiful and how unique our templated book cover designs look. If you want to save even more money and are willing to do a fair amount of photo or illustration research, you can choose the most economical package. A free phone consultation with Incubation Press’s book designer, Lieve Maas, and me will help with the decision about which package to choose as well as with resources if you’re going to supply the artwork.
Back-Cover Copy
During this time, you also need to start working on the back-cover copy of the book (which will probably be the basis for the copy on your Amazon sales page), so the line editor can review that, and the book designer can incorporate it into her design. You will also need to finalize your author bio and any endorsements, so those need to be prioritized. Incubation Press offers a Book Launch package that includes information about how to secure endorsements as well as a boiler-plate letter where you just have to fill in the specifics about your book.
You will also want to write any other material for the book: dedication, acknowledgments, author bio, any appendix material if you’re going add that.
So what happens after the first draft (make that the third to fifth draft) once you’ve handed your book over to the pros? That’s next.
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