Filed under Writing.

I love that my first book is an intimate journey through my experiences of the pandemic. I’m glad most of it has a hopeful vibe. While in the beta stage, my friend, after reading it, asked if she could publish it. I was over the moon. We would learn more about the publishing business together. And we have. 

 

The goal for the paperback was to ensure there were enough poems the book would have a proper spine. I wanted it to feel like a full book in your hands. I had enough poems that we hit that target. What we didn’t know was that for text to appear on the spine there were margins we needed to be within, more than we were expecting. The template provided for my publisher on these margins wasn’t accurate – not her fault. So our proofs looked good, but when we submitted for final publishing it was rejected. We tried again. Rejected again. Our release date slipped out. Then we tried a different font at a super small size. Would this look ridiculous, would it be worth having on the cover? Should we just have plain spine? 

All this to say, it’s been a learning experience. My next poetry book I’m going to try to double the amount of poems, or at least increase the spine by 1/4th in order to avoid these challenges and to make sure the book will look smart on a bookshelf. 

 

I love that we are learning. And my publisher has been fantastic during this whole process. Making adjustments, tweaking it, resubmitting, ordering proofs, keeping me updated. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner.