self publishing diaries | finishing the book
Today, I put what may be the final touches on CLOVEN, aka the Iphigenia poems I've been prattling on about, the second in what will eventually be sort of a sibling, possibly a box set piece, to accompany GRANATA that I released a couple years back. I've already laid some plans to release it after the new year and am working with the design specs that will make a pretty little square book (like the Persephone book.) This means, now that the writing and initial edits/revisions are done, I can turn an eye toward the finish line. Like GRANATA, it has accompanying collages, the bulk of which were created even before the actual poems came to fruit, others more recently.
I thought, maybe as some guidance for others looking to publish their work themselves, it might be helpful to chronicle a little more closely what goes in to self-publishing your own collections, the processes, the pitfalls. As someone who designs books for other people (or at least designs chapbooks, with occasional commissioned covers for other publishers) and an avid zinester, I have to admit I may approach the task of putting together a book a little differently than a writer who doesn't have their hands as much in the design. Typically by the time I finish a manuscript, there has already been some thought about potential cover designs, interior layout, materials like video poems and reels, graphics for the book promo stuff. For other writers, the manuscript alone may be the focus, the words on the page, but this will be the second longer project I've done with artwork included, so there are already a lot of visuals and design elements at play by default.
Because design, my own and for others, is one of my favorite pursuits, I've had a number of cover possibilities in my head and files as I've worked on this project over the last year or so. A couple were mockups using existing pieces in the series. What I ultimately settled on was actually a tie to the GRANATA's split cover. (I will be sharing the cover soon, and talking about how I designed it, in early fall, so keep an eye out for that.)
This past week has brought the last couple of pieces, some subtle reordering, and some minor edits on pieces that needed a little help to shine. But for all intensive purposes, the writing part is drawing to a close. Any edits now will be in the proofing process this fall. I've found its best to get this final version as much under wraps as I can before committing to layout, largely because it gets more difficult to make a lot of changes once you've started messing with the template I created that helps with the margins (I'll be using the same one I used for GRANATA, which was actually the same trim size as DARK COUNTRY a few years back--more squarish than my usual titles.) This makes the layout process pretty swift, even with images, though the sprawling lines of these pieces may require a little adjustment.
Having a clean version now of the manuscript means I won't wind up too far in the weeds when messing with galleys, so that is what I will be focusing on this week. Losing any lingering typos and moving some line breaks perhaps. The timeline is looking like a January release, but I would love to have copies by the holidays, so working backwards, that means, depending on printing times, ideally I will be finalizing the proofs through November, which means I want to be at first galley stage in October. I have some chaps to finish designs on in September, so I want to get those out of the way first, so that should work out. It seems far off, but its not really and will be here before we know it. .
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