It’s so true. Writing is paradoxically solitary as well as team based. Those first three, five, ten drafts are all you. Then you hand it off and the nerves set in. It’s exciting and terrifying, so you need your team to be just right. Who makes up your team? Who do you need on your side to be successful?
Let’s break it down.
Build Your Team
- Beta readers: these people will tell you whether or not your book is working on a reader level. Choose the right ones–not someone who will just say, “This was good.” That’s not useful. You need someone who can say, “I loved this element of your story, but this section in Chapter 6 lost me, and I wasn’t sure what was going on.” Good, constructive feedback you can use to make your work better.
- Editor: After you’ve made the changes your Beta reader suggests, it’s time to hand it over to your editor. Make sure you know how they work and that you both know what you’re expecting so the process goes smoothly. (For instance, do you want a development edit, which is super intense and really digs in? Or do you just want a copy edit, to make sure the story hangs together and your grammar is correct? Or something in between? Discuss!)
- Proof reader: this is your last line of defence against errors. This is someone with a deep attention to detail, who notices when you spell it hte instead of the, or if you miss word out. (see it?) This happens when all the big edits are finished. No more tinkering with the story now! That can just introduce errors.
- Cover designer: Yes, you can use Canva. But do you have a sense of what cover design should look like in your market? Do you understand fonts and thumbnails? Do you get color design and what will catch your reader’s eye? If you’re doing this yourself, do your market research. If you have a cover designer, you can go back and forth in coming up with just the right image for your book baby.
- Typesetter: This is the person putting your book into book form. There are programs that say you can upload a Word document straight into Amazon. But we can pretty much garuntee there will be mistakes and things that don’t sit right. This is one area you don’t want to mess up, as the reader will become frustrated with a poorly typeset book.
- Production person: have you sent your copies to the organizations that require print copies? Have you got the legal stuff correct in the book’s front matter? Who are you sending copies to? This person can start ticking the boxes of things that now need to be in progress, like getting the book out to your ARC team and getting the file ready to load in places like Ingram Spark and Amazon.
- ARC Team: these are your first reviewers, before the book is officially released. Your production person can help set up this team, or you can send a call out to people who want to be the very first to get their happy little reader paws on your new novel. You give them a date you need the reviews by, and then you take those reviews and make them into marketing materials in the run up to your release day. You want to choose people who like your genre and who can get the review back to you on time, as well as post that review on Goodreads.
- Marketing person: this may be the same person who handles your production. They’ll get your ads on Amazon and such set up and start things rolling. They might send release notifications to various organizations interested in your book. They’ll do a hard marketing push in the lead up to your release day. They’ll probably still be the person you talk to the most after your release day, too, as marketing doesn’t stop when the book is actually out. You have to keep it in people’s minds on various social media platforms, and that’s pretty time consuming.
So, who is on your team? Need help getting one together?
Give us a shout.
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