It's been a few weeks since the last blog post,but I can report that things have been moving along at a great pace. We now have in our hands a complete first draft of "The Alchemist's Box," the first book in the Merchant Blades series! Alex completed it in April, at 90,000 words as planned.
So what have we been doing since then? Well, I'm currently about a third through a proofreading run, and I've also been reading up on the editing process. So along with my proofreading I've been empowered to do a light edit to smooth off any rough edges. Alex will then go through for another revision, and then we'll have several things to sort out. At this point we'll try to get some beta-readers to have a look through the manuscript to give feedback, and we are also intending to send a synopsis and the first few chapters out to agents and publishers to see if it gets picked up by the traditional publishing route.
By all accounts it tough to get a foothold in the traditional publishing world, and once we've sent submissions off its pretty much out of our control whether anyone takes the bait, so if we get no bites, we'll move on to getting a paid editor to give us some input, before taking the self-publishing route.
The approach for self-publishing that is advocated on Lindsay Buroker's excellent blog is to release several members of a series of book within a month or two of each other to generate some momentum, and allow yourself to leverage promotions on the first book to draw in purchasers for books 2 and three.
With this model in mind, Alex has embarked on writing book 2 in the series, and just today finished the first act at around 30,000 words, which is excellent progress. She was even writing by the pool on our recent holiday to the Yucatan in Mexico, to visit the home of the Dreaming Demon. Fortunately now we're back I hear no drums in the night!
Keep your eyes peeled for some teasers for the Alchemist's Box coming soon to the blog!
So what have we been doing since then? Well, I'm currently about a third through a proofreading run, and I've also been reading up on the editing process. So along with my proofreading I've been empowered to do a light edit to smooth off any rough edges. Alex will then go through for another revision, and then we'll have several things to sort out. At this point we'll try to get some beta-readers to have a look through the manuscript to give feedback, and we are also intending to send a synopsis and the first few chapters out to agents and publishers to see if it gets picked up by the traditional publishing route.
By all accounts it tough to get a foothold in the traditional publishing world, and once we've sent submissions off its pretty much out of our control whether anyone takes the bait, so if we get no bites, we'll move on to getting a paid editor to give us some input, before taking the self-publishing route.
The approach for self-publishing that is advocated on Lindsay Buroker's excellent blog is to release several members of a series of book within a month or two of each other to generate some momentum, and allow yourself to leverage promotions on the first book to draw in purchasers for books 2 and three.
With this model in mind, Alex has embarked on writing book 2 in the series, and just today finished the first act at around 30,000 words, which is excellent progress. She was even writing by the pool on our recent holiday to the Yucatan in Mexico, to visit the home of the Dreaming Demon. Fortunately now we're back I hear no drums in the night!
Keep your eyes peeled for some teasers for the Alchemist's Box coming soon to the blog!
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