First off I wanted to apologize for how late this post is. Last week I was working on finishing the 3rd, and hopefully final edition, of my first book. I focused a lot on the artwork and formatting to print correctly on Amazon’s publishing service. Getting the cover art to fit correctly can be very difficult, especially with the bleed option set (necessary for the maps inside). I’m happy to say it is complete and turned out better than I hoped!
The changes are:
- Better artwork
- Easier to read formatting
- Broke up Chapter 1 into 3 different chapters as it was dragging on way too long.
Is currently available on Amazon and as before anyone who purchased a previous edition of the book can contact me for a free copy of the new edition! Please feel free to contact me at RaphaelTheAuthor@Gmail.com
But during the process of updating to the new edition, I had a lot of time to reflect on where I was with my writing. Looking at the older editions, I look back on them as learning experiences towards becoming a better author. The book publishing world is so much more complicated than I had initially thought (and even then I thought it was complex). Like anyone else, I was full of doubt, apprehension and anxiety with regards to my writing and how to present it. But someone I spoke to gave me some really sound advice:
“It’s your very first published book, you can’t compare yourself to someone whose been doing this for decades.”
– Some very wise person I talked to (I’m so sad I can’t remember who told me this).
At first I admit I took that the wrong way. I thought of it as a criticism towards my ability to write a cohesive and enjoyable story. But I thought about it some more and after discussing it with said person, I realized the truth in those words.
I’m not perfect but neither is anyone who starts out in anything. I’ve started to realize the key to improving is to know that perfection is impossible, but to never stop striving for it. I think this is true more so in creative pursuits as quality can be very subjective. What one person considers being of high quality may differ completely from another’s opinion. It’s not to say that some criticism is invalid, but to say that it’s impossible to make everyone satisfied with your work. There’s always room for improvement, working hard and to keep trying is always better than giving up.
Thanks for sticking with me this long and I hope you enjoy the content here. 🙂
– Raphael
Raph's Cozy Musings 