From First Word to Publication ~ Undertaking Love by Kat French

Chapter Eight, 2012 ~ Cover love, and a new direction.

Over the summer of 2012, I decided to have a go at writing erotic romance. It wasn't a huge jump across genre's as Undertaking Love is quite sexy, and I wanted to explore the idea of self publishing. Hey -  I'd dipped my toe into the publishing world, and now I wanted to swim in it! Why not? I count myself incredibly lucky to be working with HarperCollins, it's given me solid foundations and faith in myself to have a go at self publishing too. 

I'm happy to report that it was one of the best decisions of my life. I wrote the book, Knight & Play, quite quickly and heavily under the influence of late night vino! It was a different writing experience for me, but one I I found I really enjoyed. Some weeks later I reached that point again of having written a book and needing to do something with it, and this time around I found myself a fab editor (someone who is also a good friend, which has been a rewarding experience all along) and a wonderful cover artist via recommendation from one of my writing group.

Obviously it's very different self publishing to working with a publishing house. All of the decisions were suddenly mine, and each one felt brain-achingly important. The cover artist was tremendous, she listened to all of my disconnected ideas and came up with designs I loved. Over the course of a weekend I studied so many different images of peaches that I don't think I'll ever eat one again! It was worth every second of stressing though, because the end result is something I adore and am extremely proud of. And hey - your cover is your shop window, isn't it? i wanted people to be lured in by that beautiful fresh peach, lol! 

Come November 2012, I was good to go. I had an edited manuscript and a gorgeous cover. I'd read that the uploading process of amazon wasn't bad, so I didn't dread it. I was so wrong not to!

I am possibly the least techy person on the planet, and the formatting process made me want to stick my head in the gas oven whilst main-lining vodka. It was that bad. It probably wasn't really, not for a normal person, but for me? Hell on wheels. I honestly don't know how the book ever made it as far as the screen. But it did, and miracle of miracles, it looked fine! (In amazon's defence, the problem lies with me, not their system. Don't be unduly frightened of formatting, it's just that I am technically inept. And in my defence, I am now perfectly able to format, the first time was def the worst time.)

Publication was set for end of November, and I was as nervous as a nervous thing. How would it fare?