I am so happy to be able to present the final cover for The Kraken's War! A big thank you to A. A. Medina at Fabled Beast Design for his hard work and patience. I couldn't be more satisfied with the result!

So, what are the next steps? Currently, the book is being edited by my sister, who - nepotism aside - is doing an amazing job. She's about a third of the way through the manuscript and making good progress. I'm hoping to have a draft to upload to KDP within a week or two. Of course, I'll have to finally buy the license for Vellum, because I want everything to look as good as possible. When I have the page count, I'll be able to get the wraparound cover file, and (in theory) be ready to publish a book!

I'd like to use BookSirens to handle e-ARCs, for a lot of reasons. First and foremost, it seems like a good way to get some reviews before the book is published. I don't have enough of a following on Bluesky (or anywhere) to rely on my own efforts to get e-ARCs into the hands of people likely to read and review the book. I'm cautiously optimistic about BookSirens, but we'll see how it works out.

Then, there's the matter of getting the book on Goodreads. I have no idea how to do this, as you can't be an author on Goodreads without having a book already listed there. So, how do new books get listed? From the little research I've done, it seems a little convoluted to get established on Goodreads as an author. For starters, you need to have a published book to even begin the process, and then you have to have a public website (which I have) which shows your official author email (which I'm reluctant to do). So, my book might not have a Goodreads page for a while, and I might not have a Goodreads author profile for even longer.

The KDP stuff seems relatively straightforward. Aside from not having the finished manuscript ready, I also don't have a description of the book. I've been struggling with writing one, and as important as it will be, I don't want to get it wrong. As a sidenote, I'm also not thrilled with the my current website situation. I used Namecheap.com and WordPress, but I think I would have been better off using Squarespace. Maybe I'll change my mind, but I suspect I might be switching over before long.