the Birth of a Book

Time is going by so fast. This year, in particular, has gone by in a blur.  I cannot believe that it is already September.

In thinking about my business, I have come a long way. I began the year with the goal of founding my own publishing company, to publish my writings. It was a dream that I did not know if I could achieve. In April of this year I achieved that goal. My publishing company, La Luna Press is up and running.

After the establishment of the business, I then set my sights on all of the proper things one has to do when starting a business. Paperwork has to be filed for tax purposes, a bank account must be established for the business, etc. Once those things were done, I then set my sights on publishing.

I have poetry on two blogs, this one as well as my first blog, Words of Hope. In one sense, the hard part is over; I have already written the poetry to go in the books. In another sense, the hard part had just begun.

 

I went back to my very first writings, put them in chronological order, and created a collection of poetry. Since I have written so much poetry in the last two years, I decided to create two collections of poetry. (With my writings this year, I could have a third!)  On my first blog, I wrote poetry in English and Spanish. Therefore, my first books will be my poetry, in two collections, in both Spanish and English. I will have them available in an electronic book version as well. (That makes eight books!)

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The next step in the process is editing the books. It is truly an art, to get the right view of the page. The typeset, the spacing, all make a huge difference to the final product. There are many individuals and companies who work as editors, which charge for their services. I am fortunate in that I have one of my sisters helping me edit the books. We are working on book one. It is about 90% done.

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While she worked on editing the first book, I then began to design a website for my company. The site is live now; you can find it here: http://www.lalunapress.com/

 

In addition to building the website, I designed the covers for the books. I know how to create calendars, flyers, greeting cards on a computer. I was confident in my skills and knew it would be easy for me to create a book cover. Or so I thought. It took much trial and error, research, consulting with relatives, friends, photographers, magicians. After many months, I finally have the covers of the books completed, and in the correct format. Here is a preview of the book covers……

 

You might be reading this and asking yourself, “What’s next?” The next step is to finalize the editing of book one, and use that as a model for the other three. After that, well…

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There are about 1,000 steps to publishing a book, and I am learning as I go. I am not only launching one book, I’m launching eight. It is a daunting task, to say the least. However, I am up to the challenge. I feel I am at the halfway point in this endeavor. I am anxious to reach my destination. That being said, I am enjoying the journey.

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They say that seeing a creative project come to fruition is the equivalent of giving birth. When I began this process, I never knew what went in to the birth of a book.

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