Resurrection

In addition to my regular editing jobs, and trying to get back to my own writing, I have undertaken the task of helping my dear friend, Marilyn Meredith, self-publish new editions of all of her books with her former publisher, now defunct.

I started with her Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery series. There are eighteen books in the series, including the most recent one, Spirit Wind. It had been scheduled for release several months before she was informed the publisher was going out of business.

Fortunately, the cover art had been produced and approved, and she had a copy.

I need to note here, Mundania Press, her former publisher, commissioned a brilliant artist, Niki Browning, to create all new covers for this series last year. They are GORGEOUS! Marilyn was fortunate in that Mundania gave her permission to use them.

Larry is creating the spines and back covers for these. They are a tremendous challenge because he has tried to replicate the mottled backgrounds so the covers flow seamlessly to wrap the book. He is doing a superb job!

We started with the new book because it needed to be available for purchase. Then I began the process of re-publishing the rest of the series.

Wingbeat had not been available for several years. Fortunately, Marilyn had her final draft and the new cover. It is now available, too.

Next, she wanted one of her personal favorites, Seldom Traveled, done. She wants to do some promotion using this one, so I put it at the top of my list.

This one posed a particular challenge for Larry since the cover file we received contained some additional text—behind the title! He had his work cut out to remove it, but he did.

Next, we tackled Intervention. Copies of previous editions were available—with the older cover—but none with the new one. I love the stylized great blue heron on this one.

At Marilyn’s request, we took on A Cold Death next. This was the last book published by her former publisher. (She writes two different series and creates a new title in each series every year.) The spine was a particular challenge for Larry, but it looks seamless—and beautiful.

Now, I am working on the first two: Deadly Trail (the prequel to the series) and Deadly Omen. 

Since the editing on this series was very inconsistent, I have re-edited and re-formatted all of the interiors. I have also tried to standardize the fonts and overall look so they feel like a coordinated set. Fortunately, Marilyn has always written well, so her edits go pretty quickly. (I spend a couple of days on each one.)

We’re making great progress, and Larry is keeping up with the print covers. I can’t wait to see the whole series on a bookshelf with all the books in the same format (trade paperback) with the coordinated covers.

Many thanks to Mundania Press (especially Dan Reitz) for allowing Marilyn to use all of the artwork and responding so quickly to the requests we’ve made, and to Niki Browning for her extraordinary talent. Her covers make the series come alive.

Still a lot of work to do, but I am excited about being able to help my dear friend and favorite mystery writer make this complete series available for the foreseeable future.

Republishing

We were blessed to be published by two small independent publishers. The owners of both became dear friends as well as our publishers.

The first company was sold when the owner could no longer run the business due to Parkinson’s disease. This situation was sad and distressing since we cared about the people involved.

We stayed with the new publisher since they had seven of our titles. So far, they seem okay, if indifferent, but we haven’t seen any royalties for months. However, getting our rights back would cost us more than we could make in several years. So, the books will stay where they are—for now.

The second publisher had a stroke about two years ago. Again, we felt terrible because she is a dear friend. In addition, she created a new imprint for my book. Besides being published by her imprint, I did a great deal of editing for her.

We have prayed for her recovery and continue to hope she will be able to resume her work, but after nearly two years without royalties, I felt I had no choice but to take back my book.

I contacted the cover artist to find out who owned the cover art. Some artists license their covers to the publishers and retain their ownership. Others create the books for the publisher. The publisher pays for the cover and has ownership. This was the case with my cover. Thank goodness because it is my favorite cover.

The first sample I received in no way reflected the story. It featured two half-naked people against an orange sunset. I loathe the color orange, and the cover looked like it should have been for erotica. Not at all like my book.

Larry mocked up an idea, and the cover artist took it to a whole new level. It completely reflects the story.

I contacted the publisher and requested my rights back. In addition, I asked for the cover rights in exchange for any money I am owed. Bless her. She gave me full rights in writing as well as the cover art and the PDF of the book as submitted for publication.

Then came the hard work. Fortunately, I have a program with an OCR (Optical character Reader). I was able to convert the PDF to a text file, so I could create a new Word file. The downside is in the conversion, all the formatting is lost. Occasionally, words are lost or wrong. Therefore, a complete edit is necessary, along with new formatting. But at least I had about 95% of the text intact.

I contacted the cover artist again. I offered her a small amount to remove the publisher’s information, and she agreed to do it as well as size the cover for the new book.

I tried to format the book to closely resemble the original so the transition would appear nearly seamless. This took lots of time and effort, but the result was worth it.

Once I had the complete manuscript and cover, I was able to self-publish it as a second edition. For this one, I added a new section in the back: Book Club Questions.

The book is now available again on Amazon as a second edition, and I am happy to have complete ownership of it. From here on, I will have complete control of the book without depending on anyone else.

Since I did this one, I have also converted two books for a friend. They had been published by the same publisher.

I anticipate we may have to do the same for the other seven books. Someday, we will probably have all of our books self-published.