Republishing - Part III

In addition to republishing my own book, Ghost Writer, and Bob Schwenck’s book, Digging Deep, I took on an even larger task. Okay, I volunteered for this one.

My dear friend, favorite author, and one of my favorite people, Marilyn Meredith, had several books with the same publisher who first published Ghost Writer. Since she depends on her royalties for income, the lack of payments for nearly two years affected her much more than it did me.

After I republished Ghost Writer, she decided to take back the rights to all of her books, too. A mutual friend said he’d republish her Rocky Bluff P.D. mystery series (written as F. M. Meredith). He owns his own publishing company, so he could take on the twelve books in the series. He published her most recent one, so it made sense to have all of them all with the same publisher.

However, she had several others, so Larry and I said we’d republish those and help her to self-publish them. This way, she will always have complete control over them.

We started with the first mystery she wrote, The Astral Gift.

She had the rights to the cover art because the original publisher, who created this image specifically for this book, died. All Marilyn had for this one was a text file (like on Notepad). All the words were there, but they were a mess. In addition, she wrote the original in 1998. Many of the references just didn’t work for a contemporary book. We decided to identify the time frame as earlier, and the book worked again.

We liked the result so well, we took on another special book.

Lingering Spirit won the 2012 EPIC eBook Award.

This book is also special to Marilyn because it is based on a family event—the loss of her son-in-law. (This one makes me cry. I adore it!)

Unfortunately, we couldn’t use the original cover art. So, I hunted for an image to invoke the same emotions as the original. Fortunately, this one was perfect—and the price was reasonable. (Some images can cost hundreds of dollars.) Marilyn liked it, too, so she bought it.

Larry took it to a whole other level. (He’s getting to be a terrific cover designer!)

Marilyn only had rough Word document for this one. (The other choice was a PDF of the galley, and it seemed harder to work with.)

Each of these books required a re-edit as well as formatting, but we’re very proud of the final results.

Marilyn Meredith’s published book count is nearing forty. She taught writing for Writers Digest Schools for ten years. She served as an instructor at the prestigious Maui Writers Retreat, and has taught at many writers’ conferences.

Webpage: http://fictionforyou.com

Blog: http://marilymeredith.blogspot.com/ and you can follow her on Facebook.

See all her books at her author page on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Marilyn-Meredith/e/B001HPJ440/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1