An Announcement and a New Topic

by Deren Hansen

We don't do much self-promotion here on the Utah Children's Writers blog, so I'll be brief: I have published a series of writers guides that incorporate much of the material I've shared on this blog. You can learn more at dunlithhill.com

While I would be thrilled if you were to rush out and purchase my guides, devour them in one sitting, give them glowing, five-star reviews, and evangelize them to all and sundry, my reason for mentioning their release is to explain why I'm going to run a series of posts to share what I learned through the process of producing and publishing the Dunlith Hill Writers Guides.

You see, when I began collecting, arranging, revising, and expanding the material for the guides, I guessed the project would take two months. That was nine months ago. As much as we feel entitled to grouse about how slow things move in publishing, I now have a bit more sympathy for the production side of the process.

But I'm not going to cover the how-to's. There's a wealth of information on formatting e-books, cover image dimensions, pricing and promotion strategies, and so on. Much of it is confusing or contradictory because the details frequently change.

I'm going to discuss the why- and why-not-to's--something I considered a number of times when I felt I was stuck in an editorial quagmire and the project would never see the light of day. What I discovered is that the single most important factor in completing such a project is to be very clear about why you're doing it and what you hope to accomplish.

I call what I learned, "Artisan Publishing." I'll begin to explain what that means next week.


Deren Hansen is the author of the Dunlith Hill Writers Guides. Learn more at dunlithhill.com.