Taking Creative Control by Self-Publishing My Books

Taking Creative Control by Self-Publishing My Books How Self-Publishing Gave me the Creative Control I Needed Christina Hamlett is an award-winning author whose credits to date include 34 books, 161 plays, five optioned feature films, and hundreds of articles and interviews. She is also a script consultant for the movie industry and a professional ghostwriter. Read on to find out about her experience with traditional publishing and her decision to take creative control of her book into her own hands.Twenty-six years later, I still remember the unabashed giddiness I felt when my agent told me that my first novel, The Enchanter, was going to be published in hardcover. When the editor sent me a long questionnaire to fill out regarding the type of artwork I envisioned for the cover, I couldn’t have been more excited. I had definite ideas about the kind of â€Å"look† I wanted to fit the romantic time-travel storyline of a handsome young Merlin coming to modern-day Washington DC in order to recover the stolen Excalibur.Traditional publishing and a lack of creative controlYou can, th us, imagine how deflated I felt when the cover art arrived, and I had no say-so in requesting changes. Not only had the artists decided to leave off the two main characters but the sword they featured was clearly for one-handed French duelling and not Arthurian legend-making. Dratimus maximus.When, a few years later, I was contracted for four romantic suspense novels with HarperCollins, my assumption was that I’d actually get covers that reflected my input as the author. Not so. In fact, the third book – Hunter’s Heart – had to be hastily withdrawn and fixed in order to erase the heroine’s accidental mustache, a mistake that at least four people at HC failed to notice during production. If there’s architecture that’s significant to the setting, don’t force your designer to interpret what â€Å"a big house with a lot of trees† looks like. Is it Georgian Colonial? Craftsman? Cape Cod? French Provincial? Are the trees Oak? Palm? Evergreen? Willow? Your designer is not psychic.Respect your designer’s time. Having done book covers for my own clients, nothing is more infuriating than someone who keeps changing his/her mind.Remember to provide a design credit. While most authors do this on the back cover or acknowledgments page, my choice was to give Isabelle her own photo and bio at the end of the book. That placement was indeed well deserved!Just Say You’re Mine is available in paperback on Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon Canada. Find out more on Christina's website!Have you gone through the process of both traditional publishing and self-publishing a book? Is full creative control something that matters to you? Leave your thoug hts, experiences, or any questions for Christina in the comments below.