Writing Tip: Mine the Acknowledgments
On Monday I’ll self-publish my eighth romance novel in two years (okay, they’re short!) and it’s taken me a long time to learn a few things. We all know that romance publishing is bursting with indie books and DIYers. It’s easy to write a novel and simply upload it to Amazon’s Kindle with a few clicks. Voila! You’re an author! But even though you’re self-publishing that doesn’t mean you can do it all alone. You’ll still need specialized help — from copyeditors to publicists to cover designers. You’ll just need to line them up yourself.
The best way to find them is word of mouth from colleagues you respect… but don’t forget that the authors you love are also, basically, colleagues you respect. One tip I can’t emphasize enough is that you should ALWAYS study the copyright and acknowledgment pages of any book you read. Who does the author acknowledge and why? What do you think of the results? Pay special attention to the books you love, books in your genre, and books that reach your readers or have stood out in the crowded marketplace. Play detective. Mostly you’re looking for positive recommendations, but any info can be useful. If someone credits a proofreader for a book you found errors in you’ll know NOT to use that person!
It’s never too early to start this good habit and you should keep at it. Keep a list of resources and add to it as you learn more. I use Evernote to collect names and bookmark websites, often adding notes and tagging them by service (ie. design, formatting, etc) for easy sorting later. Make sure to include the author or book where you found the recommendation — because you may want to track back later or cross-reference them. If several authors point to the same resources then that’s significant. How many romance novelists thank Sarah at Okay Creations for their covers? Many of the most popular.
This is a simple, cheap, and efficient way to build your own network of referrals — before you even have an actual network! (And as an added bonus: it will help you draft your own acknowledgements….)
❤ Charlotte
@charpennclark. For updates on my books subscribe to my newsletter at https://tinyletter.com/charpennclark.
