Identity!
Everything needs a name, that word (or two or three) that claims its uniqueness. Every place has a name. Every object has a name. Every person has a name. Every book has a title.
This is where your book publishing with Draft2Digital needs to start. You have to decide on two names – one for you and one for your book. These are important decisions that create the identity for your book. They're the first decisions to make before you start the publishing process. Which names to use seems simple enough, but there are considerations. After all, this is how you and your book will be identified forever.
Your Author Name
For me, the name I wanted to use as the author was already established. Since this book Lady, Will you Hear Me? was similar to my first book Uncovering Norman, I wanted to use the same author name, my full name, Susan E. Rogers. Let me explain why.
First, I wanted to use my own name, not a pen name. I needed to prove a point, to myself and to the rest of the world. Yes, it took a while but Susan E. Rogers is now officially an author!
When I was younger, my sense was that most authors used their middle initial. While I was writing Norman, I noticed there was a trend for authors to drop the initial and use only a first and last name. My name of Susan Rogers is pretty common. There are a lot of us out there, so I’ve always used the initial as part of my legal signature. Additionally, there are several books written by other Susan Rogerses. I wanted my author name to stand out from that crowd and be as unique as possible, therefore I included the E.
A thought about pen names. My writing has evolved to mostly speculative fiction in the horror and thriller genres. I use the same full author name for all my fiction because they are all of the same ilk. As my writing career progresses, and I develop reader loyalty and name recognition, I want those readers to be able to find my work easily.
I do think pen names are useful, however. I wrote two books in a fantasy series (currently submitted to my publisher) with a young adult target audience that cross over to adult. I don’t want a potential reader or parent to decide against them because “That author writes horror.” So I used a pen name for those fantasy books, one that seemed more fitting to the content. If you see fantasy by Eilish Cummins out there, that’s really me.
Your Book's Title
Just as much thought needs to go into choosing a name, or title, for the book. This is my book’s identity forever.
Every time I write a new book, I start out with a working title. I might tweak it a bit, but generally it stands for the duration of the writing. For me, it gives the book its identity right away and helps me to stay on track as I meld the narrative around it.
I always research to see if there is already a book with that same title already published. I was surprised to find there are so many books that share a title. Only once did I find the title of one of my own books had a few others similar to it out there. Similar, but not exactly the same so I decided to leave mine as it was.
My choice of title for this book was a line that the main character used right at the beginning. Lady, Will You Hear Me? is speculative non-fiction about my psychic interaction with a ghost. These are the first words he said to me and I knew all along this would be the title. It is unique; there are no other books with that same title. The question in the title is phrased a bit differently. I think it draws the potential reader in right away, hinting there is an interesting story to be told.
These two names – author and title – are important. Very important. They are the unique identity of the book. I always want to make sure I get them right. They are the first distinct pieces of information required to start the publishing process at D2D.
What’s next? Tell us about the book!
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