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Women of the Wise Oak (book 2)
Ilfracombe, England, United Kingdom
Aim: Publishing "Women of the Wise Oak" a historical fantasy sequel to "Children of the Wise Oak" (2016) Professional editing, cover, & printing
Women of the Wise Oak
In 2016 I successfully raised £1,800 on another crowd-funding website* to publish my first novel, "Children of the Wise Oak". Now I am back to publish the sequel.
Although you could read either book without the other, I would hope most people will want to read the first book if they have not already done so. Therefore, for anyone who missed out on the first book, there will be an opportunity to catch up on the series by buying both books for a special deal price (less than you would pay on Amazon).
The first novel set the scene for an epic historic-fantasy story, spanning half a century, and eventually visiting four continents. "Children of the Wise Oak" followed the adventures of three brothers - Blyth, Teague, and Abbon - guided by the warrior mage, Gwenn.
Now, in "Women of the Wise Oak" Gwenn takes centre stage as she attempts to find out more about a man who is part of a prophesy involving Blyth.
The whole series has a close adherence to historical facts, but is overlaid with fantasy elements. The central characters are magical to varying degrees, and such things as dragons are real, even if rarely seen.
The reason for this crowdfunding project is simply that I absolutely don't have enough money to fund this out of my own pocket. I could produce a poorly edited book with a terrible cover design and just put it in Createspace; but that would be a tragedy.
The first book had a professional edit, a commissioned painting, and a graphic designer produced the cover art. The result was a professional product that would not look out of place next to Harry Potter, or Percy Jackson in a bookshop.
From producing this book I learned a few things, through mistakes.
- First mistake was not getting two separate editing passes done. This was just because of budget constraints. So a big part of the budget is to pay for a separate copy-edit, and line-edit. That's the main reason for the increased goal from last time.
- I also didn't anticipate having to get a professional designer to work on the cover. I am so glad I did in the end, because turning a fine art painting into a book cover is not as easy as it might seem. Andy Jones did a fantastic job.
- The other big mistake was not allowing a budget for creating "Blue Poppy Publishing", but that won't be a problem this time because it is already done.
I will be using all the same services as I did last time around.
- Cover art will be by Iver Klingenberg, from Porlock in Somerset.
- Editing by Sarah Dawes, and graphic design by Andy Jones - both from Bishop's Nympton (pure coincidence)
- Printing will be done by Short Run Press in Exeter
- Publishing will be by Blue Poppy Publishing in Ilfracombe
So, as you can see, it will be a really local project, helping to keep people working in Devon, and Somerset.
* Which I won't name here. (Some of you will know anyway)
I decided to come over to Crowdfunder because it is based in the UK, and has features I didn't even know existed when I did my research into these types of platforms. Anyway, that's got that out of the way. Let's focus on this project.