How time flies! Great news!
Weun Academy’s book one softcover edition will release this month (August)! These days softcovers are considered soft launches where publishers and authors share upcoming projects to drive interest and get early reviews. The strategy is by the time the main ebook launches there’s plenty of “social proof” reviews to get new eyeballs and readers! The ebook will be going on Book Sirens within two weeks or so to get early eyeballs and posts.
It seems strange to say the softcover is a soft launch, but ebooks are the majority of sales these days! That said, we will also offer a hardcover edition for those that want a truly special edition for their shelves.
Matt and I are putting together a presentation around the Weun Academy softcover design. Holding a “cover reveal” event is a must-do these days. We’d love to share what process we went through to land on such a phenomenal design! As soon as we have a date for the event I’ll post it. We’re going to record the session just in case you can’t make it.
The ebook launch of Weun Academy: The Shadow Maker is still planned for late October!
How about Toriko Tales, you ask? The content for the softcover edition is completely done. It follows a similar formatting used by Weun Academy’s softcover, which helped. Though, we have a completely new series logo design that took numerous iterations to get right.
The front cover design is complete! It’s VERY different than any book within the D’mok Revival series and completely contrasts with Weun Academy’s design. Matt really dug deep to create an interesting, high tech, cat-gal, contemporary cover… Don’t worry about the use of “contemporary” here! Many of you have seen Kindle Direct Publishing, Amazon, Audible, and store shelves littered with books with covers of mostly a few HUGE WORDS and some semblance of “an image” behind them or integrated into or around the words.
I get the strategy for “those types of covers.” Digital consumers mostly see thumbnails on one Amazon platform or another. The big words stand out to get attention and quickly convey a vibe. But … that’s not us. People always judge a book by its cover. So, we want to give them a bit more of a show. Expect a cover reveal for Toriko Tales in early October (date to be announced). The launch of the book for Toriko Tales is planned for mid-December 2025… So still this year (technically)!
The dmokrevival.com Web site design is slowly getting upgraded. Content revisions for the original D’mok Revival series books are in. Weun Academy information has been added. The top content of the homepage has been revised to spotlight the two books, along with the ability for people to subscribe for updates! A complete design overhaul is needed but likely not going to happen until the two books are launched.
I am going to enhance the site so the homepage can transform into more of a landing page when a code is passed in the URL. This way I can do targeted landing pages for Weun Academy and Toriko Tales without spawning other HTML, etc. That’s the plan for the moment at least… I do plan on performing some competitive research on landing page best practices just to see if I need to revise that plan to be more effective with my marketing.
There’s a new offering as a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association that I’m going to take advantage of. Apparently there’s a whole promotion apparatus there! I’ll post about details as it moves forward. But I’m glad to have the help of such an amazing organization and peer group!
That’s all for now!