As we get into November, I’m once again looking to finish working on a book.
In this case, it’s the same book I was working on last November, the sequel to my young adult/middle-grade fantasy, Light Keeper Chronicle. However, now I’m hoping to do my final pass of the novel before I start getting it polished up for publication next year.
Over the past few months, I had a handful of beta readers who were very generous with their time read through the book (as of now, two finished the book, two got halfway through, and two are earlier on than that). So now I need to take what they told me and try to implement those changes.
So, today I’m sitting down and figuring out what those changes need to look like and what needs to get done before I start getting toward publication.
1.) Center character chapters on the character they’re focusing on
In the Light Keeper Chronicle books, I shift perspectives between four characters in the first book—these four are the main characters of the series, the Element Keepers. In book 2, there are three more Element Keepers who also have their perspectives folded in.
One issue that a couple of people mentioned was that there are moments where I float a little bit outside of the perspective of the character I’m centering the chapter on. Feedback indicates there were moments where I maybe gave too much insight into other characters who weren’t the focus of that moment. Or, in the case of one character, they had very few chapters and there was a feeling that they weren’t enough of the main character in the chapters where I centered them.
Similarly, one person mentioned that I had a slightly different narrative style between perspectives. That being the case, I should mind the language I use for certain characters and the insight I share while following characters. Hopefully all that is something I can button up.
2.) Trim plot points and characters
This is an issue I’ve talked about before: I have too many characters.
In this book I introduce three new main characters with the additional Element Keepers. On top of that I have two new Warlocks, one new traveling companion, two new antagonists, and maybe seven more characters of note. On top of that, maybe 75% of the main character of the first book reappear in this one.
This book is already significantly cut down from what I’d originally planned for, even at 100k+ words. Even with that in mind though, I think at least half of my beta readers mentioned the density of characters being at least a partial issue.
As this is a series, I’ve put myself in a corner in some regards. There are a couple of main characters who aren’t hugely plot significant in this book, but will be important later. If it were a stand alone book, I’d cut them out and redistribute their plot important beats to other characters appropriately. (This actually happened a little bit in The Unspoken Prophecy when I determined Walter would spend the bulk of the book with the ogres and goblins; beats of dialogue I’d previously had for him were either cut completely or tweaked and given to Ellean.)
But doing so in a series is a bit harder as I either need to explain established characters’ absence or, for new characters, I’d need to spend more time later on introducing them in what I anticipate will already be a dense book 3.
In any case, there are certainly some loose characters in the book I can cut or condense. Even so, I need to figure out how best distinguish the characters I can’t as easily cut so that everyone in the massive cast stands out as individuals.
3.) Iron out plot details
I had an intertesting issue with this book.
Though my current draft sits around 110k words, the first draft was a little over 120k. I started the current draft of the book in earnest in 2023 and finished mid(ish) 2026. That means, compared to my other two published books, I wrote more words in a shorter amount of time with a closer (theoretical) publication date than with either previous book.
There are certain odd inconsistencies that even on my second draft I encountered. Characters know things or don’t know things based on how I was feeling on the day, so there were moments where contradictory information cropped up. There were also moments where information was repeated because I’d forgotten what I’d already shared.
This is an issue that should, on paper, be pretty easy to tighten up—but since this is a series I need to not only tighten those facts up for this book, but do so while looking both forward and back. I need to edit the longest book I’ll have yet published so it makes sense internally while also making sure the text fits with what came before and what will come after.
4.) Budgeting
While not technically a part of revision, I realized as I was getting things in place for editing that I’d be remiss not to start considering the cost of getting this book published once editing is done.
In the interest of transparency, I have a bank account ostensibly just for my author funds. As of now, it has a balance of about $1,500 and gets about $120 added to it every month via pay from my day job.
Book sales also go to this account, but that only averages maybe $5 per month.
After I published The Wilderlands, I did a break down of how much self-publishing costs were. That was back in 2023/2024, but here’s what those numbers looked like:
Line Editing: $731
Copy Editing: $653
Cover Art: $350
Design for Exteriors and Interiors: ~$930
If those numbers held, I’d be looking at about $2,664 — however, cost of living has increased since then and so have prices. On top of that, this is a longer book, which means the people working on it will spend more time working on it, which means they’ll need more money.
I’m still in the process of getting some aspects of the book priced, but I think I can safely assume this book will cost me at least $3,000. If I assume I pay all of this out of pocket from just my author account, I’ll be in the ball park of $0 by June of 2027 year, before accounting for other expenses. (Thankfully, this is not the account I live off of.)
But let me go back through and do a sort of “gut feeling” adjustment.
Text Editing Projection: $1,200
Cover Art Projection: $500
Design for Exteriors and Interiors Projection: ~$1,600
I merged Line and Copy Editing together and didn’t increase the prince much as I’m hoping to just use one editor for this book since it’s a more straightforward writing style than The Wilderlands was.
I brough Cover Art expectation up to $500 since I anticipate a more detailed cover than either of the previous two books. Because of the detail I’ll likely be looking for $500 seems a reasonable estimate. Though, given what I have in mind, I expect this number might go even higher.
Design for the Exteriors and Interiors is actually the only number I solidly have at this point. I’m planning on using the same cover/interior designer I did for The Wilderlands and involve her earlier in the process. She has me projected at just shy of $1,600 to do interior and exterior.
(I did an audiobook for The Wilderlands that I’m not currently planning to do for Light Keeper Chronicle #2 right now so I didn’t include those numbers. Since it is part of a series, if I do do audiobooks, I’d like to have those recorded relatively back-to-back—thus, I don’t intend to really investigate an audiobook until/unless I have a finished draft of Light Keeper Chronicle #3.)
So, if that one solid number and an approximate set of other numbers is right, I’ll be looking at about $3,300 for my next book, so I’ll have to get to budgeting to make that work.
I have a long month ahead so, while I get to work, feel free to check out these other posts about the Light Keeper Chronicle:
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Light Keeper Chronicle: The Unspoken Prophecy is available for physical purchase from Schuler Books, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon or wherever you read ebooks.
The Wilderlands is available for physical purchase now from Barnes & Noble and Amazon or wherever you read ebooks. The audiobook is also out now on most major platforms.