ePublishing Production Plan

Today my personal editor (my wife) and I discussed our ambitious production plan. Then it evolved into our entire product launch plan. And then I had even greater ideas. Woah. Very exciting. So here's a little taste of what we've done. Note that I haven't yet developed a production schedule. We still have some details to hammer out, some costs to fix, and some decisions to make. But we are getting closer to really launching the model and building to an online launch by August or September. I've revised the plan to produce 2 books and 2 novellas this year, followed by 2-3 books in the series next year, depending on how the creative side works with the development side, and perhaps more novellas, or some combination.

OK, here's some of the plan:

We broke the product development and launch into a handful of categories: Content development, Design, Marketing, Production. We then further broke these categories into specific components:

Content:
1st draft
2nd draft
Alpha readers
3rd draft
Beta readers
4th draft. These are complete.
Next:
Editorial review (by an outside editor, for marketability, consistency, and the like)
5th draft
Copyedit (my professional wife)
Proofread.

A this point, the ms gets split into print production for POD and ebook production cycles. I won't bore you with the details now, but they involve page layout, font type selection for text, chapter heads, titles, covers, and the like. Then we split between formatting and proofing the two types of product.

As for Marketing, this really involves a number of processes. We are very close to settling on an illustrator. I'll let you know more once we come to a mutual agreement on details, but suffice it to say I'm very, very happy with the contacts I've made, but one in particular is a shining star that would be just perfect in so many ways.

Also with marketing comes the prep for blog tours, press release, and heavy investment in social media. I'm also researching marketing firms (low chance there due to budget, and due to the fact that the research thus far indicates that most of them aren't really savvy yet with social media and ebook launches. I hope to find I'm wrong, but we'll see). I have found an interesting marketing blast plan through Createspace. I'll let you know what I decide there. It could be very helpful to you if it works. Suffice it to say that I'm not going to just throw my book up. It's going to require a lot of work to achieve visibility, and I hope to invest sufficiently in that realm.

Marketing also involves a website platform, the audio production (which has its own huge schedule), and mobile apps. The last part is an idea barely out of a two-hour brainstorm, but the possibilities are enormous. I'm really, really excited about that part. Again, once things begin to take a better form, I'll share what I'm doing there.

OK, I could put more specifics here, and perhaps I'll repost this in about two weeks when I have more details in concrete. But we're really hoping to launch a product that will be much, much more than just a black and white text novel, but an experience. Shoot me any ideas you might have, especially if you have connections with people who know how to build mobile apps. Thanks!