It Takes a (Three-Person) Village: Hey I’m Putting Together a Team

I’m planning to do virtually all of the work on publishing these 100 books myself.

However, there are two areas where I can’t pull this off without help:

Art

The first is art. I’m competent at graphic design, which is the most dangerous place to be.

Because… it means I could make my own book covers, design my own interiors, create my own promotional graphics, and maybe even fake my way to piecing together collage-type images for a children’s book.

But I shouldn’t. Because ultimately I’ll know all of the above aren’t as good as they could be — and I’ll blame any and all failures on my art.

That won’t stand. I need to be able to blame any and all failures on a whole host of other things.

So I devoted quite a bit of my project time this week to finding an artist who can handle the variety of books, and needs for those books, I’m going to throw at them.

Fortunately, I’ve narrowed it down to a handful of really great artists (who are in the budget I’ve allocated). They’re working on test projects right now as I find the right person for this.

Copy editing

I wish I could catch all my writing errors, from missing a word to becoming obsessed with a word or phrasing choice and using it three times in one chapter. But I can’t.

So for my longer, more copy-intensive books (like novels), I need to turn to a pro.

This search was much shorter. A few weeks ago, I found out my friend Marcy is making a career switch to copy editing. She and I talked over the past two weeks and she’s on board to take me on as one of her earliest clients.

What I did this week

  • Monday, Oct 31, 2022 – Post to this blog… plan tasks for the week… put up finalized job posting for artist
  • Tuesday, Nov 1, 2022 – Evaluate first round of artist applicants and send follow-up questions to best candidates
  • Wednesday, Nov 2, 2022 – Send initial interview questions to candidates… work on writing first chapter of ’80s trivia book
  • Thursday, Nov 3, 2022 – Call with new copy editor to make plan for first edit… finish Retro newsletter and queue to send
  • Friday, Nov 4, 2022 – Meet with accountability group… write up and send test project to artists… correspond with artists re: their questions on the project
  • Saturday, Nov 5, 2022 – Correspond with artists and send test project to a few more candidates
  • Sunday, Nov 6, 2022 – Work on writing first chapter of ’80s trivia book… correspond with artist candidates about test project

Review: My three big goals for the week were:

  1. Hire artist to create cover for 1st book ❌ – moved along significantly in the process but did not reach the point of being ready to hire a candidate this week
  2. Finish two chapters of ’80s trivia book ❌ – Made a lot of progress on chapter one but did not finish it, nor a second chapter
  3. Figure out plan for laying out first book ❌ – Did not address this as I did not have an artist candidate hired

3 big goals for this week

  1. Finish process to hire artist
  2. Work with copy editor on revisions for first book
  3. Finish three chapters of ’80s trivia book

To follow along on this ride

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