On Thursday, October 30th I made an amazing discovery. The standard procedure when a writer is preparing a new book is to look for similar books on the market to study their production and marketing techniques.

As you may know, I’m working on my second book - a novel (Feb 2009 - I’ve written about it before ) which is geared towards middle school and high school boys (as well as their fathers). Since the story has ’superhero’ elements, I wanted to include illustrations in each chapter. One of my issues is figuring out how many drawings to do.

My manuscript is not a standard straight-text novel, a comic book or a graphic novel. It’s somewhere in between the three, combining the best features of each to create an engrossing story.

Over the past few months, I’ve been so focused on finishing the story, that I have not taken the time to search the book market and see if there are similar works available that have been successful. Yesterday, by ‘accident’ I stumbled upon a web advertisement for one such book: The Doppleganger Chronicles, by G.P. Taylor.

After going to the book’s website, I discovered that the format of the book is very similar to what I’m envisioning.  My book is geared for a slightly higher age level, but needless to say, I was excited. :-)

My plan is to study the process that G.P. Taylor went through to produce his book. Then I will apply those lessons to the production of my book - not to make a carbon copy of his, but to find inspiration for the design/packaging of mine.

Just looking through the site has proved beneficial already! I’m one step closer to bringing to life the dream that lives within me! I thank God for that. I plan on trying to get in touch with G.P. Taylor. Who knows what kind of conversation will take place!

Go take a look and let me know what you think of the Doppleganger Chronicles website . I’d be real curious to see what you like about it.

-Allen Paul Weaver III-

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Filed under: Book Publishing • Risks and Opportunities • Writer Resources

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