Oct
12
A journey to a book ~ Part 5
Filed Under A journey to a book
Being the fifth in a series of posts about a book proposal, from concept to print.
I received the contract for the book and read it over carefully. I sort-of knew what to look for, living in a writerly family with a science journalist and book author for a husband. I knew that receiving advances was not standard in the quilt-book trade (at least not for neophyte writers) so that was not a surprise. That’s right kids… you’ll work on a book for 2-3 years without seeing a penny :) . You better be in it for the love of this type of work.
Everything in the contract looked good but I did have a few questions for Karen, so I gave her a call.
In the contract, the book was described as a block book with no projects included. I told Karen, “You just made my life a whole lot easier!” No quilt instructions would mean less work for me.
I confirmed with her that the order of the blocks could stay alphabetical by the simple titles I had given them, and that I didn’t have to number the pieces like it said in the guidelines. Since the blocks were very simple in nature, with just a few pieces, I could leave them unnumbered.
I also asked Karen whether things were confidential at this point. The answer was “sorta.” I could definitely tell family and friends, but it would be better to hold off on sweeping announcements until later. Also, she counseled me not to go into the “companion CD” aspect until such time as I got the go-ahead from the Marketing division, both so that the idea wouldn’t be scooped and so that the company would have a chance to work out the details of the CD production. (I’ve since received the green light on that.)
An important question was whether Martingale had feelings about me continuing to publish my own books. I had made it clear in my proposal that the appliqué tips were based on text that had appeared in my previously self-published books, and just wanted to make sure things could go on. Karen told me that was okay… they just wouldn’t want me to publish anything that was the same or substantially similar. No problem.
It was a great conversation, and it enabled me to move ahead with signing the contract. I noticed that the tentative working title had been changed to Easy Appliqué Blocks. I was very grateful for that, because “The Little Book of Big Appliqué” was just not flying. My friends would ask me, “How’s the Big Book of Little Appliqué coming? Or is it the Book of Little Appliqué… The Little Big Book of Appliqué… what the heck is it?” It got so that I couldn’t even say it right. On top of that, I noticed that Martingale was already publishing a boxed set of patterns called “The Little Box of Baby Quilts.” Easy Appliqué Blocks was sounding real good.
The next step would be for me to submit a sample chapter and a complete Table of Contents by December 7, 2007. Stay tuned!
Until next time,
Kay
Quilt Puppy Publications & Designs
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2 Responses to “A journey to a book ~ Part 5”
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I can not tell you how excited I am about your new book. Maybe I have missed it but is there a release date. The idea of putting the patterens on to a CD is just the best.
Toddy, thank you so much! I hear that Martingale is very excited about the CD too. They tell me that the book will ship to quilt shops early in March 2009. If you missed any of the posts in the series, just click on “A journey to a book” in the categories and that’ll bring them all up.
Kay