The logistics of Acts of Speech are coming together. When I decided to self-publish a poetry book, it was partially an experiment because I don’t know how self-publishing works, and this is a good first try. By the time each i is dotted and each t is crossed, I will have a firm idea of the logistics before I embark on other projects.
This is great for a book that I didn’t even decide to (vaguely) put together until the first part of 2019 and that I didn’t have a final final no this one this (no, I don’t name my files like that, I swear) copy until September because I decided to fudge around with the table of contents and add a few more poems.
Acts of Speech also has a book cover designed by L. T. Williams, whose art is fabulous.
I thought that this part would be a lot of waiting and pacing because I needed certain things to do ISBN forms, and I needed the ISBN forms to do the Library of Congress control number form for self-publishing. The LCCN is supposed to take about two weeks for turnaround, but I got it literally in a single business day — and I’m betting that part of this is due to workload shifts in libraries towards digital projects and workflows because many of the staff members must be remote during the pandemic.
One big decision I made was to label this religious poetry. I grew up Neopagan, and it always bothered me that the religious books I wanted were shelved in the New Age section and often interfiled with conspiracy theory writers warning us of deep Reptilian conspiracies and starseeds. Using the word religion and calling it religious poetry in the way I describe subjects in Bowker and the self-publishing distribution venue I’m using (Draft2Digital) is a way of forcing my work onto the bookshelves where I think work like this belongs. It’s nice to have that level of control.
In a few weeks — after another obsessive skim to make sure I’ve caught typos — I’ll make another post describing where to find it. The publication date is October 29, so it’s coming right up.