Rachel the Reader vs Rachel the Writer

I've been doing a lot of interviews/general talking as the Spirit War's release date gets closer (SO EXCITED!), and the question of "what are your favorite books?" has come up a lot, as it does. For the record, my favorite book changes all the time, but perennial favorites include The Last Unicorn, Dune, The Deed of Paksenarrion, 1984, The World Without Us, and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. 

As I was answering all these questions, though, I began to think why I choose the books I do and more, why there are certain books I can't seem to enjoy no matter how hard I try or how good I know they are. For example, confession time, I can not get into Game of Thrones. I have tried four times in the last ten years to read the first book and I've never made it past the first hundred pages. 

This infuriates me, because I know I'm missing out. All my friends love the series, but I just can't get into it. Same with The Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern). I've heard nothing but amazing things about this book, and while I got a good half way through, I just never really cared enough to finish it. 

I actually have a very long and impressive list of books other people loved but I could never get into, including several genre classics I feel I should read as a writer. But no matter how hard I try, I just can't make myself finish them. 

I think this is in part because Rachel the Writer and Rachel the Reader approach books differently. Rachel the Reader is far, far crueler than Rachel the Writer. When I'm reading, my tolerance for slow starts or gentle build up is next to zero. Sometimes I just hate characters, other time there's something in the book that I find distasteful to the point where I don't want to read any more about them. And sometimes I just don't care enough to keep going.

This incredibly picky, irrational way of judging books horrifies Rachel the Writer, most of all because it's so arbitrary. Like, I can see as a writer that something is good, but the reader part of me just does not care. It's one thing to understand that not everyone will like every book and quite another to see it in yourself, especially when it's so easy to start seeing reasons a reader could hate my work. Undermining doesn't even begin to describe it.

Some writers talk about their internal editor. Me? I fear my internal reader. I'm constantly scared the bitch will zero in on something and that will be that. I've actually put down whole, perfectly good novels because the reader half of me wasn't on board, and while that's probably a good thing, I still can't tell you why the book didn't work. As someone who likes to be scientific and specific, it drives me NUTS. 

So, have you ever had a novel you knew you should have love but didn't? Do you let fear of reader expectations cloud your writing? Do you notice a difference between your writer mind and your reader mind? I'm really curious!

- Rachel

Getting closer!

The end of April is nearly upon us, and you know what that means...

THE SPIRIT WAR comes out in a little over a month! GASP!

After a year and a half, Eli's story finally continues, and boy, is he in for it this time! I won't post the blurb here since it's a little spoilery if you haven't read the first three books, but you can spoil yourself silly (and preorder ;) ) over on Amazon or the bookseller of your choice. And if you really can't wait, you can read the first three chapters on my site!

I'm going to be doing promotional stuff all month, including some big give aways, so keep your eyes peeled! I'll be announcing everything on Facebook and Twitter, so if you don't follow me there already, come say hi and get in the know to win some awesome stuff.

Are you excited? Because I am excessively pumped to finally get to share this book with you guys! Yay!

5 Signs Your Idea Would Make A Good Novel

First up, a little house cleaning! Here's what's new in the world of Rachel since last week:

• The ever lovely Book Chick City reviews the audio version of The Spirit Eater!
• Fantasy Book Cafe read the Spirit Rebellion and liked it with reservations. I hope you'll stick it out for the third one, Kristen!
• And finally, I did an interview with Fantasy Book Review and had a great time! Yet another link for the "I Talk A Lot" box!

Ok, now that's out of the way, let's talk writing.

In my post on plotting, I gave a lot of time to the idea of making sure you're writing the right book. I thought this was a pretty obvious step, but a lot of people wrote to ask how you can tell if an idea is strong enough to carry a book. My usual answer to this question was the vague and hand-wavy "you just can!" but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this response is a) stupid and b) wrong. 

True, I can usually just feel when an idea is right, but this isn't some magical writer-fairy intuition, it's experience. I've been writing for about 8 years now. In that time, I've started a lot of books, way more than I've finished. By this point, I've tripped up enough that I can get a pretty good feel for whether or not an idea is book-worthy as soon as I start the planning process.

Now, there's no reason you should have to go through eight years of false starts to build your own sense of whether or not a book will fly. The whole point of my writing posts has always been to save other people from my mistake. So, with that in mind, I sat down and had a good long think about how I actually know if an idea can hold up all the way through a novel. As it turns out, there are a few signs all my ideas that made it to finished books had in common, and now, without further ado, here they are.

5 Signs Your Idea Would Make A Good Novel

1. You can not stop thinking about it

You know how sometimes you get an idea that your brain will simply not shut up about? You think about it all the time, talk people's ears off about it, and get bouncing up and down excited at the possibilities the story/world/character throws at you. These are the marks of a really good idea. You know when book blurbs say "a story to capture the imagination?" Yeah, that's what just happened to you. Your imagination was captured. This is gooooood. 

An idea that can capture you so fully is an idea worth exploring. Maybe it's not a full novel yet, maybe it's just a world or a magical system or even a character. Whatever it is, save it. You've got a winner. Think of it as a spark, a flavor you can build a cake on or use in combination with other winning ingredients. 

Don't make the mistake of thinking every one of these ideas has to be its own book. The Eli books are actually a combination of several could-not-stop-thinking-about-it ideas. What you have is a hook, don't be afraid to blend it together with other favorite ideas until you have a concoction of pure win. 

You'll know it's ready when it starts writing itself, which leads us to...

2. It writes itself

This is part and partner with the can't-stop-thinking-about-it idea. Often, I'll know a story is a keeper when I start writing scenes in my head without really trying. When you've got characters talking on their own or dramatic events unfolding right before your eyes, that's a good sign. 

If these characters or events don't have a home yet, sit down and start figuring out where they come from. Or, better yet, try putting them into one of those settings you couldn't stop thinking about. Remember, you're just playing around. Nothing is final yet. See what mad alchemy you can create. Often, a little bit of world building is all it takes to cement the scenes that write themselves into the corner stones of a great novel. 

3. World building is fun, not work

This is more of a warning flag than a sign. Say you have an idea you're really excited about, but as you start putting down the basics, you start getting bored. Danger, Will Robinson! You are the author, you are god, if a god is bored with her creation, then something is very, very wrong. 

This isn't necessarily the death of your idea, though. After all, you were excited about the idea at one point. If you find yourself getting bored while world building, stop and try to figure out why. Are you working on a part of the novel that doesn't actually matter, or is there a fundamental flaw in your idea? 

World building is pure creation, and while it's not always manic writing excitement, it should always be fun. If you're not having fun, that can be the sign this idea isn't all you thought it was. However, if you're having such a great time you catch yourself going off and writing up things just for the fun of it, that's a great sign and a good indicator that this idea is worthy of being a book.

4. You can see the finished product

Lots of times when I am super excited about a book, I can already see the finished product in my mind. I can see the sort of cover I want, where it would sit in the bookstore, even the reviews. Most of this is wishful thinking of course (Why, Mr. Gaiman, I'm so delighted you liked my book!), but hey, I'm a fantasy author. Wishful thinking is my biz! 

The important part of this step is the idea of completion. It's easy to get lost in exciting ideas and characters who write themselves, but the most important deciding factor for me of whether or not a book can actually stand is whether or not I can hold the whole of the final product in my mind. Can I see the sweep of the series? Do I know what the next book is going to be about? Is this a stand alone? 

For example, I knew almost from the beginning that Eli was going to be a 5 book series. I didn't know what the plot of each book was, but I knew there would be one for each character. I could see the arc of the story, see roughly where my meta plot would need to start really coming in. If you can look at your idea and see roughly what it will be when you finish, even if you turn out to be completely wrong, that is a good sign that you've got a fully fledged story.

5. You can easily list why other people would want to read your book

This one is the trickiest and most subjective, but it's also the most commercial of the signs. When you try to sell a book to a publisher, an agent, or directly to the public, you're asking someone to spend their money (because remember, time is money) on your idea. You're saying "my book is worth your reading," and if you're going to make that kind of bold statement, you have to believe it yourself, and more, you have to know exactly why your book is worth reading.

If you can look at your potential story and immediately see what is good, unique, compelling, exciting, and fresh about it, without lying to yourself (First Rule of Thievery, the only person you have to be honest with is yourself), then you can safely say you've got a real winner on your hands. Go write that book!

There, I hope that's a better answer to the question. Thanks as always for reading!

- Rachel 

Spirit's End cover revealed!

The Lord of Storms, he is not happy! Eli, however, is giving him the "bitch, please" look. I'm not sure if this is the 100% final cover, but I totally dig the purple. Let's get the other 2 in here to compare!

Oh Eli, being on every cover is not going to help with those ego problems, is it? At least he's in good company. You can see all of Orbit's upcoming covers, including mine, over at their massive cover post!

Spirit's End's official release date has been set for November 20, 2012. This will be the fifth and final Eli novel that finishes out the story. The Spirit War, the fourth novel, will be out on June 5, 2012. I hope this answers everyone's release date questions!

Guest Post: Budgeting and the Writer

Sorry I've been AWOL, folks. I've been a bear in her writing cave, attacking all who come near (so, in short, having a pretty awesome time!). As promised in my last post, though, my husband, the amazing Travis Bach, has written a guest post for me about what it's like to actually support a family when 1/2 of the money comes from a writer (a topic that he has a lot of hands on experience with, seeing as he keeps all our books). So, without further ado, here's Travis!

Writing Financials, a Guest Post by Travis Bach

Since Rachel has recently posted about writer money, I wanted to take this opportunity to try and guest post it up. I'm not a professional writer, but I do have to be the one who looks at the money and figures out how to make it work. I'd like to share some of the planning and tactics we've been using to keep the lights on even though author money is less like a cash flow and more like a cash glacier that drops big cash ice blocks off at irregular intervals.

#1 - Know thy self...Financially
We've spent a lot of time analyzing our spending habits. This is typically done using tools like mint.com, but I used to have just a spreadsheet for it. Mint.com is way nicer than a spreadsheet by the way and will save so many hours of work its not funny. There's some competitors to mint out there as well, like quicken online and such. I encourage you to explore, as these are powerful tools that should not be ignored.

This step is essential. You cannot plan if you do not know how much you  spend regularly. If you've never done this step, it might be an eye opener and a little painful. Sometimes we waste amazing amounts of money on things we've never thought of. Also, you'd be amazed at how many weird automated payments can slip through the cracks and hang around for years sucking up cash.

This item is #1 for a good reason. Keeping an eye on the money is vital and simply paying more attention will often reveal what courses of action are available to you. If you do nothing else, do this on a frequent basis.

By the way - if you are afraid to look at your bank statements... Count that feeling as a massive alarm bell. You need to get in there now. Face that fear!

#2 - Budgeting
For us, we have to dole out large sums of money (RA NOTE: all those big checks I talked about in the last post) carefully over long periods of time. By far the majority of my efforts on this simply are looking at what we're spending and how fast is the money going. Making a budget is key, but there's so much advice out there that there's no point in me covering the basics of that here.

However, estimating incidentals is the hardest part of planning. The expense events that are not part of the budget. Things like medical bills, car repairs, home maintenance, fines, fees, etc... Having done this for a few years I know to plan for about $1100/month (~$13,000/yr actually divided by 12) in incidentals.

How did I get that number? By looking at my historic spending summaries at mint.com and using Bank of America's online equivalent (since it had a lot more historical data for me). I look at total budget overruns (total spent - budgeted expenses) over several years and generally a 'safe' number emerges for me to use.

In addition to estimating incidentals, we maintain an emergency savings fund that can keep us afloat for 3 months with no money coming in at all. Any good financial planner or personal finance website will tell you how important this is. When talking about incidentals, its vital. The savings fund prevents us from having to use debt to cover short-term financial gaps or emergencies and, thus, not having to pay more for those incidents.

When the emergency fund gets low, we know its time to start cutting back and finding ways of getting money flowing into it for replenishment. Its a good, practical, and empirical measurement of the reality of that year's incidentals; rather than just my predictions.

#3 - Handling Large Blocks of Income
The chief challenge we have to deal with is the payment schedule. Rachel isn't getting a monthly paycheck for writing. She gets a few checks through her agent throughout the year. Knowing our budget requirements though, I can look at each check and see how many months of operations that check represents. When I look at our savings account, I know about how long we've got before something has to change (more on this later).

I also keep an eye on how many book payments are yet to be made and when those might be coming in. Forecasting like this is very important as its much easier to cut spending over the course of many months than over just a couple (or one). Cutting $200/month for 10 months is easy. Cutting $2000 from one month is hell.

Early detection of fiscal difficulties prevents us from getting blind sided. It also makes it so that I can more easily spot the ramifications of incidental expenses that pop up without warning (car breaking down, etc.). When that big, unexpected, whatever bill comes in, I know which way to jump and what it means for the future (i.e. next 12 months)

Also of note, we keep all the writing money in its own separate savings account so that it doesn't get eaten by accident. Having a lean checking account helps create the proper feelings of wealthy/poor as the monthly cycle repeats itself. I will say with certainty that putting lots of money into a pile that's connected to a debit card will result in that pile getting spent much faster than desired and on little, meaningless things.

We always strive to make the spending of the writing money a deliberate and planned act. Money, writing or otherwise, is earned through great effort, so its spending should always receive careful attention.

#3 - Using Milestones
I try to always have a plan for the next 12 to 18 months. Currently I have a rough idea of what's going down through 2013 (this planning might be its own post, it's a lot). There's a lot of assumptions going into that, planning on books yet unwritten and unsold. Fortunately, Rachel writes at a fairly reliable pace now, so its easier to guess what books will be written and when.

I have a spreadsheet on my desktop that I've used to calculate some numbers that are of vital interest to me and for Rachel's writing career, such as:

• Amount of savings needed for 6 months of living on only my salary.
• Amount of savings needed for 6 months of living without my salary.
• Amount of savings needed for 6 months of living without any income.
• Book sales to cash-in hand ratio. Ie.. if the publisher pays $X, how much comes home?* 
• How much writing money is expected to come in over the next 6 months?
• How much writing money is expected to come in over the next 12 months?
• How much writing money is expected to come in over the next 18 months?
• What's the threshold for me to quit my job?**
• What's the threshold where Rachel has get work other than her own novels?

*This number is approximately 63% right now
**and become Rachel's full-time assistant/promoter/financial manager/product developer/GM/etc.... (RA NOTE: Slave, coffee boy, full time ego adjustment coach, etc...;D )

I tend to update this sheet once/twice a year. These milestones are important. They are indicators of future prosperity or trouble. All writing work takes months to pay out, so we have to look forward far enough to start damage control on time. I bet that Rachel could get contract writing work easily enough if needed. That said, getting a contract to write for hire, writing the book, editing the book, and getting paid for the book would take months and months and months. Much of that spent waiting on people.

It's these kinds of delays between need, effort, and payment that make planning so amazingly vital. If there's gonna be a problem in October, we need to be on the move in March.

Debt
The last thing I ever want to do is to use debt to cover a shortfall. Nothing like having money troubles and then having to pay 20%-50% extra to deal with them. Did you know the average small item put on a credit card winds up costing the owner triple what they would have paid? Yeah. Screw that.


So, in recap, my advice to folks would be to monitor, budget, and plan plan plan plan plan. Just like steering a big ship on a long voyage, its vital to constantly update your knowledge of your position and to make corrections early enough that the problems are small and fixable, rather than huge and crushing. Thank you for reading and I hope this helps shed more life on living as (or with) a working writer!

- Travis Bach (AKA, the real Slorn)

The Nitty Gritties Writing and Money

I think about money a lot. I don't think this will come as a surprise to anyone. I mean, the main character in my series is a thief whose main goal in life is to earn a million gold bounty, so clearly money interests me. Admitting this interest, however, is sort of like admitting I have an embarrassing personal grooming habit, because money is one of the few remaining things you do not talk about in polite society.

The older I get though, the more I realize that this aversion is a huge disservice. Few things can ruin your life faster or more completely than money. This is especially true for writers who, as John Scalzi points out in his own excellent post about writers and money, seem to be unusually and universally bad at dealing with money. This (admittedly anecdotal) failing is further aggravated by the byzantine feast-and-famine nature of writing money combined with the fact that most new writers have no idea what to expect when they sell their first book because, you know, people don't talk about it.

Thankfully, though, this is no longer totally true. While it can still be pretty hard to get an accurate picture of what to expect money-wise as a writer, both in terms of amounts and how money actually comes in (both of which I consider pretty vital information if you're looking to make publishing your new career), a few brave souls have bucked convention by sharing their own experiences. Today I'm throwing my had into the ring as well, so if you've ever wondered about the nitty gritty of just how authors make their money, or if it's possible to make a living writing, keep reading! We're about to talk about the Benjamins (or, you know, your denomination of choice).

Pretties!

First off, in case you didn't see the FB link, the Orbit art department made me some awesome wallpapers out of the new covers! So if you want to invite Eli into your home, you can put one of these bad boys up. Just be sure to count the silver afterward...

(big versions here)

Oh Eli, don't fall!

Also! We have some Miranda and Gin art from the awesomely talented Minna Sundberg (ShadowUmbre on DA)! Because there was a serious lack of ghosthounds up in here.

Full sized version here!

Miranda is serious business even when she's hanging out. You can see the DA post here, so please leave any comments for the artist over there.

Poor Gin looks grumpy, we should have drawn him in a pig. :D

Wasting Time, a clarification

As someone who talks about writing efficiency, I also talk a lot about wasting time. Namely how I use planning to prevent losing time to stupid stuff. Time is limited enough as it is, especially for people who write on the margins of their lives, stealing an hour here or an afternoon there. I always try to emphasize that time is our most precious commodity, the one thing we can never get back, and we should treat it with respect by using it wisely. That said, I got an email tonight that made me realize I should perhaps add a caveat to my general hatred of waste.

When I'm writing, even when I have my plot all planned out, I sometimes I go off course. Something that looked go on paper might not work once I get it into the novel, and as a result I can end up scrapping a paragraph, or a scene, or a whole chapter as I go back and start over on the right track. From an efficiency point of view, this can seem like a horrible waste. That scene is never going to be in the book. The time spent writing it will only bloat my spread sheet, dragging down my words per hour. But even so, I never count backtracking as waste, because every word I write makes me a better writer.

I read once that an author has to write a million words before they know what they're doing. I fully agree, but what that saying leaves out is that no small percentage of those million words will be ones that never make it into the final draft. I have whole or nearly completed books that I spent months of my life working on that will never see the light of day, but even those I refuse to count as wastes or failures, because the stories I tell now are built on a foundation of the words I threw away.

The hardest lesson I've learned so far as a writer is that failure teaches more than success, but only when you stop being scared of failing long enough to start learning from it. After all, the novel that never gets published teaches you to write the one that does. The wrong word makes you find the right one. Cutting, rewriting, doubling back, these are not waste. This is writing, and sometimes it's only by falling on our faces that we find the way forward.

Goals

First off, another big thank you to Stefan at Far Beyond Reality for hosting an omnibus give away! I have the winner's book right here beside my chair, all wrapped up and ready to go. Congratulations again, and don't forget you can still enter Fantasy Book Critic's omnibus giveaway if you haven't won one yet!

Back when I was in high school, my guidance councilor had us do one of those exercises where you write down all your goals for the future and when you want to achieve them. It was supposed to encourage us to make something of ourselves, but most people just goofed off (I recall a great deal of my senior class wanting to be doom lords and world conquerors). But I took the exercise seriously and wrote out this huge and ridiculously detailed road map for the rest of my life, which for some reason ended at 30 (hey, I was 17 at the time, I don't think I believed there was life after 30).

I still have this list. I'm not quite sure why I kept it, it was just one of those things that gets put in a box over and over, and every time you clean you think about throwing it away, but you never do, and then suddenly enough years have passed where it's become this relic from your childhood, so you take really good care of it, etc. etc. Looking back over the list now, I was a pretty ambitious kid. I mean, 2 PhDs by 25? I didn't even write down what they were PhDs for, just PhDs.

So yeah, the ambitions of youth. But the big thing? My huge, end of life goal for the immeasurably distant future of 30? Make a living as a professional fantasy author.

Done.

Today is my 30th birthday. Really, I made my goal three years ago, but it's as true now as it was then, though it still doesn't quite feel real. Even three years on, I get the violent urge to giggle in disbelief every time I realize "Holy shit, I am paying my mortgage with sword fights." But I do. I made it. Life goal, crossed off!

Now, as I enter the uncharted, "Here Be Monsters" part of my life, my biggest concern isn't knowing where I'm going, but what my new goal is. I sold my book, I've published one series and sold another, and I make a living as an author full time. That's pretty much everything on the list. So, now what? What comes after you "make it?"

Oh sure, there are plenty of big, shiny goals after your book hits the shelves: making a national list, becoming a #1 NYT Bestseller, seeing one of my books get made into a movie, winning a Nebula or a Hugo, but all of these are determined by other people. If all it took was hard work and a great idea to become a huge bestseller, then we'd have a lot more of them. I don't want to tie my big new goal to things I can't control, where success or failure has as much to do with luck as effort and talent. So, instead, I've picked something I can control, a milestone no less lofty but completely my own, and it goes like this:

Write 150 books by the time I turn 60.

That's 5 books a year for 30 years. Of course, I get to subtract 8 from that for the books I've already written, but still, 150 books! That's multiple bookshelves of my own work (assuming they're still putting books on shelves in 2042). Is it a ridiculous goal? Of course! But no less crazy or unlikely than getting a book published in the first place. Less, because this goal depends entirely on me. It'll be a lot of work, but I think I can make it. I'm already on track to write six books this year, maybe 7 if I don't get hung up. And if I make it to 60, I'll reevaluate. Maybe I'll set another goal, 300 books by 90!

I've spent most of my thinking life running toward the goal of being an author. I might have made it, but the race isn't over. It can never be over. We always have to have something to run toward, or we stop running. I for one mean to run this thing as hard, as fast, and as well as I can. And that, I think, is a very worthy goal indeed. 

More reviews and Tweet questions #2!

Some really lovely reviews/contests have been coming in!

• Mihir over at Fantasy Book Critic did a great review of Spirit Eater and Spirit's Oath, my Miranda short story! They're also giving away a signed copy of the Omnibus through March 10th, so don't forget to put your name in the hat!
• Tor.com had a great, very in depth review of the omnibus as a whole. In addition, Stefan (author of the Tor review) is giving away ANOTHER copy of the Omnibus on his own (fantastic) review blog, Far Beyond Reality. This give away ends today, though, so hurry over before it's too late!

Also, I have been darting about the internet writing things both about writing and about my own books! Here's a round up: 

• I wrote a post for Orbit all about Nico, so if you want to know more about how the little demonseed came to be, please be sure to check it out!
• I did a guest post for fantasy writing blog Magical Words all about tension, complete with visual aids!
• And I did an interview for Waterworld Mermaids about writing and the Eli series. Very awesome site, so happy they invited me over!

Ok, enough business, let's do some questions!

@Mathew_Braun asks How do you write characters whose experiences and background are different than your own?

This is actually something I struggle a lot with. As I mentioned in my Nico post for Orbit, I had a lot of trouble with Nico because of exactly this reason. Nico is shy, I am emphatically not. She's also quiet, I talk more than Eli (not really, but that apple didn't fall far from the tree, if you get me). The experiences and backgrounds are less trouble for me than the character themselves. Experience and background are really just the stimulus, it's the character's reaction to that stimulus where things get really hairy.

Writing characters who are not only different from me, but different in ways I have trouble understanding, is something I think I'll struggle with for the rest of my life. But it's a good sort of struggle, the growing kind. With Nico, I had to slow down, listen, and do a LOT of rewriting before I got her down. It was a slow, messy approach, but that's the rough part of trying to make your characters people. People tend to be messy, and just like with friends you don't understand, sometimes you've got to slow down and talk to your characters before they'll come clean, or talk at all. In the end, though, you get a diverse and deep cast that can hold you through several books, and that's worth a lot of effort.

Jessi in the email box asks How much control do you have over your covers?

There are two answers to this - a bunch and almost none. My publisher, the ever amazing Orbit Books, actively solicits my input on every part of the Eli books. However, publishers are in business to make money, and while they work with me a lot, in the end, they choose the cover they think will sell the most copies. I'm happy they do this, because I also want to sell many copies so I don't have to go out and get a real job again. The cover they choose might not always be the one I envisioned in my dreams, but it's almost always good, and if I have serious issues, the art department listens and does their best to compromise with me. I've never had a cover I flat out hated (thank god), but I will admit I like the new covers a LOT more than the old ones.

They just look so much more "this is a fantasy series" to me.

Of course, this is just the experience of one publisher and one author. Every house works differently. I've known some authors who were involved every step of the design and others who didn't see their cover until it was up on Amazon. Most authors fall somewhere in the middle, but if you're a new author (or a hope to be new author) and you have strong opinions about your cover, make them clear (in a polite way) right from the start, and then get ready to compromise. 

As the author, you do have some measure of final veto power, and that can be tempting to use, especially if you hate your cover. Before you fire the nuke, though, consider, no one wants your book to do better than your publisher. If they have a cover, they picked it for a reason. They paid money for that cover. Digging in your heels and saying NO helps no one. Instead, try to figure out how the cover can be changed to make it less odious. Publishing is a small town, and no one benefits from burned bridges. 

Well, I hope that was entertaining! As always, if you have a question about Eli/publishing/writing you'd like me to answer, please send it to me via Twitter or through my contact form. I look forward to seeing it!

Thank you for reading, and as always, thank you for helping to make Eli a success!

Yours sincerely,

Rachel