The journey to write ‘Rise of the Hackers‘ has been long and included many pit stops and parallel roads. Building a book is not just a matter of order, discipline, structure, and inspiration, but also some marketing vision. Why writing a book that nobody will ever read? That’d be sad.
Thanks to my background as an online marketing strategist, designer, and content creator, I truly believe I needed a great story packaged in an enormous container. I’ve seen many books failing in the go-to-market stage because of a weak cover. Bad, right?
Finding the perfect cover is critical to selling a book, mainly when it’s aimed at young people. On November 22, 2017, I sent the first email to Anna G. Sola, a great illustrator I met at Twitter. After describing her the story, the characters, and much other stuff, I waited for her response a few hours.
We reached an agreement soon. There were no arguments about pricing. Anna told me a figure, and I agreed. That was all. Shortly after that, she sent some drafts. In the early stages, Mara Turing looked younger. She was an 8 or 9 years old girl. So were her friends.
After a couple of meetings with the publisher, we agreed on raising the age of Mara Turing and her pals to 11 or 12. This was the summer of 2018.
By June 2018, we already had a few designs and proposals for the clothing, poses, etcetera. Anna was fast —really fast— at the time of understanding what I had in mind. The uncolored drafts were terrific.
Connecting with an audience of young readers in 2020 is not only a matter of writing a fantastic book. I believe that’s only about 30-40 percent of the job. The rest? Contacting influencers, designing great pictures for Instagram, creating video-pills for our followers, and so on.
For the Spanish readers, I’m already writing the third episode of the Mara Turing book series. And I promise you something: the cover will also be excellent.
Hola, estamos en Estados Unidos pero queremos leer esto en español y no nos permite cambiar de lenguaje. Ayuda por favor.