Publishing Banners: For God, Tasr and Russia

When it came time to publish Banners, I had the same question as I did with Ikons.  Should I go the traditional publishing route and find an agent or self-publish?  I sat myself down and asked, why am I doing this?  What do I hope to gain?  After several one-sided discussions, I finally found my answer. I didn't want money, I wanted immortality.

I grew up in an age of imagination where I spent nights listening to radio shows and creating images of characters and locations in my mind.  My world was filled not only with stories plucked from the airwaves, but also those found in history books.  Bigger than life heroes and villains fought imaginary battles across the expanse of time.  Add to this tales from my uncles returning from the war in Europe and the Pacific and my father's stories of Russia, and my mind was fertile ground for tales of  epic proportions.  I wanted to share these sagas and pass them down to future generations.  My children and their children should know their heritage and the sacrifices of those who made their lives possible.  Thus I decided to write in way to accomplish this goal.

Based on my experience with Ikons, I again chose iUniverse as my publisher.  I did take more time to sculpture Banners than Ikons and hired a retired professional editor to check over my work.  She did an outstanding job, proving I did not have all the necessary knowledge to self self-publish.  While I did have the foresight to farm out my editing, I found another area to make mistakes.

Buoyed by my new found confidence, I designed my own book cover.  All my covers were to have my ancestors' images.  The first reflected Massey and Akulina, who were the major characters, and the second contained Akulina and her sons, Stefan and John.  I knew how to use Photoshop, so what could be the problem?  All I had to do was cut my characters from the family portrait and slap them on various backgrounds.

Cover using the newspaper image background

Cover using refugee background

Cover using battle background

My focus group suggested using the cover with the battle background, but changing the subtitle.  I finally chose For God, Tsar and Russia, believing it conveyed the nature of the story.  iUniverse was more than happy to use it.

Banners back cover

For the back cover I changed my author's photo.  For this one, I went with a picture of me sitting in the cab of a Soviet missile launch system.  This is what I look like.

Me in the cab of one the Russian missile launchers we destroyed

I entered Banners in the Writers' Digest Self-Published Book Contest in 2003.  The book received fours and fives in all categories but cover design, which received a one out of five.  The reviewer remarked that while my prose was almost poetic, my cover looked like, "a Photoshopped picture on a background."  Which it was.  Another lesson learned.