Into Pages

Publishing your own writing requires many decisions. They dig down levels which seem easy enough to decide upon when looking down from above. Up close, however, the nuances that color a decision can make the choice seem impossible like choosing between two crumbling levels. Today, I want to look at one choice which has been weighing heavily upon us, names.

My co-author and I have been trying to decide upon the best naming system for ourselves. How do we best put our names on our works?

At first I thought we should only put her name on for the sake of brevity. She wanted to use initials for her first and middle name and since that would include my initial as well (A. L. Edwards). It seemed reasonable. But it isn’t quite honest. Quirni has two authors. I have done the greater portion of writing but we have worked out plot together and she edits and rewrites.

So, two names is more representative of us but two names take up a lot of space. Since we are related and have the same last name, why not only put that in once? From that I came up with A.L.L. Edwards, which is a combination of our initials. Upon reflection I realize that, once again, it suggests only one author. Fine, whatever.

I have been the one who struggles with this more. Perhaps honesty in a naming isn’t the important thing but it seems to me it is. Nevertheless, I settled upon A.L.L. Edwards.

Since our work is published on Amazon it seemed reasonable to me we have a name easy to recognize. As we publish works other than Quirni we want our readers to be able to find us. A.L.L. Edwards seemed like an easy to remember name to me. And it isn’t lost in all the other Edwards’ on Amazon.

But its nearly as clunky as using two ‘Edwards’ in the author name. A. Edwards and L. Edwards.

Clunky worked for the Kindle e-version of the books. The cover wasn’t right there face up looking clunky every time the book was read. It will be soon however.

We are perfecting the paperback version of The Marrilian. We received a proof of the book and as you can see from the featured image, we already have one proof we’ve had to change.

And on the front of that, our names and the book name.

A & L. Edwards. The Marrilian. Quirni. Book One.

A lot of decisions went into those four parts and that is a large part of the reason why we haven’t posted in so many months. Now we would like to share what we have learned.