Small business owner is one of those epithets I never thought I’d be picking out of life’s bin and pinning to my chest. Every time I’m referred to as “the boss,” I suppress the urge to check behind me for my last employer. Regardless, a whirlwind of serendipity scuttled me here, for which I’m grateful.
Last fall, after kicking around on X’s #WritingCommunity, it hit me that indie authors struggled to uncover the sacred trio of trust, cost, and talent when hiring freelancers. Usually one, sometimes two, of those would be dropped onto a raft with a prayer and a shove. It seemed needlessly difficult to wrangle and vet a small army of editors, designers, and narrators…
A little voice nagged at me: Haven’t you always loved graphic design? Also, aren’t three of your friends wickedly talented and itching to get their hands dirty on more artistic projects? Like, come on, between the four of you, you already have an editor, a graphic designer, and a male and a female vocal artists.
It took us a single discussion before Fablesmithy blasted out of its t-shirt-cannon-of-a-womb.
Happily, the universe did not wait for us to get off the ground before flooding us with clients and projects. I found myself designing covers for multiple books, creating a swath of graphics for an advertising campaign, formatting novel interiors, creating vector logos, and even assembling a corporate PowerPoint. I postponed our company’s launch multiple times just so I could keep up.
However, this Saturday (May 3rd) is our official launch! After spending months working on our website, I’m teary eyed (actually, that’s a lie — my eyes are as dry as mottled snakeskin tossed into an industrial dryer after having stared at this screen without blinking for the last 12 weeks) and impatient to reveal our company’s official website a few days early:
Check out our three forges: editing, design, and narration. We also bundle all those services together into three different packages to suit various budgets. Basically, when you’re done writing your book, just throw it at us, and we’ll throw back everything you need to toss your book up onto Amazon, etc.
(Also, our packages are stupidly discounted as part of our launch promotion.)
If you’re curious what kind of design work I do, here are some book covers I’ve made (full disclosure: a couple of these are derivative mock-ups inspired by my own books; titles and names have been changed):
The Last Lady of Albessind by Lloyd Meeker
(Tales of Riardan, Book One)
The Garden Witch by Lloyd Meeker
(Tales of Riardan, Book Two)
(Mockup inspired by All Is Well)
(Mockup inspired by The Last Goddess)
If you’re an indie author, I recommend following Fablesmithy on X (@fablemsithy) and IG (@fablesmithy), where we’re going to be offering some launch promos for our grand opening on May 3rd (this Saturday!). Come say hi! It’ll be blast. Our whole team is gathering to celebrate our online “ribbon cutting,” too.
See you there!