The Wooden Ring began fourteen years ago with a question about Cordelia’s missing journey in King Lear. After finding an agent but not a publisher, the novel waited on a hard drive until its author was ready to rebuild it as a story of legitimacy, duty, power, magic, and pirates.

Marketing before publication doesn’t mean shouting “My book is coming!” for two years. It means knowing your reader, giving them somewhere to find you and building familiarity before asking for a sale.

Three covers, several expensive lessons. I look at what redesigning The Chic Crone taught me about book cover design, genre signalling, thumbnail readability, reader expectations, print colour, and the hidden costs of changing a published cover—including lost recognition, outdated promotional materials, and Goodreads complications.