From Draft to Published | The Darkling Collective

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The draft is done. The hard part is over — except it isn't really, is it? The path from "finished draft" to "live on Amazon" is long and full of decisions, and most publishing advice skips the messy middle entirely.

Here's the full workflow, start to finish, exactly as I actually do it.

The Editing Passes

I run every manuscript through three distinct editing passes before it goes anywhere near a formatter.

1 Structural pass (me). Read the whole draft fast, like a reader. Note pacing issues, scenes that drag, plot threads that go nowhere. I do this in Word with Track Changes off — I'm reading, not fixing. At the end I have a list of structural notes.
2 AI editing pass (Antigravity). I feed chapters into Antigravity for continuity checks, consistency flags, and a developmental read. It's particularly good at catching things like "you described her eyes as brown in chapter 2 and green in chapter 11" — the kind of error that survives every human read-through. This generates another pass of notes.
3 Line edit pass (me). Armed with structural and AI notes, I go back through chapter by chapter. This is the slowest pass and the one that actually transforms the draft into something publishable. Word's Track Changes is on here.
4 Submit to my editor. Once I'm satisfied with the manuscript after those three passes, it goes to my editor. Coming in clean means their notes focus on the things I genuinely can't see myself — not the structural issues I could have caught on my own.

Three passes sounds like a lot. One pass is not enough. The sweet spot feels like two but it's actually three — the third pass is where the book starts to breathe.

Cover Design

I don't design my own covers from scratch — the competition in romance and fantasy genres is cover-designed by professionals and readers know the difference immediately. What I do depends on the pen name's budget and release cadence:

Kate Seger / Lola Dresden: Premade covers from reputable designers (Canva Pro for promotional assets around it). The premade market for dark fantasy and dark romance is genuinely excellent right now.
K.S. Valentina / Kat Summers: Lighter, more playful aesthetics that I build in Canva Pro using high-quality stock — these genres tolerate more DIY aesthetic in the cover without hurting sales.

Cover goes live for the pre-order reveal before the book is finished whenever possible. Cover reveal creates the first wave of momentum and gives BookFunnel something to link to.

ARC Setup via BookFunnel

Once the edited manuscript is formatted (or even in a clean Word export), I build the ARC campaign in BookFunnel. My ARC timeline:

6 weeks before publish: ARC sign-up link goes live in newsletter and Substack
4 weeks before: ARCs distributed to readers who signed up
2 weeks before: Reminder email to ARC readers to post reviews on or around launch day
Launch day: Reviews go live, BookFunnel ARC link closes

I don't gate the ARC behind anything except an email address. Every ARC reader goes into the pen name's newsletter list and gets a welcome sequence. Most of them stick around.

Formatting with Vellum

Vellum is Mac-only and I keep a MacBook specifically for this reason. The workflow:

Export the final Word document as a clean .docx
Import into Vellum, apply the house style for that pen name
Review the ebook preview on Kindle, Kobo, and Apple Books simulators
Export: EPUB for wide distribution, MOBI for KDP direct, PDF for print interior

Vellum handles the print interior beautifully too — margins, trim size, running headers. I proof the print PDF carefully before uploading to KDP because print errors are the errors you can't fix after someone has a physical copy in their hands.

KDP Upload and Pre-Order

I always do a pre-order if the timeline allows — ideally 30 days minimum, 90 days is better for series books. Pre-orders aggregate sales to release day for rank purposes and give you a real number to build momentum around before launch.

KDP file checklist before upload:

Ebook interior (.epub from Vellum)
Cover file (2560 x 1600px minimum, Amazon specs)
Blurb — keyword-optimized, written before the book was done
Categories and keywords — researched, not guessed
Back matter — next book teaser, newsletter sign-up link, author page link

Back matter is invisible marketing. Every reader who finishes your book should have a frictionless path to the next one and to your list.

Launch Week

Launch week is newsletter-heavy. I send:

A pre-launch "it's almost here" email 48 hours before
A launch day email with the live link and a personal note
A "one week in" email with early reviews and a reader shoutout

Social media during launch is cover graphics and quote cards from the book, built in Canva. I schedule these the week before launch so I'm not scrambling.

After launch week, the book goes into the backlist marketing rotation. That's a separate strategy — but the launch itself is a sprint, not a marathon. After 7–10 days, you move on to the next project.

Publishing a book is a process, not a moment. The draft gets you to the starting line. Everything above gets you to the shelf.

The readers are already out there. The system is what gets your book in front of them.