The highs and lows of publishing

Destined has been officially released now for almost a week. It’s exciting. And scary. And just about everything in between. But overall, it’s a good feeling to finally have it out there, and have people interested in it. Granted, for now most of those people are friends and family, but everyone has to start somewhere, right? First bit of news: I have a giveaway!  This one is on GoodReads, but I may consider doing one on my site/blog later on for those who aren’t members of GR. I can’t get their widget to show right due to my site formatting,...

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Well, there goes my productivity

I’m a nerd. Always have been, most likely always will be. I was pretty much the American version of Hermione Granger in school, as my friends can probably attest. Though I was also shy, so I don’t think I was as bad as her when it came to raising my hand. I don’t remember being the obnoxious “Ooh! Oooh! Pick me!” type; I just liked when I did well on tests and knew answers the other students didn’t. Man, that sounds snobbish, doesn’t it? Maybe I really WAS Hermione. Anyway, that’s me: nerd, geek, dork, they all apply. I’m competitive when playing...

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It’s out!

Destined is finally available for sale! Print: $9.99 at CreateSpace for now. It’s supposed to be on Amazon as well, but for some reason it hasn’t shown up there yet. eBook: $2.99 for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble NOOK  It’s also available for Kindle at Amazon UK and Amazon.de (in English) I’m looking into getting a general ePub version available for those who have other types of readers.   *happy dance*   All in all, this was a relatively painless process.  Sure, formatting the books was time-consuming (I started...

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Cover tips for print

I mentioned in a previous post that when I first uploaded my book to CreateSpace, I got a message that the cover had transparent layers, and that flattening them had resulted in a color shift. I debated leaving it and waiting to see if it really did look any different or not (some accounts I found online claimed they got the same message, but that the cover looked fine). But in the end, the perfectionist in me won out and I looked up how to flatten the cover myself, so that I would be sure everything would look exactly how I wanted it. In case...

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My ePub file is finally awesome

But before I get to that: I’ve uploaded the final part of my book excerpt, Chapter Three! I’ve also re-uploaded chapters 1 & 2 because I made some minor changes in them as I was going through my print proof. My second proof was ordered today, so barring anything crazy with that, I hope to be ready to publish by the end of next week. Exciting! Now, on to the original point of this post. While I wait for that second proof to print and ship to me, I’ve been going through the ebook files to make sure they’re all clean and perfect and ready to...

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The importance of the proof

When I submitted my files for the print edition of Destined, I was sure they were prefect, and that I wasn't going to have to make any corrections. Even better, CreateSpace was having a promotion where the first proof was free (plus shipping), so I thought I was going to get this done pretty cheaply. Ha. Despite the numerous edits I've done (NUMEROUS), I still managed to miss things. There's something about reading on actual paper, I think, that makes it easier to spot errors. Up until now, I'd been proofing either on the computer, on my iPad,...

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It’s here!

The proof of my print edition arrived today! It's all shiny and pretty and I'm in love with it. I haven't had a chance to really go through it to look for errors, but the quick scan I did looks good, so I'm hopeful. I'd prefer not to have to resubmit and buy another proof, but if I do find something inside that needs fixing, I may also tweak the cover...

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Coming into the home stretch

First bit of happiness: my print proof shipped yesterday! Depending on how fast the shipping is, I may have it in my hands by the weekend. Patience is not my strongest suit, so this is just about killing me. Best thing about it, though, is that if all goes well, and I don’t have to make any major corrections, there’s a good chance I’ll be able to release in all formats before the end of the month. Which means my book will be out in time for my mother’s birthday on the 29th. I think that’s a birthday present she’ll really like, especially since...

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Release Date. Sort of.

One of the downsides I've found with self-publishing is that you can't really set a firm release date. When you're done editing and formatting and are ready to go, you submit your files to the various sites (Amazon, B&N, Smashwords, CreateSpace, etc.) and then wait for them to approve and publish your book. There's no guarantee exactly when that will happen, and you can't tell them to wait until a specific date to do it (at least, not that I've seen). So I can't really say "DESTINED will be out August 29th!" because I can't know for sure that...

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Now for the not-as-fun part

I have my print version finally done. I changed my mind a few times regarding trim size and margins, so ended up re-formatting more than I’d have liked. But I finally have it where I want it, and it’s looking good. Which means I’m finally ready to get going on the actual publishing. Before I do anything with the ebooks, I wanted to get things started with CreateSpace and get a proof on its way to me. And now I’ve hit a bit of a wall, because I’ve come up to the ISBN portion of the process, and I’m confused. Originally, I was going to get the...

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Quick tip for print formatting

Avoid the hell I’m about to put myself through and take this advice: when formatting your book for print, after you’ve decided on a font size and leading for the main text, print out the first few pages before you waste your time formatting the entire damn book. I had mine set at 11/14 (11pt font with 14pt leading), it looked good on the screen, so I spent all weekend perfecting the formatting, removing widows and orphans, getting everything so that it looked flawless on the page. Then today, I printed out a couple of pages to see how it would...

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