Tag: Adobe Photoshop

Ready or Not – Print Edition: Still delayed

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Ready or Not (concept only)For those who prefer a nice physical, bound book to hold in their hands … I’m sorry but I’m still working on that for Ready or Not.

Theoretically this should be ridiculously easy and all, but Createspace is what I go through for the print because it’s the highest quality Print On Demand publishing service after Lightning Source, which I’d prefer to use but lack the Photoshop skills necessary to get the cover and page layout right in a single go and thus would get obscenely expensive.  Problem is, though, that Createspace apparently hates me.  It’ll lay the pages out pretty neatly while I’m experimenting along the way still writing the book and such; then I upload the final document file which, in theory, ought to be perfect since I’ve been testing along the way … … … random badness happens.  In this case it keeps setting the pages several inches too high up and to the right.

So far I’ve found all the things not causing that.  I pray it’ll only be another few days to a week before it’s up, but it could be as many as two or three more weeks.

I’d go with a publisher and save myself these headaches, but I’d be simply trading them in for different headaches.  At least this way I keep full control and don’t have to worry about some artist getting strange ideas about what my covers should look like (for those who think an author has control of her cover art through most publishers, all I can say is, “that is adorably naïve, honey.”), higher royalties, an editor I know well and trust not to decide to rewrite the book for me (yes, it happens), and control over release date (sort of).

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Mounting anxiety

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The end of Love or Lust is in sight. Saturday is on the horizon. I feel sick to my stomach.

Publishing a book is quite easy, from a technical standpoint. I could have done it a year ago today. I had the book typed, and myriad places would have taken a PDF or DOC file. But, that’s not good.

First there’s editing. My but what a knock to the ego to see all those mistakes! And even the technically good sentences and paragraphs that leave you thinking, Good God! What in Hell was I thinking?!

Once that’s done, the paranoid among us must proofread it again, and the perfectionists among us (sadly, that’s me – I’m lazy out of self defence, once I elect to do something …) can’t just look for spelling errors, we must reread the text and tweak dialogue and word choice.

Somewhere in here is agonising if you wish to publish this yourself or give it over to another to do. If you elect the agented route you have the headache of query letters and heartbreak of rejection after rejection – or increasingly more popular, no response whatsoever (silent rejection). Should you luck into an agent (or unluck, depending one’s philosophy at this juncture) there’s the agony of waiting while she (ever notice how many agents are women? I wonder why) shops it to publishers, then waiting for them to put you on a shelf.

Even on your own, you aren’t done at editing. God no. Formatting! Do you want a print edition? Better learn about gutters. Do you want page numbers? The title and author in alternating hearders? Layout is a wretch. You get better at it with practice, learn to preset as much of that before you start typing (and styles are my best friends). Exporting to MOBI and EPUB.

Personally I don’t care for the method Smashwords uses to convert documents. I make them in Pages, Adobe InDesign, or PubIt (Barnes & Noble epublishing service) then edit them with a text editor (Komodo is my favourite for this) because it never fails that SOMETHING will be wrong. The only thing I trust to get my MOBI files (Kindle) correct is Adobe InDesign with Amazon’s Kindle plugin.

A cover! Good Lord, you forgot a cover! Image searching! Find an artist! Can you afford an artist?! Creative Commons search? CreateSpace image library and cover creator?

Whew, we have a cover. Is its resolution correct? What do you mean the image size needs to be A x B on this service, but D x F on this other one?! ~sob~ Second guessing time! Oh, God, does this cover actually work? No, it’s stupid … no, no, it’s okay …

Then the anticipation. You’ve got it all done. The day is approaching. Th publisher says 29 June, or you picked it. It’s like waiting for Christmas, but not the excitement of what Father Christmas will bring, but the horror of just what monstrosity is lurking in that package from Aunt Phillis. You are equal parts terrified the book won’t sell a single copy, your own MOTHER didn’t buy it! That it will sell hundreds of copies in an hour and the next day a flood of criticism, negative reviews, peasants carrying pitchforks and torches beating on the door demanding your blood! Or, God help you, it sells, it ACTUALLY SELLS! Well, even. God help you, you’re a celebrity! Nightmares ensue of paparazzi being eaten by you dogs, and pictures of you in the bath showing up in National Enquirer …

Publishing a book is very hard on the psyche.

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Getting caught up

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Well my debacle with Word did set me back a few days, unfortunately, but I’m managing to catch up. Tonight I’m as far along as I should have been this time Thursday. Given that I spent the better part of Thursday catching back up to this time Monday, though … that’s progress.

As of right now I still assume 29 June will be the release date. I intend to double my editing time, not only to the catch up point but to the end. What that ought to do is finish this proofread with a week to spare so I can spend that time quintiple checking the eBooks are working properly and that the print edition is not off centre.

I’m pretty much decided on us$3.99 or $4.99 for the ePrice. This seems most consistent with the length of this story in this genre, competitively priced against the big press books, a dollar or two cheaper, but still high enough to be taken seriously. That said I’m half tempted to make it 99¢ and leave it there just to see what happens.

I’m going to start working on some Project Wonderful ads, so keep an eye out for those if you’re the sort to take interest in such things. Just don’t expect great things; my Photoshop and GIMP skills are less than elite, they’re potentially less than amateur in fact.

We shall see.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m excited. Less than a fortnight left to go! I think I may be sick.

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Cover Art

Published on by JayeLeave a comment

Editing of Love or Lust continues apace.  Not as rapid a pace as I’d like, but such is life.  It’s a lot less urgent since I’ve hit a spell of writer’s block in Ready or Not, but patience isn’t always one of my greatest virtues.

I’ve a dear friend of many years who is a wonderful and talented artist who has agreed to design a cover image for me, but he is a very busy man with a business of his own (Video Game Heaven, Augusta, Ga on Peach Orchard Rd for those who’re interested.) so I’ve fired up photoshop and made a Plan B/Place Holder cover image.

Believe me, his should be better than this.  Though I am curious to know thoughts, so please answer the attached poll.

It uses this Creative Commons image.