Mary Sisson's Blog, page 44

Commence freaking out....

I took another look at Trials--JFC, it's 30 chapters already! Whenever I look at it after a while, I'm just like, Dear God, this is SO BIG! I'm easing into it--today I changed the formatting in hopes of making production a little easier next time around. Of course, that caused new and exciting problems with the italics, but I will sort it out tomorrow when I start re-reading the mother.

I had a bunch of ideas for it when I stopped work on it last, so I'm going to attempt to incorporate them in during this read. But not today--today is for feeling overwhelmed.

Hm, things have changed

As I've mentioned before, when I did Trang the things that really helped were 1. doing a giveaway at LibraryThing and 2. getting an ad with Bookbub.

This time around, Bookbub is WAY more expensive, and the people at LibraryThing haven't done squat. (My sister had the same complaint--I guess the culture there has changed. I have more ratings at GoodReads at this point.)

So I poked around, and thanks to the ever-reliable Lindsay Buroker I found these recommendations. I'm giving eBookSoda and Free Kindle Books & Tips a go, because both are willing to waive the review requirements for new books. (FreeBooksy also has a BargainBooksy thing--I might use one or the other some day, but both are relatively pricey, so I'm going to start with the cheaper services.)

Whew!

Things are frantic (I'm not going to be doing anything else book-related until May), and then The Weirld proofs arrived today--pant-pant! They look good, I think--I approved the large-print edition. I had already approved the regular edition, because the mistake was so bad, but looking at the hard copy...eh, you know, it's one of those things where it could be the print run itself--it's just a little bit off the spine--but then I felt like the title could stand to be moved too, so I changed it. I think I'll just let that go with a digital proof, though.

Done!

I finished inputting the corrections, and have given the files to SquareSpace. Whoot!!

Progress report

Yesterday I proofed and input corrections for the large-print edition, and today I finished proofing it. (I'm tired, so I'll finish inputting the corrections tomorrow.) I also found another typo (a comma error!) that was also in the regular edition, so I'm re-submitting that interior with the new cover to CreateSpace--that one should be ready to go when I get the new proof, and hopefully the next proof of the large-print edition will be release-worthy as well.

Whoopsie!

I got hard copies of both editions of The Weirld only to realize that there's been a typo on the cover of the paper copy of The Weirld this entire time: I misspelled "journalist"! Awesome! Anyway, everyone's just been buying the e-book, so you know, thank God for that--it will be fixed soon. (So, buy it now, I guess!)

Anyway, the interior corrections on the regular edition went through fine, and I'm going over the interior of the large-print edition (the cover needed some fixing as well, predictably enough).

Taking a step back, taxes are DONE (DONE!!!!!), so now I'm kind of hmmm-ing at the calendar. I've got stuff at the end of the month, but maybe I can take another stab at Trials in the meantime--I actually had a bunch of good ideas for it before I got swallowed whole by production.

Whoo!

This edit of the large print edition is done, baby! The book is in with CreateSpace, along with a less-typo'd version of the original edition (nothing quite like reading over something in a different typeface to make mistakes pop). Ah, I'm happy about that--of course, it will be interesting to see how the book looks when I have an actual proof in hand.

You know what's interesting? Obviously this book is only about half the size of the large-print Trang books, which really push CreateSpace's maximum page count. And as a result, while the Trang large-print editions must be considerably more expensive than the normal paper editions, The Weirld's large-print edition can be the same price. Not bad!

Wow

I took a peek over at BookBub--wow, that's gotten way pricier. They used to be $60 for a free promo (granted, it took some effort to get picked up), and now it would cost $470 to do a 99-cent promo. OK. For that kind of money, I'd really want to make sure it works, so I'll definitely wait. 

Progress report

I did six more chapters of the large-print edition--only five more to go, so that (fingers crossed) should get done in the next couple of days. Then I will order a proof and give it another going over.

Progress report

I did five chapters of the large-print edition of The Weirld--that went well, I'm definitely getting more efficient. Plus there were just a lot fewer of those spreads that were half-a-line off. I don't know what causes it--having an even number of paragraph breaks on one side and an odd number on the other? Having many more paragraph breaks on one side than the other? I'm sure a real book designer would know....

Anyway, just a few more days of this and I should be done! Between the three editions of The Weirld and revamping the two Trang books, I feel like I've been on quite the production treadmill!