The Nuts and Bolts

First things first, thanks to everyone who purchased Second Olympus during my birthday sale!  I hope everyone loves it (or at least doesn't want to throw tomatoes at me). Once again, I beg,implore,grovel at your feet to PLEASE post reviews to places like Amazon and Barnes & Noble.  The number of reviews a book has (doesn't matter if they're good, bad, or indifferent) dictates which books get picked up by the system for things like "If you liked this book, you might also like THIS one!" which can bring me to new readers.  The general rumor is that 50-ish reviews is the golden spot for being included in the system algorithms, and you'll note that not a single one of my books has that many reviews on Amazon.  Love an author?  Leave a review.

Secondly, A Line in the Sand, better known as JJD5, is now available for preorder!  Ebook only, of course, because preordering the print copy isn't something that's available at this time.  The release date is currently January 23rd (bonus points if anyone can guess why), so I'll try to have the print copy released prior to that, so that we can all hopefully be reading on the release date.

Kindle
Nook
Kobo
iTunes

Now, you might be saying "But why is there no cover art?  We want a cover!"  Well, yes, so do I.  Very very much, in fact.  But, things have to go in a certain order when designing a cover, so I'll gladly bore you with excessive details.

Pick up the book nearest to you.  Look at the spine.  Most likely, the cover of the book has a front piece, a back piece, and a spine piece.  Well, the front and back covers will always be the dimensions you designate.  For example, my self-pubbed JJD covers will be 5x8.  The spine dimensions, however, are determined by how thick the book is.  More pages = thicker book = wider spine.  Everything has to fit just so to line up with the edges of the book.  So, you can't begin designing a print book cover without knowing how many pages your book has, first.

Look!  Visual aids!

So where does that leave me?  Well, last night I finished making editing notes on JJD5. Some were handwritten new paragraphs, others were things like "Awkward sentence", or "re-order" or "WTF?".  My next step is to start typing all those changes into the actual Word doc that is my manuscript.   Once that's done, I can copy/paste the document into a template that will become my print book file.  I have to decide all about the front-of-the-book material, and if I want to include pages at the back from any of my other books, that sort of thing.  Only when that is ALL done, and I can get a final page count, do I then request my cover from my cover artist.

I'm hoping to have the edits all done by the 16th at the VERY latest.  That was the deadline I gave myself, and getting it done sooner would make me do a happy dance.  I'll probably spend a couple of days (or three, or four) getting the print copy formatted and prepped, and then I'll email about the cover.  I'm pushing the time limit to get everything set for a January 23rd release date (all final files have to be uploaded by January 13th at the very latest), but I'm way behind where I wanted to be originally anyway, and I hate to drag it out any longer.

In the meantime, while we wait, I give you my Christmas Groot.