When I decided to e-pub Zig Zephyr and the Forever Diamond, I figured it would be easy-peasy. The book was already done, after all, so it was just a matter of formatting it, getting it up online, and that was it. Ha ha. Foolish man.
Here's just a partial list of the things that have cropped up in the last week ...
1. Rewriting and tweaking the product blurb a zillion times.
2. Revamping my entire personal website to make it more Zig-friendly, which meant switching Internet registrars and hosting companies, taking down my old website, and beginning to rebuild the site from literally scratch. I finally got it to a point where I can BEGIN working on it but I can stand the thought of people seeing it. (I ultimately decided not make a separate page for the book, but fold it into my regular website).
3. Write a sell-sheet slash press release and begin compiling a list of places to send it.
4. Set up a personal Amazon page
5. Oh yeah, and regular work.
The funny thing is, I'm not resenting this sudden crush on my time. It's actually fun. The way I see it, I'm building an infrastructure, and it's kind of like putting up an apartment building. You want it to be nice, and then once it's built, I'll be on the hunt for people to live in it.
6 comments:
Now you need to consider a paper version via CreateSpace, and you can go off and visit schools and stuff.
Yeah, I've been debating that.
And I've been debating, if I was to do that, is Lightning Source or CreateSpace better? Ideally, I'd want to control the pricing.
I don't know. CreateSpace was relatively easy to work with, although compared to just e-publishing it was a giant pain in the butt. I'll continue to do it through CreateSpace just because they're affiliated with Amazon, whereas I think Lightning Source is affiliated with one of the distributors. I do remember looking at LS's site and saying WTF? Whereas with CreateSpace it was more WTF? as I was trying to figure out the layout, to which I eventually turned to Natasha to save myself from myself.
I think Zoe uses LS. I forget why.
Your site looks great! Have you thought about putting a clickable cover image in the right column under "News Flash"?
Formatting for print is major intense compared to ebook formatting. It's totally different. After you re-size the page, you have to tweak Word to make the pages number correctly, then you have to go through page-by-page to check for widows and orphans, and getting rid of those things is a pain in the butt. (Cause when you get rid of one, another pops up two pages down the road.)
It was fun, though. I'm going to start playing with an Adobe InDesign trial, see if it's $700 easier there, LOL.
Lightning Source distributes thru Ingram (that's how mine go anyway). Dunno anything about CreateSpace - but ya gotta have a print version. The school thing is a blast - don't discount it.
Isn't it amazing how you don't mind the work when it's for something you truly love?
Side note to Natasha -- InDesign makes it WORLDS easier. I couldn't imagine formatting anything in Word.
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