Month: June 2021

‘Rags and Muffin’ Is Finished

I know I’ve been radio silent again for a while, but that’s because I was again in one of those stages where I have a project I want to complete but it seems to be taking too long. But, today, I have it done—the final edits and formatting for Rags and Muffin, the novel I am planning to release after Dead 2 Rites, which will release after Jake and the Dynamo.

This took longer than expected for several reasons, both related and unrelated to the project itself. One thing that took a while was inserting all the internal links: This novel has a glossary in the back, mostly because, when I was a kid, I thought novels with glossaries, such as Dune or Watership Down, were extra special. But in the world of eBooks, a functional glossary requires hyperlinks in the text. Vellum, my formatting software, has a limited ability to add internal links (though it has fewer options than I would like), and today, I got the links done.

The cover art for this project hasn’t been made yet. However, I uploaded the PDF of the paperback and mocked up a fake cover on Amazon KDP so I could use the previewer to make sure the internal margins are correct.

The chapter headers and section breaks are from Barbusco comics. At the moment, I only have the one chapter-header image, the gun next to a teacup. I’m thinking about commissioning a few more so there isn’t just one image at the head of every chapter, but if I do that, I can get them in the same dimensions so they won’t affect the page count. The complete PDF of the paperback clocks in at 490 pages, including the front matter.

Real Life

The only remaining delay has to do with real-life stuff: The magical girls and I are buying a house. We had been shopping for a while, but a house that met our wants came available suddenly and unexpectedly. We’re supposed to be moving in at the end of next week if all the paperwork is complete on time, and for that reason, after this post, I’m going to go radio silent again for a bit because I’ll be focused on packing, closing, and moving.

Release Dates

Because we suddenly had to drop money on the house to avoid losing it, there isn’t a lot in the kitty for my publication and advertising costs. After we’ve made the down payment, I’ll be better situated to assess our budget and figure out what I can do, but I think we should have enough for some modest promotion.

For that reason, tentative release dates for the books are:

  1. Jake and the Dynamo:

  2. Dead 2 Rites:

  3. Rags and Muffin:

I am also (cross fingers) hoping to have the fourth volume of Jake and the Dynamo out by the end of the year.

Those are tenative, and I might tweak them by a day or three as I learn the business and, for example, figure out which days of the week are best for a release. Some unforeseen disaster or delay may also happen, but since two of the books are ready to go except for minor tweaks, I don’t think there should be any serious problem.

This has, of course, taken longer than I originally, optimistically anticipated. I can’t say I’m surprised because I haven’t self-published before; I’m just glad I didn’t have a Kickstarter because delaying release on a pre-funded project is bad form. I may, however, consider Kickstarters in the future when I’ve got the hang of this.

‘Dead 2 Rites’ Is Good to Go

Obviously, I’m still absorbed in my projects over here. I worked with Barbusco Comics and Nodsaibot to fix the issue with the cover of Dead 2 Rites. They were both very accomodating.

As you can see from the post’s eye-catch, I’m looking over the previewer on Amazon’s KDP module to make sure the paperbacks look the way they are supposed to. Once that’s squared away, I can look over the eBooks.

I can see that Vellum, despite its gigantic cost, has saved me any number of headaches. Since this is the first time I’ve done this, I now know I did a few things in the wrong order—for example, I should have already uploaded the manuscript and reviewed it before commissioning the cover art. Fortunately for me, Vellum’s presets are built to accommodate Amazon’s requirements, so, for example, my inside margins aren’t screwed up. If I had to widen those, that would throw off the page count, which would then throw off the cover art again …

Anyway, it appears my first-time, amateurish disasters have been largely averted so far. I learned a few lessons, but they have been mostly pain-free.

Also, Amazon’s software is more user-friendly than I expected, at least when you have all your files pre-built. (I understand that trying to build your paperback from a Word file using Amazon’s software is a major headache.) It automatically checks the margins on everything, and it automatically requires a deeper gutter for Dead 2 Rites than for Jake and the Dynamo because the former is considerably longer.

At least for now, it seems that the greatest difficulty comes from the requirement that the cover—front, spine, and back—need to be a single image, which means the book dimensions have to be set in stone. On the other hand, that makes wraparound covers a possibility, and that’s what we have for these two books.

Volume 1 Is Fine; Volume 2, However …

Looks like the cover for volume 2 has been rejected by KDP because the dimensions are slightly off. Looking back over the files and prep, I’m pretty sure how it happened. I’ll be going back to my artists to get this resolved; I think it’s fixable, but I’ll keep you all posted.

Preparing to Publish

I am currently wrestling with the Amazon’s esoteric system in an effort to get Jake and the Dynamo published in the new edition. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the preview and realized that I and the artists had, in fact, got the dimensions correct. There is just the slightest error here, easy to repair—and props to you if you can spot it.

Looking at the interior, it appears also that Vellum, the software I’m using, behaves as advertised: I haven’t been through the whole thing, but so far, it appears that the formatting is correct with now weird artifacts or margins. I believe this new version will be even more attractive and readable than the original paperback publication, which I was already quite pleased with.