Now Available in Paperback – At Last!

Yippee!!

I finally conquered CreateSpace and got the paperback up online.

Things that were tricker than I expected:

1. The Table of Contents

OK, this is largely my fault because I don’t have a full version of Word but, that being said, I still have OpenOffice and LibreOffice so the fact that I had to do the Table of Contents THREE TIMES to get the page numbers right is just my Inner Blonde getting some exercise.

2. Font Size

What looks great on-screen doesn’t work so well in a book. In the end, I sat with the Proof Copy and some other physical books (that I liked the look of and thought were easy to read) and compared them. Then I increased the font size and the line spacing; hopefully it’s an easier read as a result.

3. Re-Paginating

Having changed the font size, I had to re-paginate the whole thing.

4. Table of Contents

Which stuffed up the page numbers in the TOC, so I did that again.

5. Chapter Headings

The CreateSpace template has chapter headings at the top of the page. In a book, that looks really weird. So I moved them all to the same point halfway down the page (copied and pasted a gap into each page in front of the chpater heading).

6. Re-Paginating

So then I had to re-paginate the whole thing all over again and because there was the occasional page with just one line on it, I tweaked things and now the Chapter Headings aren’t all a uniform distance down the page. I really considered making more changes to font and line spacing. Then I had a glass of wine, stopped considering it and decided enough was enough.

7. Table of Contents

I carefully checked the TOC – all good.

I saved the re-paginated Word doc as a PDF and uploaded it to CreateSpace. Had another glass of wine while I was waiting.

Did the online Digital Proof Checker thing and the page numbers in the TOC were wrong. Again. By one page.

Briefly considered just having another glass of wine and letting it go but my Inner Perfectionist (who is also blonde but in a Nazi sort of way) wouldn’t let me. She took the wine away and MADE me do it all over again.

And I finally uploaded the file! It had 135 pages now, so I got a new cover from Morgan – this cover was big enough to have the title and author on the spine. Yay! I uploaded the new cover Morgan had made. I thought about ordering another proof copy (my Inner Perfectionist was keen) but I really really REALLY want to have copies to sell at the next Big Stone Rolls Inside workshop on 1st August. So I took a deep breath and ordered 10 copies – my rationalisation for this was that I had actually done a good job with the proofing, the first proof copy was fine except for aesthetic tweaking (and the TOC) and if they arrived all stuffed up, well, when I’m hugely famous, they’ll be really valuable.

Author copies are only $2.98 but you still have to pay postage. I’m not sure how that works when the minimum price (based on production costs) is $6.20. Amazon-logic.

Now I’m sitting back finishing the wine, waiting for the sales to start rolling in and, of course,  working on the next book.