Merry Christmas And All That

Long Time, No See

Sorry I've been neglecting the blog of late. I was so wrapped up in the final editing and formatting of "Blackwing Rising" that it seemed to consume all my author energies.

For some reason, MS Word's quirks managed to make the manuscript translate incorrectly into some of the Epub formats. I lost paragraph indents. It took"forever" to get it all fixed. When a book is over 400 pages long, editing takes hours.

Apparently, when I transferred some of the pages from one version of Word to another, the formatting floated off into one of the black holes Microsoft Office likes to offer now and then. I've fallen into them before and learned how to work my way back out, but sometimes it takes a lot of experimenting. At long last, Smashwords accepted the book for its premium distribution channels, so it's finally available in just about all electronic version.s

Then I headed back over to CreateSpace to publish the paperback version. First I had some cover problems--relatively easy to fix this time.  Bless its little heart, the interior was just fine, but it didn't get there easily. This time it was trying to get the page numbering to work the way I wanted it to. Setting the section breaks kept sending my first chapter off into the black hole of even instead of odd page placement, no matter what I seemed to do. I must have "killed" another couple hours getting that right.

Then, of course, there is the filing for ISBN numbers. I have purchased a block of ISBN's to register for my books. Each book requires three ISBN numbers, one for each kind of publication. So each book has a Kindle number, an electronic text number, and a paperback/print number--well, not really. I could use the same ISBN for Kindle and the other electronic text versions, but I haven't. (I do need to check on this.)  At any rate, I do have to enter a lot of data to get the books registers. (There is a "clone" feature I discovered that helps, however.)

While much of this work is a nuisance, I do find having control over publication is empowering. Of course, I would love to have a publisher take me on, but for now, I am happy to do it myself.

I am now immersed in the coming holidays, so I may not post much again for a while. So, with the spirit of peace, joy, love and hope, I wish you all a Merry Christmas!