December is a busy month, but the publishing process continues!
This past month I posted a series on Alpha and Beta Readers and as I’m finishing up book one, I am reminded of how grateful I am for each person who has taken the time to give me feedback.
But in the meantime, let me give a bit of an update on the process at the moment.
Book One (subtitled: The Key Quest)
I finally got Book One put together in a PDF file for printing and made up my cover. I uploaded this to Createspace (Amazon’s printing arm) and Ingram. I then ordered a proof copy from Createspace and was thrilled that it came in just five days! That’s including printing and shipping across the border (US to Canada). I was impressed. I seem to be having a bit of a trouble with Ingram’s proof copy. Ingram’s site is nowhere near as simple to use as Createspace and it’s hard to figure out exactly what’s going on. 🙂
When I received the proof copy (Createspace), you can imagine I was pretty excited! However, as I started to look over the proof, it didn’t take long to start finding problems with it. Createspace had done an amazing job of printing what I sent to them, I just had sent problems to them in my files. 🙂
Here are a few of the issues I found: my title was too high up on the front of the book; I misspelled the name of my Publishing Company in one of the spots; and I still had a number of grammar/punctuation mistakes. I ended up reading the entire book again, cover to cover and used a pen to mark up the proof copy a LOT! I’m glad I did. I think I found about 200 corrections. This evening I ordered a new proof copy and I believe I am still on schedule for my book launch teams in February!
When I ordered my new proof, I corrected the mistakes I had made and cleaned up the cover. I also took out the headings (I had the name of the book up there) as well as added in chapter numbers. I am currently awaiting its approval by Createspace so I can put through the actual order.
Soon I’ll be blogging on how to set up your book for printing, but no time now! I hope to blog about using MS Word, MS Publisher and Pressbooks in setting up your book.
Book Two (subtitled: The Defense Quest)
I have not paid much attention at all to Book Two for quite a while. I have been focused on getting Book Three typed up and Book One to print. I expect I’ll be able to settle in on polishing Book Two in the month of January and, hopefully, have it to the printers by February/March for a proof copy and start printing polished copies in April.
Book Three (subtitled: The Harry Quest)
This book is in rough draft and I have started to do my initial edit of this book. I am finding some of it is decent, but the first chapter was absolutely horrible. I am not sure what to do about it other than to maybe just rewrite it. I am going to polish it up a little bit and let my Alpha Readers give me some feedback and go from there.
When I read it, I was faced with the reality that it simply stunk. Oh, it was bad. 🙂 But that’s part of the process, so that’s okay. 🙂
I received a series of texts the other day from one of my Beta readers asking how long before Book Three will be ready for Alpha/Beta Readers. It’ll likely be the end of January.
So, there you have it. This is the December update on the book situation!
My plan is to have some book launch teams starting up in February. I have already arranged to do one at the Public Library here in Ingersoll and I’m hoping to do one at a school, but have not heard back yet from the school (I only contacted them recently).
Thanks for reading!
UPDATE: To check out Shawn’s books, head to My Books page!
Shawn
8 responses to “December Book Update”
You’ve had a busy month! Also, what a useful blog you have!
Thanks so much. I started this blog because I was struggling to find answers to a lot of publishing questions. I thought I could provide something helpful from what I was learning. I’m glad to hear it is helpful!!
This is a great site! I wish I had read some of this BEFORE I published my first book through Smashwords, and then CreateSpace for the next six books. My editor and I have used CreateSpace for all my books, and it is amazing! They are so very helpful, and ship very quickly. After my editor thinks we are good to go, we load the cover and manuscript. When it’s given the ‘go ahead’ from CreateSpace, usually within 24 hours, I look through the digital proof, then order two proof copies. Then we read the proof copies out loud, finding many more mistakes! 😉 Then we order a final copy after mistakes are corrected, but I go through the digital proof copy first. I say all that because I think when you self-publish, you have to be extremely careful in the typo, grammar, head-hopping, and research areas. You don’t want to offer anything for sale…or give it away for less than an ‘A’ grade in an English class. Thank you for all the fantastic information here, and for the follow. I’ve done the same.
Thanks so much. I just finished going through my second proof today. It’s a lot of work, but you’re right, we should not offer low quality work! Self publishing has a bit of a bad rap when it comes to quality and I think we can change that. 🙂
One of Deborah’s comments touches on a particularly important issue — reading your work out loud. It’s the only way to slow your brain down such that it doesn’t “fix” errors while you’re reading. By reading out loud, and in as dramatic a voice as you can muster, you’ll be able to see mistakes that are otherwise invisible — at least until the book goes to press, and it’s too late. [smile] Better to catch ’em up front.
That’s such a good point, Josh (and Deborah). My books are geared at a younger audience so I read them out loud to my kids. They had to put up with my many pauses while I highlight issues and more, but that’s been a helpful part of my editing process, although I have not yet read the proof copy itself out loud.
Thanks fr following my log.
Thanks for taking time away from your writing to visit my blog!