pexels, Pixabay, Public Domain

I realise I’ve said little for the last two months although quite a bit has been going on behind the scenes. I  ‘engaged’ a professional editor at the beginning of June, and things are in the early stages, but so far I’m pleased.

I’ve done more work on the ‘back matter’ of the ebook, and also overhauled my stylesheet document before I approached my editor as there were a few small inconsistencies in it.

I played with Gimp again to come up with a transparent cover image that includes the title, author name and the publishing imprint logo. Graphics are not my forte and it takes ages to accomplish what someone else could no doubt do in an hour or less, but I got there eventually. I think I have the image sized correctly now for the ebook.

I contacted Fantasia Frog who have produced a few covers for me already, including the one for the WIP, to check what format their book cover credit should be in, and also to enquire about a possible bookmark for sale on the FF site. After some back and forth, I now have image files for a bookmark which shows information about the forthcoming book on one side and some fantasy images etc and my website link etc on the other. I can use that generic side on future bookmarks. The FF designer very kindly went the extra mile and did some investigation for me re online printers, and we identified one to use. I should already have sorted out the printing, but have been sidetracked with other things since.

While corresponding, I also asked about a premade cover for a novel which I’ve only written part of – and ended up buying it.

I also made a start on editing the second book I intend to self publish, though I’ve only managed the first chapter so far. It is, however, a much shorter book and more straightforward, being a first person narrative, so I’m hoping it will need a lot less time and effort to get it in a state where an editor can look at it.

To summarise the latest goals and progress:

1. Produce a fourth e-book version and play it through on text-to-speech and make further amendments – Completed.
2. Work out how to format a Kindle book including the front and end pages and what to put in those – Pretty happy with the process I’ve documented, apart from the continuing issue with the title page image which has the text too small possibly because of making it responsive and sizing for the screen (not including actual figures for width and height). Need to try again with text title/author name and the logo image and see if they still split across ‘pages’. Need to create a short dummy ebook to find out if the trial attempt at a transparent graphic works, as none of the preview tools are any use for that. Done – seems OK as far as I’ve been able to check from putting the dummy book onto Kindle and also Kobo.
3. Once the final edit is complete, approach the revised shortlist of pro editors to establish how much it would cost for this long first MS, and whether it can be done without having to spend ‘loadsamoney’. Done – and engaged an editor. Now awaiting feedback.
4. Finalise the back of book text and also remember to add info to the copyright/dedication page such as the book cover designer’s and editor’s credits. More or less done – contacted designer and ascertained form of credits they wanted, and added that to the draft front matter. Overhauled the back matter text.
5. Consider if further tweaks are needed to the ebook conversion process in light of advice in David Gaughran’s book and linked articles. Haven’t had time to progress this.
6. Arrange to print book marks. Again, haven’t done this yet.

Those nice people at ROW80 are posting updates on a blog ‘linky’ list again – see here. Alternatively, you can check the Facebook group here.