Dan Marvin’s Blog

Today I uploaded the final version of “Briefs” and the cover to LSI, the company doing the printing.  I am sure they will need some things fixed but at least they have it all there and it feels like progress!  It’s going to be tight to get the book shipped by the 30th, but not impossible if they’re efficient.  I’m getting excited, although I’ve seen the book from Lulu before this feels like a big step with the finished cover and improvements to the formatting.  I’m $130 poorer for the experience, so I sure hope it sells!

Yesterday I took a half day of vacation to ‘finish’ Briefs.  I finished up the cover art and sent it to Shannon to run through his cover program around 4PM.  I finished proofing the book and sent it to him to put into a PDF about 10 last night.  Whew!  That was a lot of work.  I still have to set up the book on LSI when I get the files back from Shannon and then order the proof copy.  I’m not sure how hard that will be or how long it will take.  I have nine days, but the proof copy comes with express shipping.

I did fix two fairly significant things in the edit.  About half way through the book, Word had changed the formatting, adding a space behind each paragraph.  I fixed each story from there on.  That caused some bigger blank areas at the end of stories, so I added several more ‘Fabricated Factoids”, etc.  I also fixed a problem with the footer/page number that had a space in the line at the bottom of the page.  The rest of it was pretty minor, a heading in the wrong font, a few wrong words that spell check wouldn’t pick up (reign vs rein, etc).

I hope to be able to report by the end of the weekend that it is not only uploaded but looks good!

Friday came and went without Briefs being ordered or finalized.  I did work on the editing last night and have been going back and forth on the cover at length.  I had something that was ‘good enough’ but decided I wanted ‘as close to perfect as I can make it” instead.  So… more time.  New deadline is Wednesday, wish me luck!

I am about to start truly self publishing Briefs and have to send Amazon a book for them to have in inventory before it will be added to the site.  While that should be straightforward, I’ve decided I need to make the cover more interesting and make sure the inside is completely perfect before I upload it to the publishing site.  I’ve enlisted the help of Shannon at the Lulu Book Review site and he’s been very helpful on the cover.  My wife was suckered into helping with the editing with promises of untold riches once I become a best selling author. 

I’m hoping to get everything in the cleaned up and final form by this Friday, then uploaded to the publishing site.  I have to order one copy to make sure everything came out right.  Hopefully this copy will be perfect and I’ll be able to send it to Amazon.   It’s going to be a foot race so check back often to see if I meet my January 30th shipping date!

The lulu book review blog just did a wonderful review on “Briefs for the Reading Room”!  It even made me want to read it.  Getting books reviewed is very challenging I’ve come to discover so having this free service out there is a great resource for aspiring authors.

http://lulubookreview.wordpress.com