It’s been a while since I’ve uploaded a video blog post, but I received my print copies of “Stone and String” today (a day early!) and wanted to do the unboxing. So I’ve got a quick announcement about the Infinitas Publishing booth at Burg Fest, the upcoming dates regarding Distant Horizon, and the first look at the print copies of “Stone and String.” Check out the video below, and I hope you enjoy it. 🙂
Filed under Business Ventures, Writing
Today I’m going to interrupt my usual post with an announcement: I have received my paperback proof of Magic’s Stealing!
It came in a small, cardboard wrap (not quite a box, but not a bag, either), and was delivered to my front door. Upon opening the package, I took a few pictures. 😀
(( Please ignore the various HeroMachine pictures and cool artwork in the background… those aren’t our personal works (Though if you want a good way to organize the general look of your characters, HeroMachine is quite fun. There’s a whole row of pictures off the frame that we based on one of our campaigns). ))
Fancy Title Page
Anyway, this book has 158 pages of content, plus additional pages for the front and back matter, and it clocks in at 170 pages long. Here you can see the the title page (there’s a few pages before it), and further down this post are samples of a chapter page and a regular, full-text page. You can click the images to see them at a larger size.
I did all the formatting in Microsoft Word 2007, and I hope to do a post later on some of the fun tools you can use to add a professional touch to your books. Once I tested a few pages out on my printer for various fonts and sizes and line spacing, I saved this as a PDF, and checked it in the digital proofer on Createspace. Once that looked good, I ordered the print edition.
This particular book is 5.25 x 8 inches (based on a few of my favorite books with easy-to-read formatting), which uses the same dimensions as a 6 x 9, so the cover converted easily. Glossy cover and black-and-white, cream pages. I chose the “bleed” option so that I could use the full page image treatment (pulled from the background of the cover) for the chapter intros and title page.
Page Full of Text
I did notice that the words got a tad bit close to the gutter, so that’s something I’ll have to keep in mind for future series, but it’s still readable. Of course, I also justified the text.
This is the end result, and I’m now reading through the book to make sure the formatting is correct before I release the print edition (Amazon only, for now).
I’ve found a couple typos, which I’ve made note of, but if those are all I find, I will most likely let those slide for now so that I don’t potentially mess up the formatting right before ordering a large number of books. If I find a large number of typos, I may go ahead and do the initial revision now.
Though that one I’ve found may keep pestering me…
I don’t know. Maybe I’ll order a second proof, that way I can be sure the formatting looks right and that there are as few errors in the print book as possible.
Anyway, regardless of what I choose to do, I plan to go back and revisit both the print and ebook editions at some point for typos, but I’m considering doing that all at once, when more typos have inevitably been found.
In the meantime, look forward to the paperback edition, coming soon! 😀
Sorry, this photo got a little blurry…
I hope you’ve found this post helpful. 🙂
Have you had any experiences with proofing a print edition of your book? How do you decide when to update for typo corrections?
Filed under Book Covers, Business Ventures, Writing
Guess what my husband and I got in the mail today… the full version of our Battle Decks: Multiverse 1953 card game! Woot! 😀
We unboxed the game almost immediately, and now you can get another sneak peek into Battle Decks (including the cover). We printed the game at The Game Crafter, a site which is little pricey but not bad for print-on-demand games. I was a bit nervous as to how well it would print, but I’m happy with the results, and I’m looking forward to playing our first game with the actual cards.
A heads up, if the game looks interesting to you, we will be releasing a free, PDF trial edition which shows you how to play a basic game. A try-before-you-buy sort of thing.
Battle Decks: Multiverse 1953 is a card game Isaac and I will be publishing under our new business, Infinitas Publishing. Isaac created the rules of the game and figured out how the points worked and what the stats should be. I did about half of the card art, minus sketching anything mechanical. Isaac did those sketches. We’re also working on an upcoming blog series called The Multiverse Chronicles, which mentions several of the characters included in the game.
I hope you enjoyed this post. 🙂
Filed under Book Covers, Business Ventures, Gaming, Photo Illustration
Stephanie Flint - Author and Artist 