Sometime today, a UPS truck will drive up and hand me a proof copy of Pixie Dust. This is my last chance to notice any killer flaws in the cover and the text before committing to turning the book loose for sale.
If I see something horrible, then I have a very narrow window to make the corrections and upload the changes to the printer. Originally, I said Pixie Dust would be released ‘in April’, but as more and more pieces of the publishing puzzle came together, I chose April first. Everything was going fine, until there was a mistake in the publishing process that cost me about six days. It was one of those things where I uploaded the a file to the wrong queue, and then didn’t notice the error.
It’s quite a juggling act. About three or four months ago, I created the advance reader copy versions of the book and ebook and gave them out to a few selected review sources that preferred advance copies. The theory is that, should the reviewers choose to write about the book, their comments would hit the internet near publishing time.
There are also four publishing streams I’m trying to manage, the trade paperback printed by Lightningsource. The mobipocket ebook version and the Kindle version are currently queued up ready to go. The mobipocket eBookbase system, took the file and my April first publication date and seems ready to go once the clock strikes midnight over in Europe. The Kindle version will require me to go back to the website and click the publish button the day before that, and hope that there are no unforeseen delays in turning it loose on the Kindle store.
The bad boy of the lot is my ePub format ebook distributor which I may have to replace. It took weeks to publish my other titles there, and now they aren’t communicating with me about my new book. That’s another story for another time.
While it’s not working out perfectly, it is my intent to get Pixie Dust published in all formats at the same time, with reviews hopefully to notify people that it’s available. Some of the bigger publishers try to stagger releases, so that their high dollar hardback sales aren’t undercut by the ebook sales, but in my case, after the various selling and production costs are deleted, all formats produce roughly the same return. The only exception being the books I sell from my own website and package up myself.
I’ll keep you updated.
UPDATE: It arrived and looks fine. I’ll need to do a more detailed check, but nothing about the new cover introduced any blatant errors.