Brisk Worlds have been out in the wild for 37 days now, (first review here) and it has already taken on a new form.
As of October 13th it can be purchased in paperback form!!!!!
Now, the more astute of you might notice that the cover looks completely different from the eBook version that I released back in September. Well, that's because it is. By quite a bit.
THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT
Publishing a book was my dream since starting this blog (and for many years before too). In September I accomplished that with an eBook collection of my Flash Fiction entitled BRISK WORLDS.
It was a fun learning curve and got me over the hump I'd been stuck behind for quite sometime. And while it does count as 'me being published', like many writers out there, your book just doesn't feel like it counts until you can hold a real copy in the palm of your hand.
Putting together an eBook is the easier of the two options by far. The formatting is simpler due to the settings on most devices taking care of font size, justification, etc. You don't have to worry about headings, page numbers, or blank pages. So, so simple.
I put the eBook out to cross the milestone, accomplish my goal, tick the box, scratch that itch.
And then I set straight to work on the paperback.
It got stressful at times. You want every chapter to start on the right hand page. Blank pages creep in but you don't want the page number or the header on them. It becomes a digital nightmare and MS Word fought me every step of the way. When that's all figured out (hours of formatting later) your book needs a back cover to match the front-
-which is where I was led astray.
BLANK CANVA
Although I worked my ass off creating the cover myself (see post vol 4 part 3), because I was using such basic tools, I had issues with KDP not liking the DPI of my finished piece. It turned out that, although it looked good on my laptop, the process of putting my design from MS PowerPoint to MS Word and back again caused quality issues.
I pushed through with the paperback version at the time and ordered a proof copy from Createspace. It looked . . . good . . . but not great. And while others couldn't see it, the image and the text had a certain . . . 'blur' to them.
I figured it would have to do but I knew that I would want better for any future project. So I looked around to see what else was available on a budget.
A few fellow writer friends offered up the programs they use. I still wanted free, because I just can't spare enough on this yet. And then I was reminded of CANVA (see post vol 1 part 27).
Wanting to know what I could accomplish by just playing around, I got to work on a cover. With no ideas at the time for the cover of my upcoming project, I figured it would be easier to just try something alternate for BRISK WORLDS instead.
The original cover, with the trial and error, the restarts, the formatting, and the reader voting blog post must have hit six or seven hours of work (at least).
The grey cover above took about 25 minutes.
And I fell in love with it immediately.
I couldn't put my finger on it, but the image of the world, the font, and how it all went together (front and back) just looked a hell of a lot more professional than the original.
A TALE OF TWO COVERS
Torn was the best way to describe me after that. At first I kept it to myself (and fellow writer Liz Hedgecock because I had to share my creation with someone!).
But then I showed a few people at work and a few family members and a few friends and . . . well they all liked the new one. And I liked it more and more as the days passed.
It just left me with a big choice to make.
Of course, we know how it ended, don't we. Last week I received my own paperback copy of the new cover and it looked perfect. So I approved the proof and released the paperback version of BRISK WORLDS into the wilds of Amazon.
That's almost it now (Kobo version coming December 2017). With one project behind me, I'm busy at work on Project Rage, before I settle down and spend my November diving into NaNoWriMo.
I'm over the hurdle of publishing and my hope now is that momentum carries me onward, project after project, release after release.
I'm actually looking forward to 2018.
See you in . . . seven.
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