A busy weekend for self-published authors
On Saturday morning the proofs came back from the printer. The proofs basically consist of a glossy-printed copy of the cover and an assembled, comb-bound version of the book. Here's what our proofs look like.
From these, we are supposed to catch any mistakes that the printer might have made and report back. Unfortunately, this new look at our book revealed to us several mistakes that we had made, including some missing words at the top of page 93. Much cursing and spitting later, we have assembled some correction pages and will pay the fee to have the pages corrected. At this stage, corrections for mistakes
we made are not supposed to be necessary; we should have done all that prior to sending the book to the printer. Fortunately, the changes to the galley (the pre-publication copies for reviewers) are only going to cost us $.35 per page. Unfortunately, it's going to be more like $10 per page for the changes to the finished book. But hey, we caught it now, when it's correctable, as opposed to
after 1000 copies were printed up.
Scott and I had a really good conversation about marketing: what to do, and how much of it. Scott is much more conservative than I am. He wants to do all the marketing through our web site and other web sites we know; I'm totally gung ho and I want to fly the book critics from
Premiere magazine into town to interview us. Scott and I are meeting somewhere in the middle.
So my grandiose dreams of a full-color brochure and press kit have been toned down to a more reasonable (and affordable) scheme: postcards patterned after the front of the book, which will do multiple duties as a mini-brochures, photographs of the book's cover, and (duh) postcards to send when we want to test a particular publication's interest. If they respond to the postcard with "send me a review copy," then we know we've got a live one on the line. As opposed to sending review copies into black holes. Actual review copies will be sent out with sell sheets (letter sized one-page flyers with the basic pitch and book info) and another postcard.
You can't tell me life isn't like a David Lynch movie
While standing in the medicine aisle at the grocery store today (this cough plagues me still, though it weakens every day), I was stopped by an elderly German man. Through broken English and a case of halitosis made worse by his broad smile, he told me of his encounter with a raccoon the previous morning. He then held up his hand, which was red and swollen and had four or five purplish bite marks punctuating the crimson skin.
"You know," I said, not wanting to prolong the conversation but not wanting to withhold information that might save the man's life, "Those things carry rabies."
"What is this... rabies?" he mimicked back to me. I swear to God, he said it just like you or I might parody someone trying out a new English word.
"Uh... it's a bacterial disease carried by animals." (I was wrong – it's actually viral.) "Have you ever heard of a rabid dog?"
"Oh yes, this animal looked like a funny-looking dog." (Maybe he thought I didn't know what a raccoon was, or that he had used the wrong word.)
"You should have a doctor look at that," I said, as Christina walked up. I used her arrival to help extricate myself from the situation. He didn't look all that alarmed, but he did thank me and finished up his grocery shopping. On the way out of the grocery store I noticed him driving off in a beat up old Hyundai plastered with American flag stickers. One of them said, "The Power of Pride."
I hope he was driving to the emergency room, or else the power of pride isn't going to do him much good.
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