Print Version of Infused Updated

Since it was originally published, I have found (or been told about) a few typos and grammar errors in Infused. Recently, when I converted the novel over to iBooks on a Mac, the document editor on that system pointed out a few more issues to consider (although not all of the things that it pointed out were actually incorrect). So, with the accumulation of a number of minor tweaks, I decided that it would be a good time to update the print version of the book.

With CreateSpace, when you update a book, it becomes unavailable for purchase until the process has been completed and approved. So, the print version of Infused has been unavailable for the past few days. Luckily I live one state over from one of their printing shops, so the proof of the book only took a couple of days to get here. I found a minor formatting issue and resubmitted the change online, but it will not require me to have another proof shipped to me since it is in the interior of the book - those type of changes can be proofed very well online. I have approved the new changes and am now waiting for their systems to verify that everything is in order. So, it will hopefully be available for purchase again tomorrow at some point.

During my rush to finally get Infused published last year I found that I had not put any thought into the design of the back cover of the book. What I ended up doing was putting together a quick introduction to the story using a graphics program to produce the text. This meant that there was no spelling or grammar checker, so, right near the beginning of the text there was a typo. I really wanted to fix that with this edition, so since I was modifying the cover anyway, I decided to add a picture of the author to the back cover as well. Although I love the way that the front and spine of the book turned out, the back is still pretty bland - but at least people get to see my (somewhat) smiling face now.

Infused Available on iTunes

The iPad version of Infused is now available. I used the iBooks Author tool from Apple to create the iBook version of the novel. It took this long for me create this new version simply because I did not have access to a Mac. Last week I bought a Mac Mini to be able to format books and to play around with writing iOS applications.

The iBooks version of Infused has the added feature of titles for each chapter, a bit fancier page layout, and a few minor edits.

After getting the iBooks Author tool installed, it just took a few hours to import the text from the original Word document and then go through it with the built in proofreader and spell checker to look for things that should be touched up. Once I was ready to publish the book I found that I needed to register with iTunes. It took a few days for my account to be setup. Then after installing an additional piece of software (and having to guess how to fill out several pages of forms) I uploaded my book to Apple. Next came the review process by Apple. I checked several times the next day to see if it was available in iTunes, and it appeared about a day after I had uploaded it.

The iPad version of Infused can be found at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/infused/id593767688?ls=1

Advertising

Getting people to be aware of your book by word of mouth is a difficult task. Most of the people that have bought my book have been those that know me either though my day time job, through alumni gatherings, or through my work as a lighting designer with local plays.
To try and get the word out a little more, I have decided to try a little advertising. The current play that I am designing the lighting for is How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying being put on at the Cary Arts Center in Cary, NC by the Cary Players. I am basically giving them back some of the money that they are paying me for my services to have an advertisement for Infused included in their programs that are handed out to their patrons.
This will introduce my book to an expanded audience who will hopefully find it interesting enough to purchase. We'll see how this experiment goes.

Next Project

I have been considering what I should work on writing now that Infused has been published. Before I went to the seminars by local authors (and came away depressed as described in my earlier posting) I had started writing another book. This other book is a fantasy novel with a twist, and I had written the first seven chapters. It has also been suggested by a couple of people that I write a sequel to Infused.

I have the basic story line figured out for an Infused sequel, but I don't know if it would be better to work on that, or on the more mainstream type of fantasy story that I had started. I just can't decide if it would be better to work on extending Infused with a sequel (since it is an unusual type of story) or starting an entirely different series.

If I go with the new fantasy book, one thing that I would need to work on is battle strategies for a small group of people to be able to defeat a larger numbers of enemies (which I have no knowledge of) while taking into account the special abilities that the characters have. The Infused sequel would be about Geoff learning about relationships and growing into a more complete person on a different world (as he plays god).

After Infused was Published

Once Infused was available for sale, my tasks were to make sure that people knew it was available and to get as many reviews posted as I could. I posted information about my book and put links to it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble on Facebook to let my friends know about it. I also put up a post asking those friends that had read it to post reviews. I later followed up with an e-mail out to the friends that had read it asking them to put up a review.

Since the Amazon author page was setup to be able to read a feed from a blog, I started writing this blog hoping that it would provide some more insight into myself and the book for anyone that happened across the listing. I don’t know how many people have read the entries here, but it has at least provided me with a chance to get some thoughts and experiences documented.

After a couple of weeks, I only had one review that had been posted; it was from my best friend Monique. I then posted another request to my friends on Facebook – this time saying that they can just put a comment instead of a review if they like. After this request (and mentioning a couple of friends in my blog posts), I ended up with a couple more review postings. I was a bit surprised that it was so difficult to get people to post reviews, especially since a number of my friends are theatre people and are pretty outgoing and expressive.

With no advertising helping to get visibility for my book, it’s up to me and word of mouth for the most part. However, mentioning it to people at my day job and bringing it up in conversations at parties can only get me so far.

In an attempt to make more people aware of my book, I started a post on my high school’s FaceBook page asking for information about all the different books that had been written by alumni (I knew of a couple other than mine). Information was posted about several other alumni authors, and a representative from the school said that they were working on setting up an alumni author shelf in the school library; it would be cool to have my book available at my alma mater.

I’ve given a few paperback copies of my book to friends, and I’ve joked about leaving some copies at various places in hopes that people would pick them up and read them, but really, I’m just not sure how to get more people interested in reading Infused.

Self Publishing

About a year and a half after I finished writing Infused, I finally decided to self publish it. My earlier blog posts shed light on some of the reasons that I waited so long, but in the beginning, I hesitated because I had read that agents would not work with people that had self published (either because the writer had gone outside the system, or because they would have concerns about rights to characters and stories).

I finally got to the point where I just wanted to complete the process of producing a book. So, after I spent time finishing up going through the editing changes that Joyce had suggested, I looked into what I needed to do to be able to get a printed version of my book created.

My son had been told that Create Space was a good avenue to get a book published in his teen writing group, so I looked into that site. I assumed that it must be reasonably priced if teen writers were being guided to it. There didn’t appear to be much information on the site itself about the costs involved, but there was an ‘Explore paid services’ button on the front page. I knew that they would offer editing and design services to make extra money, but I was not planning on spending anything on those offerings. So I clicked on the ‘Start a title for free’ button to see what would be involved. I had to create an account and was then given options on the kind of paperback book that I wanted to produce. I was given options of different sizes, black and white or color, and type of paper. After that was decided, I was given the chance to download a template for the interior of the book.

I had thought about wanting to have the book published in a 5 inch by 8 inch format before I went to the site, so I had formatted a copy of the novel in a Word document to be that size. I had even made a guess at the margin settings that would be needed – the main ones pertaining to the gutter settings. The gutter is the part of the paper that is in the middle (where the left and right pages come together). In a newspaper, the gutter is fairly small, but in a bound book, there is a wide area of the paper that you cannot print on (because it will be in the binding). To have a book formatted correctly to avoid printing in this binding the pages have to be setup with larger margins on the left side on the odd pages, and a larger margin on the right side of the even pages. Once I had the template Word file from Create Space on my computer, I modified the copy of my novel in the 5x8 format so that it had the same margins. I didn’t want to go through the process of copying pieces out of my file into the template file, so the formatting of titles and page numbers are not what was provided in the template. I then uploaded the interior of the book and it was presented on the screen in a realistic view of how it would look in a printed book – the shading of the pages and the flipping of the pages caused excitement to build in me.

Next, was the cover design. The site offered a number of pre-defined templates where you can put in text and upload a few pictures, but they were very rigid and they did not offer one that could handle a cover made up of just an image (which was my plan since I had created a cover image including the title a while back). So I went for the other option which was to download a template graphic file would have an outline of the back, front and binding edge that was the correct size for the number of pages of the book (and the type of paper I had selected).

Once I had the cover template, I worked to fit my image to it. I found that the picture I had created was more square than was needed, and started to trim off the sides to fit, but then I realized that I had enough extra width to be able to also wrap around and cover the binding. I really liked the way that it came out. I then had to add the title and my name to the edge of the image so that they would appear on the binding. I didn’t get them perfectly lined up, but by this point I was raring to get it submitted and let it go without inspecting it carefully.

For the back of the book, they suggested that I put an overview of the story and a picture of myself and information about me as the author. I quickly typed up an overview and put that on the back, but I knew that this information would be a lot more important if the book would be available in retail stores (where people would pick it up and consider purchasing it) than when the book is only offered on-line, so I didn’t put a great deal of effort into it. Unfortunately there is a typo that I didn’t notice at the time that got through. I didn’t have a professionally looking photo of myself and I did not have any other writing credits, so I didn’t put any author information on the back.

Once I had the cover finished, I uploaded it. The next day I was sent an e-mail that the book was ready to be proofed. I had the option of checking it completely on line or having a copy sent to me. I chose to purchase a copy and have it sent to me. It arrived a couple of days later. It felt great to have a real book in my hands that I had created. The cover looked great and I felt a sense of accomplishment. I did however notice a few typos right away in the first chapter. When I had started verifying the editing changes many months earlier, my heart wasn’t in it (because of the depressing talks by local authors addressed in an earlier blog post), so I had not done a good job of checking the edits. I went back and fixed the issues in the first four chapters and then resubmitted the interior file.

I chose to proof these changes on-line (since the exterior was not changing) and (while I was on the phone chatting with my best friend Monique) I finished up the paperwork (such as setting prices) to have the book made available. To get to this point, the only money I had spent at Create Space was the cost to have the proof copy printed and shipped to me – I was surprised that there were no other costs. I then used a Kindle tool to make a version for that ebook reader from the ePub that I had created earlier (after copying over the editing changes) and signed up on Amazon directly to have that made available on Amazon. I later discovered that I should have setup the Kindle version through Create Space because otherwise the Amazon store doesn’t realize that the Kindle and print versions are the same story.  I also put the ePub up on Barnes and Noble’s site.

The next morning I found out that the Kindle version was available. Minutes later, Gary, who was managing a project that I was working on at my day job, bought a copy for his iPhone after I told him that it was available. The next day, when the printed version was made available, the first person to order it was Monique. It was wonderful to have friends support me in this endeavor. 

Final Book Cover

While I was putting off working on the final editing of Infused, I decided to give the cover design another go.

After looking around the web for space pictures, I quickly found that NASA provides many photos that can be used by the public and business sector without any fees. The only stipulation is that if the photos are used for commercial purposes, a disclaimer should be given stating that NASA does not endorse the product.

After looking around the NASA site for a while, I found a nice moonscape picture that didn’t look at blurry as those from the 1960’s, a star field shot, and a picture of Earth with a hurricane off the North Carolina coast. The Hurricane was a nice touch because in the story Geoff goes to the moon after seeing a satellite picture of a similar hurricane on the news.

I initially tried to make the cover picture more proportionally correct – I made the Earth fairly small. I started with the star field as a background and then placed the moonscape at the bottom (of course). Next I placed the smallish Earth near the top. I had not pursued getting a photo of anyone else, so I used the picture of myself that I had used in my earlier attempt, and placed it so that it looked like I was standing on the moon.  Next, I Put the title “Infused” in red letters in between the picture of me and the Earth.

Unfortunately there were a couple of issues with this attempt. My dark hair seemed to dissolve into the star field and several people that saw it thought that it wasn’t very menacing looking with the Earth being so small and far away. Also, I realized that I once again forgot to stretch out the picture of myself to match Geoff’s height.

For the next attempt, I backed up a few steps in putting the images together and moved the Earth into the center of the image and made it much larger. This made it so that my hair was clearly visible against the lighter colors of the Earth (after I stretched the picture of myself the correct amount to make me appear to be 6’ 3”). I then put the title above the Earth.

I felt that the resulting combination of the images turned out quite well, although there are a few issues. The light on the Earth and the Moon are coming from the right side, whereas the light on me was from the left – it’s not a big deal, but it is a bit off if you look at it too closely. The other issues are mainly with scale. I’m certain that the part of the moon in the picture is huge compared to the size of a human, and of course the Earth is way too large compared to the picture of me. But, overall I think it is a pleasing picture and I think that it ended up looking great on the printed version of Infused.