Take a sweet look! My first batch arrived from Amazon last week. It’s only twenty promotional ARCs. I’m gonna to need to make ‘em count!
Doesn’t it look great? The colors turned out perfect! Lemme tell ya it was all me, Lesly, and MS Publisher. I sure am glad the cover printed correct the first time, since I did not relish having to do all that work again.
Be prepared to see a variation when it comes to the back, since I did find another designer who I’m hoping will finally work out. You see, Ingram allows for their UPC to be moved to any printable space, whereas Amazon KDP insists on that corner placement. See how it thus obscures one of my stars? My new designer should be able to get that issue fixed. He’s also planning on reformatting that text, which I was worried about making too small for some of the younger readers.
The inside, which I won’t show here, looks great as well. In fact, that appears to be one of Amazon’s strong suits: good paper, solidly printed, in a nice readable font. Here you may recall, however, that though I appreciate Amazon’s help, I did originally have some design desires that out-scoped their templates…
This is why I’m so happy to have at last found a designer. What I’m saying here is that I might be getting my dream interior after all.
What’s that dream?
Imagine an interior in Adobe Caslon Pro, aping perhaps just a little the chapter header style of the early American Girl books. And more; I really wanted the chapter names to appear in the table of contents, and for there to be some sort of cute flower eye catch to break up all of the scenes.
We’ll see what can be done, and I’ll keep you posted. But the one thing I refuse to do is delay my release any further. I know my Amazon hardcover isn’t showing yet for pre-sale, but it—this very book, depicted above—will be LIVE FOR SALE on September 18th.
Whether a more deluxe Ingram format will also be available on that date remains an open question, but if we miss, we’ll be close (probably no more than a week)!
Once I am satisfied that my physical book is available everywhere, I may have my designer then go back and convert the KDP. Yes, this means this Amazon first edition version may become rare, so I suggest snapping it up early and often!
So, in review:
There will be two hardcover first editions available at the outset—Amazon KDP (depicted above), and one distributed and printed through Ingram—however, one of them (the latter) hasn’t even yet been designed.
The Amazon is definitely “GO”, though you can’t yet see it in pre-order (only the eBook is showing right now). The custom Ingram version might not be quite ready by my September release date, but if that one is late it shouldn’t be by far.
Both will have all of the text (it’s the same ISBN). Bells and whistles should be the only difference between the two, but who knows—the “plainer” Amazon templated version might still trump with respect to print quality.
In other news, I’ve signed up for an eBook promotion through Goodreads. Look for that in September as well as another marketing thing I haven’t tried before.
