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Untimed Goodies

Nov12

My latest Advanced Reader Copy of Untimed. NOTE: the white balance leans overly orange in this photo

This was a busy week for Untimed swag. The proof came for the latest ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) and it looks fantastic. Not only the outside, but the interior has a new properly done layout that includes all the illustrations and near print ready formatting.

Swag bookmarks

I also received a run of bookmarks. These look pretty cool but I wish there was an easy way to get proofs before printing a big run. The way they price these things on the online printshops (I used overnightprints.com for these) it only makes sense to order 1000-2000+, but there are no (physical) proofs. The text on the back is a little close to the trim for my taste, even though it was well inside the safety zone. They also have a 2-3mm variance in the cutting, which is typical but annoying. They aren’t all centered perfectly an I’m a perfectionist. Still, they look cool. For those of you curious about the process, below are the print ready versions.

By: agavin
Comments (6)

Posted in: Untimed

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, books, Novel, online printing, Paperback, swag, Time travel, Untimed, Writing

Order the Hardcover – sort of

Feb05

Amazon has put up the hardcover. More or less. They have a page, and you can order, but they list it as “Temporarily out of stock.” Still, I’m sure if you do order they’ll ship in a couple of days when they finish sorting out their internal business.

They also haven’t totally connected the product to the Kindle and Paperback editions. I find it interesting how their site puts things together piecemeal. The must have various background jobs that massage the data and not all of them run together on the same schedule. I.e. the “book importer” job puts books in but the “book merger” job later connects various editions together.

By: agavin
Comments (0)

Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Amazon.com, Andy Gavin, E-book, Hardcover, IBook, Kindle, Paperback, The Darkening Dream

Hardcover Proof & Paperback Giveaway

Feb01

Glamour shot of my hardcover edition

The hardcover proof came in yesterday and it looks awesome! Now I just have to get it up on Amazon. As it’s printed via LightningSource this might take a few days. The trade paperback went through CreateSpace which is owned by Amazon, so it was fast.

This edition was more work than I thought — although it does look great — for a number of reasons. LightningSource has a rather peculiar and unintuitive process, although they make a nice book. Also getting the mechanical all finished was at the far end of a long chain of about seven contractors.

Anyway, it’s mostly done now. A whole set of pictures of the hardcover from every angle can be found at the bottom of the post.

For other The Darkening Dream related news: First of all, the book is now officially $4.99 and enrolled in Amazon’s Kindle Select program. This means the Barnes & Noble, iBooks, and Google versions are no longer for sale. Sales were 60:1 higher on Amazon, so it’s a bit of a no brainer and I’ll see how KDP Select goes and revaluate at the end of April.

I’m also running a quick “Vampire Valentines” giveaway on Goodreads. You can enter to win one of twenty copies of the paperback (sorry, if you want this sexy hardcover you’ll have to buy it, the manufacturing cost is almost triple the paperback). Winners will be decided by Goodreads on February 14th. The giveaway can be found here:

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Darkening Dream

by Andy Gavin

Giveaway ends March 01, 2017.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

By: agavin
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Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Amazon, Andy Gavin, Book, CreateSpace, Giveaway, goodreads, Hardcover, LightningSource, Paperback, The Darkening Dream

Hardcover Mechanical

Jan25

The The Darkening Dream‘s hardcover mechanical came in and I submitted a proof. This is the third version of the book, the e-book and the trade paperback already being for sale.

Look for them here

As a long time book lover (over 10,000 books in my library) I wanted a hardcover, even though the paperback will be cheaper, and it’s unusual for a small imprint like mine to do a hardcover edition. Plus it’s even more unusual for the hardcover to come out after the trade (a few weeks in this case), but I’ve never been much for doing it the normal way. I just love the feel of a nice hardcover. I’m printing it through Lightning Source which is the only POD printer I know that does real dust jacket hardcovers. And some people say the quality is better than Createspace too, but boy the sign up and interface are 100x more obtuse — which is one of the many reasons Amazon will continue to crush the competition.

Anyway, Apple also turned up the iBooks version the other day — finally! The whole process only took them a month! (I had to make a new iConnect account, as for some mysterious reason app accounts can’t also sell books!). But in any case, if for some odd reason this is better for you than the Kindle version, here it is:

By: agavin
Comments (3)

Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Amazon.com, Andy Gavin, Apple, Cover version, Dust jacket, E-book, Hardcover, IBook, IBooks, Lightning Source, Paperback, Print on demand, The Darkening Dream

The Trade Paperback is Launched!

Jan17

Glamour shot of my trade edition

I got the latest proofs back from CreateSpace for my novel, The Darkening Dream, and they are looking great. While there are perhaps a few little tweaks possible to make them perfect, the presses are ready to roll, so I turned it on.

Now it’s winding through the mysterious process at Amazon.

You can buy it here!

Or if you’re an e-book person, those editions have been for sale for a couple of weeks and you can find them here. Amazon is in the process of linking the two versions together and the like. They have a big system where every component is on different server clusters and updated on different timetables. It might even take them a couple days to get the page 100% sorted. But you can still order.

Now I only have the hardcover edition to do. Because it’s print on demand there is really no reason not to do one for those who like hardcovers (like myself). The only extra hard cost is the dust jacket mechanical and some minimal Lightning Source setup fees (they being the POD printer I know that prints hardcovers). What we can’t really figure is the several hours of time it took to fill out their 80 page contract and application and fax it back to them. No web form! They need to get with the times.

You can the trade paperback front and back here:

or the spine here:

The interior looks great also with all the nice chapter heading illustrations and proper typography.

By: agavin
Comments (1)

Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Andy Gavin, CreateSpace, E-book, Hardcover, Indie Publishing, Lightning Source, Paperback, Publishing, The Darkening Dream, Trade Paperback

Paperback Getting Close

Jan12

The “beta” of The Darkening Dream‘s Trade Paperback cover has come in and I submitted another proof. With any luck I might get it on sale next week, the week after for sure. The interior layout has been complete for almost a week too. I can’t wait to see this puppy in the flesh. It should look great.

You can see some of the old paper test versions below. My long standing Lulu (ick) ARC on the left and an older CreateSpace proof on the right. Even with that hybrid cover the CS proof is looking and feeling great.

Apple also finally turned on my iBooks account today and so the iBookstore version should be up in… well however long it takes them to approve it. Given that it took ten days just to validate the account it might not be instant. All the sites except for Amazon and slow slow slow. For example, I uploaded the new cover to Barnes and Noble a week ago and it still hasn’t updated!