The paperback version of Crow is finally finished and available through Createspace and Amazon
!It took me a little longer to get the paperbacks put together as I ended up having several formatting issues. Now that I look back on it, it's actually pretty funny and I want to smack my head and go "Duh!".
After finishing the ebooks on Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble's Nook, I started researching how to create my paperbacks. I downloaded the appropriate template directly from Createspace's website and started cutting and pasting the book and making the appropriate tweaks. Half way through, I saved the document to work on something else and when I came back to it I was horrified to see that all the formatting had shifted. Determined, I looked up how to do the formatting myself and the next day I remade it from scratch. The formatting looked perfect and I was incredibly pleased with it. I saved it again and went to work on finishing the back cover.
The next day (we're up to three days now, trying to get the paperbacks together) I downloaded the cover template from Createspace and pasted my front and back covers in, making more tweaks to the images and spine until I was happy with it. Once complete, I eagerly opened the file that had the book's interior and just about had a meltdown when the formatting on the document I had made from scratch was also a complete mess!
It took awhile for me to figure out what was wrong. I was using OpenOffice to create the documents but was saving them as a .doc file, which is what I'm used to, and saving it in that format was stripping out all my elaborate formatting. So, day four, I remade the file AGAIN from scratch, this time saving it in the appropriate .odt format before exporting it into the .pdf file that Createspace required.
It was a messy headache, but now that I've been through it, I certainly won't be making those mistakes again - publishing the paperbacks for future books should be much easier and faster.
After a fairly quick 12 hour review process, Createspace put the paperbacks for Crow up on their site for sale - and now it is also available through Amazon as well.
It has been a fascinating, and frustrating, experience but I am incredibly happy with it and I can't wait to hold a copy in my hands. I know it seems silly, and maybe it's just a throwback to my youth, but holding that book in my hand - I feel like it will finally cement it in my head that I am a published author!
Wooooohoooo!
I hope you all enjoy the book and I'm already preparing to start the next one!
Happy Reading :)
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