Some skills we hone. And some we mess up.

 

After taming new wordprocessing software to my will (ooh, calm down there...) the good news is that the interior of the paperback of The Forever House is finally finalised: headers, footers, blank pages, et al. 

Hurrah! and all that jazz. Do you like the Half Title page? I thought I did quite well with that.

However, just as when reading a good-news missive from an agent or editor, we know there's a but lurking in the wings.

The but isn't so much lurking as staring out from that embarrassed pink border which should not be there. I am so used to working with covers for ebooks that is what I've done, whereas the height & width specifications of a paperback are not the same. The trick, I now realise, is to create the paperback cover first and pull the ebook cover from it. And it is no compensation to read that I am not the first to mess this up, not by a long chalk.

But there we go. Some skills we have to hone more than others.

Smirking alone on its Amazon page, you'll find the ebook HERE.

Thanks for not throwing cabbages. I will get there - eventually.

Back-Blurbs and Interviews

As has probably been noticed by those following this blog (thanks, great to have you along) there's not a lot of creative writing being done at the moment. At least not of the type I enjoy. I am currently formatting The Bull At The Gate for paperback, and that means copywriting the back-blurb. Allow me a quiet arghhhh!!

The thing with a paperback is that it is a solid item. Unlike an ebook, it can't be tweaked at will, so the back-blurb has to be correct first time. It's not a product description which can go into detail about the triple storylines, Roman historical thread, the haunting from beyond a watery grave that may be more than it first appears. It is a short tease, and they can easily sound either cliched or risible. I doff my hat to those who can write them before breakfast, though having searched the Net it would seem that not many can explain the how of what they do.

So when a request to be interviewed on marketing & promotion appeared in my Inbox, I grasped the displacement activity with both hands. It's just been uploaded onto a blog entitled Self Publishing For The Technically Challenged. 

At least it says what it does on the tin. I wish my back-blurb did.