Are You Finished?

Are you finished? Finishing a project is such a strange thing. I think it is especially strange with self-publishing. I recently finished another book or perhaps you can say that that I’m in the process of finishing it. I had some time away from my regular job around Christmas, so I made use of that time to write. It is amazing how much you can accomplish when you have eighteen hours a day that you can use for whatever you want. I didn’t spend all of that time writing, but enough of it that it gave me a good start. Then in the days that followed that, I used whatever time I could find to continue the project. It was all just hard work. There were things that needed to be done. I finished the first draft and I started on the cover. It took me a good 36 hours of labor to complete the cover. I figure that means I saved myself at least $500 by doing it myself, but at last, I finished it. I went through the book, correcting the mistakes I found. Then I created the PDF files from the cover design and the book block. I went through several iterations of doing that because the preflight evaluation kept coming back with problems. At last, I got it down to two problems that I figured weren’t going to cause any real issue in printing. It took me a few minutes to realize it, but I was done. The next step was to send the files off to the printer.

We reach that point where there is nothing more that needs to be done, and yet we’re sitting there trying to think of what more should be done. Finishing is such an abrupt thing. There’s all this work to do and then there is none. Oh, there will be more that I have to do. Because this project is so dependent on graphics, I may have to make some adjustments when I get the proof copy and I’ll want to do some things to promote the book, but I’ve reached that point where I can sit down and relax, read a book or watch television and not have to worry that my writing project isn’t getting done.

And it really is such an odd feeling to finish a book this early in the year. I’ve got nearly a whole year that I don’t have to worry that I won’t finish a book this year. That really is such an arbitrary thing, but it does give one a sense of accomplishment.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: WestBow Press

Image
T oday, I’m writing a book review unlike any I have written before. Actually, I’m going to I’m reviewing two books and I haven’t read either one. As you may recall, some time ago, Thomas Nelson announced that they were entering the vanity press market, using the imprint WestBow Press. The first books out of that arrangement are making their way down the pipeline, two of which you can see here. The first thing I noticed when they arrived was the size of the box. I arrived home and saw the box sitting on my front step. My first thought was that they had only shipped on of them. The box is the same sized box Amazon.com uses to ship individual copies of my novels. I opened it up and found both novels stacked neatly, one on top of the other. Both books have the dimensions 6” x 9”, a fairly standard size for non-traditionally published books. Publishing a book with that dimension simplifies the process when a book will be published both as a paperback and a hardback. One of the books is p...
Read more

Review: Raider Publishing

Image
A few weeks ago, I received a request from someone who had come across the popular Review: Westbow Press post. This reader requested that I look at Raider Publishing . After asking this reader a few questions via e-mail, I learned that she had used them to publish a book and was disgruntled with them. One of her complaints was that Adam Salviani was not responding to her e-mail and he was “unavailable” when she called his office in New York. This was brought on by her concern because she had not received an advance copy of her book and found that it had been published without her being informed. In her e-mail, she stated that she had been in contact with other customers and they had received the same treatment. I did what I normally do when I receive a request like this concerning a company I don’t recognize. I looked for as much third-party information as I could find on the web. Interestingly, I did that search before I realized she was disgruntled and I found relatively little to...
Read more

Is Tate Publishing a Scam?

Image
T oday, I want to take one more look at Tate Publishing and Enterprises LLC. In case you missed Tuesday’s post, Tate Publishing is a subsidy press that focuses on unpublished authors. They charge a $3,990 publicist setup fee, but they do appear to have sufficient staff to justify their claim that they have allocated $27,000 for each book. Today, I want to look less at promises and more at results. In the interest of showing rather than telling, take a look at the video below: One of the services that Tate Publishing provides is that they create fifteen second spots like the one above and run them on cable networks. They promise 80,000 impressions. Or to state it another way, they promise that 80,000 people will see that commercial. Someone from Tate Publishing is welcome to correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe they charge an additional fee for these commercials. The way I would expect this to play out is that each commercial will air one time with about 80,000 people watching. T...
Read more