Monday, April 25, 2011

Solid and Insightful Reviews

Well, The Door to Canellin eBook has officially been available for 9 days now, and so far the customer reviews at Amazon are stellar! 3 five star reviews and 1 four star so far. In the interest of full disclosure, I will say that the review from JoEllen Bush comes from one of my sisters, who was also a first reader for this novel. She has an "editor" credit on the acknowledgements page for all the help she gave me spotting typos! I think the most insightful review so far comes from Amber Anderson, who gave the book five stars, but pointed out a couple of things she thought of as minor flaws. An excellent critique, Amber, and I'll certainly take your words to heart while I'm working on the sequel!

I'm almost finished going over the proofs for the hardcover and paperback print versions, and I think I've made a decision on how I plan to handle them.  You see, as a writer, I try to be a perfectionist. I'm not perfect by any means, but every time I read my books I see any number of tiny changes that might make the book better.  A word change here, a phrase slightly altered there. But there comes a point in the life of any creative work where the creator has to say, "Enough! This is the final product!" And that's what I intend to do with The Door to Canellin. That being said, I did discover a couple of typos in the text. For instance, it seems I couldn't decide whether to capitalize "freshman", "sophomore", etc. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't. There is also a typo that I caught before and thought I had changed. Not a misspelling, but a place where I had vacillated between two turns of phrase, and somehow mixed the two together. I thought I had fixed that one in particular, but apparently not. So, for the paperback release that will be placed on sale, I intend to fix those typos, resubmit, and get another proof. Once I have confirmed the formatting has turned out correctly and there are no odd issues with text alignment, etc, I will release the paperback with no further changes. I won't even tempt myself by reading it completely. The final check will be for page and text formatting only.

The hardcover, on the other hand, I intend to leave as is. It's a limited edition hardcover, direct from the author, and will never be for sale anywhere as far as I'm concerned. What the recipients of the hardcover will be getting is one of 60 books, crafted with a great deal of care, but with the minor mistakes and occasional poor word choices left intact. These 60 books will be unique in their minor, special little differences from the final paperback release.  This isn't me being cheap or lazy. The interiors of the paperback and hardcover are identical in formatting, so one file can be used for either of them. But the factors that make me want to do it this way are, one, I want to get the hardcovers out to my backers faster (I can order immediately if I make no changes), and two, I honestly believe that these minor differences are part of what the Kickstarter backers should be getting. Not that they shouldn't get my best work, but they should get something special, a unique edition of the book that will never be seen elsewhere. And, everyone who is receiving a hardcover will also be receiving the finished paperback, so they will have both the limited edition AND the final paperback release!

Things are starting to come to a close here, as far as the Kickstarter project. The Kindle and Nook versions have been sent out, the hardcovers should be ordered this week, the posters have arrived and are being prepped to go out, and the paperbacks should be going out next week. The t-shirts for the $100 backers should be going out this week as well, and the manuscripts will be sent in the same package as the hardcovers. Barring complications, I expect to have all Kickstarter rewards on the way within two weeks from today!

It's been a great ride, folks, and I hope you enjoy the result! For me, the ride isn't over, as it is now on to marketing, building a following, getting some name reviews, and very soon, working on revisions to the sequel. Keep checking back here for more status updates!

2 comments:

  1. I must check this blog once every two hours. It's getting rather addictive.

    Thanks for taking the time to correspond with me via email last night. It was nice talking to you about the e-publishing process.

    Congratulations on all the reviews, by the way. It's impressive to get as many as you have in such a short time, as I've noticed from watching the pages of other indie's books on Amazon.

    I look forward to seeing future updates from you. I will await the sequel eagerly.

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  2. Congrats on your reviews so far. I am 12% through the book and counting.

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