One of my usual blog posts to start a year is to post my book sales for the previous year—and for the last quarter of the year. Let’s start with the quarter, which was my best of the year. Sales were:
Oct – 6 sales of two different books
Nov – 19 sales of three different books
Dec – 24 sales of two different books
Quarter: 49 sales of five different books
Those of you who follow my blog know this was a huge quarter for me. Those of you new to the blog will no doubt say What? With 32 books for sale you sold less than 2 copies per book for a quarter? Yes, that’s true. It shows that increasing sales haven’t made a dent in my cellar-dwelling status.
The reason for increasing sales is the ads I’m running on Amazon. Most of those 49 sales were of the two books I have ads for, 10 ads total, 5 for each. It would be nice if I could report profitability, but, alas, my ad costs so far have run more than my royalties. The will be the subject of a blog post in the near future.
Then, for the year 2020, I sold 96 books. That’s my third best year, lower than last year. But last year I sold books at author events. The pandemic prevented author events this year. Of these sales, 15 were sold in person, the rest through Amazon or Smashwords (only 1 there). I had sales of 14 different books.
So not a stellar year, but much better than some. I still have money in my ad budget. Hopefully they will run a profit before long.
For the first time in many years, I start the new year with uncertainty as to what I want to accomplish in my writing. Perhaps this is a residual effect of the corona virus pandemic, which caused a general uncertainty in the world and made life difficult to plan. I didn’t get as much writing done in 2020 as I wanted to, not so much because of corona virus but because of being diverted to other things (health issue, de-cluttering work, letters transcription).
But, a writer who is publishing is running a business, which should have a business plan if it wants to be successful. So here is my plan. It’s a starting point. I will be thinking much about this over the early part of the year and may modify it based on further consideration.
These books have been waiting for the book that goes between them to be written. I’m finally back to working on it.
Finish and publish The Teachings. A little over a week ago, I got back to serious work on this novel. As of today’s effort, I have 37,000 words in the first draft. If 80,000 is the minimum size of the book, I’m closing in on halfway done. But I don’t feel that the story is halfway done, so perhaps this will be a 90,000 word novel. Either way, at my current pace I could be done in mid-February, which means I might have the book ready to publish in April. For now, those are my goals.
Write and publish one Sharon Williams story. Believe it or not the next story in my series Sharon Williams Fonseca: Unconventional CIA Agent, is starting to roll around in my brain. This is happening unsolicited. I’m not trying to think about it, yet the story is developing. That may be a sign that I should write the story this year.
Write and publish one Documenting America volume. I’m planning for this to be Run-up To Revolution, covering 1761-1775, the documents that led to our rebelling against England. I did some reading for research in 2019 and a little more last year. I need to figure out where I was and see how quickly I could do this. Writing these volumes is always pleasurable, and I’m looking forward to this.
I know which Bible study I want to write and publish next, but it’s going to take some work. Not sure I’m quite ready to do that..
Write and publish a Bible study. I’ve planned out what I want the next one to be: Entrusted To My Care: A Study of 1st and 2nd Timothy. I have a fair number of notes on this, have taught it twice, and think I could do this one with the least amount of effort among all those I’ve developed. Yet, it would still be a pretty significant effort. This would be later in the year.
Maintain a twice per week blogging schedule. The last two years have shown me I can do this. On occasion I may have to make a dummy post or even skip one, but for the most part I should be able to do this.
It’s been a long time since I wrote most of the poems in this, around 2005-6, I think.
Write some poetry. The desire to write poetry again has become active, even if the words aren’t rolling around yet as they are for the short story. I know the poetry book I want to write. My question is: do I wait for inspiration to strike or do I apply some perspiration and just get on with the writing? That’s what I’ll be thinking about the next few weeks.
As I say, this is a start. For now I’m concentrating on my novel. Once I get that done, I’ll give this plan serious re-evaluation.
The 5th story in my Sharon Williams Fonseca – Unconventional CIA Agent series. Published in January 2020, I’ve sold one copy.
Ah, 2021 is starting out good, with January 1 falling on Friday, my regular blog post day. I always start a new year here by summarizing the year just ended and making some goals for the year just starting. I’ll do that today with a recap of 2020. On Monday I’ll put some writing goals for 2021, assuming, that is, that I formulate some goals between now and then into a publishable state.
Retired from my day job (for the 2nd year), cooped up due to the corona virus pandemic, you’d think I got a lot of writing done, right? You’d be wrong. I’ve said all this before on the blog, but let me go through it again.
In January I published “Tango Delta Foxtrot”, the next short story in the Sharon Williams Fonseca series. That was written in 2019 and passed through my critique group. It all came to January and I published it then. So far I’ve had one sale. Yippee.
Also in January, I continued work in the next novel in my church history novels series. Begun in late 2019 and tentatively titled The Teachings, it falls chronologically between Doctor Luke’s Assistant and Preserve The Revelation. The action takes place during the first Jewish war of 66 to 70 A.D. I got a few chapters in, running them by the critique group, when I bogged down on making my story fit into the historical events. I spent a lot of time reading in source materials, adding a little text, setting it aside, and going back to the sources again. By mid-March I had about 21,000, or between 20 and 25 percent of the intended length. Feeling frustrated with it, I decided to stop my major work on it.
Stephen Cross was quite a character. Frequently in court, involved with a pirate, taking part in two military excursions, he left a lot of footprints that I’ve been able to follow.
Instead, I pulled out some genealogy work I had begun some time ago. This was the lives of Stephen Cross and Elizabeth Cheney. Elizabeth is a gr-gr-whatever-aunt of Lynda’s. I began studying them two or three years prior and realized I had enough material on them to make a short book. I organized the material back then and wrote the beginnings of a book. I picked up that work again and saw that yes, I could make a book out of their lives, but I really needed to do more research. I worked on that the second half of March, making good progress.
Then Lynda went into the hospital on April 3. I couldn’t go in to see her, of course, so to keep myself busy, instead of going back to The Teachings, I focused on Stephen and Elizabeth. By the time Lynda got out on April 21 I had most of the research done and was back writing the book. My labor on it continued after Lynda came home. It all came together around the end of May, I edited and formatted in June, and published it in July. Stephen Cross and Elizabeth Cheney of Newbury has—wait for it—one sale so far. That’s fine. This isn’t intended to be a best seller. Hopefully some day a few Cross and Cheney researchers will find it.
From there I moved to decluttering/dis-accumulation work at our house. I dug into boxes of papers left behind by my mother-in-law. That caused me to also look at our own boxes of papers and begin culling. In the process I found our Kuwait years letters. I collated them, indexed them, and then decided to transcribe them. This took up some of July, all of August, and some of September. Someday I will add photos and make it a book for the family. For now, it will sit in the cloud.
During this time, I occasionally picked up The Teachings and did a little work on it, either research or writing. I added 500 words here and there. But I still couldn’t focus on it.
I updated my first Documenting America book for conditions in 2020: correcting typos, correcting formatting, adding new text for 2020.
In September, I think, I decided to re-publish my first history book, Documenting America: Lessons From the United States’ Historical Documents. I published it first in 2011 and decided it could use some updating for conditions in America in 2020. I think it was September to early October that I: re-read it; corrected a few typos; and added text to each chapter for what’s going on now. I also had to improve the formatting because, in 2011, I didn’t know much about print book formatting and made some errors. I completed this work in mid-October and re-published it.
Meanwhile, I had been dissatisfied with some formatting and illustration quality in the Cross-Cheney book. I tackled that in October as well, substituting some figures, improving the pixel quality of others, and re-published it. I still wish they were better than they are but at least they are better than they were.
Writing related, but not new writing, was taking part in two week-long on-line seminars about using Amazon advertising to boost book sales, once in July and once in October. I saw an increase in sales as a result, though the ads really are not paying out. I’m still within the budget I set, so I’ll keep the ads running. I’ll take the challenge again this month, then see where I go with it.
Finally, in the second half of December, I was ready to return to serious work on The Teachings. Over the last few days of the month I added over 5,000 words, bringing my total to just short of 33,500. I have much of the rest of the book planned, and should be able to make good progress, so long as other things don’t get in the way.
Here’s where my Church History Novels series stands. Working on that “gray” one.
Things such as a new short story, or deciding to transcribe more letters, or let decluttering overtake me again.
Was it a productive year, writing-wise? Perhaps. I wish I had more to show for it. May 2021 be better.
“Adam Of Jerusalem” is a prequel to “Doctor Luke’s Assistant”, and is the first in my church history novel series. “The Teachings” fits in as book 3 of the series.
In January of this year I began writing The Teachings, the third (chronologically) novel in my Church History series. I had been reading for research some time before that. I worked on it consistently through January and February, then bogged down in March. My problem was I wanted to be historically accurate to events in 66-70 A.D., but didn’t want to overdo the historical stuff and not have the novel interesting for the characters and the plot. I started re-reading my main source, Josephus, but that just made me more uncertain of how to proceed.
So, as I have a habit of doing, I went to another project, my family history/genealogy research into the children of John Cheney of Newbury (1600?-1666). Genealogy research is always a pleasure and I figured it would be a brief, rejuvenating diversion. Some years ago I began this work on his youngest child, Elizabeth, who married the mariner Stephen Cross of Ipswich. I found much about them (mainly about Stephen, but that helped define Elizabeth’s life as well), and realized it would be a stand-alone book about them. I brought that book to about 60 pages in 2018, then set it aside. In March I picked it up again as the diversion, and by April 3 I had it up to around 80 pages and, I thought, close to finished.
The colonies did well governing themselves, until the King of England tried to impose new government on them. Resistance to that became the seeds of the American Revolution.
On April 3, Lynda went into the hospital with her burst appendix and was in 19 days, requiring two surgeries. It didn’t look good for a while. Since due to the pandemic I couldn’t be with her at the hospital, to keep myself occupied I worked feverishly on the Cross-Cheney book. Before long I had it up over 100 pages. Lynda finally came home though was still weak and recuperating. I got the book up to 116 pages, polished it, and published it. So far, with 1 sale, it’s doing about as expected. A few of the figures were of poor quality, so I haven’t advertised it to the Cross or Cheney genealogy boards and won’t till I get those figures replaced.
After getting my diversion done, it should have been back to The Teachings, right? Well, a little bit. But soon I was working on another diversion. It started as decluttering, going through the many papers my mother-in-law left behind at her death. But that soon evolved into transcribing our Kuwait years letters. That took the better part of August and early September. That’s now done. I will someday turn that into a book for my children and grandchildren. That will take editing, adding commentary, and illustrating it with photos. I don’t see doing more on that for the rest of this year—although, I don’t rule out occasionally opening the file and adding some commentary.
Published in 2011, I really need to do something with this, update it for later publications and correct some formatting errors. So, I began the editing work in early September 2020, and hope to re-publish by the end of September.
That brought me up to mid-September. Time now to work on The Teachings. Except I still didn’t feel like it. I decided I would take another Amazon Ad Challenge in October, and that I would focus on the first Documenting America book as the next to advertise. But this book needed significant work. It was the first I published, long before I understood formatting. I also figured I should add new material to bring the book up to date for 2020. I worked on this the second half of September, and began the re-publishing process on Sept. 28th. The last couple of days have been sufficiently busy with life that I haven’t had much time to work on it. But that’s now a today task for the e-book. I’ll have the proof copy of the print book on Saturday, so by Sunday Oct 4 the re-publishing process should be complete.
Then what? Work on The Teachings, finally? Maybe, maybe not. I want to get the Cross-Cheney book figures corrected and that book re-published and advertised. There’s always file maintenance. Plus, evenings in front of the television, I do e-mail “maintenance” and saving my correspondence to Word documents. That’s a tedious but fun process, something I can do multi-tasking, a non-urgent item to make progress on. But next on the list of items I posted on Monday is The Teachings. Will I finally get back to this?
Today, instead of working on finishing the Documenting America changes, I dusted off my Thomas Carlyle Bibliography. Last night, as part of my TV-watching-multitasking, I opened the Carlyle Letters On-line and read a couple of letters. I discovered a short translation he did of a Goethe autobiographical passage that wasn’t in my list of his writings or publications. How could this possibly be? I have three other full Carlyle bibliographies, plus a partial bibliography that covers the period in question. Why would they leave this out? I documented it on paper and, since it was late, went to bed.
This morning, as my first item of business after devotions, was to add this entry in my bibliography. First, however, I found the document on-line, at a previously unknown (to me) site called the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Sure enough, in the January 1832 issue was the Carlyle translation. I checked the two thick bibliographies on my shelf and confirmed that this composition wasn’t in it. Maybe they didn’t add it because it’s a translation with just a paragraph of Carlyle commentary rather than an original piece? Maybe so, but those bibliographies include his other translations. I added all this to my bibliography. While I was at this, I found an essay on Carlyle I hadn’t seen before and downloaded it for future reading.
The fact that I keep pulling off my novel in favor of other, less important publishing tasks, is perhaps testimony that I’m not thrilled with how the novel is going. Or that it’s consuming a lot more brain power and I’m unwilling to expend that brain power at present. I’m not sure what it is, but, if I ever hope to get this novel completed and published, I need to get on it. Even if it takes a lot of brain power.
I almost forgot that today is my day to blog. I had said that I would next blog about my writing goals for 2020. Here it is after noon, and I just remembered this.
Fortunately, I did spend some time this week thinking about those goals, writing them out, thinking some more, writing them out again. I believe I’ve settled on a few goals that I think are doable. At least I’m willing to make them public and work toward them. I’ve divided these into two categories, call them primary and secondary. Here are the primary goals.
Write and publish The Teachings. This is book number three in my church history novels series, though it will be the fourth one written. It fills the gap between Doctor Luke’s Assistant and Preserve The Revelation.
Make corrections to Acts Of Faith and re-publish it. As I’m going through the teaching process, I keep finding little errors that need correcting. A couple are bigger than little. I actually plan on doing this next week. I have someone willing to promote it but I’ve asked him to hold off until I make the corrections.
Write and publish the next book in the Documenting America series. This will most likely be Run-up To Revolution.
Finish and publish “Tango Delta Foxtrot”, the next short story in my Sharon Williams Fonseca series. In fact, the story is written and in the final editing process. I’ve been slowed trying to incorporate comments from my critique group. I need to make some final decisions and run with it.
Help a fellow writer get her next book published. In fact, I may have completed that this morning. I made a tweak to the cover and uploaded everything to Amazon KDP. The review so far has said the proof copy is ready to order, so it will most likely be found acceptable.
As to the secondary goals, here they are.
Complete the genealogy book Stephen Cross of Ipswich. This has been on the shelf for several years. As I recall it was more than 75% done. I hope soon to dust it off in a month or two and see where I left it.
Write an article for Voice of the Martyrs magazine and submit it. An idea has come to me for this and I don’t want to let it drop without seeing where it could go.
Write and publish another Bible study. I have five studies already developed and taught which could serve for this, and one that is gelling in my mind. I’m not sure if or when this will happen, but I like the idea.
Begin writing Volume 3 of The Gutter Chronicles. I have the outline mostly done. Maybe I’ll get to this, maybe I won’t. For sure I won’t if I dong get it in the goals.
I think that’s enough. If I get through my primary goals, and one or two secondaries, I’ll feel really good. I’ll update on occasion as the year winds on.
I’m still working on my annual goals for 2020. I’m just not sure of what I’m going to attempt this year. So, I’m going to start on goals for January. That’s a short enough time frame I should be able to project 30 days ahead. Here are my goals.
Blog twice a week, on Monday and Friday. I’ve been fairly successful blogging at this rate, and feel confident I can achieve this.
Finish producing a book for a writing friend. This project is well along. I might finish it today; if not, it should only be a day or two from now.
Edit my short story “Tango Delta Foxtrot”. The story is finished, and I’m in the editing process. My critique group hasn’t particularly liked the plot, but I don’t know how to change it. Whether I can accomplish this in January is a little iffy.
Attend writing group meetings as much as possible. My travel schedule may make it impossible to attend one, but hopefully I’ll be at the other.
Start my next book, tentatively titled The Teachings. This will be book 3 in my church history novels series. I plan on starting this later this week. Writing will take several months.
Finish a proof-reading of Acts Of Faith and republish a corrected version. I’ve proofread about a third of it and found more errors than I like.
Create a PDF version of Acts Of Faith: Leader’s Guide in 8.5×11 inch format. This is a brief task that should be no problem to complete.
I think this is enough. I’m writing this Friday evening to post on Monday morning. It’s possible I’ll add an item or two.
The writing of this book was finished in December 2018. Editing took some time, and I didn’t publish it till May 2019.
One year ago I entered the world of retirees. It was unchartered territory for me. I knew I had more than enough interests to stay busy, but how would I structure my days? What would I accomplish? Would it be more or less than I wanted to do? How would writing and stock trading and property upkeep and a dozen other things vie for my time?
At that time, in January 2019, I did not write a blog post about writing goals. It was all too new. I didn’t know what I could accomplish in my writing. I had recently completed the first draft of Adam Of Jerusalem and I was letting it simmer while the Christmas busyness was in progress. So that would be on the table early in the new year. But what else would I accomplish?
I think I will start this year on An Arrow Through The Air by three posts about goals. First will be what I accomplished last month, then will be a look-back at the whole year, then will be a look-ahead to 2020 and what I hope to accomplish. I’m still thinking about the new year, so this schedule will give me time to think some more.
I last posted about goals at the end of October, for November. Not sure why I didn’t do a December goals post. Here’s what I said for November, and how well I did on them over a two-month period.
As always, blog twice a week on Monday and Friday. I may have to write some ahead and schedule their posting. I did fairly well on this. Some of them I did write ahead of time for later posting. I missed one day in each month.
Attend writing groups. One group is considering adding a second meeting in the month, so it might be three instead of two meetings total for the two groups. I attended every meeting available. One was cancelled. Another was a time to wrap books as Christmas presents to go to a middle school. It was a fun time.
Finish Tango Delta Foxtrot. I think this is about two hours of writing. Surely I can do that. I finished this, and gave it to my critique group (Scribblers and Scribes of Bella Vista). Waiting on a full range of critiques, but initial response, but for installments and for the full document isn’t good.
Finish reading in two books that are research for The Teachings. This is quite doable. I’m not reading all of Josephus—just enough to know about a certain action in Jerusalem at the beginning of the war in 66 a.d. Yes, I got this done. From Josephus I have selected the dates and locations for certain scenes. From the other book I have a good idea of the composition of The Didache. From the two I’ve made an outline. When I sit down to work on it, probably next week, I hope it starts to flow.
Finish the Leader’s Guide for Acts Of Faith. This should be doable, in the original concept only. I’ll be working toward publishing it in December, most likely as an e-book only. Another thing finished. I received some feedback about potential changes that would have taken time, but decided not to make them. For now this is an e-book, but I’m planning on making a PDF in 8.5×11 format to give to people who ask.
So, two months of reasonably good accomplishment. Hopefully this will continue into January 2020.
The e-book cover for this was easy. At present I’m not planning on issuing a print book.
Well, I missed another blogging day. Yes, I missed last Friday. That’s two Fridays in a row. I tell you, miss it once and it can become a habit. I’ll break that habit this coming Friday.
For now, I’ll just tell a little of my current activities.
Today is the day to publish the Leader’s Guide for Acts Of Faith. I made the cover on Friday, finished the editing on Saturday, made one minor tweak yesterday, and let it sit for the night. As soon as I finish this I’ll go to Amazon KDP and do the publishing tasks. Hopefully it will be available for sale before the end of the day, though perhaps tomorrow.
I’ll make the cover for the print edition of the prequel of this look much the same. Delete “Again” and change the photo.
Then, tomorrow I’ll work on my friend Bessie’s book. I did her second book for her earlier this year. Her first book, however, is available from the publisher only as an e-book. She has people in the church who want a copy. At my prompting, she obtained a license from the publisher to make do a print book edition of her own. I have already gone through the text for errors. I think I built the Table of Content, but will check on that. The cover will follow the lines of the last book and should be simple—except print book covers are never simple for me. Publishing it may not be doable on one day.
Salzburg and environs are so nice, with quaint things to see and do—but not when you’re following Sharon Williams Fonseca.
After that, I shift to writing tasks. My short story, “Tango Delta Foxtrot”. It’s now at 5,300 words and is well along with the story. I don’t have a specific word goal, and I didn’t plan out the plot. To keep it from getting boring I need to wrap it up. I may work on that some in the evenings. I did so yesterday evening, incorporating comments from my critique group. I’m not finished yet with that, so may make working through those comments my evening task for a few days. Wednesday or Thursday I hope to be adding words to the story.
Meanwhile, I sold a couple of copies of Acts Of Faith at church yesterday, and last Friday a paperback copy of Doctor Luke’s Assistant sold at Amazon. That bring my sales for the year up to 131, my second-best year so far. About 75 of those are self-sales of books from inventory, and 69 are of books I published this year. That’s good news. I hope to continue the up-trend next year.
Had an on-line sale of this one day, then two days later had another, plus one of the prequel. I’m hoping it means someone bought it, not realizing it was the second in the series, liked it, bought the first, then convinced someone else to buy it.
Thanksgiving is over. Well, almost over. My sister is still in town, and we’ll get together again this afternoon and evening. Our full household, however, is back to two, just me and the wife. We have much after-company work to do yet, but the yesterday we took our rest, and this morning is normal routine. Tomorrow or Wednesday will be full routine.
I gave up writing work during this time, except for a little editing in the Leader’s Guide for Acts Of Faith. I rarely went to The Dungeon since two Saturdays ago.
But, now it’s time to get back at it. Complete editing of the Leader’s Guide is step one. Simultaneous with that I’ll be reading for my critique group, Scribblers and Scribes of Bella Vista. I have two pieces to read to get ready for the meeting Wednesday evening. Plus, I need to send out again for critique my short story, “Tango Delta Foxtrot”. I haven’t written any more on it, but still have a few pages of it to read to the group.
I’ll make the cover for the print edition of the prequel of this look much the same. Delete “Again” and change the photo.
Next, I’ll get back on publishing tasks for Bessie Black’s first book, Once Upon An Island. It was a work-for-hire, but she received a license to self-publish it as a print book since it’s gone out of print. I’ve already done most of the formatting. I want to read it through once more to look for typos. I figured out what we’d do for the cover. I hope to publish that for her before the end of the year, which looks very doable.
The other thing that has surprised me recently has been some unexpected on-line sales. I had two sales of Headshots and one of In Front Of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, as well as one of Acts Of Faith. Those came about a week ago over a three day period. It’s nice to see sales at the same time from both the back list and new items. I hope this will be a trend.
So, back in the saddle, for three weeks at least, before the next holiday interruption comes.
In a recent postI wrote about my hate affair (no love to balance it) with creating book covers. The saga continues. I received the proof copy of Acts Of Faithon Friday. To my pleasure, it was perfect. The cover was perfect. Everything was centered, the colors were good, the text was correct and nicely spaced. It was suggested that I make a tweak to it, changing the cover on the spine and changing the font on one block of text. I thought that would cause a slowdown, so I decided not to and just clicked “Publish”. That was Friday afternoon. And then I waited.
This is what I uploaded. Still waiting to hear if it works.
The wait is for a live body at Amazon to check the files. Typically this takes less than 24 hours. You get an e-mail, either it’s good and the book is published, or it is not accepted and you need to figure out what is wrong with it.
That e-mail came Saturday at 09:50 a.m., but I was outside doing yard work. I saw it when I can in around noon. And the verdict: “We checked your files and found issues you need to fix before your book can be published on KDP”, Sigh. They further said, “Resize your front cover so that the image or background on the front cover extends far enough beyond the edge. Add an extra 0.125″ (3.2 mm) along the top, bottom, and sides of your cover. This prevents manufacturing issues when the cover is trimmed.”
I was hoping to work on the Leader’s Guide for AOF that afternoon, but instead I worked on the cover. Since the proof copy was so good, I couldn’t see what was wrong with the cover. I checked my calculations of the size, which were correct. I went ahead and slightly enlarged it. But it’s more complicated than that. The front cover is a layer that sits on the background and is aligned with the edges of the background. Beneath that is an image size. At least, I think that’s how it works. Don’t ask me. I’m still an amateur with graphic arts software.
I looked the thing over, and realized everything wasn’t quite in alignment, but couldn’t tell what was wrong. I checked the size of each layer and they seemed to be correct. So I exported it to PDF, uploaded it to Amazon, checked the on-line book reviewer. It all looked good, so I clicked “Publish”, and went into waiting mode.
This morning (I’m writing this on Sunday), at 09:34 a.m., while at church and about to start our Life Group class, I received the e-mail: “We checked your files and found issues you need to fix before your book can be published on KDP” for the identical reason. One more sigh.
After Life Group, after church, after getting lunch and milk to take home, I went to The Dungeon—once again not to write, but to fix the darn cover. I decided I would invest an hour to fix it, then I’d just find a professional and hire the tweaking done.
I spent about 15 minutes checking the layers, checking all sizing, determining I didn’t know what the problem was. I thought maybe I should just use the Amazon cover building program, but found it was complicated. I searched Amazon for help, and found a way to talk with someone. I then spent a very not-so-pleasant 45 minutes on the phone with an Amazon rep. She was difficult to understand, and ultimately couldn’t help me. She sent me an e-mail of what the cover dimensions should be, which confirmed my calculations.
I had spent my hour, but decided maybe the thing to do was to try one more time, re-building the cover from scratch. I knew what I wanted, I knew the size, so it went quickly. In fifteen minutes I had all the elements in G.I.M.P. file except for the text on the spine. The first time around I created the spine text in PowerPoint and uploaded it to G.I.M.P. I wasn’t real happy with that. So, I decided to try once again to understand how to get the print tool to do what I want.
My problem was getting the text to center vertically in the text box. Horizontal centering is no problem, but I couldn’t see how to center it vertically. I had previously watched a YouTube tutorial on book spines using G.I.M.P. I watched it again, and they said nothing about vertical centering. I noticed he sized the text to the size he wanted, then pulled the limits of the box to match the text size, then aligned the box where they wanted it on the page. I looked at another tutorial, and they did the same thing. I decided I’d better do that.
I opened the text tool, changed the font type and size, selected bold and center, then typed the text and spaced it horizontally in the text box. Then I resized the box to match the text. I rotated it 90 degrees clockwise, and centered it vertically and horizontally on the background. Everything looked good. You can see the results in the illustration above.
One last task was to flatten the file into one layer before exporting the cover to a PDF. That was all done, and I uploaded it to Amazon, checked it in the previewer, and, once again, it looked good. I clicked “Publish” for the third time, and now, for the third time, I wait.
I’m simplifying it somewhat. I created the spine box and deleted what was obviously incorrect several times. I made the other tweaks of color and font, and now have them correct. At several times I had long waits, up to three minutes, while Amazon processed files. I used that time to look at the proof copy, and discovered two errors in the Table Of Contents and one error in a chapter subtitle. I made those changes and checked it in the on-line previewer. This was along with the final cover upload.
As I said, now I wait. It’s possible that an e-mail will arrive before this posts at 07:30 a.m. on Monday. If so, I’ll edit it with the verdict. I’m feeling optimistic. I understand G.I.M.P. a lot better. I understand how to work with layers much better. I feel fairly certain that the next time I go through this it will be much easier. All except choosing artistic elements that look good. Now that’s going to take a long time, if ever.
