I think I should have been able to anticipate that the hardest part of finishing a book, for me, is actually being done with it.
But, at long last: I am! Bringer of the Scourge is finally available in paperback from Amazon here!
Finessing and perfecting—gardening, really—has been long a part of my writing method. I get the work done wherever and however I can, in whatever raw state a sentence can be persuaded out by sunlight, in whatever raw state a book can be grown. I like to tinker and rearrange and accept what happens in the process as organic to the nature of my writing.
Now, I’ve written whole books worth of material on my phone, over the years, especially when I had an onerous commute and little else to occupy myself on a congested train. Later, when I was caring for my mother; once I cleared the initial survival-mode abdication of all my creative interests, I returned to writing-as-habit quite naturally, in the waiting room at one of her many, many appointments last spring: I popped open the notes app on my phone and made a new document.
I habitually groom these notebook pages over time, fiddling with previous pages’ wording before embarking on anything fresh. This process tends to produce relatively-polished-looking first drafts that nonetheless need something in the way of surgical reconstruction to be serviceable as books. It is not readily apparent from this newsletter, but in my fiction I am a habitual under-writer, and so the gardening process is one where I can feather out scenes later.
This process is, in some ways, a means of tacitly avoiding forward momentum; when things are simply not cohering, I can always garden.
The Self-Publishing Derby was really good for me, in this regard: hard deadlines, finite production timeline. Relatively little gardening time. I had to pick my tomatoes and run with them.
But! The print version of Bringer of the Scourge has been, in a phrase, a logistical quagmire, primarily of my own making, centered upon expectations I could never hope to excel beyond simply because I have, in another phrase, impossibly lofty ideals.
Not solely because of the material challenges of print publishing—if anything, I think I rose to that challenge just fine. I figured out an economical, workable pathway for print books on my own terms on the software side. I have built a workflow in Microsoft Word that allows me to take that into Adobe Acrobat and create a print-ready file directly. My layout is very simple, so I don't need a full tour through InDesign to accomplish what I want for the appearance of my books. Yes, even with a full-bleed map!
(I’ve thought about bashing together a how-to for this because I have some Thoughts on how to make Better Books through publishing-on-demand but I could easily end up in the weeds, for people who don’t especially want to know how the sausage is made. If this is something that is interesting to you—please say so in the comments!)
My most daunting logistical challenge, in independent publishing, is not writing or revising or even hitting the publish button, now—it’s my own perfectionism. Not in a cute way: in a diagnosed, obsessive-compulsive disorder way. In the process of making this book, I printed five different versions, which sounds slightly manic but, if anything, feels a bit on the low side for me personally, because I have a long and complex history of bludgeoning a project to its early and untimely end by relentless and obsessive dissatisfaction.
Bringer of the Scourge is in many ways a departure for me, and one of them is in being somewhat satisfied that the thing is done. Well, at least, done enough.
At the beginning of this process, I ran a one-of-one exclusive edition for myself on Lulu with the specific version of the book as it was published on Day One of the Derby. This version was just to have a physical object I could show people in light of the “I wrote a book!” conversations after the end of the Derby, at Thanksgiving and so on. The trim size was great: pocket paperback! But, for me, the price of printing with Lulu was high enough that I was very disappointed in the quality of the paper. My first printing had some undesirable appearance issues.
My first trial print at “novella” size (8x5) on Amazon was an unmitigated disaster. Their matte covers are sticky-feeling and don't look attractive, or at least, don’t look attractive with the book I printed, because my cover pdf had the wrong color profile (my bad) and a key element of the prose was not correctly italicized… throughout the book. Ugh. Expensive and frustrating lesson to learn.
Next batch was better but still not great, and I still wasn't in love with the novella size. 8x5 is a fine size for a lot of books, but my book is a love letter to the spinner-rack paperbacks at my childhood library and the Waldenbooks in our shabby rural mall. I desperately wanted a different form factor which reflected my literary heritage. So to speak.
My friend
printed Not Your Mountain at 4.25 x 7, which was a custom trim size on Amazon. I did the back cover faux-leather texture and the spine typography for AJ's book in this format, and realized it was close enough to what I wanted that I could run my own that way. I hadn’t committed to a size yet on Amazon; once you publish the paperback, it’s no takebacks, but I had let my book ride in draft mode this whole time, so I was still free to resize and resubmit.I was concerned it would limit my availability on multiple platforms, but my fears were for naught—it's available internationally! It's just the Amazon isbn is not eligible for bookstore distribution, which I am fine with as I suspect the bulk of my readers wouldn't discover me on the shelf anyway.
So I ran proof copies at that size and it was finally, finally right enough for me.
I had to try Lulu again, just to be sure I hadn’t done a fluke the first time out—and, it seems, I might have? I just received that test-parcel today, and… frankly, they’re rather lovely. The paper quality seems different, but in truth it’s probably just that in the five months since I first printed it, I have learned a lot about how to design a truly beautiful book. I overwhelmingly prefer their matte covers over the “matte” from Amazon.
I elected to launch the paperback edition through Amazon, for simplicity’s sake, but I will probably print up a few more of the Lulu editions for special purposes. I don’t think I want to use their distribution platform as I think it would put my price per copy too far out of my own comfort zone, but I might be open to persuasion on this front.
In the meanwhile, I am blown away by the positive reception my pocket paperback has gotten in the wild so far! I have loved getting pictures from friends on this topic. Maybe someday that feeling will get old, but seeing my book in someone’s stack of new books or on their shelf next to some of my own favorite classics, it is a genuine thrill for which I cannot yet summon my specific words of gratitude. Thank you for being on this wild ride with me.
Picking my tomatoes and running with them, til Hell won’t have it—
—M.
This is all so cool! The bit about seeing your book in friends' hands is motivating me to get back to work on my novella. :)
I'm so glad that size worked for you! It was a size offered in Atticus. Thought hm, well, worst case scenario, I hate the size for a print proof. It's such a good size!!