Self-published means you’re solely responsible for all the stuff that happens. The good stuff, the bad stuff, the mucky, yucky stuff. One of the issues that crops up is the disparity between writing and updating eBooks versus the hardcopy.
Electronic media rock. You can poke and twiddle and correct until it’s all good, then you can upload. Make a mistake? No probs, fix it and upload again. Most platforms are forgiving and, though it might take a while for published corrections or front cover updates or new content to be filtered through to the end user, it’s heller faster than traditional print.
To give some context, I realised that after I had revamped all the front covers for my books, I hadn’t done the same for the hardcopies. For the Paranormology series, it wasn’t so bad considering they were similar enough to the ebook to get by. The Bullet, however and Atlas, Broken, were both very different. When I published Devon Cove Ghost, I had a forehead slapping moment when I found that I hadn’t even made a hardcopy for Cooper Alley Ghost. Sheesh.
I set aside some time and worked at Lulu to get Devon Cove in, then moved back to Cooper Alley. That got me moving to fix up the rest of the books. I re-jigged the content to make it all consistent. I added the author bio at the end. The back covers got a make-over and the front covers all used the same font for the series. In short, it came out looking super.
Thing is, the results can’t be published straight away. Even though the content files are electronic – it’s pdf for the innards and png for the outer, which gets converted to a pdf anyway – the files cannot be distributed until the author has purchased the books and approved it. That’s because Lulu is print-on-demand, so there isn’t a warehouse of your book waiting to get sent out. It’s a nice way to save trees, and costs related to printing and storage, especially if you’re a budding author and haven’t got tens of thousands of dollars to put behind you.
So that’s what I did – I held off doing the order until all of the books were ready, then did it all in one big shipment:
Tada! So, first, I apologise for not having Cooper Alley and Devon Cove Ghost on hardcopy until now. That was my oversight. Secondly, I’m proud to say the new covers and innards are looking shmicko!
If you’re interested in getting some copies for yourself, head to Lulu and poke around:
https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/jeremy-tyrrell/atlas-broken/paperback/product-1re926rm.html?page=1&pageSize=4
Please note, as of now (26th of November, 2021) I haven’t finished reworking the Adaptation series except for the compendium. I’ll be getting onto those later on. Right now, I’ve got an Octopus who’s waiting on his trilogy, and a ghost that needs to escape from a machine.
