January 30, 2006

First Proofs of Book

I got the electronic proofs of my book this morning from iUniverse, and they did a very nice job on the interior of the book. It's going to be 190 pages, which, surprisingly, is longer than the manuscript, and it's a fairly large paperback format too, 6" X 9". The cover price will be $13.95. The title of the book is ONLY WHAT IS, which comes from my May 24, 2005 post, "The Believer in Mottos": “I am only interested in what is."

I'm less satisfied with the cover, but I'll have the chance to try to browbeat them into making suitable changes. I want an extremely simple cover design, and, probably not trusting that I really wanted that, they went beyond my specifications and added designy touches. Ugh.

The book contains 90 posts, the large majority of them fiction, with some autobiographical and travel essays and haiku, and with a post-sized author's preface added. Comments are not included, though of course they'll still be available on the original posts. I'll post the table of contents when the time comes close to offer the book for sale, which should be in about a month. It will be available on Amazon and B&N as well as from the publisher, and I'll put permanent links to all three on my sidebar.

I'll also post other materials that traditionally help readers decide to buy a book: the jacket copy, the blurbs, and my personal favorite, the author photo.

Exciting and nerve-wracking! I've been through this proces several times before, and so far it's easier with this self-publishing service than with "real" publishers.