Disaster!
No sooner had I written a blog about how things were seemingly coming together than the very next day the world conspires against me to send me back two paces where previously I had advanced one.
The problem you see emerges from the fact that yesterday I received my formatted manuscript back from the publishers. Other than the nice job they’ve done with the header, I have to say I’m mightily disappointed. Because they use template formatting it seems to me that there hasn’t actually been an individual as such to actually look over what has been formatted and sort it all out. That, apparently, is my job.
Fair enough – I’ve only gone and spent a good amount of money on setting up a publishing package that includes both enhanced cover design and formatting. I’ll just accept their word and get on with it…
But that my friends, is not the main problem, no, for the main problem is the size of my formatted work. My trilogy comes in at a whopping (wait for it)… 999 pages!
Ok, fine, so 999 pages is a larger amount than expected, but that’s alright isn’t it? Even if it pushes cost per unit up to being nigh on the same as the RRP, you can let that go for the sake of your art can’t you?
Well no, actually, I can’t.
Why not? Because my publishers only print to 740 pages.
740 pages and my manuscript comes to 999.
I am, as they say in the trade, “screwed”. The solution, other than sending an obviously worried email to my publishing contact, is to take stock and look at my options. My plan of having my work published in October certainly seems to have gone straight out of the window. It seems also that because the company I was using are a famous American-based self-publishing firm, and their book template sizes are all American trade sizes, that even if I took their formatted work and went to a new printer, the cost of printing to a specialist U.S. size in the U.K. would push my cost per unit up to the £11-12 mark. My RRP is £12.99.
It seems then, that I must format my book myself.
Now this isn’t such a hard task as it might seem to some of you. I’ve actually formatted my books before for my e-publishing trial, but from experience I know that I don’t have the software available to me to make the finished work as professional as I’d like. I also know that it’s going to take me a darn long time – something I really don’t relish doing given just how much work I have to do at the moment.
But needs must. Accordingly, I must ‘bite the bullet’ and get on with it. On the plus side, if I format it now to a U.K. trade size my cost per unit could potentially be much reduced, however I will need to expend more funds to get my cover adjusted to the new size and thus it seems the endless torment of a budding author doesn’t end just yet.
One of these days, just one of these days, something is going to go right for me.
Until next time,
M.J.Ryder
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