So You Want To Publish A Book But It’s Too Late For Bronycon - Maybe · 8:51pm Jun 6th, 2019
This is all CoffeeMinion’s fault, just to be clear. Ahem. Many of you have pestered me for a paper copy of Monster in the Twilight. I’m going to oblige. I’ve created a Gdocs folder where I’ll be building the project, and an index file for anybody who wants to watch can see the steps (and stumbles and just plain explosive falls)
Monster in the Twilight is 99k words
Letters From a Little Princess Monster is 337k words
Yeah, the resulting tome will be heavy enough to stun a rhino (if it fits inside Lulu.com's printing limits). Let’s get started and see if I fireball and fail, or if there’s a light at the end of this tunnel that isn’t a train.
Link to the project folder (read-only)
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fqX5wo6QgWa6Wf9lauURk7-S6HduZiZb?usp=sharing
Link to this index file (Comment-enabled, please don’t abuse)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s-xgw-BN5_x1PIXpLTSqt2-bmkA66iaA2vU4T8soSPQ/edit?usp=sharing
Goal: To get a copy of Monster/Letters (Hardback, damnit!) off to Lulu before the 10% discount for printing expires tonight. (LULU10) (or at least I think it expires tonight) I figure about five copies, signed and brought to Bronycon, will be the limit, with #1 tossed into the charity auction)
Begin!
Godspeed, you maniac!
BTW, I took advantage of your promo code for ordering proof copy #1 of my book in the wee hours this AM, so thank you for that! Also, once again, thank you for your succinct summary of how to do this. Everything totally clicked for me this time. I probably could still turn around a print run of my novel in time, now that I (allegedly) know what I’m doing; but I want to aim low and start small for my very first sales attempt.
5070382 11:42 Declaring this experiment complete for the moment. Need more NyQuil. Darned cold.
For those of you following along, the files in the folder that matter are:
BCBMonster-combined2a-8x10.docx (Both stories, large format, rough)
BCBMonster-FirstBookOnly2a.docx (Monster, 9x6 format, needs a few hours of editing)
Lulu-MonsterFirstBookOnly2a.pdf - The actual file that Lulu would use to produce the book.
Tasks needed: Pick through FirstBookOnly2a and clean up all the headers and footnote alignments.
Generate a 3830px x 2775px cover for it that doesn’t look like I used Paint. Which I am.
FYI: Lulu runs on EAST coast time, so I would have needed to be done by 11PM to have gotten the 10% printing discount. Still, this experiment is a success. God willing and the creek don’t rise, I should have a printable copy of Monster sent to Lulu by Saturday. Oddly enough, my formatting of the template this time *kept* the odd pages on the right side of the PDF, so they won’t print gutter-outside on paper. Skill and luck combined!
12:12 - Staggers off to NyQuill Land
Sunday 11:24 PM. Stupid cold. No progress.