And now an update on the Fan To Pro book. I spent a lot of the weekend working on it, so here's the latest:
Status:
- The book is actually formatted and uploaded at Lulu.com. This actually took awhile due to PDF conversion issues.
- I am now working on the cover, which seems to work well as a simple cover for now – though people are still dropping ideas on me left and right. I think next time I may "fansource" cover design more and hands-off it.
- I hope to get the cover finished in a week or so and approve the final version in March.
- Release to Lulu will be earlier than release to Amazon and other stores as it takes a few weeks for a new book to go through the system. I'm still aiming for March.
What I learned:
- Typesetting and laying out a book is a very unappreciated skill that you will NOT appreciate until you actually do it knowing a book you set up will be available to the public.
- PDF conversion is also a massive crapshoot. Lulu.com's PDF conversion beat the one I had on my Mac Word. I ended up using Mac Word to get my book PDF, but had to cope with some annoying margin issues.
- The first time you do set up a book for publishing, take a whole day to do it. Trust me on this.
- Examine other books to get ideas for layouts, numbering, and more. That helped a lot.
- Don't forget title, copyright, dedication, and other pages.
So the book is all but ready to go. It needs a cover, a print check, and some tweaking. But late March is looking awfully good . . .
. . . and yes when it's done I'll write up my experience with Lulu.com!
– Steven Savage