Self Publishing - Sending off Typescript to Printers and Formatting for Kindle.

I had a delicious lunch in The Gipsy Moth pub in Greenwich yesterday, to celebrate sending my typescript for Gipsy Moth to Direct POD, the print on demand company!

I have checked and re-checked the typing, spelling, continuity, and those pesky chapter headings which seem to jump about every time I changed something else. At last it was ready, and the final cover design arrived too (I'm going to tell you more about that in a later blog).

I phoned Clare to check that I'd done everything, and pressed send! The proof copy should come back soon, and then I'll have to re-check it , of course and send it off again for the big print run! It's so exciting to be actually doing it at last!

Meanwhile, I'm formatting it for Kindle. I've been using Self-Printed by Catherine Ryan Howard, and Easy Way to Publish ebooks on Kindle, a booklet from Freda Lightfoot. They are both very good, and it's a bit like making a special dessert and taking the best advice from Delia and Nigella to make the flavour that I want. The cheesecake above at the pub was Mascarpone and Amaretto. Umm!

Self-Publishing - A Weekend in Madrid with Final Editing and Formatting Book for the Printers when I got home.

It wasn't a good idea to go to Madrid for the weekend when I was trying to do the final edits on my novel, so I took a hard copy with me, and it was quite inspiring reading about Kathy's flying lessons when I was 39,000 feet in the air!

Madrid is a beautiful city with a clear blue sky and amazing white rooflines shining like intricate wedding cakes against it.

We had dinner at The Botin Restaurant, the oldest restaurant in the world according to the Guinness Book of Records! Ernest Hemingway used to eat there.

'In his book The Sun Also Rises (1926) he writes, "We lunched upstairs at Botin's, it is one of the best restaurants in the world. We had roast young suckling pig and drunk rioja alta.". Then again in Death in the Afternoon (1932) he writes, "I would rather dine on suckling pig at Botin's than sit and think of casualties my friends have suffered." '

http://everything2.com/title/Botin

Whilst I was away Clare at Direct POD printed out my cover to check that the colours worked, and she sent it me with no laminate, a glossy laminate and a matt one. The matt one was best, although in all the colours were good.

At last I finished the editing and then I had to get to grips with formatting. It didn't take as long as I thought, but it was fiddly getting the chapter headings to stay in place and making sure that the page numbers started on page 7 and not before! But I'm quite satisfied now. I've only got the Amazon Kindle to do and by all accounts that's far worse!

Self-Publishing Gipsy Moth at Last with Direct POD!

After a flurry of activity in the summer, researching into self-publishing, I began to have second thoughts and didn't do any more. Then the other Sunday, my husband was reading in the paper (on his i-Pad) about success in self-publishing and said I should really give it a try, so by the end of the day I had enquired about having a cover designed, more about that in a later blog, and I had asked for some quotes to have it printed! My aim is to have it ready for a book signing at a local farmer's market in November!

I wanted to have 100 copies printed to see how they sold, and it's amazing just how much that costs! In the end, I decided to go with Direct POD, because they gave an online quote immediately, which proved to be the best out of all the others.

We visited them yesterday to just see what their finished books were like and Clare was very helpful, answering all my questions patiently and apart from giving me a sample copy of one of their books, she also gave us a tour of their vast printing works where my book will be printed!

I felt that, at last, it was really happening!

Afterwards we asked about a good place to have lunch, and she suggested The Aviator at Sywell Aerodrome. Perfect, as my book is all about flying a Gipsy Moth! The hotel is situated in the original club house, and they have kept all the old panelling, windows and fittings to give it the real atmosphere of the 1930s. We even saw a small plane come in to land! I hope it's a good omen for my book!