Birthing agonies

Birthing agonies

I’m really getting tired of this POD (print on demand) world. The first time around, when I did the agent-publisher deal, it was so easy. I signed a contract, the publishers changed the cover without telling me, they gave me a single day to review the final cut, and then the publisher died as it hit the shelf, the company went into chapter seven and I didn’t get a dime. Nice and straightforward.

This POD stuff is supposed to be easy. I signed onto CreateSpace and then got a book about it. Found out well into the book that CS only is good if you are writing short attention-disorder shit, 200 pages or less (with big fonts, sheesh). Early ReTyrement is 497 pages, a full novel. It won’t fit!

So I’m scrambling about, trying to find out what services are out there. My sister is sending me postings to strange self-publishing services. I don’t know if these people do POD or tarot readings.

And my cover – I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do there. Today I mocked up the cover art spec I’ve dreamed of and posted it to all my loved ones. My mother sent me the link to amazon, so I could “see what the competition is doing”. My sister sent me a blurb on kindles slowly taking over the market and enslaving literature as we know it. My friends didn’t peep. Jeez, I just wanted to know if the figure positioning was any good.

This is going to make the dedications in the front cover easy. Thanks to nobody.