Um, I think the phase "Never Judge a Book by its Cover" became so common because many people do just that.


Then, of course, there's the human analogy ... but the literal interpretation has to count for something.

I think you should just put a crayon scribble on the front cover.

And I liked CP's designs - they were wonderful!!!

It would be nice if everyone bought your book hoping to be charmed. Human nature being what it is, I bet there's a good chunk of your prospective audience who will buy your book hoping to find fault and think to themselves that they could have done it better. Their money's just as good.

Can't please everyone on the internet, that's for damn sure :)

Okay, little update time, things are moving along swimingly. For me, the classic procrastinator, it's going okay. The downside with blurb is text insertion, that part is a PITA, a real PITA, it reformats and screws with your head in every whihc way. So the bulk of text is going in at the end and this will be time consuming to make sure it's not screwed up. I will also need to PDF the entire book so I can index it, this will also be a PITA. But I refuse for it not to be indexed.

In the middle of getting some images in place I decided to make a change to the interior design a bit, an improvement. I may also remove the background design and keep the pages a slight tinted color or not and keep them white. Not sure. Keep in mind the design layout is very simple and clean not too much in the way of gee-gaws. Blurb has some limitations and a lot of their "themes" just do not match my vision. So I kept it simple.

Once I get a PDF draft of some of it this weekend, I will see if I can extract a few pages for posting here for opinions. I only have adobe reader at home so it makes PDF editing impossible. I'm using cutePDF to do the conversion (suggested by the gurus at blurb) so if anyone knows another non-acrobat PDF generator, I'd love to hear about it. Freeware, that is.

The first run of promotional postcards came back from the printer. If anyone wants one PM me an address and I will mail one. Do not feel obliged I'm just putting it out there if anyone has a remote interest. The second postcardf will be done later in the summer, with actual ordering information and pricing. Kind of exciting to think I am almost done with this and it will be available.

The only bad thing is, and I do not know if it is really a bad thing, the book is going to be a bit larger (page count) than I'd anticipated. This will make it more expensive price-wise, so I am debating whether or not I add the $5 on top of the blurb price so I make a bit out of this. Goodness knows I will never get rich or never make back any of the $$ this project has actualy cost. That said, I do not want to put it out for nothing except blurb to make dough. If I sell 100 copies I will be happy. I'll cross this bridge when I do the final upload of the book to blurb.

I'm also debating on spending $$ for an ISBN number, it will cost about $125 and I also have the copyright application to think about. That's cheap ($45) and I can file it myself. I need to see what I actually need to send for the manuscript, if a PDF proof will be sufficient.

Oh, and the last bit of very cool news is the Valentino family will be donating an image or two from their collection for use in my book. While they have a book of their own coming out in 2010 sometime (which I am very excited about) it's like a benediction to get their approval on my project and to have them offer a rarity for me to use. :D

What program are you working in?

TRES cool !!

Will the promo postcards feature the cover design? :)

Yes, they do and you get the cover credit on the copyright page and in the acknowledgements.

BTW, can I send you another photo to play with for the back cover? I'm hoping you might be able to duplicate the tinting of the cover shot.

I might also send you a little photoshop project if you are up to it. ;)

I'm using the blurb software called booksmart. To do their books you need to work in their software. Text text boxes on the pages work in much the same way as MS Publisher (sh!tty) which I am used to from when I put out the RV Newsletter.

Basically you pick from the page layouts they have, and they just upgraded the software, I downloaded the new version last night. I see I might be able to edit the layout of the pages, which can be cool or a headache. Not sure yet. If it is going to allow me to enlarge the photo spot on the page, or move them around, this will be a good thing. Blurb provides many options for layout of the photos, but only a few I can really use because I do want to caption most of the photos.