Cover for the Paperback of The Lost Steersman

Rosemary

What do you think, too much green? (You may embiggen.)

Well.  It’s now in the hands of Createspace, waiting for them to tell me whether or not it’s acceptable.  The issue will probably be alignment, with this book being more than a hundred pages longer than The Outskirter’s Secret.  They give you a template sized to the size of your book, but many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip, as they say.  If there’s a problem, I’ll have to adjust, resubmit, wait for review again.

I’m almost certain I got all the typos.  Almost.  Because, damn, there’s always one or two that just slip through…

Already on the task of creating the paperback for The Language of Power.  But there’s certainly no way I’ll finish that before Christmas.  In fact, the time needed for the vetting process and final proofing on The Lost Steersman makes it not likely that even that will be on sale in time to arrive before the holiday.  It’s possible, but not certain.  Rats.

On the other hand, having done three now, I do have a better sense of the range of time needed.  Good to know for the future.

You know, the more I look at this cover, the more I like it…

 

 

 

 

 


10 Responses to “Cover for the Paperback of The Lost Steersman”

  • RogerBW Says:

    Typos: that’s why they used to pay copyeditors, after all. Why it’s become acceptable to say “meh, good enough” and let stuff go out riddled not only with the author’s mistakes but with a bunch of new ones… I don’t know.

    I think that works very well. And it’s been a while since I read it, and it makes me want to read it again. (OK, I still have my copy from first publication, but still. A uniform edition is quite tempting.)

    • Rosemary Says:

      Hey, trad publishing still does pay copyeditors! Wait, I assume they do… hm. I should check on that. They can’t have done away with copyeditors — not yet! I assume that one of these days AI will take care of it.

      But anyway, it’s one of the downsides of the self-pub route. Alas.

      As for “uniform editiion,” at this point the first book (The Steerswoman) is in a slightly smaller format (8.5×5.25) than the other two (9×6). Not quite uniform. I had to do that because I discovered that the longer books would end up having so many pages that I’d have to charge too much! Bigger format= more words per page. I’ll go back later and redo The Steerswoman in the larger format to match.

  • Evelyn Says:

    Minor, but: I think there are missing quotation marks at the beginning of Jo Walton’s quote, and there are two commas after her name. Also, in Suzy Charnas’ quote, the period after the word fear looks like it’s been partly cut off?

  • David Tate Says:

    So, dumb question from someone who doesn’t know the biz:

    I already own a paperback copy of _The Language of Power_. Del Rey / Ballantine, first edition, 9th printing (if I’m reading the copyright page correctly).

    So Del Rey has returned you the paperback rights because they no longer have any interest in publishing new editions? Or something like that? I know that the industry sucks for non-bestselling authors, but I don’t know the details…

    • Rosemary Says:

      The Del Rey books went out of print — which means that even though they held exclusive right to publish them, they stopped printing copies, stopped selling them alltogether. When that happens, an author can request that the publisher return the rights to the author. Then, the author can find another publisher, or self-publish.

      I did that back in 2013. I released the ebook versions first (in 2013 and 2014) because it was a relatively quick thing to do — and it paid off. Apparently there was a lot of backed-up demand for books by Rosemary Kirstein. And apparently my readership had nothing against ebooks.

      Recently, it started looking like people also wanted paperback versions, so I’ve been getting those done.

      This is a trend. There are a lot of authors who don’t just sit back when their publishers stop supporting and supplying the “backlist” — the books that are not brand-new. The new technologies (ebooks, and print-on-demand paperbacks, and the Internet) are what makes this possible and cost-effective.

      • David Tate Says:

        Awesome. Thanks for the clarification.

        I remember reading about how YouTube and various music search/recommendation services might help to break the stranglehold of the Record Labels on music, by allowing people to find and directly buy the music they like. Something like that might happen with print too — and, in fact, I can assure you that I first heard of your works through a combination of UseNet (rec.arts.sf.written) and (the late lamented) Alexandria Digital Literature’s recommendation engine, “Hypatia”.

  • Christian Brunschen Says:

    I love seeing these back in print – I bought all four in the series so far in your ebook release, but recently bought a new print copy of The Steerswoman for a friend, who has in turn bought one for a relative!

    Regarding the cover – am I imagining things, or does your name look a bit more ragged/pixelated along the edges than the title, both on the front and on the spine? As if your name has been rendered to pixels first and then scaled up (resulting in pixelated edges), but the title has been scaled up first and then rendered to pixels (leaving the edges nice and smooth and sharp).

    Best wishes

    // Christian

    • Rosemary Says:

      It’s a bit hard to tell on the screen version — that’s a version exported to JPEG so that I could link to it on my blog. The actual file used to create the cover is a big fat PDF (I use the GIMP software for image manipulation.)

      I’ve got a physical proof copy that just arrived, and is waiting for me when I get home. That’ll really tell the tale.

    • Rosemary Says:

      That physical copy told the tale: you were right. I suppose I could have got away with it, because it was only slightly noticeable, if you knew where to look, and looked very closely. But with the other problems (see my recent post), I just can’t let it go looking like that.

      Thanks for catching it!