Saturday, July 8, 2017

Create Space Says Book Has Passed Their Requirements

Getting "Word of Mouth" to print nearly killed me.  I am not computer gifted; I do not speak "Computer" and I have been trying to get this done since the middle of June.  I had to go back to them so many times that yesterday, when they accepted it, I wrote a "thank you" note to Anshu, Daniela, Wardah and Vaishnavi, the poor techs who had to work with me.   They wrote a thank you for your thank you back to me.  Any gratitude that they may have felt is substantially, "Thank God - we never have to hear from her again!" 

For any of you who are contemplating writing and publishing a book, here are tidbits I can offer based on (bitter) experience.

Either write the book as one file - i.e. Chapter 1 through 10 as one file,' not Chapter 1, Chapter 2, because it won't fly like that.  I kept getting this in red ink:  Each file must be at least 24 pages.  And between the lines, "Go back and do it right!"  When you don't know what "right" is and you have tried several different means ... It turns out that they meant "book" instead of "file."

I had to learn copy, cut, paste to put the Dedication, quote, Table of Contents, Chapter 1 to Chapter 46 in one humongous file and send it on it's way. 

Happily I had the great good luck to have a friend who is a retired graphics director who put the front and back covers into a format acceptable to Them.  Note "retired" - he won't do it for strangers. 

Today's love note from Create Space said they have accepted cover and interior, all that's left is to prof it and I did that yesterday when I put in the last of the photographs.

Off to see what fresh hell awaits me. 

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