Cover me

Update on my ongoing adventures in paper publishing (this being an offshoot of this year's eBook Experiment):

So I finished the pdf of the interior. I had been led to believe that after that, Amazon would process the file and then give you a template for the cover with which you could start the process of creating a cover. They don't. They actually give you a choice of using their cover creator (for those who can't do their own designs) or uploading your already finished cover. And they give you some links to pages with the information you need to create that custom cover.

Which should be at the beginning of the process, not in the middle. I could have had the cover ready now too. (This isn't really Amazon's fault, but my own fault for listening to people who didn't know.) As it turns out, they don't do templates for all formats, and mine will have to be made by hand myself, and they give oddly vague instructions. My artwork is good. The key is getting it into the right format for them (They want a bleed, but they don't seem to want it to be a real bleed built into the file by the software. They want me to fudge it. Gah!)

So I'm frustrated.

I'm also frustrated because I bought some advertising on a review site which should be good for boosting sales a little.... and my sales promptly came to a complete halt. I haven't sold a book since the ad appeared.

As for the critique and writing progress: I got some scenes done and chapters read. Haven't pulled either together yet.