I’m making progress toward bringing The Prairie Grass Murders into this new digital publishing world. I’ll keep you posted as I get the formatted files uploaded and finish whatever else I need to do.
For now, I just want you to see my new cover art designed by a University of Colorado student, Jalena Marie Penaligon, whose mom is a Colorado author and a good friend. Networking is a wonderful thing.
I told Jalena my ideas for the cover, and she gave me exactly what I wanted:
I cut my time investment way down by paying a local expert to format my manuscript, so I wouldn’t have to battle that particular learning curve. Next week I’ll work on uploading the files for Kindle, Nook, etc. If my blog posts are a little short this week, I know you’ll understand.
And you might want to follow The Blood-Red Pencil blog for the next two weeks. We’re doing a series on e-publishing with a variety of posts that may help you with your own digital publishing projects.
Hi Patricia .. I love the cover – and totally agree with everyone else .. you seem to have it taped! Good luck though with all the projects ..
Have a good week .. even though I’m late in! Cheers Hilary
The formatting issue is one I’ve noticed since I downloaded the Kindle App to my computer. I’m hoping my Kindle conversion guy has that all figured out so I don’t have to do much tweaking.
Congrats! I’m a big fan of ebooks.
I’ve encountered many ebooks with formatting problems. At times there are no spaces between words and strange line breaks. These are small blips that might slow me down for a second.
Congrats and great cover! I upload to Kindle separately, but I let Smashwords take care of all the other formats. Seems easier to me. Good luck!
Love the cover and good luck with the e-release, Pat! Also thanks for the heads-up on the BRP series.
I’m rather pleased by the e-book prices as well. Now I just need to learn how to read faster.
Oh, I wish I had this cover on the copy I have. I love it!
Jumping into the digital world–I’m exhausted just finishing my last round of revisions! But I’ll be keeping up with all this through Blood Red Pencil, and your posts! Like Clarissa, I too am beginning to read more through e-books. They’re less expensive, and, well, in this depressed economy, what can one do?
Ann
Sounds terrific! THe thought of doing all that formatting terrifies me 🙂
Oh, I can’t wait! I mainly by ebook now.
CD
Beautiful cover! The colors are perfect!
Monti
MaryMontagueSikes
Looks great, Patricia. Very smart to have the cover designed locally and to get someone to format your ms. so you can focus on other things. And I’m glad The Prairie Grass Murders will continue to be available via e-book!
Hearth Cricket
That’s awesome, Patricia!
Hey … I like this cover better than the original one.
Love the cover, Patricia! Good luck with the ebook – keep us posted!
What an evocative cover, Pat! Best of digital luck to you as you wade into e-book ocean.
Very cool Patricia. I just bot a DroidX…I am so excited. I can now download e-books as soon as payday comes around anyway. I will check out the Blood Red Pencil.
Nancy
N. R. Williams, fantasy author
Good morning,everyone. Thanks for the book cover comments. I’m very pleased with my artist’s work.
Thanks for the promo offer, Jan. As soon as I know the book is out there, I’d love to have some help with getting the word out. I’ll be in touch.
Terry, I’m going to upload directly to each e-book site rather than going through Smashwords. I understand payment is a little faster without the middle man, and that makes sense to me. I knew the formatting wasn’t a monster with the Five Star doc, but I’m just swamped with projects at the moment. I knew this job would get put off too long.
As for no cover art to display, Arlee, I think I’ll print out a copy and frame it to hang above my bookcase. Can’t let good art hide inside an e-reader. 🙂
I really like the cover art–I’m a big fan of dirt roads, country roads, and roads in general.
If you get the book on e-reader you don’t have that nice cover to display in your book collection.
LeeTossing It Out
Hey – that is a beautiful cover – of course I’m a prairie chick (born in Medicine Hat, Alberta) so…
As soon as you get up and going I’ll post a link to your seller on my blog – let’s get together and make this happen!
Patricia – What a terrific cover!! And it really does capture the novel. I wish you well going digital!!!
Sounds good Patricia, excellent cover,
Have a lovely day.
Yvonne.
Love the cover, Patricia. I’m so impressed that you are taking this step in the new digital world. I’m still debating…
karen
Patricia, if you submitted your book electronically to Five Star (and I know you must have) it’s practically formatted already. I found that formatting for Smashwords which wants a .doc format, then taking that and doing a simple “save as html” in Word covers almost all the bases. The hardest part is finding a cover, and it looks like you got a good one.
Good luck — with your release.
Terry
Terry’s Place
Romance with a Twist–of Mystery