RE. Seashell: Let's Make it Official · 9:40pm Sep 29th, 2023
What the title says. It's happening - Seashell is going to be a print book.
I guess it's a good time to tell everyone, because I've already started doing the layout. In fact I'm mostly finished formatting, if not content writing and editing, the interior matter for the first edition I plan to print.
"Whoa whoa whoa," I can hear you now. "First edition you plan? As in, there's gonna be more than one version?"
Yes, and I'm glad you asked! This story is really special to me, so I'm trying to do something special with it as a book. I want the very first printing to be something more than the average trade-size paperback, so I decided it's not going to be a trade-size paperback. It's going to be a hardcover version, in the "Royal" size format (6.14 x 9.21 inches). Linen-bound, dust jacket, the nicer #80 paper - all the upgrades. Yes, it's going to cost a bit, but I think the price per copy I'm seeing for printing it with the options I want is pretty in-line with the level of quality I'm going for, and it's not going to be excessive. It's going to be a limited edition and I'm probably only going to be printing about 10 copies of this special hardcover version, anyway, so it won't be terribly expensive for me upfront. Besides, I think the small run makes it extra-special for the people who get a copy of this version.
There will also be a paperback edition. Haven't decided what size format yet, but I'm going to try to keep it highly accessible by making it very inexpensive and unlimited in printing (print on demand is great, you can get exactly as much as you want of anything! And I won't need to end up having like 500 undistributed copies sitting in a closet for the next decade!). I imagine that'll be the one I try to have in Twilight's Book Nook next year at EFNW.
There's still a lot of work to do. I'm, uh, kinda laying it out for print and rewriting and expanding it at the same time (I should really just be doing the writing part first I guess). It's going to be a while before I see a proof copy, and consequently before any of you see distribution copies. What's "a while?" I don't know! A month? Two? Three? Six? I couldn't tell you. I can say print layout hasn't been difficult so far, and writing progress is good. I'm optimistic about it being ideally less than six months from now, but no promises yet.
So that's where we are with Seashell. And if this project succeeds? Who knows what I'll print next. I'm sure you guys in the comments have ideas - your input is why Seashell is getting printed, after all.
PS., word to the wise, if you ever need to lay out a print book, get a copy of Adobe InDesign! I was worried print formatting was going to be a nightmare because that's how I've heard so many authors describe it, but it's not terrible with a tool that makes it not-terrible. There's no reason to suffer through trying to make a book print correctly with a regular word processor like Word or LibreOffice, so please, please don't put yourself through that.
Oh excellent, very much looking forward to this!
This sounds terrific, Winston! I’m definitely going to try and get a first edition.
Huh. And to think, I just added Seashell to my lists for reassessment. Perhaps I should push it up the schedule a little. I wouldn't be opposed to getting that hardback...
Very cool! I too look forward to getting a copy.
Personally, I'd line up for a copy of Ghost Lights as well. :)