News 6.02

We're only about a month away from getting to the end of A Fistful of Fire, and everything's silent. I'm getting nervous. Is the silence good? Bad? Indicative that readers want to throw rotten tomatoes at me? (Yes, my tongue's in my cheek.)

If anyone wants to buy a convenience e-copy of A Fistful of Fire, it's on sale for $2.99 US and will be for the month of June. Come July, price will go back to $3.99. Lord willing, I'll also be releasing book 1 of a completely different series that's young adult urban fantasy at the $2.99 price.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the poll. I often hear quoted that the preferred paperback size is trade paperback. I prefer mass market, myself, but I wanted to at least get an idea of what my readers preferred. I don't know the details about how that general preference for trade paperback was determined—for all I know, researchers only asked readers of literary fiction who live in a particular city.

So. I'll start with mass market paperback (ETA: if I can—I just realized I'd missed something on CreateSpace that means I may not be able to release as standard size mass market *headdesk*). I intend to create a trade paperback, too, for those who prefer it, and a large type version, but I don't want to move too quickly and shoot myself in the foot.

As things stand, I refuse to charge more than standard trade publishers, and I want to be able to get into bookstores (once I have a large enough backlist), which means I have to stick within a certain page count. That means the mass market version of A Fistful of Fire will have to be kinda… compressed. Size 10 font, for example. I've been tweaking, trying to make give it a layout that's as easy to read as possible despite the limitations.

Between my experience as a proofreader and my old hobby identifying margin sizes, fonts, and font sizes in a book to look at 'em, the end result should look professional without having to go through a series of proof copies.

Now, to finish converting and tweaking the cover for print publication on my old slow computer. *sigh* At least it's a Mac.