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Writer's pictureTracy Eire

What's taking so long?

Updated: Jul 12, 2023

I've been teasing this book for ages -- relatively speaking, as I often dead-drop books on Amazon or wide and just sort of hide in the nearby brush line to watch. But Their Greatest Hart still not out! What's going on?


It's a saga folks (not the Viking kind), and that saga starts with the fact I'm putting a lot (a lot) into this novella. It's one of three books I've formatted the way I'd like to make standard for my books in the future -- you can take a look at either of On Canvas in Shadow, or A Book by Candlelight to see what I mean.


For the first couple of books, everything came together. But I've had proofs coming (no, publishing is not cheap), for weeks, and none of them... have been right.


Amazon Print Proofs


I feel like a completely different team of people from Amazon printed the proofs for On Canvas in Shadow and A Book by Candlelight than have even glimpsed the tawny waves of the prince Ruel's hair. Honest.


The people who delivered me nearly perfect copies of the first two books (the mistakes were all mine), haven't even seen the young prince across a Northern meadow. Nothing. And when I speak of weird mistakes we're talking everything, folks.


There are some rules, for example, for bleed pictures on the platform. Here's one: Add 0.125 " (3.2 mm) to your book's page width and 0.25" (6.4 mm) to the page height to ensure that the images in your manuscript extend beyond the edge of the page.


I'm religious about this! It worked flawlessly in two books, and in this last? OMG. White lines around the graphics? You betcha. SO frustrating for someone who wants to turn out a printed product worthy of her readers, and is putting in the time and effort (and money) to get graphics like this:


Pretty cute, right? I thought so too! And this takes the least amount of effort of anything in the book right now. It should be simple for Amazon to get proofs like mine right. They've been doing them for years, plus two of the three books came out perfectly as a result of following the standards for printing.


But I've had such weirdness as the white line that marks the interior binding on a bleed page being printed on the outer margin of the book. When this is how it's supposed to look, right here:


Fig. The little narrow line of white you see on the inside of the graphic sits in the fold/binding of the book. Not on the outside margin of the page! What the heck, Amazon?


Not much longer?


So I scrapped all the graphics on the template and started over. Thes pictures had been through so many changes, I didn't have much choice. The latest proof is... acceptable. But I'm pretty shocked that it's taken me three shipments of my proof to get here.


However... this book is finally much closer to being something that can go home with someone and be a beauty to read, with sweet surprises when readers open its pages.


That's all I wanted!


UPDATE! I figured out what I had been doing wrong thanks to some friendly help from the Amazon Support people! This book should be on its way to you very soon! Thank you to Amazon and to my readers for their patience!

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