Writers for the Red Cross Auction 2011

I came across the Writers for the Red Cross 2011 Auction a little late—it goes on for five weeks and I discovered it in the middle of of week 2 thanks to a tweet by Steve Tiano that he’s auctioning off the layout of a book in week 3—but for anyone with an interest/connection to books, there are plenty of great items/services to bid on.

And, with everything that’s going on currently in Japan, it’s more timely than ever to donate to organizations that respond to disasters/calamities around the world.

How Trade Books Get Sold

As I’ve noted before, there is a long production chain for a book to get published: manuscript acquisition, (copy)editing, layout and design, printing, and marketing. However, even if you do all of those things right—right meaning highest quality for the best cost—you can still wind up with thousands of books sitting in your garage for the next ten years if you don’t have one, last key element in place: a book distributor.

Finalized 20 Years Later Cover Design

It took longer than I would have liked—due to being bogged down on my end and no fault at all on the part of the book cover designers—but the cover design for Emma Newman’s forthcoming 20 Years Later has been completed and finalized. (Click on the thumbnail at the left to see a larger version.) The interior pages are with the book designer and so—once again, more slowly than I would have liked—the whole book should be put together by the end of June. Then, those files can be walked over to my local printer to get a proof copy ginned up. After that, there are some last odds and ends of details—assigning an ISBN, generating a Bookland EAN barcode, dropping in the P-CIP data block, adding some glowing blurbs on the back—and we’re good to go.

But first, a few words about the cover design itself.