You cannot know how happy I am to be finished. Oh, don’t worry, I’ll be finding typos from now until June like spinach in my teeth, but at least the major editing is done and the “final” file has been uploaded to Kindle’s website.
As I have mentioned numerous times, I have a love-hate relationship with editing. I love being a rock-tumbler for my story and seeing how it polishes up by the end, but it is so hard to reread the same story twenty times and still be interested. Editing can take me a while because I need to step back and not read about my characters for a while. I love them dearly but not enough to read The Winter Garden twenty times in a row. One thing I have found between books one and two is that I have mastered lay/laid/lie and effect/affect. These have been issues in the past, but as I have been writing and editing more, they seem to be going away.
Last night, I sat down and formatted The Winter Garden in both forms, ebook and paperback. With the ebook, I’m never quite sure what I’m doing. The file still seems overly large, but it works well on my Kindle at least. Over time, I may go back and tinker with it after it’s released (I always end up putting up another file when I catch typos). After cursing under my breath at Word for several hours because pieces kept shifting at random, it finally looks as it should. Ebooks are a must, but ugh, the formatting can be a pain in the butt. At least now, I have a Kindle, so I can make sure it looks okay before sending it out into the world.
This morning, I finished formatting the paperback, which is its own headache, but it’s done. Hallelujah, it’s done. The odd thing is, both The Earl of Brass and The Winter Garden are the same page length as paperbacks even though the second book is several thousand words longer. What I’m really looking forward to is getting my ARC copy. I cannot wait to have The Winter Garden in my hands and be able to read it and see the cover in real life. An ebook is cool, but a paperback is better. It makes everything more real.
It’s random, but it was fortuitous that both books turned out to be the same size because my boyfriend used 302 pages as a template for The Winter Garden‘s cover. Because it was longer, I worried he would need to tinker with the cover to make it fit properly since the spine would be larger. Luckily, it was perfect. When the ARC comes, I will spam everyone with pictures.
I am so excited that the book is nearly out, but at the same time, I am so happy to be done dealing with it for a while. Now, I can focus on my classes and writing book three.
So there are 48 days until The Winter Garden comes out. If you would like to pre-order it for 99 cents, please click here. After March 31st, the price will go up to $3.99.
Kara Jorgensen 
Woot! Congratulations! I can’t wait to read it. 🙂
Thanks, Kate =) So happy to be “done.”
Great news!
Well done. Personally I find it impossible to proofread my own novel-length work, so I paid a professional to do it. I like the image of spinach in teeth for typos. I agree the Kindle formatting seemed fiddly. After I did it, I did my paperback through Createspace (which was straightforward) and realised there was a function by which it ‘automatically’ got formatted for Kindle. I’m not sure I trust it, but might give it a try next time.
I totally agree. I do it myself out of necessity, but my beta readers caught a lot. I’m sure we still missed a few along the way. I think I used that converter the first time I uploaded a Kindle book and it was a little off because my chapter titles had a lot of space around them.
Congratulations. My coauthor and I were where you were at a month ago. It’s so good to finally “put the baby to bed,” so to speak. I wish you the best of luck.
Thank you! I just saw your post the other day. Red Deaths looks really good. I am so happy to be “done” with The Winter Garden. I must say, book two went a lot smoother than book one in terms of formatting both forms. Good luck to you also!
Congratulations! What a great achievement!
Thanks, Amanda!
Good work. I found it maddening to constantly go back and re-upload to Createspace and Kindle. While it’s necessary that they give you the “preview” option, their “mistakes” are not mistakes and quite frankly they can’t catch everthing! Hello formatting nightmare! It sounds like you are doing it right – taking your time and giving yourself room to breathe before publish. Congrats 🙂
Thanks, Lani. I was actually surprised I finished book two this early, but it’s good in case the cover needs editing or anything else goes wrong. Hopefully nothing will but great to have that wiggle room, especially when I have assignments for graduate school to work on too.
Hope it’s smooth sailing! 😀