Monday, March 19, 2012

Saving Scott's Official Debut

As I write this, I'm getting ready to leave town for the LA Marathon. However, due to the miracles of the Internet, the race will be over and I'll be heading home when you're reading this.

Today (Monday, that is—not Thursday when I'm writing it!) marks the official debut of Saving Scott as a Nook First special. This link is to the Nook First page, and I can only hope that Scott will be there for all to see.

I put the book up for sale last week—it went live late Wednesday. As I mentioned, it's exclusive to Barnes & Noble for 30 days. After that time, I'll be offering at the other e-book stores. But for now, you can get it here. And if you don't have a Nook, you can download the Nook apps here.

And, if you'd like to read an excerpt, you can find one here.

In an earlier post, I mentioned formatting, and gave some tips. However, there's a caveat. The software that the various sites use can still create glitches. So when you read an e-book, remember that the author might not have been "lazy" or "sloppy" in the formatting. Sometimes it's out of our hands. The folks at Barnes & Noble were very helpful when I reported things that didn't look right, despite my having everything formatted per their instructions. It was a special perk of the Nook First program, since they want the book to look its best, too.



What I learned about the Barnes & Noble formatting is that they default to fully justified text, but because they use automatic hyphenation, you don't get those lines with only two or three words on them. However, you get a better looking product if you do the justification first rather than have their software do it.

If you spot any problems, I'd like to know about them. I know a reader was very apologetic about pointing out some glitches in one of my books, but with e-publishing, it's relatively easy to fix them, so I don't mind at all. I won't thing you're stepping out of bounds. You can email them to me—contact information is on this site.

My newsletter opt-in form is another example of formatting being beyond my control. On my "old" website, the form is tidy and compact. On my new one, the Wordpress page template overrides some of the code, resulting in spacing issues between the fields that can make it confusing for the person filling it out. It's something I can try to fix, but probably not before the next newsletter goes out.

And speaking of the newsletter … you can sign up at either of my sites. I have a special contest each quarter for newsletter subscribers only, and I hope you'll sign up if you haven't already.

Tomorrow, my guest is Donnell Bell, who's talking about remodeling, first drafts, and opportunity.

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2 comments:

Karen C said...

It's a great read, Terry.

Terry Odell said...

Thanks, Karen!