The Ups and Downs of Pre-Order for Indie Authors

Yay! Descant is ready for pre-order in eBook, and in a couple of places for print. I really really hope people like book 2.

What a ridiculous process it all is! Amazon will let you upload and be ready to go in print, but won’t open pre-order except for digital. IngramSpark sets you up for pre-order in print, but their process is so much more difficult than Amazon that I regret uploading when I did.

As soon as you find errors you missed, you have to go through the entire approval process on either service. Gods forbid you change your page count in a revision, you’ll have to go through the whole cover dance again, too. Amazon is quick to re-approve, IS less so. Draft2Digital, which is handling eBook distribution outside of Kindle this time, was smooth and low stress.

Also, for any writers reading this, I can’t emphasize enough what a help getting a proof copy from Amazon was. Digital proofs didn’t help me see that a matte cover for a “silver” book came out dull gray. Nor did they clearly reveal that, once bound, the 2-page map spread I tried to do wouldn’t work. A good inch of the map was swallowed into the spine, specifically the middle part that has a big old volcano that’s the center of Malor. So that’s a one-page, landscape oriented map now. Even the centering of the cover was off, not to mention how the back needed correcting. And it was a random flip through the proof pages that showed me where I’d messed up some formatting. Drazoen, when they speak, are B+I, but I’d missed it somehow in all 8 draft read-throughs.

At least this time I haven’t had to argue with IS about whether I own my ISBN or Amazon does. Learned that the hard way last time. Every book is a new opportunity for learning! To celebrate Descant’s release I’ll be doing a lot of silver nail art. Mani #1 is the cover photo for this post.