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Books by Lee Gaiteri
2007 May 22 My collection of short stories is pretty close to a point where I'd like to publish it at last. I'm wondering at this point if I should nix some design decisions, like starting every story on an odd page. Losing that would save four pages, which doesn't sound like a lot but matters to me, and I don't think it'd harm the content in any meaningful way. It looks like a lot of books don't feel the need to do that.
Secondly, I'm highly interested in getting a decent cover. I've used POV-Ray to render a front and back based on the Maze stories, which make up four of the nine stories in the book, but lacking any actual people (or close simulacrums--I've had little luck with Poser), I think it doesn't really have enough punch. I'd much rather have a cover--or perhaps a back cover--based on Below, the only novella and only fantasy story in the collection. It's far more cinematic. I think the image I have in mind could work quite well as a back cover, bookending some more artistically enlightened take on the Maze on the front cover. The only artists I know don't necessarily do--or have time for--this sort of project, and I definitely don't have money to shell out for it. Lulu has some attractive-looking services in this arena, but most of them are based on massaging stock photos, and frankly I could do that on my own if I felt it would fit my concepts. This isn't to say I can't go forward and use the cover I've worked up, and then use something else later on, though.
Global distribution is not an option at the present time, but later on I'll definitely consider it. I don't recall if I have to buy the ISBN through Lulu or if I can use a different one, but I've been following the other conventions: Exact page numbering, blank page at the end, etc. It's set up so I can convert it to global distribution at a later time.
Lately I've also been looking at trying to pump up sales of Sudoku Most Foul, and to that end I took another look at the description I'd written up for it. I was surprised to learn that I'd forgotten to add a couple of important keywords to the text, without which it simply wouldn't show up under those searches. So I found good places to insert those terms, and it seems to have paid off; the book is gaining more hits per day, and sales have increased in just the short time (little over a week) since the change. The next time I publish, I'm going to work up a list of key search terms and possible search queries I'd like to catch, and use that as the basis for a description. That sounds like common sense, I know, but it really didn't occur to me the first time.
2006 Nov 14 Well, now I know what went wrong on the first printing--aside from a bug in the postscript file that I hadn't caught at the time (which is corrected now). Apparently not using the strech-to-fit option when uploading the cover was a bad thing. Although my image was the correct size pixel-wise, which I thought meant I should uncheck the box. Turns out that was exactly the wrong thing to do.
Anyway, everything's fixed now, and the book is finally available to the public.
2006 Oct 19 The proof copy I ordered of Sudoku Most Foul is in, and it looks great. The cover is, however, off center. This is odd considering I uploaded images that were exactly 1913×2925. I'm wondering if maybe coil binding had something to do with this, or if some other factor is involved. I read on one site that their cover only went 38 pixels (1/8") over to any given side, so maybe that's part of the problem; maybe the dimensions Lulu provided were off. The cover FAQ on the forums, in the first post dated November '04, says that the cover dimensions should be only 1/8" out, not 3/8" as suggested in the regular FAQs. Curious.
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