All the Little Details
![The Tiny Books Universe [Detail]](/assets/tiny-books-universe.png)
Earlier this week I finished the final round of edits for the first of my Tiny Books, Start! Stop Procrastinating and Pursue Your Passion. Working with my editor, Owen Gregory, the book has been considerably refined and all that remains now is to format it.
Kai Brach, Offscreen magazine’s publisher, has very kindly written a foreword for the book, which I’m looking forward to sharing very shortly. I’ve always admired Brach’s work on Offscreen magazine and I’m delighted that he enthusiastically agreed to write a foreword.
With the edits complete, all that remains is the small task of creating PDF, ePub and Kindle files to get it into readers’ hands.
Did I say small task?
Of course the task is considerably larger than I’d anticipated and is by no means small.
One of the many benefits of working with Emma Boulton and her wonderful team at Five Simple Steps (and the other publishers I’ve worked with) was that all of this complexity was handled – as if by magic – in the background.
Looking back this was so much easier. When the manuscript was completed, your job was – for the most part – over and the publisher took the baton and finished everything.
When you’re the author, designer and publisher, all of this becomes your responsibility. Breaking the task down there’s a lot of complexity: three different versions (PDF, ePub and Kindle); a distribution channel to get the book into readers’ hands (Shopify, in my case); writing and formatting launch emails… the list goes on and on.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a challenge and wrestling with InDesign to ensure the typography is beautiful and considered is, for a typographer, a pleasure. As far as creating the ePub and Kindle files goes, well… that’s another small task that I’m approaching with trepidation.
I’ll get there, eventually, and I hope to have a PDF – at the very least – finished for beyond tellerrand, where I’m the opening speaker. A few late nights and a lot of hard work and, fingers crossed, I’ll get there. As my editor expressed it: Toi, toi, toi!