First, I leaped off the preorder cliff, at least part way: Silver Circle: Scattered Sparks is now available at Amazon for preorder. I set the release date for October 31 because, I mean, it’s just suitable to toss it out into the world on Halloween. This is a dramatic move because it also means I’m committed to releasing it no later than October 16 at my Patreon. That means one week and two days, which is super tight, obviously. It’s out with proofreaders now, and I’m proofreading too, of course, and it’s all very intense.
This means the book will be available at my Patreon for only two weeks, but that ought to be ample for people to download it. I’ll need to send out a newsletter to make sure people do know about it. I don’t have time to write the next bit of “Midwinter,” alas. That shouldn’t be a problem in November.
Second, I’m now working my way through updating all the Black Dog books, but they’re not all updated yet because I haven’t had time to complete the process. By the end of the week, they will be. Want to know what slowed this down? Because, since I want to complain about it, I’ll tell you. Some years ago, Amazon folded CreateSpace, the paperback arm of their self-publishing platform, into KDP. One of the Black Dog books got caught in that transition and ever since it’s been really difficult to update that specific book, because the file was made to fit CreateSpace, not KDP. So, now, finally, I re-formatted the dratted file, ran into unexpected complications with that, and the whole thing took days instead of minutes. I will, today, click through the whole paperback preview again, every single page, and then, I hope, I will hit publish and update that paperback edition as well. Then the rest of the series ought to be much easier.
Third, I need to set up promos for the Black Dog series and the Griffin Mage trilogy, but I don’t have time to deal with it, so whatever, I’ll do it when I can.
Fourth, I’m doing some tedious revision to Silver Circle Part II, and Alison, this is your fault, so don’t complain when you don’t see it arrive in your inbox today or tomorrow. Maybe Wednesday. Or Thursday.
Please Feel Free to Share:
Well, my husband and I are on vacation and don’t get back til late Thursday night, so that actually works for me. And hopefully it will be Even Better!!!
Brilliant – just pre-ordered on the UK Amazon site and looking forward to seeing it on Patreon next week (wow that’s soon)
I must have missed your explanation about why the series needed updating – is it a big update (are there whole new sections which will justify me buying the new editions? Or just a few fixes?
Gill, I’m going to STRENUOUSLY resist any attempt by KDP to require me to call these new editions. Changes are minimal!
They have new covers and they’ve all been proofread again from the top, particularly to correct errors in Spanish and other languages. And I’m standardizing capitalization of Special Forces and a few other words, where capitalization isn’t consistent from front to back in the series. And I’m changing the back matter for some books. That’s it.
The main idea was to change the covers in the hope that this will make the whole series more appealing to fans of UF / Paranormal. Everything else is just tweaking. If I can persuade KDP of that, then they may allow readers to update previously-purchased versions, but KDP can be somewhat recalcitrant about things like this, so I’m not sure how that will turn out.
Dealing with Amazon must be quite a struggle. Will be interested to see the new covers.