A lot has gotten accomplished with my book during the past several days. I guess the biggest thing to report is that after ten years of on and off labor, with each chapter getting its own Word document, those have all been stitched together into one single massive master manuscript! That's what I had done just after noon.
It's now twelve hours later.
The result is a 540-page long, 140,000 word file weighing in at a little under half a megabyte. Which would be about a third of the capacity of the 3.5" floppy disks that we used back in the day. And that probably says more than is necessary about how your friend and humble narrator still gauges computer technology (laugh out loud).
For most of the past eight hours I ran the complete manuscript through Microsoft Word, and fixed a few things that Grammarly didn't catch in the course of the past few weeks. Satisfied with the result, I imported the manuscript into the Kindle Create app that Amazon makes available (for free) to anyone who wants to make ebooks, or even prepare a book for physical printing. Had a few fits and starts, figuring out how to do what... but after an evening's work there is now an almost completely formatted project file. I'm taking a break for the night and will get back to formatting tomorrow.
Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing can handle a hardcover book that's 550 pages or less. I'm having to edit my manuscript to make it fit. The chapter about Adderall, and what it did to me (pretty much made me feel like a god) is now gone. A few other things have been trimmed down. Maybe it's for the best though, especially the Adderall chapter. Don't want to get in any kind of legal trouble. Lord knows that there are some things in this piece of work that are daring enough as they are.
I finally hit on a design for the cover that I really, really like. It's using the image from the Codex Manesse that I found a couple of months ago, that I really loved as soon as I saw it. I saw this pic and instantly knew that I had found the basic element of my book's cover. So when the page numbers have been tabulated and it's found to be something printable, I'm going to take that cover design and get into Photoshop on my iPad and make a fully trimmed and marginalized cover file. And then, theoretically, I should have a sellable book. But I'm going to hold off on releasing it until sometime next month. Got a few things going on in the meantime that need my attention also.
But as things stand now, there is going to be a fully processed manuscript, fit for publication, by the end of the weekend. I am really astounded and amazed at the state of this project. A year ago I was focused on writing the first draft of my book. That was completed the week before Thanksgiving, and I felt proud and accomplished. But the work was far from finished. I've intended to do this the right way, no cut corners. This has to be the best possible product that I can offer to a potential audience. Lord willing it's not going to come out looking rough and sloppy at all. It's going to be a polished book, one that I hope will entertain and edify and enlighten.
Anyhoo, that's where things are at 12:39 am on Friday morning. More soon.
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