Update (Or, the end of WordPress).

This is the end of the result of me banging my head against multiple walls. It's fair to say this book wouldn't even exist at all had my first trad publication had looked better than it did. I became so fundamentally obsessed with its terrible presentation, I actually decided to write a novel from scratch (technically based on an old idea but still completely rewritten). Why a novel, you ask? Because that was the only way I could guarantee the book would have enough pages for spine matter. Unfortunately, the publisher wasn't willing to get creative with pagination, which I did much later on, and I know it was to keep costs down, however paper thickness, alignment and pagination can make a difference to a book's thickness if printed via Amazon.

I was waiting for a response from another publisher on this before I made any updates, so when they passed, I reached out to the original cover artist and she kindly designed some spine material, which I couldn't really arrange without dimensions originally. And I wasn't happy with my own attempts. The worst thing about self-pubbing is the amount of effort/time/money you can spend on test copies and trial and error copies. You do only pay printing costs for author copies, however that can still be costly. Really the onus is on you to get it right, and even if you do, Amazon can still fumble the printing depending on which printer gets the job. (Also, it means nothing if they package it in bubble wrap since you'll be sure to get dog-eared covers).

Having said all that, now Amazon has arranged printing in Australia, (I believe via Ingram, a company I cannot have an arrangement with since I don't have an ABN as a publisher - people told me I should get one, believe me, there's headaches associated with this too.) This is great news aside from one thing - they jumped the gun on cream paper printing and it's not available here as yet. Which means this author copy was still an import.

I've let that go for now. Ultimately, after all the roadblocks and painful decisions to cut ties with the previous publisher (which was still the right decision), I think I can settle on this being the final edition. I also splurged for an editor which was the biggest cost I've spent on a book outside of the cover art. So, if I were to employ this person on the reg to edit all my books, I'd go broke. You have to be prepared to make your own investments in regards to time and money. So, it's lucky I do this as a hobby and haven't made a living out of it since I'd be in the hole for more than a couple of digits.