Darklands no longer pushed around by ‘proper’ books
After a month of wrangling and faffing, I finally ordered my proof copy of the Darklands new edition on Sunday – and the paperback arrived today – a fair bit speedier than expected.
I am *so* pleased with it. There was a slight concern that the quote on the front cover might not quite fit, what with print ‘gutters’ and suchlike to take account of – but it does. The front cover is lovely; the back cover vastly improved, and the spine is great. Darklands can now proudly hold its own on any books shop shelf in the land – no more being pushed around by sparkly, curlicue-ridden proper books!
Not everything went according to plan. As discussed last week, at a late stage of the editing process (ie, the last minute) it turned out I had to pay feedaread £39 to amend the cover, and another £39 to amend the inside. There was nothing wrong with the interior. I had just thought I might as well change it while I’m re-doing the cover. The only changes I wanted to make were:
- Replace inner page title with a graphic in the same font as used on the cover
- Alter copyright blurb to say ‘second edition’
- Change one typo pointed out by an eagle-eyed reader (apparently Kings have counsellors (people who give advice), not councillors (people on a council). Who knew?
- Alter the Kikimora preview at the end to give a brief blurb about the story before launching into the first chapter. I also wanted it to say ‘coming in 2013’ instead of ‘coming in summer 2012’ :-S
I had already spent a lot of time making these changes and proof reading everything again and, although they were minor, I really wanted to keep them. However, life is insisting on hitting us with a lot of financial flour-bombs at the moment. Reluctantly I shelved the interior changes and saved myself a bit of money. So that’s 20% of yesterday’s vet’s bill covered 
The disadvantage to this is that it remains the same edition, just with a different cover – which I am already afraid could lead to confusion. I was surprised to see just now that Amazon is already showing the new cover for the paperback. Anyone buying it there might be even more surprised when they receive a copy with the old cover…! (they already have several in stock) Unfortunately there is absolutely nothing I can do about that at this point, so I’m not going to worry about it.
Now to order a big boxfull ready for the upcoming christmas markets. Next dilemma: how many to order? It’s a trade-off between lower postage on a large order or having the money in my account a bit longer… hmm.
emma woodcock 