What Can One Say

But CONGRATULATIONS!

Amanda Hocking just signed a 4 book deal with St. Martin's for over 2 million bucks.

As a tribute, I offer a Cole Porter song  but you have to click because embedding has been disabled.  (Sorry.)  Just take it for a jolly song it is, it's not a message, nor do I mean anything by it except it's Cole Porter (!) and the name is Amanda.  It's from the movie Adam's Rib starring Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3vjhSTsKfg

My triumphs are small in comparison.  CreateSpace finally was happy with the photo in the book pdf file so I ordered a proof copy of Summer Horse.  I can't explain the problem because I don't understand the mechanics of it.  I found an old image, I tweaked it, cropped it, and used it.

The DPI (dots per inch) was wrong.  Apparently this image is 72 and CreateSpace wants 300.  So I resampled it in PhotoShop.  That made them no happier.  I googled the whole DPI thing and sad to say I'm completely confused today by the explanation which has something to do with the size of the image.  I went back to the original image, tweaked it and did a small crop to wind up with 300 DPI.  I did not resize.

Here's as close as I can get to it.  If you have an 8X10 and it's 300 DPI, if you  decrease the size, you are removing dots.  (I would have thought the dots just got closer together, it would still be 300).  What will appear in the book is essentially an 8X10 photo that's compressed in Open Office to fit the small page.  Apparently since CreateSpace okayed it, that's how it's done.  I have no idea.  

But if you choose to go with CreateSpace and have any interior illustrations, this might happen to you, too.

Just to note, Summer Horse has always sold more briskly at BN and Dream Horse always more briskly at Amazon.  Again, no explanations from me!

Now the task at hand is to work on the cover for a book I haven't finished yet.  I tried to find a photo but (and I'm good at that) I couldn't so I decided "Heck, I'm a photographer" sort of anyway and while I don't really want to, I will.  But this is a little more complicated than going outside with half a bad apple and shooting it in direct light.  It'll take a while to figure out.  It's all part of the process and I'm glad to do it.  It does mean I have to make a cake today.  See what winds up being photogenic.