Missed A Day Again!

Yes, I know, I'm a day late - in fact I'm thinking of changing my weekly Blog to Saturdays. Tuesday was all right. I should have prepared better for my presentation about publishing, but I foolishly thought that if I merely spoke about the route I had taken – omitting the fact that when I first wrote my book I thought that every agent and publisher would be pounding down my door to publish it. As you might imagine I was in for a very rude awakening! That fact aside I should have spoken about the fact that I spent years trying to get published by mainstream publishers and it has only really been in the last 2-3 years that I have got to grips with KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing.) This fact aside, I have had years of what is now known as POD (Print on Demand) in order to get my novel in print – in fact I have various copies of my novel floating around my parents’ house. Well I suppose they would always come in useful for kindling! I tried to explain that when I had chosen the size I wanted for my book in order for KDP to actually lay it out the way I wanted I had to change the format of my novel so that instead of the pages being A4 size; I had to change them to 6 x 9” otherwise it would not lay out the pages the way I wanted them to be. Perhaps I expected them to understand and I don’t think that they did. This makes me sound like I’m a bitter, twisted, vengeful person and you know something, they’re absolutely right! I also forgot to take the articles I’d written while I was living in the Middle East, but truthfully I didn’t even think of them. [And to be honest I never thought they were particularly well-written – and I wrote the damn things!] On the plus side I received some more royalties - £1.31. I don’t think I’m going to be a Kindle Millionaire anytime soon!

I have become inordinately interested in bookbinding and I post a video below that shows you how to do a ‘kettle stitch’ – unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be holding the signatures together as well as I’d like – now this could be because I’m using different types and weights of paper, so I shall just have to try the same stitches on ordinary 80 gsm paper (basic printer/photocopier paper.) I have a few more items to purchase, some PVA glue; brushes and craft templates for my covers, but then I should be readily prepared to make my book. {Or at least bind it!}