A Tale of Two Proofs

Most of the subreddits I follow that are devoted to writing, self-publishing, indie publishing, book cover design, and so on, stress me out more than actually providing useful information. Not to say they haven't opened my eyes to some very important things I never would have thought of as a debut self-publisher in the online realm. But most of the time, Posts in those threads pique my anxiety and make me feel overwhelmed and that I'm approaching this all wrong.

I can't remember what subreddit or thread or post I encountered about whether to apply a matte or glossy finish to a book cover. I hadn't even thought about it until then. But the gist of the post and the comments on it was that the cover finish generally depends on the category/genre of the book. The consensus was that matte is the preference for most fiction, and that glossy is generally the style for YA and non-fiction.

At the same time, there was some discussion about the physical qualities of each finish. Stuff about fingerprints, cover paper quality, and the way colors come across. That particular point stood out to me. The point that matte covers absorb light and so darker colors tend to become muted, whereas with a glossy finish, the colors pop more due to the way the finish reflects light. That was intriguing.

However, the majority of posters in that thread were of the opinion that matte was the better choice. It's the standard for general fiction, I guess. Seen as more serious, more sophisticated. Since I want to be considered an author of sophisticated fiction and I want to be taken seriously, that made my mind up for me. Maladaptive would have a matte cover.

My proof arrived earlier this week, and I've been reading through it to catch any straggling errors and tidy it up before I upload the official manuscript (non-sequitur: the eBook was originally scheduled to release April 1, but after receiving the proof I realized I wanted a bit more time with it before it goes live, so I pushed the eBook release back to April 7).

Honestly, the proof looks fantastic. The interior looks pretty sweet, and I'm impressed with the overall quality of the cover and the cream paper. Nothing about it seems cheap or amateur. It's pro and I love it. But I did note that the dark teal on the cover reads almost black. And that got me curious what the glossy version would look like.

So I ordered a glossy proof as well to compare. It arrived yesterday and... HOLY MACKEREL. I mean, look at the difference...

The difference in the vibe is astounding, to me at least. And I don't mean the matte version is more sophisticated or serious or reflective of the genre. I mean the matte version is so inhibited, and it just literally faded into the background, as the glossy version is so vibrant, sparkling and shining and gleaming in my hands. It looks so friggin' amazing that there is no doubt in my mind (well, except for the people on Reddit nagging in the back of my mind) that glossy is the way to go, at least for this book.

It actually got me feeling a little emotional and verklempt. Rhianna's "Diamonds" started playing in my head. It's really stunning. And that's what matters, I think. It should be less important whether or not its the standard finish for the type of book that it is, and more about the unique needs of the cover itself and what serves it best.

And so, I think I'm breaking up with matte to go with glossy. It's screaming to me that this is the right decision. Reddit might tell me I'm wrong, but I don't care. Well, I care a little. But not enough to be dragged back down to a finish where light and color go to die.

It's feeling pretty real now. Today I will upload the final official manuscript to Amazon KDP. I feel a little dumb for pushing the eBook release back but, I didn't have any pre-orders anyway and approximately five people in the world are aware this is even happening, so the impact of that is minimal. 

I may decide to move the print version release up. I mean, why not? What's the value of holding it back until the scheduled April 28th date? If the interior is ready and I've decided on the cover finish, then I might as well just push the button, right? I suppose I could use the three weeks to "build buzz" but let's be serious, building buzz is not exactly my strong suit. So stay tuned for me to change that date as well. Trying to predict the release date felt like closing my eyes and pointing at a calendar. It's like I said before. It's a snow globe, not a crystal ball. 

Cover Reveal & Release Date!

The eBook version of Maladaptive is available for pre-order on Amazon until its official release on April 1st! I'm thrilled with how the cover turned out. The designers at Getcovers turned the cover I designed for Inkitt into something magical that feels exactly like the world of Maladaptive in my eyes. I'm so proud to share it!

The print version is scheduled to be released April 28th. It's uncomfortable to me the way that Amazon makes you pick a release date. I mean, you could publish it immediately, just push the button and do it. But that means trusting that it's perfect, and I wanted the opportunity to order a proof copy and read it the way it's meant to be read. Take one last look at it to catch any errors I might have missed, and to make sure that the cover looks as good in print as it does online.

So the April 28th date gives me that time to make any final tweaks. The proof is supposed to arrive this week, and I'm looking forward to holding it in my hands! If it passes my quality inspection, then there is a very good chance I will move the release date up. It really does make me uncomfortable to announce a date at all, even though I know that's just way it goes. It feels like trying to predict the future, and I keep thinking, "what if something comes up?" I know how that sounds...

I've been leaning into that discomfort as part of my Instagram release announcement. You know, it's a snow globe, not a crystal ball, LOL. Maybe that's lame. I'm sure it is. This is the part where it becomes real, and where I have to put on my big girl boots and try not to take people's reactions (or lack thereof) personally. 

I should really try to take a page from the book of Cara (which is, literally, this book) and close my laptop and go for a big daydream and ignore the real world for awhile, and pretend that what I've done is "nothing". And maybe I should daydream about something else for a change.

A love letter to Hannah

You know those side characters from stories who shine so bright that you yearn for more of them? 

I keep thinking about Hannah from Maladaptive and whether or not I did her dirty by withholding her until Act II. As Cara’s best friend, she has become as dear to me as any of the book’s main characters.

I always knew I was going to give Cara a witchy, new age, silver haired, nurturing, bohemian soul in tune with The Universe for a best friend. Cara needed her. But it’s almost as if I didn’t know how much I needed her. 

Her scenes were some of the most emotional for me to write, because the compassion she gives to Cara was in some ways an exercise in giving myself that same compassion. I shed a lot of my own healing tears as her kind words flowed from my fingers to the keyboard. It's almost as if writing her words of encouragement and support acted as a form of therapeutic self-love and self-compassion by proxy. Hannah's words might be meant for Cara, but I needed them, too. 

And yet, we only start to get to know her about halfway through the book, and we don't even see her in person until Act III! 

That was basically why I wrote the holiday-themed short story (A Maladaptive Christmas Interlude). I wanted to give Hannah a co-starring role in a companion piece to Maladaptive.

I never really talked about it in the blog. It was Christmastime, and I was also still actively writing/revising Maladaptive and posting it to Inkitt at the time, and I just never got around to discussing it in any amount of detail. 

But what Hannah brought to that companion story became canon for me. To the point where, even though I’m in the process of preparing Maladaptive for self-publishing, I started looking for a way to weave the interlude into the novel.

But I couldn't make it work. And it is as it should be. In trying to look for a way to incorporate it, it became clear to me that Hannah is enough in the main story. She fulfills her role in exactly the way she needs to. I realized that trying to shoehorn the interlude into the novel wouldn’t be good for the novel or for Hannah. So, I’ve decided to leave Hannah’s interlude as its own thing, which I will probably publish after Maladaptive is released (stay tuned for an announcement on that).

In the meantime, I just wanted to say…

Dear Hannah,

You became so much more than I originally envisioned and I’m so grateful you burst your way out of the muse’s consciousness into the Maladaptive world in such a beautiful way. You bring so much to the story, and to Cara, and in a way, the fact that you get to be the lovable side character that people will want more of is exactly what you deserve.

And you know what? I have ideas for you that haven’t even been put to paper yet. It’s not over for you. So, hang in there! For all the I got you moments you share with Cara in your supporting role, I’m throwing that energy back to you. I got you, girl. I can’t guarantee you’ll get your own spin off, and honestly that might even be a disservice to your gifts, but I can tell you I’m not done with you yet, and you deserve a little support for a change!

Love, Zinnia

The Space In Between

I’m in this weird space in between things. Like this liminal space between urgency and nothingness, and it’s a daily struggle to not just let myself slip into the nothingness side. 

All it takes is one day to lose focus, and suddenly the urgency drifts away, and the things I want to do become distant dreams again. I trying really hard not to let that happen.

On the Inkitt front, there is a bit of a lull. I’m not actively posting any writing there, so I’m trying to catch up on stories in my Currently Reading and TBR lists, and stay engaged. I don’t want it to float away like a balloon I let slip from my hand.

It’s okay to be between stories, right? Now that I’m finished posting Sixty-Six, I don’t have to start immediately posting something else. I can just enjoy what others have written for a little while, until I'm ready to contribute something new.

On the self-publishing Maladaptive front, I’m busy. But also, it feels like I’m not busy. Like there are all these “hurry up and wait” things. Like there is this ever-growing list of tasks I need to complete, and every time I strike one off the list, I find out I did it wrong, and now I have to add it back to the bottom of the list while I finish all these other tasks first.

To put it mildly, I’m totally overwhelmed by this list of things that I need to do that will all eventually come together but at the moment, I can’t see how, and it feels so far away. It puts me into a state of thinking about doing these things, endlessly, while moving incrementally forward and feeling like I’m not accomplishing any of them.

This is all so very vague and cryptic, I’m aware. To put it in some kind of concrete terms, I thought that I was at the finalizing my book cover stage. I took the manuscript, and I plugged it into a book formatting service (Reedsy Studio) to get my page count for the spine width, and I gave that to the cover designer (Getcovers) along with the book size (5x8) and they made me a beautiful book cover that I love.

It took a couple of tries. The first version wasn’t quite right. Well, it didn’t look right to me, but for all I know, it was the more marketable version, and I turfed it to get them to do what I wanted. That might have been the wrong call from a marketability standpoint, but it just didn’t have the right vibe to me. But I gave them my feedback and they did what I asked, and I think it turned out gorgeous.

Now I find out that I may have underestimated the page count, because I had forgotten to add in things like the copyright page, and my author bio, and stuff like that. Maybe it won’t make a huge difference, but I wish I had realized I was missing those things before getting the cover designed and paying for it.

So now I’m in this phase where I’ve added in the front and back matter, and going through the manuscript, word by word, line by line, to fix any errors. I decided to do this using a screen-reader, because when I read with my eyes and mind, I insert missing words and correct mistakes. I basically don’t see them. The screen-reader is helping me catch a ton of errors I had no idea were in there, which is amazing, but also kind of scary.

And honestly I wasted like so much time trying to find a screen-reading app that sounded natural enough that I could actually listen to it. One that actually pronounced words properly instead of phonetically. It was one of the most infuriating side quests I have ever been on. Not kidding, I had a pocket of about 5 hours to spend on revising the manuscript on Saturday, and I spent 4 of those 5 hours on the edge of a meltdown because none of the apps I was using would do what I needed them to do in the way I needed them to do it.

Eventually I figured out how to add a more natural sounding screen-reading voice to Microsoft Word, and that is doing the trick. So I’m finally moving forward, but Maladaptive has 48 chapters plus the prologue. So it just takes the time that it takes, and I also have my day job, and what about exercise, and the aforementioned reading, and there just aren’t enough hours in the day.

And then there are all these other things. Setting up the KDP and D2D accounts. Filling out all these other fields, like genre tags and keywords, descriptions, etc. And… A+ Content? What the hell even is that? And do I want to try and get ARC readers/reviews? And how do I determine what my launch date is? And how do I time KPD and D2D so it launches at the same time? And what if I forget to order proof copies?

And what about all the other things I don’t even know about yet, that I seem to keep stumbling upon every day, adding to the list? And the fact that every time I try to do something, I end up hitting all of these roadblocks, and end up having to spend a bunch of time figuring out how to get around them, only to have more pop up in front of me like I live in a video game or something.

One thing at a time. Yeah right. That seems like the best way for me to miss something critical in the big picture.