Happy New Year. Happy New Book

Happy New Year, one and all!  In this first blog entry of 2024, I’m delighted to announce the birth of BAGMAN HITS THE ROAD, now live on Amazon as an e-book and paperback.  As the blurb says, it’s a sequel but one where you don’t need to have read the first book.  This is because I do a very quick recap in the first chapter.  Sales?  Who needs ‘em?

As I mentioned in the last entry of 2023, I’m hugely grateful to Fran Pryor and her husband Lee for all their help and advice.  I can’t imagine publishing anything in the future without their invaluable input.  I really thought I’d read this one very carefully but Fran shook her head ruefully and told me this time around it was even worse!  I didn’t think that was possible.

As this whole blog is meant to be about helping other writers, let me confess that I do still struggle with the paperback process on Kindle Direct Publishing but I might have done a little better on this occasion.  For a start, I ditched KDP’s recommended 6x9 format and went for 5x8, which is much more like a standard UK paperback.  Also, I used a blank template rather than the one in which you paste your text into each chapter.  This has dealt with the rather odd numbering glitch which gave me multiple page 207s in the first paperback edition of BAGMAN.  As a result of this cure, I’ve now put out a revised, smaller format second edition of the first book.  I’m still experimenting font sizes because I think that 10pt is just a touch too small.  The 12pt, on the other hand, is starting to look like one of those large print editions you see in libraries.  I’m trying 11pt unless the book is particularly short – in which case 12pt will do fine.

So there we are.  Not much else to say except to wish everyone reading this a happy, positive and creative 2024.

Happy writing!