"The notion that such persons are gay of heart and carefree is curiously untrue. They lead, as a matter of fact, an existence of jumpiness and apprehension. They sit on the edge of the chair of Literature. In the house of Life they have the feeling that they have never taken off their overcoats."
- James Thurber, My Life and Hard Times

Sunday, December 19, 2010

A new book for a new year

A quick post today, folks, introducing my latest book, which is now available on Amazon:









Gorgeous, yes? The cover art was designed by the fabulous Joe Felipe of Market Me Graphics. Love. Him.



People kept asking me when I was going to publish a book of my columns, and I kept saying, gee yes, I should do that. But when I approached agents/editors/publishers, their response was lukewarm at best.





"Yes, that sounds like a great idea, but you're not famous. Come back and see us when you're Dave Barry."





Not to sound pissy, but when I'm Dave Barry, I don't need to go see them. I might need to see a specialist, however.





So I decided to try out Amazon's CreateSpace program. You write the book, send them your stuff and they publish it. You get a bunch more money per sale than if you went the traditional route, and you have more control.





Control is not always a good thing. Having never published my own book before, I had to go a few rounds with them on page count, margin size, etc. Most of these corrections were because I didn't know what I was doing. Fortunately, CreateSpace was willing to work with me on fixing things. They do charge a little money for their part of the process, and they waived certain fees with me because they understood my floundering.





Now all I have to do is let everyone in the universe know it's out there so the people who like to laugh can buy it and get a giggle or two.





I don't have any signings lined up, but if you live near me and you buy a copy, let me know and I'll come sign it for you. Hell, I'll read it to you if you like. It'll be fun. We can do lunch.





Call me.

1 comment:

Enid Wilson said...

The cover art looks gorgeous! Congratulations Gayle. I used Createspace too for printing but I didn't use any of their layout services. Is the book in Kindle Store? I found my books are selling really well in Kindle.

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