I just ordered a proof copy from CreateSpace for my first-ever publication. It should be available by the end of the month. I've been writing forever, but I never felt justified in putting down "Writer" as my occupation because I was never published. "Unpublished Writer" felt the same as saying "Loser." Now, even though it's self-published, maybe I can hold up my head! It's more respectable to do it yourself than it used to be. However, I was looking at the Science Fiction Writers of America website and it says you must have "sold" a certain amount of writings to join. That's pretty snobbish of 'em! Ha, ha!
I'm also planning to publish "Monster" as an ebook, but I haven't started on that yet.
I could not use my own artwork on the cover of "Monster." We figured out a way I could upload my Word drawing by turning it into a JPEG and it uploaded all right, but then it informed me that the DPI was too low - only 96 and it has to be 300. At that point, I threw in the towel. Word just won't work as a publishable drawing program. "Monster" is an intense and compelling story, well worth buying and reading, but it's only a 73-page novella, not a major novel like "The Termite Queen." So I found a ready-made cover in Cover Creator and adapted that. It has no relation to the story, but it has a fairly dramatic look to it.
As soon as the book is officially available, I'm going to publish my own cover drawing here on the blog. I think anyone who is reading the book might like to see it. And I'm searching for the right vector graphics software that will give me a PDF drawing with the right amount of DPI so I can make my own cover for "TQ." I really doubt that I need something as expensive as Adobe Illustrator or Corel -- after all, I've done good, fun stuff with the simple system that Word provides. So I'm thinking of getting a trial version of Mayura when I have time to spend working with it. Any advice?
I had wondered why I had never gotten any comments on this blog, and then I discovered that Comments weren't enabled. Now they are, so feel free to share anything you like!
Paint.net is very good, and its free. http://www.getpaint.net/index.html
ReplyDeleteIf you need vector graphics, I can recommend you Inkscape (http://inkscape.org/). It's comparable to Illustrator or Corel Draw in terms of features, and it's completely free (as in beer and as in speech). It uses a standard format (SVG, also used in browsers), and has very good export capabilities (including PDF).
ReplyDeleteI use it myself for the logos of my webfiction and plenty more work. It's really powerful!