The Formatting for Paperback Saga

Time for another round of Writerly Tasks that do not involve writing.  Today's topic: the Formatting For Paperback Saga*.  

I know I mentioned something about this a couple months ago, but my paperback formatting was all fudged up and I didn't even think to check it until recently.  I assumed (ASS-umed) that when Amazon took over Createspace that all of my books would be just as well-formatted as they had been when I originally did all that crap with CS.  Nope nope nope.  Oh, the internal stuff seemed like it was fine.  The covers, however, were a disaster.  

And the thing was that all my covers appear to be fine at first glance.  I scroll down the list and they all look hunky-dory.  When I go into the paperback setup portion and scroll down there, they looked pretty okay, too.  Until I noticed that the graphic was only showing the front cover and it was the cover for my ebook.  Ummmmmm.  Then I'd go into the preview thing and the covers were farqed up.  Blerg.

Now, this wasn't really a pressing issue because I don't get more than one or two paperback sales a year.  Then it occurred to me that anyone wanting to purchase a paperback would look at the preview and plainly see the cover was toast and then not buy, because who wants to chance paying for a book when the cover is fucked.  

Even then, though, I dragged my feet.  It takes about ten minutes per cover to just get it uploaded.  Then I was running into fresh hell after uploading my cover PDF.  It would be the exact same file I used for Createspace, but Amazon wasn't sizing it down to fit, so my preview would show like one CORNER of the whole cover as the whole cover.  Back out of that, go into the cover creator, upload the cover again (another ten minutes), work with all that, and then finally submit.  Lather, rinse, repeat - 17 times.  Frankly, it was more of a hassle than I was ready to deal with.

Until yesterday.  Yesterday, I sat down here and got to work.  I got all but the genie books done.  Those will get done sometime today, good lord willin' and the internet doesn't go down entirely.  

So, anyway, it'll get done.  Once it's done, and all my books get approved by Amazon, I'll be back in business.  For now, though, I'd hold off on buying paperbacks from me.  (Except for Accidental Death, Natural Causes, Project Hermes, and Song of Storm and Shroud - I did those back in June and they're good to go.)

I think I said this before, but it bears repeating - if you trusted on the transition from Createspace to Amazon to go smoothly, check your books.  They might be fine.  Then again, they might be tragically un-fine.  Either way, it's worth a look.

*Please bear in mind that you experience is probably not as much of a PITA as mine because I'm guessing you have better internet than I do.