Deadly Troubadour

Today was supposed to be a fairly momentous occasion. In late December I hit the goal of my Indiegogo campain to print a run of my first novel, Deadly Troubadours. I was thrilled not only to be able to go through with my printing plan, but also with the tremendous support I received from so many wonderful people.

Going back and forth with our chosen printing company has not been the easiest thing in the world. Neither my wife, who is the cover artist and obviously more fluent in Japanese than me and so has been taking point in most communications, not I have published a book before so it is a bit of a learning curve. And although the company boasts of being perfect for first timers, they haven’t always been able to offer the clearest of expectations. Still, despite the frustrations we have been certain we made the best choice.

Last week when the final sample version of our complete version came in, we were thrilled. The colors looked good. The trim was well within acceptable limits. We gave them the okay to print and I even wrote a blog about it. Things were looking good. In fact here is the picture I posted of the sample along with the original cover art. Take a nice look.

 This morning at about 10:15 the doorbell rang. It was the delivery man with eight boxes containing a total of 300 books. Hot diggity. I opened up the top box. The books look great. They have a nice heft. Feel good in the hand. Easy to read. Nice. I couldn’t spend to much time with the because at 10:30 I had a Skype planning meeting for a future project. That meeting went nicely and when the project is a little farther along I will let some details slip.

After the meeting I went back to spend time with my books. I’m excited. Things are going to get pretty busy sorting the books and getting them ready for shipping. But it is going to feel good getting more stories out into the world for people to read. And they are so pretty. Let’s take another look.

  
Hmmm. Something is a little off. What is it?

Have you found what’s missing?

There is no egg. On the sample, and in the data, there is a blue egg at the base of the book. In the actual printed copies there is none. I tell the wife. We are both annoyed. Near as we can figure, the width estimate they gave us for making the spine was not wide enough so they stretched the image leading to cutting off the egg. Which seems to defeat part of the point of doing a sample. But I can’t really speak as to their process and when or how the image was altered. All I can say is we aren’t happy with the change.

Sure, it is just a tiny image on an otherwise acceptable product, but it isn’t what we ordered. It isn’t what we paid for. Part of the reason the book has only just now been printed is we took a month just to make sure, with multiple samples, that the cover looked exactly how we wanted it. 

Also, I hope for at least two more books to follow up Deadly Troubadours. The plan was for each book to have a similar piece of art flair at the bottom of the spine. A little touch to link them all together. It does’t work so well when the flair has been left off the first book.

Anyway, I’m disappointed. The Mrs is proper annoyed. The printing company is closed over the weekend, but come Monday she fully intends to give voice to her dissasitifaction and give them the opportunity to make things right. I don’t want to go into details of what that means until the dust settles.

The books are technically here. We just don’t know if they will be staying or not. Huzzah?