Deborah Woehr

My mind and fingers have been itching to start editing that manuscript since I typed “The End” on Sunday. Last night felt like a mild version of nicotine withdrawals. I know of at least two scenes that I need to revamp or get rid of entirely. It seems that I take a perverse pleasure in the editing process.

At any rate, I wasn’t expecting my manuscript to arrive from Lulu until after Christmas. But I guess they decided to expedite it. I decided to publish my draft in the coil-bound format for two reasons:

1. To see what my cover would look like.
2. To check out the quality of the spiral bound because I’m thinking of using this format for how-to books. More on that next year.

Before I converted the file to the PDF, I added two pages at the end of each chapter to give myself some space for comments/revision notes. That didn’t work out because I’d completely forgotten about the page formatting. I have blank pages at the end of some chapters and none at others. Oh, well.

The cover turned out nicely, except for the smudges. Marti Lawrence had warned me about this, so I wasn’t surprised. Disappointed, but not surprised. Lulu has implemented a new UV coating which is supposed to help make the covers last longer. The downside is that you have to wear gloves in order to handle the book.

Customers who order the book inside North America will have to deal with this problem, while International customers get their books printed from Lightning Source, which still uses the old cover process.

I’ve decided that I’m not going to obsess over this, at least right now. Hopefully, Lulu will improve this situation by the time I’m ready to publish this book next year. In the meantime, I need to worry about polishing it to the best of my ability before I start shopping around for an editor.