We had to push back the release date for the first Tales of Ciel short story – just one week, to March 24. We were running a bit behind on our production timeline, and rather than rush the galley design, I decided it would be best to kick the release by a few days so we have time to get things right. For a little insight into the book publishing process, a book generally goes through three stages of design.
- Once all the assets are finalized (the manuscript, original art), a book designer and a typographer (sometimes the same person) will first adjust the art to fit the dimensions of a cover file. For Amazon Ebooks, this process is pretty simple, but it can take a few rounds of revision when you’re working on a print edition. Hardcovers are particularly tricky because the designer has to account for the leaflets and the dustjacket space lost to “wrap”.
- After that, the typographer designs the look and feel of the copy to be displayed on the cover. In the case of an Ebook, this only includes the title, subtitle, and byline. A print edition might include a back cover blurb and/or a few critical pull quotes. Hardcovers have more space to work with, so they often include an author photo and bio as well.
- Lastly, the book’s interior needs to be designed so that it looks like a book instead of a Word file. This process can be as easy or as complicated as you want to make it. Since we don’t use any interior art in our books (aside from the chapter clipart in the Tales of Ciel), we try to keep things pretty simple, with the focus on consistency, readability, and professionalism.
That last stage is where “The Clouds, from Afar” got held up. The Tales of Ciel novels all have a uniform look and feel, with the same stylized chapter headings and the same font families deployed throughout. I wanted to keep that consistency in the companion shorts. These Ebooks should still look like Ciel books. I’m hoping to look over the final layout sometime today. If everything looks good, we’ll submit the publishing files to Amazon same day.