Continuing the Publication Journey - Trusting in God's Delays

A lot has happened since I joyfully announced that I was going to have my book, Seeking the Light of God's Comforter - When Challenges Dim Our View, published. At that time, a February, 2016 release date had been proposed to me.

We all got to work - the team and I. By mid-December the copyediting was completed and we took a break for the holidays. 

The end of January, my project manager and her husband welcomed a baby boy (via adoption) which had been a 7-year journey for them toward parenthood. Naturally, they needed time to bond with him and she took an 8 week maternity leave which I gladly understood. It left me with other work to do, one piece of it was  being able to sit down in person with the publisher so she could see the vision I had for the formatting of my book. In doing this in-person consultation on February 12^th,  I was told there are photo graphics inside the book which need the attention of the graphic designer who had worked on readying my design of my book's front cover. The publisher took those designs and was to get them to the graphic designer so she could begin work. 

There were delays with her getting those designs to the graphic designer, but they did get to her on April 1.

In the meantime, I have been attending to projected marketing needs, among them learning how to create a website, not an easy task for this technology challenged individual. I have a vision for that, too, which I hope I can pull off.

 An online course with a great teacher was being offered in April. GREAT timing! I've done everything else "online", why not this key piece? Nine of us are in the course which is being held in a closed group on Facebook. For the first two weeks in April we were instructed (video) with key overviews of the process and plenty of time to make comments and ask questions and encourage one another. There was also a phone consultation with the teacher so she could understand key needs I have. The 3rd week in April we were to begin implementing what we had learned with guided instruction as our teacher showed us how she creates a website. She lives in Texas and mid April got overwhelmed with the floods that were so very harsh in the area where she lives. We have been "off course" for these past two weeks. Hopefully, we will be working again soon.

On April 22 I got the template proof of my book's first pages including text pages, a sample of how the graphic designer had done the first interior graphic of an Introduction page, and two samples of devotionals with their accompanying photos. This was for the purpose of my approving them before she proceeded to send the template model off to the typesetter who then will take the full manuscript and photos and ready them to be printed. I then will get all that back to approve before printing is okayed.

However, back in October when my project was first discussed in a phone consultation with the publisher (and no notebook with my vision of formatting had been seen by her), she chose a 8.5” x 8.5” square 'trim size' for the book as she felt that would do well to fit my horizontal and vertical photos. I appreciated that input. It sounded good to me.

What I came to realize, seeing the template on April 22, was that the ‘trim size” is too "short" in length to fit all the devotional texts on one page. Each devotional is the same word count. The samples the graphic designer used for the template fit as those devotionals are not spaced out as other texts where emphasis was needed by spacing sentences or centering some of them. The other beginning texts (Table of Contents, Dedication, Endorsements, Acknowledgements) look gorgeous! 

The Introduction pages (there are four) have a photo header, thus the need for a graphic to be done. Some text flows out of the reflection of the photo image. There was no way the designer could get the full text to fit on one page. She went to a second page and "cut and pasted" a part of the photo header to try and keep "my flow" but to my eyes that did not work. As I know the whole manuscript, I could foresee how that same configuration would happen with the "longer devotionals". 

The only suggestion I had to remedy getting the "look" I have worked so hard to attain was to ask the publisher to go to a different 'trim size" with that being 8.5" x 11". I know that will fit as it is the size of my mock-up manuscript notebook, the one she saw! 

It will be more costly to print that new size and I will be paying "again" for time the graphic designer needs to re-format the front cover design and the "beginning pages" to that new size as she had done for the template I received on April 22.

Are you tired yet?  

I am exhausted! 

I also am still expecting! With the way this project is "progressing", I think the due date could possibly be September, 2016. 

Stay tuned.

The bottom line we each know is that the timing of what is to be is all in God's hands! 

Thanks for your continuing prayers!