First blog, eh? Always a tricky one, so I may as well start at the beginning.
Not right at the beginning, of course – not The Big Bang. Not even The Big Bang that resulted in me being here. I am not even talking about how BPi started (coz you can read all about that here), I am talking about the adventure we found ourselves on releasing our first book.
Both Iain and myself had released books before, so figured it would be a breeze. I had cheated in the past and paid someone to sort out all the technical BS necessary to make my words reach your eyeballs, but Iain had not. He had done it old school by sitting there, scratching his beard a bit and Figuring It Out. That would be his job, then.
We signed our first three authors in a flurry of contracts and ink then determined which of those three authors would win the chance to go first. It was quite an easy choice as THE AXE & GRINDSTONE was good to go with very little editing needed. We contracted an artist, I brushed up on my Photoshop skills to make the outside of the book look fancy, Pat learned how to use InDesign to make the inside of the book look fancy and we all generally got busy, looking to make the first release around August time.
Best laid plans, and all that.
Seems it wouldn’t be quite as easy as we thought. Nothing catastrophic, you understand; we didn’t accidentally press the Delete button. Just lots of little jobs that need doing amount to LOTS OF JOBS THAT NEED DOING with very limited time. We got there, though, and the book was off to the presses last week with a release date of 31st October. A little later than planned but, as they say, the best laid plans…
Zion
