Hard Cover Edition at Brigitte’s!

The limited hard-cover edition of Love is Magic: A nearly true story of Friendship and Change is on sale now, exclusively at Brigitte’s Serenity Studio!

Of course, if you can’t make it into Brigitte’s, the paper-back and Kindle editions are at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0990519104

Initial Reviews

The first 3 reviews on Amazon:

“Love is Magic is a charming book about the magic of friendship and the ways in which love and attention can make life blossom. The illustrations are fabulous and the story is sweet and uplifting. My son is grown, but I bought a copy anyhow, and I have given it to several friends with little ones. I look forward to reading our copy to my own grandchildren when the time comes.”

“This is beautiful heart-warming story for children and grown-ups alike!”

“This is an adorable book about friendship and positive thinking. The story is so sweet and thoughtful. It’s the perfect book to read to little ones before bedtime. I love the illustrations. They are wonderful especially for those who can’t read yet. I’m buying some more of these books as gifts for my friends’ children and grandchildren.”

Early Release!

As you may recall from previous posts, the official announcement is September 1st.

However, as followers of this blog you are getting the announcement early – Love is Magic is available now on Amazon!

Click here to go to the product page:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0990519104

 

Working on Hardcover Edition

With the paperback and Kindle editions coming out soon, we started getting things together for a hardcover edition.  There are no changes to the interior, but the cover art needed to be modified for the case-wrap exterior.  New bar-code, as well, so as to distinguish this book from the other editions.

Cover art for Hardback

Corrections, and New Proofs

It’s amazing how little mistakes creep in and remain unnoticed through so many twists and turns!  This story is less than 400 words long, written in very simple prose.  On top of that, dozens of people have read the story, providing much valuable input.  You would not expect any grammatical errors to remain, would you?

Last week, the story finally made it in front of a professional editor (not for editing, mind you, but more or less by chance.)   Upon close examination, there were upwards of 20 errors in grammar!  Mainly, these were in the form of capitalization (“Queen” is lower case) and superfluous use of commas (which I am prone to, I know!)

I am eternally grateful to my friends and editors for catching this before this book went into production!  I would hate to see Mitch’s beautiful artwork insulted by my clumsy prose!

The lesson in this is: Always, always, always get an editor to look at your work.  Do it early, do it often!

New proofs are on their way.

Administrative Stuffs

 

This just in:

 

Dear Publisher:

Your EPCN application for a Library of Congress control number for
 Title: “Love is magic”
 ISBN:  “9780990519102”
was successfully transmitted to the Library of Congress.

 

 

A Year of Development

It was one year ago today that I placed the first post on this site, describing the book “Love is Magic,” and announcing that I would blog about the development process.

Well, I’ve been posting pictures, the story, and even a coloring book for you to download.  What I’ve left out has been the boring parts:

• Endless emails between myself and Mitch, debating the finer points of the artwork
• Communications with publishers and publishing services
• Shipping largish paintings back-and-forth between California and Oregon
• Numerous mistakes made, which inevitably involved doing parts of the process over (like re-scanning the artwork, and re-uploading higher resolution images to the printer)
• Purchasing ISBN numbers (You know you need separate ones for each edition?  Paperback, hardcover, Kindle?)
• Deciding how to handle hard-cover editions (these will be limited)
• Giving away proof copies and requesting reviews from influential people

There are an amazing amount of details to getting your book out into the world.  However, the light of day is starting to shine on the horizon, and I believe we have a publication date:

Look for an announcement on September 1, 2014

I hope you enjoy this book as much as I’ve enjoyed bringing it to you, and thank you for all of your welcome support!

Andy

 

More Proofs

What could be better than a proof copy?  Five proof copies! These are for the reviewers and such – a required step before production begins.

First Proof Copy

The first proof copy is in!  There is still plenty of work to do to make this book available, but this milestone is the one I’ve been most anxiously waiting for!

About proofing: It’s amazing how little things don’t jump out at you until you look again.  Note the “c” in “Magic” – doesn’t the leaf behind it make it look a bit like an “e”?  Gotta fix that before it goes into print!

Draft – Cover

This is the 4th draft of the cover.  What do you think?