The mad dash of the self-publishers is ON! Like others locally, I’m moving heaven and earth to get ready for SPACE 2024. Prepping for a show can be as all-encompassing as one wants to make it, and my crazy summer plans suggest that this may be the only such event in which Phoenix will have a physical presence this year.
The keystone of the Phoenix show offerings is, of course, Strange Times 5 – the “My Best Joke” anthology. With over 20 contributors, this is a tremendous project to pull together. Fortunately, everyone has been great about meeting the production timeline.
To speed things along, I had the design template in place well before the submission deadline. Beyond that, it didn’t hurt to have prior experience navigating the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing templates and systems. This was much more of a plug-and-play situation. As submissions came in, it was a simple matter of dropping the new pages into the book.
I completed the book on Monday and had a printer’s proof (above) in my hands yesterday. There were a couple technical tweaks on my end – stretching out a graphic to fill out the page bleed, etc. – but nothing huge. I submitted a “final” document last night.
Once you make that “Go ahead and publish” order, Amazon digs their nails in. They dinged me for about four pages’ formatting, which I needed to address prior to going live. No problem, quick fixes again. I resubmitted and am awaiting final approval (or, possibly, more ticky-tack issues). There’s a cat-and-mouse element to finalizing a zine with Amazon, and I’m in the middle of it right now.
The goal, as stated above, is to have the zine ready to debut at SPACE. It’ll be close, but the corrections were minor. Cross your fingers that the zine will be ready for the 27th!
Phoenix Productions 