COMPLETING AND FINISHING

No not the blog. Panic ye not.

In my days at work we learned about different people’s working styles.  I can’t remember it all these days (thank goodness) but there was a category of folk called Completer Finishers. Various psychometric tests I took demonstrated what I already knew. A completer finisher I am most definitely not.  It’s all about attention to detail and I really can’t be doing with all that.  Despite all the hard graft we put into painting Herbie, I could take you now to little hidden places we missed. Only tiny and hidden mind, but I know they are there. It is the same reason why Herbie has one fresh glossy painted handrail on the port side and a rubbed down but still peeling one on the starboard side.  ( I will do that next chance honest). In any project, once I have solved the major problem and broken the back of it, my mind goes onto the next thing.  I know this is immensely frustrating to the completer finishers around me but there it is.  Mea Culpa.

Why do I tell you all this? Because today I have been struggling with something that is trying to force me to complete something in excruciating detail and I am ready to scream.  Let me start at the beginning.

Do you remember my book Jobs for the Boys?  Of course you do, I have been labouring hard not to let you forget it. Well last night I was gently chiding a friend who has downloaded it but not yet read it.  Her excuse, and it is a fair one, was that she would rather have a proper paper book, and she cant be doing with reading a whole novel off a screen.  So today I thought I should bite the bullet and sort out how to get it available in print.  In theory this is easy.  Amazon have a service called CreateSpace where you can upload your book, format it, design a cover and make it available for cheap printing on demand.  I haven't yet calculated the cost but no more than yer average paperpback.  Not bad as I (as the author and publisher) would have no up front costs.  As usually of course nearly all the money goes to them and I continue to starve in a garret, but that's another story.

Then here comes the completer finisher problem.  Their software that checks it out is mega fussy.  Page sizes, margins, gutters, fonts, file formats, you name it.  I wouldn’t mind only four times it’s told me a font isn’t embedded when according to Bill Gates or whoever it is these days in charge of Microsoft Word says it flippin’ well is.  I checked the little tick box to make it do it. Grrrrr.

To add to my annoyance I went back to the version we proof read prior to publishing the book on Kindle.  Several people have tactfully pointed out that the published version has the odd typo.  Kath reckoned most of these were introduced when we uploaded the file and converted to kindle format.  So  I checked that  today, the Kindle version against the final proof we submitted, yep, sure enough their bit of software had actually introduced errors.  I have the proof (literally) ( even that “literally” is literally - think about it).  So I don’t know why their pesky software is getting so picky with me when they are just as bad.

There, that’s got that off my chest before I go back and have another try.  Hopefully I shall prevail, then I can tell you how to get a cheapish copy of the best book I have ever written.  Just try to ignore the fact that it is at the same time the worst book I have ever written.  So far any way. A sequel is on the go.