Book #1 Chapter #3 Spot Art

So here is the final spot art for Book #1 Chapter 3 done by my artist, Matt Curtis. Firing the beam is the fifth grader, Tyco, probably cooking up some fresh rabbit. His vegetarian third grade friend, Ty, is cowering behind him. 

 

Book #1's Chapter 2 Spot Art

My artist, Matt Curtis, did a stunning job with this piece. This is Stefan as a first grader. Stefan is the seventh grader on the front cover standing next to Tova. Click on the picture to zoom it up and see the details. Notice the fairy carvings on the headboard. Depicted: Stefan in bed reading The Saeshell Book of Time.

 

Publishing Children of Sophista

I had someone tell me that one of my early readers would be willing to buy the Collector's Edition of the Book #1, which is being produced simultaneously with the Readers's Edition. Both editions will have 22 spot art pictures inside. But the Collector's Edition uses a full color process so that all artwork and some of the text effects will be in color. The Collector's Edition is about four times the price of the Reader's Edition. And yet, before the thing is even published, with only a few pieces of art to look at, someone is already willing to buy it. The artwork in the book is nothing incidental either. A large chunk of it has the theme, "The Part of the Story I Couldn't Tell You". Whether you are a reader or writer, you know that the plot has to flow at a certain speed or there will be stall. As the saying goes, one picture is worth a thousand words. Sometimes there are very valid and interesting things to be told, but you must just edit them out.

Quite frankly, it was a no loss proposition for me to do the color edition. A full color book is a great tool for give-aways and other promotional/review copies. Since it costs very little to load yet another project into the press, why not. But with interest in the color version in spite of it costing nearly four times the cost of the standard Reader's Edition there is another point to be made. To get a decent price for your book, you need not price fix. In fact, you need to move the focus away from price and towards value. Are you offering something worth paying the higher price for. This could be not only because you tell a great story with your writing, but because you tell one in pictures too. You, the writer, have something to contribute here since you  are the one with the great picture in your head. So put that down onto paper too. And this scheme can be carried to ebooks also. Again, no price fixing, people with color ereaders will see, guess---color artwork. And even if they don't have a color reader now, they know that when they add one to their electronic bookshelf, the color art will be there, at no additional cost. So in this scary, changing environment there is a way to make money as writer and a publisher without driving the price to zero or fixing the price to try and prevent that. Provide value.

Chapter 1 Spot Art

In the story, this is what The Saeshell Book of Time looks like. The book glows because it is alive and it controls time. Since no one ever attempted the puzzle about what the cover means, here is one part of it. The infinity exclamation point means infinite possibilities. N! means N factorial, which is the number of possible different arrangements of N things. So infinity ! means the number of ways you could rearrange infinite numbers of things or infinite things happening in time: Infinite possibilities.

Third Draft of Book#1's Back Cover

This is the third draft for the back cover of The Saeshell Book of Time: Part 1: The Death of Innocents. In this draft we focused on increasing the realism and some of the special effects.

Second Draft of Book #1's Back Cover

Besides some improvements to the image, this draft has the new promotional or summary text. The text was shrunk from 245 words down to 118 words and better reflects the story of the book. The first part of the text describes the entire serial itself and then the last bit explains what part this serial installment covers.

 

First Draft of Book #1's Back Cover

Here is the first draft of the back cover of book #1, The Saeshell Book of Time: Part 1: The Death of Innocents.

Middle School Boy Reviews Book #1

I have been conducting a early reader trial of the final version of Book #1, #2, and #3 at Rainard School for Gifted Students in Houston, Texas. This is a review of the Saeshell Book of Time: Part 1: The Death of Innocents conducted by a middle school boy who I call Boy #1.

The story is told in a way I have never ever seen before.  Telling and progressing the story in the present while telling the background story and using the background story as part of the present story to advance it is just incredible.  The variety of characters and their development is also magnificently done.  Their personalities show and they grow as well while learning new things about each other and themselves, by seeing each other's and their own past.  There are however, quite a few things that are put out there suddenly and without warning, and while most of the events fit in with the story, quite a few of the fact related things, such as the sudden revelation of Stefan and/or Tyco being able to survive in space, and/or Stefan having the ability to allow Tyco to survive in space, (as shown in the last paragraph of page 197 that stretches over to and ends in the beginning of page 198) don't fit in so well.  The story is great and beautifully crafted, the characters well-made, and the only things I saw as anything resembling a flaw is what I just mentioned.

The Cover of Book #1 is Final

The cover of The Saeshell Book of Time: Part 1: The Death of Innocents is now final. Here it is: