Paperback Edition of "Storm's Herald"

I have finally published a paperback edition of Storm's Herald:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1799212165/

On the one hand, most indie authors of fantasy fiction understand that the vast majority of their book sales will be through eBooks. However, there are still a few readers that prefer to hold a book in their hand, including a number of potential reviewers. I therefore decided to release a paperback edition of the book, in addition to the eBook version.

A few observations from the paperback release the process:

• Formatting a manuscript for a paperback edition is slightly more complicated than publishing an eBook edition. Left and right hand margins need to alternate, to allow the book to be bound. Moreover, the size of the font and the page sizes need to be adjusted to match publishing requirements. This is very different from the eBook version - where font selection and font sizes are adjusted automatically to reflect the preferences and settings of the individual reader or device. In addition, the fonts selected need to be embedded into the electronic document for submission to the printing house.

• Having been through this process once now, I can say that the format templates provided by Amazon were very helpful. It is nonetheless essential to go back through the proof copy of the page layout after the manuscript has been submitted, to be sure that everything loaded as anticipated.

• Although the Kindle Direct website suggests that it's preferable to submit the paperback manuscript as a pdf file, I found that it was actually easier to submit the manuscript directly from my MS Word file. The pdf option produced errors that did not occur when submitting the MS Word version of the same document. Go figure.

• Another difference between the eBook and the printed version of the document, is that the Table of Contents needs to be embedded in the manuscript as text - not as a hyperlinked table. The hyperlinks tend to produce errors when submitting, and the page numbering sequence also doesn't seem to match once the conversion to a printer-ready version has been made. I had to manually verify that the page numbers in the Table of Contents were still in alignment with the proof document.

All told, however, the process was easier than I had thought it might be. Certainly much easier than the writing and editing process that generated the manuscript.