Spoke to Paul West earlier (and, for a brief moment, his lovely wife, Diane Ackerman), to make sure we were on the same page regarding his new novel, The Immensity of the Here and Now. At present, I’m wrapping up the process of selecting a printer. This is the first time Voyant has put out a hardcover release, and that’s a different proposition than making paperbacks. The plan is to combine printing of both hardcover and paperback (with the paperback going on sale a year or so after the hardcover), so as to keep overall costs down (even though I need to put out the capital to print the paperbacks that will sit unsold for a year).
Estimates from the dozen or so printers I’ve solicited range from $X to $XX (I don’t want to give away too much info). I mean, there’s literally a 100% range between the bottom and top bids. In fact, the highest bid comes from a company that always sends ridiculously high bids. It’s strange, because this company really goes out of its way to advertise how it handles short runs, sends nice sales materials, and makes plenty of followup calls. But this is the 4th straight job where they’ve come in thousands of dollars above anyone else, with no particular value added. At this point, I included them in the bidding process sort of as a joke.
But, since I now have a pretty good idea of the costs, I’m pretty confident in the cover price that the hardcover is going to carry. This is important because, without it, I can’t send out promotional materials to bookstores, reviewers, etc. Now I can finish up the layout of the book itself, and send it out to a print-on-demand company to make 50 uncorrected proofs of the book. These can then get mailed out to the aforementioned reviewers, as well as people we hope will provide early blurbs for the book.
[Meanwhile, Mr. West will go over one of the uncorrected proofs and turn it into a corrected proof, sometime before July, when I plan to send the final book to the printer (at which time I’m going to need to have a cover design ready for both HC and PB versions: eek!)]All this needs to get done by the end of the week, since I’m leaving for a business trip/vacation on Saturday to Puerto Rico. I’ve never been there, but it sure oughtta be nicer than hanging out in Jersey all month.