Yes, it’s been a while.

We finally made it back to the US – after an unexpected year in Montreal. (We went for a summer vacation, and never came back! Ha!)

We decided to settle in New York City this go around. So I’ve been neighborhood hopping, apartment shopping, etc.

And I’ve been writing my fingers to the bone. Seriously.

I have a new title coming out soon… Desperate Sellers Only. More about that later.

Let’s pick up where we last left off, shall we?

No More Smelly House – the object of this Walking The Task segment – is complete, fully edited and indexed.

But as I said when I launched this little experiment, I have had some snafus.

The Layout & Index…

Print books are completely different animals than e-books.

So my initial intention was to find someone who could both index and typeset my book. Someone who had experience with print books.

I had found several very competent people to do the task.

But I decided to try and save a few dollars by having some providers bid on the job at eLance.

(I figured since I’d be reporting my results here, I’d try to make it as economical as possible.)

The gentleman I chose bid $250 for the complete job – layout and index. Quite a deal. Normally a job like this would be ‘at least’ $500-$700.

The first index he sent me was like 2 pages long.

At the time I had 130+ 8.5×11 pages. We’re talking 12 pt font, single spaces. There’s NO WAY you can distill that much information into 2 pages.

So I sent an e-mail saying it was a good start, but that there was a lot missing.

He replied with a request. Could I send him a list of words and phrases that I wanted to use for the index.

I replied “No.” I told him that I didn’t have the time to do that. That’s part of the indexing job – to find all the terms of significance. I told him that if he didn’t think he could do a good job, let’s revise the quote he gave me.

He told me that he could do it.

Several days later, he sent me the index. It was 13 pages long. He rose to the occasion indeed!

The layout, on the other hand, was adequate. But it really wasn’t ready for print quality.

Darn.

The Layout & Index – Part 2…

I’m re-e-e-eally tired of waiting now. I want to start selling this darn book.

So I decided to put it on the market as an e-book, just to get the ball rolling.

However, I had to have the layout re-done and index re-numbered.

Why? Because the layout the eLance provider did was sized 6×9. I needed to have it reformatted for 8.5×11.

I took one afternoon and did the layout myself. Six hours it took me.

Then I posted a project on Rentacoder for someone to re-paginate the table of contents and the index. I wanted the project completed in 3 days. And I specifically stated that I needed 100% accuracy.

I chose a company for $50.

When he sent the final version it was riddled with page errors in the index.

I sent the provider the error list and he revised them. But in the process, some of the layout got thrown off. It’s not horrific. Just some really minor stuff. But still.

The Cover…

This part provided the least amount of stress.

I went back to eLance and posted a project for an ebook cover.

Fifteen or so bids later, I chose a designer. He completed the project in a day. Then he did the header the following day.

The original cost for the cover was $80. The header was $20.

The End Result…

So the No More Smelly House e-book is finally up for sale.

I’ve just started doing some advertising. I’ll let you know about that later this week.

Whew!

Filed under: Bullet Point

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