Day Zero – First Engineer

First Engineer glanced up from his desk in surprise. It wasn’t time for the midday briefing, yet Second Engineer stood in front of him tapping a print-out against her thigh. An alarming item in itself. Files were only printed when the digital copy had been deemed so harmful that it had been completely wiped and a single hard copy made, to be filed or burnt at a later date.

‘Report.’

There was no need for pleasantries. They were engineers, their job was to ensure a smooth running of society. Let the other departments clamour to be the best. Engineers were silent and knew the truth of things.

‘This tripped our protocols as it ran through the security filters. It’s a lecture for the neophytes.’

All staff who worked for the Mouseion of Alexandria started at the same place. Whether they would go on to be curators, custodians or even engineers, they all started as neophytes. Then their skills were assessed, and they were allocated to the correct departments.

‘A neophyte lecture. What on earth could be in that to have triggered an alert?’

‘It was written by Curator Strathclyde.’

First Engineer frowned and held out his hand for the offending transcript. When Strathclyde had first arrived through the quantum stepper, First had argued vehemently that the man could prove to be highly dangerous. He had been overwhelmingly outvoted. The other departments had been charmed by Strathclyde and could see no threat in his friendly ways. They were treating him like a project or an interesting pet.

Despite First’s objections, Strathclyde graduated as a curator. Now, he was being considered as an occasional lecturer in Beta Studies. First wondered when the rest of the mouseion heads would realise what a threat to the stability of their society Strathclyde was. Who knew what dangerous ideas he might try and inculcate? His eyes flicked across the paper.

Who amongst us hasn’t wondered if we are not alone in the universe? He stared at Second and looked back over the paper, as he began to read aloud. ‘If we can have a parallel existence between your Earth and mine, why not multiple universes?’

With a shaking hand, he took a match from his desk drawer and set fire to the paper, placing it in his bin.

‘Do we know if he discussed the contents of this paper before he wrote it?’

Second shook her head. ‘We’ve pulled all the audio files from any neighbouring wrist braces, and nothing was detected.’

First frowned. ‘What about his own?’

‘He doesn’t always wear it. He’s not impressed by the wearing it for the common good argument. Also, according to the notes, in his monthly assessment he commented, that as it wasn’t mandatory, he’d rather not.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘In his defence,’ said Second, ‘he was tracked and spied upon through his wrist brace.’

‘But that was unsanctioned. He would never have known about it if we had been doing it.’

‘I don’t think he sees it the same way. And, of course, he doesn’t quite see the for the good of society the same way we do.

‘This is not news to me, Second.’ She flinched. Repetition of information was an unnecessary waste of time and unworthy of her rank. She waited to see what First was going to recommend. At this point, she felt her next suggestion would be at odds with his. She felt that Julius should be more closely monitored. He was an excellent example of a Beta mind and she wanted to study him.

‘I have determined that Julius Strathclyde is a threat to society of the first order. He is an unresolved paradox.’

Second betrayed no emotion. First’s reasoning was sound, but where Strathclyde was concerned, Second felt that First may be slightly conflicted.

‘In order to protect the citizens of Alpha Earth, I will arrange for Julius to be removed from it.’

Second nodded her assent. She felt sure that they had lost a research opportunity, but First was within his rights. Julius Strathclyde must die.

With the advance of the electronic reader the large print edition has fallen out of favour.  And its clear to see why, large print books could be very large and heavy, bulky unwieldy and expensive to buy. Even if you decided to overcome these issues not every book was published in a large print format and it was often the preserve of western and romances. Somewhat stereotyping the demographic that needed large print.

The e-reader arrived and suddenly the issue physical dimensions disappeared. Issues of cost and availability disappeared. Overnight, you simply purchased the title you wanted and adjusted the font size until it was legible.

e-reader or print?

But e-readers aren’t for everyone.

Which is why The Quantum Curators and the Fabergé Egg is available in large print.  We have gone to lengths to ensure that the book is not too heavy or too large to hold comfortably.  We considered the paper quality and the size and style of font used, picking a sans serif font, Arial 20pt, and printing on plain white paper.

I’m certain that large print readers want more than westerns and romances.  Why not an action adventure Sci-Fi story?

In every way we have tried to make this accessible. However, the price may prove a sticking point. At £14.99 it may be beyond the pockets from some who are trying out a new author.

Libraries to the rescue

Happily there is a solution. The wonderful public library service. We have lodged this title with library supplies so all that anyone needs do is go to their local library and request that their library service buy a copy.

Do this for yourself by all means but know that you will also be doing it for everyone else in your community. For everyone that wants something new to read in the large print section!

And it’s not just large print

And of course we have made the standard size print book available to the library services. Just go in and request it. By doing this you don’t just support me, I get a few pennies for every borrow, but you support your local library. The more you use them, the better their chances of staying open. Libraries in the UK are facing a shameful cut to services, they are the very epitome of a civilised society and they need our support. (I could go on at length but it will just get ranty, so I’ll stop here).

Get in touch

I’d love to hear your opinions on this as well as your success in getting it ordered. Send me a photo of the book out in the wild.  or of course you could always buy your own copy if you don’t like sharing.

The Quantum Curators and the Fabergé Egg. LARGE PRINT

Cover Design.

Of course you shouldn’t judge, but there we are. For years I didn’t read The Colour of Magic because I didn’t like the Josh Kirby covers. I’d glanced at them and thought they were more in the vein of the Conan books. Yes, I know! Anyway, I finally picked one up after being told I would love it by so many people, read the first page and never stopped reading.  That is until The Shepherd’s Crown,  I haven’t read that. Once I read that, there’s nothing left. So no, I’m saving that for sometime else.

Judging a book by its cover

Back to the importance of a book cover. It needs to do two things; it needs to stand out and to fit in. You need to flag to your potential audience that this is similar to something that they have already read and enjoyed. You only get a few seconds to grab the attention of a browser as they scroll past your cover. Clearly, a cover says nothing about the quality of the writing or storytelling, but it gives a sense of quality. A well designed cover tells the reader that the publisher has spent money on the cover, the natural thought progression from this is that they care about the product. The production values are high which implies that the writing is of a similar standard.

Does it promise what it delivers?

But no matter how lovely your cover is if it doesn’t hit your market, you are going to disappoint or confound the browsers that stopped to look at it.  Maybe they give up at the blurb, which is disappointing, worse is when they buy the book and discover it isn’t for them at all, and leave a poor review.

Your book cover should make a promise and your story should deliver on that promise.

Look at the images above. Which is your favourite? You can see which one I went for below.

First Impressions Count

As I mentioned in a previous blog, I selected Books Covered, Stuart Bache’s design studio, to make my cover. This was my most expensive purchase based on the concept that first impressions count.  I’ll do a cost blog in about three months.

Now, picking a design was a nightmare and I still don’t know if I got it right.  The designer sent me three designs based on my initial brief. One immediately jumped out as gorgeous, but I needed more feedback than just gut instinct. So it was back to the village, and I offered the three choices to various reader and writing groups.  They largely agreed with me but I remained concerned that the cover did not properly suggest SF or adventure.

I asked the design team to show me three covers that focused on this aspect. Again they sent me three gorgeous covers and I had an immediate favourite.  Again, I took it to the village and they mostly agreed with me.  This time though, my preferred option was also drawing some negative comments. That was a little concerning, so instead I went back to the village and asked if they preferred the first best option or the second best option.

Option one won overwhelmingly amongst those that hadn’t read it. Those that had read it said option two was a better fit, but that they would have still picked up option one and would have enjoyed it.

I went back to the designer and asked for help. What did they think?  Here’s what Stuart said.

Stuart Bache – Books Covered

Book covers serve two purposes: to catch our eye and to impart information in nanoseconds. Hopefully, both of these will lead the viewer to buy it.

The information we need is usually: genre/some narrative, author, title (in any order).

The next thing to think about is: will people notice/like it enough to buy it?

The thing about readers’ opinions is that it’s ‘after purchase’, it doesn’t tell you whether they would have bought it or not. Also, unless the cover is overwhelmingly wrong – which is usually reserved for book covers that use the completely wrong imagery for the genre (i.e. cozy romance cover, pure erotica story) – there will be little to no impact… especially digitally where you see the cover fleetingly after purchase.

The two you have chosen are great covers, either one will work. I would go with your gut-feeling and lean slightly towards to people who ‘haven’t’ read the novel.

Personally I prefer option two, but I’ve decided to go with the more popular cover. If I’ve got it wrong at least I have a great fall back to re-launch with.  The other thing to bear in mind is how the series progresses and I think option one will support that path better than option two.

Anyway, having finally decided on a cover, we went through a few further tweaks and now its ready to be launched on the world. I think it’s beautiful, I just hope it also works.

Time will tell. Which is appropriate for a bunch of time travelling curators.

Incidentally, this is the final cover. Was it your favourite?

Linked Blogs

It takes a village to publish a book. Part 1/?

Formatting, pricing and distribution of a new book – the village goes quiet. 2/?

Trying to turn the village into a town. Book marketing. 3/?