Category: Publishing

The process of making ebooks and paper books

This is how Pinbeam Books (that’s Sharon Lee and Steve Miller) makes book.

  1.  We collect, or write, or write and collect, the stories to be published.
  2.  We put them into form, compile them, and call for Tyop Hunters.
  3.  At this point, we may or may not put the ebook up for pre-order on Amazon only by promising to upload the completed file by a certain date.
  4. Tyop Hunter results are entered into the ebook file.
  5. The corrected ebook is uploaded to Amazon and All The Usual Suspects, for pre-order or for sale, depending on how long it has taken to complete 4, above.
  6. At this point, we are free to use the clean and corrected ebook file as a base for the paper book edition.  Unlike ebooks, one must be committed to producing a paper book now.  It is not possible to set up a paper book for pre-order by promising to upload the file by a certain date.  It’s all or nothing.  This is why the paper book variously goes on sale before, after, or on the very day that the ebook edition drops.
  7. Once the paper book has been compiled and uploaded, Amazon puts it on sale and sometimes remembers to associate it with the catalog page for the ebook edition.  This is the step where you, the reader, can Actually Purchase the paper edition.

Please refer to this procedure in future, if there are any questions about the availability of a paper edition of a new Pinbeam Books book.

Thank you for your attention.

All the News that’s Fit to Print

1   The eARC of Liaden Universe® Volume Five is now available for purchase at Baen.com.  Here’s your link.

1a  LUC 5 includes these stories: Fortune’s Favors, Opportunity to Seize, Shout of Honor, Command Decision, Dark Secrets, A Visit to the Galaxy Ballroom, The Gate that Locks the Tree, Preferred Seating, Ambient Conditions, Dead Men Dream, and an authors’ foreword.

1b  LUC5 will be published on February 1, 2022 in trade and ebook.

1c  You may preorder the trade edition from your favorite vendor*.

2   Fair Trade, the 24th novel in the Liaden Universe®, the third book detailing the adventures of Jethri Gobelyn ven’Deelin, is now available for preorder in hardcover* from the Usual Suspects.  It will be published on May 3, 2022.**

2a  The previous books in the Jethri arc are:  Balance of Trade and Trade Secret

3   “From Every Storm a Rainbow,” featuring a Liaden Universe® “holiday” story featuring Sinit Caylon will be available for your free reading pleasure at Baen.com on-or-about November 15

4   Watch the skies for a Pinbeam chapbook collecting all the so-called “bakery” stories, including new story, “Our Lady of Benevolence.”

__________________________
*Baen ebooks are never available for preorder — this has to do with Baen’s long-standing tradition of making eARCs available.  The ebook edition will be published on the day the paper edition publishes and will be available for purchase at that time from Baen, Amazon, BN, Apple, Kobo, and so on.

**We have no news of an audiobook edition at this time.  Be certain that we will shout this news from the rooftops, once it is in our possession.

Fair Trade available for preorder

Fair Trade is the 24th novel in the Liaden Universe® created and written by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller.  This title is the direct sequel to 2013’s Trade Secret and the third book detailing the adventures of Jethri Gobelyn, a Terran who has been apprenticed to a Liaden Master Trader.
Cover art is by David Mattingly.
Fair Trade hardcover is available for preorder from Amazon, and I suppose other places that do preorders. Publication date is May 3, 2022. Amazon link:
    1. There will be an ebook edition; the reason you can’t preorder the ebook has to do with Baen’s tradition of offering eARCS.
2. No word on when the eARC will be available — usually it’s been hitting 6-8 weeks out.
 
3. We assume there will be an audiobook edition, but we don’t know if that’s valid or, if it is, who the narrator will be.
 
4. Mass market paperback editions usually hit about a year after the publication of the hardcover.
 
Please share this happy news with  your family, your friends, your reading group, and strangers chance-met on the street.

Trader’s Leap Mass Market

Shameless Self Promotion!
 
This is specifically aimed at those folks who Wait for The Mass Market, so if you already have the hardcover or the ebook or the audiobook, you may avert your eyes.
 
OK then, Mass Market Readers! The mmp edition of Trader’s Leap, the 23rd novel in the Liaden Universe®, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, owner-operators, will be available on September 28. That’s next Tuesday!
 
Buy it from the vendor of your choice, please. And do recall that Reviews Help Authors.
 
Thank you.

Updatery

Steve and I will be Writer Guests of Honor at the Virtual AlbaCon, on September 17 and 18, 2021 — note:  all of the web signage says 2020, but the info is for 2021.  Here’s the link.

Registration is open to all.  The con is asking people to donate what they can.  Here’s the link to the registration page.  Hope to see you all there!

In other news, now that the contract has been signed and countersigned, we can reveal that we sold original Liaden Universe® short story “Gadreel’s Folly,” featuring a character who may be familiar to some long-time readers, to editor Jason Cordova for the anthology Chicks in Tank Tops, tentatively scheduled to be published by Baen in 2022.  Watch the skies for more details and a preorder link, when one is available.

In workaday news, Steve has opened a file for the sequel to Fair Trade (the sequel to Trade Secret, scheduled for Summer 2022 publication).  I am writing the holiday story commissioned by Baen.com.  That should be available around the middle of November.

And that’s all the (writing) news that’s fit to print.

Everybody stay safe.

 

 

Mid-season catch-up

You know what’s happening in eight short days?  Besides Steve’s birthday, I mean.

That’s right!  BAD ACTORS: Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number 33, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller — will publish in ebook form.  Right now you can preorder from Amazon, Apple, BN, Kobo, and a bunch of other online vendors.  On July 31, you will be able to buy the ebook directly from Baen.

Right now, you can buy the paper edition of BAD ACTORS from Amazon (surprising no one), and Books-A-Million (surprising everyone).  In theory, you will eventually also be able to buy the paper edition from BN, and Bookstores to be Named Later.

I only have figures from Amazon at the moment, and it looks like 39 paperbacks have shipped; and ebook preorders have just hit 450.  That’s — pretty good.  Thank you all.

In other news, Steve and I are on course to handing in Fair Trade, the sequel to 2013’s Trade Secret on Monday.  Madame the Publisher tells us that Fair Trade will be a 2022 summer book, and that David Mattingly will be creating the cover art.

Once Fair Trade is turned in, we’ll have two short stories and three novels still under contract.

…and that gets us caught up for the moment.

BAD ACTORS print edition update

For those who follow these things, I have pushed the button to allow Amazon to start processing the print edition of BAD ACTORS. The reason we’re “releasing” early is multipart.

Part One: Amazon does not allow indie authors who are using the KDP system to print their books to set up preorders for print books. No, I don’t know why; it’s Amazon.

Part Two: After much discussion, Steve and I have decided to Embrace All Market Distribution, which basically means that you’ll be able to buy the paper edition at BN and other bookstores, and maybe even borrow it (the chances of this are Beyond Slim) from the library.

Part Two-A: This also means that you will be able to buy the print edition from All the Amazons everywhere on Earth.

Part Three: It will take up to EIGHT WEEKS for the paper edition to enter the Whole Earth Distribution Market.  Therefore, we have entered the print edition into Amazon’s “process.” This will have the side benefit, for folks buying from Amazon US, of the paperback edition of BAD ACTORS being available early, assuming Amazon’s review doesn’t discover that we are In Violation of MumbleMutter.

Part Four: The ebook edition is available for preorder at all the Usual Suspects, and will publish on July 31 at Baen, Amazon, BN, Kobo, Apple &c. as originally planned.  That’s BAD ACTORS:  Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number 33, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller.

BAD ACTORS available for pre-order

BAD ACTORS:  Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number 33, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, published by Pinbeam Books, is now available for pre-order.  Links follow the Short, Obligatory FAQ.

  1.  YES, you will be able to purchase the ebook from Baen when it publishes, on July 31.  You can’t pre-order from Baen, because they don’t do that for non-Baen books.
  2.  YES, there will be a paper edition, eventually.  Amazon does not do pre-orders of paper books which are produced through CreateSpace or whatever Amazon’s print arm is called today.
  3.  YES, all three stories are reprints.  The stories are:  “Excerpts from Two Lives” (Star Destroyers, Baen, March 2018); “Dark Secrets” (Infinite Stars: Dark Frontiers, Titan, November 2019); “Revolutionists” (The Razor’s Edge, Zombies Need Brains, June 2018)
  4.  YES, it is perfectly legitimate for authors to reprint their own work, sell their previously published work to reprint anthologies.  This is done All The Time.  It is not a scam.

Everybody good?  Cool.  Here are your links to pre-order the ebook edition of BAD ACTORS: Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number 33, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller:
Amazon
Apple Books
Barnes & Noble
Bol.de
Kobo
Thalia

We’re really proud of this cover, BTW. Have another look.

 

Watch the skies

Frantic deadline writing continues, and!  We have a title for the novel, which IS a Jethri novel, and that title is!

FAIR TRADE

In the midst of All That (yes, yes, but you — at least I — have to give my brain something to do while the backroom is slapping together the rough of the next scene besides play endless rounds of Lumeno), the thirty-third Adventures in the Liaden Universe® chapbook, BAD ACTORS, is in process.  The Tyop Hunters are returning their results, and I’m looking at putting the chapbook up for pre-order next week, with an eye toward a July 31 release date.

BAD ACTORS collects three previously published Liaden short stories that fell through the cracks in our reprint process, due in equal parts to differing availability dates (one story had an 18-month exclusivity period, the others had a year), and the publication of the various Liaden Universe® Constellations.  All three stories feature people who might have chosen better, and all three were commissioned.  No, I don’t know why three different editors wanted stories that practically begged for Protags With Questionable Morals(tm).

The stories included are!  Excerpts from Two Lives, Dark Secrets, and Revolutionists.  As it happens, two of them were principally written by Steve, one by me.  So, you can have fun trying to decide which is which.  Possibly this could be made into a drinking game.  Or, yanno, not.

Watch this space, and other spaces where Things Liaden are discussed, for news.  Be sure that when pre-orders open, we will shout it from the highest buildings available.

While you’re waiting, here’s another look at the cover art.

Cover reveal!

Coming to a bookstore near you in February 2022, A Liaden Universe® Constellation, Volume 5. Art by Sam Kennedy. Stories by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller.
Table of Contents:
Authors’ Foreword
Fortune’s Favors
Opportunity to Seize
Shout of Honor
Command Decision
Dark Secrets
A Visit to the Galaxy Ballroom
The Gate That Locks the Tree
Preferred Seating
Ambient Conditions
Dead Men Dream