There's a brand new layout of Sunken Treasure, which looks beautiful and has earned the Second Edition designation.
A ton of readers have sent feedback about Sunken Treasure, and some common themes have emerged:
1. You like the stories. This makes me so happy I want to do the Snoopy dance.
2. The layout needs work. This makes me realize my own limitations.
3.
You really want a digital version that's native to the Kindle, or other
eReaders. This makes me wish my eReader-Fu was stronger.
4. You want an audio version of the whole book.
I
took this feedback to heart, and over the next few weeks I will address
every request. Today, I wanted to announce that I took some of the
earnings from the first month's sales, and reinvested them into making
the book even better: the US edition has been revised and redesigned by my friend Will Hindmarch,
with a beautiful new layout and gorgeous new fonts. Will is a
honest-to-goodness professional designer, and he made the gutters
deeper, fixed some of the typos that eluded both me and Andrew (curse
you, signing! You kept looking like singing!) and improved the overall flow of the whole book. (Note: The World edition has not been changed; we're working on it, and it'll be updated soon.)
Here, take a look at this comparison, starting with the original:
And now, the new design:
I'm
not sure if the change comes across on the screen, but it looks
beautiful on paper. Also, the margins are vastly improved since I did
them myself, which will address the number one complaint from
customers.
Whenever I revise and update my books, some people
who've purchased the first printing get upset with me. If you're one of
them, I hope you'll understand that I always want to make my work
better, and now your first edition just became limited. Yay!
Now, about the other points people have raised:
At
the moment, Lulu only supports PDF for downloadable eBooks, but I think
they will let me sell other types of digital files if I don't put it
into their eBook category. If I understand it correctly, I could make a
.zip file that has html, .rtf, .txt, and as many native formats as I
can successfully create (or pay others to create for me). If I'm right
about that, expect to see that kind of offering – still for just $5 and
still without DRM – as soon as I can pull it all together.
There's an audio version on the way, as well. I just haven't had time to record it.