Not quite a launch. Not quite a rant. Just one author trying to get a novella into the world without sacrificing too many hours or brain cells.
Paperback Problems
I’ve been writing quite a bit lately—several novellas/novelettes, to be precise.
They all began life as short stories, but brevity doesn’t come naturally. Apparently, I can’t shut up even on the page. I toyed with the idea of releasing a thematic collection, and I still might. But for now, Sustenance is getting its own debut—likely this month.
The book clocks in at around 14,000 words, printed across 144 pages. I’ve read that readers prefer novels to novellas, but I’ve also read that readers don’t really read anymore. Time’s short. Attention spans are shorter. Maybe shorter fiction has a fighting chance. We’ll see.
I formatted it in 6×9 inches, which may have been overly generous. It’s leaner than your average indie fantasy tome but still thicker than my last Žižek collection. So there’s that.
The manuscript began in Word, like every poor decision. I laid it out in InDesign and exported the PDF through Acrobat. No budget, so I designed the cover too—started in Illustrator for the vector charm, but ended up in Photoshop, where I’m more at home. I designed the full wrap—front, back, spine—as a single canvas.
This was a mistake. More on that later.
Still, I’m pleased with the final look. Might reuse the style across future novellas for a bit of visual branding. There’s barely enough of a spine to print on, but we suffer for aesthetics.
Proofs arrive Thursday. Fingers crossed.
Hardback Headaches
Then came the hardback edition. Same 6×9 size, same interior. Should’ve been simple.
It wasn’t.
I forgot (again) that hardbacks require extra bleed and margin space. Couldn’t just resize the existing cover without risking pixelation. If I’d stuck with vectors, this would’ve been a breeze. Instead, I got to rebuild the entire layout from scratch—layers, guides, grids, the lot.
Hours of joyous rework. Lesson learned. Until next time.
eBook Escapism (and Other Fantasies)
Converting the layout to eBook format was a slow-motion trainwreck. I’d inserted custom font glyphs above chapter titles in InDesign. They rendered fine—until they didn’t. Halfway through, chaos reigned.
I cracked open Sigil and manually edited the XHTML. So far, so fiddly.
Then I uploaded the .epub to Amazon. Except Amazon wanted a .kpf file. Of course it did.
Enter Kindle Previewer. Except it doesn’t support embedded font glyphs. So I converted them to SVGs.
Still no dice. Kindle’s rendering engine is older than most of its readers. SVGs failed too. So I converted every glyph to PNG, rewrote the CSS, rebuilt the XHTML again, and gave it another go.
Looks fine. Not perfect. I gave up.
They’re just decorative anyway. No plot-critical glyphs here.
The Kindle version should go live shortly. I enrolled it in KDP Select, which means 90 days of exclusivity in exchange for a modicum of convenience. After that, I’ll look at wider distribution.
For the eBook cover, I simply cropped the original layout in Photoshop. That part was, mercifully, straightforward.
What’s Next?
This post is more documentation than declaration. A sort of production diary. I’ll follow up with an actual announcement when the book launches, plus a few reflections on themes, characters, and that moment when you realise your protagonist may have accidentally sexed up a chicken.
Long story.
Anyway, this is just the start. Stay tuned.
Or don’t. Up to you.
Ridley Park 