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Wednesday, November 4, 2009

New Editions

In case I haven’t mentioned this before, we’re planning to release new, slightly updated editions of Daughter of Liberty and Native Son at some point in the next year or two—the exact date is still on the drawing board. As soon as we find a slot for them, I’ll announce the release dates here as well as on my Publishing Dream blog.

The new editions will be done in the same size and with covers consistent with Wind of the Spirit, including a larger font to make them easier to read. Zondervan, who published the first 2 books, made the text awfully small in order to keep the page count lower, and that’s something I’ve been wanting to fix for a long time. So as I can squeeze it into my schedule, I’m digging back through the manuscripts, correcting minor details and adding a bit here and there. Most readers who’ve read the original versions won’t notice the difference, but I’m incorporating some newer research to make the text as accurate as possible.

DOL has been finalized, but I’ve only gotten to chapter 7 in NS. In the meantime, I had an illustrator recreate the maps, and I just got the final files. So naturally I want to share! Aren’t they pretty? We added a few new details to the originals. Joseph Warren’s home has been added to the Boston map, and Tess Howard’s mansion is on the Boston area map. A few other features have been added as well.

I’ve always loved maps. A detailed map is a wonderful aid to help you orient the action in a historical novel, and these ought to help bring the story to life even more vividly.

After some feedback from a reader, I’m seriously considering having both books converted to Kindle format. WOTS is already available, and on Kindle the text can be enlarged to a comfortable size. It isn’t terribly expensive to have the text converted, but it’s another item that has to be shoehorned into the budget, so it may be the first of the year before they’re available in that format.

And then the question arises, what about Barnes and Noble’s new e-reader, and Sony, and so on. So far the books we have up on Kindle haven’t sold well enough to justify the expense, but they have to be marketed just like a print version, so that’s another thing we have to think about. If you have an opinion, please post a comment and let me know what your feelings are about e-books vs print books.

2 comments:

  1. Wonderful maps!

    I'll be wanting the new versions for my collection. :)

    ReplyDelete