I needed a high res image of my cover for In the Midnight Hour and I finally received it yesterday. There were two images attached to the email, one smaller and one big one. The big one opened without any problems, but the cover only had the image and my name and title. I was hoping for a version with my quote and with the paranormal romance graphic my publisher uses. I decided it must be on the smaller image and worked on trying to get it open. This was a jpg file, but I kept getting an unsupported file type message.
I think this might be one of those situations where being pretty good with computers isn’t a good thing. Most people would have tried a couple of things and given up, but not me. I knew I could get that damn thing open–somehow–but even my graphics program wouldn’t show the thing. After much mucking around, I did get it open, but it was just a smaller version of the same picture in the big file. So all that for nothing. Sigh. Anyway, I sent the big image off for the postcard and resized it for the website.
That’s been the other project I’ve been trying to do this week–get the Midnight Hour pages ready to go up on the website. It isn’t horribly time consuming as far as creating the design/layout goes. That’s already done for other book pages and it’s just a matter of replicating it. The place where I am running into an issue is with the excerpt. First, I had to choose a scene. With the help of a friend, I did. Then I had to find my contract and refresh my memory on how many words I’m allowed to post. 1500. Seemed like a lot when I read it, but it boils down to about 6 pages and the scene is something like 8-9 pages. I started trimming. I’m close to 1500 words now, but I’m wondering if I cut too much out. 
This started me thinking: Why 1500 words? Why not 2500 words? I could have gotten the entire scene up with 2500 words. Why the limit at all? Were there writers posting too much of their books?
Anyway, I’m finding this very restrictive and it’s taking up too much time. I wanted these pages up by April 1, too. And I don’t think I have a 6 page scene early enough in the book to have it make any sense to someone reading it. Actually, I’m not sure I have a 6 page scene in the book. 
I write a little long. In fact, in Crimson Veil, I had scenes that were 26 pages long!
Tags: computer, midnight_hour
*sigh* I’m one of those that would have given up.
Oh wait. On second thought, I would have called about four people to try and get it open and then figured out I didn’t have the right program. LOL.
I had NO IDEA how much I was going to need to know as I began my cyber experience. LOL.
Jennifer,
Unfortunately for me, I only know maybe 2 other people who are better at computer stuff than I am. :-/ If I hadn’t gotten it open, I would have asked one of them at work the next day.
You and me both on not realizing how much computer stuff I’d be learning. Who would have thought that selling a book required knowledge of HTML, CSS and graphics packages?
Patti