I lost track of time but so did Amazon, apparently. Cross your fingers that the pattern is visible because the darkness of that thumbnail is making me anxious. I've decided that if it comes in and the cover is completely black I'm just going to draw a fire breathing dick with tiny dragon wings on it and call it a day.
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So. I got my first author proof. Everything looks awesome on the inside and the text on the cover is aligned very well, but the cover (which was supposed to be a subtle black scale pattern that I was expecting to look gorgeous) is not only too dark, but completely obliterated. This has been a complete nightmare useful learning exercise. I went back in today and made it as light as I can without repainting the cover entirely and ordered a second author proof. It should arrive at my house on March 8. If all goes well, that will be the date that paperbacks are available on Amazon. If not, that will be the day I make my first drunk post to tumblr.
The longer short version of the cover creation story is below the cut. It has a punchline, but the joke is entirely at my expense:
There are two ways to upload a cover to Amazon. One: You can download their template for the dimensions you choose and stick it in Photoshop and create your cover on top of it. Two: You can do the “cover creator” thing where you use a bunch of public domain clip art and preset designs and end up with a thing that looks like a self-help book. I have the means of producing a cover in Photoshop, so I followed all the instructions and spent two days trying to upload the file and Amazon spent two days going, “No thank you, we don’t want this file.” I got too into it to sleep, so there was also that. THEN after much angst and frantic “what am I doing wrong nothing appears to be wrong help me forums help me” research and screaming and (on the second night) drinking, it occurred to my dumb ass to take the cover, open cover creator, and shove it into their magic design tool or whatever as a background image, then just delete all the fill in the box fields that sit on top of it. It was done in five minutes. The end.