Just to clear up a bit of confusion that seems to have spread without my knowledge:
Last year, I pitched the idea of doing a GenCon anthology. The business and distribution model in my pitch resembled what I later used for The Crimson Pact.
The only portion of my pitch that was kept was that the participants in the Writer’s Symposium all contributed stories.
After my original pitch, Stephen D. Sullivan (of Walkabout Publishing) took the concept and turned it into a print book. After the initial pitch, I had no input on the design, layout, business model, or any other aspect of that anthology or this year’s. (In fact, I didn’t start Alliteration Ink until months after GenCon.)
Probably because of the various "Steve" and "Stephen"’s floating around, at least one person got the two of us mixed up. I’d like to make sure credit (or blame, or wombats) go where they’re due.
I am Steven Saus. I do eBook conversions, and as Alliteration Ink, I only do digital books, including The Crimson Pact. (And even that’s not edited by me; all editing credit goes to Paul Genesse.)
Stephen D. Sullivan runs Walkabout Publishing. Aside from a story in Stalking The Wild Hare, I also have a story in Mages and Magic, both published by Walkabout Publishing.
Walkabout Publishing and Alliteration Ink are completely different entities, with different business models.
Okay, now moving on to everything else…
If you watch the Alliteration Ink website, you’ll have noticed that Easter came and went without a note about Spec The Halls. Expect that at midsummer’s eve instead.
I’m expecting to finish "So You Want to Make an eBook?" before Marcon (Memorial Day weekend) – at least, the blog portions of it. The finished eBook might be a bit later – say, first or second week of June.
I’ll be making a BIG announcement in the next two days about Alliteration Ink.
This should be an interesting summer.
In general, how long does it take you to do an ebook conversion? How many hours?
This is assuming you've been handed a completed manuscript, already have the cover art, etc.
ooooh big announcement! claps
The biggest time factor is how complex the work is, and how many strange formatting things happen in the text itself.
For example, each image needs to be placed (essentially) by hand. It's fairly common that people leave italics or bold across paragraphs – and that has to be fixed by hand as well.
The fastest I've gone so far for a full novel is about five hours working straight through – and that was pretty simple (but coming from a PDF). Usually it takes six or seven. Very complex works – or coming from a PDF – takes quite a bit longer. This includes proofing time as well.
Usually debugging is about a third of that time.
My own work, however, is much faster. I know where italics and the like are at, I use RTF already, and so the source document is really clean.