Summer Rain News

1/31/06 - Summer Rain is now available in a hardcover edition from lulu.com. The hardcover edition uses the second edition text (which include many small corrections), and it's 486 pages, with a color paper jacket and a nice hardcover cloth binding, with gold letters on the spine. It's available at http://www.lulu.com/content/215246, or go to http://www.lulu.com/jkonrath to see all of my books at Lulu.com. (And yes, the softcover is still available at $16.95 at that URL.)

9/18/04 - I am happy to announce that I have re-released my first book Summer Rain with a new printer, lulu.com.

As for the new edition, it is the same text, but this time, I was able to do the layout myself, and I managed to shrink it from about 660 pages to about 480 pages without affecting readability. It gave me a chance to go through and fix some typos, and I got to redesign the cover so it didn't look like a damn modern art masterpiece.

The big difference is that this version, aside from being lighter on your hands when you're reading it, is also MUCH lighter on your pocketbook. The iUniverse edition was $29.95; now it is only $16.95. In order to get the price this low, I had to forego distribution through Ingram and an ISBN/UPC/EIN, so you can't get it from Amazon or your local bookstore, but only online from lulu.com. (If you're in town or you ask real nice, I can sell you one in person with real cash or paypal or whatever. And I trade, if you have a book out, too.)

Anyway, the lulu page is at www.lulu.com/jkonrath. They ain't amazon and their prices on shipping aren't the lowest, but they've improved them since last time, and they're getting better. The quality of the book is the same, and the big thing is the lower price and the fact they didn't have a trained retarded sloth design the cover for me. While you're at lulu, you might want to check out John Sheppard's books at this page, as he is also rereleasing all of his books in the lower-cost format, and Small Town Punk makes a nice companion to Summer Rain, if you're into that whole youthful angst thing.

11/5/00 - I'm now listed at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com. and borders.com. Please check out the page here to order from one of these sites, and make sure to enter your review if you've edit the book. I have a copy of the book now, and many others have received theirs. Let me know if you got a copy and what you think!

9/14/00 - Summer Rain is now officially available from iUniverse. Go here to see it on the iUniverse.com web site. Right now, it's only available there; it will take about 4-6 more weeks before it will be available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other online bookstores. I have not seen a copy yet, but the website looks great. So go buy it!

8/17/00 - I got proofs yesterday from iuniverse! I reviewed everything and gave them the OK to start getting stuff ready for the printer. I like the inside of the book a lot - the font is great, and the layout looks very professional. I'm not 100% about the cover, but it looks pretty good, and I think it will look even better printed with a varnish finish.

The book is 660 pages long in its final form, and the list price will be $29.95 USD. (Amazon and other booksellers will probably offer it for up to 25% cheaper than list, though.) You'll be able to order it from iuniverse.com in about three weeks, and it should propagate to all of the other online bookstores about 4-6 weeks after that.

7/21/00 - The website keeps changing. The latest addition is an interview of me by dsl.org main-guy and longtime friend Michael Stutz. It's located here.

7/12/00 - I got email from iuniverse today acknowledging that they got my submission. They will review it to make sure I didn't forget anything, then assign me a publishing services associate and publishing will begin. I only have a vague understanding of the process after that, but I'm hoping for more concrete updates in a few days. Aside from that, I've been making more small changes to the web site, so feel free to look around more.

7/5/00 - The book is in the mail, and the wait begins. Allegedly in two months, everything will be done, but somewhere before that, I will be getting a proof to review. Until then, you'll probably notice a few changes to the site. I am trying to make things nice and pretty before the book ships. I'll also be including some neat new features like a photo tour and some interviews.

7/3/00 - It is done! I have reviewed the book one last time, finished all of the forms, and burned everything onto a CD. Now I just need to drop it in the mail, and everything is ready to roll. Time to go sleep for a week...

7/2/00 - I'm trying to review the book one last time to look for any boneheaded mistakes. I think I have the text for the back cover, but the last 200 words is like pulling teeth. I have cover art! Thanks to Dave Gulbransen for going out at the last second and taking a bunch of photos of campus for me. Not only did he grab a great cover, but I've got a ton of other images to use for the web site. Turns out my stuff will be far too big to submit online, so I will have to send in a CD-R with everything. This is bad because it adds about a week, but it's better than sweating bullets hoping a 60 meg download doesn't time out over my network connection...

6/27/00 - The Word version of the book is faring well and available to advance reviewers. I've spellchecked it, but it needs another pass by hand just to make sure everything's cool. I'm still scrambling for the cover art, but I'm hoping I'll have something soon. I am also working through the iuniverse submission process, and waiting for some answers from their tech support on a few little problems. I have a few ideas sketched out for an overhaul of this web site, and I hope to make it prettier in the next few weeks. If all goes well, the book will be submitted over the holiday weekend, meaning a release in early September.

6/22/00 - The book is more or less in the Microsoft Word template. It sure is weird working in Word after five years of linux and emacs. I have a bunch of LF/CR problems to work out, and stuff like email messages are pretty screwed right now. Plus I have a slew of problems because I have this whole system down with the text files. I don't have anything in CVS, I don't have a naming scheme for the doc files, and I have to do a huge game of switcheroo every time I want to bring the files to work and back. Plus my NT partition suddenly refuses to work with my ISP's DNS servers for no reason. If there is a god, he hates me. Anyway, I hope to get a Word version for reviewers by the weekend.

6/20/00 - The text for the final draft is complete! Now I just need to get everything into the Microsoft Word templates and get everything ironed out and ready to go to the publisher. I'm also waiting for the cover art, and I need to write the back cover stuff. That includes quotes from a bunch of people I haven't heard from in weeks, so I might just have to make up some quotes or something.

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