This Really Bugs Me!

I buy the Oz books as Christmas gifts for my niece, so it's not surprising when Amazon sends me one of those "You bought X, so you might like Y" emails. The irritating part is seeing someone putting up their own editions of the books (incredibly easy in the POD era) and not really caring. Not even trying to pretend that they didn't just download them from Project Gutenberg and put them up somewhere else.

Look at this. Or this. Neither of these offers are going to get my dollar. I'd rather spend money on something that is really well put together, like this.

One of the reasons that AiO has been delayed as long as it has (remember when I wanted to get it out on August 21st, 2009?) is that I wanted to produce a quality product. There has to be art And it has to be good art. I've been very lucky that a number of artists have been able to produce some really top-notch stuff without breaking the bank. And my layout person, Jess McDevitt, has done a topflight job of making the whole thing look really good, too. Check this out:


(And an extra bit of news: After several attempts, I have been unable to get CreateSpace to accept my files. This is mostly due to the charming border design you see on the sample page. Since it adds so much to the book, I'm not in favor of changing or removing it. So no CreateSpace.)