The paperback Proof Copy of my book, The Modest Proposal Institute, arrived a few days after I expected, probably because of the winter weather we’ve enjoyed this past week, but it did arrive and it looks great. So yesterday I finished the process and today my book is available as a paperback.

For those of you who like to read a ‘book’ and not a screen The Modest Proposal Institute is waiting for you, check it out here on Amazon.com and here on Amazon.co.uk.

The Amazon site’s process for creating the paperback from your ebook is amazingly simple to use — I’m impressed. It’s particularly simple to use, if you have properly formatted file to upload and you have a properly prepared front and back cover. If you don’t have a cover, Amazon does provide a tool to build a cover.

I had my text formatter provide a file for both ebook and paperback so that part was done but I wasn’t brave enough to build my own cover so I went back to my cover designer and had her build me a file for the front and back cover. I got that on Thursday. With that, it was only minutes to upload both the cover and text files and have a ‘proof copy’ winging its way to me (I hope:-).

When the proof copy arrives, all that remains is to check that it looks as good in real life as it does on the screen and press ‘Publish’. I hope that will be early this coming week. Meanwhile, for those of you who are waiting, here’s a preview of the cover…

The Modest Proposal Institute is getting closer to being a paperback. The cover designer is working on the back cover of the book and, when that’s done, I can finish building the book on Amazon.

So far, the process has been extremely painless. Say what you like about modern technology, and most of us do say some pretty wild things about it, it makes simple so many once-skilled tasks. As I work my way through the book-building process on Amazon, I can’t help remembering all this used to take armies of people to complete. I suspect the publishing world must have taken a huge downsizing over the past 20 years, though I haven’t heard of it.

Provided the cover is complete this week, you should be able to get a hardcopy of your favourite book (i.e. The Modest Proposal Institute, in case you were wondering:-) this week or early next. I hope you’re as excited as I am.

Up to now, The Modest Proposal Institute has been an ephemeral creation, existing only in electronic form. Over the next few days, I will be changing all that by bringing the paperback version to the world. I hope the world is ready:-)

In the good old days, a print copy of a book was a real labor of love employing all kinds of skilled trades. Today, it is practically as easy as creating the electronic book so Amazon says. I hope they’re right.