Progress Report on the eBook “Following the Runaway American Dream: A personal journal of experiencing the Bruce Springsteen phenomenon”

I am about 75% finished on the first draft of the Springsteen eBook. The last major part is scheduling the interviews that I want to include. That’s becoming a bit of a logistics problem, getting my schedule to jibe with a few others. It’ll happened but it’ll be an interesting April. March is nearly gone and I’ve pretty much finished the guts of the book. After the interviews, the to do list includes:  fact checking some critical incidents as to time and date (memory plays tricks), a once-through to make sure there are no little things I left out, editing my reference pages to makes sure all the references are complete, set up a book website so that readers can make comments on the book and submit additional stories, and a simple index. Then there will be a final edit. And then a few days later a nervous second “final” edit. Then, probably the edit after I wake up in the middle of the night fearing that I have forgotten something. That edit.

I know that sounds like a lot and it is but I am committed to getting this book released by about Memorial Day, this year!

Once the final file is completed and I upload the data into a converter and hold my breath that the formatting holds true to my design, then the marketing starts. There are long lists of sites that distribute and list the book. The majors - Apple, Barnes and Noble, Amazon and the different readers, like Sony need special attention since they will be the main avenues of access. There are also a number of sites that provide reviews of eBooks. This will all take time.

One nice thing that plays in my favor is that an eBook can be revised any number of times. Understandably you don’t want to do that too much. I would rush to revise it if I saw something extremely wrong but I expect that I might wait and take care of a few small items in a one shot deal maybe within the first week and then go in a month later of I find something else.

This whole crazy exercise was brought on by my feeling that I needed to have an eBook. I wanted to avoid throwing something shoddy up on the net but, having toiled as hard and sincerely as I have on this project, I am confident  I have produced something of quality.