The SLUSHPILE Blog

Have I ever had a prayer that wasn’t answered? No. I never have.

Sometimes people say, “It’s not that God doesn’t answer prayer, it’s just that sometimes the answer is ‘no’.” But He has never told me ‘No.’ Sometimes He has told me ‘Wait’, but never ‘No’. Not yet, anyways. Sometimes ‘Wait’ is a  l - o - n - g  time. Sometimes ‘Wait’ is ten years — or more. But I’ve never had a prayer that wasn’t answered, and what truly astounds me are the ones that He has, in His Grace, answered immediately. Many, many times.

Time and time again, I pray, He answers. Do you dare to pray?

God is Good. Thank you, Lord, for answered prayer.

In the other news: this weekend is a new experiment, one that I’ve kept under my hat because, in the greater scheme of things, it may not mean anything at all. But I’m looking forward to it (especially now that God has answered a prayer, and pretty much immediately upon my uttering it). I’m headed for an arts and crafts show with a stock of books.

I wasn’t sure what my reception would be, either by the other vendors, the people running the show, or the general shopping public, but I had some good feedback through the grape-vine that the hosts of the show, at least, are looking forward to my coming. They’re glad to see something new arriving on the scene. How that will pan out with everyone else is yet to be seen.

The stock of books is probably between 75 and 100 (I’ll do a more accurate count before heading out). They’re the ‘odds’, an eclectic grouping of our various titles that for one reason or another have been ‘hanging out’. Some of them are returns (but they’re not old and dusty. Here’s an interesting little thing: when our books are returned through distribution, they’re returned to the distributor, who in turn ships them back to the printer. The printer destroys them, and then prints us up an equal amount of fresh ones and those are what get shipped back to us. It allows us to ‘resell’ new books instead of ones that may have been plastered with sales stickers, promotional stickers, or just bent up and dog-eared through the stocking and customer perusal process. It’s kind of cool, and one of those things that I never expected–if I gave any thought to it at all–before becoming immersed in the business.), some of them are the ‘left-overs’ of odd numbered orders, and some of them are just the usual ‘on hand’ books for individual orders that come through.

Lately, there seems to be a few more returns, left-overs and on-hands than usual, and this may be a fine way of moving some of this stock. And, it should be a great deal of fun.

First of all, I’m a people watcher. Each Christmas when we do our hurried, last-minute, pull our hair out shopping trip, I still take time to find a seat in the mall (sending the hubby and kids off on a particular present hunt is good for this) and simply watch people. They are fascinating. The sizes, the shapes, the clothing, the piercings and tattoos. Who’s with who, who walks ahead, who walks behind, who walks together, and who walks together but apart. Who’s alone, who’s with a family (and seeing an entire family together, even at Christmas, is getting rarer and rarer). The point is, the thought of spending an entire weekend in a booth with nothing much to do but watch people is not entirely displeasing to me. I’ll take a book (one that I’m reading and not selling) but more than likely I won’t read it much. The stories unfolding in front of me are always of much more interest. I’m a reader, but I’m also a ‘here and now’ gal, and I love the here and now. One of the great things about a book is that they patiently wait until the here and now is boring and then they take you somewhere else. But you never have to make a choice. You can have both: the here and now and somewhere else.

Secondly, my mother and her artshow friends will be there, and they are a fun group of people. Some of them she has been doing artshows with for over twenty years. They’ve watched each others’ children grow up, shared in weddings, funerals, become grandparents, and met up with each other Spring through Fall to show their work. They’ve watched as each has become more polished in their craft, their influence in the artworld grown, and enjoyed each other on a level totally seperate from the rest of their lives. For a weekend here or a week there, they have their own little club where they get to share their passion with both the public and their fellow artists. And they have a great deal of fun doing it. I’m honored to be included, and find myself in the odd group of ’second-generation’ showers. If anyone had told me I would volunteer for this when I was a kid, attending these shows and for the most part, then, being bored out of my mind, I wouldn’t have believed them. Now, I’m volunteering and looking forward to it. I think the food may have something to do with it. They always have great food.

At this point, I think I’m rambling, so, I’ll wrap this up: The artshow is Elizabethtown in Moundsville, West Virginia. I’ll be there from 10 to 6 Saturday and Noon to 5 Sunday. If you’re in the neighborhood, stop in.

Everyone have a great Thursday.

At last, the final new cover for Conviction with all tweaks made. Thank you very much Delle Jacobs for some great work!

The new cover should be in production and available through distribution within two weeks. And it’s been a long time coming. Thank you, Skylar Burris for your patience.

Now for ITSS (It’s the Story, Stupid). This is something I wanted to hit upon yesterday before getting distracted with the transferring of rights issues.

The reason I wanted to hit it yesterday was because of the four fine quotes we’ve received in on Gail MacMillan’s upcoming The Caledonian Privateer which I posted yesterday. But just to refresh your memory, here they are again, with the parts that were particularly interesting to me, and which, I believe, well illustrate the point I have made on the blog repeatedly (so repeatedly, that you are probably sick of hearing. . . well, reading it.) in bold:

“Written by a superb story teller, The Caledonian Privateer seizes the reader’s interest on Page One and doesn’t let it go until the very end.” ~ Irene C. Michel, columnist, The Courier, Houma, Louisiana and author of 50 Years of Hi, Honey, I’m Home.
 

“The powerful attraction between Emma Smith, a woman of mystery, and Captain Morgan Reynolds, a handsome rogue of means and determination, sets the stage for the thrilling adventure between the covers of The Caledonian Privateer.  Gail MacMillan sweeps the reader into her story with the skill of a master storyteller.” ~ Stella MacLean, author of Heart of My Hearts and Baby in Her Arms
 

“Gail MacMillan takes a turbulent time in history and gives it a human face. The action leaves one panting from trying to keep up.” ~ Vi Janaway, Romance Reviews Today.

 “I truly fell in love with Emma – she has the perfect blend of intelligence, grit and spirit. . .” ~ Night Owl Romance Book Reviews 

The last two I included because of what they lacked: neither of them say anything about what a good writer Gail MacMillan is. They address the story and the character.

The point is, the only time a reader notices the writing is when it is bad.

It’s the story that matters. It’s the characters that matter. No one is going to buy your book because you are a good writer (albeit, they won’t buy it if you are a bad one), but they will buy your book if you have a good story.

Everyone have a good Tuesday!

Here are some early reviews for upcoming Caledonian Privateer. It seems to be gathering a good early response, which we are quite happy about:

“Written by a superb story teller, The Caledonian Privateer seizes the reader’s interest on Page One and doesn’t let it go until the very end.” ~ Irene C. Michel, columnist, The Courier, Houma, Louisiana and author of 50 Years of Hi, Honey, I’m Home.
 

“The powerful attraction between Emma Smith, a woman of mystery, and Captain Morgan Reynolds, a handsome rogue of means and determination, sets the stage for the thrilling adventure between the covers of The Caledonian Privateer.  Gail MacMillan sweeps the reader into her story with the skill of a master storyteller.” ~ Stella MacLean, author of Heart of My Hearts and Baby in Her Arms
 

“Gail MacMillan takes a turbulent time in history and gives it a human face. The action leaves one panting from trying to keep up.” ~ Vi Janaway, Romance Reviews Today.

 “I truly fell in love with Emma – she has the perfect blend of intelligence, grit and spirit. . .” ~ Night Owl Romance Book Reviews
    

On the second half of this post, Mulling Things Over, I find myself beset with the task of coming up with a fair settlement for the returning of rights to the author of one of our earlier books.

This is the first time I’ve been asked to do so, and the author, and his book, are a unique case. His was the first book we did, and we made a lot of mistakes with it. Would sales have been better if we had been more experienced as publishers? No doubt. On the other hand, will we be more experienced next year? Yes. Will we have better sales as time goes on and we learn our trade more sufficiently, and, with a larger catalog, gain entrance into larger distribution channels? Undoubtedly.

So the question I ask myself is this: How much am I willing to penalize myself and our publishing house over my inexperience? How cheap can the author reasonably expect to get his rights back? Because, in the end, this is what it boils down to: price. We paid him for the rights when we obtained them from him, how much can we reasonably ask for when selling them back to him?

And do I want to return the rights to him?

I can answer ‘yes’ to this last question. I’ve never had it in my mind to hold someone’s book ‘hostage’ just to be peevish. If there were a legitimate chance that it would become a good-selling book and I saw a return on our investment coming in at some point, that would take further thought. But unlike two of our subsequent books that we were less than experienced at when doing, which managed to overcome their disadvantages and go on to be good and fair sellers, this first book has never broken through. It’s never gotten the word of mouth build up such as can be found on Conviction’s Amazon page:”Don’t judge a book by its cover. Really.” Even after the cover was switched out and improved, the sales never followed. In addition, it has a lousy return rate (see prior post ‘The Ins and Outs of Profit and Loss’ on how that affects the pub house).

Neither do I expect the author to produce another work sold to a different publishing house that is going to ‘take off’ and provide us with some overflow sales as readers look for his previous works. Much of this feeling is due to his personality than his work. Although we never had an acrimonious working relationship, there was still a good deal of tension in our collaboration. In short, in general terms, if a writer wants to call the publishing decisions, they should start their own publishing house, and invest their own money. When it’s my house and my money being invested, then, sorry, going to be my judgment calls, for good or bad.

I’m happy to report that this particular writer has started his own pub house. Good for him. Not only will it give him complete control over his work, it may also provide him with some insight from a publisher’s perspective.

Just to round out the general analysis on a general basis:

• No publisher, large or small, experienced or inexperienced, is going to be able to guarantee that a book’s cover is going to be what you envisioned.
• No publisher, large or small, etc, is going to be able to guarantee that the size and formatting of your book is going to be as you envisioned.
• No publisher, etc, is going to be able to guarantee that your book is going to be edited precisely the way you would wish.
• No publisher, etc, is going to be able to guarantee that your book is going to sell.
• Covering those basis, I just wish to add that we have other authors through our publishing house who, I’m fairly certain, have not been happy with every publishing decision made in regards to their work. Some of them they bring to my attention and we fix what we can if it is feasible from a cost/profit perspective. Some of them, I imagine, don’t get brought to my attention, but are mumbled about beneath the author’s breath and to their friends and relatives. I’m perfectly okay with both of these scenarios.

What all of these other authors display is 1). understanding, and, 2). patience.

They understand that this is a small, growing press.

They have patience as we go through our learning curve, as they wait for our catalog to be built up with more books, as they wait for the big retailers to take notice in addition to the smattering of smaller retails we’re already working with.

In other words, they understand that we are NOT a vanity press and that it may be several years before their books begin to realize the type of sales they’re hoping for.

So, in general terms, if I just virtually give this particular author back his rights based on the fact that we were inexperienced and a small pub house, wouldn’t every other author signed with us have the exact same argument if they decided they wanted their rights back?

After all, we’re still small, and compared to the big guys, we’re still inexperienced.

No. I don’t think I want to go in that direction and set that precedent. First of all, we’ve never portrayed ourselves as anything but small and relatively inexperienced. And considering this particular author realized he was the very first book we were doing, I think an expectation of some bumps along the way was a given. In good faith, however, we have gone back and rectified the major problems with his book, again, at our expense. We did better when we knew better.

Now let’s look at some specifics, not to his work, but the cost of publishing in general.

What an author is getting at the publisher’s expense when signing a traditional contract is:

• an advance 
• editing
• formatting
• cover artwork
• bar code
• copyrighting
• legal contracts
• marketing
• advertising
• distribution
• shipping
• warehousing of unsold and returned stock
• accounting, including 30 to 90 day invoicing to allow stores to get the books in their stores with no money up front.

All of these items, plus the general overhead of doing business and the specialized programs that allow us to even upload to the print facilities we take on at our own expense. We sign an author as an investment. Some investments pay off, others don’t. As long as we own the rights, then it’s our risk. But if the author wants the rights returned, shouldn’t the risk then become his?

As long as we own the rights, we stand some chance of seeing a return on our investment, even if it takes ten years. When we return the rights, we cede any chance we have of ever recouping what we have spent on a title.

And we’re supposed to virtually give these rights back? Again, I don’t think I want to go in that direction.

Hence, as this is a complicated issue, and may crop up again at some point with a future author, we need to come up with a policy.

One that is fair to both the author and to us. One that doesn’t hold the author’s book ‘hostage’, but also one that doesn’t allow the author to play a game of “we’ll allow this pub house to invest 5 to 10 thousand dollars in my work, and when it doesn’t make me a best seller I’ll take the rights back for virtually nothing and let some other pub house make the same investment.”

No, I think we definately need a policy.

More on this as I mull it through.

Everyone have a good Monday.

We’re coming down the homestretch for the revised cover on Conviction: a sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice by Skylar Hamilton Burris. As I (and, no doubt, the author) have lived with the original cover for two years now, I’m quite excited to share the new one.

This is still getting tweaked, but here’s the cover as of today:

 As noted, there still need to be some final adjustments, but compared to the old (below) I think the improvement is quite self evident.

In other news, our first order of One Sloop and Slow Match by James Spurr stock arrived yesterday, and the first orders were in turn shipped out. Hurrah! 

Everyone have a great Thursday. Survivor tonight.

Book publishing was in the news this morning as Random House’s CEO is expected to step down due to red ink. What was interesting to me in the article is that Random House is owned by Bartlemann, a German conglomerate. Why is this interesting to me? Because all Book ISBN’s for the entire world are registered through one location: Berlin, Germany.

I just find it odd that the country notorious for book-burnings and extreme censorship during WWII should be so much in charge of the publishing industry for the entire world. Things that make you ‘hmmm’.

In other news, Stephen King had this incredibly stupid comment to make: If You Can’t Read ‘Then You’ve Got, the Army, Iraq’. Really, Stephen, can you show our armed forces any more disrespect than to allude that they are all illiterate morons? It never occurred to you that they may be above you in moral fiber and patriotism, instead of below you based on your elitest social scale? Tsk, tsk, and shame on you. And I was always an admirer of yours. Shame on me.

Everyone have a good Tuesday.

Here’s a look at my buying habits when I shop for a book, and usually I do my shopping on Amazon. It’s convenient, and I don’t mind waiting a week or ten days for my book (or books) to arrive.

The first thing I look at after subject and description are the reviews. Do I look at the positive reviews first? Well, no. I find the worst review listed and look at it first.

Why do I do this? Maybe I believe a bad review is honest (not to say the good ones aren’t honest, but just saying that I’m pretty certain the bad one definately is). Occasionally I’ll run into a bad review that is obviously from an ‘axe-grinder’, someone with a personal grudge against the author. They’re pretty easy to pick out. They usually don’t focus on the language or the story or specifics, but more or less just say, ‘this book is a piece of crap, don’t buy it.’ Of course, there is the flip side: the reviews written by the helpful friends of the author. You can usually pick them out by the gushing quality of them, and they, ironically enough, don’t seem to focus on any specifics either.

All of this to say that I don’t think I’ve ever decided not to buy a book based on a bad review. In fact, many times I buy the book because of the bad review. After reading about the ‘negatives’, I usually end up thinking, ‘Oh, is that all? I can live with that,” because what I’m interested in, in the end, is the story. If someone wants more description, less descriptions, better editing or better drawn characters, I can understand that. But unless they say the story stinks, doesn’t make sense, or is ridiculously stuipid, I’m probably going to buy it anyway. Even then, I want to know why the reader felt it stank, was senseless or stupid, before I’ll reject it.

Reading is highly subjective. What may turn one reader off may be exactly what the next reader is looking for.

Just food for thought, especially for those authors who have a book on Amazon with negative reviews, even a whole slew of them (who isn’t tempted to read a book just because everyone else says it’s terrible. Some things you just have to see for yourself.) If it is that irretrievably bad, you can always change your pen name and start over with something else.

Everyone have a great Sunday, and may it be blessed.

Let me speak to comments for a moment. People may have noticed that very few comments make it onto this blog. There’s a reason for that.

I have a spam-filter. 99% of the comments automatically go there (and I’m talking buckets full — well over 100 on any given day).

Then I have a comments moderator, the other 1% go in there. Of those needing moderated, I’ll okay maybe one a week.

Is this censoring? You bet your tushy it is.

Why? Well, anyone that has a blog, and one that seems, by the numbers, to be growing in popularity (whether that is a good or bad thing, I’m not sure) already knows, the amount of pornographic spam comments that get left in a twenty-four hour period is both sad and overwhelming. I can’t even bear to read them, let alone let them filter through for all of you to have to read. And I’m talking some pretty obscene stuff and with children being advertised (and, yes, we’ve been checking to see who we can turn these comment posters in to as far as the authorities are concerned).

Not all the spams, thank heavens, are pornographic. We get a lot dealing with loans — payday to be specific, car dealerships — toyota seems to be quite popular, and a smattering of other subjects. But here’s the rule, if you leave a comment, no matter how complimentary it may be, you are not going to get okayed when you have links advertising your own site — unless it is a site that legitimately has to do with writing, books (even your own if self-pubbed, I don’t mind that), marketing, publishing, or Christianity.

And here’s a warning for anyone considering opting (buying) into one of those ‘make money on the internet with our auto comment posting software’ schemes. I would bet that 99.9% of the blogging community has spam software. As far as I can discern, it comes automatically with just about every blogging platform. So, yes, you can leave a lot of comments, I imagine, with your dandy new software — but none of it is ever going to be read by anyone. Even someone like me, that does a run-through of the spams before deleting them doesn’t read them. We look to see if there is a comment without links, and then take a closer look at it. The rest of them — into the void of nothingness.

So that covers the first half of my title’s subject: a Note about Comments.

Here’s the second half: Scary Things on the Web. This morning when I opened my email software, I was treated to about fourteen emails that were listed as rejected emails being returned to me, the sender. To my dismay, I found that they were emails being sent out using my email address and soliciting sites for the sale of everything from Rolex watches to new software, to, you guessed it, porn sites. None of the ‘to’ addresses were out of my contact list, thank heavens, but I still cringe at the thought of how many people out there, unknown to me, received this filthy smutty crap with my email as the return address. This has happened to me once before, I ran a virus scan and it didn’t happen again. Until today.

So, I ran another virus scan (which normally runs automatically every other day anyways) and hopefully that will fix the problem. The real issue and concern, however, is that it shows just how difficult it is for authorities to track down who is sending this material into cyberspace to begin with. How many other people out there are having their email addresses hi-jacked and used for not just disgusting material, but illegal material? And how am I to know what is being promoted under my email address, quite unbeknownest to me? I shudder at the thought.

Everyone have a good Saturday.

What is a good story teller? A good story teller is someone who writes a book the reader can’t put down.

A good story teller is invisible. I can not stress this enough: THE GOOD STORY TELLER IS INVISIBLE. For more understanding on this, read Rebecca’s Rules on Writing #1: Leave your Author Ego at the Door. But in a nutshell, it means that when the reader is reading, they are not thinking, gee, what a good writer, they are instead thinking, gee, what a good story. You, as the writer, come as a vague after-thought, usually after the book is read, and the reader rechecks your name so that they can find you again and see if you have any more good stories.

I know, I know. Normally when someone asks what we read, we throw out authors’ names and say, they’re a really good writer. But what we really mean is, they tell really good stories. In Stephen King’s book On Writing, he bemoans the fact that none of his fans ever talk about the language. I wouldn’t take that as an insult, but as a high compliment. The writing should be so smooth as to be unnoticable. If someone is commenting on the writing, then that means they noticed it. And if they noticed the writing, that means they noticed that they were in fact reading a book instead of being entirely immersed in the scene. They are no longer running for their lives, heart pounding, or anticipating a meeting with their lover, palms sweating, but are instead thinking, wow, what a nice turn of phrase. It is the equivalent of interrupting a movie with commercials, “This programming brought to you by these sponsors. . .”

Reades, like the movie audience, are grateful for the sponsors. We’re grateful that they donated their time, money and efforts into bringing them this entertainment. But they don’t really care about the sponsors. Not right then. Now they are just a distraction, an interruption, an annoyance. What they do care about is the story.

So, if you are a literary genius with a book in the closet, you need to pull the book out. You need to take a hard look at it and evaluate whether you wrote it because you had a really interesting story in mind, or whether you wrote it because you needed to write something, anything, that would showcase your talents. If it’s the latter, then throw it in the garbage. I did it with four of mine, so surely one of yours can’t be so bad.

Right?

Then move forward and write a story. A good one. And leave all the fancy literary genius crap in the garbage with the fancy literary genius book you wrote first.

Everyone have a good Friday and a great weekend.

I’ve met two people in my life that were convinced they were literary geniuses. Three if you count myself. I used to be one of them.

The two I’m referring to have never come out and stated to me, “I am a literary genius,” so I cannot say for a fact that they believe themselves to be so. But like in our Notes on POV posts (which seems to be the most popular portion of this site, btw, going by the amount of hits it garners on a daily basis - who would have thunk it?) in which I talk about what you can present from a character’s point of view: fact, summation and conjecture, I can surmise that these two people consider themselves literary geniuses. I can observe actions and come to my summation. In these two cases, I can observe lack of action.

The lack of action is that they do not continue to write. That they have no plans that I know of to continue to write. That they have written, and when told, “this isn’t working as is, rewrite it, or move on to a different story and apply what you have learned from this one,” they come to an utter standstill. They come to a crossroads in their belief in themself as a literary genius. They seem to have two choices: one, they can accept the criticism, and accept with it the fact that maybe they are not a literary genius after all. Or two: they can reject the criticism. The critic is a fool. They are a literary genius. The world just isn’t ready for them yet.

Maybe the world isn’t ready for them yet. Maybe. Or maybe they’re just not ready for the world. Maybe they haven’t done the work. Maybe they haven’t considered the third option at that crossroads: maybe they are a literary genius, but being a genius follows the old formula of 10% inspiration/90% perspiration. After all, when you come to a crossroads, you can go left, you can go right, or you can go straight ahead. Or you can go nowhere.

I would like to be able to write that I can’t imagine sitting on a book for something like ten years refusing to do anything with it, no rewrites, no writing anything else. Just sitting on what I believed to be a work of genius and agonizing over the fact that no one is reading it. That the big bad publishers don’t know a decent piece of work if it comes up and bites them on the ass. But anyone that knows my history knows that I have sat on a work for ten years (well, close to eight anyway) not rewriting it, not writing anything else. So how can I in any way be critical of these two writers that have come to my attention? How can I in any way cast a stone in their direction?

Can I cite these facts in my defense: that the book I sat on wasn’t my first effort, but came after four prior books and well over a million words and twenty years of writing? That I wasn’t so much convinced that I was a literary genius, but that I did understand that it was the pinnacle of what I would be able to produce, for at least a decade, maybe two anyways? That it was in fact the first book I wrote where I wasn’t convinced that I was a literary genius (amazingly enough, when you hit a certain level of writing, it doesn’t inflate your ego, it knocks the wind right out of whatever ego you already have) and that I never went through a ‘no one gets my writing’ phase with it, but instead understood that it would be out there, it was just a matter of when and how.

But even eight years is a long time.

Eight years is enough time to ask yourself the question along the lines of “if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it fall, did it make a sound”: If a book is never read. . . was it ever written?

More on this tomorrow when I pick up with “Moving from being a Literary Genius with a Book in the Closet to a Good Story-teller with a Book in the Readers’ Hands. (Yes, Readers’, as in plural, as in many).

Everyone have a good Thursday. Survivor tonight!

This morning I received the first mock-ups for the new cover for Conviction: a sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice by Skylar Hamilton Burris. As I’ve mentioned previously on this blog, the current cover on Conviction has long been a thorn in my side. It was what we had at the time, and I proceeded with the print run as we had a deadline to meet, but not without misgivings.

I’ve had two other artists work on this cover. One who turned in a work that was no better in my estimation than the one that is currently being used. The other had several good ideas, but never followed through with an actual cover. Not that I’m blaming any of these artists. They’re doing this on the side, they have jobs and families, too. Yes, they got paid upon completion of the covers, whether we were able to use them or not, but I also understand that they worked really hard on them with a limited amount of time. And in the end, Conviction managed to become a bestseller on Amazon/Waldenbooks for religious fiction despite a less than desirable cover.

But I’m happy to say that the new artist, Delle Jacobs, that we have working on a new cover for Conviction, plus the cover for Skyler’s upcoming book, An Unlikely Missionary, has already turned in two very promising mock-ups, and with my selection of my preference this morning, and some added notes, she is hard at work producing the actual cover. I want to thank Gail MacMillan for forwarding me her website and email. Thank you, Gail.

On the One Sloop and Slow Match front, the first print run is in full swing as of this morning. So those who have ordered, thank you for your patience. It won’t be much longer now. It should also be appearing on Amazon within the next week or two.

I’m hard at work on Gail MacMillan’s pending title, Caledonian Privateer. By the time I am finished with it and have it in print, both of Skyler’s new covers should be ready, which will enable me to do the new catalog for 2008 with all the covers looking polished.

Everyone have a good Wednesday.