RIVERS RUN is live.

I know I promised last week that Rivers Run would be available for purchase this past Thursday -- but Amazon was speedier than I expected. The Kindle version actually dropped Wednesday. Thanks to everyone who has already bought a copy of the book -- you're all my best friends forever. For the rest of you, here's the Amazon US link, and here's the one for Amazon UK. (I'm terrible about remembering to post links for the non-US Amazon stores. Sorry about that.)

I was hoping I would have good news tonight about the paperback edition. Alas, it's still in process. The explanation requires a bit of "inside baseball," so bear with me.

Up until now, I've been using CreateSpace for publishing my paperback editions. But Amazon has decided to shut down CreateSpace and bring all of its indie publishing operations under the KDP banner. I tried the KDP paperback setup for the hard-copy version of the Pipe Woman Chronicles Omnibus (a steal at just $18.99!), but the system was in beta then, and it was almost exactly like publishing via CreateSpace. So I figured getting Rivers Run through it would be a piece of cake.

Oh haha. KDP is using a different cover creation process.

I forget what my favorite CreateSpace cover template was called, but basically you took your cover image from your ebook, created a back cover image, and dropped both images into this template. The template had preset parameters for the spine -- the number of fonts and colors was limited, true, but I was always able to find one that worked, and that I could carry across a whole series.

That template is now gone. KDP has a sort of similar one, where you can drop in your ebook cover art and put the text of the blurb and bio on the back. But this time -- unlike nearly every other time, when I've forgotten to make the back cover image until I was uploading the book to CreateSpace (whoops!) -- I'd actually created the back cover art ahead of time. And I really liked it. I wanted to use it. But the only way I could see to do that was to download one of KDP's cover templates and -- shudder -- make my own spine.

For the paperback edition, of course. I still have an actual spine installed in my back.

Anyway.

I downloaded the template Friday night, threw together the paperback cover image, and uploaded everything. When I woke up this morning, I had an email from KDP saying there was a problem with my cover. Which I could have predicted, as this is the first time I've made a full cover from scratch in, -- oh, since SwanSong, I think, in August 2011.

So I fussed around with it and uploaded it this morning. I'm hoping this version will pass muster. Here it is -- isn't the back gorgeous?

Fingers crossed that KDP accepts it. I tell you what, every day's a new adventure for an indie author.

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These moments of elemental spiney blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.