It's a Real Book!!!!!!

*This post contains graphic and gratuitous photographs of both jacketed and unjacketed books. Proceed at your own risk!*

;)

I got sample copies of WINGS yesterday!!!!

When the printers print their books, they generally send a few ahead so the publisher can see what the finished product is going to look like. The rest wend their way slowly to the US via (I read this somewhere????) a big boat. Yay!

Well, my samples got to Harper this week. Not all publishers share their samples with their authors (for various reasons) but I'm glad that Harper does. So yesterday the UPS guy came to my door (at eight o'clock! I LOVE my early UPS guy!!!) with three copies of my book. Not the ARC. The. Real. Thing. Check it!

I have been so anxious to see what they did with the inside cover. There's been kind of a trend lately of having a picture (like a second cover) under the jacket and I know some people really love it, but I don't. Also, I was a little concerned the book would be bright pink. Now, I love the pink on my cover, it really works well! But no guy is going to carry around a bright pink book through the halls of junior high. And probably not high school either. So when I saw a plain black book with sparkly pink foiling on the side, I was way excited. Simple, elegant, just the way I like it!


And the spine; my next favorite part! Now, I received cover flats almost six months ago so I knew the spine was going to look like this, but I love it so much I was happy to see it anyway!! (Also, there's something about my name being horizontal that I just love!!!)

The back is more of the lush, dark, watery blue.


And the front is the image you guys are used to seeing, but with a more purplish wash than the ARCs and and a little more accentuation of the curve of the petals that make the wing shape.

*sigh* Yay!

The other fun thing I got was a copy of my signed first editions. Remember the 1350 pages from about two months ago? I got to see how they turned out!!!

I get a pretty sticker. *Aprilynne= Easily Amused . . . *


And look! It really does look like I signed the whole book instead of a big (big, big) stack of title pages!! Cool!!

So yeah, there may have been some happy dancing and some petting of books, and there was definitely some smelling of the books. (Seriously, there is nothing like the new book smell of YOUR BOOK!!!! *squeee!!!*)

So things suddenly shifted into real mode yesterday My book is real; it's in big stacks on a boat on it's way to New York. Then it will head all over the country where it will be in real stores and with any luck, people will buy them!!! Whoa!!!

I think I need to sit down . . .

Okay, coming up, next week I will be posting my tour schedule. It's already up on my website, if you're curious, but I'm going to post it here too because I would love to find out if any of you guys live in the cities I am going to because I LOVE meeting blog readers, SO MUCH!

(That and I have heard so many stories of debut authors basically reading to the bookstore employees and maybe one other person, so, yeah . . . I'm afraid of that!:D)

I'll be posting a link to my microsite that Harper is launching soon (There's an awesome contest!). I also have some fun posts planned on pre-release jitters and stress and the challenges of writing a sequel.

Ciao!