Once again, I will be editing a book for a friend and then publishing it, both as an e-book and as a printed book. I’ve done several others for David Preston over the last several years.

In addition to editing and publishing his new novel, I will be re-publishing his other books. Why? His earlier books were published with his name as Dave Preston, and the later ones as David Preston. This causes some confusion for Amazon and other platforms. Following his author name spelled one way won’t necessarily find the books with the other spelling. So he is standardizing on David Preston. Also, we are updating author information and adding some other content.

Also, his books were only published on Amazon, and we will be publishing with a wider distribution, e.g., Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo. And they will be available to libraries.

How did I get started editing and publishing? Way back in college (Whitworth College, now Whitworth University) I knew several of the staff on the college student newspaper. I noticed quite a few typos in the papers, so started marking them up and giving them back to the Executive Editor. She suggested that I should do my markup before they published, instead of after, and so I became first a proofreader, then later Managing Editor of the college paper. I also did quite a bit of typing of the newspaper on a Varityper machine, which right-justified the type. This was a bit before the college paper had computers to do this for us. On this machine you typed each line twice – once for the machine to measure the length of the line, then a second time for the Varityper to adjust the space between words to make the type line up at the right margin.

So how did I get into editing books for David Preston? The same way this all started. In 2010 he published an e-book on Amazon, Motorcycle 201. I bought the book, and noticed several typos. I asked if he was interested in knowing about them, and so it began. After that, I proofread and did some copy editing of his books before they were published. His son was doing the publishing.

Then about five years ago, a bit before Thanksgiving, he asked me if I could publish his next book. He was done writing, and his son was tied up with too many tasks to be able to get to it soon. I thought, sure, I could figure this out. And so I did the editing, and read up on how to publish on Amazon at what was then called CreateSpace, now Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). And Triathlon Ride, the third book in David’s Harrison Thomas Mysteries series, hit the Amazon virtual shelves on November 18, 2014.

After Triathlon Ride was published as a Kindle Book, David mentioned that someone he knew wanted to read it, but that person would only read it in paper form. David had earlier published Motorcycle 101 in paper form before Print On Demand (POD) was generally available, and he had to front all of the printing costs, then figure out what to do with 1,000 copies of the book. He didn’t want to do that again.

I explained that now, through CreateSpace, he could publish a book in paperback with no up-front cost. Could I do that for him? Well, I didn’t see why not. So I investigated the CreateSpace paperback requirements and worked with David to decide on the trim size (5.25″ x 8″). David had created the cover for the Kindle book, and I started with that and created the cover for the paperback, adding the back material and spine. It was published on December 16, 2014.

So, here we are, getting ready to add one more book to his list (making nine total). In the meantime, I’m working with him to get his past works republished with a wider distribution.

Stay tuned. I’ll announce the books as they are published. Links to all of David’s books can be found at https://books2read.com/rl/gs-preston.