Month: August 2010

Seth Godin Joins The Indie Author Revolution

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The news has been plastered all over the web: Seth Godin announced his most recent book, Linchpin, will be the last to be published traditionally. He blogged about it today:

Moving On

Linchpin will be the last book I publish in a traditional way.

One of the poxes on an author’s otherwise blessed life is people who ask, "what’s your next book," even if some of them haven’t read the last one. (Jeff did, of course). To answer your question, this book is my next book. I think the ideas in Linchpin are my life’s work, and I’m going to figure out the best way to spread those ideas, in whatever form they take. I also have some new, smaller projects in the works, and no doubt some bigger ones around the corner.

A little background: For ten years or so, beginning in 1986, I was a book packager. Sort of like a movie producer, but for books. My team and I created 120 published books and pitched another 600 ideas, all of which were summarily rejected. Some of the published books were flops, others were huge bestsellers. It was a lot of fun. As a book packager, you wake up in the morning and say, "what sort of book can I invent/sell/organize/write/produce today?"

It took a year or so, but I finally figured out that my customer wasn’t the reader or the book buyer, it was the publisher. If the editor didn’t buy my book, it didn’t get published. Here’s the thing: I liked having editors as my customers. These are smart, motivated and really nice people who are happy to talk with you about what they want and what they believe. Good customers to have. (In all of those years, only one publisher stole any of my ideas, no check ever bounced, and no publisher ever broke a promise to me).

When I decided to become focused on being an author, the logical thing to do was to sell to that same group of people. And it worked. I’ve been lucky enough to work with some great editors, and my current publisher, Portfolio, has been patient, flexible and, did I mention, patient. Adrian Zackheim, who runs the imprint, is exactly what you’d hope for, even if the architecture of his industry is fundamentally broken.

Authors need publishers because they need a customer. Readers have been separated from authors by many levels–stores, distributors, media outlets, printers, publishers–there were lots of layers for many generations, and the editor with a checkbook made the process palatable to the writer. For ten years, I had a publisher as a client (with some fun self-published adventures along the way). Twelve bestsellers later, I’ve thought hard about what it means to have a traditional publisher.

Read the rest of the post on Seth Godin‘s site.

Cozy Mystery Website Adding My Mystery Series

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If you like cozy, clean mysteries like the Amazing Gracie Mystery Series I write, I’ve found a site on an Amazon mystery discussion group. There are many books to choose from at http://www.cozy-mystery.com The site had an email contact for the host so I sent a message requesting she try a complimentary copy of Neighbor Watchers – ISBN 1438246072 so she can see for herself what my mystery series is like and think about adding my books to her site.

The host replied, "Thank you so much for writing and letting me know about your Amazing Gracie series. It looks like exactly the type of mystery series that this site emphasizes. I have added you to my list of authors to post, but I must warn you that it might take a little while before I get to you. My list is always expanding, but every once in a while I make it a project to get some more authors done.

Check out the site if you are interested in reading or submitting a cozy mystery book. The site has links to everything. Danna gives her definition of what a cozy mystery is. Cozies don’t usually involve a lot of gory details or explicit adult situations.

Authors are posted alphabetically.

TV shows and movies

Cozy mysteries with themes such as culinary themes, librarian themes and for cat and dog lovers

Cozy mystery new releases

In Danna’s cozy mystery blog, she talks about different movies and shows.

If you have a submission email Danna@Cozy-Mystery.com

Danna mentioned that she’d like people to link to her site. If you contact her mention that you found out about her site by reading my blog. That way she will know I helped spread the word.

I tried to list my Amazing Gracie Mystery Series on different websites for mysteries a couple years ago when I published the first book. I got a reply from one site that I must be kidding if I thought the book would be put on that website if it was sold by Amazon. I didn’t have any idea what that meant. As a writer, I figure I am always going to win over some and lose some so I keep looking ahead for other possiblities. I didn’t hear back from another mystery website I contacted. An online book store in California took three signed copies of my book on consignment but never got back to me. I was unknown, and my series is not the violent, sexy stories that ate popular so I’m assuming the books didn’t sell.

Two more mystery book list websites are http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/ ( which I found on an Amazon mystery discussion group) and http://www.thebloodstainedbookshelf. I emailed The bloodstained bookshelf and didn’t hear back so I assume my books wouldn’t fit in either of these sites.

Sorry I missed my blog post entry last week. We made a quick trip to Arkansas for my husband’s aunt’s funeral and visited with my aunt and uncle near Cabool, Missouri before we came home. The loss of one aunt is a reminder to me to spend time with another one about the same age.

Now I’m back, and a day early with this blog post, because I don’t want the phone line tied up tomorrow. My three month old dishwasher quit working a couple days ago. The repairman is suppose to call me when he is ready to come fix the dishwasher, and that is one call I don’t want to miss.

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

3 Ways To Boost Potential Book Sales Using Samples

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I was recently browsing the blogosphere for eBooks on self-publishing and blogging when I came across Kristen Lamb’s eBook We Are Not Alone: The Writer’s Guide to Social Media. It sounds like a very interesting read based on the blurb at Who Dares Wins Publishing. Will I buy it? Not without a lot of thinking and considering.

The information available in the book sounds great. I enjoy reading Kristen’s blog. I’m looking for whatever new info I can get on self-publishing and blogging. The price for the print version ($14.99 @ Amazon) is reasonable for a self-published book. The eBook version is also not terribly high ($7.99 for .pdf, .ePub, MS Reader, .mobi and Kindle). So why not jump on it? Because I have no idea exactly what is in it.

Think about the pull bookstores have on potential readers. What’s the one thing they still have in their favor? You can sit and peruse a book before you buy it. It’s the same reason customers prefer to buy books on Amazon that have the Look Inside feature. No matter how fantastic your blurb is, it will never fully capture what lies between the covers.

I could buy the less expensive eBook version of We Are Not Alone, but I’d still be out $7.99 if I don’t like it. (Even if I hate a book, I rarely return it or try to sell it.) That’s often the risk readers are faced with when looking at self-published books/eBooks and, with people reigning in their spending, giving away a free sample can mean the difference between a sale or clicking on by.

There really is no excuse for not providing a sample, especially if you do the work for your book yourself (which is what self-publishing is all about). I know of at least three ways to make a sample available to potential readers.

  1. Create a .pdf version and make it available for free download on your web site. You’d want to create something similar to an Amazon Look Inside for it to be of real value to potential readers.  Hacking up your book into sample bits like this can be a challenge, but it’s better than not having a sample at all.
  2. Use a service such as Scribd. Again, this means creating your own .pdf sample of your book, but you’ll reach an audience you may not reach otherwise.


  3. Go with BookBuzzr. This service is by far the best available to Independent Authors. They will hack your book however you want and give you widgets to use for your blog, facebook and email. Beyond that you can set up automatic tweets to market your book.


 

If you plan to sell your self-published books, you must reach readers, entice them to give you their hard won money, and the best way to do that is to offer them a sample of your wares on The Road to Writing.

 

 

This is a reprint from Virginia Ripple‘s The Road to Writing blog.

Choosing What To Write

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The writing, publishing, and marketing landscapes of books is very fluid these days. They refuse to be nailed down to the “Tried and True” solutions anymore. Given that, how does a writer go about choosing a topic/genre to write in these days of shifting sands? Fiction or nonfiction, the problem is universal if you’re going to write for any audience beyond yourself, friends, and family.

Every level in the book industry is trying to second guess what will be a good seller, if not a best seller, next. Their solutions depend on anything from very expensive market surveying and focus groups to trying modifications to what’s working now, to ouiji boards. I’d like to address the writers today. All you other levels in the book industry are welcome to listen in since what the writers produce have a major impact on you.

Write what you know?

This is a common sage bit of advice handed out to beginning writers that makes sense; however, there are some exceptions. Yes, if you write about themes that are familiar to you already, you stand a better chance of producing something that will be interesting to others. In the 1980s and 90s, I wrote several books about the subject of self-defense applied to the military, police, and street defenses. I had studied various fighting system since I was about ten-years-old, especially the Korean killing and maiming art of Hapkido. I had taught many people around the world and had people contacting me about how my information saved their lives. The problem was there were only so many ways one can fold, spindle, and mutilate an opponent. I was getting bored with repackaging the same stuff for different applications. I branched out into self-reliance, political, and later in history books. Most recently, I’ve been trying my hand at mysteries. I still write about what I know, but I’ve found many ways to use that knowledge. My fictional fight scenes are realistic and I think exciting because of my intimate knowledge of what can happen in violent situations.

Ah, but what about writing about things we don’t know about. Many freelance writers of magazine articles can tell you that it is possible to venture into subjects you know next to nothing about and yet still produce credible material. The same goes for copywriters. My bookstore, The Book Barn in Leavenworth, Kansas, had no books about out historic community to sell tourists and citizens alike that were less than $15. There were some good books, but they were $50 to $65 hardbacks. I asked several of our community’s historians if they would be interested in taking on such a project—nobody was. The inevitable happened. My wife, Barb, said, “You’re going to have to write this book.” I knew the town was the first city in Kansas and had a colorful history, of which I knew few details. I had never written anything historical before. All that meant it took me six months of intense research and drafts and rewrites, in addition to taking a lot of pictures of film pictures. The result was a colorful paperback which won three design awards and keeps selling steadily to the exact markets it was written for. Here is the cover of Leavenworth: First City of Kansas.

The Scientific Approach

Another interesting approach to find a topic to write about is to use the tools of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Go to Google or any other major search engine and type in “keywords” and “adwords” and “SEO” and you will be led to any number of services and softwares packages running anywhere from free, to try it before you buy it, or simply purchase one of these many tools. They will explain how to take a key word and enter it into their evaluation engine, which will tell you how many times the word has been requested in a certain time period. You want something that appears to have been requested at least a respectable number of times in the period but not a huge number of times. Too many times means there will be too many others like you jumping onto that bandwagon—why ask for stiff competition. The tool should give you an idea of what those ranges might be. Remember my explanation of Long Tail Marketing in my 31 May, 2010 blog post, Comments on a Garrison Keillor Column by Bob Spear? These types of tools are how one goes about identifying niches in a long tail. By finding several closely related keywords that provide encouraging results and are interesting may have just what you need to write about.

Look for Synergy

Be on the lookout for topics that can be used in interesting combinations. Independence, Missouri and bestselling author Jim Butcher did that very successfully. He combined the genre of hardboiled detective mysteries with the paranormal genre (both of which have been hot genres in the past). Out of that came a big city private eye who happens to be a real warlock and takes on werewolf and vampire cases. What a super combination! This is what I mean by synergy. If nothing else, it is one way to take a couple of tried and true but hackneyed genres and build in new excitement through their use in combination. Try looking at the familiar with a new pair of glasses.

Now, go thou and try something. Who knows where it might lead.

 

This is a cross-posting from Bob Spear‘s Book Trends blog.

Indie Blog Carnival: Why I Went Indie

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This post, by Kait Nolan, originally appeared on her site on 8/19/10.

Indie author Chris Kelly is hosting a blog carnival around the topic of “Why I went indie.”  Since it’s a topic that’s really on my mind this week, it seemed an ideal post topic and a sign to participate.

I didn’t plan to go indie in the beginning.  I’ve been off and on pursuing traditional publication since I was 15.  Still have those first rejection letters somewhere.  Of course in the intervening fifteen years, publishing changed a lot. 

Having a web presence and a platform became vital.  So Forsaken By Shadow started out as a means to start building an audience.  Originally it was going to be free.  But of course you can’t release things for free on Amazon if you’re not a publisher.  So I listed it for a buck.  There and everywhere else.

Between making the decision to put something out there on my own and actually GETTING it out there, I got into ebooks myself as a reader.  And the publishing industry started going through radical changes, even before the economy tanked.  Rather than looking at ebooks as the next phase of publishing, the big houses looked at them as a threat and have done every conceivable thing to sabotage them–delaying release, pricing them ludicrously, giving authors a pittance in terms of royalties.   Agents and editors started telling their existing authors, “Keep your day job.”

Read the rest of the post on Kait Nolan‘s site.

When Redesigning Your Site Or Blog, Don't Forget To Grandfather

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I recently redesigned my author website. It’s something many of you will do at some point, whether to add features, get a more professional look, put the focus on a specific book or service, or just because you think it’s time. Whatever the reason, when bringing in the new, be careful not to get too overzealous about throwing out the old.

Some of the content on your site may be quite popular, with many links, tweets, backtracks and so on all over the web. Check your site statistics or pageviews to get a quick read on which pages or articles are getting the most traffic, check for backtracks/backlinks on any of your content (backtracks and backlinks are instances of other sites linking to yours) and also take a trip down memory lane to remind yourself which pages or articles you have heavily promoted in the past. Be particularly alert to any content that has been mentioned in the media or highlighted on others’ websites and blogs.

When revamping your site or blog, be sure to keep that popular and much-linked content, and keep all of the associated web page addresses and links intact. After all, you’ve already put in the effort to create the content, and it’s bringing new visitors to your site or blog on a regular basis. Why on Earth would you want to toss that valuable information and goodwill asset on the junk heap?

In the case of my old site, there was a very popular page containing a BookBuzzr widget which displayed the first edition of my book, The Indie Author Guide, online in its entirety for free, as well as a free guide to Kindle publishing. This page has received numerous positive mentions (with links) in the mainstream media. It was no cakewalk building my author platform up to a point where outlets like The New York Times, MSN Money, CNET and The Huffington Post were sending new site visitors my way, and the articles in which my guide had been mentioned will still be on the web for years, or even decades, to come. Even though that Kindle publishing guide is currently out of date and I’m in the process of updating it, and an updated and revised edition of The Indie Author Guide is on its way as well, it would’ve been a mistake to completely eliminate the page and leave a slew of broken links in the wake of my site redesign.

It so happens that I didn’t intend to include this specific page in my new site. I’d created a new organizational scheme and the page just didn’t fit. However, I didn’t want to turn away any new visitors who might discover me through all those links to the page.

So I created a new version of the old page, to match the new site design, and ensured it had the same title and web address. I added a statement indicating I’m in the process of updating the guide and when I expect the new version to be posted, plus a statement with information about the revised and updated edition of The Indie Author Guide, so anyone landing on that page will get the most up to date information.

Note to those who actually write the code for their sites or blogs: even though the new page didn’t have any need for HTML anchors to be included on it, I ensured all anchors present on the old page were included in the new one, so that any links pointing to those old anchors wouldn’t be broken, either.

I didn’t include this page in my site’s navigation bar, because again, it just doesn’t fit the new scheme. But anyone who clicks on one of those old links will not be disappointed, and since the navigation bar for my new site is on that "secret" page too, it’s possible new visitors may click around a bit and learn more about me and my books. 

 

This is a cross-posting from April L. Hamilton‘s Indie Author Blog.

America’s Indie Revolt: Why It Matters & Will It Spread

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This post, from Mary Anne Graham, originally appeared on her Quacking Alone blog on 7/11/10.

There’s no doubt about who’s winning the  American Indie Revolution.  The castle walls of the old publishing royals stand in ruins.  Even former staunch allies like Barnes & Noble have defected to the insurgent writers.   

“Digital publishing and digital book selling will soon become the most explosive development in the history of our industry and will sweep aside those who aren’t participating,” Leonard Riggio, B&N’s founder and chairman, said during a recent presentation highlighting the company’s expanding foray into the digital market. 

The e-reader market is in the midst of a price war that is putting more and more of the devices into the hands of the book-buying American public.  Fewer readers visit the brick and mortar bookstores as more readers demand that the bookstores come to them, via their PCs, Macs, e-readers, iPods and cell phones.  Via America’s strong and ever expanding wireless networks ebooks get delivered to readers instantly. 

When American publishers lost control of the distribution system, they lost control of the readers and the writers.  Today authors like Joe Konrath have chosen to forego offered publishing contracts for some books, electing to get them out in print and ebook format on their own, thank you very much.  Books of writers doing it their way are, more and more,  transitioning readers to expect stories undiluted by editorial changes demanded by publishers.  An American indie book or ebook is becoming an intimate experience shared only by the writer and the reader.    

But even in the present economic downturn, America’s companies invested the time and resources to build the pipelines that allowed the Indie Revolt to succeed.   Those pipelines are being strengthened as demand encourages more investment.  Our writers can now write their books, publish them, sell them to readers and get paid via those same magic pipelines that funnel money directly into their bank accounts. 

In the heady atmosphere of power and possibility now held by the creators themselves, it becomes rather easy to forget that America’s Indie Revolt is not yet the world’s.  Imagine an American publisher today saying the following:  “Everyone knows that almost all publishers cheat their authors on their royalty payments, and there’s ­nothing the authors can do about it.”

Read the rest of the post on Mary Anne Graham‘s Quacking Alone.

Planning Your Book

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You’re ready to take the information and education you’ve gained from your research and apply it to your own book.

You’ve learned that the biggest complaint about self-published books is their lack of professional editing. Although you’re anxious to see your book in print, you realize you’ll have to go through a process to make sure you’ve created the best product you can for your particular market and the goals you’ve set for your book.

But first we address the manuscript itself, and how it becomes a book. Whether you use a professional editor, or plan to edit your book yourself, you can pick up a lot of useful information that will help guide you in the process. Understanding how books are constructed will give you a reliable blueprint to putting your book together.

Creating Books from Manuscripts

What Every Self-Publisher Ought to Know about Editing
An Unabridged List of the Parts of a Book
Self-Publishing Basics: Book Chapters and Subheads
Self-Publishing Basics: The Copyright Page
6 Copyright Page Disclaimers to Copy and Paste, and Giving Credit

Part of being a self-publisher is understanding rights and contracts, and particularly taking responsibility for your own copyright in your work. Copyright is an intellectual property, not real property like a house, but it’s no less valuable. Intellectual property has rights that will outlast its creator, and getting copyright clear is a basic publishing task.

This is one of the reasons I’ve written so many articles about copyright for the self-publisher. There’s a number linked below, and the information here will help you understand what copyright is, and what it isn’t.

You’ll get guidance on putting together your copyright page, adding disclaimers, how to copyright your book with the Libarary of Congress and a lot more. It’s a quick education in copyright, especially for self-publishers.

Copyright

Self-Publishing Basics: A 5-Minute Guide to Copyright
How to Copyright Your Book
CIP: What It Means, How to Read It, Who Should Get It
What Every Writer Ought to Know about Fair Use and Copyright
Creative Commons: What Every Self-Publisher Ought to Know

Getting Organized

When your manuscript is ready and you understand how your rights will be affected by publication, and how to protect them, you can move along to how you will organize your book. Does your book need an index? Will you need to hire an artist or illustrator to show processes or graph data?

You’ll want to check for consistency in your manuscript, before you get to typesetting and layout. Using a style sheet can help keep track of formatting elements, overall themes, or specific forms of spelling and address that should be consistent throughout your manuscript.

If your book is instructional, have you thought about enhancing its value by including a glossary or resource list for people starting out? There are almost endless ways to add value to a nonfiction book.

Who are the professionals, if you choose to hire them, who will guide you and help you navigate the book publishing process? Or do you plan to do-it-yourself?

Making decisions about your book shows how important it is to get clear about your aims. How you approach putting your book together should be dictated by how, and to whom, your book will be marketed.

More Articles on Planning Your Book

How Long Should Your Book Be?
Book Chapters and Subheads

It’s time to get into the nitty gritty of creating your book. And the first thing you’ll need is an Understanding of Fonts and Typography, so read on.

 

 

This is a reprint from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.

FINE TUNING THE EDITING

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Year ago while still learning the craft of writing, I found an article on a website . After all this time, I no longer  have the name of the website or the author.   I’ve used the following list on each of my books and all my other writings. I hope you find some use for it also.

 

EDITING

After the final draft, edit using the "find" function for the words on the following list. Next, read the sentence containing the offender, and either correct it or leave it be, depending. They are all valid words, if used in moderation, but are prone to misuse, overuse and abuse.

"Fine Tooth Comb and Red Flags and Snags"

and – but (can indicate run-on sentences) that (unnecessary in most sentences)

that (when you mean "who")

just

nearly – almost

really

seem – appear

felt – feel

begin – began

would – should – could

quite

few

rather

thing

stuff

anyway

because

"ly" adverbs

so

then

even

only

down  – up (as in sit down, stand up – can be redundant)

got – get

Look for passive use:

it – is

am

are

was

were

has

had

have

been

to be

there is

there are

there was

there were

 

Okay, so most of know all this. We still have the tendency to interject them into our writing without thinking. Try this excerise  once and see if it tightens and strengthens your piece of writing. I would suggest doing it on short story first.

 

Happy writing.

 

 

Stats and Sales and Success and Crap

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This post, by RJ Keller, originally appeared on her Ingenious Title To Appear Here Later blog.

I don’t post a whole lot here about the business end of writing, nor about the ins and outs of self-publishing. This is partly because I think the business end of writing is boring as hell. I mean, I have to worry about it because the IRS might wonder where the extra income is coming from, but it’s not something I particularly enjoy dwelling on here. Also, I said pretty much all I’ll ever have to say about the pros and cons of self-publishing when I wrote for Publishing Renaissance, and I hate repeating myself. Repeating myself.

But the biggest reason I avoid those subjects is that there are a slew and a half of other, much more knowledgeable, writers talking about it already; for example Zoe Zoemeister Winters and Mr. J.A. Konrath (whom I don’t know well enough to -meister). I’m usually hanging out, doing my writing thing, and by the time I’ve thought about the possible ramifications of literary agent Andrew Wylie publishing his clients’ ebooks on his own or heard about Who said What about self-published books over at So-and-So’s blog, it’s pretty much been talked to death.

Recently, though, a fellow indie author told me that it was my responsibility, as a successful self-publishing author, to add my voice to the indie chorus once more. To help to dispel the notion that self-published books suck, that self-published authors do well to sell a total of 25 copies to their friends and family members, or that they might – if they’re very lucky – reach 150 sold if they truly bust their ass. My first thought was, “Dude! You think I’m successful? Rad!” Because I truly don’t know what, exactly, being successful entails. That is to say, I know that it means different things to different people, but it wasn’t an adjective I’d ever applied to myself. My second thought was, “Oy! People are still spouting that crap, aren’t they?” Then it was, “Do I have enough coffee to write about stats and sales and crap?” The answer was, I guess so (I love my Keurig) because here it goes.

Read the rest of the post on RJ Keller‘s Ingenious Title To Appear Here Later.

Apprehending Feedback

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At any level of authorial skill, but particularly when you’re just learning how to write and respond to other writers, there are three critical things you can do to help yourself and your readers. (I’ll come back to this in a moment, but if there’s anything you want to do during the feedback process, it’s take care of your readers.)

  • Focus on Learning
    Just between us, you and I both know you’re an undiscovered literary genius. But even literary geniuses need to know if they hit or missed their visionary target. If you give yourself over to listening and learning during the feedback process, rather than enduring and defending, you’ll not only learn whether you hit your target, you’ll speed your ability to understand the craft of storytelling. On the other hand, the more defensive or competitive you are, the longer it will take you to grow as a writer.
     
  • Acknowledge Your Own Control
    Consider this, from an earlier post about workshops:

     

    It can be hard for an author to listen without objecting or interjecting comments, but a workshop is not a debate. The members giving feedback know their suggestions and observation can always be dismissed by the author, so no debate is necessary.

    Even if everyone in a workshop thinks you should strengthen Sally’s motivation for murder, you still have total control and everyone knows it. It’s your story and you do not have to do anything you do not want to do. More to the point, most of the people who read your work couldn’t care less whether you listen to them or not. (And anyone who does probably has more invested in a personal relationship with you than they do in the quality of your work.)

    Again: you do not have to change something if you do not want to change it. Acknowledging that you have complete control over your own work will make you less defensive. (As an aside, there are nefarious situations where workshop leaders may try to impose control over your work. I’ll deal with this more in a subsequent post, but for now remember that you have the absolute right to control your work, up to and including making a blithering idiot out of yourself. No one who knows anything about how the craft of storytelling is taught or learned would tell you otherwise.)

  • Listen for Specifics
    If you don’t know much (or any) craft it’s admittedly hard to focus on craft while having a story workshopped. A more helpful approach for beginning writers is to practice listening to comments on a case-by-case basis, rather than waiting for a consensus to emerge about the entire work.

     

    Why is this important? Because the things that will help make your story better are almost always specific. Generalities such as, “I liked it,” or, “Your main character could be more sympathetic,” are not very useful. What you want are specific examples of things that did and did not work, because those things are evidence of faulty craft. If you ignore specifics in the hope that you’ll get a thumbs-up from 51% of the group you’re only hurting your authorial education.

    Too, listening on a case-by-case basis is important because not all feedback is good feedback. Some comments are going to be misplaced, and some are going to be loony. Your job is to sort through everything that’s said in order to find a few useful nuggets, and you can’t do that if you’re not paying attention to what’s said by everyone.

    Finally, focusing on specifics calms personality issues. If you’re getting feedback from a workshop, chances are there’s a least one person you don’t like. They may be objectively offensive, or they may grate only on your nerves, but they may also be right in what they’re saying to you. If their every word drips with insincerity or condescension it can be hell to listen, but you need to learn how to listen anyway.

Any feedback on your work, whether given privately or in a workshop, is potentially risky. Trying to understand what people are saying about your work when you yourself may not fully understand what you wrote or how you wrote it, is a trial by fire. The only way to get through it is to get through it. Following the above advice will make the process easier.

 

This is a reprint from Mark Barrett‘s Ditchwalk.

Tips From An Idiot

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A year ago I was readying to “submit” to agents for mainstream publishing. I read some agents’ blogs and watched their tweets fly by. I decided they are dicks and so I maneuvered around that process, learning that there was no opportunity to get a widespread, quit-your-dayjob publishing opportunity without agents.

So I ditched it all and published my book myself.
[Editor’s Note: strong language after the jump]

I sold about 100 print copies of *that book* (you know what I’m talking about, that I can’t mention it here) and only had a couple of months to promote it before the world ended. I’ve had about 1000 downloads on various free-e joints, so that’s not bad, but you can’t count if people actually read the downloads.

I’m not into analytics on this stuff anyway. I just want to know people enjoy my work as much as I do. That’s actually a lot to ask, but my mantra has been to publish as much as you can wherever you can.

I’m on to my first novel now, which I’m issuing RIGHT NOW. Moxie Mezcal put a great cover together and I formatted this motherfucker last night in a few hours. It didn’t take the month + help I got on my first book, because I took the steps to ensure I didn’t have to retrofit more than 200 pages as much as I would have.

I am an idiot with formatting and graphics. That’s a disclosure it is important to understand. I’m not at the bottom of the barrel–in fact, I consider myself close to being an MS Word whiz. But in order to format a book properly, you really do need to be that whiz, not just be close to it.

Start writing your book the way you want it to look and the process isn’t as painful. I had to retrofit my entire first book, and that process sucked.

Using styles, this book was much easier to format since there were no bizarre blocks of text in a different font. And once I realized that my indents were too big (and gee, that’s why the thing looked so lame), I just went in and moved the top tab to .1 rather than .5 and the whole thing magically fixed itself. *Awesome*

Global seek and replace was a winner for my sections–those imperative but annoying breaks within a chapter but not quite a chapter break. I had two asterisks, then I had 5 asterisks, some separated by tabs, some not, but a global search and replace worked wonders.

I write a lot of dialogue that is cut off, like, “Hey, asshole, what are you–” In Word, it tends to not like the emdash followed by a closed quotation, so you have to manually go in and replace the open quote with a closed quote. Again, global search and replace works fine for symbols and punctuation so don’t hesitate to use it. (However, search & replace function doesn’t work for finding curly quotes and replacing with straight quotes. Or at least it doesn’t work on my system. You should try it though, to make sure you have all your quotes in the same style.)

I should have (but didn’t) customize each header to match the chapter, since I wrote Back(stabbed) In Brooklyn with multiple perspectives. It would have required going in and inserting a section break for each of my 36 chapters. Then the pagination gets all fucked up. Meh….

Table of Contents is easy, it’s an *insert reference* function on your menu and you just make sure your chapter headings are identified in your TOC settings. Once you finish formatting, right-click on your TOC field and click update. Because I messed with a few of the headings, I didn’t want to update the entire TOC but just the page numbers.

Mirrored margins was an easy choice to find and it wasn’t a custom or manual function. (This makes it so when your book prints each facing page is centered correctly.)

I laughed when I opened the book on my nightstand to get double-check the pages before the text actually started (copyright, acknowledgements, kudos, bullshit, whatever) in Murakami’s last book there were 10 pages of bullshit before the text started! But I did learn I had to put in a blank page so that the text started on the right side, not the left. I could have put the TOC on two pages then to avoid a blank page, but then it wouldn’t have been facing each other and that’s lame.

I DID NOT align the text along the bottom of each page. I don’t know how to do that and I didn’t fuss over it. I probably should have. I know I’ll get my ass kicked for not doing it. But I didn’t. Meh, again. (If my story is so boring that you are focusing on the bottom page alignment, then I need to worry more about my story rather than the formatting.)

And there it is. I formatted my book. Now go ahead and do yours.

Thanks for reading.

 

This is a reprint from Lenox Parker’s Eat My Book.

Publish With Lightning Source

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This story, by Muriel Lede, originally appeared on her site on 8/15/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission.

Chances are you’ve at least heard of Lightning Source Inc., also known as LSI. If so, you must have been told that they’re the best deal around (indeed), but also that acceptance is selective (not quite), while the submission process is complicated and unforgiving (very true!). If you’ve searched the Web for them, you’ve most certainly noticed that the information about them is scarce and contradictory (often outdated and inaccurate as well). You’ve seen many of their self-publishing customers, some of them quite experienced, curse at them out of frustration—while paradoxically lauding their service!

You indeed consider doing business with the best Print On Demand service around? Then read this comprehensive guide to get a clear idea of the process ahead and avoid making costly mistakes.

Why should you sign up with Lightning Source? Because they have the most options for your books. Because they have the best quality offering. Because their sales representatives are very supportive at every stage of the submission process. Because you want to submit straight to the printer instead of suffering the delays and hazards of intermediates. Because you want the best profit margins (who doesn’t?) and the widest distribution channel. Because you consider yourself a publisher running a business, not merely an author with a manuscript. And you want to gloat about it.

Why should you avoid Lightning Source? Because you’re not tech-savvy. Because you balk at making an initial investment of time and money, or at learning the intricacies of the publishing process. Because you turn green at the prospect of filing paperwork or reading hundred of pages of documentation. Because you don’t care about the minutiae of the end product anyway. Because a free author service suits better your needs, or on the contrary you’d rather pay four times the actual costs to offload it all to someone else. Because you consider yourself an author first and foremost, and would rather avoid every task downstream if at all possible.

This is what they mean with their registration disclaimer. Really, if you recognize yourself in the latter description, they don’t want your business. They want serious publishers that know what they’re getting into, preferably ready to submit.

Services

LSI offers two POD services. Print to Order is for wholesale distribution. That means their online retail partners (most prominently Amazon and Barnes & Noble) order copies straight from them, usually sold to customers beforehand. Print to Publisher, on the other hand, is for short runs (which can be as small as one copy but are meant typically for fifty copies and above), and ships to the publisher instead (or whichever address you specify). Note that the latter option is slightly more expensive per copy.

You can also submit electronic titles for distribution with Ingram Digital, through which you can sell ebooks in DRMed formats such as PDF and ePub. For these two formats, the provided platform is Adobe Digital Editions. In that respect they’re definitely not the best deal around (Digital Editions sucks bad, especially for ePub, while the list of retail partners is more modest than for POD), but the service is free, while you already need a PDF file for the print book interior, so why not…

Requirements

Before you even register for an account, you will need a few things:

You can also provide a GST number if you’ve registered your business with the Canada Revenue Agency.

Last, but not least, you need money; Lightning Source isn’t free. Here’s how it costs for a typical blunder-free submission:

Book cover submission: $37.50
Book interior submission: $37.50
Proof: $30.00
Ingram catalog listing: $12.00
Total: $117.00

Ordering a proof is mandatory for an initial submission. The Ingram catalog fee, charged yearly, is to make the title available to retailers, otherwise your title would only be available for Print to Publisher short runs. Keep in mind that the costs could rise; revisions cost $40 per resubmitted file. May I recommend you don’t make mistakes? They also charge for whatever technical assistance you will require, so don’t ask them for help if you can avoid it.

Administrative concerns aside, I strongly suggest you prepare your submission in advance. You will need Adobe Photoshop, and probably Adobe Acrobat Distiller (which LSI strongly recommends, although sometimes you can do without it). The rest of this guide shall describe the challenges ahead; take a look at their File Creation Guide for an overview.

Cover price and wholesale discount

At this stage, you need to settle your pricing and discounting strategy. By discounting I refer to the wholesale discount, that is, the discount you grant retailers like Amazon. Typically, online retailers in turn grant half of that discount to their customers. You must also consider the price of printing the actual copy in the equation, which is:

Profit per copy = (100% – wholesale discount) × cover price – printing cost per copy

The printing cost depends on the format of your book, its cover type, and its number of pages.

You should decide which format your title shall be, if you haven’t already; whichever you choose, they probably offer it. Only then can you compute the final printing costs per copy, which you need to settle your cover price. It consists of a base cost per copy plus a cost per page, both depending on the format. See the POD publisher operating manual (only available once you’ve signed up) for details.

In regard to the above, there are only two sensible strategies to pursue. If you wish to see your book on the shelves of brick and mortar bookstores, you must offer a trade discount of 55%, flag your book as returnable, and also sign up to be listed in the Ingram Advance monthly catalog ($60 fee per listing). Be careful before choosing that option! First, such a high discount means either you settle for razor-thin margins or you try your luck with prices significantly above the competition. Second, if your book is returnable, that means bookstores will return their surplus after a few months, and you will have to assume the cost of the unsold copies! I recommend against that avenue for most self-publishers, and even small electronic/POD publishers; read about Ellora’s Cave’s woes with Borders for an example of things going awry.

That leaves us with the better and only viable strategy for self-publishers, which is to opt the for the minimum short discount of 20%, not returnable, and to hell with the Ingram Advance catalog! That means an online-only strategy, as brick and mortar bookstores will not carry your titles unless they take the lion’s share of the profits while having you assume all of the risks (if you ask me, it’s a racket). But that also means much more money per copy in your pocket and a safe business plan. Don’t be afraid to offer the minimum discount; some will tell you it’s risky because retailers might snub your title, but that’s just an urban legend.

Then the price you should expect to be listed is calculated as follows:

Expected listed price = (100% – wholesale discount / 2) × cover price

More simply, online retailers further discount the title to their customers by half the discount you granted them; if the wholesale discount is 20%, their discount shall be 10%. Take note that, with Amazon at least, this customer discount might not be offered immediately (I’ve noticed a delay of one month), while the decision to discount any given title is entirely up to them, subject to change without notice, and is not officially documented but has been deduced empirically.

Warning: Make sure your price and discount are final; price revisions take up to 45 days to propagate across resellers. What’s more, if you’ve put the price on the cover, you’ll need to issue a cover revision!

Book interior submission

Before you proceed any further, do yourself a favor and read this official FAQ. Much of what follows is already illustrated in that document.

The book interior must be submitted as a PDF file (Postscript, InDesign or QuarkXPress also accepted), preferably as PDF/X-1a:2001 but this requirement isn’t that stringent. In practice, what matters most is that fonts be embedded to your document. If you open your PDF file with Adobe Reader and inspect its properties, you’ll see a list of fonts (with cryptic names) that the document uses. Every entry must read as either fully embedded (meaning the whole font has been embedded into the file) or embedded subset (meaning that only necessary glyphs have been imported). If it says anything else then it isn’t embedded. This is important because printers do not provide any fonts, however common, which is the only way to ensure the document will print exactly as it displays on your computer.

So how do you embed fonts? You don’t, but merely configure whatever software you’re using to produce your PDF file to do so, the safest way being to look for a PDF/X or High Quality setting. It is also recommended to stay clear of Type 3 fonts (bitmap fonts).

There are other important requirements, one being that illustrations be sampled at either 300 dpi (pictures) or 600 dpi (line art). Another is that those illustrations be encoded as either grayscale or CMYK—no RGB. See next section for a discussion of CMYK.

Last, but not least, make sure your file is titled properly: the syntax is either isbn_text.pdf or isbntext.pdf. I’ve heard of rejected submissions for misnamed files.

Once you’ve frozen your interior file, use the Weight and Spine Width Calculator to complete your book cover; indeed you cannot complete your cover spine without the spine width, hence without the final page count.

Book cover submission

This is the difficult part, where you get to experience the joys of CMYK conversion. There is no avoiding getting technical at this point; just do your best to follow.

Your color book cover file on your computer is most likely encoded as RGB (Red-Green-Blue), which is the additive spectrum that computer monitors use to display images. A printer, on the other hand, requires a subtractive spectrum to print on white paper, and this is CMYK (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-blacK). Simply put, you have to convert your file so that instead of defining color components for light, it does so for inks instead. This is no caprice, but physics.

In theory this should be trivial. Every RGB color has an equivalent in CMY; black wouldn’t even be required, as it can be obtained with 100% of each of the three primary colors. In practice it doesn’t work that way. For example, the black just described doesn’t produce black on paper, but some dark gray instead. Besides, given how prevalent black is (to say nothing of dark colors in general), it would be a waste of ink and quite a mess to mix three colors just to obtain it, which is part of why black ink was added. But conversely, black ink alone (called pure black) isn’t quite black either, at least not enough for many purposes; we need to mix it with some amounts of the other colors to obtain what is called rich black (LSI recommends 60% cyan, 40% magenta, 40% yellow, 100% black).

Then there are gamut issues, as some colors fall outside of gamut depending on context. This phenomenon isn’t exclusive to CMYK; televisions and computer monitors, for example, cannot render pure black but a dark shade of grey, due to their very nature of being light-emitting devices. Only this is far worse for printing, many more colors being unavailable; deep blue, for instance, is notorious for rendering purplish. This can be worsened by the type of press used, the type of paper, the coating, and so on.

As if it weren’t enough, printers set a total ink limit for every individual dot (obtained by adding together the percentages of each component), which can be as high as 300% (comfortably high) but which LSI sets as 240% (quite low). That means many more colors fall outside of gamut, as there is no way to obtain them with so low a ceiling.

And then, the glossy coating LSI applies onto the cover darkens the image somewhat! With so many variables to consider, it’s nearly impossible to predict what the end result is going to be, which means you can only guestimate what the necessary adjustments should be, order a proof, and cross your fingers.

Confusing? A demonstration is indeed in order:


Original RGB cover

Cover converted to SWOP, 300% ink limit

Cover converted to SWOP, 240% ink limit

Cover converted to SWOP, 240% ink limit, after adjustments

Cover scan by LSI

And none of the above looks exactly like the actual cover! The closest in terms of hue is the fourth, only even darker than the original. It does not look desaturated like the cover scan. I’d show you a picture, but it falls outside the color space of cheap digital cameras as well! Talk about irony…

Brace yourself for the fact that your cover won’t look exactly as expected. Here’s a few tips to minimize the difference:

  • Avoid dark colors
  • Avoid saturated colors
  • Avoid colors notoriously out of gamut, like deep blue

To make the conversion, you absolutely need Photoshop; I’m not aware of any other application capable of altering the ink limit of an ICC profile, at least not nearly as conveniently. Photoshop is quite expensive a software suite just to make a few CMYK conversions, but then you might not need to actually buy it; it’s often available at the office, for example, or at some multimedia lab at college or university. (No, don’t even think of BitTorrent. Illicit copying is immoral and hurts the industry. Bad children!)

Think that’s the end of your woes? There’s another requirement to factor in before proceeding: trapping (usually 0.25pt). Here we have a chicken and egg dilemma: we can only trap a CMYK image, hence after the conversion, but at the same time we can’t trap after the conversion proper because the overlapping regions’ total ink might then exceed the limit. Don’t worry, there’s a way out of this; how do you think chickens came to be, anyway?

Ready for a crash course in Photoshop CS4 CMYK conversion?

  • Set your working CMYK profile to US Web Coated v2 (SWOP) from Edit > Color Settings.

  • Convert your RGB cover to the US Web Coated v2 (SWOP) profile using Edit > Convert to Profile; leave the ink limit at 300%.

  • Apply trapping, 0.25pt, with Image > Trap.

  • Convert to US Web Coated v2 (SWOP) profile using Edit > Convert to Profile once again, this time setting the ink limit to 240% (select Custom CMYK in the list; a settings dialog will appear). Brace yourself for the shock!

  • In View, make sure your Proof Setup is set to Working CMYK, and that both Proof Colors and Gamut Warning are set. Locations whose color falls outside of gamut shall later display as gray pixels scattered all over the image.

  • Select the Eyedropper tool, and have one of the info dialog’s panels display the Total Ink (the small eyedropper icon is clickable; a dropdown menu will appear). Then you’ll obtain the total ink level for any given pixel on the image.

  • Use Image > Adjustments > Curves (or any other such functionality of your liking) to tweak your image while keeping the ink levels below the 240% limit and avoiding the gamut warnings. Yes, it is as hard as it sounds.

  • Once you’re finished, save as TIFF; uncheck the ICC Profile option. LSI does not like ICC profiles.

Keep in mind that what you see on the screen is only an approximation of the actual cover, so don’t freak out if initial results are disastrous. They will be.

Once you’ve completed the CMYK conversion, all that remains is to apply the barcode onto your cover, and the cover onto the template. Use the cover template generator for that purpose, then follow the instructions. LSI offers to apply the barcode for you, but I strongly advise you do it yourself; that’s the only way to be sure of the result. You don’t need to generate your own barcode, one is provided with the template they sent you. The document says to save as PDF, but you may also submit a TIFF file. Save your final file as either isbn_cov.pdf or isbncov.pdf. Once again make sure your files are named properly; the word around is that they may be rejected for so trivial an issue.

Putting it all together

You’ve got everything ready? Let’s cover then what to expect from the moment you register:

  • A Lightning Source representative contacts you, asking that you fill a short questionnaire. Don’t worry, it’s just to filter out those that don’t know how to read the disclaimer.

  • If you’re accepted, they create your account. You can now log in to their customer section. But when you initially do, it’s only to fill more forms; schedule some time, it’s rather long. Basically, they want to know more about your company, which of their services you mean to opt in for, how they’re to bill you (account or credit card), where to ship the copies that you order or those that get returned by retailers, etc. Then, to proceed any further, you need to print and sign some contracts, which you must send them either by fax or mail. Once they’ve processed these, your account is activated.

  • You may now access the customer section proper and create your first title; go to Setup a New Title for that purpose. There’s a few pages to fill out about the said title, then it is created and moved to the premedia stage.

  • Go to Titles Not Yet Submitted, then upload the cover and interior files using their uploader. Preview your PDF files prior to uploading! Once again, mistakes are costly.

  • Wait until your files have been processed and approved by the technicians. Since this is your first title, they then send you a mandatory proof by mail (overnight delivery). You can opt out of it for revisions, although it is not recommended. LSI then awaits your approval to make the title available.

  • Review the proof, then go to Proof Acceptance. If you approve it, it shall be made available to retailers shortly. If you reject it, the submission remains on hiatus until you send revisions.

  • Don’t forget to pay your invoices when they bill you! While some charges are immediate, others are delayed by a few days or weeks. Upon receiving an invoice by email, log in to your account and go to Pay Open Invoices. Beware, for I’ve noticed they don’t always email an invoice! If you expect one, you should drop by from time to time and check.

 

My Digital Kingdom

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This is as much for my own benefit as anything else, but I thought you lot might be interested. I’ve started fine-tuning my online presence to get a bit more control over it all. I’m the first to admit that I’m an absolute net-whore. I wander around the digital domain waving my business at anyone that happens to look in my direction. Such is the nature of the modern world.

I have all kinds of online communities that I like to be a part of, as well as keeping an online presence to promote my work in the hope that people will be interested enough to read my stuff and help keep my career alive. Or, at least, not entirely moribund. Plus, I just love being a part of the online landscape. I get to meet so many interesting people, learn cool stuff and enjoying absolute lunacy from the around the world, all in the comfort of my office chair. It’s a crazy place out there and I don’t like to miss anything.

So, because of that, I have numerous things to keep an eye on and numerous places to share my own little slices of madcappery. This website, The Word (assuming you’re reading this there), is my main place. It’s the hub of my online activities. But I also have a LiveJournal blog (where you may well be reading this right now) and I’m very active on Twitter and Facebook. (I actually have two Facebook places. The one linked to here is my author page, but the one shared with Posterous and The Word is my personal page, which I keep for people I actually know.)

I’ve also recently become very busy on Posterous, but that’s partly to help streamline all this stuff and partly to collate all the crazies I enjoy. In an attempt to get my head around how I’ve set everything up, and in an effort to show anyone else that may be interested, I came up with this little diagram. It illustrates all the places that I’m active and how those places cross-pollinate each other to save me posting things in multiple places.

my digital kingdom My digital kingdom

I hope that helps to clarify things, if you were even vaguely interested in knowing. Everywhere you see an arrow is an automatic share, so posting in the one place automatically shares that thing with every place pointed at. And this doesn’t include all the various forums that I tend to chat away on to a greater or lesser extent, depending on mood and time. In fact, looking at this makes me wonder where the fuck I get time to do anything else, but I do. I’m actually pretty good at it. And, with that, I’m off to work on the new novel, before the Grudge Monkey comes looking to kick my arse again.

 

This is a reprint from Alan Baxter‘s The Word.

It's The End Of The Book As We Know It, And I Feel Fine

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This post, from Kent Anderson, originally appeared on the Socieity for Scholarly Publishing’s  Scholarly Kitchen on 8/11/10.

About a dozen years ago, when journals were entering the gauntlet wrought by the peril and potential of the Internet, I remember thinking (and saying to any poor soul who would listen), “Wait until this hits books.” Back then, books were off-limits somehow, their hard covers repelling new media’s assaults. E-readers were being introduced, but none made the mainstream. Handheld computer-based attempts were ill-fated. The rumble of thunder seemed too far off to cause a worry.

Little did we know that we’d witness a fast-moving tornado when the storm finally hit.

While you can debate the commercial success, aesthetics, and longevity of it, Amazon’s Kindle has proven to be the wind shift that signaled the storm’s arrival. Other forces — the rise of viable print-on-demand (POD) technology especially, but also shoddy author contracts, publishers focusing too much on a few authors, more authors self-publishing and a rise in social acceptance of the mode, and other background trends — are tearing through the land of the printed book, leaving the industry exposed on many sides, apparently with little shelter.

Now that the twister’s finally arrived, the constant rumors of Borders folding or being consumed have been joined by the news that Barnes & Noble is considering putting itself on the block. While part of this may be a business gambit, the gambit is only necessary because the business is less viable than ever.

Publishers are changing, too. Mass-market romance publisher Dorchester Publishing is dropping its paperbacks entirely and moving to e-books and POD fulfillment for print titles. This means Dorchester is seeing that online retailing is going to drive their business, not remaindered print in bookstores.

Read the rest of the post on Scholarly Kitchen.