Anniversary Contest Finalist #3 – Why I Started A Publishing Company

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This post, from Shaun Kilgore, originally appeared on his site on 3/5/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission. This is Shaun’s entry in our anniversary contest, in which the winners are selected based on total unique page views. So if you like it, and would like to see Shaun become a regular Publetariat Contributor, spread the word and the link!

Why did I start this publishing company? Here’s the short answer: Because my wife was interested enough in starting a business herself that she volunteered to help me create Founders House Publishing.

You see, just before this happened, I was preparing to work with a friend on a small publishing venture, the first real push in that direction that had any legitimate chances of getting off the ground. (I still hope to work with him in the future.) It was in the process of helping my father find a place to publish his book, Echoes From The Past: A Memoir Of Family Heritage, that my wife and I decided to do it ourselves. Sure, there were other options, but this made sense in a variety of ways. Why do it, you might ask. Let me see if I can answer that.

Looking Back

For the longest time, I’ve loved books and loved reading. In fact, I’ve been on the path to publishing my own books since 2006 when I published a collection of short stories using the author services provider Lulu. It was an awesome step forward for me to put the book together inside and out. When I received that first copy in the mail I was ecstatic. (I saw myself as a publisher even then.) As a writer, I certainly had some satisfaction, but this was definitely a war between my interests as a book designer/artist and the one who wrote all the content. It is satisfying in a whole different way to take the labors of other writers and help package it in nice designs and colorful covers.

I recall putting together some stapled booklets for a small magazine about Christian religious topics about eight years ago. Even then, I was intrigued with the design and look of the magazine and looking for ways to create something special. This was just something I was printing out on my home printer! The feeling has been the same every step of the way. When we received the first copy of Echoes From The Past, that same excitement was there. Even more so since I could see the logo for my own publishing company on the spine.

What I Have Now

So here I am, the co-owner of a brand new book publishing company, busy with the promotion of the first title. You might be asking what makes me think I can be a publisher? Or you may wonder how I did it in the first place. Those are fair questions. Again, the short answer is this: I’m a publisher because I believe I can be one. That’s certainly not enough of a response for most people who will be asking that question in the first place. (I’m talking to writers and agents mostly.) My wife and I have divided up the tasks of this business largely according to our relative strengths. We are going to be building upon these strengths by gathering more knowledge of the industry as well the opportunities that are emerging for self-publishers and independent publishers alike.

We started this like many small presses have began. We formed a business and did all the normal work involved in setting up this company legally. Like many start-up publishers, we are using the largest print-on-demand (P.O.D.) Lightning Source International (LSI) to print our books. That’s basically it. It’s not that complicated a process these days. The accessibility of the technology is a great thing. It’s really leveling the playing field and opening up so many opportunities for new publishers to make their mark in the industry. I know that Founders House is ready to take this step.

In Closing…

This is what I have been waiting for. It’s the chance to stretch both my creative and my entrepreneurial muscles. It’s the time to see whether we have what it takes to success and thrive as publishers. Most importantly, now is the time I get to share my hopes and my vision with other creative people. This post is for the writers, artists, and would-be publishers out there. I wish you luck and I hope I get the chance to work with you in the future. Send me your comments. I welcome your input.

 

Anniversary Contest Finalist #2 – Success Feels Like Failure

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This post, from Virginia Ripple, originally appeared on her The Road to Writing blog on 3/6/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission. This is Virginia’s entry in our anniversary contest, in which the winners are selected based on total unique page views. So if you like it, and would like to see Virginia become a regular Publetariat Contributor, spread the word and the link!

Last Sunday I had a wonderful thing happen in my absence at church. My mother (who is one of my biggest fans :D ) took my book to her Sunday school class and, for lack of a better description, “marketed” it. Before the class was over there was a volunteer to write up an article for the church newsletter. Before the worship service that follows Sunday school concluded, the minister was informed of my book. He said that, if the person who volunteered to write the article hadn’t, then he would have. From there it’s supposed to make it’s appearance at the next monthly elders’ meeting. It seems that things are beginning to roll for Fear Not! Discovering God’s Promises for Our Lives.

So why does it all feel like I’ve failed?

It’s because of the POD stigma. As soon as someone says, “Congratulations on getting your book published!” I ask myself if I deserve the congratulations. Surely I do. I worked as hard putting together a book I’m proud of as a straight A university student does to stay on the Dean’s list. (I even “pulled an all-nighter” a time or two. ;) )

Then comes the question, “Who published it?” I answer honestly that it was published by Lulu, but I don’t always add that it’s a large self-publishing company. That bothers me. Afterall, I’m a trail-blazer like all the other Indies out there.

I’ve been thinking about it all week and I have an idea why writers are stigmatized more so than any other Indie. We’re the customer who jumps into the “just opened” line at the store before anyone else realizes it’s open. The traditionalists are upset at themselves for not venturing outside the status quo. The good news is that there are traditionally published authors such as Stephen King, Douglas Rushkoff, and Douglas Clegg who are now jumping into self-publishing, according to M.J. Rose in the article Self-Publish Stigma Is Perishing.

On the flipside, Rose says there are also Indie authors being signed on to traditional publishing houses after their book breaks the 5,000 and 10,000 sales mark. That’s a very good reason to start out as a self-publisher. Of course, as Ray Robinson points out in his article Self Publishing Stigma, unless you do everything you can to market your book you’ll be lucky to end up in the 6% who break even. That’s why having a marketing strategy and doing as much research on marketing techniques is so important (and a subject for yet another post :) ).

There are a lot of reasons why achieving success as an Independent Author can sometimes feel like failure. Most of those boil down to letting the ubiquitous “other” make us feel unworthy of the title Author. I hope that someday we’ll all be able to throw off our cloaks of undeserved shame and walk in the sun of success on The Road to Writing.

 

CALLING ALL AGENTS

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When I registered at www.authonomy.com, I submitted five chapters of my two Amish books – Christmas Traditions (ISBN 0982459513) and A Promise Is A Promise (ISBN 0982459505). I didn’t do this to work my way up to the authonomy desk, like the other writers, so Harper Collins might take a look at my work. I did it to get reviews to use on Ebay and Amazon. I wanted to give prospective buyers an idea about what others thought of my two books to help them make up their minds about buying my work.

I was thrilled with most of the reviews I got from that website and used them. Three writers tried to be constructive. One didn’t realize that I’d already self published and gave me tips on which publishers to try. She thought I should be picked up if I’d get the right publisher interested in my work. One wanted me to put the whole book on authonomy so she could see how it ended. I admitted to those two people that I was already self published. I’d like them purchase the book to see how it ended. Another one (from England which is where quite a few of the submitters on that website live) picked apart the first chapter of one book to make the story read the way he’d write it. He might have been right about the list of phrases he made of my writing style "errors" not working in a book written for England’s readers so I can’t fault him for his criticism. He was trying to help me. I don’t mind constructive criticism if it’s advice that I need to take to make my writing better. However, the other English reviews I received were great so my writing went over well with those who like American Amish stories. Since then I have sold one of my books to an UK customer.

I wonder what editors would think of my books. The revisions have be to their liking and in the publishing world, they are considered the experts, but one of my book buyers said about my work, "If it ain’t broke don’t fix it." I ask my buyers to send me a review of my books. I have a whole list of reviews from buyers who like my books the way they are and their email addresses to notify them when I have a new book coming out. I have to be doing something right in my story telling when I write a story that suits me. That means I self publish a book that I’d buy for myself. Now I’m sure that’s a book that wouldn’t suit mainstream urban readers, but my target is Midwesterners, country folks, Christians and people who want an entertaining, humorous suspense or romance that isn’t filled with violence or vampires. The idea of self publishing for me is to find out who and how many of those readers like me. So far I’m pleased.

On authonomy, authors rate each other. That means for every review I got I had to read someone’s work in return and review it. That takes hours. I wasn’t always reading material that I’d buy but responded with a critique that might help the author. To get the reviews I wanted for my books, it was worth the effort and time. I even got some advice on how to get up the ladder in the website so the publisher would notice my books.

I hear all the time now that self published work, if it’s selling, might be of interest to a publisher. Several years ago after I thought I had queried all the small publishers that would accept a query without an agent and was rejected, I got a list of agent email addresses and emailed around 200 for Christmas Traditions. Of the ones that bothered to answer, some emails come back with an automated reply. A few others said they liked my idea, but they had as many clients as they wanted to handle. Months down the road, I was still receiving emailed rejections. That’s why I was surprised when an agent searching the internet writers sites for new clients emailed me about her interest in my Amish books on Authonomy. That was the good news. Bad news is she used my Yahoo email address in October. I lost my home page about then and didn’t try to reinstall it again until February. When I found the email, I emailed the agent with my excuses and said I’d like to hear more but didn’t get a reply. When I looked up the agency, that agent wasn’t listed now. I take that to mean that fate may have intervened in my favor this time.

So take heart all writers out there wanting to get published. Publishers and agents may be coming to us. Submit a portion of your work to writers sites and blogs so the work is out there for publishers and agents to see. Wait patiently while you keep writing books and submitting. Out of the blue, you might find an email from a publisher or agent just like I did. Maybe you’ll be luckier than I was. My latest Amish book is going to be out in late March – The Rainbow’s End (ISBN 0982459521). So I’m CALLING ALL AGENTS to keep hunting. I and a lot of other talented authors are waiting for your email.

Anniversary Contest Finalist #1 – Surprise Endings: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

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This post, from PJ Kaiser, originally appeared on her Inspired By Real Life blog on 3/6/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission. This is PJ’s entry in our anniversary contest, in which the winners are selected based on total unique page views. So if you like it, and would like to see PJ become a regular Publetariat Contributor, spread the word and the link!

As readers of this blog will know, I’ve been writing stories and working on my novel for several months now and I am approaching the point where I am considering submitting some stories to literary magazines.  A few weeks ago, I started perusing some of the magazines listed at Duotrope’s Digest and I came across several magazines and online sites that admonish writers to avoid O. Henry endings.

The first one or two times I saw this warning, I didn’t take much notice.  But then as I began to see the same message over and over, I tried to interpret its meaning.  I wanted to be sure that I wasn’t violating some sort of unwritten – or, in some cases, written – rule with my stories.

I confess that if I have ever read an O. Henry story it has been many, many moons ago.  O. Henry was an American story writer who lived in the late 19th century/early 20th century.  He lived a short and difficult life but published scores of short stories during his lifetime.  So, I read a smattering of O. Henry stories and did some research and discovered that O. Henry endings are so notable that I found an entry referring to them in several online resources such as this site compiled by Dr. Wheeler of Carson-Newman College:

“O. HENRY ENDING: Also called a trick ending or a surprise ending, this term refers to a totally unexpected and unprepared-for turn of events, one which alters the action in a narrative. O. Henry endings usually do not work well with foreshadowing, but particularly clever artists may craft their narratives so that the foreshadowing exists in retrospect. The term comes from the short stories of O. Henry (a pen name for William Sidney Porter), which typically involve such a conclusion. Note that an O. Henry ending is usually a positive term of praise for the author’s cleverness. This is the opposite sentiment from a deus ex machina ending, in which the unexpected or unprepared-for ending strikes the audience as artificial, arbitrary, or unartful.”

Not all would agree with the assessment above that “O. Henry ending” is a positive term, as we shall see.  In trying to understand the O. Henry endings, we have to look at the relationship between the author and the reader.  I recently took a class with Stanford Continuing Education with the author Seth Harwood.  The class focused on creating suspense and Harwood explained that there are three ways to create suspense:

1) where the reader and the main character don’t know what’s going to happen and the reader learns what’s going on at the same time as the main character (e.g., a typical mystery novel in the Perry Mason tradition);
 
2) where the reader knows what’s going on but the main character doesn’t know the full story (e.g., a mystery where the reader has been given some additional insight such as seeing a murder take place or knowing that the ‘bad guy’ is nearby); and
 
3) where the writer and the main character know some critical information that the reader doesn’t.  In this case, the reader is often left feeling deceived.

Suspense works best with the first two approaches because the reader has more identification with and empathy for the main character and is hoping that everything turns out ok in the end.  In the third approach, the writer has employed deception and has betrayed the reader’s trust.  Harwood went on to say that the ending to a story using the third approach is likely to be met with groans rather than applause.  Many stories that have surprise endings use this third approach.

So, let’s consider some examples of O. Henry’s writing.  Some of his most well-known stories use the surprise ending to great effect.  “The Gift of the Magi”, “The Retrieved Reformation” and “The Ransom of Red Chief” all employ some element of surprise in the ending, but we learn of the events along with the main characters and they are as surprised as we are at the endings.  This is why these stories work well.

I came upon two examples of his stories that have surprise endings that, for different reasons, do not work well in my view.  “The Girl” appears to be a story about a man proposing marriage to a girl, but in the end it is revealed that the man is not proposing marriage at all but is trying to hire a cook.  This ending had me rolling my eyes.  “The Pendulum” is a very believable story and, especially for a cynical reader, the ending is understandable, but the way the ending was written was very unsatisfactory to me.  It used a sort of literary trick in that rather than trying to explain the reason John, the main character, reverts back to the status quo, the story points to an abstract notion the author refers to as “the Order of Things.”

In further exploring why writers should stay away from “O. Henry endings,” I consulted with Seth Harwood (mentioned above) and Victoria Mixon, a professional writer and editor.  They both had some terrific insights and they can be boiled down to these points:

  • Harwood pointed out that because O. Henry was so prolific and virtually all of his stories involved surprise endings, this approach is “well done and finished.”  So, literary magazines may come away from reading a story with a surprise ending simply thinking “been there, done that.”  They are looking for fresh, modern voices …”in the sense of ‘making it new’ and not just ‘new to you.’”
     
  • Harwood also emphasized the point that surprise endings are “very hard to do well and all too easy to do terribly.”  The bottom line is that literary journals are looking for good writing and the writer who is relying heavily on surprise endings tends not to be focused on the quality of the writing (I’m paraphrasing).
     
  • Mixon put it very well by saying, “…there is a big difference between surprising the reader and tricking them.”  This comes back to the description above of the three ways to build suspense and the need to avoid the third approach.  The element of surprise is a mainstay in literature and when it’s done well, “You do that with an ending that throws a whole new light on the story while at the same time feeling like the inevitable conclusion this story must have been headed toward all along.”  (Mixon also promises me that she will be writing about this very topic in her upcoming book!)

I hope this post has provided you with some insight about the perils of surprise endings.  Thanks for reading!

 

Lightning Source POD

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In the past, I have always used a small, local printer for my POD work. They are very reasonable and even deliver my books to our store. Fellow Tweeter Levi Montgomery reminded me, however, that Lightning Source was a good resource for print on demand work as well. When I did my research, I discovered Lightning Source, Inc. (LSI) was a little bit cheaper until set up charges and shipping were added in. Even so, their costs weren’t unreasonable at all, compared to many of the so-called vanity POD publishers.

Distribution

The really important consideration, however, was LS’s distribution partners. First is their parent company, Ingram Book Distributors, the largest book distributor system in the world. For a small or self-publisher to even be considered by Ingram, it must offer at least 10 different titles. Even then, one’s books must go through a very picky vetting process. By using LS, all that goes by the wayside and your books will automatically be in Ingram’s system, and they’re not the only ones. The other distribution partners include: Baker and Taylor (2nd largest book distributor), NACSCORP ( an Ingram college bookstore distributor ), Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Espresso Book Machine (often used by large bookstores for on the spot POD), Eden Interactive Ltd. (a British Christian resource company), Aphrohead (a British discount book & music mail order company). and I.B.S – STL U.K (the leading British Bible and Christian Book charity). That’s an amazing distribution force and LS has already done the hard, expensive work.

Costs

First comes the one time set up charge of $75. This is fixed, so the per book impact is a function of how many books you get printed. If you had 100 books printed, that charge would be 75 cents per book. An annual cost is $12 per ISBN to be listed in their catalog. That’s a no-brainer decision. Printing costs are based on either 50 lb white paper or 55 lb creme paper with black ink. The covers are 4 color with coating. They can render several format sizes and binding types. My 1st book runs 212 pages (they need 4-page signatures). The last two pages must be blank for their use of their barcode on the last page. The printing cost for my book in a standard trade soft cover format would be $3.65 per book (plus $0.75 setup and $0.12 catalog) for an order of 100 books. That is very reasonable for digital printing. Compare that to the quotes you’ll get from vanity presses. Hah!

Layout

They will provide a cover template based on the number of pages in the book so the trim and the spine measurements will be accurate. This will contain an ELAN barcode on the back, so you won’t have to bother buying one of those separately. They have free downloadable guideline manuals on interior design dimensions and other layout considerations, which are very helpful.

Services

These are too numerous to go into detail here. I recommend you go to https://www.lightningsource.com/ and peruse. Be sure to download all their free manuals and their application blanks, which include many pages of detailed information. You can have books printed in lots of 50 and you can have onesys and twosys printed for the various distribution partners, and LS will handle all the fulfillment and invoicing chores to the partners.

Admin

The registration process is a little involved. You are expected to provide your own ISBNs and BISACs.

[Publetariat Editor’s note: see this post from Walt Shiel for more information about BISACs]

Once you are in their system and all admin loose ends are finalized (3 business days for digital submissions), you can expect turnaround times of 2 business days for paperbacks and 5 for hardcovers, plus shipping time for printing. One cool aspect is they have a UK facility as well as their Tennessee headquarters. This gives you direct access into the Euro business environment. How cool is that?

Larger Orders

Once your book has proved out and you decide to have it printed in larger amounts by traditional offset printing technology, LS will be happy to render you a bid for that service. Since I am not at that level yet, I don’t know how their rates compare; however, I’ll be sure to give them a chance. If they’re anywhere in the ballpark, I’ll let them have the job out of sheer convenience and simplicity. If not, oh well.

In Sum

So far I’ve covered the basics of ebook, audio download, and POD publishing. Hopefully this has given you a toehold into the process of modern book publishing. I’d love to hear your comments and field those questions I am able to answer.

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

Kudos to Publisher MacMillan for Speaking Up, Even if….

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Along with most citizens of Kindle Nation, I happen to believe that some of the big publishers are making a big mistake by trying to control retail ebook prices and raise those prices by 30 to 50 percent. This mistake is compounded, in my view, by the apparent circumstance of its having been arrived at through a collusive, anti-consumer process in which the "Apple 5" of MacMillan, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, Penguin, and HarperCollins have been lured by Steve Jobs into trying to fix prices and restructure retail relationships all at once.

That being said, congratulations to MacMillan CEO John Sargent for having the guts and transparency to speak up and address readers directly in this post on the company’s blog yesterday:

Macmillan CEO John Sargent on the agency model, availability and price

I had been critical of Sargent previously for addressing his earlier comments only to authors and literary agents, and consequently trying to position them to speak up on his and his company’s behalf, and this new post is well worth reading. He has not changed my mind, and I doubt he will change the minds of many ebook readers, but we will see. There are dozens of comments that give a good sense of the range of views generally in the ebook pricing controversy, and you may want to add your voice to those of other readers.

There are reasons for  optimism about the way that this will play out, and I see glimmers of hope both in the fact that Random House has yet to join the Apple 5 and in the fact that Sargent cracks open the door of flexibility an inch or two by acknowledging that some ebooks will be priced lower than $12.99 during their "hardcover new release" period. If readers are in a position where they are able to make buying decisions based on price as well as interest in particular books, it will be easier for publishers to gather information about the importance of competitive pricing.

Credit should be given to Sargent for staying away from two "that dog won’t hunt" arguments, at least for now:
 

  • He doesn’t try to claim that these dramatic increases are based on cost.
     
  • He doesn’t try to justify these dramatic increases by saying they will be good for authors or even lead to higher royalties for authors.

One omission that hurts his case involves the actual price that consumers usual pay for hardcover new releases. It is a classic  case of apples and oranges for Sargent to compare the hardcover suggested list prices of $25 to $35 with the $12.99 to $14.99 prices the Apple 5 wants to fix for ebooks. The retailers responsible for most hardcover book sales in the U.S. (Amazon, the chains, and the big box stores) have been discounting most hardcover new releases by 25 to 46% for years, and MacMillan is not taking any steps to limit this discounting. With publishers insisting that no discounting be applied to ebooks, the actual terms of comparison should be between $13-$15 ebooks and $15-$18 hardcovers, which doesn’t quite rise to the level of Sargent’s claim of "a tremendous discount from the price of the printed hardcover books."

 

This is a cross-posting from Stephen Windwalker’s Kindle Nation Daily blog.

Branding And Publishing Strategies

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With this cross-posting, the very knowledgeable yet down-to-Earth Mick Rooney joins Publetariat’s roster of regular contributors. 

Today, publishers are looking more to cut back on the amount of titles they release and focus their marketing clout and expenditure on extracting as much as possible from the branding of high-end authors. That doesn’t mean mainstream publishing editors aren’t open to new authors with an original book or voice. It just means the playing field is getting a little less hospitable.

There seem to be a lot less players on the playing field and the substitution bench is getting crowded and our publishing managers are getting evermore conservative, unwilling to risk a late substitution from an unproven player in an effort to hold out and still win the game. Author solutions services will often use this argument to hook you into their services. Consider that almost all writers you read started out as unknowns, published a first book, broke the so-called mold, achieved what you might consider impossible or hopeless, but remember, they almost all did it by pursuing the commercial route, either directly, or via a literary agent. They, and the people who represented them, read their first book, believed in their brand, and managed to connect and sell it to readers.

Certainly, we are seeing more and more books coming out through alternative channels, be it self-publishing, or the flourishing array of small presses, some with as little as three or four titles per year. Unfortunately, authors who explore alternative routes to mainstream publishing often don’t have a brand—scratch—aren’t a brand of themselves—even heavier scratch—don’t even understand what a brand is in publishing of any route.

Dan Brown is a brand. Jodi Picoult is a brand. Stephen King is a brand. Hell, British comedienne, Jo Brand, is a fucking brand in name as well as comic execution. Double hell, Sarah Palin’s even got her political PR team to turn her into the ultimate Hockey Mom-Rottweiler brand and one day she could be your president! All the above players have been ploughing the playing field for a long, long time. They understand PR, media, and most of all, creating their own brand.

Picoult has deftly rattled off novel after novel about family and relationships, posing moral and philosophical dilemmas for many years—what if I gave birth to twins and they turned out to be reincarnations of Jesus and Lucifer? Would I love them both just as much? That’s Picoult signature and brand and she is wonderful at what she does. Think the Jerry Springer show on sedatives. And Picoult, more importantly, knows it, and so does her agent and publishers. Having a brand is one thing—having people around you or the ability within yourself to exploit this is entirely another.

In my 2010 predictions, I said we could see authors who enjoyed moderate success at commercial publishing houses find it increasing difficult to win over their editors with their latest opus. Indeed, I qualified that by saying we will see some big enough names jump from the mother ship and join the burgeoning independent family. Canongate did a great job in the UK with Obama. But the independent family is not necessarily self-publishing per say—rather the area of publishing where the medium-to-small press is not only deft at involving the author in every facet of book publicity, but damn well expects it.

The self-publisher must do this as a given. It’s not some publishing culture clique, vogue down them indie parts of the city—it’s a fucking financial necessity—resulting in a sink or swim book. Broadly, I do welcome the approach of a well-thought out, condensed, homogenised, marketing campaign, and so should any passionate author worth their salt—provided their new-found small press is not, in turn, running the legs off the author as if they were some form of new marketing donkey (read camel if you want to be upmarket) for the solution to the rigours of economic decline and creating a bottom-basement publishing empire…eh, from the bottom up!

Bob Miller and HarperStudio have been getting this new strategy of publishing right over the past twelve months. If you want an author to do some of the donkey marketing work, with finesse, then the publishing partnership/contract needs to recognise this and reward the author through an increased royalty share. There are some really strong UK publishers in the independent field well-placed to adopt some of these strategies. Salt Publishing has had a real go at it, but economics have played much of a part in 2009 and it looked touch and go for them for a while. They are not out of the rapid waters yet, and I seriously feel they need to look at their royalty structure to survive (single digit royalties just aren’t cricket in the independent game anymore) and pick up the really big fish from the mainstream arena if they are to see out 2010 and really develop as a true independent of great promise.

There are other great pretenders, Two Ravens Press, Snowbooks—I equate them with publishers like Soho Press or Soft Skull Press (arty, urban and eclectic), or their musical equivalents of the early 1980’s, Rough Trade and 4AD, highly independent but crucially with a definitive branding and an extraordinary ability to identify that brand and the creators of it, through to reaching out to an audience/reader and connecting with them.

So whatever the origin and the route to readership, independent publisher, small press or self-publishing author—what’s the brand and how do we identify and find it?

Well, it’s not the norm; otherwise we wouldn’t have independent operating authors or publishers. We’d just be selling plain vanilla ice-cream all the time. But, just sometimes, someone likes their vanilla with cherries in it, or curious wee green bits—we taste first, savour and enjoy, before we actually discover the wee green bits are pieces of pistachio nuts. It’s only then we ascribe a tag, a flavour, a definition and a brand to them. Good marketing and branding starts out with absolutely nothing, and ends up with something glorious and unique. Bad marketing starts out with something and tries to make it something it will never be. Bad marketing will never separate the wolf from the pack, nor the gem that sits amongst the stones at the bottom of the sea. So, again, what leads to good branding, identifying and selling the idea of a book?

Branding is not one book, as such, but its inception and origin must at least start there.

Every publisher and agent you will contact wants you to tell them everything about your book in one concise short sentence (that’s about 0-12 words, tops, 15 words, and after that I’ll have to kill you). It’s tougher than it sounds. Try it. If you can’t; two things, one, maybe your book needs a sharper focus. Its core idea and branding should shine through after just a few pages; and two, maybe you don’t understand your own book as well as your readers can define it.

Creating something often allows us to overly immerse ourselves in the result of our endeavours, and we don’t see our book’s simple necessity and message. It’s also what a good editor worth their salt is looking for—something clear, unique and different. This is also the true definition of what independent publishing is.

At large publishing houses, often a promising manuscript will have to be read by an editor, then, outside readers, and ultimately, the commissioning editor before it is passed to the sales and marketing team. A manuscript can fall at any of the latter hurdles, but it helps if the first key editor sees the light shining from your manuscript. Too often, set formulas, and prescribed ideas of manuscripts that went before can influence what falls on the commissioning and sales desks. This is why a skilled literary agent who believes in the merit of your work and can see the branding possibilities of your work and can help to push and guide a manuscript through these treacherous waters.

So, how does Jodi Picoult fair in our branding exercise? OK, 15 words max.

“What if I gave birth to Jesus and Lucifer? Would I love them both equally?”

Holy shit! Just in at 15 words. I think this can still be tweaked, but what the hell. I found my first novel Academy really difficult to market and brand. It was a highly complex, historical and dark novel. My subsequent book was far more esoteric and experimental, and, yet, advanced copies and readers presented its tag and branding within a few days—where cruelty meets beauty—four words.

Branding one book can be difficult. I think it gets easier the more books an author writes. And so, it should if the author is making defined and progressive development in their books and writing style. I am lucky in my time to have met and even befriended a great many authors. One thing is clear when we discuss branding for an author and their books. It takes time. There is no author I know of, and I mean no author, who writes successfully full time and managed to achieve it after a book or two. Those who do manage to write full time have long identified their brand and managed to connect that brand with an established readership after about four or five books whether they have achieved it through mainstream, small press, e-publishing or self-publishing.
 

This is a cross-posting from Mick Rooney‘s POD, Self-Publishing and Independent Publishing blog.

Common Misconceptions About Publishing: #1

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This post, from author Charlie Stross, originally appeared on his Charlie’s Diary blog on 2/23/10.

I’m back home, I’m over the jet lag (for now), and I’m looking for something to write about.

It struck me, reading the comments on my various postings about the Amazon v. Macmillan spat in January, that many people don’t have the first clue about how the publishing business works — or even what it is.

Publishing is a recondite, bizarre, and downright strange industry which is utterly unlike anything a rational person would design to achieve the same purpose (which I will loosely define for now as "put authors books into the hands of readers while making a profit, to the satisfaction of all concerned"). So over the next few blog entries I’m going to make some notes about what’s going on …

Misconception #1: The publishing industry makes sense.

Most discussions of publishing take it as axiomatic that there is a thing called the publishing industry and that the entities within it look similar and work pretty much the same way. Nothing could be further from the truth.

As an author of commercial science fiction and fantasy novels, which is a highly restrictive category I mostly deal with a very specific type of publisher: a mass-market commercial fiction publisher — as opposed to, for example, a University press, a small press, or a vanity press. (NB: the word "press" is often used to mean "publisher", even in this day and age when almost all publishers have outsourced the inky job of running a printer to someone else.) Here’s how the mass-market commercial fiction publishers are structured:

Read the rest of the post, and series, on Charlie Stross‘s Charlie’s Diary.

You Need Google Alerts

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Hey, wouldn’t it be great if you had a little brother or sister hanging out on the interwebz all day and tattling on anyone who said anything about you or your work online? Then you could quickly respond with appreciation to any kudos, and if it seemed like it would do any good, with damage control to any not-so-kudos. As it turns out, you already do have just such a little tattle-tale, ready and waiting to report back to you. Its name is Google Alerts.

How To Use Google Alerts
The way it works is simple: you go to the Google Alerts page and set up a separate Alert for each word or phrase you’d like reported back to you. Note that you don’t have to have a Google or Gmail account to do this.


 

Under "Type" you can specify whether you want the Alert to search News (news reporting sites), Blogs, Web (non-blog websites), Video (video sharing sites like YouTube), Groups (online communities), or Comprehensive (any mention on any site). Under "How often" you can tell Google Alerts to notify you as-it-happens, once a day or once a week. Anytime the word or phrase you’ve specified turns up online, Google Alerts sends you an email with a link to the page where the mention occurred. For "Email length" you can choose an upper limit of 20 results or 50 results per email notification. Then you just enter your email address, click the Create Alert button, and your personal tattle-tale is on the job.


What Alerts Should Authors Have?

I recommend authors set up alerts for their author or pen name(s), the titles of each of their books, the name(s) of their blog(s) and/or website(s), and the names of any events, sites, etc. with which the author is affiliated. I also recommend the following settings for Alerts:

Type: Comprehensive – so you don’t miss any mentions

How Often: once a day or once a week – so you’re not inundated with Alert emails

Email Length: up to 20 results – this limit will probably far exceed the actual number of results in your Alerts for a very long time
 

Be sure to enter your Alert search terms the same as you would in a search engine. Use quotation marks around phrases and full names to avoid a lot of incorrect results. For example, if I entered the Alert search for Publetariat’s Author Workshop Cruise like this:

Author Workshop Cruise

my Alert would include any references to "Author", "Workshop", or "Cruise". If I enter the search term like this:

"Author Workshop Cruise"

my Alert will only include references to the entire phrase, "Author Workshop Cruise".

Alerts based on general search terms will return a lot of false positives even when you employ quotation marks, but it can’t be helped in some cases. For example, I’ve set up an Alert for ‘ "Snow Ball" + novel ‘ to be notified anytime my novel Snow Ball is being bandied about online, but I also get a lot of hits from people who are talking about about actual balls of snow. Still, I’d rather scan through a few false positives each day than stay in the dark about it when people are talking about my book.

Only people with Google/Gmail accounts can make changes to their existing Alerts, and this is accomplished via the "Manage Alerts" link in any alert email. Users without Google/Gmail accounts can only delete existing Alerts and add new ones. If you don’t have a Google/Gmail account and you need to change one of your Alerts, here’s how to do it:

1. Copy down the parameters of the Alert from within one of its Alert emails, and mark the email with a star or file it in a location where you can easily locate it later

2. Go to the Google Alerts page and create a new Alert, using as many of the parameters you copied as you wish, and changing any you need to change

3. After you’ve received an Alert from the newly-created version (so you know it’s working), return to the Alert email from which you copied the parameters, and click the "Delete this alert" link

How To React To An Alert

When an Alert notifies you of a positive mention, go to the site and see if comments are enabled. If they are, leave a note of thanks to the post’s author, along with any additional remarks you can offer about the article, discussion topic, or post in question. Be sure to check off the "be notified of any responses" box, if there is one, so if anyone replies to your comment you’ll be notified and can come back to respond. Also be sure to spread the word by sharing a link to the page whenever appropriate. This is a win-win that rewards the person who mentioned you or your work by driving traffic to their site, and strengthens your author platform by demonstrating that people are saying nice things about you or your work.

You will be amazed at what a big impact your response and publicity can have on the people who’ve mentioned you or your work. They will feel validated and appreciated, and will be that much more likely to sing your praises whenever the opportunity arises.

When an Alert notifies you of a negative mention, you’ll need to decide whether or not it will be productive for you to respond. In most cases, it isn’t. Please see these posts for additional guidance:

Congratulations, You Get To Be The Bigger Person Now

Internet Defamation, Author Platform, And You

So head on over to Google Alerts and get your personal tattle-tale on the job right away!


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

5 Favorite Fonts For Interior Book Design

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There’s no bigger decision you make in designing a book than picking the body typeface. A book by its nature is a long reading experience, and as book publishers we want our books to be as easy to read as possible while communicating the author’s intent. Style and fashion also play their part in many book designs, particularly in popular niches. The accumulated expectations of 500 years of book readers also come into play. Books are pretty conventional objects, after all.

Some fonts really lend themselves to book design while others, which look good in a brochure or on a business card or billboard, make odd, unreadable books. Any idiosyncrasy in the type design will be magnified by the repetition of typesetting 75,000 or 100,000 words in thousands of lines on hundreds of pages.

So the choice of your basic typeface looms large when you sit down to design your book. Here are five typefaces that have become favorites and which will almost always look great in your books too. You’ll find links to the vendor of the fonts as well.

  1. Garamond – Named after the famed 16th-century French “punch-cutter” or type designer Claude Garamond, many versions of this old style face exist. The one used most frequently now is the version designed by Robert Slimbach for Adobe. It’s known for its graceful, flowing style and humanistic elegance. Here’s a sample:

    Get Garamond here
    book-design-type-sample-garamond

  2. Janson – Designed by the Hungarian Nicholas Kis in the 17th century, the design was mistakenly attributed to the Dutch printer Anton Janson. It is a strong and elegant face with marked contrast between thin and thick strokes, and may be the most popular text face for fine bookmaking. Here’s a sample:

    Get Janson here
    book-design-type-sample-janson

  3. Bembo – Bembo, another old style typeface, was based upon a design by Fracesco Griffo, who worked for famed early printer and publisher Aldus Manutius in Venice in the 15th and early 16th century. It was a clear attempt to bring the humanist script of the finest scribes of the day to the printed page, and served as the chief inspiriation to Claude Garamond, among others. Bembo has a classic beauty and readability that are unmatched.

    Get Bembo here
    book-design-type-sample-bembo

  4. Caslon – One of the most popular text typefaces of the 18th and 19th centuries, Caslon was designed by William Caslon in England in the early 18th century. An old-style face modeled on early Dutch originals, Caslon has an appealing irregularity and creates a distinctive texture on the page. Many people recognize Caslon from its extensive use in textbooks. Here’s a sample:

    Get Caslon here
    book-design-type-sample-caslon

  5. Electra – A 1935 design by the prolific type designer D.W. Dwiggins, Electra creates a distinctive “color” and evenness on a printed page. It’s inventor said he wanted Electra to excel at setting down warm human ideas, to endow it with a warmth of blood and personality. Here’s a sample:

    Get Electra here
    book-design-type-sample-electra
    Although it would be easy to fill a book with samples of great text typefaces, it’s also true that many professional book designers could, if necessary, limit themselves to just these five fonts and continue to create great—and greatly varied—book designs, for years to come.

    So when it comes time to select the typeface for your next book, choose one of these five and rest assured that you have made a great selection.

    Those are my favorites. What about yours?

 

This is a cross-posting from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.

Open-source .epub vs. Adobe .pdf

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Over the past few days I’ve been reading up on e-book file formats. I have a collection of short stories I want to publish, and I have a working understanding of the technology that readers will use to embrace that content, but until recently I haven’t worried too much about delivering content to that technology. (The main reason for my delay is simply the pace of change. Time spent trying to understand or master e-content technology six months ago would have put me at buggy-whip risk.)

As luck would have it, Mark Coker just released data about the file formats most in use on Smashwords, his e-publishing site. At the same time, Joel Friedlander pointed me to a useful video tutorial about formatting content using Adobe’s InDesign software, which seems to be the tool of choice for many people. From these two sources of information I was able to understand and easily navigate the first fork in the road on my own publishing journey.  

Like any author, what I want is for my text — the words I’ve written using whatever tools I’ve chosen to use — to be available to as many people as possible. That’s going to be my main, unchanging goal, no matter what else happens in the future. Because of the technological time we live in, reaching that goal means providing my text in various file formats so it can be accessed by the end user. Ideally there would be only one file format for publishing text, and it would be open source — meaning no one would own or control that particular format, and anyone could use it without having to pay a per-use fee or buy a proprietary application. (For obvious reasons, this is not the preferred course for companies looking to profit from the dissemination of text.)

According to Mark Coker’s file-format data covering the past year on Smashwords, Adobe’s proprietary .pdf file format was the most-used format at 35%, followed by the open-source .epub format at 22%. Mark also noted that this was a change from the previous year, when .epub beat .pdf handily.

Why would a proprietary format beat out an open-source format? In this case the answer has as much to do with the demands of the content being published as it does with functionality of the file formats being used. As I recently learned, the .epub format’s strength is that it creates reflowable text — meaning text that adjusts itself depending on the size of the display, the font being used (if the user is able to change fonts), the size of the text, and various other variables.

From the point of view of many authors, however, this is also .epub’s weakness. If what you are publishing is simply a long string of text — as most fiction tends to be — then .epub works fine. If your content includes tables, images, sidebars and other layout-specific elements, then .epub quickly becomes a nightmare because you cannot control when and how these elements will display across all of the various e-readers and viewing applications.

The .pdf file format solves these layout-specific problems because it creates a static image — a picture — of each page. From the author’s point of view this is a godsend, because content will always display the same way for every user. For users, however, there is a downside. Precisely because .pdf text is not reflowable, it will not resize to fit each device or user setting. This means some users on some devices will need to zoom in and out to clearly see things like captions, table data, or sidebar text that may be in a smaller font. All of the information will be present as the author intended, but if the original page was 9 inches high by 6 inches wide, and the end user is looking at that same content on a Kindle or iPhone, there’s probably going to be some zooming involved — provided the device supports that functionality.

Because the stories I want to publish are straight text, the reflowable .epub format not only meets my needs as an author, but it provides the most transparent reading experience for end users. That’s a win-win for me because I don’t have to make any trade-offs between my own authorial needs and the end-user reading experience. Having said that, the appeal of the .pdf format is clear because it preserves all the work an author puts into page layout and structure. If I had content that was dependent on images, data or layout, I’d have to decide whether to use .pdf, or how to translate all of those assets into .epub-friendly equivalents. Ugh.

As a follow-up, I encourage you to watch the InDesign tutorial I mentioned above. I learned a lot in the few short minutes it took to watch, and I think it will give you valuable insight into these issues. It will also introduce you to the learning curve you’ll be facing if you decide you want to do some of the more complex stuff yourself.

As for me, I won’t be buying InDesign any time soon, for three reasons. First, at $699 it’s pricey. Second, the life of a successful writer will be defined as much by keeping costs under control as by anything else, so there aren’t going to be a lot of dollars going out until there are a lot of dollars coming in. Third, if I ever decide the software is worth having, I’ll still want to compare the total cost (in time and money) of buying it, learning how to use it and paying for future upgrades with the total cost of having someone else provide that service. If I can get the end result cheaper I’ll go with the service: if not, I’ll buy the software.

It should be noted that it is not necessary to buy InDesign, or any Adobe application, in order to create a .pdf file from most commonly created source text. Adobe’s proprietary tool for creating .pdf files is called Acrobat, and it currently sells for $299 in the U.S. The application that most computer users use to read .pdf files is called the Acrobat Reader, and it is distributed free — meaning anyone can freely read content that someone else has created as a .pdf. What is less commonly known is that the OpenOffice suite of applications includes a .pdf writer in its Write application, allowing documents created in a wide variety of file formats (including MS Word .doc) to be exported as .pdf files. More info here (scroll down).


This is a cross-posting from Mark Barrett‘s Ditchwalk.

Editing Your Own Book

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Last summer, I gave away copies of my latest book, "A Promise Is A Promise" ISBN 0982459505 at my high school reunion to 22 people. My husband and I had a delightful evening, reminiscing with my former classmates. One of the men at my table happened to be a former neighbor when we were growing up. We rode the same school bus. His family bought gas at my parents filling station.

A discussion was started with this man and his wife about my book writing. I admitted I wished all my books were better edited. I’ve had some editing help over the years and constructive criticism from a former teacher which I greatly appreciated, but I hated to always ask her to help me. I’m sure when she first offered she thought I might write one book and no more. The task of editing a book is a large one for anyone who didn’t expect to get paid for their efforts. Anyone who volunteered to edit one of my books could expect to find I liked to write books so the editing isn’t going stop with the next one. That is if the volunteer editor wants to read another book and another and another. That would be up to the volunteer.

Out of the blue after the reunion, I received an email offer from the classmate’s wife to edit my next book just for the privilege of reading it because she likes Amish stories. (Soon to be released "The Rainbow’s End – Nurse Hal Among The Amish – Book 2 . Now for me that is an offer I couldn’t refuse. A fresh eye. I feel as if a writer editing his/her own work is like a doctor treating himself or a lawyer defending himself. Not a good idea. When I read my work my brain reads the words the corrected way I know it should be and skips over the editing errors. Putting a story away and going back later does help find some mistakes. For me reading every other chapter works. That takes the story out of context so I’m reading the sentence structure more for errors rather than the story. Printing the story out to look at hard copy helps but ink is an expense. Takes most of a cartridge to print every manuscript. Even that doesn’t help me catch all the mistakes, because I am too close to the writing. However, I’m thinking giving someone else a hard copy to edit is worth the cost. I can afford a cartridge for that. I mailed a hard copy to my new editor right away.

I just got the manuscript back and the simple errors are so much easier to see once the correction is pointed out. I looked through the manuscript and can’t believe I made such mistakes. I emailed my new editor a thank you for the great job she did. She said she’d be glad to read the next story for me. I emailed back that the next book was a western sequel and not Amish. To my amazement, she emailed that she didn’t care. She likes my writing so much that she wants to read any book I write so send them to her. She says my writing is as good as Cindy Woodsmall and some of the Amish writers. What a compliment!

I find editing errors in almost every published book I read that experienced editors working for a publisher skipped over. I see the errors because I’m looking for them. Along with that, I watch sentence structure and the way a story is put together. All that is a learning experience for me. Does it take me longer to read a book than it would most people? It sure does, but watching how other authors write helps me become better as an author.

Editing by a professional is expensive. An expense that can leave a self published author in the red if the book doesn’t sell well. If I was well known and selling lots of books, I wouldn’t mind taking that expense off my income tax, but I have to get to that point first. I’m not there yet. I’ve heard of authors that spare no expense to self publish their work, go in debt and don’t sell enough books to pay the debt. I didn’t want that to happen to me.

That doesn’t change the fact I feel bad because of the mistakes in my book. I mention it to my book buyers once in awhile. Usually, they tell me that they are reading the book for the content. I write so well, they are absorbed in the story. They don’t notice editing mistakes while they are finding how what happens to the characters. One buyer brought one of my books to my attention. She thought I might like to know my editor missed four typos. I emailed her an apology with the explanation that I did my own editing. She was in awe that I could write a book that was that well done. I appreciated her comment. Still I stopped print on that book and reedited it to get rid of those four errors. Made me feel better.

　

　

　

　

 

Smug

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I watched the most godawful movie the other day. It’s my fault, usually my 10-minute rule is pretty good. But somehow this one lasted beyond 10 minutes and we suffered through it. [New York, I Love You] With a cast of people who I generally like, an interesting soundtrack, and pretty good cinematography I had to think about why it was so terrible to watch. First, the stories were not compelling. They were overly dramatized in these long cinematic sequences.

It was smug. It was self-gratuitous.

It was like the film was masturbating right in front of our eyes. It was fully enjoying itself, in all its glory, parading around in its celebrities, music, and eye-candy. Well guess what, Hollywood, you clearly made this film for yourself and not us, the viewers. Not to mention the inaccuracies, which grate on a viewer like nothing else. NEVER in my life has anyone ever gotten into my cab; and I have never gotten into anyone else’s cab. Doesn’t happen. So, L.A., please don’t use that stupid scene again.

So it got me thinking about self-gratuitous art (elephant dung and Jesus pictures), and self-gratuitous music (5 minute long guitar solos), and self-gratuitous cooking (obscure, tasteless variations of offal with fruit combinations), and self-gratuitous dance. And of course, self-gratuitous writing.

What exactly do I mean by self-gratuitous? Being different just for the sake of being different, without any particular meaningful purpose is a component of this characterization. Or writing overly descriptive passages that don’t serve the story–or worse, divert from the character development or the story. When I took my first acting class, the instructor kept telling us not to act self-gratuitously. I had no idea what he meant and I was terrified of violating this cardinal rule, yet I didn’t know what to do to avoid doing so. Then I watched two guys do the seminal passage from Waiting for Godot and it was just dripping with an indescribable smugness that our instructor couldn’t even explain, but to stomp around and throw things and curse in Russian. It was then that I learned what it was to be smug on stage.

One could even argue that the beloved Chuck Bukowski wrote self-gratuitously. Certainly some poetry is self-gratuitous, serving only the writer in the secret code of meaning. Experimental writing walks a fine line; and self-gratuitous to one may be high art to another. But the discerning judgment lies with the reader, ultimately; and that is what should keep any writer (and artist, musician, filmmaker, fashion designer and dancer) staying on the right side of the self-gratuitous argument.

Gaining confidence in your art and writing shouldn’t necessitate smugness; but it also shouldn’t be a continuous struggle, right? As I get started on my new novel whose characters I’m absolutely in love with, I will keep that front of mind through the duration of my writing so they don’t become small details of masturbatory writing exercises.

This is a cross-posting from Jenn Topper‘s Don’t Publish Me! blog.

Writers Need Social Media… and Social Media Needs Writers

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I’m struck by 2 posts today that I need to share with anyone who has not “got” social media yet. The bottom line is that authors/writers need social media and vice versa. It is increasingly important if you want to connect, sell, network and promote yourself and your books.

First, watch this brilliant video by @equalman , author of  Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business
. It is an eye opening look at the importance of social media and also a brilliant example of a book trailer (It made me ready to buy the book and I’m already a believer!)


 

Second, read this post by publisher Jane Friedman which includes “Hands down, online tools are the fastest and easiest way for unknown writers to begin building an audience, get better at their craft, and network with others who can make a difference in their careers.”

Basically – you need to promote your book in some way in order to get readers and sell books. Social media online is a brilliant way to do it. It is fun and you need to make it a part of your life. Yes, you will spend too much time doing it, but that’s because it’s a) fun and b) it works!

My own evidence:

  • 95% of my book sales have come from people reading this blog, finding me on Twitter or Facebook or finding me through other social media sites. The other 5% are family and friends who would have bought anyway!
     
  • 100% of my course sales for the Author 2.0 Program and over 3000 downloads of the Author 2.0 Blueprint have come from the same sources
     
  • My top 5 traffic sources for this blog include: Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon – social media sites
     
  • Most of my networking is now done online and I have met amazing people from all over the world, including most of my podcast guests. Most of this is due to Twitter.

If you are just starting in the social media world, here are some related posts for you:

istock_000006428830xsmallSocial media sites also need writers. The essence of web 2.0 is connection and user created content. Everyone who has a blog is a writer of some sort and everyone can be a publisher online. The people with the best skills to take advantage of this – WRITERS!

Yes, you have the skills people want in this content driven market, and your writing can sell your books and promote yourself. So, if you haven’t jumped into social media yet, now’s the time!

 

Here’s where you can find me if you’d like to connect – I’d love to hear from you! (I am on many more sites but these are my main ones!)

Twitter: @thecreativepenn

Facebook: joanna.penn

LinkedIn: Joanna Penn

FriendFeed: Joanna Penn

Flickr: TheCreativePenn

YouTube: TheCreativePenn

 

This is a reprint of a blog post which originally appeared on The Creative Penn website on 8/26/09.

Proofing Thoughts

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I just finished reformatting my 2nd mystery, Firebug, for uploading into Smashwords as an ebook. That was a worthwhile undertaking because, as in the 1st mystery, I found all kinds of proofing errors. This is after I had several people proof and professional editing. I had gone over it several times myself. The most common problem was using two words when they should have been combined into one. Second most common error was dumb little typos such as ‘be’ when I meant ‘me.’ A few passive sentences were caught (just like this one).

Two things often improve the accuracy of the writing process: multiple pairs of eyes and time away from the work in progress. It’s hard to catch everything when we proof immediately after writing something. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. It means we should do an initial proof, let it sit for sometime, and then come back to proof again. It’s amazing what an expectant eye will do to trick you that first time through. I am not alone in this problem—it is common in the profession.

The lesson to be learned here is that we are not perfect. We ere and we miss things. Because I have to do a careful line-by-line edit when reformatting into an rtf for Smashwords, I am more likely to see things the computer catches. Thank goodness for those wavy red and green underlines.

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

 

[Publetariat Editor’s note: also see these articles on editing and revision here on Publetariat:]

Choosing A Freelance Editor: What You Need To Know
Five Lessons For DIY Line Editing
Five Of The Most Commonly Misspelled Expressions In The English Language
Focus On Editing
How to Write Tight – Self-Editing Tips to Make Your Manuscript Ready for Publication 
More On Revising And Editing
Phantom Editors and Writing ‘Mistakes’
Simple Math: Fewer Editors = More Mistakes
Ten Words You Need To Stop Misspelling
The 32 Most Commonly Misused Words And Phrases
The DumbLittleMan Guide To Comma Use
The Science of Editing
Why Do You Need an Editor?