Design

Articles about book and cover design, as well as design as it touches on aspects of author platform.

8 Simple Steps To Self-Publishing

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Thanks go to Self-Publishing Coach Shelley Hitz for contributing this guest post. 

Are you interested in self-publishing a book?

It might not be as much work as you think. In fact, if you already own a website or blog, you can seamlessly transform your most popular content into a book. Think about it: you can take the same great content you’ve already written for your site and reformulate it into a printed book, PDF eBook or audio book to make the most of all your hard work. Follow these steps and you’ll be well on your way to becoming a self published author, like me!

8 Simple Steps to Self Publishing Your Book:

  1. Create an outline and chapter layout using the best articles from your website or blog.
     
  2. Enter your content into a template formatted for your desired book size (i.e. Microsoft Word).
     
  3. Save your book as a PDF file.
     
  4. Select a designer for your book cover or design it yourself.
     
  5. Select a self publishing [services] company.
     
  6. Sign up for an account with your publisher and upload your documents.
     
  7. Begin promoting and selling copies of your book online, via your website or blog and in person.
     
  8. Finally, convert your book into various formats to get the most out of your work (i.e. PDF eBook, audio book and Kindle eBook).

That’s it!

I stumbled upon the concept of self publishing books in the fall of 2008 when one of our colleagues, a fellow speaker, showed me a copy of his self published book. Not only were his books affordable-they only cost him $2-$3 each-but their quality was excellent. And he also gained the instant credibility of being a "published author."

I thought, "I can do this!"

And believe it or not, after about one month of hard work, I was ready to publish a 190-page book based upon my website, Teen-Beauty-Tips.com.

How did I do it? I followed eight simple steps!

The Nuts and Bolts of Publishing My First Book

Step #1: To get started, I assembled my first draft based on the best articles from my website. Once I selected the articles, I decided on an outline for my book and formatted the content into chapters.

Step #2: I then decided on a book title, "Mirror Mirror…Am I Beautiful? Looking Deeper to Find Your True Beauty," and began the process of copying and pasting the text of my articles into a Microsoft Word template.

Step #3: Next, I converted my Word document into a PDF file using the free edition of PDF995 (to do this click on properties, then advanced option and select the "statement [5.5 X 8.5] " from the drop-down menu for the paper format).

Step #4: Since I was working on a very low budget, I decided I would use a DIY design approach and used Photoshop to create my book cover.

Step #5: After more research on self publishing, I decided to use CreateSpace (affiliated with Amazon), to publish my book. Why? Well, there are no upfront costs, they list you quickly with Amazon and I can buy books for less than $4 each to sell at events.

Step #6: Finally, I was ready to upload my files and order my proof copy! My 190-page black and white soft cover book cost a mere $3.13 + shipping, with the help of the Createspace Pro Plan.

Although the Pro Plan requires a one-time fee of $39, followed by a $5 annual fee, these small fees are well worth it! With the Pro Plan you gain significantly higher royalties and can also buy copies at a much lower cost to sell at events. Therefore, I highly recommend the Pro Plan for anyone interested in self publishing with Createspace.

Step #7: What a great feeling to self publish my first book! I immediately began selling copies online through my website and at speaking events.

Step #8: My final step was to create other versions of the same book. I chose to offer it digitally as a PDF eBook and give a free copy away to my newsletter subscribers. In a very small niche-Christian teen girls-this has helped to build my list to almost 3500 subscribers in a relatively short period of time.

I also recorded an audio version of my book using the free software, Audacity, and a $30 microphone. Once the audio files were completed, I began selling the MP3 downloads of the book through ClickBank and the CD version of the audio book using Kunaki. With Kunaki, I can buy CD’s for as little as $ 1 (+ shipping).

Finally, I expanded my book’s influence by making a version available for the Kindle. To convert my book into the Kindle format, I removed all of the pictures embedded in the Microsoft Word template and saved it in as a HTML document. I then uploaded my book to Kindle Direct Publishing, text and began offering the Kindle version from my website as well. You can see my sales page here.

Do I Make Money Selling Books?

I’ll be honest. In such a small and specialized niche, I’m not getting rich by selling books from my website. However, I am receiving regular paychecks from both online and offline sales. And as my website traffic increases (now over 1000 visitors per day), my sales also increase.

If you want to "make it big" in publishing, I recommend that you hire a professional to design your interior book template and your book cover design. I also recommend hiring a professional editor. After taking the DIY route initially, I did eventually decide to hire a designer to update my book cover.

And finally, if you want to truly self publish, I recommend that you start your own book publishing company and use Lightning Source. Be aware that it does require more time, money and effort upfront. However, in the end, you can earn more in royalties by self publishing through Lightning Source, especially if you want to sell books to international audiences or in bookstores. If you’re interested in using Lightning Source, I recommend reading a book by Dan Poynter called, "The Self Publishing Manual" to help guide you step by step.

You Can Do It!

Since you’ve already invested so much time and energy into writing your website or blog, why not take a little extra time and get the most from your content by repurposing it into a self published book? Follow my eight simple steps and you, like me, will soon be selling physical products like paperback books, audio CD’s as well as digital products like Kindle books, PDF eBooks and MP3 downloads from your website.

Are You Ready to Get Started?

If so, I recommend that you go and download my free book templates and then sign up for a free Createspace account. It costs you nothing and yet provides you with an easy action step toward achieving your goal of getting published.

And have fun…soon you’ll be a published author.

Shelley Hitz is an entrepreneur, author and speaker. Her website, Self Publishing Coach, provides resources and tutorials that help you publish and market your book. Discover 200+ free book marketing and author tools in Shelley Hitz’s 36-page free report. You can also find Shelley on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Self-Publishing Cover Art – Part One, Book Cover Design

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This post, by Katie Salidas, originally appeared on her Written in Blood site on 5/2/11.

Let’s face it; people do judge a book by its cover. Book browsers will only give a book a few seconds glance. Good cover can draw potential readers in whereas a poorly designed cover, can send them screaming for the hills.

This is what drives many people to pay hundreds of dollars to do a cover for them. I’m not saying that’s wrong. Just please remember your budget.

Your cover should do three things: Advertise the book, showcase the author, and set the “feel” of the book.

That’s the first thing people are going to see when they look at your work. So it goes without saying, that you cover needs to really grab their attention. It needs to stand out among thousands of other books within its genre.

If you’re book catches their eye, it might get them to read the back cover, or product description (for online shopping). Beyond that, they may take a chance on a sample, or decide to buy the book right there. And that’s exactly what you want.

Remember this when thinking of cover design. It’s the most important visual sales tool you have, and worth spending a little extra time and a few extra dollars on. Cover art and editing are the two places where most of your budget will be spent (marketing being the remainder).

For most of us, cover art is something we will have to hire out for. We’re writers, that doesn’t mean we’re graphic artist. “Don’t quit your day job.” It’s okay to NOT be a graphic artist. If you don’t have the skills necessary to produce a professional-looking book cover, then you’ll need to get in touch with a freelance artist.
 

Read the rest of the post, and also see Part Two, on Katie Salidas‘ Written in Blood.

Book Formatting Problems and Treatments

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Whenever I get a manuscript to edit, I can often guess the author’s age range if a common formatting problem pops up. For those older folks who learned to keyboard on typewriters, they were taught to always hit the space bar twice at the end of a sentence. This is a big no-no for computer writing because it throws off page layout software, as far as spacing is concerned.

The double spaces show up as white holes on the computer screen and hardcopy printouts. “Oh no !” you say. “I just typed my whole book that way!” Don’t despair. This is an easily fixed problem in Word. Click on Edit and go down to Replace. Enter to spaces in the Find box. Enter one space in the Replace box. Click on the Replace All button. In case you may have entered even more spaces, keep clicking on it until multiple spaces have been eliminated.

Similar to that problem is the typing of spaces to indent paragraphs. Don’t do that. A text paragraph Is best indented by using the Style description. Click on any text paragraph and then click on “Normal” in the style palate. Then go to the right of the style’s title and click on the arrow to modify the Normal Style. Click on Format and then on Paragraph. Go to the Special Box and click on 1st Line. 0.5 inches is a little big, so try 0.25, which is about 3 characters wide. Click on OKs and Apply until all the text paras now have automated indents.

If you want something centered, don’t move it manually over with space (fix this in the same way you did the double space problem) and by creating a new style for centered text by defining its type of paragraph in the style description.

I just completed my judging of interior book designs for the Ben Franklin Awards. Even in this highly competitive contest, the following problem still cropped up in several books–using sans-serif fonts. Serifs, the little tiddles on letters, are necessary for our eyes to see closure to letters and words. Without them, our eyes quickly tire. Some folks use them to separate the main text style from the text used in information boxes. Rather than use a sans-serif font, use a drastically different serif font to delineate the difference. Sans serif font do have a place–on computer screens.

Finally, if writing a book ms, you can save each chapter individually if that helps you keep track. I’ve been guilty of this myself on some of my earlier books; however, if you’re going to send it to an editor or designer, put all the chapters together in one file in proper order. Don’t make the editor or designer do it for you.

Not all line and copy editors fix these problems, but because I am a book designer as well as an editor, I see these problems often enough to know they needed to be addressed here.

This is a reprint from Bob Spear‘s Book Trends.

Promote Your Books in the Publications Section on LinkedIn

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In a recent post, I gave instructions for promoting your books on your LinkedIn profile by using the Reading List by Amazon application to post a book cover image and a link to your book’s Amazon sales page.

Another way to get visibility for your books on LinkedIn is to use the new Publications section on the profile. The great thing about this Publications area is that you can list any type of publication, regardless of whether it is available on Amazon. You can even list free ebooks or newsletters.

Just follow these four easy steps to promote your books and other publications on LinkedIn:

1. Click on “Profile” and make sure you are on the “Edit Profile” tab.

2. Go to the “Are You Published” area and click on “Add Sections.”

LinkedIn3

Note: If you don’t see the “Are You Published” box on your profile, look for a similar box that says “Add sections to reflect achievements and experiences on your profile.”

3. On the next screen, click the “Publications” button on the left and then click the “Add to Profile” button.

LinkedIn4

4. Complete the publication description on the next screen, then click the “Add Publication” button.  Remember to include important keywords in your publication descriptions, to help people find your profile and your publications when they search by keyword.

Here is what the finished product looks like on my profile:

LinkedIn6

The book title is hyperlinked to the book sales page on my website. On my LinkedIn profile, the “Publications” section appeared below the “Experience” section, but you can move some of the sections around by dragging and dropping them.

To add additional books, go back into "Edit Profile" mode, scroll down to the "Publications" area, and click on "Add a Publication."

 

This is a reprint from Dana Lynn Smith‘s The Savvy Book Marketer.

Fun With Fonts: Identifont

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If you like typefaces, if you like to play around with your fonts while other kids are off doing piano lessons, if you keep noticing the typefaces on the restaurant menu, you need to know about Identifont.

Identifont is the coolest font site on the web. You might not expect that when you first go there, because it has none of the luscious typography of sites like I Love Typography, Typographica or Typophile. But it’s got something no other typopgraphy site has.

Identifont - Find Out The Name Of That Font!

Identifont, the brainchild of David Johnson-Davies was built around Artificial Intelligence (AI) software developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and launched in 2000. The site says it is the largest independent directory of typefaces on the internet. You can see by the updates that new type foundries are being added all the time.

Here’s what you’ll find at Identifont:

  1. Fonts by appearance—This is the heart and soul of Identifont. Through a series of simple, illustrated questions, the AI behind Identifont will help you figure out exactly what typeface is used on that book cover you really like. It takes an average of 15 questions to come to a conclusion, but I’ve found Identifont to be right most of the time I’ve used it. There’s really nothing else like it. Here’s a typical screen from the identifier, where I’m up to question #4:
    Identifont

    Click to enlarge

  2. Fonts by name—Maybe you remember that the font you want has “park” in it, but that’s all you remember. No problem, because Identifont will call up every font it has that gives even a partial match. This is a lifesaver also.

     

  3. Fonts by similarity—Another terrific utility. Perhaps you want something like the stylish Park Avenue, but not quite. This is a task that could take time to visit font websites and look through pages of samples. Not with Identifont. In a few seconds I had located this lovely Tiamaria, a typeface I had never heard of. Perfect.
    Identifont

    Click to enlarge

  4. Picture fonts—This will amaze you. Try entering anything here, like “dog” or “beach” and see what Identifont comes up with. It has such an enormous database of fonts it’s hard to stump it. Here’s one of the 18 fonts I got with a search on “balloon”:
    Identifont

    Click to enlarge

  5. Designers—Want info on a typeface designer, including links to all their fonts? Just enter a full or partial name, and you have it.

     

  6. Publishers—A huge collection of type foundries, with links to all their typefaces on Identifont.

There’s also a small collection of free type fonts, with links to download locations, and listings of the most popular fonts on the site in the past week. In addition, there are links to two associated websites:

  • Fontifier where you can turn your handwriting into a font
  • Fontscape, an independent directory of typefaces organized into unusual and useful categories.

If you like fonts, set a timer before you surf over to Identifont, because it’s easy to spend way too much time running searches through their database and marvelling at the sheer variety of the fonts it will return.

Identifont, a great tool and a heck of a lot of fun for type lovers. Try it.

 

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

Why Createspace Is Better Than Lightning Source

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This post, by Robin Sullivan, originally appeared on her Write to Publish blog on 2/13/11.

I promised this would be my next blog post and since I have others I want to get to it’s time to do this one. Let me start by saying that I was Lightning Source’s biggest cheerleader. When they came onto the scene they literally changed overnight the ability for an author to get a printed book at a reasonable price and for that I’ll be forever grateful. But…business is business and CreateSpace has one up’ed Lightning Source…I’m sorry my friend but I have to align with what will make the most money for my business.

For those that don’t know these are the two big players in the POD (print on demand business). They work similarly in that they are not publishers they are printers/distributors. They take your book and put it in dead tree formats. Both offer extensive services such as editing, layout, and cover design but you should NEVER purchase these services from either organization (You can get it better and cheaper elsewhere – sigh…another topic for another day). So for the sake of this post we’re going to talk about what you SHOULD use them for.
 

  • Producing high quality printed books
  • Distributing printing books.

QUALITY
Let’s first talk about the quality. They are nearly indistinguishable. (I suspect they are using the same equipment). The covers and interiors come out as good as any book you’ll find in a bookstore. Yes the covers are done with laser “toner” rather than “cymk” ink but unless you have a printer’s loop you’ll not notice. If none of my previous sentence made any sense to you, don’t worry – it just says that the quality is very good for both and you should not be concerned.

One difference….CS (CreateSpace from here on) uses a slightly thicker paper which I like marginally better. It’s not that big of a deal but gives a “slight” nod to CS on a point that is not very important in the grand scheme of things.

Another point that should be made…especially by people who publish through the likes of iUniverse and Xlibris etc. These companies use CS and LS for their printing. In the past I believe most of the big publishers used LS but I’m sure they “shop this around” frequently and I can’t say for sure who they use now but I’d lay dollars to donuts that it is one or the other of these two companies.

DISTRIBUTION – Lighting Source
The one very attractive thing that LS (Lightning Source from here on) has over CS is they are associated with Ingram. For those that don’t know this is the elephant in the publishing industry supplying the majority of the books to major bookstore chains. (Bookstores don’t want to write 10,000 checks to 10,000 publishers – the publishers all use Ingram and the bookstores write one check to one source). The whole reason I went with them is by being in the Ingram channel your books can be in any bookstore. A great “theory” but doesn’t really translate in practice. Being distributed through Ingram doesn’t mean store shelf space it means the “ability” to buy the book (How distributors work with book stores is again a whole new subject too big to get into today – another topic on the TBW (to be written) pile.)

Since I can’t get into the nitty-gritty details of distribution let’s just say that being in Ingram means that if someone walks into a store…doesn’t find the book on the shelf…they can go to the information desk and order it. That’s how it should work but it doesn’t always. Being POD has some issues in that the “payment” needs to be made at time of purchase and in general most bookstores pay after the fact – (or in the case of Borders not at all – but again a topic for another day — sigh) sometimes 60 – 120 days later. Again…in theory…if the person at the information desk is wiling to pay now and pickup later then they MIGHT be able to get the book this way but in my experience most stores say “we can’t order POD books”.

All this is a long way of saying being in Ingram should make it easy for your books to be purchased with bookstores but my testing has shown that this is not really true.

DISTRIBUTION – Create Space

Read the rest of the post on Robin Sullivan‘s Write to Publish blog, and for an opposing viewpoint, see this rebuttal from Zoe Winters.

Book Design For Self-Publishers: Workflow Overview

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Note from Joel Friedlander: This post is one of a series on Book Design for Self-Publishers. In the last article we looked at getting the raw materials for your book design project organized. Now it’s time to turn to the workflow for your book design project.

Do you really need to pay attention to your workflow? Isn’t it more work than you need to do just to get your book in print?

Well, yes and now. Workflow describes the order in which we’ll address the tasks that all together make up your book design process. For instance, stopping first to take stock of materials and aims, as we did in the last section, is a really helpful part of our workflow.

Properly sequenced, each task in the book design (and production) process naturally leads into the next tasks, and gives you the assurance that you haven’t neglected anything as you move forward.

I’d like to lay out for you a typical workflow that you can use or modify to meet your own needs. Every book is different, and every author has her own habits and preferences. Within those constraints, if you understand why the pieces fit together the way they do, you’ll have a more secure and efficient process getting to press.

Because this workflow describes the entire design and production process, I’m going to break it down into three distinct sequences, and we’ll look at each one separately.

Three Stages of Book Design Workflow

Here’s the way I’ve divided the major groups of tasks for book design:
 

  1. Design Stage
    Tasks in this stage include organizing your files, creating book page elements, experimenting and selecting typefaces to use in the book, selecting your trim size and binding, creating master pages, paragraph and character styles that embody the final design choices.

     

  2. Layout Stage
    In this stage you’ll flow text into your layout, create different sections, paginate the book, assign master pages, deal with local formatting issues, create part and chapter breaks, and add graphics, charts, tables, photographs, sidebars and other non-text elements.

     

  3. Production Stage
    Now that the book is coming together, you’ll be checking your work, adjusting the page length, killing widows and orphans, dropping in last-minute items like the copyright page and index, checking font usage and graphic links, and finally, creating the files you’ll need for printing.

Parallel with this workflow we’ll also look at two other areas that will merge with the creation of the interior of your book, each with their own discrete set of tasks:

  1. Graphics Workflow
    Books that rely on graphics need special attention to make sure your project will come together properly when the graphics meet the text when you layout your book.

     

    Whether you have 100 family photos or numerous charts and graphs, line drawings or other graphics, it makes sense to process these elements in the most efficient way.

  2. Cover Workflow
    The way we design and produce covers is a process all its own. Understanding a workflow that brings all the elements you need for your cover together at the right time can be a real help when you’re looking at a deadline approaching.

     

    With hardcover books we have to account for jackets and produce designs for the cases as well, so they get included here too.

Books are, by definition, long documents. One of the implications of working on a 90,000 word book is that small changes can have very large effects when multiplied by thousands of lines or hundreds of paragraphs. Workflow helps give us the best chance of getting our book through the process efficiently and safely.

In the next in this series we’ll look at the first step of interior book design and production—the Design Stage.

 

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

Authors Rewrite The Book On Self-Publishing

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This article, by Kim Ode, originally appeared on the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune site on 1/29/11.

Not so long ago, the way to get a book published was clear: Submit your work, twiddle your thumbs, get back the manuscript, send it out again. Eventually, if you were very good, or very lucky, a publisher would bite and, eventually, you’d be holding a book, no longer a mere writer, but an author.

Today, the digital world has ignited self-publishing, changing everything. Why wait for New York when you can plunk down your money and get a finished book in just a few months?

Make no mistake: It will be your responsibility to market it. Many reviewers and bookstores won’t take you seriously. And you may never earn back your investment, which could be as high as $20,000. Is it worth it? Apparently, it’s at least worth the risk. In 2007, about 134,000 books were self-published in the United States. In 2008, that rose to more than 285,000 and in 2009 soared to more than 764,000.

In contrast, traditional publishers produced about 288,000 books in 2009, almost stagnant from 289,000 the year before, according to the firm R.R. Bowker, which tracks the book industry.

In the Twin Cities, a growing number of "contract publishers" offer a variety of services for a fee, from professional editing to layout and cover design to help with marketing and distribution.

Brio, a contract publisher in Minneapolis, published 200 books last year. It could have published more, founder William Reynolds said, but he is willing to turn away some authors, telling them if their manuscripts are, well, awful. Just as some authors resist self-publishing to avoid the taint of a "vanity press," more self-publishers want to avoid the reputation of publishing anything for a price.

"It’s not fun to be a dream crusher," Reynolds said. Yet he regards dream-crushing as one of his more valuable services. Authors should expect to spend as much as $20,000 "to do it right," he said. "So if I’m going to be a dream-crusher, it’s medicine that’s got to be taken, because there are thousands of dollars on the line."

 

Read the rest of the article on the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune site.

Editor’s note: Publetariat founder April L. Hamilton disagrees with the "as much as $20,000" figure quoted as required to "do it right". She says, "With POD and ebooks, it’s readily possible to produce a quality book for a few thousand dollars or less, and most of your monetary investment should be made in professional editing, cover design, and/or ebook formatting and conversion."

Want To Get Your Book Published? Don't Forget The Six Basics

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With this reprint, Publetariat welcomes Patricia Benesh of AuthorAssist.com as a regular Publetariat Contributor. While the article was originally aimed at those seeking mainstream publication, its advice is equally applicable to an indie book.

6 Basic Principles for Getting Your Book Published:

With all the talk about getting a book published, writers can get lost in the technical process of how to get a book published and forget the basics: to get your book published (or self-published), you must have a quality manuscript. At AuthorAssist, we coach our writers to adhere to basic writing principles. In this article, we take a step back and look at the critical principles of fiction writing.

1. Know your genre and your audience. Most fiction falls into one category or another–or you may be writing a mixed genre novel. Regardless of genre, to get your book published, it is essential that you meet your readers’ expectations. If you are writing a mystery, your readers expect your manuscript to conform to certain conventions regarding the crime and solving it. Not that you are writing a formulaic or cookie-cutter manuscript, but you are adhering to genre standards. You understand that readers approach a mystery differently than a science-fiction or romance novel. Genre affects the plot, the pace, and even the title of your book. It affects your query letter and who you query among literary agents and publishers and it affects how your book is marketed and distributed. The best way to know your audience expectations is to read what they are reading-read extensively in your genre. Become familiar with popular authors in your genre and participate in the associated reading/writing community. In doing so, you begin to build readership for your book.

2. Write what you know. This oft-quoted principle is attributed to the quintessential American novelist, Mark Twain. In thinking about getting your book published, capitalize on your unique experiences and the quirky people you have encountered. Enhance and embellish with your personal observations. Create your special hook. Write your novel so it is different in some way-so it attracts-and holds interest. Think ahead to the title, summary blurb, and other descriptive material-and how you will write it to grab readers’ attention.

3. Tell a good story. Start off with a bang to hook in readers immediately. Develop memorable characters that your readers will love to love–or hate. Put some surprises in your plot that will shake up readers and keep them guessing and turning pages. Avoid the tendency to sag in the middle; keep up the pace throughout.

4. Have your work professionally edited. In thinking about how to get your book published, remember that your book is a reflection of you. Now that you have spent hours, weeks, months, maybe years writing it, you will want to take the time to have it professionally edited. A professionally edited manuscript shines because extraneous material has been deleted (as well as grammatical mistakes and typos) so the work flows with ease. A polished manuscript makes all the difference.

5. Give your novel a thought-provoking title. Titling your book is a surprising challenge and can be a lot of fun. Brainstorm with your friends and family. Hold a contest or poll. Once you hone your title, be sure to research the web to learn if it is in use now or has been used before. Even though titles are not copyrighted, you will want to know how the title is being used or has been used in the past.

6. Create an eye-catching cover. Go online to Amazon.com and take a look at current book covers as well as covers of books in your genre. The first thing to notice is the thumbnail. Does it stand out? A key element in designing your cover is to ensure it looks good as a thumbnail. Later you may use it on your business card, as a bookmark, or in e-mail blasts. So cover design is too important a feature to scrimp on. Consider working with a professional book designer. You will be glad you did.

Now back to the first point–your target audience. In thinking about how to get a book published–and read, remember, you are writing a book for your readership. Most important–make sure your work adheres to the basic principles before you try to get your book published.

 Reprinted from Ezinearticles.com

Illustrations And Text In Ebooks

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With the exploding popularity of ebooks, especially with Google’s announcement this week of selling their ebooks thru Indie bookstores, it’s time to address this subject. Illustrations in ebooks are problematic. Unlike printed books, which require a skilled book designer to meticulously layout and place illustrations, especially in nonfiction books. Tables and the like must be kept with their pertinent text.

Ebooks have the unfortunate reality of an ever-changing playing field, which makes the placement of illustrations more difficult. Those who use their e-readers have the ability to vary the font type and size. The e-publishers have strict submission requirements to make the ebooks as simple as possible so they can be translated into the various e-reader formats readily.

This is why one must work closely with the ebook publisher or distributor in order to give one’s illustrations the best possible chance of successfully working with the text of all the e-reader formats. In addition, there is the issue of color, especially important for children’s picture books. I believe the newest iPads may have a color capability. As fast as the technology changes, I think most of the e-readers will have this capability in the not-to-distant future.

Finally, unlike print books, which encourage careful font selection, drop caps, and chapter head designs, ebooks require the use of only the most universal of fonts and as few text styles as necessary to universally support the various e-reader formats.  This means the designer must be able to accommodate both print and ebook styles in their designs. Ebooks are simplistic enough for most anyone to produce a Word version of their book formatted to the ebook translator software’s requirements; however, some would rather not bother and leave this to a designer.

Ebook illustrations and text are important subjects to keep on top of as the emerging technology has the potential to affect their structure and requirements. It’s important to read industry newsletters and magazines to stay current on digital developments.

 

This is a reprint from Bob Spear‘s Book Trends.

Basic Author Websites

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Providing up-to-date information about an author is essential to his or her book marketing efforts. The best way to do this is with a basic, easy to navigate, and easy to find website. You have a choice: pay someone to do it for you or do it yourself.

Paying someone else to do it may ensure it has a professional look, but you run a risk of a website designer putting far too much into it. Doing it yourself is not that difficult these days. You don’t need to be an HTML programmer anymore. It is very important to keep it simple and not use too many bells and whistles. Speed of loading and navigating is critically important. There are a number of excellent alternatives to website construction. Some are fill-in-the-blanks, generic sites (many major publishers provide these, as well as author support sites). Others allow you to build it from scratch or base it on an excellent template.

First, let me provide some resources for these and then I’ll discuss what needs to be included on your site. The following resources are ones with which I’m familiar. A simple search of the internet will provide even more possibilities.

Building Your Own Author Site

http://www.homestead.com

This is the web host I use. I’m not saying it’s the best, but it fills my needs just fine. The important thing is that it provides a free copy of Intuit’s “Sitebuilder” software, which includes some excellent templates and very easy to use website construction tools. They have a number of different programs for different levels of support.

http://www.authorsguild.net/?gclid=CLWT25LTu6QCFRBrgwodWH_Ozw

This is an author specialty web host with a version of Sitebuilder. They have three different versions of support, ranging from $3 to $6 to $9.

http://www.smartauthorsites.com/authors_landing.html?gclid=COKL8KfTu6QCFSIxiQodHT_f0g

Smart Author Sites is an author web design company.

http://www.bookbuzzr.com/

If you go to http://www.spearsminteditions.com/books.html , you will see my books opening and riffeling thru pages. Book Buzzer provides the aps which make this happen. It’s a good book support company.

Author Support Sites

http://authors.novelhelp.com

This is an excellent author support site (free) which provides a page to each member.

https://www.smashwords.com/about/how_to_publish_on_smashwords

This is the ebook service I personally use and recommend. They translate your book into all the different ebook formats, sell it for you, and provide each user their own author pages.

http://www.bookbrowse.com/author_websites/

Has hundreds of official author sites.

http://www.authorbytes.com/

This is a paid author book marketing support service.

http://www.eyeonbooks.com/authorwebsites.php

This is a free author website directory.

http://www.filedby.com/service/

Provides free to premium levels of author supports, including websites.

The Importance of Getting Found: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Whole books and seminars exist on this topic. It’s imperative that your website comes up on the first page of the results of a search. I’m unusual in that I am willing to go down 5 or 6 pages of search results for something I’m interested in. Most searchers are not, which is why you have to optimize your website for the internet search engines like Google and Yahoo. They send out software routines, called spiders, throughout the internet to find and categorize wites by their key words. The two best ways to do this is through the use of:

  • Metatags: keywords most likely to be important to the people you want coming to your site
  • Links: Links to your site from other sites

 

What to include on author websites

Author Contact information: every contact info you want others to have to be able to get a hold of you for commercial purposes.

Publishing house and Distributors

Bookstores and libraries need this info to buy your books.

Contact information for a publicist and / or lecture agent

If you have someone setting up book tours for you, be sure to include their info.

Contact information for your literary agent

This is for folks seeking rights to your book, such as movie makers and foreign publishers and distributors.

A media room

This is to provide to the press and reviewers downloadable materials they need to talk about you:

  • Bio
  • 300 dpi author pictures & book cover
  • Synopsis
  • Press releases

Books

  • A Bookbuzzr picture of the cover with a short downloadable teaser
  • Powerful short synopsis
  • Trailer (optional)
  • Buy / shopping cart link

About the Author

An interesting background that explains why you were the guy to write this book.

Page Links (Permalinks)

Usually on the left or top of each page that allows you to navigate around the site easily.

Buy Links

Usually called a shopping cart. This provides the site visitor the means to purchase your books.

Author Appearances

A schedule or calendar of where you will be appearing and when.

A community / discussion function / Blog

If you are able to create a significant book buzz, this is a discussion page for your fans to talk about you. It’s an excellent way to get interesting feedback. An on-site blog or a convenient link to one is an excellent way to tell fans what you think.

What not to have on your book website

Flash may be neat, but it slows down page loading and automatically knocks off fans with older computers and operating systems.

There are no permalinks: That’s just crazy. If visitors can’t readily see what they want to look at, they’ll leave immediately. Make your site ultra easy to navigate.

The blog lacks an RSS feed: Allow your blog readers to be automatically alerted whenever you post a new article. That is the function of an RSS.

Failure to include a contact email address: If you are concerned about your privacy, create a separate email address that’s only used for your writing efforts. Don’t give out the ones that go directly to your family.

Dark backgrounds and small / multiple fonts: you know how I feel about these aspects when it comes to book covers. The same goes for websites.

Unused features: Don’t put up a feature like a blog or a touring schedule and then never update it. That’s a big turn-off.

Forgetting to post downloadable hi-resolution images of / from / about the book: As a bookstore owner, I put out ad flyers, emails, and website postings advertising upcoming author signings, for which I need the info in authors’ media rooms.

Book trailers that play automatically: When I click on a home page link to a site, I do not expect to have to wait while a book trailer plays or a cutesy teaser door promises glorious mysteries if you just click on. DON’T DO THAT!!! I hate having my time wasted. It really agggravates me. If I want to watch a book trailer, give me the option to click on it. Your synopsis better be really good for me to want to do that.

Sample Author Sites

http://www.nancypickard.com/

Nancy is a beloved Kansas mystery writer who is a major force in the Sisters in Crime, an international mystery writers’ organization. She’s a national level author, so her site is more complex than some.

http://www.harpercollins.com/author/websites.aspx

This is how a major publisher handles author sites.

Important Book Marketing Blog Posts

The following book marketing posts from the Bookbuzzr folks’ blog will help you understand that you need to know your target segments when designing a site or a campaign.

http://www.bookbuzzr.com/blog/book-marketing/your-book-marketing-plan-who-should-you-be-promoting-your-book-to/

http://www.bookbuzzr.com/blog/book-marketing/cheap-and-free-book-marketing-strategies/

http://www.bookbuzzr.com/blog/book-marketing/tools-to-help-you-create-videos-for-your-blogwebsite/

 

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

Understanding Fonts and Typography

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The design of your book has a critical part to play in how readable it is. Whether you’re designing the book yourself, or hiring a professional book designer, it pays to understand the basic building blocks that books are made of. Type fonts and they way they are arranged on the page—typography.

After deciding on the size of your book, the next big design decision is picking a type font for the body of your book. Although many classic book typefaces look similar they can have a sizable affect on the overall look and readability of the page.

Here are some articles that will give you a little background in book typography:

5 Favorite Fonts for Interior Book Design
3 Great Typeface Combinations You Can Use in Your Book

There are thousands of type faces avaialbe for digital typography, most of which are available for download at various type foundries on the web. But very few of these fonts are used for books.

Classic Book Typefaces

Most of the typefaces we use for books are classic typefaces, either oldstyle or transitional designs. The designs of these typefaces trace their roots to the very infancy of printing, in the years when printing with type first spread from Germany thoughout Europe.

It was in Italy that the earliest type designers and book printers created many of the letterforms that influence us today. You could say that our culture has grown up, grown literate, and grown learned through the agency of these typefaces, and I think that’s one of the reasons they have such a firm place in our cultural history.

Here’s an article I wrote for Self-Publishing Review that will give you some idea of the kind of history embedded in our typefaces:

Deconstructing Bembo: Typographic Beauty and Bloody Murder

Typography on the Book Page

When you start designing and laying out your pages in whatever program you’re using, you want your book to look professional. You can do this by conforming to standard conventions and making good choices.

Here are some articles that deal with the makeup of book pages:

Elements of the Book Page
5 Layout Mistakes that Make You Look Unprofessional
The Title Page
The Poetry of the Typography of Poetry
Book Page Layout for a Long Narrative
The Typographer’s Curse: Automatic Leading

The Coming of the EBooks

Behind the self-effacing practice of book design lies the history of the printed book, and all the marvelous innovators and printers who came before us. While we don’t yet know how far books will travel away from the classical models that have ruled book design for centuries, we can be sure that digitization and the evolution of ebooks will change typography forever.

Now we’re just seeing the beginnings of what will eventually become a robust capacity for typographic design. Caution though, it may be a bit rocky getting there:

Apple iPad Typography: Fonts We Actually Want
iPad’s ePub: The “Book” of the Future?
Books on the iPad’s iBookstore

Your book is taking shape now, starting to look like the book it will become. Tasteful and readable typography will do its part to help make your book stand out from the crowd. As your book moves closer to completion, you’ll move on to our next topic, Making Print Choices. Onward.

 

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

New Visions For The Book, Part 1

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This post, by Janneke Adema, originally appeared on Open Reflections on 9/13/10.

A few weeks ago the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University brought together a group of digital humanists of diverse disciplinary backgrounds as part of the unique summer institute One Week | One Tool. The aim of One Week | One Tool was to come up with an (open source) digital tool to aid humanities scholarship. The catch was that this whole process of tool-building could take no longer than a week.

The tool the group came up with and, as part of the deal, actually build, is called Anthologize. Anthologize, as the tagline proclaims, ‘use(s) the power of WordPress to transform online content into an electronic book.’ The idea is that you can grab content from your own blog or other blogs, order it, determine the layout and publish it, both in print and in different electronic formats.

Next to being a refreshing project and a useful tool, what I found interesting about Anthologize is the (implicit) notion that lies behind its conception, namely the idea of what a scholarly book should or can be.

Anthologize it

Let’s take a closer look at a blogpost about Anthologize written by Dan Cohen, the director of the Center for History and New Media. Cohen is a historian who, in his own words, ‘explores—and tries to influence through theory, software, websites, and his blog—the impact of computing on the humanities.’ In the post he wrote to introduce Anthologize, there are a few interesting preconceptions concerning the book. For instance, he begins his post with stating the following:

“A long-running theme of this blog has been the perceived gulf between new forms of online scholarship—including the genre of the blog itself—and traditional forms such as the book and journal.”

This sentence is very interesting for various reasons. First of all Cohen talks about the perceived (and thus not real) gulf between online scholarship, such as the blog, and traditional forms such as the book. Furthermore he states that the book and the blog are both forms of scholarship, they are just different genres. Finally, he refers to how discussions surrounding the scholarly book mostly have been conducted by opposing new online forms of scholarship to traditional print scholarship such as the book and the journal.

Further on Cohen explains more in detail what Anthologize has to offer:

“Today marks the launch of this effort: Anthologize, software that converts the popular open-source WordPress system into a full-fledged book-production platform. Using Anthologize, you can take online content such as blogs, feeds, and images (and soon multimedia), and organize it, edit it, and export it into a variety of modern formats that will work on multiple devices.”

In this sentence it becomes clear that both Cohen and the One Tool | One Week people argue for a concept of the book that goes beyond the print format, where in their view books can be delivered in various formats (including, but not exclusively, print) suitable to be read on (and by) various devices. Furthermore, they—I would say consciously—push for a broad(er) idea of what a book can consist off: in their vision a (scholarly) book can, besides text, consist of all kinds of multimedia content. Furthermore, it can consist of material that has been previously online available—hence published—such as blogposts. Thus with Anthologize a book becomes a selection of online available material which can be expanded with new texts and/or multimedia content. Finally, it offers the creator of the book the possibility to instantly publish the book her or himself, without the help of publishers or self-publishing platforms.

As I will state, with this tool Cohen and the people from One Week | One Tool argue for a concept of the book that goes beyond the idea of the traditional printed scholarly book. Anthologize forms a, perhaps implicit, critique against connotations that are an intrinsic part of the production process of a scholarly book as it is currently common in print publishing: double-blind peer review and quality control and branding by a reputable press. In this way they try to challenge or by-pass the traditional authorities that determine whether a scholarly book is fit to be published.

The New Age of the Supplement

Read the rest of the post on Open Reflections.

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.

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.