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Articles about craft.

How to Write a Great First Draft

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Many writers think a first draft of a novel has to crappy. Anne Lamott in her nonfiction book about writing, Bird by Bird, has a chapter called Shitty First Drafts. A recent Murderati blog post was titled “Your first draft is always going to suck.” 

I respectfully disagree. Of course, no first draft is publishable as is, but it doesn’t have to suck either.  There’s no reason a novelist can’t craft a readable first draft that needs only minor revisions in the second round. Every writer has his/her own style, but my personal belief is that if you start your journey with a good road map and a tangible destination, you won’t get lost.

In other words, I believe I write decent first drafts. Which saves me a lot of time and trouble. How do I do it? With a lot of advance planning. These ideas may only be workable for crime fiction, but here’s how I craft a great first draft without any gaping holes or illogical twists:

1. Create an outline. Once I have a basic story idea (comprised of an exciting incident, major plot developments, and overview ending), I start filling in the details. I structure my outline by days (Tuesday, Wed., etc.), then outline the basic events/scenes that happen on each day, noting which POV the section will be told from. For police procedurals (and most mysteries), in which everything happens in a very short period of time, this seems essential. Some people (like Stephen King) tell you not to outline, that it ruins creativity. Again, I disagree. So I fill in as much detail as I can at this point, especially for the first ten chapters and/or plot developments.

2. Write out the story logic. In a mystery/suspense novel, much of what happens before and during the story timeline is off page — actions by the perpetrators that the detective and reader learn of after the fact. Many of these events and/or motives are not revealed until the end of the story. I worry that I won’t be able to convey to readers how and why it all happened. So I map it out—all the connections, events, and motivations that take place on and off the page. Bad guy Bob knows bad guy Ray from prison. Bob meets young girl at homeless shelter. Young girl tells Bob about the money she found . . .

3. Beef up the outline. As I write the first 50 pages or so, new ideas come to me and I fill in the rest of outline as I go along. I continue adding to the outline, and by about the middle of the story, I have it completed.

4. Create a timeline. A lot happens in my stories, which usually take place in about six to ten days. I keep the timeline filled in as I write the story. This way I can always look at my timeline and know exactly when an important event took place (Monday, 8 a.m.: Jackson interrogates Gorman in the jail). It’s much faster to check the timeline than scroll through a 350-page Word document. The timeline keeps also me from writing an impossible number of events into a 24-hour day.

5. Keep an idea/problem journal. I constantly get ideas for other parts of the story or realize things I need to change, so I enter these notes into a Word file as I think of them. (Ryan needs to see Lexa earlier in the story, where?). I keep this file open as I write. Some ideas never get used, but some prove to be crucial. Eventually, all the problems get resolved as well. I use the Notebook layout feature in Word for this so I can keep the outline, timeline, notes, problems, and evidence all in the same file, using different tabs. I love this feature.

6. Keep an evidence file. This idea won’t apply to romance novels, but for crime stories, it’s useful. I make note of every piece of evidence that I introduce and every idea I get for evidence that I want to introduce. I refer to this file regularly as I write, so that I’m sure to process and/or explain all the evidence before the story ends. In my first novel (The Sex Club), a pair of orange panties didn’t make it into the file or the wrap up, and sure enough, a book club discussion leader asked me who they belonged to.

7. Update my character database. It took me a few stories to finally put all my character information into one database, but it was a worthwhile effort. Now, as I write, I enter each character name (even throwaway people who never come up again) into the database, including their function, any physical description, or any other information such as phone number, address, type of car, or favorite music. Now, when I need to know what I named someone earlier in the story or in a previous novel, it’s right there in my Excel database (Zeke Palmers; morgue assistant; short, with gray ponytail). For information about how to set up a file like this, see How to Create a Character Database.

As a general rule, I like to get the whole story down on the page before I do much rewriting, but I’ve learned to stop at 50 pages for two reasons. One, I like to go back and polish the first chunk of the story in case an agent or editor asks to see it. Two, I usually give this first chunk to a few beta readers to see if I’m on the right track. So far, I have been.

 

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.

Risner To Speak At Women Health Fair

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I’ve been invited to be the guest speaker at Van Buren County Hospital’s Women Health Fair in Keosauqua, Iowa on October 14, 2010 from 2:30 – 5:30 p.m. I’ll be speaking about my Alzheimer’s Caregiver Experiences. This year’s theme is "Fight Like A Girl". The expected attendance is around 200. This sounds like a fun experience, but I think I’ll keep my fingers crossed that I do a good job.

How did I end up with this invitation? I joined a website for Iowa authors http://wwwhttp://www.iowacenterforthebooks.org Any group looking for a speaker can read a list of books I’ve written and my biography. This is the second speaking engagement I’ve received from that website. I don’t think I can remind other authors often enough to check out their state resources for authors.

What was it in my biography that qualifies me to speak at a Hospital Health Fair? Let me tell you. My experiences include helping my mother care for my father for ten years while he battled Alzheimer’s disease and working in long term care at the Keystone Nursing Care Center in Keystone, Iowa as a Certified Nurse Aide for almost sixteen years. It’s not often you meet someone like me that is a CNA/author/speaker. That’s because I didn’t just do my job for the paycheck. I tried to make a difference in the lives of the residents by understanding how Alzheimer’s disease affected them and their families and doing something about it. In my time as CNA, I was awarded the 2004 award for Certified Nurse Aide by the Iowa Health Care Association and 2006 Professional Caregiver Award by the Alzheimer’s Association. Those awards will be mentioned along with a picture of me on the marketing director’s advertising about the Health Fair CNA/author/speaker.

While I took care of my father, I kept a journal. After his death, I turned that journal into a story about what it was like for his family to take care of him. Realizing there are many books on the market about caregivers struggling to care for someone, I made my book different by adding helpful caregiving tips at the end of chapters. Plus, I had the advantage of being able to write this book from a CNA point of view. The book is Hello Alzheimer’s Good Bye Dad.

As more residents with Alzheimer’s were admitted to the nursing home, I met many families baffled by what the disease was doing to their loved ones. I started a support group to help. I listened and explained what I knew from my experiences with my father and my job. Early on I decided I needed to write a book of examples about how to relate to someone with Alzheimer’s. That book is Open A Window.

Anyone that wants to be an author needs some speaking ability. I’ve been speaking since 1998. The Alzheimer’s Association asked me to speak at a conference for ministers. I was scared stiff, and the subject was a painful one, talking about caring for my father. When I received a packet from the Alzheimer’s Association in the mail with the survey about how the ministers liked my speech, I was overwhelmed by their great comments. Also in that packet was a form to fill out and send back if I wanted to be in the volunteer speakers bureau. There was a need in my area on the far side of the county when the Alzheimer’s Association didn’t have as many experienced employees. Now adequate staff has eliminated the need for volunteer speakers, but I still get an invitation once in a while and I go. Education about Alzheimer’s disease is very important for families. Have I spoke before an audience of 200 people? No! But how much different can that be than speaking to 20 – 50. Besides, I’m doing two sessions so I won’t have 400 eyes looking at me at the same time.

The administer at the nursing home asked me several times to be the speaker for inservices on Alzheimer’s. For one inservice, I wrote a fifteen minute skit about a woman, with Alzheimer’s, in the nursing home. Two nieces came to visit and didn’t know how to relate to her. The employee who found the most mistakes made by the nieces received dinner for two at a restaurant. That skit later became my three act play, Floating Feathers Of Yesterdays.

Van Buren County Hospital’s Marketing Director wants me to bring my books to sell and sign. There will be a variety of health related booths besides mine. My husband has consented to go along with me on this three hour drive. He can help carry in the boxes of books and watch the table while I’m not there. I’ve found he makes a good salesman for my books. He has read them all and never fails to tell people that he likes what he read.

An added plus is I get to take my Amish books, too. When I had the idea to write them, I thought if I set my series about Nurse Hal Among the Amish somewhere in Iowa that might be a way to increase sales in my area. Turns out the marketing director at the hospital says she likes the idea very much that the books are set in southern Iowa and for the Health Fair theme it’s an added bonus that the books are about a nurse. "A Promise Is A Promise and The Rainbow’s End – books in my Nurse Hal Among The Amish series.

So now I’ve a speech to write and practice. Plus I’ve been thinking about what I want on my table. Just recently, I printed out a large batch of business cards and bought a card holder to display them. I have three short story books. These were stories I entered and placed with in contests. I’m taking them to use in a give away. People can sign up for the drawing, and I’ll mail the book from home after I draw. That way no one has to worry about being there for the drawing. Since the three books are different themes, people can list a preference when they put their name in the basket. I will put a list of my books and a business card in with the winning book so that might encourage the winner to want to read more of my books. One of these books goes along with the health theme for that day – Butterfly and Angel Wings.

I’m looking forward to the opportunity and the drive. Fall is coming. The timbered hills along the way should be lovely in October. The marketing director asked if I charged a fee. My answer was I’m free. Ever since I helped my mom with my father I’ve liked educating others suffering the pain of watching a loved one go through Alzheimer’s disease. The bonus is now that I’m an author I get to talk about my books at the same time and sell them. I’ll tell you all about how the Health Fair went after October 14th.

 

Save The Little Darlings

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Hello. My name is Virginia and I’m a back story addict.

I admit it. I have a problem with giving my readers too much information. After reading not one but two posts by two different individuals on the topic of “killing the little darlings” (an idea taken from Stephen King’s On Writing) and too much back story I’ve finally come to terms with my addiction. So how do you go about ridding yourself of those scenes and characterizations you’ve grown so fond of?

You could do as Kristen Lamb suggests and ruthlessly delete them. That certainly “kills the little darlings.” Of course, if you’re like me, you probably have a hard copy or two hidden away you could resurrect them with. If you really want to get of rid of them for good, then you’ll also need to shred those documents. Better yet, give them a right good send off into the netherworld — burn them.

Okay, so I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time letting go. (I’m an addict, remember?) I have a secret stash of dialog and scenes that are nothing but “little darlings” and back story. I keep them and revisit them from time to time as a reminder of who my characters are, what past events shaped them, which silent characters still greatly influence them. Keeping them doesn’t mean they’ll make it back into the story. They may, however, find their way into another, provided it moves the story forward. In the mean time they get to live their own quiet life in a document far removed from the one they originated in.

It’s a risky move. Those pieces of characterization could easily sneak off their island and invade my work in progress. Yet I think it’s worth it because hidden in the “dirt”, as Joe Konrath calls it, are some gems that could be useful later.

It’s important to remove all the “little darlings” and back story information that weighs your WIP down, but perhaps instead of killing them it is better to house them in a secret document located far, far away from The Road to Writing.

What do you think? Is it better to eradicate the “little darlings” or isolate them?

 

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

Does Your Novel Suffer From Flat Writing?

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One bane of the writer’s existence is flat writing that comes off to your reader as dull or lacking impact. It slips into writers’ work with little notice and will destroy a wonderful novel in no time at all. How do you determine if your writing is flat? Allow people you don’t know to read your work. They’ll inform you in a hurry. However, the best way is to keep your eye open for how you respond to your reading. If it doesn’t "wow" you, it’s flat.

 
[Listen to a PODCAST of this article.]
 
 
Here are some tips to overcome flat writing.
     1. Cut, Cut, Cut

     2. Choose Your Nouns and Verbs with Care

     3. Eliminate Passive Voice

     4. Play with Your Words

     5. Trust Your Muse

Let’s now look at each of these in more detail.

 
Cut, Cut, Cut: If your writing sounds flat, it’s often due to excessive words that don’t add to the plot or even the meaning of your scene. To overcome this, review each word as to its necessity in your novel. Let’s consider the following example.
 
     "Jason went to the store to pick up his weekly groceries."
 
If we review this sentence, we see much of it is unimportant. Right away, we can drop the phrase, "went to the store," as this action is obvious by the word, "groceries." We might also be able to cut "weekly," unless this time period is needed for the plot. Your final sentence might be:
 
 
     "Jason picked up his groceries."
 
Better, but still pretty dull, don’t you think?
 
Choose Your Nouns and Verbs with Care: Let’s consider the corrected sentence above for this example. If we just read the words, there’s little interest even in our corrected sentence. After all, grocery shopping is about as mundane as life gets. So, let’s pay attention to the NOUNS AND VERBS to see if we can’t spice this puppy up. What if we rewrote that sentence as follows:
 
     "Jason raced to grab his groceries."
 
You can see by choosing more specific verbs, this sentence came alive. With the word, "raced," all of a sudden we’ve instilled the sense of speed or pace, and thus, more interest. The secret, of course, is to choose the correct verbs and nouns to fit the scene.
 
Eliminate Passive Voice: We’ve all heard about the inherent weakness of Passive Voice in fiction. It’s sin is the way it makes it more difficult for a reader to tell who’s doing what. And a slow read, is a boring read. There’s more on PASSIVE VOICE here.
 
Play with Your Words: Sometimes writers get so caught up in the minutia of the craft of writing, we forget to write out of the box, so to speak. Go ahead and try something new and unusual. Write that simile the way it popped out of your head. Go on and use that odd description or that risky scene.
 
After you do this, set it aside for a while then review it to see if it still works for you. If it does, leave it in. If it doesn’t, well, reread suggestion number one of this article.
 
Trust Your Muse: As with recommendation number four, set things aside then go back and reread your work. This allows you to forget the subtle nuisances of your thought process when you first wrote out whatever comes off as flat.
As you return to your work, if you’re not sure if the words you’ve chosen enhance your novel, listen to that nagging voice from deep within you. That’s your Muse and she’s rarely wrong. Don’t try to outthink her or rationalize away your rejection of her coaxing. Just trust the woman. She’s your best friend in life, let alone in your writing.
 
If your writing is flat, disinteresting, dull, lifeless or any of those other synonyms, readers will put your book down. Worse than that, they’ll create a negative buzz about your novel. Focus on the most compelling writing you can produce and things will fall in line for you.
 
Has your work ever suffered from flat writing? What did you do to overcome it?
 
Until we meet again, know I wish for you only best-sellers.
 

This is a reprint from C. Patrick Schulze‘s Author of Born to be Brothers blog.
 

Short Story Contest Winner

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The winners up to sixth place are now out and online for the Arkansas Writers’ Conference contests at Little Rock, Arkansas.

I placed second in contest 25. Look What The Cat Dragged In. Title of my short story was The Unexpected Visitor. Guidelines for this entry – a short story and no word limit which is great for me. I know 2500 words is about the top limit for an entry, but I like it when I don’t have to watch the count close.

I’ve been entering this set of contests since 2003 and have many awards from first to sixth place. For the $10 entry fee participants can enter as many contests as they want. I have entered up to a dozen each year, but this year I found only four that I wanted to do. Several of the themes had vampire or ghost subjects. Vampires aren’t something that I can write about, but I did come up with a ghost story. I’ll share that one with you around Halloween.

The $15.00 prize money paid my entry fee and expenses of ink, paper, envelope and postage. Plus, I am listed online in the list of winners for anyone that wants to look up the website.

Every year the contest rules come out in January. The entries have to be in by the last of April which is plenty of time to work on a short story. After all these years, I’ve become familiar with the different contest themes. When I get an idea in the months before the contest starts, I write a story and wait to see if it will fit the guidelines. Sometimes, the story only takes a little reworking.

The first four contests entered, the writers have to present at the conference the first weekend of June. Contests 5 – 28 are open to all writers. Contests 29-36 are for residents of Arkansas only.

Now my entries to White River Writers Conference Contest, Searcy, Arkansas, have been sent in. Another Arkansas based conference with a July 26 deadline. More on that later in September if I place in the contests. Sometimes I submit the short stories I’ve used for the Arkansas Writers’ Conference. I’ve found with a different set of judges I place this time when I didn’t in the other contest.

Over the years, I complied quite a few essays and short stories. When I published my books back in 2008, three of those books were made up of these contest entries. Wild West Tales, Butterfly And Angel Wings and A Teapot, Ghosts, Bats & More.

The books didn’t cost much to publish. I use them as give aways at book signings. The winner has a choice of the three books. Also, I gave a copy of A Teapot, Ghosts, Bats & More to my family doctor to put in the magazine rack in the waiting room. It took the longest time for that book to get placed in the rack. I finally figured out all the staff read the book before they gave it up to the patients. In the back of each book is my contact information and list of other books I’ve written if anyone reading this book wants another from me. I’ve sold the doctor two of my Amish books and the staff has bought four of my Alzheimer’s caregiver books Open A Window.

Three of the short story entries became books. I make sure to list that I was a contest winner with the short story. Right now I have a western book, second in my Stringbean Hooper Westerns, to be published soon. I entered my western in a Western Three Chapter contest. Dusty Richards, well known western author, is the judge. He gave me second place for my first Stringbean Hooper book, The Dark Wind Howls Over Mary. Contest winners are announced in September at the conference. If I am awarded anything I can use that acknowledgment in my next book.

　

　

　

 

What Writers Can Learn From Flamenco

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Creativity through dance is fascinating when writing is our main form of expression. Here are some lessons learned for writers from Spanish flamenco dancing.

  • Know the tradition that lies behind and within you. Flamenco is native to Andalusia in Spain with Gypsy, Sephardic Jew, Moorish and Byzantine influences. It is beautiful to see old people dance it as well as the women in their prime and the young girls who learn the skills. There is a vast tradition behind the movements of flamenco as well as the songs that are sung with it. For writers, we have a great tradition behind us that we need to be aware of. We need to know the rules and the past in order to bring our words to life on the page.
  • Extemporize from that tradition to find your personal expression. For dancers, this is your style of flamenco, for authors, this is your voice and writing style. Once you know the tradition, you can express yourself within it and use creativity in your own way. Flamenco dancers seem to go with the music, almost as a jazz band improvises as the music moves. Each time they perform it would be a little different. As writers, we need to know where we are coming from and the rules of our genre, and then we can go out from there to a place of originality.
  • Use your passion and your personal power. Flamenco is incredibly empowering to watch and to dance. It exudes pride and power, a separation of the artist from those who watch. The expression is usually serious and the movements compelling with authority. This is a dancer that knows their worth. As writers, we definitely use our passion to write but sometimes that power can be missing. We need to reclaim that, to be unapologetic in the ability to express and create. No one can take that from you, whatever their judgement.
  • Have a varied repertoire. Flamenco is best known for the stamping of feet, the fast tapping and grand movements but there are also slow dances, almost mournful in their experience. The songs and flamenco guitar are spine tingling in emotion. For writers, we must also have this full range of skill both in writing, and also in all the other areas of a writer’s life these days, like marketing and promotion.
  • Celebrate each other with Ole! When watching flamenco, it is part of the experience for the audience and other participants to shout ‘Ole!’ and other encouragements, and clap during the performance. It is an interjection like applause and acts as a spur to the dancer to move faster. As writers, we don’t have much applause in our daily writing lives so we can learn from this to try to encourage each other further, to spur each other on to greater things.

It is important to get out there and live a life that is worth writing about. Watching or even dancing flamenco is an experience that will challenge most people and spark new ideas. Have you found inspiration in a dance or other physical form of creativity?

 

This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.

Whither The Author-Artiste?

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Seth Godin’s announcement yesterday that his future works will not be traditionally published seems, to me anyway, to have finally knocked over the "Tipping Point" domino in a chain that’s long been poised to open the floodgates of true acceptance and respectability for indie authorship. For authors like Godin, JA Konrath, Steven Covey, and lesser-known indies like me, this is a wonderful development. It’s a clear signal that going indie can be a big step in the right direction for any author, established or aspiring, who’s got an entrepreneurial spirit and commercial sensibilities. But what about all those other authors, published and aspiring, who are more in tune with art than commerce? How would a Flannery O’Connor, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Camus, Dostoevsky or Salinger fare in this brave new world of indie authorship? Not too well, I suspect.

These are authors of seminal literature which has inspired whole generations of writers, thinkers and artists, and their works will continue to inspire thought and action for generations to come. Yet somehow I doubt any of them would’ve been very excited about, or done very well with, something as worldly and mundane as author platform. And this begs the question: where, and how, is the important and challenging literature of tomorrow to be discovered and brought to the public’s attention? Will it be lost to the ages for want of a Twitter account and Amazon Rush?

I’m not saying the rise of indie authorship has somehow created this problem. If anything, indie authorship has opened a door of opportunity for those few authors of literary fiction and philosophical or metaphysical nonfiction who are also web savvy and/or highly motivated to get their work out to the world. After all, it’s not as if mainstream presses have been clamoring for more edgy, unclassifiable, non-commercial manuscripts. Trade publishing in the United States hasn’t been primarily about enlarging the canon of quality American literature for quite some time.

While there have always been passionate and compassionate editors, agents and others willing to champion this or that "great" book, regardless of its apparent commercial potential, these have increasingly been diminished to the role of mere voices in the wilderness. Because the publishing business is, first and foremost, a business, and there’s nothing wrong, illegal, or unethical about that. A book that doesn’t look like a substantial moneymaker isn’t likely to be picked up by a big, mainstream house. Small, independent presses can bridge the gap between art and commerce to some extent, but those presses have to turn a profit to survive too. Great reviews and a slew of doctoral theses based on a given book won’t pay the rent.

I’ve turned this over in my head again and again, but there are no easy answers. Plenty of people have gone through the exercise of sending some literary classic or other to a mainstream house or agent under a different title just to get it rejected and then knowingly blog about the generalized cluelessness of trade publishing (and in so doing, entirely overlook the fact that publishers are engaged in a for-profit business), but this exercise barely pays lip service to the larger issue. If we agree as a culture that important, if non-commercial, literature deserves wide exposure, study and discussion, who’s supposed to foot the bill for getting it out there in front of eyeballs?

Indie authors like me who’ve worked long and hard to master platform and publishing skills may feel some righteous indignation at the notion of our artier, less business-savvy counterparts getting somewhat of a free ride when it comes to the labor involved in indie authorship, but we should try to get past this tit-for-tat mentality and look at the big picture. I know all kinds of things about self-publishing, trade publishing, setting up and maintaining an author platform, and the business side of indie authorship, and I’m a pretty good writer of entertaining little novels and instructional nonfiction, too. But I’m no Salinger, O’Connor, Dostoevsky, Garcia Marquez or Camus, and I never will be.

Is it better for the culture at large if the only new authors to achieve any meaningful level of exposure or acclaim are like me, succeeding largely for reasons having at least as much (if not more) to do with our business and marketing skills than our writerly gifts? I’m thinking, no. I have come up with some ideas to address the problem, but it’s a woefully short list. Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments area.

1. Introductory self-publishing, author platform and publishing business courses should be added to the core curriculum of all creative writing degree programs; many students in such programs may have no intention of ever self-publishing, but these subject areas are so commonplace in the publishing world of today that to be ignorant of them is indicative of an incomplete education.

2. The National Endowment for the Arts has grants on offer each year, but admittedly, they’re limited to pretty specific categories and putting together an acceptable grant proposal is scarcely easier than setting up and maintaining an author blog and Twitter account.

3. Anyone who’s mastered a crucial publishing or author platform skill like podcasting, ebook creation, book cover design or the like should share the wealth of those skills by providing some free instruction to their fellow writers in the form of how-to videos, articles, or podcasts.

4. Any author or publishing pro who’s in a position to give wider exposure to a deserving non-commercial manuscript, book or story should do whatever they can to lend a hand to the writer in need.

Remember: it was probably some classic of literature, not a NY Times Bestseller, that originally inspired you to become a writer in the first place. Let’s all do what we can to give that same gift of meaning and inspiration to future generations of writers, thinkers and artists everywhere.

 

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

Cozy Mystery Website Adding My Mystery Series

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

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

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

Authors are posted alphabetically.

TV shows and movies

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

Cozy mystery new releases

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

Choosing What To Write

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

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

Write what you know?

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

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

The Scientific Approach

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

Look for Synergy

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

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

 

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

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.

Stats and Sales and Success and Crap

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

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

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

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

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

Apprehending Feedback

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

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

     

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

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

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

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

     

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

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

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

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

 

This is a reprint from Mark Barrett‘s Ditchwalk.

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.

 

Tips From An Idiot

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for reading.

 

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