Every few days I get someone making a comment on a topic and mentioning they can’t do such-and-such because it just costs too much. And I get at least one letter a week asking me how I can do so many books with the cost of editing.
To be honest, these questions always puzzle me. So let me dig into this a little.
My History
I used to have a publishing house, remember, folks? I was the publisher, actually, of Pulphouse Publishing Inc., ranked the 5th largest publisher of fantasy, science fiction, and horror in the nation for four or five years from 1989-1994. We had a two-story office building and at the peak I employed nineteen people in one capacity or another, from the shipping area to the printing to editorial. It was a beehive of a building, that was for sure.
And my monthly expenses just to keep the doors open, let alone the costs of production per book, would stagger you. I know it did me regularly.
So this new world of publishing is (in my opinion) book-publishing heaven. Not only is this new world faster by factors of a hundred or more, but the production costs don’t even come close to what was needed in 1990 to put out a book.
For example, from 1989 to 1992 we did a series of books at Pulphouse called “Author’s Choice Monthly.” The series let each author pick five or six stories, around 30,000 words, for a collection. We did one per month, sold them both in limited hardback form and unlimited trade paper form. We used the old warehouse method, meaning we had to guess ahead how many to have printed and bound. We did our own printing, then we had to haul the printed books an hour north to either a perfect bindery or the hardback bindery. Then we had to pick them up when done and bring them back to the office to be unloaded, packed, and shipped to stores and customers.
Let me put it this way as to costs. The price of the gas (for the 60 mile one way drive north to the binderies and back in 1990) for the van we used IS MORE than what WMG Publishing pays right now to put a collection of mine or Kris’s into electronic and trade paper edition.
That’s right, just the gas (in 1990 money) for 240 miles is more than I spend now for everything needed to get a collection into print.
Yes, this is publishing heaven. Trust me, I lived in the other place from 1987 through 1994.
And traditional publishers in New York still do. And that’s where so many of these beliefs come from. People who work the traditional side just can’t believe that a book can be done cheaply and yet professionally.
Trust me, coming from Pulphouse Publishing, at first I didn’t believe it either. But I was wrong.
Steps of Production and Each Step’s Costs
Every author is different. Every author has a different set of skills and a different configuration of friends and family around them to tap for help.
That said, let me try to detail out some basic costs if you do most everything yourself. Figure your own costs at each step.
I am talking at this point about doing your production and launching your book yourself. I will talk about other options later.
Writing Stage
I believe every writer should value their time and put a price on that time for writing. I have done a number of articles about that. But this article is talking about money out-of-pocket. And since I assume you would have your lights on and heat working in your home, there would be very little out-of-pocket money for writing.
However, on your accounting books, the value of your time is your biggest expense. Set yourself an hourly or daily wage and put that against the cost of the book.
So it would look like this:
— Cost of writing time, share of electricity, heat, and so on. (Example: 120 hours for a novel = 120 x $50.00 per hour (plus expenses) = $6,000.00)
— Out of Pocket Expenses for writing: None.
Proofing Stage
This is the area that seems to get new writers the most tied in knots. And that makes sense, actually.
Newer writers are focused on words only, on creating beautiful sentences, because that’s what their English teachers had them do. And granted, in the early days of writing, this focus isn’t a bad thing. All writers need to learn the basic writing rules before moving on into telling great stories and often breaking those learned rules to tell a better story.
That said, when a new writer looks at a book from a traditional publisher, they think it’s perfect BECAUSE IT IS IN PRINT. Now, of course, if you have been through numbers of books in the traditional system, you are just laughing now. If you have dealt with a proofreader paid for by your publisher who thought they could rewrite every sentence, you are laughing your ass off right now.
In real terms, sometimes traditional publisher helps a book with their editing and proofing and sometimes they hurt a book. And my gut sense is that it’s about 50/50 and you never know which 50 you are going to end up with on any book. Again, I’ve published over 100 books with traditional publishers. I can’t begin to tell you how many they made worse. And I can’t begin to tell you how many a great editor helped me fix details.
But even on the great jobs out of traditional publishers, there are no such things as “Perfect Books.”
Just doesn’t ever happen. And forget tastes in that equation. Every book has mistakes. Lots of them.
But new writers believe in the myth of the “Perfect Book” and thus, when wanting to publish their own book, think they need to pay tons of money to have so-called “professional” editors read their work.
Nope. Not needed. But you do need eyes on the manuscript. Especially early on when you haven’t figured out your own basic mistakes you make book after book.
So back to costs. My suggestion is use the barter system.
— Get another writer to read your book in exchange for reading that person’s book.
— Or have a friend who likes the genre you are working in read it and make a list of the typos in exchange for dinner.
— Or find a retired English teacher who loves to read and won’t rewrite you and pay them a few hundred to read and mark up your manuscript with their dusty red pen.
Here is what Kris and I do:
For short stories or collections or nonfiction work and many novels, we just trust each other as first readers. I read her work, she reads mine. We correct obvious mistakes. That’s it. A cost in time, but no money out. Do we miss stuff because both of us are not great at copyediting? Yup. Do we care that things get missed. Hell Yes!! But this is a business and we just can’t do much beyond what we do. We write and release. Otherwise, we would both still be working day jobs and trying to fix the mistakes in our first books.
For some major novels, we do the same, and then we also have a wonderful friend read the book who we pay $150.00. She reads the book and often on backlist work, she also compares the file to the printed novel from New York. (And finds all kinds of mistakes in the printed novels as she goes along. Sometimes problems (that we had right in the file) were introduced somewhere in the process of publishing in New York.)
So our total costs for proofing:
— Short fiction and collections and many novels: Only time. (Count at your hourly rate for your accounting.) No out-of-pocket costs.
— Some Novels. Time and $150.00 cash out of pocket.
Cover Stage
If you are working on Microsoft Word and bought the Microsoft Office, it has a program included called PowerPoint which turns out is for slides and professional business presentations, but does wonderful covers. Quick, simple, easy to learn, and surprisingly powerful. (It gets a very bad rap from those who have spent years learning PhotoShop.)
No point in hiring someone to do a cover and then try to describe to that person what you want. Just learn how to do it yourself. Scary at first. But wonderfully easy once you pick it up. And you will spend less time doing the cover yourself than dealing with a person you hired.
So your first covers are going to take some extra time to learn things, and you will need to study covers to see what makes your cover look professional, but once you get going and have done a few and learned how to write blurbs and tag lines and such, covers get easy.
And always remember, it can be done again and fixed later very easily.
Besides your time, the art or photo for the cover is where the out-of-pocket cost comes in for each cover.
On any one of a dozen sites, find “royalty free” artwork which is basically the artist selling you use of the art for restricted reasons, which tends to always include book covers. On all the web sites that offer royalty free artwork and photos, read their licensing agreement carefully to make sure you can use what you are buying.
There are some fantastically professional artists on these sites. It’s a new way for artists to make a living by selling uses. Wonderful for them, wonderful for us.
For electronic publishing, you do not need a very high-resolution file, especially for PowerPoint. And the artist’s prices are determined on the size of the file you download. So go for a small file and cheap.
Most of the art I buy for short fiction covers or collection covers costs less than $10.00 to use.
However, on some novels, Kris and I have worked with some artists to get exactly what we want. We have paid anywhere from $100 to $500 per cover illustration. But that is only for very special projects. I do the layout.
But except for the special projects, all novels cover art has been in the $10.00 range as well.
So total costs are:
— Short stories, collections, and most novels: $10.00 plus time on your accounting sheet.
— A few special novels: $100 to $500 plus time on your accounting sheet.
Launching Your Book Stage
There are no costs at all for putting a book or story or collection up on Kindle, Pubit (for B&N), and Smashwords. There are other sites, but start with those three for now.
You have to spend some time writing a blurb and doing an author bio, but once you have those, it’s cut-and-paste.
So total costs are:
— No costs except a little time for blurb and author bio on your accounting sheet.
Totals
Ignoring the cost of your time for this calculation, your total out-of-pocket costs are as follows using Kris and my method:
— Writing Stage… $ 0.00
— Proofing Stage… $ 0.00 (to $150.00 for some special novels.)
— Cover Stage… $10.00 (to $500 for some special novels.)
— Launching Stage… $ 0.00
So your total costs run around $10.00 out of pocket for most short stories and collections and most novels.
That’s what we do.
Paper Books
If you want to add a trade paper edition, you will need to pay CreateSpace $25.00. And it will take more time and more learning to format your book correctly for paper and do a full wrap cover. But again it can be learned and only costs $25.00 extra, plus costs of the proof and books you buy at your publisher discount. (And by the way, I do spend $25.00 per month for Lynda.com for quick answers to questions on the different programs and tutorials on how to do some of the program steps.)
Promotion
Why bother? Just move on and write the next book or story. And then the next and the next. Maybe announce it on Facebook once so your family can find it and put a listing on your web site, but that’s it. Any time you spend on this step is wasted writing time. Go write.
And if you spend a penny on this step before you have over fifty or more titles, you need to step back and really look at your marketing and business plan. There are very sound reasons to spend some money on promotion. But not early on.
Hiring Some Steps Done
This is very possible these days with many businesses running flat fee services for doing work for you. And if you have to have enough money to make it work.
From what I have heard, proofing runs from $150.00 to $500.00 for a full novel. Having a cover completely done will cost you from $200 to $500. But for heaven’s sake, figure out how to launch the book yourself to Kindle, Publit, and Smashwords. It’s simple and keeps the money in your control completely.
Huge Warning!! Major scams are springing up all over, from agents to new businesses, offering to do this work for you for a percentage. Let me say this as simply as I can as a warning.
NEVER GIVE AWAY A PERCENTAGE OF YOUR WORK!!!!
That’s an old habit writers got into for a number of decades in publishing with agents. It’s a horrid business practice and just damn stupid when it comes to the life of a copyright. And, of course, these scam artists will want to get all your income from your work before you see it. You let them do that and you deserve what you get. Sorry to be so blunt.
Excuses
Looking at indie publishing from the outside is just flat scary. I had a publishing company and this stuff scared me. I knew how hard it was in the old traditional way of doing things. And how expensive it was in the warehouse model of distribution of paper books instead of the new POD version. My company went down in 2004 leaving me and Kris with almost a half million in debts we paid off by writing. Of course I was scared to even think about going to the publishing side again.
But electronic publishing is scary simple.
Does it take a learning curve? Yes. But so does Angry Birds. Actually, I think Angry Birds is harder to learn than electronic publishing.
We teach how to format, do a cover, and launch a story in ONE DAY at our Think Like a Publisher workshops here. The other days are for all the other stuff around it, including web sites and such. But the actual putting books up takes us a day to teach, with breaks. People in the class are launching their first books within a few hours.
So if you are making excuses to not learn this, it’s the fear talking.
I hear the following excuses all the time:
— It costs too much.
— I don’t have an art bone in my body. I can’t design covers. (You don’t design them, you find a cover you like and try to make your book look similar.)
And my favorite excuse:
— I would rather write than spend the time learning how to publish. (Those writers either get taken by scam artists or give their work to agents and end up spending far more time rewriting for some agent than if they had just learned how to publish their own work and believed in themselves. Remember, agents don’t buy books, editors do. If you don’t want to indie publish, for heaven’s sake, send you work to editors, not agents.)
If you find yourself making excuses and not publishing, step back and figure out what you are really afraid of. (Like me. I was afraid of the huge debt until I learned how really inexpensive this process now is.)
Chances are your fear is not coming from the simple process of putting a manuscript into a certain Word.doc format or doing a cover on PowerPoint. Chances are the fear stopping you is in your own writing or in your own life.
Just saying…
Summary
This post was about the first major excuse of “it costs too much.” If you are letting the cost of publishing hold you back, you are just making up an excuse. Plain and simple. You can put out a novel for $10.00 in art off a royalty free site.
That’s right, with a little exchange and some learning, you can publish a novel or story or collection for $10.00 or less. And if you price your novel at $5.99 or $6.99, then you get your money back in two or three sales.
Of course, as I have said over and over, your time is valuable as well. And on your accounting sheet, do include your time and put a real dollar figure on it.
Value your time and your writing.
But don’t let out-of-pocket expenses be an excuse to not let readers find your work.
And by the way, don’t forget to have fun.
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Copyright © 2012 Dean Wesley Smith
Cover art copyright Philcold/Dreamstime
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I no longer pay people to read my books, they pay me:)
I do all my own formatting, of course, but my quote was mostly for Cover and Interior Art – when the book calls for it – and which I have no skill at but still enjoy. At $200-$300 for cover art, and between $25-$100 each for illustrations, character portraits and/or a map. I like a few illustrations scattered around the books I buy. It’s classy!
A part of me shudders a little bit every time I read about everyone doing their own covers. (Full disclosure: I am a semi-retired graphic designer.) I’m not trying to state hard and fast rules here. You are in control and you make the decisions about your own books. I’m just offering some different opinions.
Yes, I agree the software is out there and you don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars on the pro level stuff like Photoshop to turn out good work. The digital revolution has made things as exciting for artists as it has for writers. I would suggest GIMP (free!) over PowerPoint because GIMP has a better tool-set that allows you more and better control over the images you create. I can make furniture with a hacksaw, but I can create more elegant furniture with a saw more suited to the task.
When you do your own covers you should put in the time to really learn the software AND study what works. There is theory behind good design. Things aren’t just randomly plopped down. You can learn what works and why. Dean has said writers need to crank out a million words before they know what they are doing. I’m going to suggest that artists need to push around a million pixels.
I’m not advocating any elitist agenda that only certain people can be artists. I always approached my own work as more of a tradesman, actually. Trades involve skills that can be learned by anyone. Even if you don’t have an inherent aptitude for it, you can gain competence in a trade through practice.
And that’s my two cents…
Mark,
I’ve heard that a great deal from graphic designers. But that said, graphics people know how to make a pretty book that is proportioned correctly and kerned correctly and laid out in “correct” ways, but alas, not a designer I know understands one whit more than the rest of us what makes a book sell and what doesn’t. And beyond basic design features, it always comes down to taste.
I was trained and have a five year degree in architecture. The first couple of years we were trained a great deal in art and design. When I started Pulphouse, I knew I knew nothing about cover design, so I kept the entire publishing company books very, very simple in cover design, and surprise, it became a “look” that I couldn’t have come up with if I had hired a hundred graphic designers. You can spot a “Pulphouse Book” from a hundred feet among all the beautiful books of Dark Harvest and Ziesing and Grant and Arkham House. (Other specialty publishers of the time.) They did beautiful books and I love to collect them to this days, but Pulphouse books stand out and sold better. And to a graphic designer, they are really ugly and poorly done.
The one thing I love about electronic and POD publishing is the ability to change a cover at will. I am stuck with publishing through Pulphouse the ugliest book ever done in science fiction. I wanted to change that cover from the moment I got it, but could not due to publishing deadlines. It lives out there as an example of how bad covers can get. Now, the really poor covers I did early on for WMG are mostly changed out. I agree, I have learned, but those early covers still sold a ton of books. Are the new, “better” covers selling more??
Some, yes, some no. Go figure.
So folks, I agree with Mark that you will get better as you do covers. But don’t let that stop you with just getting a cover done and up. You can fix it later as you learn more and your “eye” gets better.
Dean I wish you had written this 6 months ago when my wife was freaking out about my writing.
Yes, I have one of those spouses who seems a little less supportive than others when it comes to my writing. I now know it was fear based. She was scared to death I was going to sink $5000 – $10000 into some ‘hobby’ as she called it and end up with a book I could sell only to my family and friends. After lots of research and trial and error, I discovered most of what you say here on my own and I was able to show her how little it actually costs to do this. She’s since come around, but I let her read this post anyway and she smiled at me this morning, now my biggest fan. BTW a lot of my research into publishing originated at your website. I learn something new everytime I visit. Great Job! Keep it coming.
Thank you so much for this post. I’m trying to keep my costs as low as possible, which I’m thankfully able to do because I’ve always been a bit of a Jane of all trades. I’ve heard quotes as high as $5000 to get your book published saying that getting a /website/ costs $2000.
My website costs $80 a year which includes the domain name. Yes, I needed to know a few basics, but with templates and all the functionality of hosts, it’s really not hard.
And my hosting is more expensive because I wanted a host with good customer service. I could have gotten it for $50 or so from another host.
I love all the processes of publishing, so far, and I’m sure I’ll only grow more enamored as it becomes quicker and easier with each pass of it.
thank you so much DWS. You are generous, and clear. May I ask, is there a way to find out the charge for ISBN #s for ebooks? Thank you.
dr.cpe
archangel, use the free ISBNs offered by all the sites, including CreateSpace. Or if you don’t like that, buy the $9.99 ISBN from Smashwords and CreateSpace. Kindle and Pubit give you an assigned number for free. It makes no difference at all in any fashion. Use the free ones.
Dean –
I’m interested in how well your POD stuff does compared to ebookery. Don’t need dollars, but a rough percentage?
My experiences in this arena convinced me I was better off staying with electronica.
I got a fair number of folks who said, “Oh, I don’t like ebooks, but if you’ll put it up as POD, I’ll snap it up!”
I did — and they didn’t.
Since POD sites also allow authors to track sales, that was an easy check. I’ve put up three novels and had — literally — only a handful of sales on each as treeware. Whereas both of those have sold well as ebooks.
No matter how I parse it, POD comes up short. Market doesn’t seem to be there for me; the cost to a reader, when you count shipping is somewhere around 3-4 times as much, and they have to wait for delivery.
Example: The Dreadnaught, a doorstop fantasy I did with Reaves. We sold more copies at Amazon.com LAST MONTH alone than we did at Lulu for the ENTIRE YEAR. Cost to the customer: Lulu: $19.95 for a trade paper, plus about six bucks shipping, but let’s round it down to $25.
Amazon.com: $6.99.
Our piece of Lulu’s cover price is around three bucks per copy. At Amazon.com, it’s almost five dollars.
No way I can stretch this economic model so that it’s worth my effort; nor does it seem to be a service to my fans. Other than having a nice copy to stick into my ego rack, I don’t see the point.
Easier for me (and cheaper for a customer) to send them a print-ready file and let them run to the local U and get it PODed there, costs about $12-14 if they must have paper.1
Is it just me?
Steve
Steve, sorry for the delay answering this, but I’m going to answer it on a main post. I think the question is that important. Not the “Is it you?” question. (grin) But the reason for POD and how to make it work. And our percentage. So one more day and I’ll have it up front.
Um, what looks like a typo in my previous post was actually not, just needed an explanation: I put up three books as PODs, but said “both of those have sold well as ebooks.” That’s because I pulled one of them — I didn’t like the layout.
SP
Mark: I come from a design background myself, not a working professional designer, but I studied commercial art along with film and art history — and I do instructional support for a commercial art college program.
I think the fact that I come at this with an art history and study of pop art background may give me a different perspective:
Covers reflect the work. And amateur covers are going to be a “look” just like the lurid pulp covers of another era were.
Think about the Grunge movement — it became chic and slick, but it started out as exactly what it looks like: down and dirty “we don’t need no stinking art directors” done by amateurs. The point of the look was not originally to look interesting so much as to communicate being a part of a subculture. People imitated each other to show they were part of the group, and only when the look became recognizable did it become a real style.
At some point, various niche groups are going to sort themselves out, as people in various genres start to imitate each other. Even pros do that, actually. (Like the freaky habit with some historical romances or thriller romances these days of cutting off the heads of the cover models and putting the title and/or a building up there instead.) Neon green swashy fonts which you can’t read will someday mean something to the reader, just as a busted bodice used to.
In the meantime, I suspect that simplicity will win the day. (But I also think that properly kerned type and appropriate font choices will continue to be that subtle something that makes one cover look more professional than another.)
And just to toot my own horn on design — for those who didn’t see it on Passive Voice: I just won a book cover award from eBook Designer for my somewhat retro (and very simple) cover for The Man Who Did Too Much.
I was creating practice covers for my books and found a great tutorial for drawing “Paisley” patterns using Inkscape. I did not realize that vector graphics had come so far.
INKSCAPE TUTORIAL: PAISLEY MOTIF
http://verysimpledesigns.com/vectors/inkscape-tutorial-paisley-motif.html
- Paisley looks just like a cell/ameba. The same vector tool lets me do circuit patterns, leaves, etc…
Both Inkscape and Gimp have great tools. I’m using each to manipulate/create elements that I assemble in LibreOffice. I’m doing patterns that sit in a transparent layer below the main text, as a background layer.
It is deeply scary how the covers are coming together, with just free software. HA!
@ Jane: “how do you upload to iBooks direct? I’d heard this was impossible/difficult.”
Oh, it’s a NUISANCE, but it’s only impossible if you’ve got a PC rather than a Mac.
You do have to have a Mac computer to upload to iBooks. Also: It has to be a Mac with relatively recent (mine is two years old) hardward/software, and you have to be an iTunes user.
(I’m baffled by why iBooks chooses to limit its supplier market on this particular basis, but it does. This strilkes me as idiotic.)
Then there’s an application process. And you have to download and use their Mac software to upload the ebooks (which software I also have to delete from my system every time I’m done using it, because as soon as it’s IN your system, it automatically corrupts all existing ePub files with Mac coding, so that various other vendors won’t accept them, etc.–this problem disappears as soon as you delete the iBooks uploading software). And the software is clumsy and not at all user friendly. And once you’ve uploaded, it take a couple of weeks for iBooks to process the ePub file and post the book. It’s also a fussy system which often rejects files, but does do with incomprehensible coding that makes it very difficult to figure out what needs to be fixed so that the book will upload.
Etc., etc., etc.
And for all this, I actually make very little money on iBooks.
My own feeling is that, since I’m a longtime Mac user and have a sizable backlist to post (about 25 book-length works), it’s worth the bother. But if I was not a Mac user, I’d use an aggregator–the same one I use for Sony and Kobo (which I tried and found too much trouble to deal with, so I used Nina Paules’ ePublishing Works! for those and various smaller markets).
@ Traci: “Can we please throw in formatting as a cost?”
Why? I do my own formatting, as well as my own conversions to Mobi and ePub. This ensures I have a high level of quality control on the formatting of my self-pub backlist books.
Traci, Yup, I agree with Laura. I also format everything, and have learned different ways to get the formatting to hold. The early books we put up were just in straight word to Kindle and they have paragraphing problems, but now we can get them to hold 99% of the time. Also, you can get a program for free like Calibre and convert and format all your own stuff easily into ePub or Mobi.
Laura: are you sure it’s corrupting those epub files, or just claiming ownership (i.e. default opening priviledges)?
Every file type generally has a default application which claims the file so that when you double-click, the system will not be confused as to which program to use.
You can set this file by file, or set all files of a type to open with a certain program in one swoop. I suspect that’s what the Apple software is doing on install. You can change it back easily:
Next time you install it, find any epub file, and choose “get info.” In the middle of the “get info” window there’s a section called “Open with:” with a drop down menu where you can choose which app to open epub files with. If you change it, it will change for that file only. But there’s a little button below it which says “Change all…” — and if you click on that, it will change all epubs in the system to open with the application you specified.
Camille, I’ll try that, but this seems to be more complicated that than. For example: Kobo rejected an ePub file because it was Mac-only ePub… which I had NEVER TOUCHED with the mac software. That’s when I noticed that, just by virtue of being in my Apps directory, iBooks software turns all ePub files on my computer (even ones it has NEVER been used to open) into mac-only ePub files.
It’s something weird.
Since I seldom need the Mac iBooks software (I do uploads/changes to my iBooks list only a few times per year), I find the simplest solution is to schedule a day once every few months for working on iBooks, download the software when I get started, and delete it from my system when I’m done. Least problems this way, I find.
Further on the formatting issue…
Editing and packaging are what I consider real variables, in terms of what each writer needs and what their expenses will be. (As stated–my backlist books were all already edited, and I’m removed enough from the text after years away from it to proofread it myself. But if I were posting brand new, never-before-published books, I’d make some sort of editing arrangements.)
But formatting and converting ebooks just require sitting down and following the directions on various ebook conversion programs which have become increasingly available over the course of the year. I am very meticulous about formatting and conversion, going over every page of every book I produce, fixing every mistake I find… and would nonetheless have to say that formatting and conversion are far-and-away the easiest and quickest aspect of preparing an ebook. Learning to do it–and certainly, learning to do it WELL–took some time. But that was just a matter of trial, error, and experimentation. (I also imagine that it’s only going to get easier as the softwares become more sophisticated, user-friendly, and competitive with each other.)
This is also why I do my own conversions for ePub and Mobi and certainly would never use something like Smashwords’ “meatgrinder” or the allow Kindle to do my conversions for me. I want a professional-looking product, so I make sure it’s a finished, final, complete ePub or Mobi ebook when I upload it.
I’ve also heard that for copy editing having the computer read your book out loud is supposed to help catch the types of mistakes a word processor won’t. Free software will do it in chunks and I guess you can purchase the software to very large chunks.
@Bonnie – You can also use Adobe Reader’s read out loud. Within Reader go to View > Read Out Loud > Activate Read Out Loud.
The voice is not the greatest – completely monotone – but it may be another option.
Just a request – Dean can you do a blog post on formatting in CreateSpace?
Unless you have already written such a post – then please direct me to it.
Thank you.
Cyn
Cyn,
Formatting for trade paper books to put up on CreateSpace is called “Book Design” and there are entire semesters in college on that sort of thing. I am going to be teaching a class this fall on not only formatting in trade paper, but also what to do with the books once you have them. And how to get them into channels and so much more.
That said, on Lynda.com, there are courses on book design inside of InDesign tutorials. InDesign is an expensive program that almost all major publishers and magazines and most newspapers use to layout their issues. There are cheaper ways of doing it, but the cheaper you go, like laying out a book in Word adds in levels of problems. But it can and is done.
Basically, the way to start learning book design is pay attention to books and their interior. Open up a hardback that looks good to you, and ask yourself on every page what would you do with that running header? Page number? How far down the page would you start the chapter? Drop caps? And how big? Margins, leading, gutter, and on and on and on. It’s all learnable, but it does take a little study to make a book look professional in layout.
And more importantly, easily readable. We’ve all picked up books, opened them and then put the book back because it would just be too hard to read. That’s a publisher doing a number of things wrong. Mostly because of money issues in length, has crammed down the type size, expanded the margins and such. There is only so much length in compared to size of font that a reader’s eye can track across a page and then return to the next line.
As I said, there are entire programs in school on formatting a trade paper. I will be doing a week this fall, with help from another professional in book design.
This is one of the reasons I tell people to start with electronic publishing first, then work into trade paper as they get comfortable.
Thank you Dean –
I will look into Lynda.com. It has been years (1980 or so) since I did any book design and it was on an actual typesetter. We had the design already set in a program so it was much easier in some ways and harder in others. The typesetter product was printed out in a type of photo-paper. A lot of chemicals were involved.
I do okay on digital publishing because it is easier.
And while I could have been learning book design in the last few years, I was actually in the computer repair business until my sickness.
Thanks for the answer. It seems to me that I will need to take a few weeks and really dig into what is needed for a trade paperback.
Yours, Cyn
eBook formatting is easy and fast, once you get the hang of it. Anybody can do it for themselves. I need to learn how to do book design with the same ease, though. I like classy books.
Thanks Laura & Dean for your replies. I don’t have a Mac or itunes, but I might ask a friend. I much prefer to go direct if I can, then I have more control. It’s not always possible, of course, and Smashwords is invaluable for distributing to places like B&N who refuse to deal with foreigners without American bank accounts (sulk!)
My second novel cost me $35.00 to publish … that was 14 months ago and I’m still at net loss.
Talking about Power Point “power,” I created my book-trailer for “Arboregal, the Lorn Tree” using Power Point. Cost to produce $0.00. I even wrote a blog on how to do it, see it at http://sandru.com/blog/category/writing-and-publishing/
Just had a wake-up call yesterday and today. Smashwords has been down and is still down today (at least in Nevada, California, and Canada). It’s just another reason to have several outlets for our product.
Yours, Cyn
@ Jane: “Thanks Laura & Dean for your replies. I don’t have a Mac or itunes, but I might ask a friend.”
The problem you should be aware of before you contemplate doing iBooks via a friend or a friend’s Mac is that… you can’t even MONITOR your iBooks accounts (let alone do changes or updates) without a Mac.
(It’s a really silly system for a vendor to have. Basing access on whether or not the supplier is a Mac user? What are they THINKING?)
Honest to God, Dean, if I did a cover potential readers would run screaming in droves from the horror. (And I do not write horror)
Some people shouldn’t be put anywhere near a graphics app. Really. But coming up with 50 to 75 bucks to pay someone to do it isn’t really a huge deal and there’s plenty of cheap royalty-free art. I do think that a cover that gives a professional impression (and I suspect a lot of that is properly kerned type and appropriate font choices for title and author) carries a message to the potential reader. I know I can’t do that so I pay someone to do it for me. No apologies for paying a flat fee for what I’m not comfortable doing myself.
And the guy who lives in the same house with a Hugo-winner editor says you don’t need an editor. *snickers*
JR, I’ve been nominated five times for a Hugo Award for my editing and I am not a good copyeditor and have never claimed to be. The ability to see story structure and help a writer fix the problem is a different skill then finding a missed word on page ten. Trust me. And yet beginning writers think “editor” means copyediting and fixing mistakes. Nope.
Thank you DWS for your answer about ISBN’s. Appreciate it
dr.cpe
Dean wrote: “The ability to see story structure and help a writer fix the problem is a different skill then finding a missed word on page ten.”
Precisely. These are two separate functions, with two separate skills sets, and they’re done by separate people.
A copy editor’s job involves things like spotting where you wrote “now” when you meant “know.” The spellchecker won’t catch that, and the writer may have been too careless or exhausted to see it himself.
An editor’s job involves saying things to the writer like, “It makes no sense that your lead character, Adolph Hitler, breaks the non-aggression pact, invades Russia, and starts a two-front war he can’t win. Plus… who’d be stupid enough to invade -Russia-? Didn’t you read WAR & PEACE? You’ve got to provide Hitler with compelling motivation for launching Operation Barbarossa, or else take it out of the story.”
(In fiction, unlike life, things need to make sense.)
Laura Resnick, you witty example made me laugh. They’d have to also give the underlying motive for Sudenland too.
re: formatting for CreateSpace -
I set my MS up in Word (I know – but it worked for me!) tweaked it over and over, then saved to PDF and printed some of it out. CreateSpace has a very good walk-through for how to do this. Mirrored margins, even/odd page numbering, etc.
The thing is, if you have a little time and are willing to do some iterations, you don’t have to get it perfect the first time. Sure, I tried, but when I got my first proof copy, I compared it to the published books on my shelf, and realized I needed a little bit more spacing, and a slightly bigger font. Not to mention printing on cream paper, instead of white.
So I made those changes and got another proof. It looked great – except that I needed to re-center some graphic elements.
Third proof was the charm, and it really wasn’t that hard. I recommend taking a physical book that you think is laid out well, and studying the elements. How did they head the chapters? What kinds of fonts are they using? etc. Then see how much of that you can duplicate in your document.
Dean, even though I’ve heard this before from you, it’s always so useful for me to read it again!
There’s only one thing I will gently disagree with you on, and that’s the cost of copyediting/proofreading. I know who you’ve got working for you for $150, and I know that person is fantastic—no arguments there. But that person is charging below the going rate.
I’m a full-time writer and a former professional copyeditor (as well as production editor, content editor, blah blah that was all nonfiction anyway), and I’ve been copyediting for colleagues who are putting their work up. Good, solid writers who know how to write kick-ass books. But they still need a professional eye to go over them. Heck, even I hire someone to go over my book ms before I put them up, because I know I’m going to miss things in my own work. When I get to doing POD, I will probably have them reviewed again, for things like bad breaks and ladders and widows/orphans.
The thing is, it’s more than just typos. For example, most people don’t know that extra spaces before a paragraph mark can screw up formatting. Stuff like that.
I’m not advocating spending a ton of money; I agree with you 100% on that. I just want people to be aware that quality copyediting can cost a little bit more than what you quoted. Copyediting is a skill very different from writing. Make sure you get someone who’s well-trained.