Publishing – Page 3 – Jaye Em Edgecliff

Decisions, decisions …

Published on 2 February 2013 by JayeLeave a comment

So the final editing of Love or Lust is well under way. It probably won’t be done by Valentine’s Day, but it still might. It is moving at a fair clip, but that doesn’t change that there’s about 140k words and 400-ish pages to get through. Too, I have to make a final read through just to make sure that the final buff and polish is done, so that date will likely be missed and was never a very resounding likelihood anyway.

That’s got me to thinking about a few things.

First off, section separators: Also known as fleurons (and an hundred other things), they do give a certain flair to the page. They’re also a bloody wretch to figure out how to do. With Dingbats type fonts they’re a breeze in the PDF, but they start to become an unholy nightmare in the universe of the ePUB and Kindle editions. Not impossible, mind, but nightmare. An alternative is to just use a little graphic. Dear God save me from things that ought to be black on transparent alpha layer but instead are scans complete with random not exactly white artefacts in the white bits!! Photoshop and I had a lovely row about that. I did make one. It was kind of pretty. Well, that is, until I tried to put it on the page. That didn’t go too well. Still … I’d appreciate feedback on that.

If you click on the word fleurons above it’ll take you to an example image. The alternative is good old fashioned asterisks.

The second bit of thinking was just a bit of fun inspired by how another author did a little pre-release promotion. Seanan McGuire did a Discount Armageddon A–B–Cs thing that seemed kind of cute. The more I think about it the less I want to do it. So I probably won’t. But just in case I do lose my mind and decide to go with this little touch of lunacy … well … you’ve been warned.

Solidly decided things:

Publishing, I don’t care if you use a publisher or do it yourself, is a good way to go completely mad with indecision, anxiety, self-doubt, and several other things that suddenly have escaped my vocabulary and are lost in the woods some place.
I love my cover art. I’m, torn between ideas regarding it though. I’m very much thinking to keep that layout and just change the colour scheme for each book, and then (naturally) the image. The question is, do I keep finding girl/girl cover art (something I can absolutely do for Ready or Not but is giving me a touch of trouble for later books), or just keep finding pretty images (e.g. the 4th book maybe having a ballet slipper on it or some such). Ah well, I’m not even done with the second book yet and feel like it needs heavy editing so I’ve plenty of time to consider and reconsider this.
The print edition will be somewhere in the neighbourhood of us$10. Sadly, this is due entirely to length. It costs more than the retail price of a novel half this size just to print the bloody things. Which gives me a new found respect for some of the newest Terry Pratchett novels I’ve picked up being about us$10, but doesn’t explain some places charging that much for things like Light Fantastic or Wyrd Sisters! The eBook, though, will likely be closer to us$4 or us$5. Compelling enough arguments could see it as low as us$3 (just use the comments or the contact link), but current ‘wisdom’ says the higher price will attract more sales. We’ll see.

Page numbers. I’ve just realised I’ve no idea how I should like to do the page numbers. Centered and unadorned at the bottom of the page? Unadorned at the bottom corner of the page (obviously this thought is for the print edition only)? Unadorned at the top? If decorated, with tildes or a fleuron/dingbat? Well, don’t ever let anyone tell you self-publishing is easy, or that it’s the lazy way out or any other such nonsense. That said, going through a publisher is just as bad or worse — you may not have to decide a lot of this stuff, but then you have to worry that your first edition might have covers in “50 shades of mud” and “kept them out of the shops“, among too many other less amusing anecdotes by far too many other authors to mention.

I’ll always argue with someone who says writing is ‘hard work’ — I take issue with the work part. The hard … that depends on perspective, writing is challenging in terms of telling a good story well and not losing your mind in the process. Work it is not. Publishing, on the other hand, I will doubt the sanity of anyone who claims is anything but work and be suspicious of anyone who claims it to be easy.

In other news Puppy Bowl is tomorrow!! I’ll, alas, be missing it because a) I’ll be at work and b) I don’t actually have any TV service that doesn’t come via my DVD player.

The Perks of Being an ePublished Author (kimbervale.wordpress.com)
A statement I’ll never understand (jayeedgecliff.wordpress.com)
Smashwords Direct Offers ePub Uploads for Indie Authors (goodereader.com)

If you want something done right …

Published on 4 October 20122 February 2013 by JayeLeave a comment

Two posts in one night. My, but I’m in a mood tonight, neh?

If you missed any earlier mentions I’m self publishing my work. Some will applaud this, some will bemoan and decry it. C’est la vie.

I will not presume to tell any their business. If you prefer the traditional publishing route and have the patience for it, and the luck to succeed at it, by all means go for it.

For me, it’s simply not a desirable option.

Simply put I don’t want to put up with the crap for less than 5% royalties. It’s insulting.

The trick is to know what to do yourself and when to ask for help.

Plenty of books put through a major publisher see no real promotion, and no serious editing. Simple fact. Think to any major published work you’ve read lately that came out recently. Typos, grammar goofs, etc. And how did you know about it? NY Times best seller lists don’t count. I mean The Other Stuff.

So. Some things I’m learning.

Editor, have two, kind of. Sweet talk, or marry, a grammar nazi. Or pay, but we’re going to operate on the assumption that authors don’t have money. It’s statistically more likely. Have them proofread your work, but first do it yourself. Have some friend read it too. Someone to give feedback. The friend is kind of like a line editor and a sense checker. Their purpose is not to say, “in the second paragraph here you used the inverse third person conjunctivitis on your pluperfect nominative glass widget in duck sauce” (grammatician I most assuredly am NOT, most of my grasp of English grammar comes from my Latin II class); instead his job is to say “Jaye, great story so far, but just why is it, exactly, that when they went to the mall in Chapter 2 they summoned a daemon to ransack the Starbucks during that zombie uprising?” so that you can scratch your head and go “they were SUPPOSED to just buy shoes and grab some pizza. I’ll take a look at it.”

The important thing, though, is that it’s your story. Generally, take the grammar advice, but if it interferes with the narrative voice and is a subtle thing that doesn’t detract from the clarity, only the technical accuracy, ask yourself if you really want to change it. You can say no. Same goes for the mall scene. Maybe your friend is an idiot, or maybe it CAN be interpreted as a daemonic zombie invasion if you read if certain ways, but you’re fair sure the average reader will see shoes and pizza, then leave it.

Even if you speak perfect lit geek, and grammar is not an esoteric occult thing to you, still have an editor. She doesn’t know what’s supposed to be there. She’ll see what you did not.

Cover art: have it, but don’t go mad. Trends don’t mean much. Pay for a pro to make your cover if you can, by all means. But if you know a friend handy with a pencil, then ask him. Maybe you and a friend are handy with Photoshop. Search Creative Commons’ engine for an image that is befitting and doctor it up. A cover needs to catch the eye. As long as it does that and conveys something meaningful about the story, like genre, then you’re probably okay.

Look at a pro book and try to decide what you do or don’t need, and make sure to have that. Copyright notice pages, dedications, other works by this author list, etc.

Finally, get it out there. I don’t put much stock in single stop services like Smashwords. I just don’t think they provide a sufficient service to warrant the percentage they keep; not considering the nuisance their conversion software is. Others are hardly better. Use them, or not, is always your choice. Personally, though, make your own ePub in Pages or InDesign or similar, and upload them to places like Kobo and Barnes & Noble yourself. Make your own mobi for Amazon. Then a PDF and some patience with a good print on demand service. Lightning Source, if you have some money, or CreateSpace if you’re broke.

You may not get an advance, and you may have to learn to arrange your own book signings, but you get more per sale, so fewer sales to make the same money. No one arranging for you to sign books if you don’t like interacting with people or arranging them somewhere you don’t want to be. Pros and cons, it’s all the same in the end; even the praise vs the loathing. Some will like you better for being self pub others will deride you, the opposite is certainly true.

In the end don’t let anyone tell you what to do. It is and always will be your story. If you don’t agree with the advice an editor or agent is giving you, find another one or put the book out yourself. If you are in no hurry and want the peace of mind of a contract and an agent to do all the heavy lifting for you, then go for it. Just always approach with caution, and always remember they’re asking you for the rights to your work. No matter what they may try to make it sound like they’re not the ones doing you a favour, you’re doing them one – if they don’t have books to sell they don’t make a dime. I’m sure you can extrapolate from there.

Good night all.

Making Kindle friendly files

Published on 20 September 20122 February 2013 by Jaye3 Comments

I’ve been working on various options for publishing my books to Amazon.

For a print copy there’s Create Space which looks fairly straightforward and easy to use. Charges to be distributed outside of Amazon, and gives a horrible royalty at that point (though sadly one not too far from the mark of what every royalty would be if I went traditional publishing. I won’t say I’m self-publishing for the money, self pub has it’s own drawbacks, but I won’t say the big guys’ under 5% rates weren’t insulting enough to be a factor).

For electronic publishing it looks like I would need an ISBN for Apple iBooks. Unfortunate as I’d like to be published there, but don’t have us$250 for ISBNs (us$125 singly or us$250 for 10. I’ve got 4 books I’d like to publish. And do plan to write more). So looks like being there is a bit back burner – bummer since that’s my favourite eBook store. Kobo, which I’d never heard of, and the Nook I can just upload an ePUB generated by Pages ’09 and they’re happy so I’ll be doing that. Amazon, well, suffice to say Amazon’s a little different.

Amazon has its KDP program. No big deal, right? I can upload .doc, .pdf, .epub, or .html to it. Yes, and it comes out kind of weird. Okay, so it looks like they use their own thing: .mobi. What can make .mobi? Amazon’s software, KindleGen – not impressive. A program called Calibre – easy to use though not written with non-computer geeks in mind (luckily I can fake it) as all too much FOSS stuff is these days, and its .mobi output is awful: Assuming Amazon will let you upload it (frequently gives an error message) you wind up with insane word wrap! Finally there’s a plugin for Adobe InDesign CS4-6 which allows export to Kindle. Like many Adobe products it is, just a moment while I consult a thesaurus – I need an antonym, ah looks like non-intuitive will have to do despite lacking poetry, but then again so is InDesign.

Because it was no easy task I’m going to give some simple steps for what to do.

First off, have a .doc or .docx file. And be prepared to make adjustments.

Fire up InDesign, tell it you’re making a Document. Set it to Digital Publishing, then select Kindle from the appropriate drop down.

Okay, from here it’s easy, just stupid. Click file, then PLACE. Not import, gods no, of course not. Why would it be Import!? Place is the only sensible term for doing what we’re about to do! Find your doc file . PDF works too I imagine, but that was … different and I didn’t like it.

Where’s the document?! Notice your cursor looks funny? Click the blank page in front of you. Don’t worry where, it doesn’t seem to make a lick of difference.

There! Your document is ready! Or is it?

It doesn’t import auto-indent settings correctly. Why? One word: Adobe.

You could do all manner of things to fix this, but the easiest is this:

Pray you set separate styles for things that oughtn’t have been auto-indented. If you didn’t, you just have to add/remove indents by hand. Luckily there’s the ability to do it via selection tool.

Now for those of us with styles for everything, go to the top and click Type. Go down to Paragraph Styles.

An ugly little box pops up with a list of all your Styles. Hurray, now what? Where’s the edit option? It’s in a right click menu. God knows why.

There. Edit all the styles that should (or shouldn’t. Two books in a row, one imported with, the other without. Explain THAT one!) be auto indented and fix the indents. This will fix it for all the text with that style, which if you remembered to set that when you made the document in the first place means you’re all set.

When finished, click file, click Export for Kindle, enjoy what SHOULD be a good mobi file.

There’re some quirks that can happen with the title page so you might have to adjust some here and there so don’t forget to preview your file.

The downside to a series

Published on 18 September 20122 February 2013 by JayeLeave a comment

Oh my, Love or Lust is past the halfway mark in a second draft as revisions and edits get done. I swear if I find one more daft typo I’ll scream.

Anyway, this is the broad sale edit phase polishing up the story. When editor and I are happy with it then copyediting happens. Couple passes to be sure no little ugly comma splices and other grammatical gremlins are still around, then it’s off to the retailers.

The downside is this is absorbing and distracting the mental CPU cycles that might’ve been going to getting over my touch of writer’s block with Ready or Not. No I hadn’t mentioned that yet. Yeah, well, got a bit sick & work got a bit crappier and I’m a little “so … what’s next?”

It’s the worst kind too. I can see all kinda next coming up, but I got to GET THERE! Hmmm … maybe this many chapters in, it’s time to fast forward to school starting and them getting on with sophomore year.

Ah me, but publishing is such a slow process

Published on 18 August 20122 February 2013 by JayeLeave a comment

I think it’s taking longer to edit the book than it did to write it. It hasn’t, actually, not yet anyway. Still Love or Lust is still on track to be out before Christmas, though I don’t think before Halloween. Thanksgiving, perhaps.

Ready or Not is proving interesting. Just got done writing a bit I didn’t see coming. It’s proving an interesting ride to write that one.

To note Love or Lust will absolutely be available in Trade Paperback through Amazon, as well as for Kindle, and from Barnes & Noble for their Nook the day it’s published. Apple‘s iBookstore with luck will be the same day or shortly after – but depending on various factors could take a month or two. Same goes for getting a print copy outside of Amazon.

Why? Going self-publish. The big boys are impossible, and given the girl-meets-girl nature of Now & Forever, I’d be pretty well relegated to rather niche publishers whose books aren’t normally on store shelves. Way I figure it, if I’m going to have limited distribution either way, I might as well do it myself and save myself some hassle.