This is an update of my previous blog (click here for the original) for the friendly attendees of a workshop on Self Publishing for Family Historians at the Society of Genealogists on Saturday 8 February 2020.
First of all, an apology. I misled you concerning inserting images into a paperback. I was confusing paperbacks with ebooks.
To insert an image into a paperback all you need to do is to click Insert where you want the image to go, click on Picture, choose your image, and Bob’s your uncle.
It’s best to make sure the image is the right size before
inserting it into the page. If you try to alter the size after you’ve inserted
it you may lose resolution. As I remember when I did this it this involved a
bit of toing and froing to get the size and position of the image right.
NB: This is for black and white images only. For colour you
will need to choose the colour print option on Amazon’s website, and I imagine
this will bump up the price somewhat.
PYNTO:https://www.pynto.co.uk/ A friendly wife-and-husband team who can design any kind of book you like, from basic to custom-made.
LIFELINES PRESS: http://www.lifelinespress.co.uk/ A bespoke, personal service for print books only, offering everything from ghost writing to editing to the end production of a beautiful work of art, printed on paper of your choice, hand-bound in leather or anything else you choose.
Before you approach any of these companies:
What you need to think of
EDITING: There are three main types of
editor:
Structural edit – checking the manuscript as a
whole for clarity, over-writing, under-writing, repetition, overall structure
Copy editing – line by line checking for
grammar, clumsy writing, repetition, clarity
Proof reading – checking for mistakes
and typos
There is a certain amount of blurring between these three tasks, but do not expect an editor to proofread your book. She/he may correct mistakes if they spot them but it is a different process altogether, and one a sharp-eyed friend might be able to do for you.
https://www.99designs.co.ukUK-based. Your cover remit is ‘put out to tender’ to a number of designers who are invited to submit their designs, and you get to choose your favourite. The more you pay the more designers you are likely to attract. This has the advantage of being able to choose between several completely different approaches.
Find a book whose layout you like to use as a template.
Consider:
SIZE: Of the book; standard non fiction is 6”x 9”, fiction 8”x 5” (but you can choose what you like).
TYPEFACE AND TYPEFACE SIZE: There are specifically recommended fonts. I used Palatino 11 point. It’s not a bad idea to print out a few pages in various typefaces and sizes in your chosen page size to see what it looks like
CHAPTER TITLE LAYOUT: Centred or left-aligned, upper or lower case, etc.
TRIMMINGS: Drop caps, headers, small caps etc
IMAGES: (photos, maps, family trees)
FRONT MATTER: What goes before the main text. This is a matter of choice, but for ebooks certainly it’s good to keep it to a minimum. Mine consists of:
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication/quote page
Table of contents
Photo of the subject of my book
END MATTER: What comes after the main text.
Acknowledgements
Appendix & chapter notes/references
Bibliography
Index
Author biography
You can also include reviews, if you have them, or books
you’ve already written.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY: This is important to readers,
so it’s a good idea to make yourself sound interesting and likeable!
Keep it brief
To the point and in the context of the book.
Write in the third person
BLURB: The blurb is what makes a person read
a book or pass on.
Again, keep it brief – no more than 200 words
Write in the third person present tense
Remember it is a selling tool not a synopsis, so don’t attempt to tell the whole story
The blurb also acts as a reminder of what excited you enough to write the book in the first place.
Both organisations publish in print and ebook form.
Amazon: free to submit, easy to navigate, they provide you with a free ISBN (or ASIN).Subsequent updates and changes, to the interior or cover, are also free.
Ingram Spark: fee of $49 to submit – unless you are a member of ALLi, in which case it’s free), and you need to have your own ISBN (through Neilsen: https://www.nielsenisbnstore.com/). Advantages of Ingram over Amazon are a) the quality is very slightly better, b) they have print outlets in the UK and Australia, c) they have a wider range of sizes and quality, including hardbacks.
Amazon has around 85% of the market but many people, including bookshops, don’t like them.
In both cases you upload your manuscript as one document (in Word), and your cover separately (as a pdf). You enter your title, author name. Chose categories and keywords, decide pricing. Make sure you fill in your tax details so you are exempt from US tax.
I will be adding details on ebooks shortly. I will also be updating my blogs on formatting.
For the good people who attended the Society of Genealogists workshop on self publishing on Saturday 8th July, here as promised is the gist of what we covered:
First off, it is important to find out as much as possible about the process in order to avoid getting confused and/or ripped off. There are sharks out there.
Self publishing is ideal for family historians for several reasons:
You get to control everything: the length of the book and the look of it including the cover
You can mix the genres (ie history/family history/memoir and fiction)
It doesn’t matter if you only intend to sell a few copies (see POD below)
You can edit the text, images and/or cover at any time and re-publish the book at no extra cost
Your book never goes out of print
PRINT ON DEMAND (POD)
This is what has made self publishing in print form possible and financially viable. Instead of having to print off hundreds or thousands of copies of your book, and find somewhere to store them, Amazon (or whoever) files your book electronically and only prints a copy when someone orders one. Unit costs per copy are the same no matter how many you order. Shipping costs on top vary according to the country the buyer lives in and how many copies he/she is ordering. So if for example you order ten copies to be sent to the same address it will not cost ten times as much as ordering one copy.
BEFORE PUBLISHING
EDITING
Having written your book and polished it to within an inch of its life, it’s a good idea to have it professionally edited. Every writer no matter how successful or experienced needs an outside eye to check for overall structure, clarity, repetition and consistency.
(That said, if you are only intending to publish for your immediate family this may not be essential, though the right editor can always improve any book.)
COPY EDITING & PROOFREADING
Copy editing means checking the book for grammar and sentence structure. Some editors will do this for you, but don’t expect it.
Proofreading means checking for typos. You should be able to get a sharp-eyed friend or colleague to do this for you.
Once your book has been written, rewritten, edited and proofread, the next step is to gather it together in two documents:
INTERIOR
COVER
The interior consists of Front matter, text and End matter. What goes where is a matter of choice but generally speaking this is what I go for:
INTERIOR FRONT MATTER
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication/quote page
Map/family tree/photo
Table of contents
INTERIOR END MATTER
Afterword
Acknowledgements
Appendix & chapter notes (or notes if you have footnoes)
Bibliography
Author biography
Index
FOOTNOTES
In my first book The Worst Country in the World I didn’t use footnotes for various reasons: a) I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of the text and b) footnotes don’t generally work in ebooks. Instead I referenced my sources in the Appendix and Chapter Notes, and expanded on various things only the seriously interested, such as family members, might want to know. This was a personal choice however. With my current book I may rethink.
DESIGN
Whether you decide to go it alone or get people to help you it is useful to have some idea of what you want your book to look like. It can be helpful to find a book whose layout you like and use it as a template. (I chose Kate Grenville’s The Secret River for the plainness of style, clarity and size of font and relatively generous margins.) These are the considerations:
Page/trim size: Amazon’s POD templates are limited to standard book sizes such as 5” x 8” (standard novel), 6” x 9” (standard non fiction) etc. (I chose 6” x 9”)
Font and font size: (I chose Palatino 11 point – on the large size, deliberately; I experimented with different fonts and sizes, & margins, by printing out a few pages and cutting them down to the relevant size, but it’s difficult to see how it looks until you can see the full printed proof)
Margins: (mine were top & bottom 1.9cm, inner 2 outer 1.5, gutter .33)
Chapter headings layout: (Aligned L, R or C, upper or lower case, start some way down the page)
Extras: such as drop caps (1st letter of 1st sentence in each chapter enlarged), small caps at beginning of new chapter, headers
Images: (photos, maps, family trees) – see below for copyright
COVER
Received wisdom says don’t try to create your own book cover unless you are an experienced graphic designer or au fait with Photoshop. Professionals know what is eye-catching and what is not and what is appropriate for the genre. They should also be clear about how many versions and amendments they are willing to provide for their fee. Fees differ according to how much they are required to do; original artwork will obviously cost more than if you provide your own image, or if they are able to use stock images from copyright free sources. Expect to pay from around £250 upwards.
Alternatively look online for cover designers and if you find one you like, contact them direct. Likewise in a bookshop: the designer’s name may be on the fly-leaf of the book, otherwise contact them through the publisher.
COPYRIGHT
As we touched on in the workshop copyright is a minefield, and I cannot pretend to be an expert. However I did come up against a copyright issue when I wanted to use a 19th century painting by Australian painter Tom Roberts for my cover. The image itself was out of copyright but the high-resolution photo of the image online belonged to an art gallery in Ballarat, Australia. They allowed me to use it on condition I signed a detailed license form stating I would not change the image or superimpose text on top of it, and that I would send the final proof to them for their approval. In the end my cover designer decided she couldn’t comply with their demands, so we didn’t use it.
So while an image may be out of copyright the online photo of the image – or in the case of books or documents, the scanned version uploaded online by an organisation or library – may not be.
BLURB
This is what appears on the back of a paperback or on your Amazon page. The blurb is notoriously difficult to write, but it is your selling tool, and should be:
Brief – no more than 200 words
Written in the third person present tense
A selling tool not a synopsis
Here for what it’s worth, is my blurb for Worst Country:
In 1787 a handful of people – convicts, marines and government servants – sail across the world to settle a new colony and call it New South Wales.
In 1801 Mary Pitt, a widow with five children, migrates to New South Wales from her home in Dorset to live among these same convicts.
Two hundred odd years later Mary’s great great great great granddaughter travels to what is now Australia to discover why her ancestress risked the lives of her entire family to make her home in a penal colony. She uncovers tales of astonishing bravery and bloody-mindedness, the origins of a unique form of class distinction, why her own Australian/English mother was the person she was and how what was once regarded as the worst country in the world became one of the ‘luckiest’. (135 words)
I’m not saying this is an ideal example (nowadays I think I’d edit it down a tad), but what I’ve set out to do in three paragraphs is:
1) The original story
2) My family’s part in the original story
3) My quest to investigate 1) and 2)
~~~~~~~~~~~~
HOW TO GO ABOUT SELF PUBLISHING
There are three basic options
DIY using POD with either Amazon Createspace or Ingram Spark – the cheapest option
AIDED – through a reputable publishing company or individual
HIGH-END – custom-made with special paper, size and shape and/or binding, eg coffee table book. Ideal for image-heavy books.
DIY – This is the option I chose but I would only recommend it if you have a lot of time and patience. I formatted both the paperback and ebook versions of my book – it took me longer than it should have or than it would do now. It isn’t that difficult, you don’t need any particular IT skills no matter what the books tell you.
If you are interested in the nuts and bolts of doing things yourself you can find more technical details here
Amazon Createspace: https://www.createspace.com Amazon are the market leaders for self publishers. They may be behemoths, and tough employers, but they are very efficient and easy to deal with. Their submission guidelines are very straightforward and easy to follow. They can also show you what kind of royalties you can expect to receive according to how your book is priced. The submission process is free, they don’t start to make money until you start to sell books. They also provide their own free ISBNs and barcodes.
Ingram Spark: http://www.ingramspark.com Ingram have been around forever but Ingram Spark, the self publishing arm, is relatively new on the scene. The advantages of IS are they have print outlets in the UK and Australia as well as the US (Amazon CS is US-based), their distribution is considered to be better, and for the Amazonphobes, they are not Amazon. The quality of print is also slightly better, in my experience. The drawbacks are you have to provide your own ISBN (available in the UK in batches of 10 through Nielsen – http://www.isbn.nielsenbook.co.uk/controller.php?page=121) – and you have to pay a small fee to submit your ms (unless you are a member of ALLi, see below).
AIDED – Here is where you get someone else to do the work for you. You can buy in services a la carte so to speak, in other words you can provide the cover yourself but hire someone to proofread the book, or to format it.
Before contacting an outside organisation, there are things to be wary of.
DO be clear exactly what you are looking for
DO make sure you hang onto the rights to your book: if you’re using a self pub company pay the one-off fee to get the book up there and that’s it
DO make sure the royalties come straight to you and not through a third party: otherwise you’re dealing with vanity publishing and have the worst of all worlds and will make zilch money
DON’T sign any long-term contracts
Recommended organisations:
I Am Self Publishing https://www.iamselfpublishing.com. A young brother and sister organisation, very friendly, very savvy, experienced in producing all kinds of books. They offer an initial no-obligation consultation, either in person or on the phone.
Matadorhttp://www.troubador.co.uk/matador.aspA large organisation with a rather confusing website. Probably American but also based in the UK. Again recommended by indie authors.
HIGH END – Custom-made, recommended:
I Am Self Publishing – see above Lifelines Press – www.lifelinespress.com Pynto – as above
WEBSITES
If you don’t already have your own family history website I would recommend creating one. It is an excellent way for other family members to get in touch with you. I have a static (ie not a blog) site at marymatchampitt.wordpress.com and I’ve had all manner of distant relatives contact me with very useful information. You can create one for free, or for a small annual hosting fee, at WordPress.
RECOMMENDED BOOKS
Published by ALLi and available on Amazon and elsewhere*
Published by ALLi and available on Amazon and elsewhere
*There seems to be a problem with this Amazon link. I will query it with ALLi and repost.
An organisation run by indie authors for indie authors. They publish a list of recommended service providers (available to members only) and books (available to all). They also have a closed Facebook page and monthly meetups in London and elsewhere, plus they offer other perks such as reduced rates with Ingram Spark and free entry to the London Book Fair, among other things. If you want to know more, click on the ALLi logo on the top right of this page.
For example when I contacted Who Do You Think You Are for a review they were pretty sniffy, but I sent them a copy anyway and heard nothing more. However they do – or did – have a feature in their magazine called ‘My Family Hero’ and when approached were very keen to include a story about my ancestress.
EBOOKS
Whether or not you are thinking of publishing in e-form (not so suitable for picture-based books), ebooks are easy to produce – again on your own or with help – and you receive a higher royalty (70% through Amazon compared with around 20-25% for paperbacks). Most indie authors sell more ebooks than paperbacks, partly because bookshops are generally reluctant to stock indie published books, and partly because of the cost of POD. My sales are 90% + ebook, and of those, 95% are through Amazon Kindle.
Submission is straightforward, and free, through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing: https://kdp.amazon.com/
For other e-devices such as Apple iBook, Nook and Kobo, you can use one site to distribute to all platforms such as Ingram Spark or
That’s about it. If there is anything you would like to add or comment on, or if you have any further queries, please either comment on this post or email me at [email protected].
As promised to the gentle folk at the Society of Genealogists on Saturday’s workshop on self publishing, here are my notes, posted in two parts.
WHERE I am coming from
What I know about self publishing comes from hard-earned experience publishing my book The Worst Country in the World, which after six years of writing (on and off) evolved into a hybrid mix of family history, early colonial Australian history, memoir and novel. For that reason alone I did not attempt to get it traditionally published. (Nor I realise would any publisher want to take on a book that is not likely to be a mass seller.)
Having read up everything I could find on self publishing and sent off for and received quotes that would entail taking out a mortgage, I decided to do everything myself: convert the book into ebook and design the paperback. The only things I paid for were for editing and cover design. (This not necessarily a path I would recommend unless you have plenty of time and endless patience.)
Sketch by Anna de Polnay
WHAT is self publishing?
Self publishing is ideal for family historians for the following reasons:
You get to control everything:
You can write the book you want to write
You can choose exactly how you want it to look
You can spend as much or as little as you want to
It doesn’t matter if you’re only expecting to sell a few copies
Print on Demand (POD), which means your manuscript is stored on some electronic device and only printed out when someone orders it, has revolutionised the publishing business. The unit cost of a book is the same whether you order one copy or five hundred. No book goes out of print, and there is no wastage.
However whether or not you decide to buy in professional services or advice it’s important to have a clear idea of what you are looking for with your book. There are sharks out there who are only too happy to charge a small fortune for not very much indeed.
Having done a lot of asking around two companies cropped up frequently, known to offer an efficient, professional and trustworthy service.
A bespoke, personal service for print books only, offering everything from ghost writing to editing to the end production of a beautiful work of art, printed on paper of your choice, handbound in leather or anything else you choose.
Before you approach any of these companies however:
What you need to think of
EDITING: Every writer needs an editor no matter how experienced or successful they are. There are three main types of editor:
Copy editing – line by line checking for grammar, clumsy writing, repetition, clarity
Proof reading – checking for mistakes and typos
There is a certain amount of blurring between these three tasks, but do not expect an editor to proofread your book. It is not his/her job. She/he may correct mistakes if they spot them but it is a different process altogether, and one a sharp-eyed friend might be able to do for you (as she did in my case).
For editors you could do worse than taking a look at the readers at the following manuscript assessment companies:
Received wisdom says do not try to create your own book cover unless you are an experienced graphic designer or au fait with Photoshop or other graphic software. For cover designers:
https://www.99designs.co.ukUK-based. Your cover remit is ‘put out to tender’ to a number of designers who are invited to submit their designs, and you get to choose your favourite. The more you pay (from £189 up) the more designers you are likely to attract. This has the advantage of being able to choose between several completely different approaches.
http://www.lawstondesign.com/index.html UK-based. Rebecca Lawston, a highly experienced designer who works for several major publishing companies. Her fees start at £500 for print, £150 for ebook, to include branding and marketing material.
In addition as one helpful participant suggested, it might be worth your while contacting local HE colleges for graphic design students who might offer their services at a modest fee, in return for experience and publicity. (I have yet to check if this is possible.)
BOOK INTERIOR: First, find a book whose layout you like to use as a template. Consider:
SIZE: Of the book; standard non fiction is 6”x9”, fiction 8”x5” (but you can choose what you like). Mine was 6”x9”.
TYPEFACE AND TYPEFACE SIZE: There are specifically recommended fonts. I used Palatino 11 point. It’s not a bad idea to print out a few pages in various typefaces and sizes in your chosen page size to see what it looks like
CHAPTER TITLE LAYOUT: Centred or left-aligned, upper or lower case, etc.
TRIMMINGS: Drop caps, headers, small caps etc
IMAGES: (photos, maps, family trees) Be aware of copyright: some owners may charge for the use of the image and/or map.
FRONT MATTER : What goes before the main text. This is a matter of choice, but for ebooks certainly it’s good to keep it to a minimum (especially for readers who have downloaded a free sample). Mine are:
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication/quote page.This explained the title of my book
Table of contents. Not essential (except in ebooks, for internal links), but standard for non fiction.
END MATTER : What comes after the main text. Mine are:
Afterword : A dedication to my late aunt, who started me off on my genealogical journey
Acknowledgements
Appendix & chapter notes
Bibliography
Index
Author biog
You can also include reviews, if you have them, or books you’ve already written.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY: This is important to readers, so it’s a good idea to make yourself sound interesting and likeable!
Keep it brief
To the point and in the context of the book.
Write in the third person
BLURB: The blurb is crucial – it’s what makes a person read a book or pass on. Mine is on the back cover of my book, and also on my Amazon page.
Again, keep it brief – no more than 200 words
Write in the third person present tense
Remember it is a selling tool not a synopsis, so don’t attempt to tell the whole story
The blurb also acts as a reminder of why you decided to write the book in the first place, and what it was made you think other people might like to read it!
Enough for now. The sun is over the yardarm.
COMING NEXT: DOs and DON’Ts, marketing; ebooks etc.
