Tag: The Literary Consultancy

The Oldie workshop

Published on by patsywp

To the gracious people attending The Oldie workshop on 22 October on writing Memoir and Biography here is the gist of my brief talk on self publishing, with some recommendations of people who can help you along the way.

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If you are deciding to self publish it is important to arm yourself with as much information on  the process as possible from the start. Even if you intend to hand over much of it to other people you need to know exactly what it is you are asking them to do. The better armed you are the less likely you will fall under the spell of the sharks (excuse the mixed metaphor).

shark

Suggestions and recommendations for reputable service providers are below.

The pros of self publishing:

  • You get to control everything: what kind of book you write, its length, the look of it, the cover, when you are ready to publish, how it is priced and marketed.
  • You get to keep a good percentage of the royalties yourself: with Amazon it’s 70% for ebooks, in most countries.
  • If you are not aiming at a mass market then marketing need not be too much of a headache.

The cons of self publishing:

  • You get to control everything: with no necessary prior experience of publishing you are turning yourself, an individual, into a publisher. You are taking on the work of an experienced team of professionals.
  • Marketing for self publishers is a challenge. Without a publishing house behind you you are less likely to be reviewed or interviewed in the national newspapers, or to be able to sell your book in major bookshops. (Though neither of these is impossible.)

1)         What does self publishing involve?

  • Write your book. Rewrite it. When it is as good as it could possibly be
  • Find an editor. (Suggestions below.) This is crucial for all writers, no matter how experienced or talented. Hunt around to find the right editor, who understands the genre you are writing in and respects your style without wanting to rewrite your book. This could be the biggest financial outlay in the whole process (it was for me) but it is worth it.
  • Have the book proofread. An editor is not necessarily a proofreader, so it’s important to find someone – a close-eyed friend is fine – to read your book and spot the typos. There are bound to be some no matter how many times you checked.
  • Choose a cover. Unless you are an experienced graphic designer it’s best to hand this to a professional. Print and ebooks have different requirements although both will appear on online retail sites in ‘thumbnail’ size, so make sure the wording is legible.
  • Write the blurb. Online retailers usually ask for a short description of your book (up to 400 characters) and a long one (up to 4000 characters). This is a selling tool – along with the cover it could be the difference between someone deciding to buy your book or not. Basic guidelines are:
    i)  Write in the third person present tense.
    ii)  Don’t try to tell the whole story.
    iii)  Write in the style the book is written in. (ie Comic if your book is comic, punchy if your book is likewise, etc.)
    iv)  Including extracts from reviews is fine.

As with the book cover, it’s a good idea to spend time in a bookshop looking at books and analysing why some make you want to pick them up and read them and some don’t.

  • Create your book interior (paperback): you may want to outsource this too (although it is not difficult to do yourself). It is useful to use a published book you like the look of as a template, and copy the design. You can choose your own font and font size, page (trim) size, margins and chapter layout. Alternatively you can buy ready-formatted templates from the likes of The Book Designer: http://www.bookdesigntemplates.com/
  • Convert your manuscript into ebook form: this basically involves removing hidden codes embedded in your word processor and creating internal links. Click here for details.
  • Submit your book. There are currently two main options:
  1.  AMAZON. https://kdp.amazon.com Whatever you think of their business practices they have opened up the self publishing business and made it possible and simple for independent writers to upload their books onto their site. Submission is free: they provide you with their own form of ISBN. The submission process is extremely simple, just follow their clear instructions.
    Amazon have a print ‘arm’ called CREATESPACE:www.createspace.com/ Again this is free and easy to understand.
    Amazon is for Kindle ebook only of course. For other e-devices use
    SMASHWORDS. www.smashwords.com Again the submission is simple, and free, and they will convert your Word manuscript into the correct formats for Kobo, Nook, Apple and so forth.

2) INGRAM SPARK. www.ingramspark.com/ Ingram have been around for centuries but only recently opened up to make it easy for self publishers to submit their books. The advantage over Amazon is a) they are not Amazon (bookshops don’t hate them) and b) their global distribution of print books is better. Also c) they offer more print options, such as colour, page size, hardback etc. The disadvantage is the submission process is less customer-friendly and you have to provide your own ISBN. (Of which more later.)

  • Marketing
    This is a whole different ballgame and may not be relevant if you are only planning on distributing your book to family and friends. However if you want a broader reach, first
    i) Define your target audience
    ii) Try for reviews in family history/memoir magazines, or in the local press
    iii) Approach your local independent bookshop and ask if they will stock your book, or even help you host a book launch
    iv) Social media is an important part of marketing, including author websites

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2)         How can I go about it?

There are three main options:

  • Do it yourself (apart from editing and cover design).
  • Get partial help with, for instance, cover and interior design and converting to ebook.
  • Hand the whole thing over to a service provider. There are things professionals can do that we can’t. But BE VERY CAREFUL who you deal with and make sure you know what you are paying for, and that you hang onto your rights.

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RECOMMENDATIONS

Generally tried and tested, some by me and others by ALLI (The Alliance of Independent Authors).

Cover and/or interior print design:

Editors

The following are recommended by ALLI.

Averill Buchanan: www.averillbuchanan.com/
Katherine D’Souza: www.katharinedsouza.co.uk/
Sally Vince: www.editorsal.com/
Alison Shakespeare: http://shakspeareeditorial.org/

Cornerstonses and The Literary Consultancy are manuscript assessors and they also offer some editing services.

Full help

The following two companies are consistently held to be efficient, honest and trustworthy:

You can buy in part service from them (ebook conversion only for instance) or full service.

Ebook conversion

If you do decide to do the whole thing yourself take a look at my self publishing pages. Or buy my book (available on Amazon at £1.99)!

Digital book thumbnail

Self publishing may seem daunting, and is, but the more research you do the more sense it makes. It is a fantastic resource for memoir writers.

If you are serious about it you might consider joining The Alliance of Independent Authors. If you click on the logo on the sidebar of this page it will take you directly to their site.

GOOD LUCK with your publishing enterprise. And If you have any other specific questions on things I haven’t covered please email me at

[email protected]

 Recommended books

Choosing a Self Publishing Service, published by ALLI

 

Self publishing for family historians

Published on by patsywp2 Comments

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.)

img094
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.

Matador’s charges are (according to Choosing a Self-Publishing Service, published by ALLi)

  • Setup, including ISBN, barcode, custom cover design: £680
  • Ebook conversion:  £150
  • Copy edit:  £390
  • Proofread: £340

They do not provide editors, but they do offer marketing and the possibility of getting your book into bookshops (apparently).

SilverWood’s charges are similar, though I’m told they offer a slightly more personal service, and they don’t take on every book.

Also worth considering:

A husband and wife team who offer cover design (at £240), book interior design, setting up of websites, marketing etc.

At the high end of the market:

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:

  • Structural edit – checking 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. 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:

DESIGN of the book

  • Cover
  • Interior

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.uk UK-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.
  • http://www.customebookcovers.com/fiction.html US-based. Uses stock images which they manipulate. Charges $150 for print, $100 for ebook, $150 for ebook and print.
  • http://www.coverbistro.com/  US-based. Uses ‘off-the-peg’ templates at $30, or custom design from $35
  • pynto.com  As above

Matador and SilverWood also offer cover design.

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
  • MARGINS:  Mine were quite generous at: top, bottom 1.9cm, inner 2 outer 1.5, gutter .33
  • 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.

Sketch by Anna de Polnay
Sketch by Anna de Polnay

Pitches and pigeonholes

Published on by patsywp

I was thinking about pigeons and the holes they live in (do they?) yesterday, as I was watching The Pen Factor, the last event in The Literary Consultancy’s annual conference ‘Writing in a Digital Age’.

The Pen Factor, which takes its name from The X Factor, features a group of brave writers who are given a limited time to pitch and read extracts from their books to a panel of agents, who are themselves given a limited time to respond, and all this in front of an audience.

There seemed to be a preoccupation on the part of some panel members with genre: ‘Is it really a psychological thriller?’ said one. ‘It doesn’t sound like a thriller setup to me.’ Bearing in mind the limited time allotted to both writers and agents you might think this was a distracting waste of time, as did TLC’s founder, Rebecca Swift. ‘Don’t try and define the genre’, she admonished from the audience, ‘it’s a beautifully written, idiosyncratic book, not necessarily of majority appeal but a beautiful book nonetheless.’ The writer of it admitted agents had told her before they found it ‘hard to place’, so what did she do? She self published it.

Journey into the Interior, by Sylvia Moody
Journey into the Interior, by Sylvia Moody

Before coming down too hard on the agents however it’s worth remembering that when they take on a book they too will be given a few minutes perhaps to pitch it to a publisher. So if they can use that time to say, ‘It’s a thriller with Sci Fi elements, a mix of suchandsuch (insert appropriate bestselling title/author here) and suchandsuch (ditto), rather than, ‘it’s about a woman who after a mystery illness receives odd visitors and communes with vases and the supernatural and some of them are imaginary and some real and it turns out they’re all part of her in the end and it doesn’t really fall into any particular category’, their job is somewhat easier.

So hello self publishing, where while a book has to fit Amazon’s (or Smashwords’) categories to some extent nobody is going to turn it down because it isn’t strictly a thriller or a romance or crime or even a literary novel. I’m about to face a similar problem myself with a period romance that contains elements of erotica. Were I to market it as erotica it might sell quite well but it would disappoint a lot of readers expecting whips and leather and wall-to-wall fornication, if that’s what readers of erotica expect.

Besides it’s hard to know which agents would be likely to handle such a book. As the panel showed it is vitally important, if you are looking for an agent, to find the right one. Not necessarily the biggest or the most successful but the one who is most likely to really love your book and to put time and energy into promoting it. Researching them online is all very well but for most writers this isn’t enough.

Yet another reason to self publish?

The London Book Fair

Published on by patsywp1 Comment

I was more or less warned off going to the London Book Fair by other writers who said ‘It’s really not for authors’, but I went along anyway on the offchance.

Earls Court

Entering the massive space of the Earls Court Exhibition Centre is daunting. You feel as if you’re in the cosmetics section of the biggest department store in the world. You stroll past the glossy stands of Chanel, Estee Launder and Clinique (Harper Collins, Hachette and Bloomsbury), and the cheap-and-cheerful counters of Bourjois, Olay and Max Factor (the smaller publishing businesses) and on through the digital solutions bit, and there tucked away right at the back is the Author HQ. Here you can attend back-to-back seminars, mostly but not entirely about self publishing, many of which bore little or no relation to the schedule I had painstakingly downloaded from the LBF website.

Author HQ

Thus I found myself this afternoon accidentally sitting in on part of a seminar called ‘The Write Stuff’, where brave authors can pitch their books to a panel of writers’ agents. They have two minutes for their pitch and the agents have two minutes to comment. As expected, the ones with the brilliant sales strategies weren’t necessarily the ones with the best product, and vice versa, which only goes to confirm my concern that in the self publishing world it’s not your writing that matters so much as your marketing skills.

On the Tuesday I bumped into Becky Swift from The Literary Consultancy who told me they have developed relationships with Amazon, Kobo, Nook and the rest, all of whom are looking to them for product that has the TLC stamp of approval (which is not easy to get), which means they are acting as a kind of useful filter.

Seminar

Upstairs in the rarified virtually author-free zone of the IRC (International Rights Centre), where I was stopped at the gate and quizzed about my intentions and only let through when I said I was visiting an agent friend and promised not to misbehave, agents sit in rows of stalls doing deals with publishers. News from there was gloomy – in an uncertain market the larger publishing houses are increasingly reluctant to take on new and untried writers (nothing new there). Which  means of course it makes even more sense to self publish. As one (self published) speaker said earlier, ‘Why wait months for an agent to turn you down and several more for publishers to do the same when you can submit your book now?’

Alternatives to Amazon

I’ve already blogged about Smashwords, which distributes ebooks to all outlets, including Amazon, but I also wanted to check out alternatives to Amazon’s CreateSpace, their print-on-demand ‘arm’. I’ve published through CreateSpace and found it miraculously easy, efficient, quick and free (to upload). But if you want to avoid Amazon there is a company called printondemand-worldwide.com. As far as I can tell they print and distribute your book, just like CreateSpace, only they have outlets in the UK, thereby in theory reducing shipping costs. I haven’t investigated them properly yet but it looks as if, unlike Amazon, they have startup costs. They handed me a couple of impressive-looking brochures so if you’re thinking of publishing something where quality and colour are paramount, they may be worth checking out.

Or there’s Ingram, which I knew as LightningSource, which I looked at when I was publishing my Australian book as they have an outlet in Australia (as well as here in the UK). The lady at the counter however, who was in charge of ‘transportation’, told me postal costs within Australia are so high it’s cheaper for Aussies to buy from the US, which is rather astounding. Again they have startup costs (I believe), but if you are expecting to sell a lot of books in the UK they may be worth checking out at ingramspark.com.

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Other interesting things I learned:

  • children are really into ebooks (perhaps not surprisingly).
  • the best selling book in the Australian charts is The Book Thief, written by the Sydney-born writer Markus Zusak. (Good to see the Aussies celebrating their own.)
  • the Guardian is introducing a prize for self published authors.

Was it worth going? Absolutely, if only as an excuse to get out there and connect with other writers and anyone connected to the writing and publishing business. Which as indie authors we have to do!