June 2018

June 29, 2018

For the love of passwords

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For the love of passwords

‘The reading Girl’ by Repin

 

There are a few accounts to set up if we are venturing into indie publishing. Again, using my choices as a model – which can only be a rough guide, since we each must make our own choices, which are multiple and varied and constantly changing – this is a summary of the accounts I have to help me with publishing. For this, it does help if you have a love of passwords…

~ An Amazon account from which I can publish my book as a paperback with its own ISBN, (which I have bought and paid for). Known as CreateSpace, this platform is the traditional way to publish POD on Amazon.

~ Another Amazon account which allows me to publish my book in kindle. Kindle is the e-book format that Amazon uses, exclusive to that company. It is now possible to publish both kindle and POD format books on the same platform – KDP – which stands for Kindle Direct Publishing, and if you are new to publishing, I recommend you do this.

~ An IngramSpark Account, which enables me to publish both POD books and e-books for all distribution outside Amazon. There are four possibilities you can select from when setting up your account, and it is possible to ask IS to publish for you to all other platforms. I use IngramSpark because I like their distribution list, and I love having a UK base from where I can order copies of my POD quickly.

~ An account with Nielsen UK ISBN store – from whom we purchase ISBNs.

~ An account with Nielsen’s Title Editor – where we register details of our book(s) so that they can be added to a national database and found easily.

There are other platforms and publishing models to consider, and the markets are constantly evolving, so what I have noted here is only a very rough outline of what is required. Please do your own research and make your own choices. It takes time, and once set up, the publishing of books becomes easier.

Best of luck, and thanks for reading!

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June 28, 2018

A bit more about ISBN numbers

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A bit more about ISBN numbers

I should like to say a bit more about ISBN numbers, though let us be clear that a book can be published without an ISBN, which stands for International Standard Book Number.

However, if you are aiming to publish and want people to find your books, I strongly recommend buying your own ISBNs and allocating them to your book(s). An ISBN is a cataloguing tool that many libraries and public search facilities insist on. Once allocated to a book, an ISBN lasts a lifetime, ensuring that a book need never get lost.

I think the best way to elucidate on the workings of ISBNs (they are not complicated, but the way they work together can be) is to take examples from my own publishing choices. So, briefly, I publish on Amazon, to their internal market only (that is, within the Amazon group of companies only).

I also publish with IngramSpark, which gives me a UK base for sourcing copies of my books at affordable prices. I find that if I rely solely on sourcing books through Amazon alone, they may come from the US, in which case the costs of postage are prohibitive and the waiting times are frustrating.

The key to making this work, is to have no overlaps in the markets among your different distributors. So therefore, I publish on the Amazon internal market only – I avoid their extended distribution option – and publish with Ingram Spark, with the result that IngramSpark are my source for all copies outwith the Amazon network. No overlaps.

In this scheme, I use two ISBNs – which we can purchase singly, or in batches of ten – and allocate the numbers as follows:-

First ISBN – is for the paperback POD on both Amazon and on Ingram Spark.

Second ISBN – is for the e-book available outside the Amazon network though Ingram Spark.

To be clear, Amazon, always allocates a unique ASIN number to all e-books they publish in their kindle format on their platforms. There is no other option for Amazon e-books. But Amazon does allow publishers to use their own ISBNs for their print on demand paperbacks. Which is the same ISBN used for POD books on all other platforms, in my case, Ingram Spark.

I can run Ingram Spark and Amazon alongside each other because I opt for restricted distribution of Amazon products to the Amazon group of companies only, where the other distributors have no remit to venture. For sales outwith Amazon, Ingram Spark is my preferred distributor.

My next post will be my last before the long vacation, when I shall be taking time off to be with family. Thanks so much for reading, commenting and sharing.

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June 26, 2018

A few more thoughts about book cover design

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A few more thoughts about book cover design.

Given the importance of every book cover, here I offer a few more thoughts about book cover design

There are programmes available free on the web – so much is free to use on the web to assist indie publishers – for anyone who wants to design book covers. The wealth of experience grows more sophisticated and user friendly every day. There are tutorials and lots of free on-line help – as well as some excellent books! – to get us started with book cover design.

But, speaking as someone who loves to write, has a busy life and lots to do, I decided early to outsource many aspects of book cover design. I rely on a wonderful designer who not only has done many fabulous book covers, but who works incredibly fast and has an incredible grasp of detail.

There is a lot to think about, when considering book cover design. As my first book has a certain look and feel, and since my first three books are a sort-of series that hang together, we decided early on to try and emulate that in the later covers. Which gave my designer something to work with.

If you are coming to the market with your first book, think about design, style, the unique ‘fingerprint’ you want your book to have, and what it says about the genre and content. To make a cover that is distinctive, that stands out from all the other books of its type in the market, and yet which fits in with the broad conventions of that genre – I hesitate to offer examples, in case that causes offence to some readers – might be a challenge, but has to be attempted. A quick glance through book covers in different genres will show that there are distinctive differences. (Tudor epics have often featured a woman in period dress with her head enigmatically missing. Recently, heads have been reinstated…)

First find an excellent image, which works well as a thumbnail – the size of an image typically viewed for on-line sales – and which has the image the right way round. (If landscape, with the image at the right-hand-side). The search for a good image is time consuming but actually a lot of fun. You’ll know if it works for you when you see it.

Thanks for reading

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June 24, 2018

Basic elements of book cover design

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Basic elements of book cover design. 

Briefly, a book cover will have the following elements:-

~ a publisher name. As an indie publisher, you may want to have your own publishing name, one which reflects the genre and content of your book. If you are thinking of publishing more than one book, or a series of books, you should definitely invent for yourself a publishing name that is meaningful to you.

~ A publisher logo. If you look on the back of books, you will see many publishers have logos. Be inventive, or thoughtful, about initials, images, ideas. Get out your felt-tips or design tools and find an image or logo that works with your publishing name.

~ A price stated in a given currency.

~ Space for an ISBN number, assuming you will be getting some ISBNs of your own and allocating these to your books, which I recommend. If you are investing in your own ISBNs, and wish to have your book available in paperback and also as an e-book, you will need two ISBNs, one for the paperback (usually but not always sourced as a print-on-demand or POD paperback) and another for the e-book. That is the theory. More often, virtual platforms allocate a unique ID number to e-books published on their platforms. They can also allocate free ISBNs to POD books, but if they do so, then they become your publisher, so beware of that. 

~ Blurb for the back cover. Read up about blurbs, and recon on having about three hundred words, with a headline grabber of about twenty-five words, and a catchy race through the plot which will sell the book to your readers. (Not a synopsis: a sales pitch.)

~ Metadata and BISAC codes – which can be researched on-line. These are categories that you think most closely correlate to the subject matter of your book, so that it can be catalogued and found easily anywhere. It helps indexers if you use metadata and if you are careful with your chosen categories. I use a process of elimination: Take the whole list – which is finite – and delete all that definitely don’t apply, then refine the list further. Be careful to use categories that have a broad appeal.

~ The size of your book and the width of its spine will depend on your personal preference, the type of book you have written, and the number of pages in the finished book.

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June 21, 2018

Basic requirements for book publishing

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Basic Requirements for Book Publishing (continued)

Turning to the points I made in my previous post before we can think of publishing, we need a decent enough book that we want to publish. By which I mean, we must accepted that a published book moves away from our sphere of influence and ends up as semi-public property.

My first book, Trapped is the story of my life with cerebral palsy, and, as such, publishing it was a huge leap of faith into the unknown. Would it be savaged by the critics? Would I die beneath a barrage of criticism and coruscating comment? The answers, as it turned out, were no, thankfully. But fears such as these need to be considered, then quietly put to one side as we prepare to launch our book on the unsuspecting public.

A good editor – or whizz editing skills – is as essential to a good book as a good story. And if we decide that publication is our eventual aim, it might take ten years to reach that goal. So there is, really, not a lot of hurry when we are setting out to publish our work. It helps if our intentions grow more and more solid, as we take the time to look around for a good editor: someone who understands us, agrees with our motivation and helps us to reach our goals. That said, at all times we have to retain ownership of the writing and editing of our work.

Once a book has been written, polished, edited, re-written and proofed, it will eventually be ready to be typeset (the word we use when referring to a print book) and formatted (the process of producing a book in an e-file, such as mobi files). So ask your contacts if they can recommend a good typesetter. Perhaps your reading research will have given you a few ideas, a few contacts you might email and obtain quotes from. As in any other creative endeavour, follow your hunches, and double check everything.

Thanks for reading.

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June 19, 2018

What we need when we publish our own books

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What we need when we publish our own books

Mary Cassatt (1844-1926)   The Reader

What follows is a brief summary of points to be remembered when we are publishing our own books.  And I suppose the most obvious question to start with is, are we going to publish with only one platform – we all know, I think, which platform I am alluding to here – or are we going to go with multiple platforms?

The basic requirements for an indie publisher are:-

~ A decent enough book which we want to publish. By which I mean, a book that we are prepared to write, publish and let go into the public domain. If we can’t handle the thought that, once published, our book ceases to be our private concern, the chances are, it is not ready to publish yet.

~ A good, empathic editor who can find the flaws in your manuscript – it’s safe to assume that an independent editor will find some room for improvements which we will then be pleased to work on.

~ A wonderful typesetter and formatter to take our manuscript and turn it into something resembling a wonderful book.

~ A wonderful book cover designer. Unless we would like to do this for ourselves. There are some good programmes available that make this possible.

~ A look, design or set of ideas that we can give to our book, so that it stands out from the crowd.  Photos, images, such as those available from Shutterstock, are a useful archive of ideas to look through. Consider landscape, portrait, thumbnail images…

~ ISBN numbers to give our books a unique ID number. ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number. A book does not need an ISBN to be published, but if it has one, it will always be easier to find, than if it is published on multiple platforms, each allocating the book an e-ID number or the publishers own ISBN.

~ A little cash to make the dream a reality, and to help us decide which of the tasks of publishing we will do for ourselves and which we are happy to delegate. No point feeling overwhelmed before we even begin.

~ A love of passwords and on-line accounts, because there will be a few to set up.

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June 16, 2018

What I have learned about publishing independently

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What I have learned about publishing independently.

There are several things we need to decide, when making up our minds whether to self-publish. My next series of blog posts will attempt to summarise what I have learned about publishing independently.

There are a series of basic questions that need to be answered before we even think of publishing a book.

~ Have we got the time to do some research – aka read some books about publishing – that will help us decide what our priorities are, for example, whether we want to outsource cover design and formatting, and if so, how much we are prepared to invest in this? The cost of services on offer to prospective publishers is as variable as weather on a spring day, so reading about and researching the various options is vital.

~ Do we have a regular income that will support the initial outlay of publishing? Unless we are able to source the expenses of editing, proofing, ISBNs, typesetting, formatting, imagery and cover design at low cost, some of these will crop up. Yes, some platforms allow authors to publish for free, but it is really vital, when learning about costs, to appreciate what that means. For example, if we publish on major virtual platforms for free, the platform will usually allocate to our e-books the equivalent of an e-ISBN number, which means that effectively, the platform becomes our publisher of that e-book.

~ The financial implications of publishing are not always obvious at the outset, so it is vital to be aware that the cost of services that are offered to would-be publishers can vary from several hundred to several thousand pounds. Do research the markets and options carefully.

~ Do we have time to write and edit endlessly, until we have a good enough book? There is no-one else out there setting our publishing deadlines or chivvying us up to get stuff sorted and sent. We become our own diary keepers and deadline setters.

~ Are we interested in writing, publishing and promoting? Because if we are going to be publishing, we need a good enough product, which means that writing and editing will come to the fore. Thereafter, promotion will be part of what we do, which will, of necessity, eat into our writing time. But each of these has its part to play. So decide which, at any given time, is your priority, and don’t beat yourself up if you can’t do it all, all the time.

Thanks so much for reading.

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June 14, 2018

Publishing my third book

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Publishing my third book

I am what is known in the trade, apparently, as a hybrid author. That is to say, I have a book published with a mainstream publisher, and I am also published independently. (It’s interesting what you learn when talking to other publishers at book fairs.)

My third book, Making Miracles is set for publication this month, June 2018. I am so looking forward to having it finished; and excited that a project that has taken about a decade to materialise is finally happening: I finally decided that I might as well get on with it, and publish this summer. Being an independent publisher means we have to get used to setting our own deadlines.

Previously, I have written a series of blog posts, called rather optimistically, How to get published,which focussed almost entirely on the rigours of finding a publishing deal with a mainstream publisher. At that time (2016) I wrote very little about publishing independently, because I still had too much to learn to offer anything worthwhile in the way of suggestions or opinions. Though I have since learned a great deal from publishing independently and am – retrospectively – grateful for the steep learning curves and cul-de-sacs, there is never an end to what we can learn about indie publishing. Grasping the basics has been immensely worthwhile.

In the next series of blog posts, I will be considering some of what I have learned about publishing independently: it’s advantages, pitfalls, and some of the more intricate necessities that are apt to be overlooked in the rush to get published.

Thank you so much for reading.

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June 12, 2018

Living near my mother

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Living near my mother

For most of her life – probably since the age of three, when she first got left behind and had to avoid falling off a cliff and find her own way home – my mother has done, and fixed and sorted most of everything in her life for herself. Whatever she could not manage – rooofers, plumbers, electricians – she paid for. Even a supremely competent Queen’s guide needs some help, sometimes.

She is, in so many ways, a hard act to follow. But, since she moved into her own flat round the corner from us, after 20 years living more or less alone in rural France, I have found it a boon and a blessing, firstly, to spend time with her and secondly, to be useful to her in ways that previously, were not needed. I enjoy her company, and laugh a lot where previously – possibly because of an inferiority complex that neither my mother or I could help – I might have growled or brooded or stomped. No-where is my own personal progress more obvious to me than in this. I feel content, and I love to be useful in small ways, as I notice how my mother adapts to life at a slower, more meditative pace.

I have been incredibly busy of late, and have learned a lot about life, council tax, telephone bills and utilities providers. But none of that has affected my work rate, which, instead of sinking under the weight of new responsibilities, has actually acquired a new speed and focus that I relish. Because I no longer have time for extraneous ‘stuff’, I have to prioritise, which means I do what I enjoy, quickly, and with a great deal more decision than formerly.

All of which I see as more good news.

Thanks so much for reading.

 

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June 9, 2018

Writing Book Six

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Writing Book Six

My sixth book, which happens to be the third in my Lisa Somerville trio of novels about a lawyer and her clients – of which I have had the first chapter written for a couple of years, now – is becoming, as I think about it, less of a future prospect and more of a current reality. I will be writing it soon.

The thought of changing gear and starting on my third book of fiction brings mixed feelings: excitement, the thrill of what I might discover, together with the realisation that increasingly, my books are tangible reality. With my sixth book underway, I can increasingly see the end, as well as the beginning of my bookish endeavours: two books published and a third (Making Miracles) expected in June 2018, as well as two books in the Lisa Somerville series nearing completion. Who knows how much more I will write?

So far as I can tell at the moment, Lisa Somerville is complete and as clean as I can make it, though the prospect of massive re-writes is always a possibility; The Seduction of Susan Scott has about sixty thousand words under its belt, and is shaping up; and so, I have little excuse to prevaricate with book three.

Pip is the story of a wife with an abusive husband, who decides one afternoon to leave home so that she can protect her infant son. She is not really thinking about herself, but has decided that her son deserves better. Initially I had thought that she would disappear into the sunset with just her handbag and her coat on, clutching little Pip by the hand; but something urges me to turn Fiona homeward, at least in the first instance. As a wife, she feels that she should really give her husband another chance; in any case, she is unprepared for her exodus, needs to pack a suitcase and make plans. But her decision to give her husband another benefit of the doubt has tragic consequences.

Many works of fiction feature one partner in a relationship escaping, fleeing, starting again. Escape and rebirth is one of our urban fantasies writ large… What if I could get away from all this…? But Fiona returns to the house and finds her husband back home early; and in what happens next is the tragedy of so many people who try too hard to be true to others, and forget to be true to themselves.

Thanks so much for reading.

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