The article seems to have gotten the facts right. It is possible to pay zero out-of-pocket cash to produce a book and it is possible to pay thousands.

I’m not overly bothered by the self-serving nature of the article. The author, Miral Sattar, is the founder and CEO of BiblioCrunch, a matchmaking service for authors and publishing professionals. So of course she’s going to focus on how very, very important it is for writers to pay for professional services. No fault there. I think ebook formatting is very, very important, so every article I write on this blog is focused on making ebooks. Professionals in any area of expertise are convinced their specialty is the most important part of any process. I am assuming readers can figure that out and adjust accordingly.

My problem with this article, and many like it, are that they ask the wrong question. I have learned through hard experience that asking the wrong question usually gives you the wrong answer. Even if it’s a good answer, it’ll be wrong.

So here’s the situation: You have a book to publish and you have a budget. You need to know how best to spend your budget to produce a profitable product. The “experts” are the wrong people with which to have this discussion. They can give you facts and figures. But. An editor will tell you, and mean it from the bottom of her heart, that editing is most important. An ebook formatter will tell you formatting is most important. A cover designer will tell you that without a top-notch cover your book is dead on arrival. Marketing and PR will insist that they are the ticket to success. Any of those experts could be right, but they could also be dead wrong.

To know why, you have to understand the reality. Up until the self-publishing boom, it was a rare writer who was making a living from his writing. I can’t recall who said it: “You can get rich writing fiction, but you can’t make a living.” For the longest time that was true. Even best sellers had to work “real” jobs. Even writers who commanded respectable advances weren’t making a living. They might get a $100,000 dollar advance, but that might be their only income from writing for three or four years, and when you factor in taxes and agent commissions, that figure shrinks considerably. Genre fiction writers fared slightly better. Those who were prolific and could consistently please their publisher, could publish multiple titles each year and make a living based on output. (There is a reason best selling writers who make tons of money are news–it’s because they’re rare!)

With self-publishing, more and more writers are making a living. There is a reason for that. Availability.

Here’s the thing, in order to make a living, a writer has to develop a following of readers. Out of that following, a percentage of those readers will not pay for the book. They’ll find books at the library, or borrow from friends, or find them at the used book store. Do not think for a second that the non-paying readers aren’t valuable, because they are extremely valuable. They pay for the book by talking about it. They recommend the book to friends or post a blog or write reviews. They discover favorites amongst the freebies. They will go hunting for other titles by a favorite. This is where self-publishers have the advantage. Their books are available. Traditionally published books often have limited shelf-lives. The only place readers could find back list was in used book stores or the library. Quite often back list titles disappeared altogether. It takes time to build that following. It takes time to produce enough good books to start the snowball of visibility rolling.

Do you see where I am going with this? Maybe one first book in 100,000 will make a noticeable splash, money-wise. It’s a rarity. Quite frankly, those are lottery odds. If you’re a serious self-publisher who intends to make a living from your writing, then you have probably figured out by now that blowing your wad on any individual title is a fool’s game, especially early on. I will go so far to say that depending on where you are in your career, some of the money spent will be a total waste.

Once you have a product in hand (a book is only art when you’re creating it; when you try to get people to pay for it, it’s product), you need a budget. Once you have a budget, you have to allocate those funds. What you need to do is put on your businessperson hat and figure out the best way to use your budget to get the greatest return on your dollar. In order to do that you have to ask the right question:

What do my readers value?

Successful writers, both traditionally published and self-published, are tuned in to what their readers want to read. They are also tuned in to what their readers value.

Take editing for example. If your readers value quantity more than quality, then using a large part of your budget to pay a developmental editor is probably a waste. You can save a lot of money by using beta readers, then use your editing budget for a competent line editor to find your most egregious mistakes. The perversity of publishing is this: The smaller, more exclusive, your intended audience, the more you’ll need to pay for editorial.

What about covers? Do some market research. I popped over to Amazon this morning and did a quick survey (very non-scientific). I looked at the top selling ebooks in science fiction and fantasy. Overall, the covers are VERY good. Very artistic. Most look expensive. What this tells me is that readers value “high-dollar” covers–why, I don’t know, but that’s the surface appearance. On the flip side, I looked at the top sellers in romance. The covers? Not so good. In fact, a large number in the top one hundred are pretty crappy, with the majority being mediocre. What that tells me is that–perhaps!–while romance readers are looking for covers that look like romance covers, they aren’t judging the quality of the story inside by the covers. Do better market research than I just did. While a gorgeous, beautiful cover never hurts (unless it’s not a good fit with the genre), spending more than you need to can hurt your pocketbook and put you in the red longer than is necessary.

What about ebook formatting? Again, do some market research. Download samples from the top selling ebooks that appeal to your readership. You may find that all the readers care about with the ebook is that it works. Or you may discover that bells and whistles are a hallmark. Let me let you all in on a little secret. With ebooks, do-overs are easy. Wait, you knew that? Okay, then don’t forget it. If you are willing to do some work and read instructions, you can get away with a homemade ebook format and it won’t cost you any cash. Then, as you get more books out there, and start making some money, then spend money on a pro to have the books redone. You’ll have a bigger audience to appreciate the effort.

Print format. This requires a real commitment, either in time or money. Print on demand books are getting into bookstores and libraries now. But if your book looks cheap and amateurish, it won’t be picked up. This is one area where you should not cheap out. Either schedule a good block of time to learn how to do it yourself, properly (and even with templates, there is a rather steep learning curve), or set aside enough of your budget to pay for a professional job.

Marketing and promotion. This is a tricky, tricky area and one where not even the “experts” have a real clue about the best way to spend your budget. For five bucks, you can make one investment that will pay off: Buy David Gaughran’s Let’s Get Visible. He’s done the toughest research for you about selling ebooks and building an indie career. As for everything else, in my opinion, based on observation, you’ll get a better return on your dollars by burning them on an altar to the BestSeller God than you will by spending them on advertising. UNTIL you have a decent sized body of work available for sale. Early on in your career, rather than shelling out big bucks for ads, book trailers, PR services, paid reviews, etc. write more books. Build your shelf-presence at the online retailers. Build your audience. Go where your readers are and figure out how they are discovering books to read. That said, some genres are more competitive than others and you might have to work harder or even spend some money. If you do your research, you can spend it wisely.

There you go. You now have the right question to ask: What do my readers value? Answer that, and you will know how to divvy up your production budget so you can get the most bang from your buck. With a little luck and a whole lot of hard work, I’ll be seeing you on the Writers Who Earn A Living From Their Fiction list.

While I’ve heard from some people who’ve had good results with D2D, I haven’t tried it myself.

Paul Salvette at BB ebooks has done the legwork for us. He and his crew of wonder-formatters took part in some beta testing and have written up a useful report. Here’s an excerpt:

First Impressions with Draft2Digital

Uploading your manuscript to the newly established website, Draft2Digital seems like a perfect solution for DIY eBook conversion. Thanks to Joanna’s tutorial how to use Calibre on TeleRead, automatic conversion has gained momentum in the business when indie authors are striving to publish as cost-effectively as possible. Although we have already discussed automatic conversion before (it’s not very good quality), many of our clients have urged us to try out the closed beta test on D2D. Fortunately, an email from Draft2Digital sent yesterday notified us of the open beta of which anybody can test the service without getting the beta code. We wasted no time this morning to get our hands on their hotly anticipated conversion service. Our initial doubt prevails: how much can you trust the fast quality of artificial intelligence, especially when it comes to formulating the immortality of your eBook?

…

(Big Plus)

Hooray, It’s Pay Day!

According to the latest email, customized payment methods have been very convenient for international authors who can receive payment directly into their bank accounts or via PayPal. Look under ‘Payment’ in the Draft2Digital FAQ, authors can sign a big relief to be paid by check, PayPal, or Direct Deposit. Please note for non-’Merican authors you will need to get an ITIN so that the IRS can tax you.

Paul and his crew went through the process with… results. BB ebooks is a pro outfit, and Paul is one of the best in the biz when it comes to producing ebooks. His standards are very high. He did find some problems.

Problems Ensue with Automatic Conversion to EPUB

We tried to one of Paul’s other books that was well formatted in Word, including with a hyperlinked Table of Contents. Unfortunately, it looks as though the formatting is completely blown out when their automated conversion is used. All paragraph styles are first-line indent—which is okay for body content, but not for front matter and back matter. Additionally all first paragraphs in Chapters are first-line indent, which screams Amateur Hour. Below is how it looked:

Pop over to the site and read the entire article. Lots of illustrations and good explanations for what is happening.

My takeaway from this and from what I’ve heard and from what little bopping around I’ve done on the D2D site is that they have a lot of potential. Their terms are good, their payout schedule is excellent, and they are responsive to customer complaints and concerns.

So go read BB ebook’s article, then check out D2D. It might be suitable for you.

It’s not my habit to use this blog to promote books. I’m not big on marketing and promotion. I do urge my friends to read books all the time, sometimes to the point of obnoxiousness and sometimes will resort to gifting them books from Amazon so they HAVE to read whatever I’m excited about. But other than an occasional tweet or talking about books on my other blog (which I haven’t done enough of lately) I rarely do that with strangers.

Today, though, I want you to buy a book.

It’s a short story and it’s only .99 cents on Amazon. It’s about zombies, so it may not appeal to everybody. Maybe you could gift it to a friend. Or give it a tweet or a mention on Goodreads or whatever it is you happen to do. You could even read it and review it.

Let me tell you why.

I get emails from folks who solved a problem or learned a new trick from reading this blog. They say thank you. I’ve had emails from folks who’ve dipped their toes in self-publishing waters and found out the water is just fine, and they say they got up the nerve to try because this blog encouraged them to do so. They say thank you. I’ve made friends who’ve helped me and I help them and there are thank you’s all around. I look at the search queries that bring visitors to this blog and it gives me a good feeling knowing they are finding some answers. It makes me feel useful and for that I feel thankful.

None of this would happened without one person. If you’ve learned something or felt inspired to self-publish or to make more beautiful ebooks or striven to meet new challenges because of something you’ve read on this blog, you should thank Marina Bridges.

I met Marina many moons ago on the eBay blogs. Our senses of humor clicked. When I found out that not only was Marina funny as could be, but that she wrote, too, I started bugging her for stories. When I began looking at self-publishing. I asked Marina if she’d be interested in being the “test” case, so to speak. She said yes and that’s how it started. We bought Kindles. We got hooked. I started the process of learning how to produce an ebook. Marina trusted me to get better. That’s a terrific quality in a friend, by the way. I’d propose something nutty and she’d say, “Um… okay,” and then I’d scamper off to do the nutty thing. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t, but she always had faith that I’d figure it out.

She’s still my biggest supporter. Most days the chat box is open and she gets to “hear” me bitching about my computer or railing against my own idiocy when I screw something up. Whenever I figure something out or produce something nifty, I send her screenshots and she listens while I crow. It must bore her to tears when I’m problem-solving “out loud” about formatting issues, but she never says it does. She listens. When I’m feeling down, she writes stories and sends me snippets to make me laugh. (somehow, ahem, always forgetting to issue a spew alert)

She is the number one reason book production and self-publishing is fun for me. She doesn’t let me get too serious–she mocks me heartily when I do. She encourages me when I feel stupid and out of my league. She’s always ready to say, “Oh go ahead, you can do that.” She keeps it real and she keeps it fun.

There is no Thank You in the world big enough for that.

So. If you have ever felt the urge to say thank you to me for this blog, the very best way you can do that is to thank Marina and buy her short story. It’s a little thing, but it would mean the world to me.

Junk Mail, a Kindle short story, on Amazon.

“Exploration is the physical expression of the Intellectual Passion. And I tell you, if you have the desire for knowledge and the power to give it physical expression, go out and explore. If you are a brave man you will do nothing; if you are fearful you may do much, for none but cowards have the need to prove their bravery.

“Some will tell you that you are mad, and nearly all will say–  ‘What is the use?’ For we are a nation of shopkeepers and no shopkeeper will look at research which does not promise him a financial return within a year. And so you will sledge nearly alone, but those with whom you sledge will not be shopkeepers; that is worth a great deal. If you march your Winter Journeys you will have your reward, so long as all you want is a penguin egg.”

–Appsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World

Substitute “writer” for “explorer” and much is explained.

__________________________________

Excerpt courtesy of Patrick Trese, author of the most excellent memoir, Penguins Have Square Eyes, about his adventures in Antarctica.

How can anybody be so dumb as to fall for that shit?

Here is what Heller says:

As I write these words, I am now in my seventh week of attempting to spread the word about “West of Babylon.” I have sent emails to many newspapers, from the Boston Globe down to the Miami Herald across to the San Francisco … well, to just about everywhere. I’ve sent emails to newspapers and magazines in England, too, and to websites and book blogs. In each email I send, I announce that “West of Babylon” will be available online only as of early May 2013. I attach the cover image and stellar reviews of my three novels. I do everything I possibly can in about four or five paragraphs to inspire interest in whomever the email is sent to.

The author didn’t fall for a publishing scam, but he easily could have. He very easily could be ripe for plucking in the future. I know why. He does NOT understand the Chain of Happiness.

In Traditional Publishing, the Chain of Happiness works like this:

• WRITER has to make the EDITOR happy
• EDITOR has to make higher-up editors, the marketing department and the accountants happy
• Higher-up editors have to make MARKETING happy
• The marketing department has to make REVIEWERS and the NEW YORK TIMES book editor happy
• The sales department has to make BOOK STORES happy
• Everybody has to make the PUBLISHER happy
• The PUBLISHER has to make the STOCKHOLDERS and BOARD OF DIRECTORS happy

Contrast that with the indie’s Chain of Happiness:

• WRITER has to make the READERS happy

Notice what’s missing in the first chain of happiness? If you said “readers,” give yourself a gold star. If that list gives you some hints about why traditional publishing is in such disarray and why some self-publishers are succeeding beyond almost everybody’s expectations, give yourself another star.

And yes, I know there are many traditionally published books that make readers very happy. The point I’m making is about focus and priorities. With most publishers, and especially the Big Publishing Houses, reader happiness is a side effect, not a priority.

The author of the Salon piece is locked in the Trad-pub mode of thinking. What he doesn’t realize is this: Reviewers don’t buy books. Sure, reviews can help get the word out about a book, but I’ve yet to see any evidence that reviews SELL books. By focusing all his energy and attention on people who don’t matter, the author is neglecting the only people who do: Readers.

Which takes us back to David Gaughran’s blog post. Go read it. I’ll wait. Are you back? Did you follow all the links? Got a queasy feeling in your guts now?

Did this passage jump out at you the way it did me?

And it’s much harder to tell the scammers from the legitimate organizations when they are owned by the same people.

Think about the traditional publisher’s chain of happiness. Who does a publisher have to make happy? Stockholders and the board of directors. What makes them happy? Money. Not that there is anything wrong with making money. Money is good in that it can be exchanged for coffee and cookies. So I have no objection to money. When your sole concern is making money and making more money and the desperation creeps in that you need to make even more money (come on, even I have limits to how much coffee and how many cookies I can consume!) then strange and ugly things happen. Such as once legitimate publishers ripping off writers with overpriced or useless “services.”

Self-publishing “services” are in the business of taking as much money as possible from you. That’s it. That is their sole reason for being. They will do anything, say anything, play into all your hopes and fears and dreams and desires in order to get you to pony up the cash.

What you, my friends, need to do is NEVER FORGET YOUR CHAIN OF HAPPINESS.

Before you sign any contract, or fork over a single dime, you have to ask yourself: How will this make my readers happy?

Don’t sit there moon-eyed and slack-jawed and force me to go all Gordon Ramsay on you. Come on, ya donuts!  You’re a reader, aren’t you? What makes you happy?

• A good book
• Professionally presented
• Available
• At a reasonable price

That’s it. That’s your focus. That’s where all your energy (and your cash outlay) belongs. Writing the good book is entirely on you. Making sure it’s professionally edited, produced and packaged are fixed, one-time costs. Making it available (distributed) is easy through online sales channels; more challenging (but not impossible) in print. Determining a reasonable price for your work is a matter of market research.

There are no tricks or gimmicks or shortcuts. I won’t lie to you. Publishing is a tough business. Successful self-publishers are tough nuts who work their asses off. You can’t buy success. You have to earn it.

Let me tell you what’s really expensive in this business: Ignorance. With so many weasels out to entangle your rights and licenses for the life of the copyright (your life plus 70 years), that ignorance could cost you and your heirs for decades.

Learn the business. Learn about packaging and production. Learn about distribution. Learn about getting the word out and building a reader base. Learn to question big claims and bigger promises. Most importantly of all, learn to recognize anything that stands between you and making your readers happy. If it does, walk away.

You all know that the key to a good ebook format is a squeaky clean source file, right? Word doesn’t produce particularly clean documents. For best results, you should strip out extraneous codes before you begin to format. Mark Coker of Smashwords calls it the “Nuclear Option.” You copy/paste your document into a text editor and that will remove all the unwanted coding. Then you copy/paste the clean text back into Word and you are ready to format.

Anyone who has tried this knows that doing so will not only remove unwanted coding, it’ll nuke your italics, too (and other special formatting and styles). Here is an easy way to tag all your special formatting and then restore it. (What I will show you applies to bolding, underlining, different sized fonts, etc., too.)

Here is a document in need of a good cleaning:

Open the search box and make it look like this:

If you open the “Format” box you’ll see a drop down menu that gives you a “Font” option. Open that.

Notice the many, many options you can search for. Cool, huh?

I have come up with tags through trial and error. I use several different programs when I format ebooks, so I needed something unique for search purposes that didn’t make any of the programs say, “Oh no you don’t!” and crash the search box. I use all caps and hyphens to make sure they don’t get mixed up in the text. The most common tags I use are:

• -STARTI- for italics
• -STARTB- for bold
• -STARTU- for underline
• -END- to close the tag

Back to the document. Click Replace All.

Now all your italics are wrapped in tags. This is a good time to go through and make sure your tags are in the right place and that you don’t have any blank space tagged.

Now copy/paste into a text editor:

All your formatting is gone.

Now open a new file in Word and apply your main style sheet. Copy/paste your text into the new file. Open the search box and make it look this:

Do a Replace All and… ta da!

I generally wait until I’ve formatted all my headers and centering and any other styling necessary before I restore special formatting. Once done, all that’s left to do is to get rid of the tags.

Replace All and done!

In the time it took you to read this blog post, you could have tagged and restored six files. It really is that easy.

Sometimes I can answer: “What’s a good program for making an ebook?” (look here)  “My ebook has weird characters. What’s causing that?” (look here) “What does Smashwords do?” (it’s an aggregator that distributes ebooks to various retail sites. Click here) “I have a backlist, but the books are old and I don’t have the manuscript as a digital file. Can it be turned into an ebook?” (not as difficult as it sounds. Here.) “Will you publish my book for me?” (I produce books, I don’t publish, but I can show you how to do it.)

Sometimes I have no answers: “What’s the most effective type of marketing and promotion?” (who knows?) “Will I make money selling ebooks?” (maybe, maybe not)

Sometimes I get worried. A writer will send me a link to a vanity publisher or the latest scam cooked up by formerly legitimate publisher and ask me if I think if it will be money well spent. Um… no.

A common thread running through most of those emails is this: I feel alone and I’m not sure what to do.

I want to assure those folks that one) self-publishing DOES NOT mean going it alone; and two) by asking questions, you are doing EXACTLY THE RIGHT THING.

The number one reason I hear for going the trad pub route is this: “I just want to write and let a publisher or my agent take care of all the business-production-marketing stuff.”

I understand that. I honestly do. When I’m caught up in creative throes, I don’t want to bothered by, you know, life. Here’s the reality. I sold my first piece of writing in 1990. I’ve worked with several publishers. I have a stack of book contracts. I’ve belonged to several professional writer organizations. I’ve listened to and talked to hundreds of industry professionals–writers, editors, publishers, publicists, agents, and booksellers. So I’ve been around the block once or twice. One thing I know for a hard fact is this: The industry is full of weasels and sharks, and if you abdicate your responsibility to your writing and your career, you will get bitten. It might be a small, barely noticeable wound, or you might get eaten altogether.

This isn’t about traditional versus self-publishing (choosing to do either is an option, doing both is an option–whatever is best for you and your work). It isn’t even an admonition to writers to wake up and take responsibility.

It’s actually more in response to something I’ve heard several times in the past week. Proponents of traditional publishers and agents proclaiming their valuable role in “nurturing” writers.

Um… no.

Nurturing is what mothers do for babies. Writers are not infants. Most aren’t children, either.

Despite my raised hackles over such condescending bullshit, I still understand the appeal. Writing can be lonely. Loneliness leads to frustration. Frustration requires relief lest it fester. You need someone to tell you that you aren’t wasting your life on a dream. You need assurance that you are doing at least something right. Gold stars and pats on the head don’t do a thing for me, but I do understand the very real need for recognition and acknowledgement for a job well done.

So this is for the writers who are looking at self-publishing, but are afraid that it’s a leap into a lonely abyss. Afraid it is too hard. Afraid they’ll make mistakes.

First, you will make mistakes. Everybody does. But self-publishing isn’t parachuting, so mistakes are rarely fatal.

Second, self-publishing is hard work, but it’s not complicated or difficult. If you’re smart enough to write, you’re smart enough to self-publish.

That leaves the lonely abyss. The scary place. The place where “nurturing” sounds like a good idea.

You don’t need nurturing. You need connections and support. One of the most fabulous aspects of self-publishing is that the community is large, noisy, active and supportive. Generous, too, with information.

Information is knowledge and from knowledge springs wisdom.

Want the daily news about what is going on in the world of publishing? Follow The Passive Voice blog. Facts and figures? Joe Konrath spills all, and David Gaughran is becoming world-renowned for his industry analyses. Day to day realities? Check out Dean Wesley Smith and Kris Rusch. Worried something might be too good to be true? Visit the good folks from SFWA who publish Writer Beware. Want the nuts and bolts about producing your books? This blog, Paul Salvette at the BBEbooks site and Joel Friedlander’s blog will answer almost any question you might have about production.

That’s just a tiny sampling of the many, many people who share what they know and learn. Spend a day, or even a few hours link hopping and you’ll see what I mean.

While you’re learning about self-publishing, develop your side skills. Do you have an eagle eye for typos? Become a master proofreader. Do you have an artistic streak? Try your hand at making covers and designing blogs. Do you have editorial skills? Formatting skills? Can you write blurbs and promotional copy? Nobody is good at everything, but everybody is good at something. When all those “somethings” come together, communities are born and magic happens.

Which leads me to how does one find a community, and more importantly, become a part of it?

GIVE

Take a look at the most successful and well-known self-publishers, those with the strongest community ties. The write different things and have wildly differing personalities, but one thing they ALL have in common is generosity. They share time and hard-won wisdom and resources. Take a look at how much they give and it’ll be no mystery at all why they are so successful.

When you’re feeling frustrated or lonely, the best cure of all is giving.

So, to answer the question: Do you need nurturing?

NO

You’re grown-ups. Your momma nurtured you and now you can take care of yourself. You need education. You need support. You need friends. If you’re ready and willing and unafraid of hard work, that’s exactly what you’ll get.

I love front matter When I open an ebook I want to see all the good stuff the writer wants to include: title page, epigraph, publishing history, dedication, introduction, foreword and whatever else there is. I read all that stuff. I get annoyed when I get a new ebook and it opens to the first page of the story. I have to go back, go back, go back (sigh) to get to the real beginning.

The conflict comes with samples and “Look Inside.” When I’m contemplating purchasing a book, I want the writing, the story, and I get annoyed if I have to page through all the front matter, especially if there is a lot of it and precious little writing to sample.

How to resolve this conflict? Until the distributors allow the producer to customize the sample, this will continue to be a problem for me. I honestly don’t know if it’s a problem for anyone else.

We’ll leave that alone for now and talk about the mechanics of title pages and front matter.

Does your book need a title page? I think so, yes. An ebook without a title page feels like a manuscript and I don’t pay to read manuscripts. In some cases, such as for distribution through Smashwords, it’s a requirement. Let’s get that out of the way first. For Smashwords you need a title page that looks like this:

The Greatest American Novel Evah
JW Manus

Smashwords Edition
copyright 2013, JW Manus

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

_____________________________________

That’s what is says in the style guide. That’s what you should insert in your Smashwords edition.

With just about everything else, how your title page looks and what information it contains are entirely up to you. I like the fancy bits. As for what to include on the title page, as long as the title and author name are in place, you have a title page.

A title page is a good place to insert the publishing history and copyright information.

If you don’t want a separate “legal” page, you can also include disclaimers and design information.

A quick word about the Table of Contents in the front matter. They’re a pain in my patoot. New devices have an excellent built-in ToC. If you click “Go To” on a Paperwhite or Fire, you’ll open up a window with a complete Table of Contents (if the ebook has been properly built). On older Kindles, though, the Go To menu sends you to the user generated Table of Contents. I have heard rumors that Amazon will automatically start the ebook after the ToC, ignoring whatever the producer has designated as the beginning. Ay yi yi. That’s swell–unless your ebook has 70 named chapters. Then readers who “Look Inside” will see page after page of Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, etc ad nauseum. I am trying a bit of a cheat.That’s the “official” Table of Contents, the very first “page” in the ebook. Click the index and it takes readers to an index that contains all the chapters along with links to photos.

My best advice is to figure out how the devices work and learn to work with them, always keeping in mind that the Look Inside and sample features are selling tools and readers want prose, not a long list of cryptic chapter titles. That said, if you are formatting a non-fiction project, a detailed Table of Contents might actually be one of your best selling tools. I know when I’m looking for reference materials, for instance, the first thing I look at is the ToC to make sure the book contains the information I’m looking for. The same thing applies to anthologies with multiple authors.

What about other front matter? Dedications are nice. Acknowledgments tend to be longer. My rule of thumb is, if it fits on one “page” then put it in the front matter. If it’s longer, put it in the back of the book. The same general rule applies to A Notes to the Reader or A Note From the Author.

Introductions and forewords, and even prologues, can be a problem if you’re not careful in how you build your ebook. If you aren’t building your own toc.ncx, you need to make sure your essential front matter is styled with Heading 1 or Heading 2, (h1 or h2) otherwise the conversion program might home in on Chapter One and readers will miss essential information. If the rumors are true, and Kindles are determining the “beginning” as the first “page” after the ToC, you risk ending up with a mess. So test your book on an actual device and make sure the beginning is where you want it to be.

A perfectly serviceable layout for the front matter of a novel:

• Table of Contents (truncated if it’s a long non-informative list)
• Title Page
• Copyright or Legal page (if your novel has a lengthy publication history, it might be best to put this page in the back matter)
• Dedication or short acknowledgement (put a long acknowledgements page in the back matter)
• Epigraph (if you have one)
• Foreword or Introduction
• The Story

What about the rest of you? Any opinions on Title Pages and front matter in ebooks?

]]> http://jwmanus.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/fun-with-ebook-formatting-the-title-page-and-front-matter/feed/ 21 jwmanus titlepage1 titlepage2 titlepage3 titlepage4 titlepage5 http://jwmanus.wordpress.com/2013/04/15/print-on-demand-books/ http://jwmanus.wordpress.com/2013/04/15/print-on-demand-books/#comments Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:08:19 +0000 Jaye http://jwmanus.wordpress.com/?p=2927 ]]> I have to say, the Espresso Book Machine is cool!

When I win the Powerball lottery, after I remember to buy tickets, I’m getting one of those.

Having gone through the process of producing a POD book, I am very impressed by the quality of the finished product (I used CreateSpace). I am impressed with the cost. Especially the part about only paying for copies I needed right then, and not having to worry about warehousing. I think one of the things I like best about POD is the frugality of it. Waste hurts my heart. When a publisher does a print run of 10,000 copies, and only 6,000 sell, that means 4,000 copies end up pulped. What a waste.

And one must not discount the sheer pleasure, the wonderful thrill, of holding in your hands an object you’ve created.

Where does one manufacture a print on demand book? The three biggest companies are CreateSpace, Lulu, and Lightning Source. (I’ve used CreateSpace–user friendly, relatively painless process) Before you decide which one to go with, do your research and weigh the distribution options.

What do you need to make a print on demand book? A cover file and a book file and some time.

I’ve had several people query me about formatting a print book file, and I’ve had to say no. Print layout is a whole ‘nother animal from ebook formatting. Having screwed around with templates from CreateSpace, and thoroughly muffed them and made big messes, I realized that templates or no templates, there is a learning curve. So learning how to make professional looking print books would take some time. Time I haven’t had time for.

Now! I can stop stressing over it. Now I have Jayne.

Meet Jayne. A talented designer with an eye for typography and layout. She can do covers, too, including taking an existing ebook cover and turning it into a cover for print.

(If she gets annoyed by me standing over her shoulder, watching her work magic on the computer, repeating, “Oh geez, how do you do that?” well, she is much too nice to mention it.)

Random pages from a book, just to show them off because they look very nice, don’t they?

Not only is Jayne wonderfully talented, she has the same philosophy about book production that I do. She loves books. She loves beautiful books. She’s proud of her creations and wants the authors to be proud of them, too.

It’s fun working with her. We’ve done some projects where she does the cover and I do the ebook. (In the above samples, she modified the existing Beauty and the Feast ebook cover for print, and did the original for the Spirituality For America ebook and print cover) It’s much easier to do a cohesive package when the two of us can consult on font choices and tone and images. (Added bonus, she’s a terrific proofreader–and that’s a chore I don’t mind sharing in the least!) Below is a sample of a cover she created and the graphics I made based on her work for the ebook interior.

So, if you’re thinking about print on demand, and wish to discuss your project, give us a shout. I no longer have to say no.

The most basic of basic styles are indented and block paragraphs. Convention says, indented paragraphs for fiction and block style for non-fiction. Why the convention? Indented paragraphs are quicker to read (not really, but doesn’t it seem that way?), while block paragraphs tend to be weightier, denser, and can add a measure of gravitas to the text. It’s really a preference and not about right and wrong. Readers do expect text to look a certain way, though, and you take a chance of distracting them from the prose if you mess with their expectations.

For those of you using anything other than html to format your ebooks, (pardon my shouting) NO TABS! Tabs, and using the space bar to indent paragraphs, play havoc with ebooks. NO TABS. Your word processor enables you to use style sheets–use them. NO TABS.

How wide an indent?  

The narrow indent is a leftover from the days of pulp fiction when every sheet of paper counted against the bottom line and so the publisher needed to cram as much text onto a page as possible. It looks a bit squishy, especially if the reader prefers narrow line spacing on their device. Wide indents are a writer habit, I think, from being used to working on manuscripts with their half inch indents. Too wide, though, and the ebook can assume the look of a manuscript, and that’s not polished. I prefer a medium width indent of 1.4ems (.3″ in a word processor).

Block paragraphs require spaces between the paragraphs so they don’t run together.

Whether you’re using a word processor or html, you need to include that extra leading in your style sheet–not (never) by manually inserting a blank line between paragraphs. Be aware, too, that you do not want to increase the space between indented paragraphs. Doing so means users of the Kindle iOS app will end up with huge spaces between paragraphs. Smashwords will reject files for inserting extra space.

Another style is one I don’t recommend for full paragraphs. Centering.

Don’t forget that centering IS a style. Don’t just highlight the text then click the “center” command in the menu bar. Make sure your text indent is set to zero so the center doesn’t end up off-center.

Sometimes you’ll need to set off text. Quotes, song lyrics, poetry, missives.

The only difference in coding between the first block quote and the lines of poetry is the use of italics.

What if you want to set off an entire section of text?

Keep it simple, aim for sophisticated, and keep your reader’s comfort in mind while you style your paragraphs.

What about the rest of you? Any fun styling tricks you’d like to share?