I’m Baaaack!

I’m back and it’s time to rock ‘n’ roll!

First, apologies to those who contacted me for book production services and I had to refer them to other sources. I spent the last few months of 2016 pretty much playing catch up, and I was so swamped I even disabled my service pages just to slow down the flow of queries (Gah, butI hate telling people no!). I have some serious updating to do to this poor neglected blog, but my pages will be going back online soon and I’ll be able to accept new clients in the next month or so.

Second, much gratitude and warm fuzzies for those who offered kind words and MUCH understanding about my husband’s health issues. His treatments seem to be working and he’s slowly, but surely getting back to his normal ornery self. He’ll be back to driving me nuts in no time at all.

Third, I’ve stopped working on Sundays. I have to force myself to take a day away from the computer or I will go blind or my hair will fall out or something horrible like that. I know, I know, I’m writing this blog on a Sunday, but I have so much work to do next week that this won’t get written unless I do it today. But, the norm will be, I’m offline on Sundays. What this means is that emails that come in late Saturday won’t be answered until Monday. And scheduling will take my days off into account.

The biggest news is that I’m taking on a partner. What, Jaye? A cranky old loner like you? Yep. I’m training him in book production right now, so I’ll introduce him when he’s fully on board, but rest assured, he cares as much about production values as I do. (Plus he’s young and energetic and types really fast.)  We’ll be coming up with plans to keep prices as low as possible so you all can focus on your writing and not have to worry that production costs blowing your budgets. With two of us sharing duties and quality checking each other, we’ll be able to produce more and better books.

So what’s coming up in 2017?

Ebooks (of course). High quality, guaranteed to work across devices, no-hassle updates–that remains the same.

Line-editing. I have a few editing clients and have been hesitant to take on more because of time constraints. That may be changing and it’s possible I’ll be able to expand my client list.

Proofreading. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know I’m a bear about proofreading. When a writer clicks the Publish button, I want for their work to be the very best it can be. Readers deserve no less. There will be some changes in prices and policies coming up, but my intent is to broaden my proofreading services AND keep the cost as low as possible.

Print. Just about all my clients are doing print on demand editions. With fiction I can keep the costs down to where the print version is comparable in price to the digital version. I’ll be posting prices and even some package deals.

Backlist Restoration. Writers who manage to get their rights reverted often end up with a print copy of their book and a heart filled with dismay as to how to go about recovering the text so it can be turned into an ebook or a new print edition. Easy enough to take it to the copy shop and have it scanned, but then what? Converting the scanned text via OCR can result in an unholy mess. I’ve dealt with writers who’ve spent months trying to get text in good enough shape to read. I’m going to boast a little here–I am the Queen of Text Restoration. I have the tools and skills so that I can accomplish in days what might take most people months. So if you have some backlist in need of restoration, we should talk.

Covers. Regular readers know I’ve been dabbling in covers for a while. I’m getting pretty good at it. I’m on my way to getting really good at it. I’m more than happy to work with writers on a tight budget to come up with reasonably priced covers that look good and serve their purpose. I can also modify most ebook covers for print and audio editions.

Translations and Foreign Editions: I’ve been doing a lot of German, Italian and Spanish novels here of late. I’ve figured out how to get the best results for digital and print so the books can be sold on Amazon and through other distributors. (I’m not doing Asian editions–yet.) It’s a big world full of hungry readers. If you write in an other than English language or have translated editions of your English books you’d like produced in digital or print, let’s talk.

Marketing and Promotion: Nope, sorry, still won’t/can’t do that for you. My brain just refuses to wander down those paths.

Thanks for dropping by. If you need to contact me now you can reach me at
jayewmanus at gmail dot com

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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Boast Post: Thomas Pluck and Co-Op Publishing

Practice makes perfect. And, as Malcolm Gladwell points out in Outliers, it takes a lot of practice, at least 10,000 hours worth.

“The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert–in anything,” writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin. “In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, … this number comes up again and again. … no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. …”

Practice is what I do. When I’m trying new techniques and work flows, when I need to practice, I pester my friends for projects. (My friends are wonderfully prolific and quite tolerant, or perhaps amused by my obsessions.) If my friends don’t have anything for me, I go hunting. I look for writers whose writing speaks to me and who could use my services to make their ebooks better.

Which leads to Thomas Pluck. He writes crime fiction–“Unflinching fiction with heart.” For the past year or so I’ve been bouncing all over the internet and buying short story collections in order to read Tom’s short stories. I’ve been bugging him to put his own collection together. Finally, I sez, “I’ll produce the ebook. You provide the stories and get a cover.” He said yes.

Which leads to co-op publishing. (Along with the boast part of this post) With Tom the writer, Sarah Pluck the artist, and me the editor/producer, we were a machine. A muscle machine, I tells ya. We pulled it all together, without any hitches or glitches, in about ten days.

(I have this dream of someday having a publishing company of my own–a co-op publishing company. I don’t know how yet and I sure don’t know all the aspects and ins and outs, but that’s what practice is for. Getting my 10,000 hours in.)

We did have a big advantage going in. All of Tom’s stories had been previously published and professionally edited. So the line-editing I did was little more than fine-tuning. That saved a lot of time. The real key to our success was two-fold: Dropbox and communication. For those who don’t know, Dropbox is a cloud storage service. People can share folders and files. When working with big files or folders, it’s essential. It keeps files organized, there are no worries about missing an attachment in an email, and no worries about translation hiccups that sometimes happens with word processor files.

Communication and delegation of responsibilities were the biggest factors in our success. Tom was in charge of selecting the stories. Sarah was in charge of the cover. I was in charge of the ebook formatting. I think it’s necessary in any co-op endeavor to establish who is in charge of what and thus has final say. That prevents elements from being nibbled to death by duck committees.

Work flow:

• Tom placed the stories he selected in the dropbox folder.
• Sarah worked on the cover.
• I line-edited the stories, and placed my edited versions in the dropbox.
• Tom accepted or rejected my editorial input as he saw fit, then placed FINAL versions in the dropbox.
• Sarah provided me with images and fonts from the cover (I wanted full package cohesiveness in the ebook).
• Tom and I went back and forth on story order and layout of the front and back matter.
• I created the internal graphics, then we did some more back and forth to get them just right.

BOAST ALERT: I figured out how to make an image look like stamped metal! I am absurdly proud of myself.

• I formatted the book. Tom and I had done such a good job of communicating about the layout that no changes were deemed necessary.
• I proofed the ebook then sent it to Tom for the second round. (Experience has taught me, one proofreader at a time. No sense stumbling over each and catching the same errors.)
• By then Sarah was done with the cover. I slipped it into the ebook.
• Tom returned the corrections and changes he wanted.
• I inputted the corrections, made up the various ebook formats necessary for distribution.
• Tom wrote the listing description copy.

We had a book.

In about ten days.

Polished, professional, an A+ ebook I’d put up against any big NY publishing house with the quality of the stories–and it would blow them out of the water in terms of production.

Let’s talk a moment about co-op publishing. Way I see it, it’s all about equal risk, sweat equity and equal benefits. Some books take off, some don’t, some hit the middle ground, and nobody can predict going in where any particular book is going to land–or when. I don’t normally charge for my special projects. I take my pay in practice and leeway in trying out new techniques (and occasionally, wild and crazy ideas). Tom thinks my service is valuable and wanted to pay. Well. So we agreed to a co-op, but with a twist. He’s a major supporter of PROTECT: The National Organization to Protect Children. I’m a supporter, too. Now 10% of all the earnings of this book will be donated to PROTECT. The better Steel Heart: 10 Tales of Crime and Suspense does sales-wise, the more PROTECT benefits. (hint hint, go buy the book)

Big take-away message for you, folks. Indie publishers need to be creative, not just in crafting the stories but in how you produce the books. Even if you’re low on cash, you don’t have to settle for second-rate productions. Build your networks, develop your side skills (design, editing, promotion, copy writing–all valuable), horse trade and barter, and most of all practice, practice, practice.

Addendum: Great minds think alike. Tom posted on his blog today, too. You can read more about the stories in Steel Heart here.