Tag: publishing

Publishing Basics Indies Should Know

Posted on by CMPR

Today there are millions of books published every year.  Everyone has access to the tools to publish.  However, if you don’t know how to use them properly, you could lose money and time.  For the next few weeks we will provide information on publishing basics and other tricks of the trade you need to know.

Choosing a Publishing Method

Writers have many choices when it comes to selecting a publishing method.  They can:

  1. Query agents to get presented to traditional publishers
  2. Submit directly to indie presses that accept unsolicited submissions
  3. Partner with a hybrid publisher that will handle all of the details, but writers help pay the costs of production
  4. Self-publish through Amazon, Book Baby, Ingram Spark, or Lulu
  5. Self-publish using their own editing/design team and upload the title to selling platforms on their own

Publishing Basics

No matter how you choose to publish, you will save time and money by remembering a few publishing basics.

Editing:

There are three major types of editing, Developmental, Copyediting/Line editing, and Proofreading.

  • Developmental is what helps put the book together into a cohesive narrative with a rich plot and characters.
  • Generally, copyediting is for making sure the narrative is consistent, gramatically correct, and that there are no glaring mistakes. It’s jarring to read a book with a protagonist named David, and then later he is referred to as Daniel, oops.  It happens.
  • Proofreading is for catching those typos, commas, double words, missed words, and other smaller details.

Cost: $30 – $75/hr, depending on the type of editing.  You will find editors earning much more, but your can find legitimate help at more reasonable price points.

Design:

Jackets are designed with a front cover first and then a full spread to wrap around the pages.  Interiors are also designed and digitally typeset.  If you have a table of contents, your interior designer will help paginate correctly.  Some people try to use AI tools to generate jackets.  There are also tools on Ingram Spark and Kindle Direct Publishing that can help you DIY.

Cost: Jackets $750 and up; Interior $1,000 and up depending on the length of the book and how complex the interior is.  If you do your own research you may find less expensive designers for different genres.  Then there is Fiverr, but that’s a mixed bag.

Copyright page: 

Please go to the bookstore or your shelves, and look at the interiors of other books published by traditional companies.  Copy their format so your page looks professional.  Sign up for an identifier with the Library of Congress (LOC) so a librarian will know how to shelve the book.

Cost: Free.  You do not have to pay for an LOC number and researching format will only cost you time.

Other publishing basics include getting ISBNs and bar codes for printed books.  Everything you need to know about these things you can find at Bowker.

Compare your book to the ones that catch your eye in a bookstore, so you know your book presents a professional package.  All titles require publishing basics and if writers decide to skip them, book buyers will know.

For more information on How to Publish check out our blog page and search “publishing” and “self-publishing”

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
― Mark Twain

How Often Should You Publish?

Posted on by CMPR

A new author and writer of a series recently asked “how often should you publish?”  They said it took about a year to write the first book and another year to get the beta readers, editing, jacket and everything else together.  Although, I don’t like to tell writers they need to write faster, I do have some suggestions for being more efficient with timing so you can publish more quickly.

How Often Should You Publish?

Ideally, you want to publish every year when you do a series, so you don’t lose momentum between releases.  Readers of series are a ravenous bunch and as much as they love your first book, there are other writers on deck to lure them away.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to get a book out and include a teaser of the next?  As the owner of Plum Bay Publishing, an indie publisher, and as an old hat in the book industry, here are my suggestiong to help you speed up your process.

5 Tips for Publishing a Book a Year Series

  1. Get your story out of your head and into your computer. Try creating outlines for the next book or two to help you get started faster on the next book.  Think of your series as an epic adventure story.  If you don’t do outlines, write a few paragraphs of background to start you off.
  2. After you are finished with the first draft, skip beta readers and pay a professional editor to start reviewing your manuscript. A line editor or copyeditor should be fine. You can have beta readers but if they slow you down, then getting the editing started will be faster.
  3. Combining the jacket design time with the editing is a good idea because you need the jacket designed before you do the interior design/digital typesetting (so if you want to add a graphic at the beginning of each chapter or use a special font, you can keep the branding consistent between the jacket image and the text).
  4. While waiting for the editor and jacket designer, start filling out the information on your upload platforms.  Writers can set their books up on Amazon before uploading manuscript and cover files. Ingram is the same, although you will need an ISBN which you can purchase at Bowker Identifiers. You can also buy one directly from Ingram.
  5. Allow time for promotional efforts.  While people are reading/editing/and commenting, you can start creating lists of media outlets you want to reach.  You can also update your website and begin social media promotions.

The Annual Publishing Plan

Try to write the book in 6-9months and get the rest of the process done in 3 months.  Then you will be close enough to a year between books. I’m not saying it’s easy, but once you go through the first one some of the learning curve in publishing is already over. That in itself can save you time.

For more information on promoting and publishing your book, check out our blog.

AI Writing: Parasite or Partner

Posted on by CMPR

Artificial Intelligence (AI) writing is not new.  Tech platforms have been using it to finish our sentences in Google Docs; to recommend headlines for ads; and to pull relevant keywords from an infinite number of potential combinations.  However, in a way the AI we know today is “new”, especially since Microsoft invested $1 billion in Open AI and then bought exclusive rights to the technology behind Chat GPT 3 in 2020.   Fast forward past a marketing and public relations campaign and we strongly feel the conflict that makes us excited and appalled at what AI can do.

When AI Writing Doesn’t Work

I believe that AI writing for book, articles and other long form writing will create a homogenous and boring world. Yes, there are definitely uses for AI, especially in the business world.  Who wouldn’t want a technology that could write form letters, contracts, privacy policies, and corporate boiler plates.  However, when it comes to writing there is so much that can be missed.  Here are four pitfalls of AI that I say should comfort writers.

  1. Just the facts.  How can you rely on an expert’s knowledge and advice if you suspect that AI is doling out the facts?  AI does not fact check itself.  It’s up to a human to do that.
  2. Misinformation.  Similar to not having the fact, AI can pull from thousands of opinions and false content to come up with something.  A user could be embarassed by something they publish that is more myth than reality.
  3. Innovative storytelling.  To Kill a Mockingbird, Little Women, 1984, Catch 22, The Color Purple, and Beloved are all stories that broke barriers.  That’s something that writers and creatives do.  They ask us to see the world in a different way thereby provoking thought, ideas, and discussion.   Does AI have an imagination?
  4. Personal stories.  Many writers start with what they know for their first books.  They write memoirs.  I suppose AI could write a book based on a person’s life, but that person would have to write it first.

Positive Uses of AI that Save Time

Now that I’ve pointed out why writers need not break their pencils and throw their laptops out the window just yet, I should also mention some areas where AI is likely to help and/or replace some of the things people do for the better.

  1. Content creation for social media.  There is a rule I read in a book on content marketing that says you should be able to create at least ten pieces of content based on one thing. That’s a lot.  For marketers writing multiple posts to support press releases or articles, an AI partner could be a time saver.
  2. Internal marketing departments in big companies.  Eventually, you may not need writers to develop annual reports and other marketing collateral that is generated in house.  You could feed data into an AI program and have it write the language that is common to these types of documents.
  3. Writing back ad for book jackets, catalog copy, and other items that summarize a book’s content.  You could upload a manuscript into an AI program and ask it to write a summary. The question is, do you trust an open source software to observe copyright laws and protect your story?
  4. Prompts and ideas.  Generative AI may be able to help with writers block.   Give ChatGPT a prompt and see what it writes.

A Writing Prompt Result

In this example I asked ChatGPT to give me the first paragraph for a “mystery novel based in Scotland”.  I rejected the first try.  This is the second.

“The rolling fog blanketed the rugged Scottish Highlands, shrouding the ancient hills and eerie lochs in an ethereal mist. In the heart of this mystic land, a solitary figure moved silently through the gloom, his footsteps echoing on the cobblestone streets of a forgotten village. The wind howled, carrying with it the secrets of centuries past, as if the very whispers of ghosts were woven into the fabric of the night.

Detective Elinor MacGregor had returned to the land of her birth, a place steeped in history and legends. She had come in search of answers, drawn by a cryptic message from her estranged father, a man she hadn’t seen in twenty years. The message was simple but enigmatic: “Return to the Highlands, and you shall find the truth.” Now, as she ventured deeper into the heart of the misty wilderness, she couldn’t help but wonder what truths awaited her in the shadows of her ancestral homeland, and whether she was prepared to face them.”

What do you think?  Is it a keeper, or should we ask it to go back to the drawing board?

Writers Lead, AI Follows

From what I’m reading about AI writing, and other disciplines, people are still going to need to drive the bus.  So don’t ignore or fear what is happening.  (I do recommend paying attention to developments around copyright protections for your work). Learn how to play with it or use it in a business setting so you can take the lead.  You are the creative mastermind behind your material You know how to make it as impactful as it can be.

Some articles of interest include our blog on AI and Art, and this one from 2015 about Google’s win in a court case that allowed them to digitize all books.

Amazon Books? Four reasons why booksellers can remain calm

Posted on by Claire McKinney
Amazon Books
From my visit at the Amazon Books location at the The Shops at Columbus Circle.

It is ironic, and for some it may seem odd, that in the midst of decades of brick-and-mortar bookstores closing their doors, a hugely successful e-tailer like Amazon would decide to venture into the concrete bookstore business with Amazon Books.  Or is it?

I have seen the demise of Borders/Waldenbooks, Joseph Beth Booksellers, and the rise and fall of Barnes & Noble stores; the feuds between the independents and the chains when wonderful stores like BookPeople in Austin, TX thought they were doomed; when Costco and other giant stores started selling large quantities of bestsellers at deep discounts, perhaps underselling the competition; and the power of e-commerce, with Amazon presiding over the field.  Every change in the book business makes the publishing community anxious. Clearly, with some businesses succeeding and others failing, there is a need to be able to roll with the punches.  But perhaps if we take a wide angle view of things we might be able to hold onto a few constants that will create paths of opportunity and assure people that although some things look different, the basic precepts of the marketplace and sales still prevail.

  1. Brick-and-mortar bookstores are not dying.  Yes, chains like Borders are long gone and Barnes & Noble may not be able to support a store every ten miles, but independents are going strong.  According to this article on Quartz, between 2009 and 2015 the number of independent bookstores increased by 35%.
  2. E-book sales are falling flat.  Many sources have been reporting that e-books are falling out of their previous favor.  Let’s face it, devices may be convenient but they have their issues.  Batteries lose their charge and if you don’t have an active WiFi connection you can’t download a new book whenever you want one.  And, if you are reading for content, it’s very difficult to highlight sections and go back to them in the same manner as you would mark or dog-ear a page you need to reference later.
  3. Selling in person is better than selling online.  I attribute this principle to the increase in the success of independents over the past several years.   Real readers, who actually support the majority of the book business front and back list, like to be able to browse and get recommendations for books.  They also like to hang out with other like-minded individuals.  The innovations in indie stores that now offer seating, coffee, parties, and more, have brought customers in and kept this business sector alive.
  4. Amazon Books, while competing in bookstore form, is not doing things like everyone else.  Amazon became a huge success online, and it makes sense that it would not try to duplicate what others have already done on the ground.  Why should it?  I recently visited one of their Amazon Books stores, and it was not like most of the ones I frequent. As a reader, I probably wouldn’t shop there on a regular basis.  The main reason was that there was a smaller number of titles available.  For indie presses and authors this was a benefit because the inventory was a more curated list that covered the usual suspects but also featured books from unknown publishers.  And, because curating titles meant that additional shelf space was available, the books were primarily face out, which can be a boon for publishers without a lot of marketing dollars to spend.  I could also forgo the other products that the store had for sale, like coffee makers and gadgets.  These things diluted the atmosphere and were a distraction.

I got the distinct impression that the Amazon Books location was trying to market to Millennials, which is a big “buzz” word for everyone in any industry these days.  The funny thing is that I meet a lot of younger people who fit this bill, and the ones I know who are real readers prefer the same traditional bookstores I’ve loved forever.  Maybe rather than believing we need to rethink everything we’ve ever known in this business because of change, we should try to anticipate, adapt, and remind people of the core elements of books and buying books that many people share.  It might eliminate some of the hysteria so we can all get back to business (and reading of course).

Have you been to an Amazon Books? Tell us your thoughts on Twitter.