Category: Blogs @ How to Self Publish


The Chicago Manual Of Style, a book I love to hate…

Filed Under: How to Get Started in Self Publishing by Corinne — Comments Off on The Chicago Manual Of Style, a book I love to hate…
September 10, 2012

(this post is a re-write re-post from 2011…)

As I near the end of writing my manuscript, I realize that the time has come to polish up the grammer, usage, punctuation,
and so I pull out my mammothly heavy copy of The Chicago Manual of Style.
Perhaps, you are thinking, I should have that book out all the time – before I near the end of my manuscript.
Well, I am going to ignore that kind of thinking and move forward.

I can’t pretend that I like The Chicago Manual of Style. I’ve spent too many hours trying to follow all the freakin’ rules and regulations.

Rules like how percentage has to be spelled out if it refers to human beings, but can be a symbol if it refers to anything else unless it is at the beginning of a sentence and depending how big of a number it is referring to.
This is the kind of rule that seems to love itself too much.

The T-Rex of Self Publishing, Chicago Manual of Style

This is how I feel about the Chicago Manual of Style, but I use it… and use it… and use it some more.

To be a rule simply to exist as a rule and not to help mankind in general.
Stop signs, good rule.
Percent rule,  not so much.

The manualfesto is produced by the University of Chicago Press – who is actually a publisher.
They have a section of their website with manuscript preparation guidelines that are a handy basic starting point for formatting a manuscript, even if it isn’t going to be submitted to them.

And I wondered why the University of Chicago got to determine the final word on usage of the English Language… wikilore says it is because they did it first, and they did it most, and they’ve continued to do it.

It started in 1906 with the first edition and is now in a 16th edition and is considered a guide for the proper use of everything in American English.

If I sound a little negative, it’s only because I don’t write right and I have to spend many many hours creeping through the Chicago Manual of Style to put out a decent manuscript.
Their rules of English usage are not obvious to me despite my fluency in the language.

It is also because I decided not to sign up online because if I bought the durn book, then I’d have it and not have to pay again every year. How often would they put out a new edition?  I’d be set for decades.
The very next year, they put out the new edition. All newest editions are automatically accessible in the online subscription, which is also, naturally, searchable online.

If I had the online version, I could be searching the proper usage of the word “Dammit” right now.

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5 Tips For Including Images And Captions In Your Self-Published Book

Filed Under: Blogs @ "Colonel C. J. Tippett", How To Series... Step By Step by Corinne — Comments Off on 5 Tips For Including Images And Captions In Your Self-Published Book
September 7, 2012
Cloyce Joseph Tippett certifies in the T-bird T-33 Jet Trainer

This photo looks about half this good when printed in the actual book. It will be better when I boost the contrast.

You can add line drawings and black & white photos, or other sorts of images, to the body text if you are self publishing a book. Simply include the graphics in your layout before you create your pdf. But there are limits to how good the images will look, and these five tips will help:

1. Make the photos look the best they can – with good contrast and sharpness. While you can put color photos in your electronic file, they will print in black and white unless you are creating a color photo book. Making your photos or images look nice in black and white before you paste them into your document will ensure they look the best they can in the book. The book printing process tends to flatten them out, so tend towards contrast – but not to the point where you lose detail.

2. Make them big enough. At least a third of the page if the image is a photo with a caption, and at least one inch high if it is a graphic at the beginning of a chapter. If your graphic is a page decoration, you can make it any size you want. Actually, you can make all of them any size you want as long as you stay within the print margins of your book size. Full bleed graphics are a different issue and I have no current experience with those. Generally, I try not to bleed.

3. Downsample your PDF to 300 dpi. Or you could make them 300 dip to begin with. This is a standard pdf recommendation. My soon-to-be-available “How To Self Publish A Book” book will have printed samples with different DPI tests so you can see what happens, but it isn’t ready yet. In the meantime, 300 dpi is a good general guideline. This does not apply to line drawings.

4. Include captions that cover the 5 W’s of good writing – What, Who, Where, When, Why. Actually, the fifth should be “how” but that doesn’t start with a W so I use Why. Readers will always read captions, and the captions of the photos you include in your text may be some of the first text your reader scans… especially when flipping through the book with a mind to buy, so make the best of that opportunity. Avoid describing things that are obvious in the photo and use the caption to add value and interest to your project.

5. Order a proof of your book with all of your photos in the text before you go much further with the project. The only way you will be able to tell for sure how your photos will look is to test them. Get your writing into your book design, insert the photos and size them to your taste, then go ahead with the proof. It’s not expensive to order a proof and it can save you a lot of headache later in your project. Once you know how your exact photos or images are going to translate to the medium you are working with, you can adapt your materials so that they show well.

Line drawings look really good in the current state-of-the-art print-on-demand books that you can produce as a self publisher. Photographs print surprisingly well, depending on how good they were to begin with. But if you have really stunning photographs or images that are the heart of your book project, you may want to look into producing a photo book. The only drawback is the production cost, which is the reason coffee table books have such a high list price… they have a high production cost. The technology is easily available, it’s just an issue of profit and loss.

I have included over 100 photographs in my grandfather’s biography, working titled “CJT, A Biography” and they look good enough to be exciting, but I am considering a color photo book as a future project. Many of the images in my grandfather’s archive are museum quality and contain celebrities and world leaders, so the book would not only be marketable, but would also be an important archive.

 

 

 

 

 

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My review of… Lulu.com

Filed Under: Blogs @ "Just a Couple of Chickens", My Reviews! by Corinne — Comments Off on My review of… Lulu.com
September 5, 2012
how to self publish a book using lulu

A feather of self publishing advice regarding Lulu.com

I recently printed a draft of my soon-to-be-available step by step “how-to” manual on self publishing through Lulu.com to see how Lulu compares other services I’ve tried.

www.Lulu.com is one of many online companies that offers a range of publishing solutions to anyone with a project.

To start, before I sign up for any online company, I do a “suck search” to see if anyone has gotten angry enough at that company to rant off about it. I found a really huge number of people who were pissed off at Lulu.com. Almost as many as are pissed off at PayPal.

So I was cautious and read all the fine print and submitted a live email query to lulu.com’s customer support to test the system. It took a week for customer support to respond, but when they did, it was a live person and the answer was relevant to my question, and I was satisfied. So I got busy setting up an account and putting my project together.

I liked the fact that I could make a project that was “private” for viewing right from the start. And that I could change that setting later. Private publishing. Taking self publishing to a whole new level; the self reading level.

Lulu is free. That was good, because the other services I’ve tried are also free to get started. The only charge I paid was when I was ready to order a copy of my book to proof it. Then I paid for my book and the shipping. The book fee was based on the size and page count, and the shipping was both reasonably priced, and fast. The book fee was reasonable too.

I would have to pay Lulu.com fees once I was ready to publish my book, but if I stayed in this new world of totally private publishing, I’d only ever pay when I wanted a copy of my book. Self audience!

I was able to make a cover for free, which is a service also available on other services. While I seriously recommend you hire a professional to make your final cover, it is handy to use the free service to make a draft cover. Lulu had fewer options than other services I’ve used, but I need fewer options on something like that. I’ve lost too many hours playing with covers that should never see the light of day.

When I was ready to order a proof, I did not have to put in my ISBN number. Nor did Lulu require me to take one of theirs. They would require the ISBN number when I was ready to publish, but not to order a proof, and I liked that very much.

Lulu’s system was pretty easy to use… the only troubles I had were specific to my formatting, and so overall, I was satisfied, but when I came to the steps involved with actually publishing my book with Lulu, I was no longer satisfied. The costs and process of self-publishing through Lulu were a no-go for me. Their fee to get my book on Amazon.com and beyond, and how they structure their royalties and pricing put me off. It is cheaper and easier to control on other services.  CreateSpace, where I self published “Just a Couple of Chickens”,  will put my self-published book on Amazon.com with no fee. They only charge once I start to access expanded distribution. (…disclosure….I have an affiliate link to CreateSpace on my sidebar because I am pleased with their service, but no link in the text of this post…. and I would affilate lulu.com because of their ease of printing a book, but not for their publishing portion…)

In summary, Lulu.com is very useful for printing a proof or a casual copy of a book I don’t intent to market.

It’s easy to use and the service was good. The print and cover quality was fine. I can use Lulu to print a proof of my project, or I can pay them to produce my whole book, or I can use my own ISBN number and self-publish my book through their company. But I wouldn’t. And many of these publishing issues were the root of the rantations I found in my search.

I would use CreateSpace over Lulu for self publishing… although I haven’t yet tried Lightning Source or Blurb.com. (Have you?)

Lulu’s proof printing ease makes it pretty fun to whip up book versions of some of my projects-in-waiting. To see them in book form instead of in manuscript form or only on screen. Lulu.com is great for that purpose. I’ve got so many projects that I could take self publishing to the ultimate of ultimate level… self library!

 

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Self Publishing Steps: 3 Ways to Write It… !

Filed Under: How To Series... Step By Step by Corinne — Comments Off on Self Publishing Steps: 3 Ways to Write It… !
September 3, 2012
Self Publishing Advice Butterflies

The Three Butterflies of Writing Advice

As I build my series on Step by Step Self Publishing, I keep trying to start at the beginning… with Write The Book… but current life and topics keep popping up.
Because this is blogging.
It’s more spontaneous, closer to live action, more like real life.
Not disorganized. No way!

For authors, publishing starts after we think we are finished.
So for authors, self publishing advice includes the topic of writing the book. And my advice for authors considering self publishing is to write another book and publish it as well. Don’t stop with just one book – use the time, effort, and self education to put out more books! But first, we have to write it.

Out of the millions of ways to write a book, I can think of three:

1)            Do something and write about it

2)            
Find someone who did something and write about them


3)            Make something up completely from scratch and write about it

I started with number one. I did something, and I wrote about it…  my memoir about raising poultry and a family in hard times, titled  “Just a Couple of Chickens”

Now I’m almost finished with my second book, using approach number 2. I’ve found someone who did something, and I’m writing about him. My grandfather, Col. C. J. Tippett, did several very interesting things in aviation history as well as being a fascinating person in an extraordinary time.

Number 3 seems the hardest. To make something up completely from scratch and write about it. I do have my secret manuscript just like every other writer, my blockbuster sci-fi space opera, bodice-ripper… (space-suit ripper?) but in the meantime, I’m going back to methods 1 and 2 and writing sequels to my first two books.

Because if Write It is the first step in self publishing, then Write a Sequel and Do It All Over Again is the last… that’s just good publishing advice.

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What’s Going To Happen To Readers If Just Any Author Can Self Publish A Book?

Filed Under: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions, Blogs @ "Just a Couple of Chickens" by Corinne — Comments Off on What’s Going To Happen To Readers If Just Any Author Can Self Publish A Book?
August 29, 2012
What if there are too many self published books in the world?

Will the flock of self published books overwhelm readers or enrich our world? So many books, so little time…!

This is one of the biggest questions at the heart of the emotional furor against self publishing , regarding the publishing changes going on today. Bridget Kinsella frames it perfectly in her article in Stanford University’s alumni magazine, dated November / December 2010. Her question, and the discussion, continues to rage today, almost two years after the article’s publication.

Bridget asks, “If the traditionally high barriers to publication fall, will that produce a world of unimagined richness or one mired in dross?”

She first points out that one of the advantages of the changes is that books are available everywhere, and in a bewildering array of formats. Practically any book is available to anyone with an Internet connection… even out of print books because of the stashes in old bookstores made available.

But the disadvantage comes back to the issue of quality, not just of the books, but also of the reviewers. If any author can produce a book and any blogger can review it, how can a reader find a good one?

Bridget’s article goes on to pursue the issues of the business as a whole, with valuable interviews with key people in the big agencies… but my focus is the question she posed.
Will readers be enriched or mired in dross?

Because I believe this is the key issue behind the “stigma” of self-publishing and the root of the negative emotion behind so many of the traditional versus self publishing arguments. A real fear that the availability of publishing technology and distribution channels will flood readers with so much garbage that the good books will drown.

It’s not a frivolous concern on the part of traditional publishing. There are many, many, badly-written poorly-produced self-published books, and I’m just as mad as anybody else when I spend my money on one. As mad as I get when I spend my money on a bad one produced by a well-known traditional publisher.

But it is, and always has been, buyer beware.

  • I buy books from my favorite authors because of the previous books they’ve written.
  • I buy on the recommendation of friends and family with similar reading tastes.
  • I buy based on reviews that are specific about the story and its pros and cons.
  • I buy based on the back matter, the cover, the genre, and the table of contents.
  • I buy based on Amazon.com reviews, which are written by normal people. And I read every review when I’m getting ready to buy, especially the lower rated ones.

Nowhere in this list of things that drive me to buy a book is whether it is traditionally published or self published.
It simply does not matter to me… those other elements have to be in place before I will buy.

So a self published author has to do all those things same as a traditional publisher does, and has to do them well. And this is what will separate the dross from the riches, when it comes to actually selling books.

But there’s another element to the issue, and that’s outside of what is actually selling. So many self published books don’t sell very many copies. But they still exist, and the ideas contained in them, and the point of view of their authors, is an unbelievable gold mine of human thought and creativity.

In my opinion, it’s the best thing to happen to human thought since the Stone Age. Well written or not, it’s irreplaceable, invaluable, and inestimably precious.

But I still don’t want to buy a bad one, so I’ll stick to the way I buy books, and let the best book win.

 

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My Comparison Between the Chicago Manual of Style Online Or Hardcopy

Filed Under: Resources for Writing and Self Publishing by Corinne — Comments Off on My Comparison Between the Chicago Manual of Style Online Or Hardcopy
August 27, 2012
Self Publishing Winter View

This is the winter version of my favorite view from our New Mexico property. Because I am entering edits, and that is a cold, gray, vista of gray coldness.

This week, the “Self” in Self Publishing is pissing me off.

Because this week, I am entering the edits to my book about my grandfather’s aviation pioneering history which will not be titled “CJT, A Biography” due to the unanimous thumbs down from my editors.

Not that it was the title. It was a working title. I’m still working on a title.

This week I am crawling through my book, page by page, carefully capturing all the fixes that my editors have provided.
My editors are very very good, and don’t miss a thing.
But I am apparently utterly unable to properly capitalize or numerate or subject/verb match or punctuate.

I imagine that if I had a book deal with a traditional publisher that some intern would do this for me.
I suspect that I’d still be doing it myself… but in the meantime, let me dream.

I had a job doing this kind of work twenty years ago. I quit that job.

I got tired of searching manually for the proper capitalization of the word “embassy” in my copy of The Chicago Manual of Style.
I wondered how much easier it would be to search for it on the online version.

I’d already dissed the online version in favor of the hardcover version glaring at me on my desk.
So I went online and discovered…that they had a one time 30 day free trial of the online version…

Sign Me Up!

And, and, and …. I typed in my question and got…
The same reference as I get in the hardcover version.

The table of contents.
An invitation to click crawl, rather than page crawl, the chapter on capitalization.
The same note about Chicago’s “down style” as I had sitting on my desk.

Where’s my intern?
Now the all the words in “self publishing” are pissing me off.

I searched further and I did find one benefit of the online Chicago Manual of Style.
The forum.
This is where other terminally frustrated writers and editors have posted their questions and either other people or the Editorial Priesthood of The Manual have answered, and that was really quite helpful because I did pick up a side comment to a tangent to a reference to another question that finally mentioned….

American Embassy (capitalized) or people from the embassy (not capitalized)

So, before I go back to my book and uncapitalize every instance of lieutenant colonel, except for those that should be capitalized… which means that I can’t just do a find and replace… let me summarize my comparison between the hardcover printed copy of The Chicago Manual of Style and the online version:

  1. They both contain the same nit picky, wickedly-confusing, non-obvious, trip wires of English usage rules organized in the same way
  2. Keyword searches really only bring you to suggestions for the right chapter, unless you luck out in the forum
  3. The forum is worth a lot
  4. But clicking through the chapter submenus using the forward button is a lot slower than running your finger down the printed page, because the website page refresh (on my computer) is slow
  5. The hardcover book is a pay once, page crawl forever, situation. Online is a pay yearly, click forever, version

My conclusion is:

Get an intern, give her the hardcopy book, and make HER enter the edits.

 

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How Many Plugins Is Too Many Plugins?

Filed Under: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions by Corinne — Comments Off on How Many Plugins Is Too Many Plugins?
August 20, 2012
Lots of eggs of self publishing advice

This is how many plugins I have. Is it too many?

You would not believe the trouble I’ve had in getting that question answered.
I think if a writer is going to post with that question in the title, they should answer the question!

So here is the answer…

If you are having to ask “how many plugins is too many plugins?” then you probably have too many plugins.
They can slow down your site. So if your site is loading too slowly
… more than 4 seconds…
then you have too many plugins.

It was tentblogger.com who finally quoted numbers… thank you tentblogger!

Plugins should number 10 – 15 in general, and max out at 20 if you are using W3 Total Cache.

That sounds accurate to me because my website started to slow down with less than 20 and the last 5 plugins I installed were intended to try and speed it back up.
And it also means I need to give up some plugins, cuz I am at 29 and already installed W3 Total Cache (and configured it). Wah.

But another important point I came across was… why do I have so many plugins?  Perhaps I am fighting with my theme… or trying to do too much… or under-utilizing the other plugins.

That’s a big 10-4 on all of those points. Back to the dashboard…. Because a slow site is worse than any other website flaw.

I wonder if there is a plugin for figuring out how many plugins I can get away with.
Is there a plugin rehab?
because I think I may have a problem.

 

 

 

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