What I Learned from Publishing My Own Book

Part I: I wrote From Rome to Jerusalem: A Non-Jew on the Way because I had something to say, but I also wanted to use it as a laboratory of sorts. First of all, I wanted to learn if what I tell my clients makes sense, is useful, and works. Second, I wanted to use my book to test some services I had not experienced before. Here's what I have learned so far:

Build your Table of Contents before You Begin to Write: For years, I've advised authors to write from a coherent table of contents. It worked for me. I skipped around a bit, but a working table of contents enabled me to do that without getting confused. Having the structure in place before I began enabled me to know where I was and how far I had to go. The final table of contents was a bit different than the original, but 90 percent of it was what I started with.

Don't Get Hung up on Copy Editing your First Draft: I'm a notorious self editor, but I was able to drop my perfectionism and complete a credible if imperfect first draft fairly quickly.

Use a Blog to Get Early Feedback: I created a book blog to test the waters. The first thing I did was create a "Contents" page, which contained my (surprise) Table of Contents. Then I added the first draft of each chapter, one by one, to the main page and linked it to the Contents page. In this way, early readers could peruse the entire book. I didn't get as much feedback as I would have liked, but the structure worked great. I still like a blog, with pages added, as the starter website for many of my customers. A blog is free and it's easy for Do-It-Yourselfers. Once I published the book (on Smashwords), I unlinked the chapters (which were now two or three versions back) from the Contents page. The blog is still there, and I intend to use it for news and comment about the book.

Links on the Blog Version Were Counter-productive: The book needed a glossary. Because you can, I suppose, I linked the appropriate words on the text to the glossary. This seemed like a good idea at the time, but Smashwords advises not using too many links on ebooks, which meant I had to unlink the words from the glossary. My effort here was wasted. At least, I learned how to global de-link my files in Word. That was useful.

Smashwords Has a Good System: Smashwords seems to have its act together. The two books, the Smashwords Style Guide and The Smashwords Book Marketing Guide are invaluable. The latter is useful, even if you're not publishing with them. The downloads are free. I like their business model. They charge nothing for setup, taking a distribution instead. Some authors might prefer competitors who do the reverse, charging for setup but taking no distribution, but the Smashwords approach means they have a stake in helping authors sell their books. I like that.

Setup Takes Some Doing: Some people claim that setting up an ebook, especially in the ePub format, takes just a click. Not from what I've seen. It takes a bit of work, though the work is more in the nature of simplifying a file rather than making it more sophisticated. With that said, a DIYer can prepare files for Smashwords with the help of  the Smashwords Style Guide.

Planning Helps: With my current equipment, it appears that preparing a book for Smashwords first may be more efficient from an editing/production point of view than preparing a book for print first. This depends some on the book; books with complicated formatting may not be eligible for Smashwords at all. And it depends upon software. More recent versions of InDesign have a "export to digital editions" feature that makes it relatively easy, though not seamless, to move a book from print formatting to ePub formatting.

And that's what I know so far. More later. The Publishing Pro.

You're an Author? You're an Expert.

So do something about it: Join HARO (help-a-reporter-online), a free service that emails you summaries of what reporters are working on and what experts they want to interview.  They email a long list of summaries three times a day, so be prepared to clean your inbox. Also, make sure your service isn't treating the dispatches as Spam, as Gmail did for me. Thanks to The Smashwords Book Marketing Guide for the tip. Even if that's all that were the only tip in it, it would qualify as a "best buy." (It's a free download.)--The Publishing Pro..

Our Smashwords Experiment Continues.

From Rome to Jerusalem now available: Our test of Smashwords is moving right along. My memoir, From Rome to Jerusalem: A Non-Jew on the Way is now available from Smashwords for $9.95. You can also sample 20% of the book before buying (or not buying).

Book Publishing Faced a Fork in the Road ...

... and went both ways: It is interesting to watch how eBooks are evolving. On one hand, eBooks are turning into multimedia items that soon will not resemble books at all. In fact, they won't be. Amazon's latest Kindle (Fire) has become more than a book reader. It is in fact a cheap competitor to the iPad with the ability to process a variety of entertainment and educational formats. Books now have a tendency to become, well, movies. On the other hand, the very complexity of migrating material into various eBook formats has led to entrepeneurial businesses like Smashwords and Bookbaby, which are making text-heavy files (read: books) almost stupidly easy to produce and distribute. Thus, there could be more text-heavy books--such as novels and non-fiction works with simple format--than there have ever been before. This is a continuing irony. Even as the traditional book business--with its traditional publishers, traditional printers, and traditional bookstore distribution--seems to be collapsing, more titles than ever are being published. That's all thanks to technology, both the tools that make professional preparation easier and the ones that make delivery of the content more efficient and less risky. If you've got a lot of nerve, this is a great time to be in publishing. The Publishing Pro, LLC

New Service Coming from The Publishing Pro

eBook Preparation for Smashwords.com: Publishing Pro will soon be helping authors prepare their books for Smashwords.com, a publishing and distribution platform for eBooks. We have chosen to work with Smashwords, at least for the time being, because they have been in business since May 2008 (an eternity in this business) and because their publishing model allows you to build one file, a somewhat simplified Word file, that their software converts to usable files for the various eBook devices and platforms (iPhone, iPod Touch, Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble Nook, Sony Reader, among others). Having to format individual files for all of these outfits is a burden that only large publishers can tolerate.

The downside of Smashwords, and similar providers, is that the process works best for books with simple formats: novels or non-fiction books without graphics or complicated typography. Still, this covers quite a bit of territory.

In general, authors need to get used to the idea that they do not control how their eBooks appear to customers. That's because eBooks, with the exception of those in the PDF format, are more like websites than books in that appearances are determined more by the device and the user than by the author, publisher, or printer. (This is why printed books will still have their place.)

Smashwords does take a percentage of any sales, though a reasonable one. Competitors--Bookbaby.com, for example--take no percentage but make their money by charging authors for file preparation, corrections and changes, and other services. Both approaches have their advantages. For now, we prefer the Smashwords model because it gives authors more control, especially over the minor (and sometimes not so minor) fixes that they are prone to. It also forces Smashwords to care about your book sales; otherwise, they do not make any money. We rather like that.

At this point, we are completing two test projects: One is my memoir, From Rome to Jerusalem, and the other is Pathway to Freedom: Applying the Teachings of the Buddha by Lucinda Green, Ph.D. We expect to have those up and running this month. After that, we will begin guiding other authors through the initial account setup with Smashwords, much as we do with Createspace, and (when asked) handle the initial file preparation. Goal is to have most customers able to handle their own accounts. File preparation costs will be small, probably $75.00 for books with simple formats. The Publishing Pro.

What Goes on the Back Cover?

Don't be shy: The first thing I like on a back cover is the author's bio and photo. Many authors resist this, I suppose for the same reason that many people resist having their picture taken at all. However, if you are writing a book, you need to ready to promote your brand. And guess what? You are the brand. What kind of photo? Well, it needs to be something that suits your brand. If your brand is formal, then your photo should be formal. If your brand is casual, then your photo should be casual. By the way, while some authors are resistant to the whole concept, some authors get it so well they put a photo of themselves on the front cover--and it works!

The second thing I like on the back cover is a selection of testimonials. These can be difficult to get before you even publish a book, but it is not impossible. You just need to start early and locate appropriate individuals who are willing to do this for you. A few rules of thumb.

• Get as many as you can: You will only be able to use three to five on the back cover, but you can use additional testimonials inside the book, on your website, and in your promotional literature.
• Professional diversity helps: Combine credentialed endorsers (PhDs, for example) with those who might represent your readers.
• Geographical diversity helps: If you plan to identify endorsers by place, make sure they are not all from your hometown.
• Get their comments in a letter or email: The Whole Earth Catalog, I believe it was, used to tell its readers not to think about "writing a review" but to just write down some comments in a letter. They got great reviews this way. Go and do likewise.
• Get their permission: Send them the edited version of the testimonial you plan to use and get their permission to use it, even in email. Confirm the spelling of their names, title, and location.
• Use names, if possible: Of course, this is preferable to anonymous testimonials. However, in the case of testimonials from children, it's common to identify them only by age or grade. The Publishing Pro.

What's Most Important about Your Cover?

It may not be the image: Many rookie authors, not to mention graphic designers, think the most important element of a cover design is the image. The more clever and complicated the better. (And, not coincidentally, the more expensive.) A cover photo or illustration is important, even essential, to some covers. In this category, I think of Romance novels that rely on bodice-ripping illustrations to get the buyer's adrenalin going.

Nevertheless, in my world, an illustration is rarely required and almost never the most important element on the cover. What is? It could be the title, the subtitle, or the byline.

• The byline: If you're a famous author, the smart publisher will make your name the biggest, brightest, and easiest-to-read element on the cover. If you're not, skip to the next item.
• The title and byline: These two items dance together. If your title is sufficiently descriptive, it should dwarf anything else on the page. If your title needs help from a subtitle to describe who the book is for and what it will do for them, the title should remain the largest element (otherwise, booksellers and buyers may become confused about the actual title), but the subtitle should gain more prominence and perhaps pride of place at the top of the cover. If your title and subtitle are particularly strong, and they should be, your publisher may opt for a "type solution"; that is, no image at all. Before you write off this approach as boring, go into a bookstore (if you can find one these days) and check out all the mass market paperbacks and note the simplicity of the cover designs. They are mostly type solutions; most of the type is big and blocky and all caps. And then remind yourself that these are the books that sell the most.

Whether you use and image or not, your title and subtitle (or byline, if that is the most important) needs to be easy to read from ten feet away or as a thumbnail on a computer screen. Over-illustrated covers can be impossible to decipher from a distance or in miniature.

Cover images, along with backgrounds and color schemes, are secondary elements that essentially create the right environment for the most important elements: your title, subtitle, or byline.--The Publishing Pro.

Does Your Book Proposal Have Curb Appeal?

It better have: I just read a post on msn.com that suggested prospective home buyers form an opinion on a home in 15 seconds--before they even go inside. That's the power of curb appeal. Your book proposal needs "curb appeal" as well. That's why I recommend concise on-the-point proposals. You have 15 seconds to impress an editor. Think you have more? Think again. The Publishing Pro.

Before You Write Your Memoir ...

... think twice: Memoirs are wonderful. They aren't the easiest books in the world to sell, but everyone should write one. Okay, almost everyone, but mostly everyone, sometime. If you have been thinking about writing a memoir, here are some questions to ask yourself.

• Is it the right time? There is a right time. If you're too old or frail to put pen to paper or to promote your finished book, it may be too late. If the subject matter is too fresh in your mind--if you have too many resentments, too many scores to settle--it may be time to put your memories in a journal but too early to put them in a book meant for the public. Memoirs are not for the young, the young being those who haven't live long enough to make peace with themselves and the others in their lives. I recall a workshop in which a psychologist--I can't remember his name--pointing out that people do not fully mature until they work out their "parent stuff." Everyone has parent stuff, no matter how good their parents were, and it doesn't usually get worked out until the thirties (and then only if you're particularly precocious). Until it happens, you're probably not ready to write your memoir.
• Is it too much? It doesn't have to be. One of the mistakes people make is trying to do too much in a memoir. When you're 85 and set off to tell the story of you're entire life, you could easily wind up with a 1,000 page book, which may be too expensive to put together and too intimidating for anybody to read. Good memoirs have a focus--something besides "my entire life." Mine, From Rome to Jerusalem, is about a religious transition that took a lifetime. Someone else could write a memoir about a specific time in their lives: their war experiences, their career, their struggle with breast cancer, and so on. Another format that works well for families is a compendium of stories. A bonus is that the order of the stories is not critical.  They don't even need to be chronological, which tends to make the project easier to write and complete. Another terrific memoir, especially to pass on to your descendants, is the equivalent of an "ethical will." Such a memoir would be organized around specific traits or values you find important instead of a chronological walk through your life. The other decision you could--and should, I would argue--make is to write a memoir of a specific length. I like 50,000 words because it produces a book of around 160 pages, which is long enough to be taken seriously and short enough to be inviting.
• How do I treat the people in my life? Good question, one you'll have to resolve. When I wrote my memoir, I kept going back to the idea that this was my story. This helped me keep the focus on my feelings, my thoughts, and my behavior rather than that of my family, friends, and colleagues. Realizing I could damage someone's reputation by writing the truth as well as an untruth, I watched what I wrote (keeping in mind that this was, again, my story) and then shielded the identity of most characters as an added protection.  The Publishing Pro.

Marketing Tip: Write Articles

It will build your brand: One of the things you can do to promote your book is to write articles for blogs, newsletters, and magazines. Here are my suggestions for making this strategy work for you:

• Focus on  your core market first. Let's say you have written a book about your hobby, building model railroads. Instead of contacting general interest magazines, or large circulation magazines, or good paying magazines, you should contact organizations, groups, and publications with a specific interest in model railroads. The size of their circulation and the absence of any payment are less important than their focus on your market.
• Send proposals, not articles. Don't send completed articles. In most cases, you'll be wasting your time. Instead, send short proposals that include a working title, a brief summary of what you want to write and what it will do for their readers, and some information about yourself (including, of course, the fact that you are the author of a related book.) If you are corresponding by snail mail, include a self-addressed stamped envelope. If the editor is interested, she will tell you how long to make the article and how to adapt it for her audience.
• Build your brand. When you write these articles, you're not promoting your book so much as building your brand. In fact, talking too much or too directly about your book probably won't work, even if it is possible. The editor might decide to work with you because you have written a book on a related subject, but probably the most you'll get is a mention of the book in your bio. However, writing this article will build your credibility, which will help you get more assignments and help your book sales down the road.
• Propose articles related to your book subject. To gain any benefit for your book, you must propose articles related to the subject of your book. However, they do not need to be excerpts from your book or even closely related. They could be variations from a related workshop you are doing--or would like to do.
• Put it on your blog. If you must write articles before you get an assignment, put them on your own blog. If you land an assignment based on one of your blog articles, make sure you inform your editor before pursuing the assignment. The Publishing Pro