Those Stupid Smart Phones

They've Changed the Business: Yesterday, I was trying to explain to a customer why I wanted him to send his manuscript alterations in a single batch—or at least in batches—instead of one at a time. He didn't understand. "How hard can it be to add a comma?" I patiently explained that it wasn't that hard. All I had to do was to locate the Word or InDesign file, open the file, wait for it to load, locate the correct page, insert the comma, save the file, and close the file. It might take three or four minutes. Not long, I admit, but the thing is: In that same three or four minutes, I could have made five corrections. But he didn't send me five corrections at a time. He sent me one. He sent the other four on four different occasions—which meant that I was going to have to spend twenty minutes of my time instead of three or four.

He is not alone. He is not even the worst. Not even close. Most of my customers now send me alterations on page proofs or manuscripts one at a time, and it doesn't matter if they are bipolar poets, therapists, academics, storytellers, novelists, or children's book writers. They almost all do it, and excuse me if I feel like I am being nibbled to death by minnows.

The thing is, this is a new phenomenon. After stewing about this yesterday, I figured it out. 

It's those stupid smart phones.

In the good old days (a year ago), I'd send out a set of page proofs. The proofreader would read the page, note corrections, and return the set of page proofs to me. I'd go through the marked up proof and make corrections at a single—or, at any rate, a long—sitting. The method is very efficient. It's still the best way to go. Today most people, except apparent Luddites like me, have smart phones. Sometimes, they read the proof (as a PDF) on their smart phone (a lousy way to catch mistakes, by the way). As soon as they find a problem, they send me an email or a text. "Missing comma on p57." If they read or send emails, they do so from their smart phone rather than from a computer. Millennials, I'm told (by them) don't even send emails if they can help it. They text. In any case, smart phones are not conducive to long messages. They are conducive to frequent messages, which give senders the illusion that they are communicating effectively.

Mostly they are just making trouble.

Now that I've figured out the source of the problem, what's the solution?  Maybe I need to create an app.

What's an app?

--The Publishing Pro

Look for Strategic Partners.

They are gold: A couple of my authors have reminded me that you should be on the lookout for strategic partners, which are persons or businesses with a stake in promoting you, your business, or your book. There are various types:

Presentation Partners: If you are in demand as a speaker, the outfit that hires you may wish to distribute your book to the audience. In this case, you offer the event organizer a large quantity of books at a deep discount. The right deal could substitute for your speaking fee. Or not. In any case, you should charge enough to cover your printing and shipping costs plus some profit for you. John Huenefeld, the publishing consultant I followed religiously in the 1990s, did not like to offer more than a 65 percent discount for such purchases. If you are doing a special run of books, you can sweeten the pot by crediting your "co-publisher" within the book in some fashion.

Other Bulk Buyers: If your book is a direct hit with a business or a nonprofit, the entity may wish to distribute your book in quantity even when you are not speaking to them. Go for it.  

Publishers: While traditional publishers usually take the lead in reaching out to bulk buyers and co-publishers, you can approach a traditional publisher as your co-publisher. In this case, you remain the publisher and your partner (who happens to be a traditional publisher) buys hundreds of books from you at a 65 percent discount and gets credit as a co-publisher. Why would they do this? First, they want your book. Second, this may be the only way they can get your book. Or third, they may prefer the opportunity to spend, let's say, $3,500 for 500 books instead if $20,000 to develop and pay for a much larger press run. 

Other Benefactors: Not every strategic ally will be a book buyer. For example, one of my students is a professional landscape photographer who wanted to take photographs of a photogenic site with limited access to the public. She was able to gain access by offering the use of her photos, to be taken at the site, to the organization responsible for protecting the area. Now she has a stake in promoting the organization, and the organization has a stake in promoting her work.—The Publishing Pro

How to Write a Book

It takes discipline: I spend most of my time trying to teach my customers how to be authors rather than writers. The distinction, you'll learn if you hang around me long enough, is that authors are all about the extrovert aspect of publishing (relating to their audience) and writers are all about the introvert aspect of publishing (creating the work). Great authors are not necessarily great writers—and vice versa. Some time ago, I noticed that people who write books—especially fiction—tend to enjoy the writing but be a bit intimidated by the authoring. I chose to focus on that. Besides, consultants and coaches like Molly Wingate were available to help make the writing happen. 

Still, it hasn't escaped me that there is a relationship between authoring and writing. And lately, I've noticed that my "authors" can get plenty hung up on the "writing." Rookie writers often get lost in the process (or lack thereof) or worry their writing to death.

It is easy to get lost in the forest of writing. It's a right-brained activity that will take you from tree to tree, and soon you will have no idea where you've been or where you are going. Professional writers give themselves some structure, which will allow their creative juices to flow without taking them down paths to oblivion. A good structure has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

The Beginning

I teach my customers to plan and visualize their books before they start writing. This initial process includes the following steps:

• Define your core reader.
• Define your message.
• Define how you will changer your reader's life. 
• Invent a working title and subtitle that suggest your core reader and your promise. 
• Write your table of contents.
• Determine your specs (trim size, number of pages, number of words, etc.)

This is the opposite of the all-too-common strategy of sitting down to write and letting your computer fingers take you to who knows where. If you follow my advice, you know your destination before you sit down to write. You might have some surprises along the way, but you'll always be able to find your way home.

The Middle

The next phase is to begin writing the book. Professional writers will follow some variation of the steps below:

• Write an outline or summary. (Essentially, you map out your story.)
• Write your first draft. (Do this as a freewrite. Keep self-editing to a minimum.)
• Write your second draft. (Focus on the content, not wordsmithing; eliminate chunks that don't work; add missing pieces.)
• First edit. (Fine tune your content. Get your characters, story, and information the way you want them.)
• Second edit. (Your content should be in place. Now focus on your writing.)

The End

• Get your manuscript copy edited. (Ordinarily, this is not something you should do yourself, though you should get the edited manuscript and amend it your satisfaction. The copy edit should not be about your content. It should be about polishing your words and making your grammar, punctuation, and capitalization correct, and consistent.)
• Get your pages proofed (first pass). You should read your proofs, but you should get two others (preferably) to proofcheck the pages for you. This is not editing. It is checking for errors. 
• Get your pages proofed (second pass). Same as above, but it would be good to have two different  proofcheckers.
• Approval for printing. Do this yourself. All you need to do (if you have gotten good proofchecking) is to make sure that the errors from the second proof were corrected. You should be done. 

The Publishing Pro

How to Publish Your Own Children's Book

Second edition now available: Publishing your own children's book was rather daunting, financially and otherwise, when I wrote How to Publish Your Own Children's Book ten years ago. Thanks to print-on-demand, ebooks, and easy access to distribution channels, it is much easier. I updated the book with that in mind. You can order it directly from The Publishing Pro or from Amazon. This is for the paperback. The ebook will come later.

Kickstarter Funding For Your Book?

Worth considering: Publishing is not a foolproof gateway to riches. On the other hand, it is no longer the high-risk venture that it used to be. You can publish for a modest sum and, consequently, break even on  your out-of-pocket expenses by selling only a few books—maybe 100 to 200. What if you need money to support some specialized front-end costs—or a marketing campaign that you couldn't afford otherwise? You could do a Kickstarter campaign to raise the necessary funds.

To see what one looks like, check out Architecture of Survival: Lessons from the Jewish Experience by George L. Fouke, Ph.D.  It's interesting but no guarantee. Be sure to look at the author's blog while you're at it.—The Publishing Pro.

Children's Book Tip: Write Your Business Plan.

If you are going to publish your own children's book, you should do a business plan. But this is not the first thing you should do. If you have been following my previous posts on the subject of children's books, you have answered some preliminary questions.

You know what you want to write about, what you want to say, what message you want to deliver, and what tone you want to strike. You know who your book is for. You know who is going to buy it. And most important, you know how your book is going to change lives.

Surprise! You are almost done with your business plan. All you have to do is answer three more questions. And yes, it is a good idea to answer these questions before you start to put your book together.

•    How will I reach my buyers?
•    What will it cost per book?
•    How much will I charge for it?

[This post is adapted from the forthcoming second edition of How to Publish Your Own Children's Book.]—The Publishing Pro

7 Top eBook Blog Tour Sites

Thanks to Anne Flint, author of Fettigrew Hall, for this link: A blog tour as many of you know, is a marketing strategy frequently used by self-published authors when launching new books. Although they can be quite effective as a promotional tool, it can be very time consuming for authors to reach out to other bloggers and organize a blog tour. Today, Greg Strandberg tells us about blog tour sites that can assist authors with organizing their blog tours.

Read more.

Children's Book Tip: Clarify Your Life-Changing Message.

The  key to marketing your book: Once you have determined your message, your core reader, and your core buyer, I want you to use this information to answer this question. 

• How will you change the lives of your readers and your buyers?

This may sound like an ambitious goal, and it is meant to be. Think about it. If you are not out to change lives by writing and publishing this book, why are you doing it? If you are doing it for yourself, that's fine. If crossing off an item on your bucket list is your main motivation, why should anyone else care?

On the other hand, suppose you can say with confidence that your book is going to change a child's life, and here's how. And suppose you can say that your book is going to change your buyer's life, and here's how. You have just determined that your book is important—even necessary—to others. This is your version of the "elevator speech," your thirty-second explanation of what you are all about.—The Publishing Pro.

Marketing Tip: Start Yesterday.

This blog headline from Guy Kawasaki got my attention: "10 Social Media Tips for Authors." Below is the first of the tips. Follow the link to see the others. Also worth noting is his reference in the introduction to "artisanal publishers" (aka self-publishers).

You must make progress along two fronts at the same time: writing your book and building your marketing platform. You cannot wait until you’re done writing, because a platform takes nine months to a year to build. Ideally, you started building your platform before you even began to write your book.

—The Publishing Pro

Children's Book Tip: Define Your Buyer.

Step Three: After defining your core reader, you need to define your core buyer. In the case of a children's book, your targeted reader is unlikely to be the same as your targeted buyer. Your buyer is going to be an adult, but what kind of an adult? Will your buyer be ...

• a he or a she?
• someone in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, or 80s?
• a professional or a member of the family?
• a grandparent, parent, relative, or unrelated caretaker?
• buying a book to read herself to the child or to give to the child's parent or guardian?
• associated with an institution (a school, a hospital, a daycare center, a church, a therapist's office)?

Again, you might paint a picture in your mind of the typical buyer. Your book, at least on its outer edges, will need to appeal to your buyer, or it will never find your reader. The Publishing Pro