Expanded Distribution.

Createspace's six free distribution channels.

Louis Shalako

On some impulse I just Googled my name, followed by the key words ‘trade paperback.’

A friend on Facebook had posted something where they found their books on a British website. (Eason’s.)

Out of curiosity, I went to the link, searched my own name, and found what looked like the typical listing on any bookseller’s website.

There were my books, obviously through Createspace’s expanded distribution, which includes Europe, the U.K., etc.

Today I found the link to On the Nature of the Gods, which is an Ebay store. If you look at the page, the poster is claiming five available for sale. Whether it’s true or not, one would assume that when they order them from Createspace—the only way to get them without stealing a file from somewhere and printing them off in a third world country, I would theoretically earn some royalties.

Clicking on the link (not the shopping cart) took me back to another Australian website.

Another search revealed one or two of my paperbacks in an Australian store. (Booktopia.)

In the past, I’ve found various books of mine listed on a site or page, and when the link is clicked, it goes right back to Smashwords, Amazon, iTunes or any place with an affiliate program. Those were always ebooks.

I don’t have a problem with that, although I’ve found books which I gave away for free on an Indian site, and I don’t know if those ever got taken down.

So here’s Core Values on another site. (Mighty Ape.)

I don’t know if these are legit, and I suppose you could devote a good part of your life to finding out.

But the point of expanded distribution is that your books end up in a catalogue. Somehow these sites are finding the titles and listing them, arguably just as fast as they can.

It took days for me to upload all of my own titles on Google Books and on OmniLit—and I ain’t saying you shouldn’t do that, because you get some options. You get to set a price, you get reports and analytics in some cases.

But some of these other sites...they’re doing the heavy lifting for me now.

These guys are listing my books, for free, at no cost to myself. In that sense, expanded distribution was worth nailing. In the case of a handful of books, I had to have Createspace delete them. Then I uploaded using one of their ISBNs. That’s all it took to get in the catalogues.

If I made a sale, I might not know it for three months, either.

It took a few hours. It took some thought. But now those books are not just listed alongside of the ebooks on Amazon; as well as Barnes & Noble, and of course Smashwords has the provision for in-print links.

They're popping up everywhere, and I expect that to continue, to a certain extent.

I was on Wattpad, uploading an episode of The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue.

They have on the profile page a field where you can put a link—to Lulu.com. I had the SW one filled already.

Well. I took a few hours in April and converted all my 5 x 8”s to 4 x 7s and went through the Lulu process…you guessed it.

Now I got the ‘Author Spotlight’ (another bit of time to set up) link pasted in there and everything is hunky-dory.

Within a few short years those paperback books could conceivably be in a thousand stores globally…and I wouldn’t even know a damned thing about it!

But hopefully, I will see a steady stream of revenue coming in through the Createspace account. We might sell the odd book through Lulu.

There are other places to publish paperbacks, but right now I’m doing other things…

At least that’s the theory. This is what I meant, when I wrote about The Virality of the Medium, in which article I focused more on ebooks. But it’s still relevant.

Here’s a few more links! (grins)

http://www.alibris.com/search/books/author/Louis-Shalako

http://www.fishpond.co.nz/Books/Heaven-Too-Far-Away-Louis-Shalako/9781499198331

Looks like an old version linking directly to Amazon.uk here, (if you scroll down and remember what that looked like.)

http://community.tes.co.uk/tes_book_club/f/6/t/456772.aspx?threadPi=1 which goes here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Handbags-Tale-Louis-Bertrand-Shalako-ebook/dp/B004OL2XJW%3FSubscriptionId%3D1GVBN9WWNVXC5DBPE502%26tag%3Dkiq-def-21%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3DB004OL2XJW

After a while that little old network just sort of builds itself, when you take into account recent Smashwords deals with txtr, Scrib’d, and a few others.

Here’s someone with either an affiliate link or a courtesy buy link going back to Chapters/Indigo.

I rest my case, ladies and gentlemen.

END

Digital Publishing, Quality Control.

Like that sullen Alex look.

Quality control is important in digital publishing because very often one person is doing everything themselves. If you haven’t done it too many times, it can be a murky process. More than anything, I want to be fresh and with a rational time slot available. I can upload to Smashwords or Kindle in about ten minutes, but if there is a problem, you don’t want to be running out the door to get a box of diapers or whatever right in the middle of fixing a problem with a book

When uploading to Smashwords, you need a clean .doc file as per the Smashwords Style Guide. As soon as it’s done converting, I download Epub and Kindle versions onto my desktop where I have the desktop Nook and Kindle reading apps. What I am looking for is good formatting. I want to see clean scene breaks, with the blocks of text above and below set at the right distance apart. Generally speaking, if the Kindle version looks good my Epub usually will too, but I flip through both of them right to the end. Then I go back to Smashwords and assign an ISBN, submit the converted file and have some fair degree of assurance that it will make it into the Premium Distribution Calalogue.

You want to read the chapter numbers on that Kindle version—recently I read : Chapter Four, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six…Chapter Seventeen, Chapter Nineteen…this is the time to fix it, right?

You want the right number of chapters!

What you are hoping for is a clean upload. Sooner or later the book will pop out onto the home page as a new release, and this puts a little pressure on the new author to do it right.

Before uploading to Kindle Direct Publishing, I take out the Smashwords standard disclaimer, as I have my own anyway, and Kindle certainly doesn’t require the Smashwords disclaimer!

On Kindle Direct Publishing, there is now spell-check for English-language titles. I always read this report. If you have a lot of made-up words, alien names or planets or whatever, those will always be ‘errors’ to the computer program, so make sure you proofread those for spelling thoroughly.

Fix all the ‘real’ errors and upload a corrected file. Use the digital previewer, and go right through to the end, as this is exactly how your book is going to look in a Kindle device. This is useful in helping an author to sleep at night—one or two reviews have mentioned “well-edited,” and good formatting, et cetera. (They also liked the story.)

I never use Digital Rights Management, as on Smashwords there is no provision for it anyway. If someone wants to pirate the book, they can do it easily enough. Since I give away thousands of books in a year, there’s not much demand for pirated books. I click ‘enable lending,’ and MatchBook since I have PODs.

There was a site once that had a free download of a title that I had been giving away for free. It was an old version, with an old and not very good cover. You can try and find a contact form, or an email address on the site. Generally speaking, they do take it down. If it’s just a ‘cheap ebooks’ site, and if all that is there is an image and buy link going back to Amazon or something don’t worry about it. Hope that they sell a few copies for you, as most likely they have an affiliate account and they’re making a small commission. It is not necessary to thank them.

Be glad someone thought they could make money on the book.

Uploading to Createspace is easy enough. For that I use the ebook file, format it, then save it as TitlePOD or whatever, and if I update a version I’ll put Oct13 or something on the end of the file name.

I wrote a blog post on version control, because after a while you just spawn so many files. In my case I tend to back them up like a squirrel, all over the place. I’m sort of worried the computer will crash, and every so often there is an odd-ball glitch that just locks up a file on me.

Another thing is to e-mail those files to yourself at the end of every working day. For that you need maybe two accounts.

My chapter number is six 12-pt spaces down.

A paperback is obviously formatted differently than an ebook. You can and should have page numbers for example. But also, I put section breaks in for the front matter and end matter, so the page numbers are only in the actual book. If you have a foreword, stuff like a dedication, acknowledgements, that’s front matter too—no page numbers, no headers, etc.

The free cover templates on Createspace are easy to use with a little fiddling around, and like many other self-publishing sites there are professional cover and formatting services available.

Learning to do everything myself keeps the cost down and gives me a bit of power in a sense—now I can write how-to articles and post them on my blog, and it might be helpful to someone else along the line.

Before uploading my next two ebooks and five more POD files, I will proof each file at least one more time, take a look at the covers again, get a marketing image (and maybe a better title for Collection # 4 Dark Satires) and ISBNs, write blurbs for new titles, and stuff all that into a folder on the desktop. For one thing, 

I’ve been thinking of a new image for Core Values. It’s not ready to upload until I have a cover.

The books will be uploaded in order of priority:

Third World > my new science fiction novel > ebook > Smashwrods > Kindle > POD

Collection # 4 > ebook SW > K > POD

Engines of Creation > POD after ebook published around Dec 1. The ebook is already on the platform, it’s just been unpublished after uploading. (That one had a small error which I think has been fixed as well.) 

But the Kindle version is not fixed. That’s why I make lists in the first place.)

Ghost Planet > upload POD file and cover to Createspace as the ebook is already published.

Core Values > POD this book has been out for three years so it’s high time I made the POD, however it’s not my highest priority in uploading. During the POD file creation process, I noticed one error, so after this is done I will go back, fix the .doc file, upload to SW and then upload an .html file, a corrected one, to Kindle.

During the POD process I might have to go back and forth between Createspace and my desktop via tabs to fiddle with marketing images; as often the name and title are off-center a wee bit, and sometimes it can’t be adjusted properly with the free templates that I use.

Once your POD goes live on Createspace, it will be automatically linked to your ebook on Amazon after about a week, but you have to check and if it doesn’t show up, contact them through the form on the site and tell them. On Smashwords you can also link to a print version from the ‘manage links’button on the right side of your book’s page.

Notes: on Kindle, as long as you haven’t completed the second of the two publishing pages, you can quit and the thing will be saved as a draft. You can trouble-shoot and go back later with no harm done. On SW, you can always unpublish and when you come back a few minutes later, uploading begins the conversion and submission process again. Simply do the coversion and proof them puppies one more time.

On Createspace and other platforms there are digital proofers, human review, and in many sites you can download PDFs to your computer and see how your book turned out.

Since it takes about a week for a POD to pop up on Amazon, presumably you could do PODs first and then upload your ebook. As an experiment, I loaded up to Amazon and used their spell-check as it saves me the time of scrolling through fifteen times. Then I fixed the .doc file and published it first on Smashwords. Over time, I have evolved a process, and yet if you haven’t done it in a while, or if you’re nodding off to sleep, it can definitely still be irritating. That’s why I like to have a bit of time—enough time and forsight and it’s just less stressful.

Ebooks and paperbacks of the same title must have different ISBNs, and if you even change the colour of paper, (I read this on Createspace) you will need a new ISBN.

With a Createspace assigned ISBN, (free) they are the publisher of record.

With a Smashwords-assigned ISBN, they are the publisher of record, with your own ISBN, you are the publisher of record.

POD tips: Use mirrored margins, and use the format header and footer feature to raise your header and lower your page numbers away from the text. There is a minimum gutter depending on the number of pages. A wider page margin at the top lowers the top of the text.

You can stop the process and go back to the document in order to fiddle with that. Upload it as many times as necessary to get it as good as you can get it.

As things stand right now, (Friday, October 18,) I have had to ‘nuke’ my new collection Dark Satires, but Third World went through just fine. The collection has stories that go back some years and have been through two or three computers and two or three crashes. So now I upload Dark Satires to Amazon, and this evening I’ll put them up on Createspace as PODs.

After that, I have another several PODs to do, but no more ebooks for a while.

Nuking a File.

To nuke a file, save it as a .txt document. Highlight the whole .txt document and then copy and paste that into a fresh, blank .doc file. Now re-format the thing from scratch, although the .txt saves scene breaks and indents. It will strip out bold, italics, bigger fonts for titles, stuff like that. Comb through the file carefully, and if it takes an hour to redo it, it’s better than releasing a badly-formatted product.

Here’s my new science-fiction novel Third World on Smashwords.

END

Thumbnail Reviews of Independent Publishing Platforms.

Kindle Direct Publishing now has spell-check.

Nook Press (formerly Pub-It)


I opened up an account on Nook Press, mostly because people I liked said it was a good idea. An interesting feature, besides regular publishing through Barnes & Noble’s Nook platform, is that you can use the interface to write a book from scratch.

I don’t know how useful that is, but in terms of cloud-based innovation, it has its interest.

The problem with Nook Press is that as a Canadian author, I couldn’t complete the process to set up a vendor account, and without the vendor account, you can’t publish on Nook.

Audible (audio books)

Audible is recommended pretty highly by users. Unfortunately, when I set up an account, again, I couldn’t see any way for Canadian authors to get paid, or even successfully get through the sign-up process. And if you can’t get through the sign-up process, you can’t publish. The only other thing I can say in my defense is that I can (and have) enabled text-to-speech on all my Kindle books. The issue is not that serious, at least not yet.

OmniLit

When I signed up for OmniLit, I only got so far into the process. There did appear to be provision for Canadian and foreign authors to sign up with the correct payment information including country, province, etc, and there was provision for ITIN numbers and exemption from tax withholding, etc.

Unfortunately, (and it may have just been a temporary site issue,) but I couldn’t complete the sign-up process for unknown reasons. I’ll have to go back in a month or two and try again.

Smashwords

Smashwords has some great strengths, one of which is the access to multiple distribution channels. One of the downsides is they have all the books involving bestiality, incest, and other raw forms of smut.

I’ve written some erotica myself, but too much is too much!

The problem with distribution channels is the author gives up some control. One of my science fiction books appears on iTunes. Unfortunately, it’s tagged ‘adventure.’ Adventure readers aren’t necessarily looking for SF, and SF readers can’t find the book. I can’t fix this without contacting Smashwords staff, which becomes a pain in the butt after a while.

Smashwords is relatively easy to sign up for and they have all of those distributions channels. This is a good thing, as actual sales from Smashwords site itself have been few and far between in my own experience. Also, a mix-up with ITINs and W8BEN forms, means that they withheld tax when they shouldn’t have, and now they’re saying the money is ‘un-retrievable.’ This is not good, (I don’t even really accept that information,) but on the plus side they do have accommodation for Canadian and foreign authors. I have a lot of experience on Smashwords, and there are a number of minor irritations with the site.

For example , when you upload a new marketing image, the auto-vetter brings up the last deficiency report for your .doc file. Yet the file has been accepted into Premium Distribution.

This is an important point. When I uploaded a new image for Core Values, I got a bad report on the interior file.

I spent hours with the file, looking for whatever was wrong with it, and I concluded there was nothing wrong with it. The reason I panicked—and I tend to remember that sort of thing, was that I had distributed 6,200 copies already. The idea that 6,200 people had bad versions of a book I wrote was disturbing to say the least.

Three or four days later the thing was accepted into Premium Distribution again. Yet the little uncertainties bother me. My reputation as an author and a publisher are riding on each and every product. I take great care with my files before uploading, and yes, I make mistakes too.

Another thing is abuse by immature authors. I couldn’t believe it when I saw a 200-word short story listed at $1.99. I’m sure glad I don’t have their nerve in my tooth. I’m not the sort of guy to upload every freakin’ thing I ever wrote.

Also, if staff members lose, misplace, or file in the wrong place an author’s W8BEN, the author is just plain fucked. There is apparently no recourse and no accountability in Smashword’s internal processes. They’re not used to criticism either. Staff members get all defensive when they would be better served by listening.

People gush praise for Smashwords.

But they’re invariably inexperienced authors who honestly believe they’re going to make a killing. Smashwords isn’t the stodgiest looking website—that honour belongs to Google books.

Smashwords is clearly a bit of a victim of their own success, and it’s high time for a makeover. My advice is not to get too dependent on any one platform. Don’t become complacent and think that this self-publishing world is carved in stone. New platforms come along every day.

Kobo

I signed up for Kobo several years ago. It would give an added measure of independence for Canadian authors. I think it’s a Canadian company. Unfortunately, at that time certainly, although the site may have changed, I had the impression when uploading books they were sent one chapter at a time, with all kinds of meta-data for each chapter.

(This is all different now.) At that time I concluded it didn’t make a whole lot of sense when I was already distributing to Kobo, (worldwide at this point in time) through Smashwords. Now, or during the winter, it might be a good time to look into Kobo again, just to see what’s up over there.

Kobo’s Writing Life. (Looks like some major improvements there, and I will check this out when I get time.)

The more titles you produce, the more work it will be to open up a new distribution platform.

Kindle Direct Publishing

Kindle is easy to use. It has by far the most daily store traffic, all hours of the day.

A recent innovation on the site is spell-check—that’s right, spell-check when you upload a book. From Amazon’s perspective, this must represent a response to criticisms of independent ebook authors, some of whom don’t realize there is spell and grammar check on their home computers!

Just sayin’, ladies and gentlemen. One of my pen-names just published a story on Kindle. Since I haven’t uploaded him anywhere else, I may experiment with KDP Select, which involves prominent store promotion of free titles. Some authors report great success with Select.

iTunes

I have a customer account on iTunes but haven’t signed up to publish there yet. I may check that out in the winter. What I am looking for is provision for Canadian and foreign authors to get paid, and not to have 30 % withholding tax. I don’t live in the U.S., I do not receive services there and quite frankly I don’t owe Uncle Sam a darned thing until I sell a lot more books than I am due to the basic personal deduction. (Consult your own tax expert.)

Lulu

Lulu is fairly easy to work with. I have a couple of Print on Demand paperbacks there. That’s the first POD site I ever used. The stock (free) templates are unimaginative but they do have the 4” x 7” size, which attracted me there in the first place. They have been making some changes.

Createspace

Createspace has a step-by-step, guided process that is easy to learn. Interestingly, you can also do CDs, presumably from MP-4 type files.

I have used Createspace to produce ten PODs. They’re all 5” x 8”, otherwise they would have to be 6” x 9” or some other size. That site gives a good overall impression, although I am sometimes hard pressed to find a link for my own books! If I promoted those books more I would probably have less trouble. Books published on Createspace are automatically linked to their ebook counterparts on Amazon—Smashwords provides for such links as well. The royalties on Createspace are much higher compared to the exact same book on Amazon. The challenge is getting someone to buy them.

Goodreads.

You can upload books to Goodreads. I have only four titles there. This might be a good site if you spent a lot of time there, giving all your friends five-star reviews and vice-versa. The trouble with being on too many platforms is that ultimately, I don’t go to Goodreads that often. I never successfully changed covers there, I couldn’t get it to work. I’ve never made a single sale there as far as I know. There are a fair number of troll reviewers on Goodreads as well, a problem shared by other platforms across the board.

When I tried to upgrade cover images I ended up with no images at all. Not so good. It’s been a while since I went there. Things may have changed, as Goodreads is now owned by Amazon.

Google Books.

What an ugly website. Every page looks like it was designed by blood-and-iron guys who cut their teeth writing letters to the editor using COBOL or HTML or something.

Worse, authors are not actually selling books. They are providing content to give Google an excuse to put up ads. While there is provision for book links, the reading interface is the clunkiest and most old-fashioned. It even looks grainy and unfocused. It’s meant to imitate the book-reading experience.

Authors are paid by page-views and click-throughs on ads. I never made a penny there. The process of uploading books was a pain in the ass if you’re doing it yourself. If you’re paying a nine year-old Chinese kid ten cents an hour to do it, maybe it’s not so bad.

In my opinion, not recommended. I emailed them and asked to close my account, which they did.

Note:

Amazon, iTunes and Smashwords have affiliate marketing schemes, where you can flog other people’s books and perhaps enjoy a greater measure of success, especially if you pick the better books to begin with. Some of the other platforms may have them as well.

I haven’t really tried any of them yet, as my primary focus is on writing new material and developing my skills as a writer and publisher.

It can’t be ruled out for the future. It’s easy enough to set up a book-blog or review site, then you simply attach your own affiliate code to the end of product links and voila! It looks like you’re objectively reviewing books for the good of readers everywhere and providing courtesy links to the authors you most love.

The trouble with these secret get-rich-quick schemes is when everyone is doing it, the world is flooded with spam, and we’re getting enough of that already.

Lightning Source. I’ve never used it, so I can’t comment reliably on it.

There are quite a number of other independent publishing platforms. In the interest of brevity I cannot list them all, but readers please feel free to add them in the comments if you like.

There is an article by India Drummond listing alternative book publishing platforms. I cannot vouch for them, but check them out if you will. The next couple of years will bring strong and increased competition in this field and it is wise to keep abreast of new opportunities.

Lately I've been having real problems with Blogger, so the links are all missing in this article. By careful key-word search, readers can find all of this on their own.

Formatting an e-book short story collection as a 5 x 8" paperback.

(Set page size to 5.0 and 8.0)



Formatting a short story collection as a 5 x 8 POD print on demand paperback isn’t that much different than any other book.

Since I already have my collection, ‘The Paranoid Cat and other tales’ published as an e-book, I basically use the same file by copying it from a folder and pasting it on my desktop. I re-label it with ‘Paranoid Cat POD.’

A step-by-step process.

Step one is to put the cursor at the end of the front matter. Then click on page layout, click on breaks, and then go down and click on page break/section break. I’m using Word for the entire job. I make nice, simple paperbacks. I read somewhere that a good formatter can do this in about two hours.

Next, I scroll down all the way to the end, and put the cursor just after ‘The End’ and add another page/section break as before. Now we have three sections to the book.

The second step is to scroll down and put the cursor at the end of the last line of each of the stories in the collection. Simply click on page break. These are all in the same section, which is important.

Page size.

Step three is to define the page size, as my e-book .doc file is fine in an 8.5” x 11” size, but my paperback is 5 x 8. Again, this is found under the page layout tab. Click on size. Use the buttons to change from one size to another.

Margins and Gutter.

Next comes the margins. I am using 0.5” at the top, 0.6” at the bottom, 0.4” on the outside edge of the page. I’m using mirrored pages left and right, which is also located under size. The mirrored pages should only be for your text and not the front and end matter.

For my gutter, about 0.712 is the usual, and you can fiddle with that under margins, which is in the page layout section as well. The gutter increases in size with the number of pages. I’ve seen a book with zero gutter, and the text begins in the glue. It’s essentially unreadable. ‘Nuff said.

At this point, I went to Collections Canada ISBN service website and got myself an ISBN number, inserting it into the front matter. A paperback and an e-book of the same title have different ISBNs.

Headings.

Next step is to scroll through the book and make sure all the story titles—what would correspond to chapter headings in a novel, are all down the same number of spaces. I will be using six 12-point spaces with zero trailing space. The important thing is that they are all consistent.

Numbering.

Now, it’s time to put the page numbers in. Sometimes I have trouble with it, as there is more than one way to get to the edit footer or format page numbers interface, but suffice it to say that you want the first page of your text to start at number one, and you want it on a right-hand page. Obviously, no book begins on a left-hand page. You do not want page numbers in the front matter, so make sure you click on ‘link to previous section’ if it’s highlighted and make sure it is turned off.

Headers.

A similar process works for the headers, which in my PODs are very simple. I have the title, a comma, and then ‘by Louis Bertrand Shalako.’ It appears at the top of every page in the text, but not in the front or end matter at the back.

When you check your file, go to the end of the book and check for headers and page numbers. You can put the cursor in the header or footer and click, and a box will come up, ‘edit footer,’ etc. Make sure to click ‘link to previous section’ if it is highlighted in yellow, and turn it off, otherwise the page numbers will disappear in the previous section. Concerning footer style, I use the one called ‘tildes.’ And I use 10-point, usually in bold for page numbers. Cambria is nice font, which goes well with Times New Roman, which I use for text. For my headers, I usually go to a nine-point face, again in Cambria. For this I click on the format dialogue box so that I can pick a colour, and for this I use grey as opposed to black. That way the header is there, but it’s also unobtrusive.

The page numbers are far more important, and so I make them easier for the reader to see.

For a paperback, the final end matter doesn’t have to be mirrored, and you may have to turn this off, making sure not to link to previous section when you do it. Otherwise it has a tendency to stick out too much and Createspace will notify you that it’s outside the printed area of the page. The same is true for the front matter. It’s entirely a matter of taste as to whether front and end matter is centred, or justified left, or justified to both margins. A sentence with few words will stretch in an unattractive manner when justified on both margins.

For the text in your paperback, bear in mind my e-book is running a ragged right margin, so I’ll have to go through section by section and right justify everything. I do it section by section to avoid messing up the centering for the titles and scene breaks.

Inserting the proper number of blank pages.

Now, for the front matter, you put the cursor at the beginning of your copyright information and then insert three blank pages. The third one is your title page, my title is 18-point and my name is 12-point, and they are in bold Times New Roman. Next comes your copyright page, and then insert two more blank pages to separate the text. This is section one.

At the end of the book, simply insert enough pages so that your book ends, there is a blank, and then your author bio, links, next-book preview or whatever falls on the right hand page when you visualize your book in your head. This will always be an odd-numbered page, as the book started off on page one. A book will always have an even number of pages when going by the Word document page counter, that’s because every page has a back—it’s really a sheet of paper, even though we’re doing it all by computer.

Notes.

In other notes, for headers with the author name on one side, and the title on another, sources say you can do this with Word, but I have no idea. I have done it successfully, including mirrored page numbers on the corner of the page, (rather than centered) using Open Office free software.

 

(The book has three separate sections.) 



More 5 x 8" paperbacks, troubleshooting.

Last night I pushed the button on the 5 x 8' paperback for 'The Case of the Curious Killers.'

Troubleshooting.

For some reason the CreateSpace automatic reviewer kept finding a problem with the formatting. It came at the end of the book, where I had a bio and URL. This was the third section of the book, written and formatted in Word. The bio was too wide, and for some reason every time I saved it, it reverted back to an unacceptable form.

After three or four attempts, I simply deleted the bio and URL. One, there is a URL in the front matter, and two, my bio is on numerous author pages, social networks and on my blog. I'm happy enough reciting it to old people at bus stops and strangers sitting on park benches. So it's not absolutely vital. Over the course of formatting, I learned that a 5 x 8" paperback in the 400-page to 600-page range requires a minimum of 0.875" for a gutter. This was the problem with that section of the book, and for some reason I was unable to fix it.

'Case' came out at 434 pages and retails for $10.99. This would generate two-something on CreateSpace and $1.74 on Amazon. If I sell an e-book of the same title, for $2.99, it generates about two dollars. That's how I set the price. I want to keep it as low as possible, and yet still make a profit. If the volume goes up, I could still reduce the prices and increase revenue. At this stage of the game, it's a good idea not to sell yourself short, and make it so that it's not worth your while or offers no real hope of future success.

That's why any sort of plan, based on knowledge, is so important: otherwise you just flounder or tread water with no direction and not much hope of survival.

Remember the best-seller, 'Swim With the Sharks?'

Sometime today, I'll get an e-mail telling me one of two things, either the book is okay format-wise, or changes are required.It's no big deal. Some of the mystery has been dispelled about the process of creating the physical product known as a book. I also have a POD file ready to go for 'The Shape-Shifters,' but I think that one can wait a couple of weeks or so.

There is a process. Once I click on 'order proof,' it's going to take a week or ten days to see the product. Then I 'approve proof,' and it takes another few days, up to a week, and then the thing magically appears in the Amazon store, linked to my e-books. And, since I have been selling and giving books away on Amazon, this means that while they don't have any ranking as yet, they are presented as if they do as an alternative format, item, or article to purchase. At last report 70 % of book purchases were still in hard form, and the sales of a title are sales of a title. A buck is a buck.

Marketing Images.

My cover for 'Case' was shot with a $100.00 camera, but the image for 'Shape-Shifters' came from Morguefile, and it was clearly shot with much more professional equipment. I'm really looking forward to seeing it. The 'Case' one required further fiddling after an upload or two, as part of the title was in the danger area. The CreateSpace process won't let you go any further until it is acceptable and within tolerance.

I use Nero Photosnap and Paint.NET when creating marketing images. With eleven titles and a few changes to the marketing images over the last couple of years, the limitations become more apparent, but in e-commerce, embossed, gold-coloured fonts lose some of their grocery-store checkout display appeal anyway. It's a learning curve rather than a spending curve.

Write or Procrastinate.

In the meanwhile, what I really ought to do is to open up the file of story ideas and produce some short stories with an eye to submitting them.

Rather than engaging in outright procrastination, I wrote a blog post instead.

Formatting a 5 x 8" POD paperback on Createspace.

Today I formatted a basic 5 x 8” print-on-demand paperback to be published via Createspace and Amazon. This one is of my newest book, ‘On the Nature of the Gods.’ That's available from Smashwords, Amazon, and within a couple of weeks it will be in Kobo, iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Sony, etc.

Apparently ‘novel’ is like an adjective or something, and that’s why I call it a ‘book,’ which is a noun. (A novel concept.)

In previous blog posts, I talked about making a 6 x 9” trade paperback through Createspace. That process took a week or two, although I had previously done a 4 x 7” book on Lulu. By the time you go through it and learn the process, enter all the information, and design the cover, it can take up to a month with Createspace’s internal review, (mostly the format,) processing, and then postal delivery. (Previously, I also wrote about the 4 x 7” POD of ‘The Case of the Curious Killers.’)

This is extremely simple formatting which can be done in about two hours, once you know what you actually want. In stark contrast, when doing 'The Case of the Curious Killers,' I struggled with OpenOffice, with the mirrored page numbers, and different headers left and right, and in fact my 4 x 7" 'Core Values' POD never went to press due to an unfixable glitch.

Why a 5 x 8” print-on-demand?

The book, ‘Redemption: an Inspector Gilles Maintenon mystery,’ seems a bit big and a bit thin as a 6 x 9” product. It’s only 216 pages in that size. It’s less than half an inch thick. Since I’m the one who has to do the work, and I’m the one searing my brand on it, there’s no sense in doing a product that I’m not keen on.

The basic process is exactly the same. Now, assuming the correct number of blank pages front and back, so that the title page hits on a right-hander, just as the first page of the text should, and the author bio at the back does the same, this thing is ready to go. It has a simple header, identical on every page in the text-section, and simple page numbers, the ‘tilde’ type from Microsoft Word. These are centred, not the most esthetically-pleasing, but quick and simple to do. Instead of going down eleven 12-point spaces for each new chapter like I did last time, this one has six 12-point spaces. Nice, clean, saves paper…and it’s quick.

My page numbers are ten-point, and headers are eight or nine. I’m using Cambria, a shapely font with nice, sexy serifs. The actual text is Times New Roman, 12-point. A technical note, when editing headers in Word, you can adjust them for height. My header is 0.3” from the top, and my footer is 0.2” from the bottom…whatever that actually means; and my margins are set at 0.8 top, inside 0.75, gutter at 0”, bottom at 0.3 and outside 0.4. My camera download cable is capooched, but I’ll borrow one and update this post with photos at some point. But it looks fine on screen. The gutter at 0” sounds odd, but I checked this against the file for ‘Redemption,’ and that one was also set at 0”. Your inside margin must be wide enough not to have the edge of the text stuck in the glue of the binding, capiche? It has to look nice. That’s all that matters. Honestly, take a steel scientific ruler and measure somebody’s paperback in the appropriate size. And if I do mess up, it’s only ten or twelve bucks for a proof copy, right?

Investment of Time in a Simple Paperback.

At two or three hours for each file, this puts things into a little better perspective doesn’t it? It sure beats ‘a week or two,’ which was a hit to the old motivation. No one wants to spend two weeks messing with a file—that’s why I sort of put it off until now, a rainy day, and with my most recent book all finished.

Also, the fact that I nailed the ‘Redemption’ POD on the first upload, with the proof copy in my hands, is encouraging.

The basic premise is simple, ‘pay attention or pay through the nose.’ Why? Because to pay for a proof copy, and then when you finally get it, to see that it’s mucked up, and then fix the file, re-upload it, wait for processing, order another proof, wait ten days or so for it to show up in the mailbox again, and only then find another little error is bad policy. It could have been avoided.

It’s costly, time-consuming, frustrating, and unprofessional. So, am I going to upload my file and smash together a cover and go nuts like that? It’s only ten or twelve bucks, right?

Nope. I’m going to nail this little bleeper on the first pass too. That means waiting and taking another look at it tomorrow, and if I was really smart, I’d wait at least two or three days, taking my time and checking every little thing about ten times.

As for the cover, I plan on re-reading the Createspace directions, so that the image is the right size before I really get into it. I will be using the ‘Spruce’ template again, as it looks fine and I liked the result on ‘Redemption.’

Making the Cover.

What I do there is take the original image, re-crop it, and then put new text on it, making danged sure to keep the edges of all text back at least ½” from the edges. That’s it. Drag and drop from that point.

Another brief note; in (or on,) the ‘Redemption’ back cover, I went dead simple with nothing but a text blurb. The next one might have an author pic and a bio, but if it looks too crowded then I’ll just ditch it.

In keeping with the theme of the Shalako Publishing imprint, we’ll most likely use black as the background colour, and that will be fine, considering the marketing image we’ll be using, which is the same as the e-book version. This book has a new ISBN number, as you can’t use the same one for different formats, etc.

Publication Date.

The book will be out by the end of April, in my opinion. As for pricing, I will set it for $2.00 clear profit per copy and we’ll see what that does, as we can always fiddle with it. ‘Redemption’ only brings $1.95 per sale, but that and the 6 x 9” size is how we got it down to $8.99 retail plus S & H in the first place. When using Collections Canada's CISS, (ISBN system,) there's a place where you set the publication date. When I know for sure the number of pages, and when it comes live on the sales platform, I will go back there and make sure all the data is accurate and then set that from 'forthcoming' to 'live,' and we're all done.

Incidentally, the files from Createspace can be used to create the exact same product on Lulu. More platforms means more sales opportunities, and of course you could take your files to a local printer as Pdf's and Jpeg's and print up a million copies if that's what you want to do.

Addendum: a quick check on Lulu reveals they don't have a 5 x 8 option. What this means is that you could select one of a number of sizes, then simply re-size your pages, (all sections,) keeping the margins, headers and footers where they are. 'Save as,' under a new file name. This preserves the original 5 x 8" file.