A few more steps...

This week's recap:

1) I searched online for more possible cover photos, free and not free. I didn't find any I liked better than my current favorite.

2) I played with cover layout.

3) I printed out my front material and back material, along with the first few pages of the first chapter and the last pages of the final chapter. (It printed out on regular 8.5"x11" paper and I trimmed it to my trim size of 5.25"x8".) Interesting to see it in print form. I find it easier to see certain layout discrepancies such as the type on my "Dedication" page starts much lower than the type on my "Contents" page which directly follows it. Gotta fix that, because it looks odd on paper although it didn't on the screen. I also found myself editing in the chapter pages I had printed--not grammar/punctuation stuff, but actual rewriting--which tells me that I might find a lot to revise in my first proof copy. I hope I'm wrong, and the problems I found are just remnants of my old problems with the beginning of chapter one... sigh.

Regarding my ISBN question from a few weeks ago: I'm 90% sure I'm going with "option 1" for my ISBN (free, but I don't get to use my own imprint).

This week, I have a new program to use for cover layout (thanks, friend!). We shall see how PageMaker 7.0 and I get along. I would also absolutely love to be able to say in my next post that  my interior file is uploaded. Stay tuned!

MS Word styles and typography

Two versions of page 1. Margins not accurate

First thing--yes, I did finish the editing. All the chapters are done, and I added a few items I realized might need for the sequel. So the interior body of the book is pretty much done.

I also worked on the front matter, specifically the copyright page. I looked at many fiction books and studied their disclaimers, then created my own. I also worked on the dedication page. There is still work to do on the back material (author info and acknowledgments).

But the big issues this week were "styles" and typography.

Have you ever used "styles" in MS Word? I never had. I did know that over the years Word had sometimes driven me absolutely crazy because I would try to change some formatting (say line spacing from single- to double-spaced) and IT WOULDN'T LET ME. Or it added extra space after paragraphs that I DIDN'T WANT AND IT WOULDN'T GO AWAY! Aarghhh!

But now I know why.

Think of using a typewriter. When you type with a typewriter, certain formatting decisions have been made for you. You have a certain font of a certain size. This is just the way it is.

Well, when you open a new document in Word, certain formatting decisions have also been made for you, because whoever created Word wanted you to be able to start typing without picking a font or the font size. They also picked the line spacing and paragraph formatting. Then they put all these formatting decisions together and called it a STYLE.

You may not know it's there. I sure didn't. (I never learned Word formally.) But if you try to change it by using the obviously visible formatting controls, you will have problems. You will get frustrated and want to send scathing letters to Microsoft. But all you really need to do is learn about STYLES.

I won't go into all the details, but other people have. I found this page and this page instructive.

So what's the point of all this style business? I see two main ones. The first is understanding how to manipulate MS Word so you don't get frustrated with it. The second is that it saves time! Using styles, I can change the font for the body of all my chapters with a single formatting change and not have to change each chapter separately (which I would have to do otherwise since I'm using a different chapter title font.)

So. Styles, my "eureka" moment of the week. I might be the last person to come to this party, but I'm glad I got here.

So what else did I do this week? I changed the font, the font size, and the line spacing.

What?!? Why? Well, I actually printed out some sample pages, cut them down to size, and saw how they looked. Frankly, the font looked too big and also too light.

If you look at the image above, this original version is on the left: Garamond 14/16, i.e. 14 pt with 16 pt leading. Too big. Too light.

When I realized that Garamond looked too light, I tried out several other fonts that were installed on my computer. Fonts like Palatino (nice, but bad quotation marks), Bookman Old Style (okay...), Baskerville Old Face and Big Caslon (didn't like their spacing), Goudy Old Style (nice, but also light)--well, it went on and on. I really wanted Garamond, truth to tell, if only it were darker.

So I did some research and found that there are various versions of Garamond. Then I did some poking around on my computer and discovered a folder on my hard drive with a bunch of fonts that had never been installed. One of them was Adobe Garamond. Yippee!

I managed to download it and (after an anxious time when it wasn't showing up in Word until I restarted the computer) tried it out. It looked good, it printed out darker, and it also had not only the regular font but Adobe Garamond Italics, Adobe Garamond Bold, Adobe Garamond SemiboldItalic, Adobe Garamond SaucyBold (not really), in other words, the whole package. This is important, because when using italics it is much preferable to use an actual designed italic font, rather than just pressing the "italics" button on the computer.

Then I played around with font sizes. Twelve was so small, it really shrank my book. I'm aiming at about 200 pages, and 12 pt took it way down to 170 or so. Not good. So I tried 13 pt, along with increasing the leading and expanding the margins slightly, and what I ended up with was smaller, darker, nicer looking, and about the same total number of pages as when it was 14 pt. Success!  You can see what it looks like in comparison on the right above: Adobe Garamond 13/17. (Also, I changed the chapter titles to Casablanca Antiqua, my probable title font, instead of Garamond.)

I could go on and on about how I then changed all my italics from faux italics to the italics font and moved the chapter title up on the page a bit and REDID ALL THE WIDOWS AND ORPHANS (yes) and changed the size of the decorative elements around the chapter numbers... but I'm sure I've put most of you to sleep by now.

For this week: I feel that I am getting dangerously near to being ready to upload my interior files to CreateSpace, which means that I'll have to make the ISBN decision soon and finalize the front and back material. I may also play around with different cover images. Stay tuned...

Cover, editing... and the ISBN question

Current version of title page.

This week, I worked on three areas of publishing:

1) More editing. I did two more chapters. Three to go. (Yes, I counted wrong last week.) I also went through and corrected the widows and orphans. The only ones I think are problems are the very short lines ending a paragraph at the top of a page, so those are what I fixed. In most cases I was able to tighten some phrasing on the previous page to save a line, which took the orphan back down to the bottom of the previous page. Occasionally I added stuff to create an extra line on the previous page, so the orphan was no longer an orphan. If the orphan line was long enough, say half the line, I let it stand. And of course, all this will last only until I do any more editing or change the font size or something, which would totally mess it all up again. Really, I should have left this until after the editing and formatting were totally done. Oh well, next time...

2) More preliminary work on the cover. I am using Microsoft PowerPoint to do some front cover and whole cover layouts, using the watermarked free comp of the photo I'm considering buying (blown up way too much), just to get a feel for it. (Since I haven't bought the cover photo yet, I don't want to upload the layout here, but the fonts you see in the title page above are the ones I'm currently using.) Naturally, playing with the cover is a lot more fun than editing, which is why I still have three chapters left to edit.

3) To buy my own ISBN, or not to buy my own ISBN? That is the question... My book will have to have an International Standard Book Number, that's not the question. How to get it is.

Ideally, an ISBN would be free, portable (allow me to publish the book with another printer without having to get a different number), personal (allow me to be my own publishing company for the book), and widespread (allow for the widest possible distribution, including being listed in the Baker & Taylor catalog, which libraries and institutions use. Ask me--in my job I've helped place Baker & Taylor orders. On the other hand, libraries also order through other sources, too.)
    
Well, ha ha. None of CreateSpace's options fulfill all four requirements. Here's how it breaks down:

• Option 1: Free and widespread, but not portable or personal. These books have CreateSpace listed as the publisher on their Amazon pages.
• Option 2: Almost free and personal, but not portable or widespread. In other words, you can create your own publishing company name and they're very inexpensive, but they aren't listed in the Baker and Taylor catalog (why? why?) and you can't take them with you.
• Option 3: Portable and personal, but spendy and not widespread. 
• Option 4: Portable, personal, and widespread, but even spendier. 

Option 5, which is a possibility not listed by CreateSpace, is to buy a block of ten ISBNs from the American supplier (Bowker), which puts the cost per ISBN down to a reasonable rate, and would allow one to use Option 4 without being so spendy. But we are talking $250 upfront now, and that's real money.

What to do? What are my own priorities: cost, personalization, portability, or widespread distribution? Portability comes last. Cost is near the top. But which is more important, personalization or distribution? I go back and forth on that one. To be "Green Gnome Books" (or whatever), or to be in the Baker and Taylor catalog? If I were wealthy, I'd go for Option 5. Or I could move to Canada or South Africa, where ISBNs are free. Decisions, decisions.

Coming up this week: finish editing. Really. Work on front and back material (title page, copyright page, author bio, dedication, and acknowledgments). Stay tuned...

Ottomans, widows, and orphans

Okay, time for more cats! (Yes, it is relevant. Keep reading.)

 "Two Jolly Kittens at a Feast," published and printed by Th. Kelly, c. 1874.

This week, I edited. Five more chapters are done. Here are the highlights (or nitpicky details, however you look at it):

1) I checked on some vocabulary. Although my book is set in its own world, the historical time period that I'm freely adapting is the early 1800's, and I'd rather not use words or objects that weren't being used at that time. So off to the dictionary I went, to check on "jiff," "thingummy," and the history of stoves. They all passed the test. 

2) "Ottoman," however, had to go. It refers to the Ottoman Empire, which doesn't exist in my book. "Footstool" made a good replacement, as well as a good excuse for the kittens above. "Gothic" had to go for the same reason.

3) I also decided to capitalize the word "Season" when it referred to The Season, the social season when debutantes make their debut.

4) And there was the usual missing period/awkward phrasing/"Wait, didn't I change that in Chapter 1? This needs to match" stuff.

Coming up this week: editing the last four chapters, plus Widows and Orphans.

"Mother and Child" by Henry Essenhigh Corke,1912. Widow? Orphan? Who knows?

There are widows and orphans in my book, and I'm not talking about my characters (although a lot of them are one or the other). I'm talking about little words, all by themselves, looking stupid. Like a single word at the end of a paragraph, alone at the beginning of an otherwise empty line, or at the top of a turned page. 

This is a typography thing, and MS Word has a setting which will prevent it, but the problem is that it prevents too much as well as leaving some pages with as many as two fewer lines than others. Using that setting gets rid of single word orphans, but also prevents a paragraph from starting on the last line of a page. After some intense research on the subject, I find that modern published novels do that all the time. But they don't seem to have orphans. Apparently I'll have to fix it manually. [loud groans]

On a more fun side, I've learned more about iStockphoto including that I could use one of their images for my cover. I've found an image I like and have started playing with the downloadable comp. Exciting stuff! Now I just need to figure out what program to use for the cover layout. . . . 

(Thanks to Wikimedia Commons for the illustrations.)

Extreme editing

Editing. It's enlightening, necessary, and boring. It's hard work. It's even harder when it's my own work I'm editing, because I know it so well that my eyes want to race ahead. "Come on, I already know this stuff, keep reading!" I read the chapters aloud as I edit, but it's still easy to speed up and miss the errors.

I went into extreme editing mode this week on five chapters--the first two and the last three. I started with the last chapter because it's short, then worked backwards a couple of chapters, then decided to bite the bullet and tackle Chapter 1. You may remember I was having problems with the first page; I'm happy to report that I'm happy with it now. Still, it was a hurdle.

There are fourteen chapters in Just Like Magic, so I'm about a third of the way through. Here are the kinds of things I found to edit:

1) Typos, e.g. "mat" instead of "met." Or an exclamation point where there should have been a question mark. 

2) Word choices, e.g. "further" vs. "farther," "toward" vs. "towards." Both are okay, I just wanted to pick one. Also "Stepmother" vs. "Stepmama" vs. "Step-mama" (as a term of address). I had to pick one. The winners were "further," "toward," and "Stepmama."

3) Punctuation marks. I scanned the quotation marks to make sure they were all facing correctly, and I eliminated a few excess commas.

4) Flow. In a few spots I noticed that the sentence structure was bad, and I fixed it. Nothing big, just moving a few words around.

5) Minor plot points. I lowered one character's age by a couple of years, changed the layout of Ella's kitchen slightly, and loosened a board in the back gate to explain how a large dog could have gotten into a walled back yard. These changes will, I hope, prevent some reader comments of the "That doesn't make any sense!" variety.

I also did more research on creating covers this week, and what I learned is that I need to learn more. And I will! That and more editing, coming up this week.

What kind of self-publisher am I?

I was reading this old post on "The Book Designer" blog last week and decided to answer the question posed there by blogger Joel Friedlander: "What kind of self-publisher am I?"

He posits that there are two kinds of self-publishers. The first is "hobby publisher," someone who publishes for personal reasons and expects to spend money to publish, not make money. The second kind is "competitive self-publisher," someone who goes into it as a business, expects to make a profit, and will hire professionals to help.

Both types, he says, can be successful. You just have to know what "success" means for you.

I suppose I fall into category one. I feel fortunate that I don't need to make money at writing (I have a full-time job). I also can't afford to hire professionals to help me except in a very modest way (more about that below). What success means to me is to be able to hold in my hand a copy of my book that I can be proud of and that is available to anyone else who wants to read it.

I don't think this is an unreasonable wish for an author. Writing is an art and a craft. When other artists paint or draw or sculpt, they have their finished product in their hands when they are done. They can promote it, sell it, or hide it. Why should authors be different? Yes, authors have their manuscripts, but a manuscript is a very different thing from an actual book.

Sure, a lot of books and art is bad and unlikely to ever sell. But isn't that what the market is for--weeding things out? Galleries or publishers can be useful to artists/writers (and buyers) as filters and publicists, but I don't think it is unreasonable for any author to want to see their writing in actual book form, whether a traditional publisher wants it or not. In the end, consumers can vote with their cash if the book is out there and available.

Having labeled myself a hobby publisher, I still want to create the best book I can. I want it to be a great story, well laid-out, in an attractive cover. I may be an amateur, but I'm serious about this.

We pause now for some amateur artwork by one of my favorite artists. May I ever be such an amateur.

The Chess Game, by Sofonisba Anguissola, 1555. 

What have I done for my book this week? I have:

1) Edited some finicky stuff, e.g. use of  'til versus till. (Till won.) Also how to handle "..." One of my characters uses a lot of "..." when she talks, and I examined some published books to see how they handled it. Also cleaned up capitalization in titles such as "Your Majesty."

2) Cleaned up the "sections" in my manuscript. I didn't know there were such things as sections in MS Word until I started trying to create different headers for each chapter. The template I used from CreateSpace has each different part of the manuscript a different section, some of which I managed to blindly merge by backspacing while entering my chapters into the template. But since I wanted my headers to have the book title on the left and chapter titles on the right, I soon discovered that without manipulating the sections correctly, headers in one section applied to the whole book. This is now fixed, and every chapter has its own section and the correct headers.

3) Printed some pages to see how it actually looked on paper. Tried some different fonts and font sizes. Went back to my original. I may not be quite done playing with that.

4) Revised page one, that is, the writing. Page one has been my headache from day one. I've never been happy with it, but I almost am now. [loud cheers]

5) Wrote the first draft of my back cover blurb.

6) Started researching stock photography, looking for possible cover photos. I am encouraged to see that there is some stuff out there that might work, though my favorite wasn't free. This is one area where I might have to pay. Still, there are free photos out there and I haven't seen them all.

This week, I want to do some serious final editing, emphasis on final (well, until I see a proof copy). We'll see how that goes.

Tax number, style guide, and cat

That's my cat, Shadow, watching me work. More about him later...

After doing more research on the IRS and CreateSpace websites, I found that I don't need to get an EIN (Employer ID Number). My social security number will do just fine for CreateSpace to report my earnings with. (Earnings! Earnings? Yipes, earnings...) So that's that, although it looks pretty easy to get an EIN online through irs.gov if I ever need one.

My main writing project this week was completing my Just Like Magic style guide (or encyclopedia, as I called my file). This list of all names, places, events, times, things, dogs, and dresses in my novel has already come in handy, too. I discovered in chapter eight that I had already named my heroine's father something different in chapter one. (Is he Charles or Thomas? Make up your mind, Beth! Okay, he's Charles.) Consistency! I love it, I need it, I want it.

This style guide will also come in handy for the sequel. Oh, yes, there's a sequel. I have several chapters written, and I like the beginning, but what I need to do is figure out the entire PLOT before I do any more writing. But first things first--and that's publishing Just Like Magic.

And lastly, Shadow demonstrates his basic understanding of writing and computers.

Namely, he hasn't got any.

"Mouse? Why do you have a mouse? I will nudge your hand so you will forget about faux mice and pay attention to me me me.

"You didn't really need that hand for anything right now, did you? I will settle down right here."

Love you too, Shadow.