Self Publishing: What Really Matters - Part 4

 Formatting

What about what I do—formatting? For most books, you should not spend a lot of time or money on the book’s interior format. As I’ve told my clients: no one ever bought a novel because it had an expensive, fancy font!

There are exceptions to this rule, of course. I had an author approach me about a picture book. He was also a photographer, and his vision was a high-end “coffee table” book. I had to tell him I wasn’t the right guy for his project. I use Microsoft Word to format books and that is not the right tool for what he wanted to accomplish. In fact, I also told him I didn’t think KDP was a good choice. He wanted heavy, glossy photo-grade paper and KDP doesn’t offer that option. He needed a book designer that used Adobe InDesign, which has better, more precise positioning capability and access to approximately 30,000 Adobe fonts. It is the right tool for his project. 

For a novel or non-fiction book, even with some images, Microsoft Word is a good choice to create a readable, professional looking printed book. In fact, the major online print-on-demand services are largely designed around Microsoft Word. The Kindle format is quite a bit easier to format than the printed version and Word is more than capable of generating a good-looking Kindle book. If this is the book you’ve written, do not spend much money on formatting. 

One type of book that is difficult to format is a book of poetry. The main culprits are long poems, wide poems and poems where the shape on the page is important to the author. The problem is the page size. I tell poets: 8.5” x 11” is not your friend! Most authors compose using the standard page size in Word (or whatever word processor). Poems that look great on 8.5” x 11” may not look good at all in a book or a journal. Most books are 5” x 8” to 6” x 9”. What I recommend is the poet resize the page in Word before they start composing their work. Go to Layout, click the “Size” button at the top, and go down to “More Paper Sizes.” Key in the anticipated size of your book or the journal you’ll send it to and start writing. You’ll have much more control over how your poem looks on the page if you use the correct page size from the beginning.

I know I’ll learn more as I format more books. In fact, I learned something new about Microsoft Word as I was typing this piece! 

The world of publishing is changing, not always for an author’s benefit. Competition is crazy—there are more than 3,000 self-published books put online each and every day. Generative Artificial Intelligence is now creating books at a pace that mere humans cannot keep up with. I thought, years ago, that the “cream would rise to the top.” I still hope that is the case, but it is an uphill battle. Keep writing!

Quote From Frank Zappa

 

Self Publishing: What Really Matters - Part 3

 

Description 

The book description, or blurb, is what used to be on the back cover. It was the publisher’s last chance to hook a reader, after the title and cover.

Used to be? Most books are bought online. The percentage of self-published books bought online is even higher. The only people who will read your back cover already bought the book! I believe you could leave the back cover blank and that would not affect your sales.

Focus you attention on the online book description. The online description and the back cover copy do not have to match. You have much more space for the online description than the back of your book. Utilize it! 

Your book description is advertising. It should not be a synopsis of the story. Like the title, it should be written to attract, intrigue and sell. Most of my clients are uncomfortable with this concept. Get help. Find a copywriter. Pick their brains. Read some books on advertising. Write many drafts. Take all the time you need to get it as effective as you can. Share it with your writers group. You’ll get feedback; some will be useful.

Duluth Harbor - The Mesabi Miner Arrives at Sunrise!

 

Self Publishing: What Really Matters - Part 2

Cover

I don’t design covers. I did a few for non-fiction clients, but usually I receive artwork from a graphic artist, almost always just the front cover. I apply the words to the cover: title, author and back cover copy. If the graphic artist specializes in book covers and knows the KDP specifications as well as I do, I get a full cover that is ready to be uploaded.

There is a lot of material online about book covers. Much of this advice is genre specific. Certain genres tend to utilize specific colors, fonts and image characteristics. If you’ve written a genre piece, go to Barnes and Noble or search online for books like yours to see what others are doing. 

Covers are more important than ever. Back in the day when I went to Borders to buy a book (I still miss Borders!) I would cruise the aisles and see mostly spines. If a title caught my eye (don’t discard the importance of an intriguing title) I’d pull the book out and look at the cover. At this point, most of the books went right back to the shelf and I wouldn’t even get to the material on the back cover. The front cover failed to do its job. 

Online you do not see spines. You see the front cover. While I still maintain the title is important, I think the cover is more so. 

If you’re artistic and can work with images on a computer, go for it. Go online and find the KDP specifications for the cover. The rules are precise and KDP will not publish your book if you break them. If you’re not comfortable with this, hire an experienced graphic artist. 

This is very important: the printed look of your cover is not as significant as the online version! Your online version must be easy to read at a very small size since it will often be displayed as a thumbnail, which is usually only 1.25” wide and 2” tall. You must be able to easily read the title (see why I recommended you keep the title short?) and author when the cover is that small. You may need high-contrast colors to achieve this. Shop for books on Amazon and look at the sections labeled “Frequently bought together” or “Products related to this item” to see what I mean. Your book won’t appear in these areas until you have some sales, but when it does you want it to both stand out in the list and be readable.

Self Publishing: What Really Matters - Part 1

 In 2012 I led a writers group at one of our local libraries. I suggested we self-publish an anthology on Amazon. I didn’t do it because I thought we would sell a lot of copies. I didn’t even care if one of my works was in it, though it was cool to see a book appear when I searched for my name in Amazon. I did it for two reasons. First, I am more motivated to write with a tangible goal and a deadline. Second, I wanted to understand the mechanics behind creating a Kindle book on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and a paperback on what was then called CreateSpace (now absorbed by KDP). We did not sell many copies. The book turned out to be embarrassing. More on that later.

I eventually decided to format books as a hobby business. I do it for friends and friends of friends. As I write this, I’m working on another writers group anthology. This is my 76th book. I’ve gotten good at formatting. I’ve studied hundreds of books by the largest publishers, and I know what a professionally published book should look like. One of the books I formatted (Where the River Runs Deep by Lynne Handy) was reviewed in Publisher’s Weekly and it received an “A” for format. I passed their test!

I’ve also attempted over the last 12 years to help my clients market their books online. I haven’t earned an “A” in marketing; in fact, nothing I’ve advised or personally tried has been successful. I’ve had successful clients, but their success is a result of their offline efforts: events, readings, their relationships with bookstore owners and managing to get themselves interviewed for media. Their hustle brought readers and reviews which helped online sales. But because the authors bought the books and sold them directly, those sales did not improve their Amazon sales rank, another important component to achieving more exposure in Amazon’s marketplace. 

It's obvious I’m not a marketing guru. I do believe I know the minimum criteria for a chance at success: story, cover and description. Don’t even bother spending time or money on marketing until you have these basics nailed down tight. I’ll cover each separately.

Story

If you’re writing strictly for money, pick a popular genre, study it thoroughly and write what the marketplace expects. Most of the writers I’ve worked with had a story, or a cause, which was important enough to write a book about. Many of the books I formatted did not slot comfortably into a specific genre, much less a popular one. All of this is OK, of course; write what you want to write. If your book is in a less popular genre or you can’t place it in any particular genre, be aware that marketing will take more effort, and the book will also take more time to catch on. 

The most important factor in a good story: editing. Do you remember I said the first book I formatted was embarrassing? It was full of obvious typos: two commas in a row, words squished together, missing periods—it was not a pretty sight. The wonderful thing about digital publishing is all these problems can be fixed, but it should never have happened in the first place. Ten authors participated in that anthology. Each author was supposed to submit an edited, clean manuscript. That didn’t happen. Each participant was supposed to thoroughly edit the other 9 authors’ works. We did not do a good job. What did we learn? We learned that editing is more difficult than we thought, and we went too fast, and were sloppy. 

The next year’s anthology went much better. Embarrassment over last year’s effort changed our attitude. A big part of the solution was to allocate more time to the editing process. Slowing down really helped a lot.

Today I advise my clients to do three things. First, use the tools available to you. If you use Microsoft Word, click the Editor button. It’s much more than a mere spell-checker. It’s not perfect, but it is vastly improved over what I used in 2012. If you don’t use Word or want to get a second opinion, try one of the online options like Grammarly or ProWritingAid. 

Second, read your work aloud. Or, better yet, have your computer read it to you. Microsoft Word has this feature. You will catch more than basic spelling and grammatical errors. Awkward sentence structures and poor word choices will be easier to hear than read.

Third, hire a professional editor. This can be expensive, but usually will be money well spent. There are different types of editors: developmental and line editors. Developmental editors will help with story arc, pacing and character development. Line editors are going to assist with paragraph and sentence structure, word choice and overlap some of the features of the software-based editing tools. 

If you can afford both editors, do it. If you only want to work with one, I suggest you lean toward the developmental editor and rely on the available editing tools for the rest. 

Lastly, as it relates to the importance of the story itself, spend quality time on the title. Don’t just pick a title that reiterates the plot. The title is advertising. It should be crafted to intrigue a potential buyer! Keep it short! You’ll understand why brevity is important when we get to the next section about the cover.