Self-Publishing Part 9: The Galley Proof, a Pause Before Publication, and a Last Few Thoughts on Paying to do it
Going it Mostly Alone: the Publishing Path of A Perfect Blindness
A bit over a year after I’d submitted the manuscript, I got an email with the fully formatted, ready to go to print files. Felt good. Color cover. Well laid out type inside.
Damn that feels so good. Read More
Self-Publishing Part 8: While Still Preparing the Book, a Seedling Platform Weighs Other Benefits of Paying for Publishing a Book
Going it Mostly Alone: the Publishing Path of A Perfect Blindness
Part of the appeal of self-publishing is writer control: the author can publish the book they wrote in whatever shape they wish, from rough draft to fully polished or any state in between. A writer can call it whatever genera they care, and fill it with idiosyncratic grammar, such as using then as a coordinating conjunction. No editor will command something be done, or it won’t get published—the prohibitions of defamation, plagiarism, and explicit underage sex and drug use excepted. Read More
Self-Publishing Part 8: While Still Preparing the Book, a Seedling Platform Gets a Grip on Funding its Own Book
Going it Mostly Alone: the Publishing Path of A Perfect Blindness
For A Perfect Blindness, my wife and I put the money up: The editors have all been paid, and the risk—will it make or lose money—is all ours. There are different ways to view the choice to pay to take my book through all the steps of the Traditional Publishing Path, from initial evaluation to Developmental editing, and through Content editing, Quality review, Design all the way to final Proofreading. Read More
Self-Publishing Part 8: While Still Preparing the Book, a Seedling Platform Puts Price into Some Perspective
Going it Mostly Alone: the Publishing Path of A Perfect Blindness
Of course, publishing a high-quality book has never been cheap. Once Gutenberg gave the Europe movable type in the 15th century, the first mass-published books were religious texts, including the Bible (in many cases in the local language and not Latin for the first time), costing 30 Florins—the equivalent of three years of wages for a clerk—and then the Greek and Roman classics: Important books for important and wealthy people. The literate wealthy could fund their works of science, poetry, and fiction, but these were for their peers—these works were fantastically expensive, and most of the public was illiterate anyway. Read More
Self-Publishing Part 8: While Still Preparing the Book, How a Seedling Platform Aims for an Agent, Proper
Going it Mostly Alone: the Publishing Path of A Perfect Blindness
As iUniverse is the only self-publishing company that currently offers this alternative entrance to the Traditional Publishing Path, all the requirements for such are their own. Read More
Self-Publishing Part 8: While Still Preparing the Book, a Seedling Platform Aims for an Agent, Proper
Going it Mostly Alone: the Publishing Path of A Perfect Blindness
Each iUniverse STAR title gets a personal agent: the iUniverse STAR Program’s Rights Consultant, a veteran of the book publishing industry. This person presents the book to traditional publishing houses, international publishers, audiobook publishers and book clubs for their consideration. But unlike in the old model of peddling mere manuscripts, when this first gatekeeper, the agent, had to have been approached by a writer, who had convinced the agent that not only did a manuscript have potential, and that there was a market for said manuscript, and that the author was someone the agent, and by extension the publisher, could work with to get that manuscript into the best shape possible, and then would continue to work with the publisher to sell the book after publication. Read More
Self-Publishing Part 8: While Still Preparing the Book, a Seedling Platform Aims for a Star
Going it Mostly Alone: the Publishing Path of A Perfect Blindness
With the Star designation, iUniverse commits further resources to the book, effectively completing an entirely new, author-controlled onramp to the Traditional Publishing Path.
First, the cover gets reassessed. Not only has this book met industry standards in writing quality and shown a market exists for it, but the book has reached the market and demonstrated an actual demand exists for it. The book has proven it can sell. To make sure the book looks like the seller it is, the cover gets a second Cover Copy Polish. This would include, if necessary a professional editing of the back cover copy and author bio, possibly adding blurbs from reviews it might have gotten, as well as another turn through design, including, at the very least, a new ISBN and a new colophon:
The logo changes color, again dependent upon the book’s actual cover, and transforms into a star; the swoop up remains; the matching color dot returns atop the i, and as the book and its author are no longer merely rising, the single word Star appears below iUniverse. Read More
Self-Publishing Part 8: While Still Preparing the Book, Finding a Major Mistake on the Cover
Going it Mostly Alone: the Publishing Path of A Perfect Blindness
Sure, the cover looked great. The designers followed my instructions and did a bang up job: Only with the wrong central image.
The problem was that for months I’d been using cover1 to mean a particular image. It was labeled cover1 on FaceBook, labeled cover1 on my desktop. I’d gotten used to cover1 meaning my favorite cover. Period.
But the designers changed my favorite cover’s name to coveralt1 and using cover1 for a different image, so when I directed them to use cover 1 (what had been my and most other people’s favorite), I had inadvertently directed them to use the wrong cover image.
ACK! Read More
Self-Publishing Part 8: While Still Preparing the Book, Growing a Seedling Platform with 25 Pages of Errata
Going it Mostly Alone: the Publishing Path of A Perfect Blindness
One of the things mentioned by the person delivering the Quality Edit was that after the book was typeset, I should have it proofread in its final form: things can happen when the conversion is made from MS Word to the typesetting software, and further things might simply come across differently when typeset.
Yeah. (Note the slight frown caught in the corners of the mouth.) Read More
Self-Publishing Part 8: While Still Preparing the Book, a Seedling Platform Sprouts Speakers
Going it Mostly Alone: the Publishing Path of A Perfect Blindness
A Perfect Blindness is drenched in music: not only do two musician friends end one band and start another, they go to clubs and dance, and listen to music on the radio, on vinyl and CDs as well; very many other songs find their way into the text of the book: some as the inspiration for the songs of White Heat and Mercurial Visions, two of their bands, play; other times some lyrics are quoted; and many times, songs were in the back of my mind as I wrote a particular sentence, so slivers of them can be extracted from the text, while the outlines of others can be discerned in some turns of phrase. In fact, the book has a soundtrack. Read More