Sounding Board or Punching Bag?

Well, the box of books has been here a while and I haven't done much with them. Since I have previously published a book, I know what I should be doing. Why does marketing always seem like a four letter word, when it so obviously isn't? I think for me it is because the whole process of getting the book into its final form, whether print or ebook, is such a long journey by the time you are finally done you don't want to look at or think about the book for awhile. And maybe I thought that since I printed the book through Lightning Source with their huge distribution system it would be easier this time.

I did put two copies of the book in the mail today, so that is something. The first copy was sent to one of the veterans who was kind enough to review the book, offer input, and provide a quote for the back cover. The second book went to the Library of Congress. If you request a catalogue number from them, which helps the libraries find your book, then you must send them a copy of the book when it is completed. I can now scratch those two things off my list of things to do.

On Wednesday I took a copy of the book with me to my local independent bookstore with the intention of asking her if she would like to carry the book in her store. She has been selling my other book, Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed(room)? since 2009 and has in fact sold 19 copies of the book.  She is down to her last copy so I thought it would be a good time to introduce my new book when dropping off additional copies of the first. As it turns out, I left none of my books there and it is quite a story.

In an email to the store owner a week or so ago, I had asked her about three things. 1) I knew she only had one copy of my book left and did she need more? Hint, hint...I would like to be paid for the 9 that were sold. 2) The St. Louis Publishers Association (and I serve on the board) offers free talks about the publishing process and would she be interested in hosting one of our talks? (She fields a lot of questions from authors trying to get their books published, so it would be of benefit to her as well.) And 3) The September publishers meeting is about author events and would she or a member of her staff be interested in serving on a panel at the meeting? (Their bookstore hosts a LOT of author events so I thought her input would be invaluable.)

As soon as I walked in the door she acknowledged my email and the fact that she had yet to respond, but said she would love to be on the panel. Just as I was thinking "Great!" she went on to add that we wouldn't like what she has to say. She said that we all need to send our books to an agent, and that if it is a great book then an agent will pick it up. We should not be self publishing during a time when even well known authors are not able to sell their books. She does not want to deal with people who do not understand why she needs them to discount their books 40% so that she can keep her store in business.

Now remember that I am one of the "people" she is referring to! I told her that on behalf of myself and other members of our organization, I beg to differ with her. When you have a book that is only intended for a niche market, no traditional publishing company is going to pick you up, no matter how well done the book is. She agreed that there are exceptions, but that I should have approached one of the local publishing companies. I explained that there is only one, and he turned me down because he thought my audience was too narrow. Since I have sold over 100 books, I think he is wrong. She said I should go back to him now, and I asked why should I? I have done all the work, why should I turn anything over to him now? She then launched into a rant about all the authors approaching her with their memoirs, and how they shouldn't even be writing the book themselves but should hire a ghost writer instead. Bottom line - no one should self publish.

I explained to her that we really were not even asking her to discuss any of that, we simply were hoping that she could talk about author events such as book signings. That set her off on another rant about how you might as well have a party at your house and invite all your friends and relatives because they were the only ones who would come to a book signing and buy your book anyway. But if we wanted her to come and talk, she would LOVE to come and speak her mind. I said, "So if we want a Debbie Downer on the panel, you're our gal, huh?" and she said, "That's right!" She wrapped things up by adding that she would be happy to host a publishers meeting (no doubt so she could speak up from the back of the room and tell everyone how they must not be real authors if they have to do it themselves), and also, by the way, she would love to have more copies of my book to sell. Does anyone else see the irony of that?

The Books Have Arrived!

Yesterday I received a box containing the 20 copies of my dad's book which I had ordered from Lightning Source. Now, what to do with them? Ha! I am readying copies to be mailed to one of my kind book reviewers, the Hump pilot from Texas. (My other little Navy reviewer recently lost his wife of 53 years to cancer, and has since relocated. I will let a little time pass and see if I can get a new mailing address for him.) A second book needs to be mailed to the Library of Congress, per their requirements in giving you a Library of Congress Control Number to place in the book. The Library of Congress number helps them maintain their catalog records and assists other libraries with the acquisitions of books. There is no fee charged, but you must supply them with a copy of the book when it is published. I also need to decide if I want to apply for the formal U.S. copyright. I did it with my other book - there is a $35 fee if you file online, and then you must mail them 2 copies of the book when it is printed. You have copyright protection by nature of the fact that you wrote the book, but this makes things more official and, I presume, easier to fight copyright infringement.

Then I think I will donate a book to the Delhi Historical Society and one to the Hamilton County Genealogical Society since those would both offer good exposure for the book. I also need to have some work done on my website so that the book can be purchased there as well.

I spoke with Lightning Source (LSI) about turning this book into an ebook. I did not even realize they handled ebooks until I signed up with them. Smashwords had indicated that they couldn't touch this book due to all of the images, so I was not optimistic that LSI would be able to work with it. Obviously there is no need to have it in a Kindle, Nook or other e-reader format. But it definitely would read well as a PDF on a computer or as an ePub on the iPad. My rep at LSI said that they could sell the ebook version. It is all ready to go as a PDF, though I need to assign a new ISBN number to it. And that would mean changes to the inside front matter as the ISBN is listed there. I haven't tried to do an ePub format yet, so I will have to research that some more. So much to learn!

The Price is Right

After discussing my book price with my representative at Lightning Source (LSI), as well as showing the proof to a couple of established authors, I decided to leave the book price at $9.95 for right now. As one author pointed out, I will be discounting the book 55% for all wholesale outlets, so I need to make sure I make something off of each book once the printing costs are taken into consideration. Not to mention trying to recoup the cost of layout and design fees. My Lightning Source rep said he is very interested in WWII history, and because this book is high quality, he would not hesitate to pay $9.95 for it. (Hope he puts his money where his mouth is!)

The next decision I had to make was how many copies to order for myself. I get the books greatly discounted from LSI, in fact much less than I anticipated. I know I could not have gotten them printed in St. Louis for this price. I decided to start with an order of 20 copies since I had to pay for postage and it wasn't that much more to ship 20 than to ship 10. I know I will easily sell 10 to my family members, and I will be marketing the books to some Cincinnati retail outlets as well. I also need to mail one copy to the Library of Congress as required by my application for a Library of Congress number.

With regards to my smashwords.com account and my ebook Keys to Unlocking House History, I am still waiting to be approved for the premium catalog. Normally this takes two weeks, and I resubmitted for inclusion on June 15th. I was hoping that since this was a re-submission and that I hired a designer familiar with smashwords to make the changes, I would breeze through a second time. Apparently not.

How Much is Too Much?

Well, the proof of my dad's book arrived yesterday at 5:15, thanks to my trusty UPS man in brown. My first impression was, "Man this box is small!" My second was, "Man this book is small!" After a quick glance at the cover (which looks great!), I had to set the book aside because I was in the middle of an online chat with my daughter in Prague. After that I had to prepare supper, eat and do the clean up. Then I sat down to look at the book. I am seriously concerned that I have priced the book too high at $9.95.

Before deciding on a price I went to the bookstore to look at other books in this genre and of a similar size. Most of them carried a higher price tag. I also knew what my expenses were on the book, except for the price that Lightning Source will charge me to buy my own. I also know how much time I put into scanning documents, doing the research, and writing the book. There are some fantastic historical documents that appear in the book, and some of them can't be found anywhere else. The price seemed fair at the time. But now when I look at the size, I am not so sure that people will be willing to pay that much for it.

It is not a done deal yet. I could send the book back to the designer, and she could modify the price that is listed on the order form inside the book as well as in the bar code on the back cover. This, of course, would incur additional expenses. Or I could try the book at this price and if it doesn't sell, then make the changes. And any books I sell myself can obviously be sold at whatever price I want. I could make the audience feel that I am giving them a real break. I think I will bounce the whole price thing off of some other authors and book sellers before I make a decision.

Wait for it

Saturday evening I uploaded From Buckeye to G.I. to the Lightning Source website. I did not receive any error messages, so I assumed it uploaded okay. And while I had previously received an email from LSI with a listing of all of my contacts there (wow, I feel so special!), none of those esteemed contacts had emailed me to say there is a problem. What I was expecting, though, was an email advising me that the proof was ready. On a whim, I went into my LSI account and found that they were waiting for me to tell them how I wanted to pay for the proof, and to verify the mailing address. Whether that means the proof is ready to be shipped or they will now prepare the proof, I am not sure. I certainly thought with all the legions of paperwork I completed, including those entailing how I would pay and how I wish to be paid, my payment on the proof would be self-evident. Not! So now I wait for it...

On the ebook front, I found a woman willing to make the appropriate changes to Keys to Unlocking House History so that it can be included in Smashwords premium catalog. She said she will be able to get to it this week since the book is so short and there were only a couple of things that needed to be corrected. She attempted to explain to me what Smashwords e-geek speak was saying, but she may as well have been writing in Greek. For $20 or $30, I am going to let the pros do their thing with all upcoming books.

Cover Up

My new go-to cover designer should be sending me a copy of the cover of my dad's book this weekend. She was going to work with the cover Katie came up with and somehow marry it with the spine and the back of the book. I am excited to see how it looks. She was complimentary of Katie's design, so that was good to hear. Of course, she could have just been trying to be nice, but I did ask her for her opinion and said modifications could be made to it.

I am still waiting for Lightning Source (LS) to approve me as a publisher. They sent me an email with a bunch of questions I had to answer, like how many books do I intend to publish with them in the next year? and will the books be print ready or would I need design assistance from them? I didn't realize that they were in the position to be so picky. Maybe they are only accepting publishers who will do a lot of books. If so, I'll need to explore my options. Perhaps Createspace? When this book is finally ready to go to print I don't want it languishing because LS can't decide it they want me or not.

Perfect by Design?

The interior of the book is finished! I received my virtual copy from the designer on Thursday, ready to be shipped off to a printer. So, next on the hit list is the exterior design. Katie has created the front cover for me, and it needs a little tweaking. But the spine and back cover still need to be done. Obviously it would make sense to have her do those as well. Unfortunately she is down to her last 19 days of college, so no way can she look at it before the end of the semester. And then she will have exactly 4 days in St. Louis before she heads off to Prague for a 5 week marketing session for school. I need to decide if I want to wait until July to have her complete the cover, or just turn it over to a different designer at this point.

In the meantime I have been working on my e-book. I decided to take my house history research book and strip out all references to St. Louis County, and then turn the remainder into an e-book. I think there is a market for the book as no other e-books exist yet on this topic. Plus I am very curious to see how all this e-book stuff works. I am going to go with Smashwords to produce the book. First of all I heard Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords, speak at Publishing University last year and I was impressed with him and what he is doing. Second, he will format the book for all of the different reading devices, and will put the book into distribution. There is no charge to have him set up the book, and he just gets a percentage (I believe 15%) of each sale. That beats the heck out of the 40% or more that bookstores get on a printed book.

I have downloaded the Smashwords instructions (of course it is an e-book!) on how to properly set up your book in Microsoft Word prior to uploading it to Smashwords. I think I will be able to handle this myself, but if not Mark offers a list of reasonable contractors who will get your Word document into the proper format. I also contacted one of the e-book cover designers that Mark has worked with to see if she is interested in doing a cover for Keys to Unlocking House History. I just sent an email on Friday, so I haven't received a reply yet. I really did not expect to with it being Easter weekend.

The times, they are a changing!

My Index Fingers

So it is now Friday and I am still working on the index. I actually got it all typed up yesterday, and my fingers were quite tired by the end of the process. Now I am going through the book line by line to make sure all the page numbers for the indexed items are listed. This is a tedious process, and I have a new found respect for book indexers. I can't imagine doing this for a 300 page book!

I am still confused about how certain items should appear in the index. For example, if I am listing Corporal LeRoy Kubler, should it be written Kubler, Corporal Leroy? Then it gets more complicated if the soldier is a Jr. Where does the Jr. appear in the listing? I have googled this issue to no avail. I may need to go to the book store or library and read some indexes for proper etiquette on this. I have posted the question on one of the many online writing/publishing groups I belong to, so hopefully someone can give me a reference. Dummies Guide to Indexing, perhaps?

Now I Know My ABCs

The book designer mailed a CD to me containing the entire book From Buckeye to G.I. so that I could try my hand at indexing the book. I have CS5 which contains the latest version of InDesign. This is a program that I have not had time to play around with much, and is said to have a very steep learning curve. I have a hard enough time with gentle curves, much less trying to deal with steep ones. But what the heck, I decided to give it the old college try.

The CD opened nicely in InDesign, and I found an Adobe website with a tutorial on using the indexing feature of InDesign. Looking at the crappy tutorial, I see part of the reason that InDesign has a bad reputation for ease of use. Even the video was awful. But I muddled along and actually was able to create an index. Unfortunately, it only listed the first page a word appeared on and not any subsequent pages, but I think I could have worked through that. What became a major issue for me though was the scanned documents. Apparently you cannot index (through the program) any words appearing in a jpg, tiff or any other scanned format. Since a lot of names and places appear in the 160 scans in the book, this is obviously not acceptable to me.

So it looks like I will be creating a manual index after all. I don't feel like what I did accomplish with the program was a waste of time however. It did at least alphabetize a large number of words for me. I will be able to use that as the skeleton upon which to build the rest of the index. I hope to get it all typed up and sent back to the designer by tomorrow afternoon so that he can insert it into the book.

Note to Self

Just when you think the ball is in someone else's court and you can take a breather, SLAM - back it comes at ya. The book designer informed me that I needed to convert all the color photographs to black and white, and to change all the illustrations from jpgs to tiffs. That is in addition to changing all 160 items to 300 dpi. Yee, haw! So my note to self is that if in the future I decide to use any photos and/or illustrations in a book, to first check with the designer to see what format everything should be scanned or copied to before I do anything else. I have had to redo a lot of steps on this project.

I finished all of the changes this afternoon; now I just have to figure out how to get all the images back to the designer. They are too large to email, even if I zip the file, so last time I sent everything to him on a thumb drive. I could do that again, but I am hoping to find a solution that involves an e-transfer instead. Hopefully the designer has an answer, although you would think he would have suggested it last time.

Tonight I am giving a presentation about publishing to an adult education class on writing and publishing a non-fiction book. I have done this in the past, and it is always fun to hear what book ideas people are working on. It is so great to be writing in a time when you can actually get your books into the hands of readers without being held hostage by the traditional publishing industry.

Let's Give 'em Something to Talk About

Saturday night I was part of the panel discussing publishing at the Borders store on Brentwood. In honor of Small Press Month, the St. Louis Publishers Association sponsors these 2 hour workshops at various Borders stores around the area. (Though we may need to find another location next year. Will there be any Borders stores left here?) Anyway, each speaker has 30 minutes to discuss their topic and take Q & A. My assigned topic was self-publishing versus traditional publishing. Bob Baker had presented this area the previous Saturday in Sunset Hills, so I went to that workshop so I could see what he covered. Because of his background and success in self-publishing, I knew that his presentation was not going to work for me. I started from scratch and covered the pros and cons of each type of publishing. I think that it went okay.

I love attending these things because I always learn something myself. At this session I found out that even if I were to print dad's book through Lightening Source I could still have a local printer do 25 copies or so for me to sell. Otherwise you have to buy your books back from Lightening Source, which sort of rubs me the wrong way. So I'll price the book both ways and see what happens. The beauty of using Lightening Source is that they will get your book into distribution since they are owned by Ingrams, the largest book distributor in the world I believe.

Speaking of dad's book, the designer has sent me two sample layouts to consider. But both of them are in the 8 1/2 x 11 format, which makes me think he did not get the email telling him I want it to be 6 x 9 or so. I have sent him an email through our Workroom in elance, so we'll see what he says next.

Designing Men

On Monday a hard copy of From Buckeye to G.I. and a thumb drive containing the book with and without images was mailed to the book designer in Iowa. I also included a separate file with all the images in it. Yesterday I received my Library of Congress number for the book (they actually sent me a password to get into my account on Monday), so I emailed the designer a revised copyright page containing this number. Today the designer sent me an email stating that he thinks the book would be better in an 8 1/2" x 11" format as opposed to the 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" size I had requested. He is concerned that the documents will not be legible in the smaller format. My reasons for the smaller book were as follows: it is a more accepted size by readers, bookstores and libraries and the number of pages in the larger size format will be too small (probably around 50 pages).

Clark also wanted to know if I was printing the book in color as he said a lot of my photos are in color. Actually, only the later photos that I took of the forts and monuments were in color, or so I thought. Wrong... Apparently all the newsletters I scanned were interpreted as color by the computer because of the yellowed paper. Ack! Now I have to edit all the "colored" photos in PhotoShop! And there are a lot of them. I thought I was going to be able to take a break from this book while the designer was doing his thing, but apparently not.

A Picture is Worth 1,000 KB

The corrections from the editor have all been input - at least the ones that I am electing to change - and I have made certain all of the 151 pictures, newsletters, forms (anything that is a jpg) are labeled on the hard copy of the book for the designer. I have also placed the corresponding number in the file of images I will send to him. The reason this is important is because he wants me to strip all of the jpgs out of my manuscript before I send him the book. I want to make sure he know where to put them all back in once he has the Word document placed in InDesign. Tedious work, this. I am very ready to get this book out the door!

While reviewing the book, I realized that I have not applied for a Library of Congress number for the book. This is not a necessity, but if you think your book will end up in a library, it is pretty important. I have an account set up with the LOC since I secured a number for Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed(room)?, but I have not been on their website since I did that in November of 2009. Well, in October 2010 the LOC came out with a mandate that you must change your password every 60 days. But I did not get the memo about this. I cannot log into my account now. I sent them an email asking how to get around this, and they advise that it can take up to 5 days to receive a response. Great! (Insert sarcasm here.) I'd like to have the number before I send the book to the designer, but I won't hold it up because of this.

I realized that I had not written a timetable when I was working on my last book. I am rectifying that with this book so that I don't get caught up with some of these details on the next one. In the meantime, I'm stripping pictures...

One Last Look

Now that I have taken the comments from my two book reviewers, who happen to be WWII veterans, double-checked facts and made corrections in the manuscript, I am giving the book one last review before sending it off to an editor. I want it to be as clean as possible before she receives it, because there is no reason to pay an editor to correct items that I should have caught. Authors really need to take advantage of the built-in review capabilities of their word processing programs.

As I am looking at the book, I can't help but wonder if I should go into more detail in a few areas. But then I realize that at some point you just have to say enough is enough. This book needs to be finished. So I set a deadline for myself to have the book to the editor by Friday of this week. I will be on vacation next week, and I don't want to think about this book. It will be in capable hands, and I will get it back in two weeks.

Bon voyage, little book!

Website Update

As I had previously mentioned, I was having problems with the myhousehistory.net blog, which is on the Wordpress platform. My daughter has been integral in helping me figure out what the problem is, and we decided to move the Wordpress blog to a new web host first of all. Then she has been working to try to clear up the virus. I can now log in and post new entries, but I think we are still having issues in the comments section. Katie will eventually figure it out, I have no doubts about that. In the meantime she has made it harder for spammers to post comments, which is great. I moderate all comments anyway, but now you have to enter a code after you post a comment. That feature alone weeds out a lot of spammers.

Katie also set up a new website for my publishing company at www.provenancepublishing.com. I had already registered the domain www.provenancepublishing.net, but it is directed right to myhousehistory.net. Now that I will soon have two books under the publishing company, and one of those has nothing to do with house history, it seemed to make sense for the publishing company to stand on its own. The website is still a work in progress, but at least it is up.

Speaking of my second book, I have been busy checking some sources for data I used in the book, because my Hump Pilot suggested that a few things were incorrect. Once I get that done, I'll be ready to send it off to an editor. I have got to get this thing off dead center. At the last St. Louis Publishers Association meeting we gathered into small groups and we each had to list one thing that we wanted to finish in the next 30 days. We then wrote down how we were going to make that happen. I put down that I want this book to go to the book designer in 30 days. That may be ambitious depending on how much time the editor needs, but at the very least I want the book in the editor's hands before I leave on vacation February 26th. There...I put it in writing. That felt great!

The Reviews Are In

I received the review of dad's book from my new friend, the CBI Hump Pilot. He had some corrections of details in my section about the Cabua, India base as well as further information about flying the "Hump" (Himalayan Mountains) during the war. I am very grateful for his input, and will now double check some of my facts while he comes up with a quote for the back cover. Finally moving again on this book, though not too fast with the holidays rushing up so quickly!

The Second Review

I am still awaiting the second review of my dad's book. I emailed my hump pilot veteran just to make sure that he had indeed received the book in the mail. He quickly emailed back that he did receive it, but that he has been traveling and hasn't had a chance to look at it yet. I'm not sure when he'll get to it, but at this point I am really not in any hurry. I've been thinking that I may want to time the release of the book to a particular military event anyway, like the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Obviously I missed the boat (ha, ha) for having it ready in time for this Veteran's Day.

On an unrelated topic, I have Google Alerts set up to notify me any time something having to do with house history research is published on the web. Yesterday and today I received a lot of hits, and a number of the articles concerned organizing your house history research. As that is a topic which is covered both in my book and in an ezinearticles.com article that I wrote, I was interested in what this author had to say. Imagine my surprise when I clicked on the first article and found my ezine article quoted nearly verbatim! As it turns out, all of these articles had the same lady's name as author. So tonight I have been systematically going to each website where the article appears and leaving first a comment to the "author" to cease and desist, and then a second comment to the host of the website telling them to either take the article down or give credit to me as the original author of the article. Of course she has no website of her own or contact information listed so that I can communicate with her directly. She has a long list of articles she has supposedly written, and I can't help but wonder if she stole all of the others as well. I can't believe the audacity of some people!

Critics Corner

Yesterday in the mail I received a nice sized packet from Harry, my WWII navy veteran friend. As promised, he included a few pages from my book which included the red markings of his questions and/or comments. His comments were thoughtful and kind, and fortunately included a sentence where I had neglected to fill in a number. You can never have too many sets of eyes looking over your manuscript!

Also included in the envelope was a stack of Ex-CBI Roundup magazines. While the magazines themselves list dates ranging from 2003-2006, they are actually reprints of the magazines that were written in the 1960's. The Ex-CBI Roundup was established in 1946 as a way for the troops who served in the China-Burma-India theater to reminisce and keep in touch with one another. I wonder if my dad ever knew about these? Anyway, Harry thought that I might enjoy looking at them and perhaps gather additional material for the book. God bless Harry!

Picture This!

This weekend I buckled down to revise some of the low DPI pictures for the book. The only problem is now Windows won't let me open the ones I have worked on. It keeps telling me that I don't have permission to view the photos. Hello!!! It's my computer! My computer guy came over tonight and the best that he could work out was to install Picasa on my computer and have it be the default for opening any pictures from now on. The only problem is that it won't open the corrupt ones either, so I have to re-scan those documents and images. In looking at the forums online it appears this may be a Windows 7 issue. Grrrr... It's always something.

I also cleaned up the book and printed out three copies this weekend: one for Jay from the Hump Pilots organization, one for Harry from the USS General Anderson organization, and one for the book designer. I mailed Harry's and Jay's copies today; I won't send a copy to the designer until I get the photo issues resolved so I can send him everything at once. Harry has already alerted me to the fact that he will have his red pen ready as he is a bit of a writer himself. Go for it Harry!

Cover Up

I have been giving more thought to the book cover, in particular the back cover copy. I did go ahead and email the CBI Hump Pilots organization, and Jay replied back that he would be happy to read the book and write a comment for the back cover. That is exciting news as I believe it will lend credibility to the story. I have also emailed Harry Lagerstedt of the USS Anderson group to see if he will do the same for me. Since he was actually on the same voyage as my dad, I thought it would be fun to get a quote from him. The Anderson website is unavailable right now, so I hope that doesn't mean something bad has happened. Harry has been so sweet and helpful to me, and I know he is not a youngster. I probably need one more person to provide a quote, but I'm not sure who to approach. Perhaps someone from the Delhi veterans group in Cincinnati since that is where my dad was from.

After I get that all settled, I'll need the back cover designed. Katie did a great job on the front cover, and I can probably email her the information and she can do it from school. Worst case scenario I can hire Camp Pope to do the work for me.

This weekend I will be re-working the photographs and other documents in the book that don't meet the minimum DPI standards. Hopefully this will not be too big of an ordeal. This is when I really wish Katie was still at home to offer some guidance.