Researching House History Presentation

Today was my presentation at The Heights on how to research the history of a home. I arrived an hour early because I have a phobia that the electronic equipment will not work and I'll be stuck with a poor presentation. While some talks can be handled with no visual aids, this particular one would be very difficult to do without my slides. The first words out of the tech guy's mouth were that he could not find the cord to connect their projector to my laptop. Words to warm every presenter's heart. He ended up finding a different projector and we went to work connecting the two machines. I normally work with a Mac, but most facilities do not own the cord to connect a Mac to their projector, so I brought Jim's PC laptop along. We finally got the two machines to talk to each other, but the full slide would not show up on the big screen even though it was full screen on the PC. While the situation was not ideal, I could make do with it if I had to in a pinch. Fortunately someone in the audience suggested that I press Control, F7. Sure enough, that did the trick! And I was ready to go 10 minutes early.

There were only about 10 people in the audience, which was a little disappointing. As Jim pointed out, it takes as much work to prepare for an audience of 10 as an audience of 1,000. (Well, except for running all the handouts!) But those who did attend were very engaged and had a few suggestions on resources they had used in researching their homes that I had not even considered. Plus I sold 3 copies of my book, and considering that 2 of the people in the room already had it that is not too bad. I am hoping that I can do more of these presentations because I really enjoyed it.

As an update to the CreateSpace debate, both the books I processed through CS are now live and available on Amazon. Woo, hoo!

CreateSpace Part Four

After much thought and input from others I have decided to go ahead and place From Buckeye to G.I. and Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed(room)? on Amazon through CreateSpace. If you do not have the original print books in front of you, I don't believe you will think anything of the ink intensity that is used by CreateSpace. I approved the book proofs and they immediately became available on the CreateSpace e-commerce site. It will take 7-10 business days for them to appear on the Amazon website. It will be interesting to see if I get any sales on Amazon.

On Saturday I will be doing a presentation on how to research the history of a home in conjunction with the City of Richmond Heights. The city is celebrating its centennial in 2013, and they have a year's worth of activities lined up. I am honored to be part of the festivities, and am hopeful we will have a good turnout. If I sell some books at the event, that would be great as well.

CreateSpace Part Three

From Buckeye to G.I. cover

On Saturday I received the proof of From Buckeye to G.I. from CreateSpace. The first thing I noticed was the color and trim of the cover. The color was a little lighter than the original book, but I actually like it better. And they managed to trim the cover so that the border is equal around all four sides - something that Lightning Source seemed unable to accomplish. So far, so good. Then I opened up the book and found the pictures, illustrations and even the text of the book to be considerably lighter than they appear in the original book. I already have a challenge with the photos and illustrations due to the fact that the scanned documents were over 50 years old. I don't need the printing to add to the problem.

I contacted CreateSpace on Sunday to inquire about the issue. Today I received a response that basically said there is nothing they can change, and perhaps I need to rescan all my documents to a higher resolution and resubmit the book. Since there are 144 of them in the book, there is no way I am doing what they suggest. They were all originally scanned at 300 dpi, which is acceptable for printing. Funny how Lightning Source didn't seem to have any problems with them.

So the question is, am I being too picky about this? Is it sort of like the television sets at Best Buy, where you can definitely tell the difference in resolution when you see them all side by side but when you get yours home it looks perfectly fine? I think I will have some other people take a look at the book to get some impartial feedback.

CreateSpace Part Two

After I wrote the last post I received an email from CreateSpace indicating that there was a problem with my book cover. Here is what they said:

The cover contains transparency which is flattened during our processing and may result in a slight change in appearance.
The cover contains images that are less than 200 DPI which may appear blurry or pixelated when printed. For more information on image resolution, please visit: https://www.createspace.com/Help/Index.jsp?orgId=00D300000001Sh9&id=50170000000Irmr
The cover contained spine text that has been removed as we cannot accommodate the inclusion of spine text for books with less than 101 pages as the text will likely wrap to the front or back cover. We recommend you review a physical proof of your book to ensure you are satisfied with the adjustments made. Otherwise, you may remove the spine text on your original file and resubmit it for publishing.

Because I had worked with a professional book designer on both the interior and cover designs for my book, I was pretty surprised that they said an image on the cover was less than 200 DPI. And I was a bit concerned that they had removed the text from the book spine, mostly because I was worried about what it would look like. Did they leave the graphic (for lack of a better word) that was under the text? Or did they replace the spine with a solid color? I shot off an email to CreateSpace regarding the spine, and I had a response in less than 24 hours. Essentially they leave the spine just like you sent it to them; they simply remove the text. With that reassurance, I ordered a proof yesterday. (You can view on online proof at no charge right away, but that doesn't give you any idea about the actual printing quality.) Last evening I received an email that the proof had been mailed to me. The cost of seeing a print proof was $2.15 plus $3.59 for shipping. The local printer who did my first run of books charged me $35 for set-up and a proof, and the unit price per book was higher as well.

From Buckeye to G.I. book cover

While I was on a roll with CreateSpace I decided to go ahead and submit From Buckeye to G.I. LeRoy C. Kubler The War Years, 1942-1945. Originally I went through Lightning Source for this book because they could print the books out as they were ordered, and I wouldn't need to keep a bunch of books at my house. Also they have an expanded distribution system and can supply books to Amazon, among other places. However Amazon doesn't work that well with Lightning Source (or other competitors), and in my case the book always shows a 1 to 2 week shipping date. In this day and age of immediate gratification, most people will just move on to the next book rather than wait.

I received a couple of minor error messages on formatting (shame on you, my original book designer who set it up this way), but with Adobe Acrobat Pro I was able to correct them myself. Then I resubmitted the PDF and got an approval back from CreateSpace. I ordered a proof copy, which was the same price as my other book, and it was put in the mail to me today. In summary, I would say that my experience with CreateSpace has been quite favorable so far. But let's see what the proofs look like - as they say, the proof is in the pudding. Or perhaps I should say the pudding is in the proof?

Working with CreateSpace

In a previous post I talked about the fact that Amazon does not always play nicely with others in the publishing sandbox. Take my book Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed(room)? Researching a St. Louis County, Missouri Home as an example. I published this book in 2009, using a local printer in St. Louis. While Amazon.com is aware that the book exists, it shows up as follows:

Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed(room)? Amazon page

The page indicates that two copies of the book are available from third-party sellers for $99.35 each! And they are used copies at that!

If you want to sell books on Amazon, there are ways to get around this issue. You can set up your own store on Amazon to sell the books, or you can go through their Advantage program and have them sell and ship the books for you. There are pros and cons to both of these options, which you can read about here. Since I don't want to get involved in shipping books, either directly to the buyer or to Amazon itself, I elected to go through their CreateSpace option to get Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed(room)? available on Amazon. In this scenario you set up a CreateSpace account, upload your book and its cover, and the books are printed and shipped by Amazon as they are ordered. There are no fees involved for creating an account or setting up your title unless you opt to use any of their services.

Because I had already printed my book in the past, I had PDFs of both the cover design and the interior of the book readily available. It was extremely easy to walk through the steps provided on the CreateSpace website to upload the book and the cover. Their system advised me of two possible problems with my book's interior (both involving low photo resolution) and gave me the option to fix those before continuing. At this point the ball is in their court as I await their review. Following approval, they will send me a printed copy of the book for my review. Assuming it looks good, the book will go live on their website. I am not anticipating huge sales due to the narrow scope of the book, but it is nice to have an alternative place for people to be able to buy the book.

The most interesting thing about the whole process this morning? When I completed the uploading I was immediately taken to a page to set the book up on Kindle Direct Publishing as an ebook. Another great marketing strategy by Amazon! Because I have already published the ebook Keys to Unlocking House History, I probably will not set Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed(room)? up as an ebook as well. But it certainly seems like it would be simple to accomplish.

For now I wait to see what the folks at CreateSpace come back with - hopefully I won't be eating my words about how easy this has been!

To CreateSpace or Not to CreateSpace - That is the Question

Just as a frame of reference, my first book Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed(room)? Researching a St. Louis County, Missouri Home was printed here in St. Louis and is available on my website and in local bookstores and gift shops. From Buckeye to G.I. LeRoy C. Kubler The War Years, 1942-1945 was uploaded to Lightning Source, which then prints the books as they are ordered and also distributes the books through Ingram. My ebook Keys to Unlocking House History was produced through Smashwords, but because Amazon does not play well with others I also uploaded it through Kindle Direct Publishing to make sure that it could be sold on the Amazon website. While Amazon does show all three of my books if you enter my name in their search engine, my house research book is essentially unavailable and my WWII book says that it will ship in one to three weeks. In this age of instant gratification, a delay in shipping equates to a lack of sales.

I have been thinking about how to resolve these issues. In doing research on the Lightning Source versus CreateSpace issue, it appears that I can go ahead and upload the PDF of From Buckeye to G.I. to CreateSpace and have it sell from there in addition to Lightning Source. There are trade offs with both companies, but it seems prudent to have the book in both locations. I guess the biggest issue will be whether the original PDF, which was formatted by the designer for Lightning Source, is also acceptable to CreateSpace. I won't know until I upload it. I am keeping my fingers crossed on that one as I do not wish to go back to the designer I used.

I have never been overly concerned that Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed(room)? is not for sale on Amazon. Because my audience is limited to the St. Louis area, it didn't seem to be that big of a deal. But I am rethinking that stance. For now I think I will start with From Buckeye to G.I on CreateSpace and see where that takes me.

Amazon - Author Friend or Foe?

There has been a lot written lately about the way that Amazon is treating authors, particularly those who have self-published their books. I am fond of saying that Amazon does not play nicely with others in the publishing sandbox. The pricing structure is skewed towards Amazon even if you go through CreateSpace, which is owned by Amazon. And if authors don't go through CreateSpace they may find themselves in the position, as I did, of Amazon listing their book with a 5-8 week delivery date. In our world of instant gratification, people are not going to order a book with that kind of delivery attached to it. Lynn Serafinn wrote an excellent blog post on this subject, and you can find it here.

I had just finished reading Serafinn's post when a beeping noise alerted me to a new email in my inbox. Coincidentally it was from Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), which is Amazon's vehicle for getting an author's ebook ready for sale on the Kindle. My ebook Keys to Unlocking House History was first formatted for ebook readers through smashwords.com, but I also set up an account with KDP to ensure that the ebook would be available on Amazon. Consequently I receive emails from KDP, and this one was notifying me of a new option called KDP Select. Basically the new service has to do with the Kindle Owners' Lending Library. If you haven't heard of the Lending Library yet, Amazon Prime members can borrow at no charge one ebook book per month with no due dates. To date the books had been limited to those from traditional publishers.

But now Amazon is reaching out to self-published authors. This is hardly surprising since most new ebooks are being produced by self-publishers. (And perhaps because the 6 major book publishing companies have refused to have their books available in the Lending Library.) To entice authors Amazon has set up a fund of $500,000 for December and at least $6 million in total for 2012 that will be shared by authors who enroll their books in the Select program. Here is how the email describes the calculation of payments:

Your share of the monthly fund is based on your enrolled titles' share of the total number of borrows across all participating KDP titles in the Kindle Owners' Lending Library.  For example, if total borrows of all participating KDP titles are 100,000 in December and your book was borrowed 1,500 times, you will earn $7,500 in additional royalties from KDP Select in December.  Enrolled titles will remain available for sale to any customer in the Kindle Store and you will continue to earn your regular royalties on those sales.

Now here is the catch - you must make your title exclusive to the Kindle Store for at least 90 days. Traditional publishers who are participating in the Lending Library are not required to make their titles exclusive to Amazon, but self-published authors must in order to be in this program. Amazon's email to me stressed that I will have access to a new set of promotional tools, reach a broader audience and be given a new way to earn royalties. And here is the kicker - KDP's Terms and Conditions (which can change at any time at their discretion, and did change on December 8, 2011) state that all digital books are automatically included in the Kindle Book Lending program. So if you have a KDP book you are in the Lending Library whether you want to be or not. But the only way you will be paid for having your book there is if you remove it for sale from all other markets, including your own web site. Good deal or not?

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.