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...