DIY Formatting For POD, Pt. 2

Bottom Line It For Me, Baby Version (200 Words Or Less):
The series based on content from my how-to reference book on self-publishing, The IndieAuthor Guide, marches on. I can't just copy and paste everything from the manuscript, because the thing is 300pp long and heavily illustrated besides. But I will present topics from the book to the extent of detail possible in a blog post. Note that I'm not covering editing, designing your own book cover, creating your brand or publishing to the Kindle here, since those topics are already presented on my website in the form of free pdf guides. I’ll include links to previous posts in the series here in the Bottom Line It section. So far, I've posted topics on Publishing Options, Rights, Royalties and Advances, What's the Deal With ISBNs And Bookstores, Choosing A Publisher , Getting Organized and part one of DIY Formatting for POD. Today's post is part two of DIY Formatting For POD.

Go On An' Run Yo Mouth, I Ain't Got Nuthin' But Time Version (Can't Promise It Won't Go On Forever):
This is part two of the section on DIY Formatting for POD, so if you haven't already done so, you should begin by reading part one.

I attempted to create a blog entry to cover this section from the book, but it's very dependent on screen shot illustrations and the text just doesn't make sense without them. However, since I promised you an entry on Creating Custom Styles, I've saved that portion of the manuscript (with illustrations) here for you in pdf format.

Up Next: About Industry Standards

DIY Formatting for POD

Bottom Line It For Me, Baby Version (200 Words Or Less):
The series based on content from my how-to reference book on self-publishing, The IndieAuthor Guide, marches on. I can't just copy and paste everything from the manuscript, because the thing is 300pp long and heavily illustrated besides. But I will present topics from the book to the extent of detail possible in a blog post. Note that I'm not covering editing, designing your own book cover, creating your brand or publishing to the Kindle here, since those topics are already presented on my website in the form of free pdf guides. I’ll include links to previous posts in the series here in the Bottom Line It section. So far, I've posted topics on Publishing Options, Rights, Royalties and Advances, What's the Deal With ISBNs And Bookstores, Choosing A Publisher and Getting Organized. Today's post is part one of DIY Formatting For POD. The text is taken directly from The IndieAuthor Guide, but illustrations had to be left out because I can't get them properly aligned with my text on this blog.

Go On An' Run Yo Mouth, I Ain't Got Nuthin' But Time Version (Can't Promise It Won't Go On Forever):
If you’re using a vanity or subsidy publisher, you don’t need these formatting instructions because your publisher will either do the formatting for you or provide its own, very specific formatting requirements. This chapter explains how to format your book by yourself for print through a POD or eBook publisher. You may be familiar with standard formatting conventions for manuscripts to be submitted to an agent or editor, but formatting for POD is entirely different. The manuscript you submit for print must be formatted as print “galleys”: pages that look exactly how they should look in the published book. Therefore, it’s up to you to ensure everything from page dimensions to headers and footers are properly formatted before sending your manuscript off for print.

The keys to success with formatting a proof manuscript are minimalism and consistency. Use as few different formatting options as possible, and apply them consistently. Ideally, you should start with a pre-formatted document “shell” so that your pages will be properly formatted as you write, but you can also set up a shell, copy text from your existing manuscript and paste it into the shell as ‘unformatted text’ so that it will acquire the correct formatting from the shell.

In this post, I’ll be going through the steps needed to build and use a manuscript shell in Microsoft Word™ 2003. All the program features and options shown should be available in any word processing program from that year or later, and since MS Word™ has been the leading word processing program for decades most other word processors are designed to mimic Word’s interface and layout. If your word processor is substantially different, you’ll have to consult your program’s menus and help files to locate the features shown and learn how to use them.

Styles
Every modern word processing program has ‘Style’ functions built into it. Styles are a way of storing formatting options, such as font size, line spacing and so on, so you can easily apply all those same options to other sections of text with a single click. In Microsoft Word™, Styles are accessed under the Format menu.
When you open a new, blank document in your word processor, certain default Styles are already assigned to the document. If you just start typing into your document, the default Styles specify what font face and font size will be used, among other things. Clicking on the Styles and Formatting menu item in MS Word™ 2003 will display a list of all Styles currently available for use in the document.

Mousing over a Style in the list pops up a little box displaying all the formatting options being used in that Style. For example, the "Normal" Style is defined as Times New Roman, 12 point text, using English language conventions (i.e., no umlauts or Chinese characters will be needed), with text left-aligned, lines single-spaced, and widow/orphan control (explained in The IndieAuthor Guide to Editing) turned on. Style names are displayed with their respective formatting options applied, to give you a preview of how your text will look when each Style is used. For example, the Heading Style names are all displayed in boldface because each of those Styles applies boldface to text.

Three Heading Styles are available in the default list; Headings are formatted differently from ordinary text, and are intended for use as chapter and section headings in a document’s Table of Contents. In Word™, when you insert a Table of Contents (instructions to be provided later in this series) the program locates every piece of text with a Heading Style applied to it and includes that text in the Table of Contents. The Clear Formatting command appears above the listed Styles. Using Styles in Word™ is simple: just highlight the text you want formatted, then click the Style containing the formatting options you want. However, it’s obvious that this only works if there’s an applicable Style containing all your desired formatting options in the list.

People who don’t know how to use Styles apply formatting changes to the text in their documents “on the fly,” meaning as they go, by selecting the text they want to change and applying their desired formatting manually through use of the toolbar (i.e., 'bold' and 'italics' buttons) or formatting menu. Each time the user does this, Word™ stores the chosen formatting options as a new Style and adds that Style to the list. The newly-created Style is named in the list like this:
[name of Style before changes] + [list of changes applied, in order applied]

For example, if you select text formatted as the default, Normal Style and apply boldface and italics to it using toolbar buttons, the new Style will be named:
Normal + bold + italics

If you applied the italics first, then the boldface, the new Style would be named:
Normal + italics + bold

As you can imagine, it’s easy to quickly build up a huge number of differently-named Styles, many of which are duplicates in terms of the formatting changes they apply. The on-the-fly approach is fine for personal documents, letters, notes to yourself and the like, but not for a word processing file to be submitted to a POD publisher. This is because the publisher must convert word processing files into a format that’s readable by their printing programs and equipment.

You probably know that some computer programs place a limit on how many characters you can use for a filename; similarly, POD publishers’ conversion tools have internal limits on how many characters of a Style name they can read. If a given document has four different Styles that all begin with “Normal + bold + italics,” each of which goes on to set different options for line spacing, indenting, font face or anything else, the publisher’s file converter may not ‘read’ beyond “italics” in the Style names. It will assume that all four Styles are the same, ignore the latter three ‘duplicates’ and apply only the first instance of “Normal + bold + italics” to all the text that was originally formatted using four different Styles. It will still apply all the formatting options specified by that first Style, it won’t stop at “italics,” but any formatting changes applied by the latter three Styles will be lost and you’ll get an unpleasant surprise in the proof copy.

It’s far better to determine all the different formatting required in your manuscript ahead of time and create differently-named Styles for each. Note that if you only intend to publish in eBook formats other than pdf (i.e., prc, pdb, lrf, html, Kindle), you should keep the number of Styles you use to a minimum and keep them very simple, because when you’re done formatting you will have to convert your finished document into the desired format(s) and all but the most basic formatting options will be lost.

What About PDF Files?
Some POD publishers accept pdf file submissions in addition to, or instead of, word processing files (i.e., .doc, .txt. .rtf, etc.). In that case, no file conversion is needed at the publisher’s end. Their processing programs and equipment print the pdf file exactly as-is, so you can feel confident your published book will look exactly like the pdf file you submitted. However, turning a word processing file into a pdf is also a file conversion process. A pdf file is essentially a series of images; it’s as if the pdf maker program takes a photograph of each page in the source document and assembles all those pictures into a single file. The pdf file looks just like the word processing source file, but you can’t edit it with a word processor. The pdf file is also a lot smaller than the source file in terms of bytes, because it doesn’t contain all the behind-the-scenes formatting details and instructions that were present in the source file.

There are many pdf maker programs, and some of them are available online as a free download. Do an internet search on “pdf maker” + free to find them. Open Office™, a free, open-source alternative to Microsoft Office™, includes pdf maker functionality right inside all its programs. The granddaddy of them all is Adobe Acrobat™, the first pdf maker invented. Adobe™ distributes its Acrobat Reader™ software free of charge, but that program can only read pdf files. The full Acrobat™ program is needed to create pdf files. Every pdf maker program creates pdf files, but they don’t all use the same file conversion process. Some don’t take source file Styles into account, but those that include a feature enabling the user to convert pdf files back into word processing files might. Adobe Acrobat’s™ conversion engine generally disregards Styles, but it sometimes falters with heavily-formatted documents due to the large amount of data in the file. This isn’t necessarily a problem with the Acrobat™ program itself, but with the demands it makes on your computer’s processing power. Formatting your word processing document through the use of a small number of consistently-applied Styles keeps file size to a minimum.

Up Next: DIY Formatting For POD Pt. 2, Creating Custom Styles

Enough With The Editorializing, Tell Me How To Publish & Sell My Book Already!

Bottom Line It For Me, Baby Version (200 Words Or Less):

I've been fielding a lot of email questions about the nuts-and-bolts aspects of self-publishing lately. I have written a whole book on the subject, The IndieAuthor Guide, but it would be pretty obnoxious of me to answer each query by saying, "Buy my book and flip to page such-and-such," so I do my best to provide answers when I have them. Still, rather than answering the same questions over and over again in private messages which don't benefit the self-publishing community at large, I've decided to blog a series based on content from my book. I can't just copy and paste everything from the manuscript, because the thing is 300pp long and heavily illustrated besides. But I will present topics from the book to the extent of detail possible in a blog post. Note that I'm not covering editing, designing your own book cover, creating your brand or publishing to the Kindle here, since those topics are already presented on my website in the form of free pdf guides. First up in the series: Publishing Options.



Go On An Run Yo Mouth, I Ain't Got Nuthin' But Time Version (Can't Promise It Won't Go On Forever):

Vanity, Subsidy, POD, Oh My!
The terms “self-publishing”, “subsidy publishing”, “vanity publishing” and “print-on-demand” are often used interchangeably when people speak of self-publishing, but these terms aren’t synonymous. Rather, they describe different self-publishing options or processes.

Self-Publishing
In common usage, “self-publishing” has become a catch-all term. People using it may be talking about subsidy publishing, vanity publishing or print-on-demand (POD), but ironically, they’re rarely talking about true self-publishing. In the strictest sense, self-publishing is exactly what it sounds like: doing your own publishing. This is also known as “desktop publishing,” since it’s generally done with an ordinary computer, or ‘desktop’ computer. Typical self-publishing projects include club or family newsletters, brochures, booklets and research papers, any of which can be created using a standard word processor. There are also dedicated desktop publishing computer programs that enable the user to create more sophisticated and lengthier publications.

Either way, desktop publishing isn’t a workable solution for book manuscripts because binding options are severely limited. Office supply stores and print shops offer several types of binding, and can generally bind up to 300 pages. However, all their binding options are more fitting for reports or business documents than books. The pages may be hole-punched and placed between two report covers, or drilled for comb- or spiral-binding. The finished product will have a binding, but even if you customize the report covers with artwork and a book title, it won’t look like a book. You won’t be able to duplicate the look of a “real” book, which has pages glued or sewn into a wrap-around cover at the spine. Furthermore, having manuscripts bound individually is very expensive.

Vanity Publishing
Vanity publishing is the process whereby an author pays a publishing service to format and publish a minimum number of copies of his book. The publisher usually offers related services on a fee basis, from editing to cover art design and even promotion. The author is essentially paying to have his book printed, and so long as he’s willing to pay the required fee, the publisher will not turn him away. It is because of this fact that as a group, books from vanity publishers are presumed to be of poor quality.

This bias is the primary downside to vanity publishing, but expense comes in at a close second. An author who chooses to go with a vanity publisher must pay all production costs for a minimum ‘print run’ of his book, generally at least 200 copies. Cost per book goes down as quantity goes up, but in most cases the author can expect to pay anywhere from US$5 - $10 per copy for a trade paperback edition and between US$8 - $16 for a hardcover. Multiply those figures by 200, then add hundreds more dollars in flat fees for project setup, optional ISBN assignment, proof corrections, project management and delivery. Add another thousand or two if the author pays for related services.

The third downside to vanity publishing is distribution, or lack thereof. When the print run is finished, all the books are delivered to the author and it’s up to him to store them, sell them, give them away, or otherwise dispose of them. With few exceptions, brick-and-mortar bookstores won’t stock any type of self-published book. They’re particularly leery of books from vanity publishers, all of whose names are widely known in the publishing and bookselling industries.

More recently, vanity publishers have begun addressing the distribution problem by setting up online bookstores to stock their clients’ work, but the sites don’t get much traffic because they only stock the vanity publisher’s books, and again, most people assume those books aren’t very good. Enterprising authors can turn a profit selling their books themselves, on their own website, at community fairs, through direct mail and so on. Occasionally one will even do well enough to attract the attention of a mainstream publisher, but this is very rare.

Lastly, even though vanity publishers are only providing services for a fee, they act like conventional publishers when it comes to contracts and rights. As part of the publishing arrangement, the author will be required to sign a contract granting certain, exclusive rights to the publisher. The contract may stipulate that the author cannot publish the same work in the same format, or any other format, for a set period of years. In this way, the publisher ensures the author must go back to the same publisher to order additional print runs if the book is successful enough to sell out its first print run. The contract will also specify whether or not the author can buy his way out of the contract before the term is up, and if so, what it will cost. This stipulation lines the vanity publisher’s pockets in the event a mainstream publisher wants to publish the book.

Subsidy Publishing
Subsidy publishing is virtually identical to vanity publishing, except that subsidy publishers will not publish every manuscript submitted to them. Instead, they accept submissions (sometimes for a fee) and choose the manuscripts they wish to publish. Subsidy publishers sprang up as a legitimate self-publication alternative to vanity publishing. Subsidy publishers aren’t all created equal, however. Some are hardly more discerning than vanity publishers, while others are so selective as to rival mainstream publishers.

The worst subsidy publishers are ripoff artists par excellence, assuring every prospective client her manuscript is a diamond in the rough that is practically guaranteed to become a bestseller if she will only pay for professional editing, artwork, promotion, and other services—all of which just happen to be offered by the publisher or a company referred from the publisher. The best subsidy publishers truly strive to distinguish themselves by putting out quality books and dealing fairly with authors, but even in that case the author must contend with all the same downsides as she would face with a vanity publisher. She must pay for a minimum print run and related services, she must sign over at least some of her publication rights in a contract, and she faces all the same distribution challenges as a vanity-published author.

Print On Demand
While vanity or subsidy publishing is fine for a book with a built-in customer base, such as a textbook published by a college professor for use in his class, Print On Demand (POD) is the best way to go for an author who intends to sell her book to the general public. As with vanity publishing, an author who chooses POD is essentially paying for printing services. There is no selection process on the part of the publisher. Also as with vanity and subsidy publishers, POD companies may offer related services for a fee, and the published books aren’t likely to be carried by brick-and-mortar stores. That’s where the similarities end, however.

There is no minimum print run to order and pay for with POD because the publisher stores POD books in digital format. Individual copies of the book are printed and bound by automated systems “on demand”, meaning each time an order for the book is received. The author doesn’t pay to have on-demand copies produced. Instead, the printer keeps a share of the book’s price to cover its production costs and pays the remainder to the author as a royalty.

POD publishers may offer services related to publishing for a fee, but they are also prepared to accept print-ready files from authors. This is where the author can save thousands of dollars, by doing as many of those related tasks as he can for himself instead of paying for services. Some POD publishers don’t even charge set-up fees. In that case, the only expense that must be shouldered by the author is the cost of proof copies, which must be printed in order for the author to review the book before approving it for publication.

With a POD publisher, the author retains all rights to his work. If there’s any contract at all, its terms are limited to the details of fees, royalty payment, services provided and the responsibilities of each party. If your publisher requires you to order a minimum print run or sign over any of your publication rights, it’s a subsidy or vanity publisher. Most POD publishers have distribution relationships with major, online booksellers such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble, through which the bookseller agrees to sell the POD publisher’s books on its website. Some POD publishers only offer this as an optional service, and only for a fee. Another service some POD publishers offer, always for a fee, is ‘guaranteed returns’, whereby brick-and-mortar stores are allowed to return any unsold copies of POD books to the publisher. This is supposed to encourage brick-and-mortar stores to carry POD books, since many cite ‘un-returnability’ as a reason not to carry them, but in reality the centralized purchasing departments and computerized inventory systems of chain bookstores present obstacles at least equal to concerns about money lost on unsold copies. My previous blog post, Big Chain Bookstore Death Watch, provides rationale enough not to invest too heavily in courting big chain bookstores.

All POD publishers can print paperback books in various, standard sizes, both in black and white and full color, but only some of them can print books in hardcover editions. When the hardcover option is available, the production cost for it is much higher than that charged for paperbacks. Since an author who goes the POD route can still opt to pay for certain related services as desired, vanity and subsidy publishers have no advantages to offer the typical indie author. Why pay stiff fees upfront, warehouse your books, and sign away your publication rights if you don’t have to? POD book production is also 'greener', in that no books are printed until they're bought and paid for by actual customers. There are no crates of returns going back to the publisher, no overstock being marked down or remaindered, no unsold copies headed for the dumpster.

Next Time: Rights, Royalties and Advances

The IndieAuthor Guide Is On Sale Now!

Bottom Line It For Me, Baby Version (200 words or less):

I received my proof copy of The IndieAuthor Guide yesterday and approved it today, getting it listed for sale at the CreateSpace store just under the wire for publicity from Book Expo America over this weekend. And I'm offering my blog and website readers who buy the book from CreateSpace between now and the end of June a 20% discount code to use during checkout: 25HKCF3B . After all, if we were rich we wouldn't have to go all DIY and wouldn't need the book in the first place, right?

Don't think I'm advising anyone to rush a proof into release with only a cursory review, however. The book received a very careful, line-by-line copyedit before I submitted it to the printer to order a proof. I'd solicited for a 'fresh eyes' review of the ms, to check for major formatting errors only, but the wonderful author who took on the task did an incredibly thorough job anyway. I'd name her here, but don't want her to be buried in an avalanche of email requests for the same favor. She knows who she is, and knows she has my utmost gratitude. =')

(No Run Yo' Mouth version again...need to get hopping on promotion for this new release)

Turning A Release Date Frown Upside Down

Bottom Line It For Me, Baby Version (200 words or less):

I've been working very hard to get my new book, The IndieAuthor Guide, into print in time to reap the benefit of BookExpo America publicity over the last weekend in May. Due to publisher delays (apparently they’re busier than last time I worked with them, because the time it takes to get a proof copy has doubled), my genius plan to have the book on my site and ready to buy ahead of BookExpo was dashed. I knew some kind of 'come back in a week or two, three at the latest, because by then I swear my new book will be available' message wouldn’t cut the mustard. Getting ‘em to your site is hard enough; if they don’t find what they want on that first visit, good luck getting ‘em to come back.

Behold, my new genius plan: I put a ‘coming soon’ message on my website, along with the offer of a 20% discount code for anyone who emails me asking to be notified when the book is released. This strategy may net me more sales than if I had gotten the book out on time, and I'll have some idea of demand for it early on.

(once again, no Run Yo' Mouth version...too exhausted to write!)

Toward An Indie Author Movement

Bottom Line It For Me, Baby Version (200 Words Or Less):
Big publishers are run like movie studios, only interested in prestige titles, potential blockbusters and genre fare that earns predictably. When quality, affordable DIY tools became available, aspiring musicians and filmmakers jumped at the chance to go indie. Why haven’t aspiring authors likewise turned to ebook and POD technologies? Conventional publishing industry wisdom states ebooks and POD are merely new forms of vanity publishing for inferior manuscripts, but do readers share that opinion? I intend to find out. I'm releasing two of my novels exclusively for POD and Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader using only Amazon technologies, though not in a bid to attract publisher attention, as many others have done before me. I intend to bypass publishers and brick-and-mortar stores entirely, and remain independent. The experiment is thus far succeeding, as my Kindle-edition novels Snow Ball and Adelaide Einstein are selling well and garnering good reviews. Both will be released as Amazon POD trade paperbacks in March. If sales and acceptance continue, mine will be the first totally indie author success story.

Go On An' Run Yo Mouth, I Got Nuthin' But Time Version (can't promise it won't go on forever):
I'm an agented novelist who's been struggling against the 'gatekeeper' system employed by the publishing establishment to locate new talent. Books are a matter of taste. I don't enjoy every bestseller out there, and neither do you. Yet if my agent, the publishing house editor, or the publishing house marketing department rep simply isn't "passionate" enough about a given manuscript, any one of them can put the kibosh on its further progress for the time being.

Big publishers are run like movie studios, only interested in prestige titles, potential blockbusters and genre fare that earns predictably. When quality, affordable DIY tools became available, aspiring musicians and filmmakers jumped at the chance to go indie. Why haven’t aspiring authors likewise turned to ebook and Print On Demand technologies?

Conventional publishing industry wisdom states ebooks and POD are merely new forms of vanity publishing for inferior manuscripts, and that brick-and-mortar bookstore presence (which is denied to virtually all POD books) is a prerequisite to a successful career in authorship. These suppositions are widely accepted as gospel among aspiring writers, largely due to a bizarre sort of Stockholm Syndrome fostered by the publishing industry: aspiring writers have come to not only accept the industry establishment's absolute control over their future careers, they've come to believe there's inherent value in that control and will even defend it.

Not long ago I would've been right there with them, because until recently the publishing establishment had a complete monopoly on publishing. There was simply no way to get your book to market other than via established publishers with established supply chains. Along came vanity presses, but they were quickly discredited and dismissed, and far too expensive for a typical aspiring writer to afford besides. Now, at last, ebook, POD, and online viral marketing technologies have leveled the playing field such that anyone with a modest budget, some basic computer skills, a little time and a lot of passion can duplicate or approximate almost every service offered by a big publishing house. I say almost because the establishment still has a stranglehold on that one, last piece: supply chain and distribution to brick-and-mortar bookstores.

However, with Amazon the #2 bookseller in North America and perhaps the largest international bookseller, I believe we've reached a tipping point. Brick-and-mortar bookstores may have become marginalized to an extent where bookstore presence is no longer a required piece of the writing success puzzle. If I'm right about that, then the publishing establishment truly has nothing to offer me.

They reserve their promotion and marketing budgets for their prestige clients, bestselling author clients, and celebrity clients. Unless you come with a built-in 'angle', you're on your own to publicize your work whether you self-pub or not. They can't compete on the money front; author royalties on self-pub titles tend to run about three times the standard percentages offered by major publishers. And as for the 'prestige' factor, it's irrelevant to readers. No reader gets pulled in by jacket copy or a free excerpt, then rejects the book after a glance at the publisher details, exlaiming in horror, "Why, this book was published by Joe Bob's Falafel Hut, Bait Shop and Press, not a legitimate publisher at all!"

So, I'm putting my authorial money where my mouth is in an attempt to blaze a trail for truly indie authors. I've released two of my novels exclusively for POD and Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader using only Amazon technologies, though not in a bid to attract publisher attention, as many others have done before me. I am bypassing publishers and brick-and-mortar stores entirely, attempting to reach the same level of sales and success as a typical mid-list author through online sales of ebook and POD editions only.

I've rambled on quite long enough for one post, but stay tuned to this bat-station for future posts with details on what I'm doing, how I'm doing it, and how it's going. For now, you can check out my Kindle-edition novels: Adelaide Einstein and Snow Ball. Support the indie author movement!