Isn't that a nice picture? That is me, checking out the test copy of the book I wrote. Don't worry. This article is not going to be a self indulgent rant about what a brilliant literary genius I am. This is not even going to be another hidden promo for 'Cecilia's World', which you can now purchase by clicking here. That is not the kind of person I am.
Actually, in this article I would like to share my experiences as a debuting novelist. I'd like to share the euphoria and the hardships of writing. I want to offer some tips and tricks to help you if you decide to walk the same path. That, plus, I want to remind myself of how I can do better next time. After all, don't we all strive to improve ourselves?
Actually, in this article I would like to share my experiences as a debuting novelist. I'd like to share the euphoria and the hardships of writing. I want to offer some tips and tricks to help you if you decide to walk the same path. That, plus, I want to remind myself of how I can do better next time. After all, don't we all strive to improve ourselves?
1. If it's easy, you're doing it wrong
A bunch of months ago, I decided that it was time to write that damn book I have been thinking about for forty years. So I started writing and for months I dwelled in an imaginary world, filled with music and humor. Then, one day, my wife said, "Serge, there is something wrong. In this chapter, the father is a benign man but a few chapters further, he's an absolute cunt of a man." Those are not her exact words by the way. But she was right, I had completely changed the man's character. Fuck, shit, ass. Luckily, the problem was solved quickly by using a simple literary trick: creativity.
It is a good thing to have someone to support you and to correct these errors. Being a writer, you will quickly get caught up in your own story. You want to work towards finishing the book, without having to read large parts again and again. But, tiny things can unexpectedly alter your story, like the music you're playing or a movie you watched between writing sessions. An immediate test reader can solve that problem before it becomes a big one. That person can also correct typos and other spelling errors. My wife often does that in real time when I'm engaged in a writing session. Allow at least one person to do that from time to time, even if it slows down the writing process. Not only will you feel better because most of the errors are gone, but it will also improve your writing skills. In time, you will make less mistakes and thus become a better writer.
Because, believe me, unless you're writing a haiku book for infants, typos and errors will occur. I mean, I just misspelled the word 'errors' while writing this paragraph. Google told me that it was wrong, which is a good thing. Yet, don't just trust on Google to fix all your errors. You need a human for this job and you need to be thankful for that. After all, that person dramatically improved your chances of delivering a best seller.
Because, believe me, unless you're writing a haiku book for infants, typos and errors will occur. I mean, I just misspelled the word 'errors' while writing this paragraph. Google told me that it was wrong, which is a good thing. Yet, don't just trust on Google to fix all your errors. You need a human for this job and you need to be thankful for that. After all, that person dramatically improved your chances of delivering a best seller.
2. Dare to dream...
Interview yourself as if Conan O'Brien would interview you. Or imagine yourself at an autograph session at a massive book event. Or, if you want, imagine yourself in the gutter, homeless and undiscovered until the coroner finds a copy of your masterpiece in your pocket, reads it and publishes it, eventually providing your long lost family with plenty of royalties from the movies and merchandising. After all, many geniuses have been discovered after their death, no?
No, I'm not telling you to write a book and go lay in the gutter and wait for the sweet embrace of death. That would be silly. I'm just saying that you should dare to dream. At night, or whenever you have the time, do that little interview or read that imaginary book review. It will send some dopamine to your brains which makes you feel good. While writing 'Cecilia's World' I did that from time to time and it was fun. In one of those fantasising sessions I even got to meet Neil deGrasse Tyson. Even in my mind, he wouldn't shut up, but that's ok. He doesn't know.
No, I'm not telling you to write a book and go lay in the gutter and wait for the sweet embrace of death. That would be silly. I'm just saying that you should dare to dream. At night, or whenever you have the time, do that little interview or read that imaginary book review. It will send some dopamine to your brains which makes you feel good. While writing 'Cecilia's World' I did that from time to time and it was fun. In one of those fantasising sessions I even got to meet Neil deGrasse Tyson. Even in my mind, he wouldn't shut up, but that's ok. He doesn't know.
3. ...and prepare to be disappointed
Just like this murderous demon in squirrel uniform, tiny things will fuck you up. No, for real. After checking and approving the test version, we still found some typos and errors. If you're going into this business on your own, or even with the help of some test reading volunteers, these things will happen. Only if you work with a professional publishing company, you can expect perfection. That is why you'll get only 30% of the profit your book makes. Then again, 30% with a pro could become more than the 85% if you go independent. They simply have the better tools, the better contacts and the bigger events.
About those tiny errors: it's a lot harder to discover them on screen than on paper. We'll get them out by the time we need to do a reprint, if we need to do a reprint. It was a bit disappointing but I guess that is the price you have to pay for independence. Besides, only errors give you the opportunity to learn.
About those tiny errors: it's a lot harder to discover them on screen than on paper. We'll get them out by the time we need to do a reprint, if we need to do a reprint. It was a bit disappointing but I guess that is the price you have to pay for independence. Besides, only errors give you the opportunity to learn.
4. Technically, it's almost rocket science.
Here is a picture of a calm evening sky. It's here because you will want to watch it from time to time while reading the following text. What comes next can be utterly confusing and quite possibly it won't even help because it'll just lead you to reading even more confusing stuff. The technicality of publishing a book is brain mangling, to say the least. I'll try to sum up some pros and cons, a few things that I have learned while publishing 'Cecilia's World' but from there you're on your own.
a. A book is not an ebook
When 'Cecilia's World' was finished, I thought I could now quickly transfer the whole thing into both a book and an ebook. I had decided beforehand that the physical copies would come in an A5 format so I had based all of my writing on that. For the printed version, that worked perfectly, although there are a few things. For starters, you'll probably have to deliver the whole thing to the printers as a PDF. They will not do anything, not check, not correct, nothing. They'll only print your book. Be sure to ask for a test print. In my case, I did get some advice on the cover but that's mostly because the rest was ok. Why? We followed a few guidelines which we found on the internet:
-Black is not always black. In computer code, there are different blacks with some of them being printed as dark grey. Be sure to have maximum saturation on your text.
-Also be sure to make outlines. This way the result will be the same as on your computer screen.
-Do not add the cover to the PDF. You'll have to make a separate PDF for the cover.
-If you want a white sheet in between chapters, you'll have to add a blank page. As I mentioned before, the printers will not do that automatically.
-The cover has to be in a high resolution, otherwise it will come out blurry.
-Watch out for automatic page numbers. In 'Cecilia's World' the foreword is on page 2 and the first chapter on page 3. We did not find this tip on the internet.
-Do NOT use enters for page breaks. That is a hefty no-no. Your software has a function for that.
In all, it's best to practice a bit with your text editing software. I have used Openoffice and a trial version of Adobe Illustrator. Others will use Word or even others. You'll need to become familiar with the program you use. Smashwords, the platform where the digital version 'Cecilia's World' is published on, has an excellent Style Guide that has helped me a lot (click here).
Ebooks work very differently than books. In a paper version, you could actually work with enters instead of page breaks but if you do that with an ebook, the whole thing will look weird. Furthermore, ereader users can change the font and the text height, so they won't always look the same. Therefore, page breaks, remember those words.
Perhaps this should have been the very first tip on this whole article, but start with a completely blank page. Do not add any formatting before the actual text is written. It will only complicate things. Oh, and no double spaces behind dots at the end of a sentence. Apparently that's a no-no.
-Black is not always black. In computer code, there are different blacks with some of them being printed as dark grey. Be sure to have maximum saturation on your text.
-Also be sure to make outlines. This way the result will be the same as on your computer screen.
-Do not add the cover to the PDF. You'll have to make a separate PDF for the cover.
-If you want a white sheet in between chapters, you'll have to add a blank page. As I mentioned before, the printers will not do that automatically.
-The cover has to be in a high resolution, otherwise it will come out blurry.
-Watch out for automatic page numbers. In 'Cecilia's World' the foreword is on page 2 and the first chapter on page 3. We did not find this tip on the internet.
-Do NOT use enters for page breaks. That is a hefty no-no. Your software has a function for that.
In all, it's best to practice a bit with your text editing software. I have used Openoffice and a trial version of Adobe Illustrator. Others will use Word or even others. You'll need to become familiar with the program you use. Smashwords, the platform where the digital version 'Cecilia's World' is published on, has an excellent Style Guide that has helped me a lot (click here).
Ebooks work very differently than books. In a paper version, you could actually work with enters instead of page breaks but if you do that with an ebook, the whole thing will look weird. Furthermore, ereader users can change the font and the text height, so they won't always look the same. Therefore, page breaks, remember those words.
Perhaps this should have been the very first tip on this whole article, but start with a completely blank page. Do not add any formatting before the actual text is written. It will only complicate things. Oh, and no double spaces behind dots at the end of a sentence. Apparently that's a no-no.
b. It's not a cover until the fat lady sings.
So you've written and formatted your book, now it's time to work on the cover. Hell is about to break loose. You will have to deliver a PDF and again, that differs from book to ebook.
Ebook: JPG of front and back in decent resolution is ok. You can upload those separately.
Book: Yeah, but there is that little thing called 'spine', that thing on the side with your name and the title of the book. That is going to be nasty, because it raises a lot of questions.
1. How wide does it have to be?
You'll have to ask the printers because that depends on the number of pages and thickness of the paper. For a 355 pages book like mine, the spine had to be 1.90cm wide.
2. How do I press that between the front and page pages?
You'll need a decent photo editing software. Photoshop did the trick for me, along of course with a very good friend who's good at this kind of stuff. He only had to start over twice.
3. Will it make me insane?
Yeah, and there will be more.
Like, make sure that there are a few centimeters of blank space around the artwork, plus a few millimeters of outlines. No text or important parts of the photograph near the edges. They might become folded over or cut away, depending on the format of the whole thing. That is why you should always ask for a test print.
Right, that should cover that. Or maybe not. I can only give advice for books with text only. If you want to publish a photo book or one with drawings you might want to carefully read the Smashwords Style Guide (here), and/or find more help. I checked into that, it's confusing as hell.
So you've written and formatted your book, now it's time to work on the cover. Hell is about to break loose. You will have to deliver a PDF and again, that differs from book to ebook.
Ebook: JPG of front and back in decent resolution is ok. You can upload those separately.
Book: Yeah, but there is that little thing called 'spine', that thing on the side with your name and the title of the book. That is going to be nasty, because it raises a lot of questions.
1. How wide does it have to be?
You'll have to ask the printers because that depends on the number of pages and thickness of the paper. For a 355 pages book like mine, the spine had to be 1.90cm wide.
2. How do I press that between the front and page pages?
You'll need a decent photo editing software. Photoshop did the trick for me, along of course with a very good friend who's good at this kind of stuff. He only had to start over twice.
3. Will it make me insane?
Yeah, and there will be more.
Like, make sure that there are a few centimeters of blank space around the artwork, plus a few millimeters of outlines. No text or important parts of the photograph near the edges. They might become folded over or cut away, depending on the format of the whole thing. That is why you should always ask for a test print.
Right, that should cover that. Or maybe not. I can only give advice for books with text only. If you want to publish a photo book or one with drawings you might want to carefully read the Smashwords Style Guide (here), and/or find more help. I checked into that, it's confusing as hell.
5. Now go sell books and become rich
So you did everything I told you to do, including searching for other advice, and you are ready to sell your writings to the masses.
How to do that?
For my ebook, I worked with Smashwords and I'm quite pleased with them. You can upload your text as a .txt file, plus the covers and they'll do the rest. You can also do an interview, which is fun, and add the necessary links in your author profile. Then they will publish the thing and you'll see it appear on a multitude of ebook distributors. They also have a Premium Status for books which will get your book to most major platforms. To receive that status, your book has to apply to the guidelines which should be rather easy if you follow the aforementioned tips and tricks.
There are other providers too. BookBaby is probably the most popular and they can help you with printed versions too. You can also go directly to Kindle or Kobo. That is up to you. Be sure to check the internet for alternatives that might suit you better. Smashwords did the trick for me personally, but I can imagine not everyone being happy with their service. They are quite strict in their guidelines, but I guess that only helps improve the overall quality.
How to do that?
For my ebook, I worked with Smashwords and I'm quite pleased with them. You can upload your text as a .txt file, plus the covers and they'll do the rest. You can also do an interview, which is fun, and add the necessary links in your author profile. Then they will publish the thing and you'll see it appear on a multitude of ebook distributors. They also have a Premium Status for books which will get your book to most major platforms. To receive that status, your book has to apply to the guidelines which should be rather easy if you follow the aforementioned tips and tricks.
There are other providers too. BookBaby is probably the most popular and they can help you with printed versions too. You can also go directly to Kindle or Kobo. That is up to you. Be sure to check the internet for alternatives that might suit you better. Smashwords did the trick for me personally, but I can imagine not everyone being happy with their service. They are quite strict in their guidelines, but I guess that only helps improve the overall quality.
Then there are the physical copies. I can only tell you what I did do sell them. I promoted them here on Merchants Of Air. I used social media and my network of artists, agencies and friends. I'll have a book launch with Urall, Stratosphere & Thisquietarmy (check) coming up and I'm looking into some other possibilities. Just use your resources, that's all I can say about that.
Right, that's enough. Now go write your bestseller.
Serge
Right, that's enough. Now go write your bestseller.
Serge
