Publishing, Editing, and Ghostwriting Services

Several years ago, I was well into working on my first book and had to make a decision—should I spend a couple of years researching traditional publishers, formatting my manuscript for submission, and sending it in to one publisher after another, or should I spend that two years researching self-publishing and go that route?

The decision was difficult, because I had the best agents in the business handling our book, Escape from Paradise. As good as Sonia Land was and she is the very best, even if a major publisher picked up Escape from Paradise, it could be a couple of years before the book would be published. Since the subject matter of the book was very timely, I decided to take the risk and go for self-publishing. This was back in 2002 when self-publishing and print-on-demand (POD) was in its infancy.

Setting up Escape from Paradise

To typeset the book, I bought a very expensive and complex program – Adobe InDesign. Fortunately, I have a son who is a real computer whiz. He mastered InDesign in no time and did a beautiful job of setting up the book.

With InDesign, once the book is set up, it can create a PDF file of the book which is ready for the printing presses. Using InDesign, I managed to do the cover, which amounts to two pages (front and back cover) and the spine. My kid set up 476 interior pages, which the pros call the “book block.” There have been some recent changes in how to do a cover in InDesign. As a sample of what to do now, here are instructions for Adobe InDesign:

• Color Settings should be set to North America Prepress 2. (This specifies Adobe RGB as your working RGB color space.)
• All images should be in the Adobe RGB color space. Exception: Images that include transparency. When flattening for PDF/X-3, InDesign will convert these to CMYK anyway.
• All swatch and object colors should be left in CMYK. Converting these to RGB would increase the chance of some or all of your layout being flattened to CMYK.
• Export your PDF directly from InDesign using the PDF/X-3 preset or a custom modification of it. (With InDesign, you no longer need to print to PostScript and run through Distiller, as Lightning used to recommend—and in fact, with InDesign CS6, that method can be buggy.)
• Is there any time you should stick to PDF/X-1a? Sure. If you’re producing an interior file for black-and-white printing, that’s still the safest standard—though, even in that case, Lightning now accepts either one.

That’s all! Your color should now reproduce better on Lightning’s presses. These instructions are courtesy of Aaron Shepard! The above information is thanks the the top guru of POD and self publishing, Aaron Shepard, Shepard Publications. Here are some links to Aarons books (all of which I have purchased)

• Aiming at Amazon (now free)
• POD for Profit (Amazon)
• Perfect Pages: Self Publishing with Microsoft Word, or How to Design Your Own Book for Desktop Publishing and Print on Demand (Word 97-2003 for Windows, Word 2004 for Mac) (Amazon)
• From Word to Kindle: Self Publishing Your Kindle Book with Microsoft Word, or Tips for Designing and Formatting Your Text So Your Ebook Doesn’t Look Horrible (Like Everyone Else’s)
  (Amazon, Kindle edition only $0.01)
• Pictures on Kindle: Self Publishing Your Kindle Book with Photos, Drawings, and Other Graphics, or Tips for Formatting Your Images So Your Ebook Doesn’t Look Horrible (Like Everyone Else’s)
  (Amazon)
• HTML Fixes for Kindle: More on Self Publishing Your Kindle Book, or Tips for Touching Up HTML from Microsoft Word and Other Apps So Your Ebook Looks as Good as It Possibly Can
  (Amazon)

Aaron’s Publishing Page, http://www.newselfpublishing.com Sales Rank Express, http://www.salesrankexpress.com For notice of new posts (and books) from Aaron Shepard, subscribe to Aaron’s Publishing Update.

Never send out review copies

With the two PDF files – one for the cover, and one for the books interior book block, I had a local printer run off 50 copies. I called these review copies, and sent them out to a number of reviewers. With only one or two exceptions, the reviewers sold the books I had sent them to second hand dealers, and they appeared for sale on the Internet. I made a rule never to send out review copies—it’s a joke and not worth it.

Self publishing

Next, I submitted the book (the two PDFs) to Lightning Source (LSI). Unfortunately, the print quality of the photographs in the book did not come out to well with LSI. This is because they were using the IBM InfoPrint printer. Back in 2002, IBM was lousy at printing. So I submitted the book to a second printer – Digitz. They used a laser-type printer, and the photographs came out very well.

The Digitz copies were the ones I gave out personally. The LSI copies went out to Amazon, and various online outfits and to booksellers. Over time, Digitz changed its name to BookSurge, and BookSurge was bought by Amazon and became CreateSpace which morphed into Kindle.

How to set the right discount for your book

Since Kindle originally took 55% of the price of the book, I wasn’t making much per copy. Foolishly, I went on like that for a couple of years. I even let LSI take 55% as I thought that it was what everyone did. I finally woke up to the fact that, just by going into my LSI account, I could lower LSI’s take (after the printing charge) to 20%. I canceled kindle, and had all my books printed by LSI—and netted me about three times more on each sale. They told me that lowering the discount to 20% would kill my bookstore sales. False. The bookstores just marked up the price so they made a profit.

You see, I had set up my ISBN number with no price attached (otherwise, you are locked into that price. That gave me all the flexibility the bookstores needed.

Never code your price into your ISBN. Never set a fixed price on your book! After months and months of research interspersed with learning to build this website and other websites to promote my business, I came across some things you might want to use if you self publish.

InDesign is not on the list as it is too expensive and difficult for most users.

Software:

Book Design Wizard http://www.bookdesignwizard.com

This program is for easy text formatting (toggles the table of contents to the chapters and automatically updates page numbers for the table of contents; sets up the proper mirror margins; and the alternating even/odd headers, plus a lot more). However, you can do exactly the same in Microsoft Word, which is what I do now. However, even if you decide to do your book in Microsoft Word, Book Design Wizard will point you in the right direction. The cost is about $40.

Book Cover Pro http://www.bookcoverpro.com

A cover design program—formats the cover (front, back, spine) properly for any size book. Very easy to learn, but I do it in Adobe Acrobat Pro. The price of Book Cover Pro is about $80.

Other stuff:

All files have to be submitted in pdf (Adobe Acrobat) form. I use the Adobe Acrobat Pro, but there is a lot of free stuff out there.

Bowker for your ISBN number http://www.bowker.com/index.php/supportfaq-isbn

Kindle (and other publishers) will give you a free ISBN. Don’t take it, because you will not own this ISBN number. You will have big problems if you want to switch to another printer.

Don’t buy ISBN numbers from anybody but Bowker, as it will still not be yours. Buy only from Bowker—it’s the only way.

Library of Congress http://lcweb.loc.gov/loc/infopub/publish.html

The other other thing you need, and it’s free, is a Library of Congress Number. It’s easy—just go to their website. The Library of Congress number has to be obtained before your book is even printed, because it goes on your copyright page.

Copyright facts

There is a lot to this, and it is best laid out at Copyright Facts Every Author Should Know

Publishing Sources:

Kindle

Kindle is a part of Amazon for self-publishing books, cd’s, and dvd’s. There are NO set up fees at all. Very cheap printing costs. Your book goes instantly to Amazon and they have a real simple way for you to set up your cover—you do it online. Here is one of my Kindle covers for my large print edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Cost is free.