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HOW TO BECOME A FAMOUS AUTHOR
By Jack Schofield
The term, "self publish" is used a lot these days. It is a misnomer. For the writer, the "self" soon includes the cost of an editor to perform a substantive and a copy edit on your manuscript, which can run into a minimum of $1000 depending on the type and length of book. Then, a designer must be employed to lay-out your manuscript in book form. A book designer is an artist with a software program called InDesign or Quark. He will put his artistry to work designing your cover and laying out the contents of your book in a manner that will make it fly off the shelves. He put out a grand and a half for the software plus the cost of an up-to-date iMac and invested at least two years of studying to master the program so his services come at a pricey price. The "self" in self-publishing is starting to fade.
Now that you have an InDesign file print-ready you send it to the book printer of your choice, and you are smart enough to know that it must be a "book" printer-not the guy who says he is, but a bona fide company who can translate that pricey file into a piece of art that will, as we mentioned, jump off the shelves. Let's say your child is an illustrated, 200-page full colour epistle measuring 8 inches square in hardcover (they call it casebound) with a dust jacket displaying all that fine artwork you just paid for. The price to print your little darling depends on the number of books you order and the plan to "start small and see how it goes" flies out the window when you see the price of a short run. The price starts to look better at 1000 copies-probably about $7.00 per book for the book described, and is decidedly more attractive at 2000 copies when the unit cost drops to $4.00. You have forgotten the item at the end of the quotation explaining how much per book the printer will add to deliver it to your door, but when the big day arrives and the truck pulls up to your garage you find they have packed the 2000 copies in 56 boxes of 35 copies each, weighing just about that many pounds per box. (if you are metric-do your own conversion). Your brand-new SUV will just have to stay outside until you have sold all those soon-to-be-referred- to by your wife, as "bloody books."
Now comes the funny part. "What are you going to do with those bloody books?"; There are bookstores all over Canada and the United States just crying to have your book on their shelves-you know that, but they haven't heard the news, so you start looking at the marketing plans offered to you by a plethora of little spring-up companies who keep emailing you expressing their keen resolve to solve your distribution problem (and their bottom line). You are starting to think that you should have just published it as an ebook, so you check with a little company owned by the giant. Amazon, called "Createspace," They will be happy to convert your manuscript into what they call an ePub file so that it will display on the Kindle tablets-"oh, it has photographs with captions? Sorry, our $99.00 special doesn't apply. We will have to look at that and give you a quote and, "No, it won't turn out like your designer laid it out because he did so for print books, which are fast disappearing into the sunset," he says, and then adds, "No, it won't automatically appear on Apple's iBooks either because we are mad at them. And, Sir, you must do your own marketing because nobody will know your book is available unless you send them to it. Kobo? How do you spell that. sir."
Oh, I nearly forgot, your wife is having a garden party and you stacked all those 56 boxes in front of the lawn chairs in the garage.
The term, "self publish" is used a lot these days. It is a misnomer. For the writer, the "self" soon includes the cost of an editor to perform a substantive and a copy edit on your manuscript, which can run into a minimum of $1000 depending on the type and length of book. Then, a designer must be employed to lay-out your manuscript in book form. A book designer is an artist with a software program called InDesign or Quark. He will put his artistry to work designing your cover and laying out the contents of your book in a manner that will make it fly off the shelves. He put out a grand and a half for the software plus the cost of an up-to-date iMac and invested at least two years of studying to master the program so his services come at a pricey price. The "self" in self-publishing is starting to fade.
Now that you have an InDesign file print-ready you send it to the book printer of your choice, and you are smart enough to know that it must be a "book" printer-not the guy who says he is, but a bona fide company who can translate that pricey file into a piece of art that will, as we mentioned, jump off the shelves. Let's say your child is an illustrated, 200-page full colour epistle measuring 8 inches square in hardcover (they call it casebound) with a dust jacket displaying all that fine artwork you just paid for. The price to print your little darling depends on the number of books you order and the plan to "start small and see how it goes" flies out the window when you see the price of a short run. The price starts to look better at 1000 copies-probably about $7.00 per book for the book described, and is decidedly more attractive at 2000 copies when the unit cost drops to $4.00. You have forgotten the item at the end of the quotation explaining how much per book the printer will add to deliver it to your door, but when the big day arrives and the truck pulls up to your garage you find they have packed the 2000 copies in 56 boxes of 35 copies each, weighing just about that many pounds per box. (if you are metric-do your own conversion). Your brand-new SUV will just have to stay outside until you have sold all those soon-to-be-referred- to by your wife, as "bloody books."
Now comes the funny part. "What are you going to do with those bloody books?"; There are bookstores all over Canada and the United States just crying to have your book on their shelves-you know that, but they haven't heard the news, so you start looking at the marketing plans offered to you by a plethora of little spring-up companies who keep emailing you expressing their keen resolve to solve your distribution problem (and their bottom line). You are starting to think that you should have just published it as an ebook, so you check with a little company owned by the giant. Amazon, called "Createspace," They will be happy to convert your manuscript into what they call an ePub file so that it will display on the Kindle tablets-"oh, it has photographs with captions? Sorry, our $99.00 special doesn't apply. We will have to look at that and give you a quote and, "No, it won't turn out like your designer laid it out because he did so for print books, which are fast disappearing into the sunset," he says, and then adds, "No, it won't automatically appear on Apple's iBooks either because we are mad at them. And, Sir, you must do your own marketing because nobody will know your book is available unless you send them to it. Kobo? How do you spell that. sir."
Oh, I nearly forgot, your wife is having a garden party and you stacked all those 56 boxes in front of the lawn chairs in the garage.
Submitted on April 15, 2014 in By David.
