Cast Your Pod To The Wind

For those of you new to the blog, I’m not only a writer but the Digital Producer for if:book Australia (the institute for the future of the book). At if:book we (Simon Groth, if:book manager and myself) have been putting together a fortnightly podcast on the future of the book discussing projects, cool stuff we found on the internet and start-ups.

It’s a quick (30mins) light-hearted podcast that is worth a listen to (if I do say so myself!). You can find the first two episodes below, and for those of you who are inclined to subscribe the RSS feed is now working and for those using iTunes, it’s there too.

if:book Australia Podcast 1: Cast Your Pod to the Wind

The first podcast from if:book Australia features Simon Groth and myself discussing the Jeff Sparrow’s ‘On Not Writing’, latest essay from if:book’s series The N00bz, a preview of the upcoming event ‘Memory Makes Us’ with Kate Pullinger, and a discussion of BitLit, a new Canadian startup that promises to convert your print library to digital.

Links to the stuff we talk about in this episode:

• The Internet Archive
• On Not Writing by Jeff Sparrow
• Memory Makes Us
• BitLit

if:book Australia Podcast 2: All Your Pods Are Belong To Us

Episode two of the if:book Podcast is features special guest Kate Pullinger. Just prior to her role as chief memory maker, Kate sat down with if:book’s Simon Groth and myself to anticipate what might happen when writing live before an audience for Memory Makes Us. We also catch up with her thoughts on writing for digital narratives and transmedia projects.

Our regular review of Stuff We Found On The Internet picks apart the US Department of Justice’s case against Apple and the implications (such as they are) for the recent verdict in the DOJ’s favour.

Links to the stuff we talk about in this episode are:

• Explaining the Apple Ebook Price Fixing Suit, Adam C Engst
• More Proof The Big Six Of Publishing Are Run By Morons, Mike Cane
• Inanimate Alice, Kate Pullinger & Chris Joseph
• Flight Paths, Kate Pullinger & Chris Joseph
• Memory Makes Us

Enjoy!

Part 1: POD & Lightning Source & Covers

Every good journey starts with a to-do list. The major sites you must see in Spain, the ten most disgusting things you need to dare you spouse to eat in Asia, the bucket list you’re going to kick into action once you make friends with that rich guy on TV. Though the list below is a little more average, it’s just as important to make. With it, you can get your POD pushed through with minimum effort; without it, the time delays will make child-birth seem like a preferable option to book production.

So what are the vital steps I’ve needed to take in my POD journey?

1. Create my e-book covers (Complete with compelling blurb and kick arse reviews).
2. Create the internal PDF for my books (With the ever divine, and free, PressBooks. No need to read up on margins allowances, fonts or regulations – this tool does it all without you having to waste your time reading the design fine print).
3. Sign up for a Lightning Source Account, and validate it (And just to be on the safe side, make an extra copy and stand by for requests of extra validation).
4. Purchase my ISBNs and set up my titles (With additional research to figuring out what the hell the terms ‘laminate’, ‘perfect bound’ and ‘stitch bound’ refer to).
5. Generate my book cover templates and back cover barcodes (Yep, the cover fun doesn’t end with your designer, you need to submit it in the format and templates Lightning Source require. Why? The only plausible explanation I can come up with, is shits and giggles. The ISBN agencies also lead you to believe you have to purchase the matching barcode for your ISBN, but I have a little secret, with Lightning Source you can generate it for free…)
6. Submit your files (And wait…. And wait…)
7. Submit your file revisions (Hopefully learning about my mistakes will mean you can skip this step with your own project and avoid all the Greek style plate smashing I’ve been doing to de-stress…)
8. Order a proof (For a bizarrely expensive cost).
9. Hey presto! Start making those printing orders because it’s a goer!

Treat the above like your road map to POD and follow my lead…

It’s time to tackle the Print-On-Demand book cover…

E-book covers translate well into print covers. Why? Because the designers use the KISS principle – Keep It Simple Stupid. A cover that has wow factor as a thumbnail can’t help but pop at the print book cover size. If you want to learn more about cover design see my previous post or listen to my podcast interview with e-book cover designer Kit Foster.

But the real challenge is making sure your blurb is a dynamite stick of words ready to blow a reader’s mind. I talk about creating your book ‘pitches’ here if you need a little awesome-blurb-writing-refresher-course. However, the key things to remember are:

• The blurb is a sample of the writing in your book, it has to entertain, and intrigue in equal measure.
• It must introduce your character, the villain, the world and the obstacles faced by your protagonist. Don’t include subplots; they come out in the reading of the book!
• It needs to mention what the protagonist stands to lose or gain.
• Finally, you have to leave the reader hanging with a statement or question.

If your e-book has been out there for a while, you may also have some kick arse reviews you can add to the back of the book to further intrigue and entice your reader to buy. Below are the conversions of my e-book covers to print book covers. As you can see, the front cover is the same as the e-book version, the spine is of the same font (and for The Grand Adventures of Madeline Cain, part of the title has been removed to make it fit nicely on the spine), and the back cover is very simple.

E-book Cover: The Grand Adventures of Madeline Cain: Photographer Extraordinaire

Print Book Cover: The Grand Adventures of Madeline Cain: Photographer Extraordinaire (Click on the cover to enlarge)

E-Book Cover: E-Book Revolution: The Ultimate Path To E-book Success

Print Book Cover: E-Book Revolution: The Ultimate Guide To E-Book Success (Click on the cover to make it larger)

E-Book Cover: Jake's Page A Short Story and Play

Print Book Cover: Jake's Page A Short Story and Play (Click on the cover to make it larger)

I limited each blurb to 150 words, basically one paragraph, so the back cover wouldn’t look crowded and I could add several review blurbs without going into the blank area at the bottom where the barcode for the cover needs to be. For non-fiction (in my case the E-book Revolution book I’m creating) you should always have a short 50-100 word author bio and photo about yourself on the back. Proving your credentials as an expert is vital to convincing an audience to buy a non-fiction book, particularly in print, as they are paying a lot of money in comparison to an e-book. You need to give them a reason to give you a chance, just don’t fake superhero credentials, ok?

Before you design a print book cover you need to know:

·        What the dimensions of the book are going to be. I would suggest you use one of the two most common - trade paperback (6”x9”) or regular paperback size (5.5”x8.5”).

·        You need to know how many pages your book will be when it’s printed – this dictates how thick the spine has to be and how little the writing will need to be on the spine. Just promise me you won’t make your book dimensions so large that the spine becomes a sliver that has to be read with a magnifying glass. We will go through how to create the interior and find out that all important page number in Part 2 of this series. 

You then need to put this cover into a Lightning Source template, making sure that all of the text, images and logos fit within the correct areas in the template. The biggest advantage of the template (only just eclipsing its ability to annoy the crap out of you) is that it generates a barcode coded to your ISBN. Why is this important? Every print book is required to have an ISBN and barcode on the back. Many authors are lead to believe they have to buy their barcode from the ISBN agency in their country. I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer to save my $40 barcode cost and replace that with a perfectly good free one, thank you very much – so watch out for Part 5 of this series where I talk about Lightning Source cover templates and free barcode generation.

This is the very simple first step of that processes to holding a real, shiny book in my hands *happy dance*. As part of this process I also want to be very honest in what it has cost me to set this all up. So at the end of each post I am going to put a running total of project costs, so all you wonderful indies out there have a guideline not only to the process, but the mullah involved.

In the next post we’ll look at how to create the internal PDF file for your Print on Demand (POD) book.

Until then, why not leave a comment below voting for your favourite of the above three covers? What content did you put on the back of your book? Would love to hear what you think is most important. Encouragement as I struggle through the process is also appreciated!

E-book Revolution Podcast Ep13 - Long Form Journalism E-Publishing With Charlotte Harper

Thousands of commuters every day are looking to fill in the boredom during their public transit, I know I am! They need short, snappy pieces that can be consumed in a day on the ride to and from work. It is this need, and the decline of in depth features in newspapers and magazines, that has seen the rise over the past twelve months in long form journalism, non-fiction pieces between 10,000 and 35,000 words that according to Mark Leslie at Kobo, are selling like hot-cakes through the online platforms. We’re not talking a massive reporting of the facts, e-book readers are after narrative non-fiction, a sort of evolution of the non-fiction article for e-book consumers. A half way point between fiction and non-fiction if you will. This has opened a huge opportunity for writers of all callings, from journalists, to non-fiction authors to fiction writers who pen travel, to memoir, to essays about writing. It is non-fiction’s answer to short stories and novellas.

At the end of last year, my writing mentor, world renowned fantasy author Isobelle Carmody, presented me with a challenge. Keep a diary of impressionist writing, describing my trip to Cambodia as simply as possible with as little judgement as possible – let the description speak for itself. When I returned and let her read through the entries she was astounded at what I had written, “This is possibly better than your fantasy writing, you should do some non-fiction pieces with this.” Then I spoke with Mark Leslie, touching on the rise of long form journalism, and suddenly my interest was piqued enough to seek out a podcast expert in this area!  In this podcast I talk to new digital first long form publisher, Charlotte Harper from Editia about the rise of long form journalism and how emerging writers are using it as a path to professional publication.

Charlotte Harper covered the digital transformation of the book industry between 2010 and 2012 for Fairfax Media,Bookseller + Publisher and the EBOOKISH.com.au andBooku.com blogs. Charlotte is a former technology journalist, a Walkley Award-winning web producer (for her contribution to The Sydney Morning Herald’s online coverage of the 2000 Olympics) and ex-literary editor of The South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. At The Canberra Times, she was variously chief sub-editor, features, online editor, and editor of firstly the Saturday news features section and then the Sunday magazine. Charlotte recently founded publishing companyEditia, which is a new digital first publishing business devoted to long form journalism and non-fiction shorts.

In this podcast we discuss:

• Why long form journalism is becoming so popular
• Why writers should look at it as a potential path to publication
• The length of a feature article in comparison to long form or a novel
• The rise of ‘commute’ fiction
• The potential for writers to make more money over time in comparison to freelance
• How long form publication could help increase your profile
• The importance of tying into recent news events when marketing long form journalism e-books
• Where the e-book revolution is going and how it will effect different genres
•  The possibility of newspapers/magazines following Editia’s long form journalism path
• Thoughts on the future of newspapers
• Top 3 things an author needs to create a successful long form piece
• Elements of good research and interviewing
• The Key to being successful in this e-book niche
• The important difference between journalism for website/newspapers and journalism for e-books
• How to pitch long form journalism
• Marketing long form e-books
• Editia’s upcoming projects
• The top 3 tips for breaking into publishing via long form.

Enjoy!

Podcast Powered By Podbean

Download this episode (right click and save)

  I love hearing from my listeners! Please feel free to contact me or offer any feedback on topics you would like to see covered at: ebookrevolution (at) yahoo (dot) com.

Emily's non-fiction book E-Book Revolution: The Ultimate Guide to E-book success is now available at Kobo, Amazonand Bkclb (Australian e-book store).If you enjoy her tongue in cheek style you may also enjoy her comedy novel set in Facebook, The Grand Adventures of Madeline Cain: Photographer Extraordinaire also available from Kobo, Amazon and Bkclb.

The companion website for this podcast is http://ebookrevolution.podbean.com 

Damn it! Who Knew Print Books Were Still Important?

Last month I had a bit of an epiphany that in hindsight should have slapped me on the head a year ago.

People like print books, even though the topic is about something completely digital.

A lot of you may be saying ‘duh – exactly how long has it been since you picked up a real book - not the square plastic kind?’ But I’m hoping that you e-book authors out there kind of get where I’m coming from.

I speak around Australia delivering seminars and workshops for writing centres and conferences on a variety of topics, but most often it is e-books for beginners. What a great opportunity to build a repour over a couple of hours and sell my e-book E-Book Revolution: The Ultimate Guide To E-book Success, right?

Thing is, I haven’t sold one book from a single one of my speaking gigs. Why? Because the people who come to my workshops don’t actually understand how e-books work and more often than not, have never even read one. Wouldn’t even know how to go about getting one on their reader. And by the time they got over their all consuming fear of technology and actually found out how easy it was, knowledge of my book would be so far removed from their brain they wouldn’t even stop at the cover as they scanned the pages of Amazon. Even if they do already have a reader, they have to remember when they get home to pull their reader out, log onto their e-book store of choice, search for, and then purchase my book. Let’s face it; people have trouble deciding whether or not they want the free paper at the train station, why would they go to the four step trouble of purchasing my e-book when they just had a 6 hour session with me? It doesn’t matter how much further I tell them the book goes, I’ve sent them out of that room with a brain meltdown, the chances of them buying are zero to eating dog food.

So even though I believe that having a print book about how to make an e-book is the most pointless, and ironic, idea I’ve ever heard of, if I want to see that book bought by the audience that is most likely to use it and review it, I have to go to more traditional means. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that to make speaking gigs worthwhile, I had to actually have something physical to sell people. Even my fiction books, which are aimed at a YA audience, need a physical product, whether it’s a print book or something I can sell them that represents my e-book.

 I held a How to Create E-books workshop for teens during the last holidays, and the kids were super keen when I told them about my fiction books set in Facebook. Abusive umbrellas? Super hero chameleons? Getting mistaken for a spy by the FBI? Heck yes! But because I didn’t have anything they could get their parents to buy off me at the time, or anything they could purchase with pocket money, again I made no sales of my fiction e-books from the gig. As I was planning to do more speaking gigs for teens I had to figure out, how do I sell them my books?!  Even though teenagers are huge users of technology and readers of e-books, they don’t have credit cards and must rely on their parents to purchase their e-books for them. The chances of you getting through the gatekeeper that is a budget pressed parent? About as good as getting a Luddite to purchase an e-book about e-books.

So if I wanted my writing career to survive past the days people actually knew I existed because I was in their face like a bad smell, I had to come up with a solution for two problems:

• How do I create a print copy of my book?
• How do I sell my e-books to the person standing opposite me with the memory of a goldfish?

While I am secretly working on a way to sell e-books in person with the help of the awesome team at Tomely(all of which will be revealed in goodtime on this blog), I have also embarked upon the daring mission to convert my three e-books to print books via Lightning Source.

Why not use an easier service like CreateSpace or Lulu you may ask? Well, it’s because of quality. I’ve seen the books that come out of CreateSpace with the covers that peel after three sessions with a book or come out of the pack, covers scratched and corners bent. Heck, when I wanted to edit my fantasy manuscript I actually created a proof copy in CreateSpace so that I could look at the text in a different format (the best way to help you pick up typos). The book was wrecked within a week, after my whole family had read it, it looked like it was five years old. Whereas Lightning Source is a service used by publishers around the world for their POD ranges. Yes it is hard to navigate, and a pain to deal with, but it produces that high quality work that distinguishes your book from that of a vanity publisher.

I’ve never attempted to do print on demand before, so this is a whole new field to me. I’m excited, and a little bit nervous, because I have decided to share the whole process on this blog. From design, to set up, to ISBN’s to pricing decisions. Everything. I want this blog to be the definitive place you go to make dealing with Lightning Source a walk in the park.

First stop on the road to POD and next week’s blog?

Converting your e-book cover to a print one. Here’s a sneak peek of one of my covers below. What do you think?

Original E-book Cover

POD Cover

Have you done POD before? Why did you do it? What were your major troubles? Share your thoughts in the comments below. Encouragement as I fight my way through would be greatly appreciated!!!