SELF-PUBLISHING TIPS
IT HELPS TO KNOW WHAT TO DO AND WHAT NOT TO DO
SO- you have gathered your material - your fiction, your biography, your children's book, your expert's guide, your illustrations or photos, your stories, your poems, your family genealogy, whatever - and you want to turn it into a book. But you're not sure what to do next.
Where to from here?
You're not wanting to take the world by storm. You're just wanting to know how to put your book together so it looks good, get it to print, maybe do a digital book (e-book) and look at a few marketing ideas.
PD Dawn - a New Zealand first-time writer came to Briar's Books for some help
Here is a brief video of her process.
Now what?
Do you have some experience as a writer or not?
People come to Briar's Books in all states of preparedness. Some present me with their prose in long-hand (fortunately not many). Some are reasonably computer-savvy but can't spell. Some know how to use MS Word, but have no idea how to format a page or design a cover. Some have made some attempt to have their prose edited, some haven't. I have never met a manuscript that was not retrievable but some take more work than others!
Editing and preparation of the manuscript. The manuscript needs to be in digital form, ie., composed in a computer word-processing program. It needs to be emailed or delivered on a USB stick. It needs to be edited as much as possible beforehand - by friends, family or a professional editor - otherwise Briar's Books will charge for the service. Content needs to be well-organised and not confusing to follow. Somewhere in this process - earlier rather than later - you will need to bring your material to the person designing and producing your book so everything can be talked through and your questions answered to your satisfaction. Also bring along a printed version of the raw manuscript if possible, if you consider the manuscript ready enough.
Do NOT make the mistake of trying to get your manuscript layout looking as perfect as possible before you bring it in for production. Professional book production software strips out much of the styling put in place by word processing software - to eliminate printing problems further down the line. Just make sure that chapter headings and subheadings are formatted clearly enough in your provided file to be distinguishable from the rest of the text so the designer can find her way around your material. NEVER bring along a digital file that has been laid out using table formatting in Word! (Only use table formatting for tabular data). Literary matters aside, professional book production is a very technical business and authors are sometimes amazed at what their prose has to undergo before it becomes a good-looking book!
Give the designer some idea of how you want the book to look, eg., It can be helpful to bring along a book that shows roughly what you have in mind. Most people know what they want in general terms. Do you want portrait or landscape, do you want wide inside margins. (Poetry anthologies are laid our differently from fiction.) Have a good feel for the dimensions you want. In NZ A5 is a good size for posting, and for general appearance. Books can be larger or smaller, depending on your preferences and the kind of content. You will need to think of a title with impact, about the kind of paper you want to use in the book, what sort of cover stock (most self-published books are "paperbacks" using a strong flexible card), and whether you want special effects like embossing, or foil. Do you want your book with a proper glued spine, or are you happy with something more basic. Stay away from hardcovers - they will cost a lot. Your designer can help you make these decisions.
A note about illustrations: If your book is to include illustrations get them looking as clean as you can before giving them to your book designer. Scanning and printing picks up all smudges and flecks. Or be prepared to pay your designer to do that for you. Same with photos. If you are happy that blotchy, torn, faded photos or colour photos with a strong colour-cast are scanned and placed in your book, that's fine, but if you want them improved that will be a cost you will have to meet. Scans of photos will pick up finger prints, creases and every blotch. Briar's Books offers a scanning and photo restoration service.
A note about photographs. If you possibly can, use photographic prints as your source and get them scanned at 300pp (pixels per inch) or (preferably) 600 ppi, or get your designer to scan them. Avoid giving a book designer a photo that you have downloaded from the internet. Typically they will shrink to a quarter of their dimensions in the book (because of the demanding requirements of commercial printing), and trying to bring them up to size is a sure-fire recipe for furry images. Usually a rescue job can be mounted but it's a fix-up. Generally clients don't realise that a photo that looks large on screen shrinks to tiny sizes in a book.
Cover design: This is an important part of a book. People browsing through books are first drawn in by what's on the cover. The next thing they do is flip the book over to read what's on the back. Some people know exactly what they want on the cover, others have no idea. Do you want to use existing art or create a design yourself. Do you want Briar's Books to do it, or friend or family member. Briar's Books designs covers - either from scratch or using your provided material.
Copyright, ISBN. You will need to make decisions about copyright (the restrictions/permissions placed on readers who want to use material from your book), and be careful about any copyrighted material needing permissions, eg., poems, photographs, that you have used in your own book. Most authors apply for an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) from the NZ National Library which enters you on searchable databases so people can find your book. The ISBN becomes the bar code that is found on the back cover of most books. Usually your designer looks after that process for you.
Communication between designer and author during book production. This is a process and usually Briar's Books sends progress reports as the book begins to come together in the studio. These are in the form of colour PDFs which can be viewed by the author on a computer or suitable electronic device. PDFs open in Acrobat Reader, which is found on most computers these days. But print-outs can be sent if the author prefers.
When the author is happy with the way the book looks, it goes to the printer. They take the computer files which have been made technically "print-ready" and the book is on the way. Briar's Books works with trusted printers. The printer produces a printed proof (which shows exactly what the book will look like ) and this must checked thoroughly by the author and designer for errors or any other issues before the final print run. Once it is approved, the next step is delivery of the finished books to your door.
Now - how to distribute and market your book?