Meduspod episode eight has just gone up, which contains "This is the Way the World Begins" with awesome narration by Rock Manor. Podcasts are a great was to submit reprints, although I tend not to send unpublished work as you can lose first print rights that way. It depends on the podcast. "This is the Way the World Begins" originally appeared over at Daily Science Fiction.
Things have been a little quiet around here for the last couple of months. Part of that was a change of role at the day job - new hours, new processes, new colleagues, all of which took some getting used to. Most of my writing energy in October went into admin tasks: finishing some edits, getting my submissions up to date, and submitting my tax return.
November is, of course, National Novel Writing Month. I wasn't sure at first if I was going to take part, and in the end decided that 50,000 words was too much to take on on top of everything else. Fortunately my online writers' group runs a novella contest for six weeks starting on November 1st, so I'm taking part in that. The wordcount is 17.5k to 40k, and I'm aiming for the lower end. I'm two thirds of the way through the time, and a bit behind on the words, but I'm happy with the story so far. Which is to say, if I go silent for another two weeks, this is why! When you upload your manuscript, you'll also have to upload your cover, or design one using the site's templates (both Lulu and Createspace have these). There are various ways to approach this.
If you're designing the cover yourself, or paying for one to be designed, you'll need to find the dimensions of the book from your site of choice. You'll need to include the front and back covers, and the spine, all as a single piece. Then, when it gives the option, you simply upload your ready-prepared cover. If you're not using a ready-made cover you'll still need an image to go on the front of your book. Lulu allows for abstract shapes to be used instead of uploading a picture, but that's not recommended as it can turn out very generic. It's also not recommended, unless you're a professional photographer or artist, to use your own photos or art as they can look amateurish. Of course this depends on what you want from your book. If it's for personal or family use then a meaningful photo might be just what you need. There are plenty of stock image sites that you can choose an image from, and download for a small fee. Don't be tempted to just pick one from the internet, as this is copyright infringement and exactly the same as if someone decided to use your work in their book without credit or permission. The stock image sites have licence agreements for their images, and you need to choose the licence that best suits your purpose. This isn't as difficult as it sounds as these are usually laid out fairly clearly and sites often have a FAQ explaining which rights you're buying. There's usually a limit on the number of copies of the book you can sell, but if you ever sell that many you'll be able to afford to hire someone to create a cover for your exclusive use so it's not really an issue. There's a great deal of debate about covers in self-publishing circles. It's true that bought covers look more professional, and with a stock image you run the risk of someone else using the image, or it being a little generic for your work. I have anecdotal evidence from a friend in self-publishing that her books with bought covers sell more than those without. In this instance cash may well beget cash. Some of us simply can't afford to shell out for someone else to design a cover for a book that may never earn it back. There's no shame in that. There's also nothing to stop you going back and reissuing books with a new cover if you suddenly come into money. Whatever you choose, all that matters is that you're happpy with your cover before you print the book. Once you've got all your text in place, it's time to go back to the beginning. The table of contents is something you do only when the rest of the manuscript is finalised, because otherwise the page numbers could be inaccurate.
Firstly, put your cursor wherever you want the table to go. Then go to the Insert menu of Word and select Index and Tables. On the box that pops up there should be a tab for the Table of Contents. Select this. It will give you several options. Insert page numbers? Well obviously. It will also give you the option to right-align them, which will make the table easier to read. The Tab Leader option will let you decide if you want a line of dots, or a line, or nothing at all, between the end of the title and the number. I opted for nothing as this is what you often see in traditionally published books. The format option lets you change the look of it. Show Levels is only useful if you have different levels of headings - say a title and then different sections within your chapter, as this will let you pull out the different subheadings as well. For a standard book of short stories you only need one heading. In Word 2000 there's an options button, which may be lurking somewhere else in more modern versions, but this is where you tell it which information to pull out. Check the box for building the table of contents from styles. Then go down the list. Remember the style of the table of contents we set up earlier? Select that as 1 (and any subheading styles as 2, 3, etc). Click OK, and you have a table of contents. Next, you'll need a cover. Headers, footers, and page numbers Just like a traditionally published book, yours will need page numbers - especially if you're planning for a table of contents. These can be at the top or bottom of the page, in the middle or on the outside edge. This is purely a matter of personal preference, so I'd recommend taking a look at the books on your shelves that are similar to yours to see what looks best to you.
Page numbers are added in the Insert menu in Word. Remember to uncheck the box for inserting the page number on the first page, as the title page doesn't need one. It is still page 1 though - numbering should be continuous throughout and include all the pages, even the blank ones. There is an option in page number setting called Continue from Previous Section (or similar) which should be checked. A word of warning - if you're putting them on the outside of the page, remember that your pages are the wrong way round. You need to select Outside on the options, and if your version of Word has a little icon to show you where the number will appear you'll see them on the outside of the pages. However, when you go back into the manuscript they'll be on the inside because your pages are back to front. This is nothing to worry about. Next you need to insert headers or footers if you have them. Most books, certainly fiction books, have headers rather than footers so I'm going to assume this is true of your book. The advice is the same either way. Remember those section breaks we set up earlier? This is where they become important, because they allow you to have different headers throughout the book. Your title, dedication, and contents pages don't need headers or page numbers, but we'll leave them to the end. If you want the headers on odd and even pages to be different (for example to have your name on one and the book title on the other) you'll need to set this in the Page Setup section (where you changed the margins etc). In the layout is the option to select Different Odd and Even, so check this if you want them different. Don't forget to apply this to the whole manuscript. Once you've done this (or not) , go back to the manuscript and move to the first section of text that's actually a part of the writing. Double click in the top or bottom margin, or use the view menu to open the headers and footers. It will also give you a little pop-up bar with options. The first thing to do is hover over the options and turn off the one called "Same as Previous". Make sure your page numbers are where they should be, and enter the text for your header. I usually make this one font size smaller than my main text. Headers are usually on the outside of the page, so remember to position them on the inside of the view in Word - on the same side as your page numbers if you don't have those centred. When you're finished, move on to the next section. As before, turn off Same as Previous and edit it to how you want. Go through the manuscript and do this, removing auto-filled headers and page numbers from the sections where you don't want them. Because you've turned off Same as Previous you should be able to change the headers and page numbers in any section without it affecting any of the others. Once you're finished go back to the beginning and remove the page numbers from the front matter of your book. The reason to do this last is because if you do it before you turn off Same as Previous it would delete them from the whole manuscript. The next step, tedious but necessary, is to skim through your headers, footers, and page numbers to make sure nothing's gone wrong. If the content of a header doesn't look right, or there is or isn't a page number in the right place, it might be that there's a page or section break in the wrong place. The view where you amend headers and footers will tell you which section you're in. If the page numbers are woefully wrong, as mine were after I added and removed some breaks (95, 97, 94, 96, anyone?) take them out and start again with them. Don't be tempted to edit manually as this may cause further problems later. Once everything's fixed, check it again. Setting up new chapters and stories The easiest way to see how your manuscript is set up is to set the zoom to about 75% so that you end up with two pages alongside each other. However, these will be back to front to how they appear in your manuscript - right on the left, left on the right - because Word will line them up with odd pages on the left and even pages on the right. In a published book the first page is on the right hand size because the first even page is, essentially, inside the front cover.
Working with the manuscript as is isn't as difficult as it sounds. The purpose of putting the pages alongside each other is purely so you can see where to insert page and section breaks. If you want you can insert a blank page at the beginning of the document as its own section, which will at least make everything look as if it's in the right place. But you'll need to take it out before you do your table of content, and reverse left and right in my posts, so I really wouldn't recommend it. If you look at a traditionally published book you'll see that new stories and chapters begin on the right hand page, even if this means having a blank page on the left. This is a convention you'll need to follow if you want your self-published book to appear professional. If you're printing only for friends and family you may not be bothered by this, in which case feel free to start new chapters on the next page. If you're starting new chapters/stories on the right hand page, this means that they need to start on the left in the Word document. All you need to do here is insert a page or section break, or two, to get the new text in the right place. Whether you choose a page or section break depends on if you want your headers or footers the same throughout the main body of text. If you want them the same, choose a page break. If they're different (for example to put the title of individual stories their own title as header) you need a section break. More on that in my next post. I managed to forget that my flash story "Paying for Death" was published by Sorcerous Signals. Things have been a little bust lately, what with broken bones (not mine!) and overtime at the day job. Here's a link!
"You're sure you want to do this?" That was it. No greeting, no discussion. Mirri nodded and swallowed around the lump in her throat, proffering a lock of golden hair tied with a thread. Choosing a font and setting up styles Font is another thing that will impact the size of your book but, like margins, don't be tempted to make it as small as possible. Nothing will make it look self-published and amateur like squashed-up text in an obvious attempt to save page count.
As with margins, some POD imprints will have specific fonts they like or don't like. Lulu specifies that if you plan to upload a Word document for them to convert, you must you one of the following: Arial; Book Antiqua; Bookman Old Style; Century, Courier; Garamond; Palatino; Tahoma; Times New Roman; Verdana; Symbols. (If you're uploading your own PDF you can use any font you like as long as you've embedded it. This isn't something I'm going to go into here as it's not a process I've used myself.) Once you know what your options are, pick the font you like best. Some of them take up more space than others, even at the same size, so it really is a matter of personal preference. Something that looks similar to a traditionally published book is probably the best choice. You may want to use a different font for titles or specific items within your text. This article from desktoppub is a good guide as to how to choose a font sized based on your target audience. Generally 10-12 point is a good choice, going larger for an older or younger audience. Now you have your font choices, it's time to set up styles. This is done via the Format menu in Word. You can set up a style to be a particular font and size, with or without underlining, bold, or italic, and even choose how you want it to be justified. For a short story collection you will probably need a minimum of three styles: for titles, headings, and subheadings you don't want to appear in the table of contents (e.g. the heading for the table of contents), for those you do (use a separate style for subheadings than the chapter headings), and for your main body of text. Your needs may vary depending on the book you're publishing, so set up as many styles as you need. Once your styles are set up, use the styles option to format your text. This is done in a similar way to changing the font or text size, in that you select the text to be changed and then click on the style. However, this makes all the changes at once, which makes formatting much quicker than having to change, for example, the font size and formatting options separately. It will also come in handy later when setting up a table of contents. Next time, setting up new chapters and stories. I've always been a pantser, and love writing in that white-hot frenzy of inspiration that can come of this method of writing. However, it can result in a lot of words wasted as you end up excising scenes that aren't necessary, or cutting out waffle that was only needed to writ into the story in the first place. Case in point: the first draft of The Reflection of Memory came in a 17k. The printed version is a much more manageable 10k. That's a cut of around 40% of the original wordcount.
I've become a lot more risk averse as I've got older, and wasting time on unnecessary words is one of the things I'm trying to avoid. For a while this has manifested as a fear of writing anything at all, because there's not always a way to tell before you start if you're writing a dud. That's not healthy though, or productive if you actually want to write. So now I'm teaching myself how to plot. Trying to, anyway. My first port of call is Evan Marshall's Novel Writing (called, I think, The Marshall Plan in the US). He has a handy breakdown of how many scenes and characters you should be thinking to put in a book of a particular length, how to structure the middle to keep it moving, and how to finish off. Some of what he writes makes perfect sense to me, for example where to add your "surprises" and plot twists to keep things interesting. However he thinks that there should be 5 viewpoint characters in a 120k novel (the length I'm provisionally aiming for), which seems like a lot to me. Especially since, in the 24 sections you get to start a novel at that length, the secondary characters come in at sections six, eight, ten, and twelve. That doesn't seem like a lot of space to get things moving. And you're supposed to plant the seeds of each one in the previous sections, but what if you're writing one of those novels with separate characters and plotlines that eventually come together? It seems like this book is a good place to start, but I'm not convinced it will let me tell the story I want to. The next part is to dig into Jeff Vandermeer's Wonderbook, and all those random writing books I loaded onto my Kindle and haven't read yet. Maybe if I take the bits I like from each of them and shake I'll come up with a method of plotting that works for me. Better late than never - here's the next of my POD posts. Page Size and Margins Assuming that you've got your front matter set up and your manuscript ready, you then need to start formatting your document. The first thing to do, if you haven't already, is set your document to the size your chosen for your trim size. In Word this is in the Page Setup options under Paper Size. Select the size, and make sure you select the option to apply it to the whole document. For some reason, at least in the version of Word I'm using, this is not the default.
The next thing to set is your margins. These will have an impact on the thickness, and therefore cost, of your book, but don't be tempted to set them as narrow as possible. Your readers need somewhere to put their fingers and thumbs when they hold the book open. Traditionally published books tend to have margins in the region of 3/4 to 1 inch. If you're not sure what to use, find some books of a similar trim size to yours and measure their margins. This will give you an idea of how your book will look. The POD printer you've chosen may also have their own specified minimum, so poke around on the site and find this out before you decide. For example, Lulu has a handy guide to formatting if you want to have your book available for retail, which specifies that margins must be at least half an inch and the top and bottom, and left and right, must match. Once you know what your margins are set them in the Page Setup options, and remember to select this for the whole document as well. Next time, choosing a font and setting up styles. |
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