News!! (and a Request)

As promised a little while ago I have some news of my book Veiled in Shadows.
Essentially my news is fairly straight forward.

Finally, after much hair tearing, endless delays caused but the intrusion of other aspects of my life, going back over my MS I don’t know how many times, I have all my files for the book ready for uploading to the printing company Lightning Source.

Notice I say “printing company” rather than “self-publishing company”. That is because Lightning Source is plain and simple a printer.

Unlike many vanity presses masquerading as “self-publishing” Lighting Source is a printer. They don’t try to sell you various “services” to “improve” your manuscript. They don’t sell you packages to market your book.

You have to do it all: editing; layout; cover; uploading the files for the cover and body; supplying an ISBN. Also, you set the retail price and decide on wholesale discount and returns policy. In short you are the publisher. (Some of you will remember I registered a business as a small publisher a while ago)

After that they list the book on Ingram (of which they are a subsidiary) so book stores can order it and they make it available to mobs like Amazon and The Book Depository (in Aussie English a mob is not a group of gangsters but any group).

So after tonight I have to wait for Lightning Source to send me a “proof” copy of the bound book to make a final check. Once I approve that (assuming I don’t need any last minute changes) I am in the market.

So that is my big news. I am on the way!!!!

This is such a relief after far too much time bogged down in the last few details.
I am really excited, in fact I should probably say ecstatic about having got this far.

I have a little fantasy that once this all happens I will be able to spend more time working on my WIP. In reality I guess that if I want Veiled in Shadows to work I am quite likely to have less time to spend on the WIP.
I am going to have to market my baby myself. And that is going to be a big job!

The trick over the coming months is to come up with clever ways to increase my visibility. In terms of efficiency that effort has to be mainly targeted on the web.
In comparison to markets overseas, in Oz the market is tiny (there are only 20 million of us in the whole country).

SO now for my request.
As I said I have to come up with ways of marketing my little piece.
Now last night I came up with a few words that I hope are punchy, brief and raise interest in the book.

But I am no marketing expert, so I was hoping to ask all my blogosphere friends to do me a big favour and have a look and comment.

Here we go:

In a world divided by conflict.
In a storm that consumes friend and foe alike.


In a war fought in the shadows…
those who live may do so at the cost of their humanity.


Two lovers united by passion
…and divided by hate.


As they fight for survival…
their most implacable foe might be one another.


What do you think?
Would that attract your interest?
What kind of book does it sound like?
And are there any improvements I could make?

Finally a couple of piccies I took yesterday arvo/evening.

A rainbow in the Yarra Valley
After so many years of drought it is a real luxury to see the decent rain continuing past the occasional downpour. A rainbow is just icing!

The Sunset over Yarra Glen

I look Very Hard For Nothing.

I swear I am getting square eyes.

I have been doing final preparation of my manuscript and cover of Veiled in Shadows.
I have decided to run with Lightning Source as my printer. They are more than competitive in terms of cost per book and they give some advantages in terms of distribution.

Like CreateSpace, the Amazon subsidiary, they have an easy path onto Amazon listings. A presence on Amazon is a vital part of my planned marketing campaign, and my main target will be the American market because it is so big in comparison to anywhere else.

Yet, if I want to sell Veiled here in Oz (or in the UK) Amazon is too expensive. It can cost as much (or even more) than the price of a book to airfreight a paperback from the US to Oz. Lightning Source is an Ingram International subsidiary, which means the potential of international distribution.

I don’t really expect many (if any) shopfront resellers will pick up Veiled, not unless I can get some real sales and interest happening. More to the point, from my perspective, is if Veiled is available at Ingram (which it will be) I may get it listed by the Book Depository. The big advantage of the UK based Book Depository is they don’t charge postage for air freight. And that’s anywhere in the world!

They are well worth checking out, I buy nearly all my books from them. Their prices are competitive with Amazon and no freight cost.

Now I am digressing from my square eyes. I have to submit my MS to Lightning Source (LS) as a PDF. No problem I thought, I already have converted it to PDF using some open source software.
Wrong! LS will only accept PDFs formatted on Adobe Acrobat.

So after a lot of hassle I manage to organise a copy of Acrobat. All good.

Wrong again!
My MS, which happily converted to a PDF using the other software, wouldn’t convert with Acrobat. One of the fonts I have used wouldn’t embed in the PDF using Acrobat (fonts have to be embedded so the printer can access them and I was using an odd one for a few pages of “letters” in the book) .

OK change the font to something similar that will embed.
Still won’t work. Acrobat reports the dodgy font is still in the document.

Much rending of clothes and tearing of hair!

When I calmed down I began a search of the MS to find wherever the font was hiding. No luck on a hard copy. So I begin trawling through an electronic copy. I can’t find it anywhere.

I realise with dismay I am probably looking for a few stray characters (of the font variety, not even Acrobat has taken a dislike to my villains).

No luck. I break the MS into separate chapters and test the most likely (the ones where I know I used the font).

Hallelujah I narrow it down to one chapter and scour that with a fine tooth comb.

Still no luck.

Then, as I contemplate retyping this chapter in a blank document, I look one last time.
I find it, a single solitary space in the wrong font. No wonder I couldn’t see it. I was effectively looking for NOTHING.

Just for your enlightenment I have included the offending space. Here it is. See there? There in front of the last carriage return. See it?

No, neither could I.

So finally last night I got the whole MS into an Acrobat PDF.

Ahh, sighs of relief all round.

Except now, I have to do another line by line check to make sure no errors in formatting have crept in with the change of font and PDF software.

At least this time I’ll be looking for things I can see.

I hope.



Now a totally random piccie, this time from my archive.
Another variety of Banksia
From the leaves I’d never guess this was a banksia, but these beautiful flowers are very distinctive.

Progress

I haven’t posted about my novel Veiled in Shadows and my self publishing plans since around Christmas.

The absence of news has really been due to… well to a lack of news.

Now though, I have some to share.
My formatting is complete, I am finally happy with the way the thing looks.

I have now been taking care of some of the formal measures I have to complete to become a publisher.

I received some news last night that I was going to share today.

This photo shows my excitement at receiving formal notification that the business name I have requested has been approved and registered.I am a publisher! At least I now have a business name registered in my name.
My little (or is that microscopic) enterprise is titled.

Drum roll please…

Xantharea Press.

What is a Xantharea when it is at home?
I have chosen to name my business for a family of Aussie native plants called Xanthorrhoea . Commonly known as grasstrees (or less politically correctly as “blackboys”) Xanthorrhoea are a typical Aussie bush species. They are as tough as old boots, they survive drought, or bushfire and live for thousands of years. After a fire they are often the first green you see coming back in the bush. Not a bad icon to take for a publishing venture especially given how tough the industry is these days.

I decided to modify the spelling from that of the Latin proper name because I hate the correct spelling and it reminds me of a medical condition.

As if I wasn’t happy enough with that when I got home this afternoon I found an email from Bowker’s Australian subsidiary confirming the registration of my ISBN.

This is starting to feel real. Very exciting, a bit scary too, but very exciting!

Enough for tonight as I have had a long day today and need to do a few things in preparation for another long day tomorrow.

A Chrissie Brekky

As many of you know, I manage a charity service that provides breakfast (and other services) to people who are homeless.

Well Christmas is almost upon us. We have debated for some time what to do for “our guys” over the Chrissie period. We have come up with a couple of solutions.
There seem to be a profusion of Chrissie lunches, some in the days leading up to the 25th and some on the Holiday itself.

So breakfast being “our area of expertise”, we decided to put on a BBQ brekky. Well our brekky has happened and I am pleased to say it was a roaring success.
We provided lashings of steak, lamb chops, sausages, bacon, eggs along with bread rolls and assorted condiments (plus of course our more usual fare of toast, cereal, coffee and tea for those who wanted it). We had a generous donation from a local church to cover the cost so we went to town on the amounts.
By the time we opened we had a large grill full to overflowing of food ready to go.

It was a real pleasure to see the delight of many of our guys at the sight that greeted them as they came in.
One of our regulars for example, a guy who is old beyond his years and who wears an eye-patch and has massive facial scarring from the ravages of cancer treatment, chuckled with glee when he was told he could pick whatever he liked and could come back for as many servings as he wished. Another fellow said he loves eggs and hadn’t had one for over a year; he came back for at least half a dozen.

These guys have so little and live such desperate lives. Their joy at something so simple was really one of those moments that help make a tough job more than worthwhile.

The other thing we are managing to do for the guys is to keep our service open throughout the entire Christmas period. Christmas coincides with summer here. This leads to a great number of charities and other services not only closing for the holidays themselves but in some cases closing for weeks. Fortunately because we have a very dedicated team of volunteers we are going to be able to stay open right through Christmas and January.

Now a couple of piccies.
On our way home on the weekend we stopped a couple of times so I could grab the chance to capture some evening shots.

This first was captured near Yarra Glen.The silvery look is partly due to a combination of haze and cloud, but is also an artefact of a very narrow aperture because I was shooting almost straight into the afternoon sun.
The next is taken a little later from a point called Garden Hill.It is looking across miles of suburb to the distant Melbourne CBD.

Finally, again from Garden HillThe city with a 300mm telephoto as the Sun set behind.

A brief note about the self-publishing experiment. Formatting is almost complete. I have to chose a different name for my publishing venture. I am also working on layout and images for a couple of web pages. This last has not been going very well as I have not been at all happy with what I have put together so far.

A Few Bits and Pieces and a Grumble About the System.

Last night the Dr Who special “Waters of Mars” ran on ABC TV.
In a homage to a misspent youth I watched it. Well actually I have to admit that having never grown up, I have enjoyed most of the Dr Who series starring David Tennant.

Sorry to those American fans who haven’t yet seen it (I believe it screens on the 19th in the USA) but I found it boring. This special is basically a not very suspenseful zombie show. Some of the new series have been really worthwhile. I particularly enjoyed the 2007 episode called “Blink”, it really built suspense beautifully.
Alas no such brilliance was on display last night. For a Dr Who fan I would rate this effort 5 out of 10 and for anyone else 2 out of 10 (I suppose a die hard Zombie fan might give it 6).

I continue to format my manuscript. It is such a slooow process. Looking at every page line by line, paragraph by paragraph is likely to send me barmy. I live in dread of seeing my imaginary Uncle Harry again.

Finally a quick word about work. We heard today that one of our younger service users (I’ll call him Joe) has been hit by a car. According to one of the Royal District Nursing Service nurses we work with he is in hospital with two broken legs. Greg, my offsider, left work early to visit him.

Where the grumble comes in is that poor Joe has a previous acquired brain injury (ABI) from a car accident some years ago (one of his parents was driving). Because of the ABI Joe is unable to properly look after himself so he has ended up homeless. I find it endlessly frustrating that there are not enough resources devoted to assisting people like Joe keep their lives together.

Joe is usually confused and I have witnessed him crossing roads with very little idea of how dangerous cars are. That he is left essentially to fend for himself makes me very angry. Government services for the Joes in this state are woefully underfunded.

Joe is in hospital following a serious accident on a street he should probably never have been on. As for the driver who hit him heaven knows what sort of trauma he or she is going through, I am pretty sure Joe would have walked straight out in front of the car. That person is also potentially paying for our negligence as a society.

Now a Random photo from 2007.
The grey kind of reflects my mood tonight.I took this on the rear deck of a Manly Ferry pulling out of Sydney one evening, I think the sky looked just amazing.

Formatting

On my to do list, I managed to leave off buying an ISBN. It was on my mental to do list but somehow slipped off the typed version. A big thank you to Mary of The Woo Woo Journal Teacup Journal for reminding me of that little oversight. Mary thank you also for your fantastic comment on my last post. Advice like register your business name before you set about organising your ISBN should be straight forward, but is in reality easily overlooked.

Mary’s blog has a great deal of information on self publishing. It is well worth checking out on that basis alone. Mary does not limit herself to that single topic but posts on a wide range of interesting subjects.

One thing I have begun while I wait on little delights like business name registration, is working on layout. The joys of consistent formatting beckon.

As part of this process I have been looking at how to lay out my chapter headings. I like crisp and simple.

For example this is from Beevor’s D-Day.
I’m not sure about this style though. I don’t think the italics quite work and there seems to be too much blank space between the heading and the first paragraph.

Paula Simons, The Girl in Times Square
I think the simple use of a larger version of the text font works. Also there is less stark white.

Kate Grenville has gone for the super simple in The Idea of Perfection. Just the chapter number. I quite like this but need chapter titles as well.

So maybe a mix.
Chosen at random the top of page 10 of Veiled in Shadows.

Now because this has been such dry colourless post.
It's Summer and many of the Eucalyptus trees are flowering, this one is a pink or red flowering gum probably Corymbia ficifolia.

Well Here I Go.

I have finally decided to stop procrastinating.

Procrastinate me? I’d be ambivalent about procrastinating except I just can’t make up my mind.

I have been tossing up for some time the question of “to self-publish or not to self-publish” well I’ve finally made a decision. I think.

No, seriously, I have been leaning towards the self-publishing side of things for some time now and I am pretty much ready to take the leap.

Except of course the whole thing is not very like a leap. It is more like planning for an expedition than jumping off anything.

So what do I need to do before I go for it?

Here is my list so far:
Work out which POD service to use. Christy Pinheiro uses CreateSpace, her partner in crime Nick Russell uses LightningSource. There are of course others as well (Like Lulu).

Revise the layout of the Manuscript so it is suitable for publishing. In terms of editing I am pretty much happy that the MS is ready to go, thanks to the efforts of a couple of others.

Format said manuscript so it looks like a professional book.

Register a business name. Then I can be a “publisher”.

Register a domain name.

Register with a Web hosting company.

Commission or self-design a web site.

Decide on a marketing strategy for myself and the book. I promise I WILL NOT start spamming people to promote the book when I get to that stage.

Pay for a commercial licence for the art I have used for my cover. (I have a non commercial licence which allows me to reuse the image on the web etc).

While on the cover I need to rewrite the blurb (I HATE trying to condense 100,000+ words into a couple of paragraphs).

Hmm, this list seems to get longer all the time, I am sure there is a heap more but I’ll start with this lot.

So what do you think? Have I missed anything glaringly obvious (so far at least). Any suggestions? To be honest this is a bit scary and I would appreciate any comments.

Now a random photo. This timber slab shack is the remains of a pioneer farm in The Australian Alps at Namadgi National Park.

Moooooving

As you might guess from the title of this post this whole move really is becoming a saga.

Packing. Packing.Packing, it seems un-ending.


I had a hire truck booked for tomorrow (not just a ute, a proper 3 tonne van). Then I get an email from the hire company telling me they had double booked and I was the lucky sod who missed out.

As we Aussies are wont to say BUGGER!

So after a little hair tearing I began ringing and emailing around to book another. Finally with a sense of relief I had one booked with another company for the morning.
YAY!

So all things being equal our move will be mostly over tomorrow evening.

This brings me to another point. I have been fairly slack in posting and in responding to all your comments over the past little while. I'm not super human enough to work, pack and post all in the same limited number of hours we are allotted in any given day. I want to say a big thank you to everyone who has read my posts recently and especially to those who have been commenting. Thank you all for being so supportive as I ruminate about self publishing and the like.

Finally, thanks to the vagaries of the Oz telecommunications system we are likely to be without a broadband connection for some days after the move. The phone line is connected so I will have access to a dial-up connection but that will send me mad just checking email. (Dim dark memories of 300 baud modems in the bad old days briefly surface. Shudder!).
So I expect I will not be able to post again until next week at the earliest. I hope it will all be sorted by then.

In the meantime all of you good people take care!

Self Publishing: a Review.

A while ago I mentioned I received a copy of The Step-by-Step Guide to Self-Publishing for Profit! by Christy Pinheiro of The Publishing Maven

This book has raised all sorts of issues for me. I am more than sick of the grind of trying to get my work published using the “traditional” method. I have wondered about self publishing before. I have also put a modicum of effort into researching the possibility of self publishing through Lulu and BookSurge. I have even looked at Lightning Source

Christy’s book injects Amazon’s CreateSpace into the mix. The cost per copy with Create Space seems much more reasonable than Lulu. Also you gain the benefit of automatic listing with Amazon.

With self publishing marketing seems to be pretty much up to an author’s ability to push themselves. But then again it seems that most “orthodox” publishers seem to leave most of the marketing up to authors these days.

I’ve had my manuscript copyedited a couple of times. I’ve also produced an OK cover for the fun of it.

So in theory I could put it all together as a self published book in a fairly short period of time. Marketing would remain my biggest problem.
Damn it would be nice if it was all easy!

Anyway I have put up a review of Christy’s book on Amazon and include it below:

Title: The Step-By-Step Guide to Self-Publishing For Profit!
Author: C. Pinheiro (co-authored with Nick Russell)
ISBN: 978-0982266007
Publisher: Pineapple Publications

Christy Pinheiro and her co-author Nick Russell have produced a very handy guide to beginning a self publishing business. As the title suggests, the book outlines a series of steps to establish a profitable publishing business. The book works as a practical guide for beginners in the industry.

The book can be roughly broken into three sections, each covering a different aspect of self publishing. The first few chapters cover the basics such as: avoiding vanity publishers; the rudiments of establishing a business; and preparing the best possible manuscript by using services like copy editors. The next section deals with: the specifics of publishing using Amazon’s CreateSpace; it also briefly looks at other services such as Lulu.com. Nick Russell apparently uses Ingram’s Lighting Source for the majority of his own business. The third section deals with marketing a self published book and developing an income using the internet. Potentially the most valuable section of the book, it looks at various strategies. A myriad of examples are given including: using Amazon’s features; seeking book reviews; promotion using blogging; establishing a promotional website; and generating income using Google’s AdWords and Amazon’s affiliate program.

From a personal perspective, I found Christy’s book informative and helpful. This book has restimulated my interest in exploring self publishing, despite the fact that Christy specifically suggests self publishing works best for non-fiction. The only section of the book that had no direct relevance to me (as an Aussie) was some technical material on registering a business in the US and record keeping for US tax purposes.

Finally as this book produced by POD, a brief word about the book’s physical characteristics is worthwhile. I was impressed by the overall quality of the book. The paper is of good quality. The printing is excellent throughout with no technical errors or problems such as bleed. The cover is full colour and printed to a standard equivalent to any retail book. The only slight quibble I would voice is that the cardstock used in the cover would benefit from being a slightly heavier weight.

P.S.
Christy has just posted that BookSurge and CreateSpace have been merged by Amazon.

And finally.
A male King Parrot I snapped him up near Badger Creek a few weeks ago. A lot of Australian parrots are fairly easy to photograph, they seem to be curious about what you are doing.

This guy was so relaxed about my presence he took some time out to preen before flying off.

Madder Than a Cut Snake

Well I’ve officially gone mad.

“Whadda ya mean gone mad? You’ve always been madder than a cut snake!”

Uncle Harry, I hate to say it mate, but as a figment of my imagination you’ve probably proved the case.

I seem to have been doing almost anything to avoid finishing off the corrections to my manuscript suggested by Cheryl some weeks ago.
For a while I was fairly diligent, now I think I am only a few hours away from completing. My problem is I just seem to use any excuse to avoid those last few hours of work.

I don’t count blogging, although it is dangerously addictive. Some of my avoidance tactics have been fairly constructive such as: researching for the sequel; a little writing of the sequel; house work, mowing the lawn etc.

But most of them have been a sheer waste of time, like watching TV including: Aussie Rules Football (I don’t even barrack for a team) or Netball (ditto).

In short I have been procrastinating.

I thought I would share one of my procrastinations.
In a supreme effort to waste time I have designed a cover for my novel.

Mind you I haven’t the foggiest notion of why I think I need to design a cover.

Here are a few of the reasons I don’t need a cover:
- I haven’t got an agent yet, let alone a publisher.
- When I finally get a publisher they are not likely to be at all interested in my design.
- My artistic tendencies are in writing not graphic design.
- I don’t think I am likely to self publish.

But reason be damned, I was doing one anyway.
The creation of this piece has been a supreme effort of procrastination. Initially, a rough idea for the cover popped into my head: I thought it should feature a vivid blue eye because one of my leading characters features an impressive pair of peepers; then the working title is Veiled in Shadows so the obvious thing was a veiled face with a blue eye.

So armed with this nugget I went searching through stock photos.
I eventually found this image and bought a $5 limited licence.
I cropped it a bit and added some text and had a first draft, so to speak.
While this said “veiled” alright it kind of didn’t quite work for me.
So I had to add something but what?

Then quite by chance I happened to walk past a little militaria shop in Melbourne. In the window I saw among other things some Nazi documents.
I bought this one for $45 (as an aside is anyone’s German good enough for a translation? I have a minute amount of German and much of the officialese in this goes right over my head)

So after a fair bit of scanning and learning how to drive a photo editor to (do more than crop), coupled with a lot of hair tearing (my procrastination can be carried to absurd levels) I ended up with this.
To which I have added a spine and a back cover. The blurb probably deserves an apology; I really struggle at distilling 120,000 words and multiple sub-plots to half a page of text and at the same time trying to make it catchy. I hope I haven’t made the work sound trashy, I don’t think it is.

Now I have to go because I have procrastinated long enough.

More on Self Publishing

More browsing the net about self publishing. More thinking.

A couple of self publishers Neil Slade and Morris Rosenthal talk about using Lightning Source as a POD printer and selling through Amazon.

This is all looking very interesting in terms of reasonable quality and hopefully reasonably priced manufacture and distribution of a finished book.

All I would have to do is sort out; editing, layout, cover design, and marketing.
Sweet!

Actually, it really doesn’t seem too daunting except for the marketing bit.
I have already had the book copyedited and a full edit doesn’t look too terrifyingly expensive.

Of course I could edit myself.
Hah! That is laughable. Am I the only one who sees what I think is there rather than what is? At least when it comes to my own work, all I can see is what I think I have written, this makes self correcting almost impossible. As a side to this please forgive me for all the typos I no doubt have on this blog.

Cover design, do it myself? Start with a stock photo and build something in Photoshop? Maybe not, but I do know a few artists.

Marketing how on Earth do I do that? The Internet is obviously is the way to go, but how? I have done some press releases and a minute amount of development work seeking sponsorship for various charities I have worked for, but a full fledged marketing campaign?

An awful lot to think about.
My brain hurts.

Time for brain easing photos

This was taken July 2005, I wonder if anyone can guess where?

Doesn’t it look summery, just the thing for a cold winter day in Melbourne.

And just for a but of fun:
Does anyone have any idea of how this boat

Might have got to here?

Self Publishing can it work?

I have been thinking about self publishing lately.
Not that I am about to leap into anything.
As I said the other day I have an editor reading my work as I type.
But I am fairly sick of the traditional route into publication and I have hardly begun yet.

Like many of us I have had a curious look at outfits like Lulu.com and Booksurge.com and wondered if they were any different from vanity publishing of old.

Of the two mentioned above, Lulu looks less like it will subject a prospective author to an aggressive marketing campaign to sell add-ons. Lulu seems to allow you to self quote; Booksurge wants to put you in contact with a “publishing consultant”.

One difference I can see between this model and traditional vanity publishers is that with Print on Demand a client of such businesses would not necessarily end up with a garage full of unsold books. I know more than one person who has suffered this fate.

Still the author is left with the problem of how do they sell their books? If I can’t manage to market well enough to get an agent to read my manuscript, how do I go about marketing my book to the world?

Dilemmas, dilemmas.

Now just ‘cause I like them, a couple of photos.


These guys are Rainbow Lorikeets they are quite common along the east coast I snapped them at a local park near the Yarra River during February.


Also another sunset, this one near Lake George in June last year.