I use OpenOffice Writer to typeset most of my books, because it works well enough, and it’s cross-platform (kinda). I also usually use drop caps of some sort, because studies show that they improve readership. (Believe it or not.) And I’ve been using fixed line-spacing and register-true, because they make the layout look more professional. But there’s an issue with drop caps displaying bigger than I want them to, and I didn’t think I could do anything about it, until I accidentally noticed a paragraph in which the drop cap looked correct.

The paragraph’s style had been manually modified, and it was not using the “Text body chapter-first” style that I had specified. So I dug into the style parameters and finally figured out why it was displaying correctly in that case, and I developed a work-around to deal with the problem in the future.

This is a work-around, not a bug report, because I can’t reliably reproduce the bad behavior—I did try—and I don’t have time right now to delve into it further and figure out how to reproduce it. If you feel like working it out and reproducing the bug, please do submit a bug report to OpenOffice.org.

For now, here’s what I’ve found out. In OpenOffice Writer, when I use Drop Caps with Register-true turned on, in some situations, the first line of the paragraph gets pushed down, and the drop cap expands to fill the empty space. Here’s a screenshot of what I mean, from my dad’s upcoming book Jots & Tittles:

Broken	Fixed

The Details

The screenshot on the left is how the drop caps were appearing, and the one on the right is how I expected them appear. The drop cap is 2 lines tall. But as you can see on the left, OpenOffice thinks the top of the paragraph is a little too low on the page, and so it pushes the first line of text down to the next available slot (according to the Register-true reference style). When it does this, it expands the drop cap up to the original top of the paragraph, and down to the new bottom of the second line. This makes it too big, with a huge overhang at the top.

I’m using OpenOffice.org 3.1.0 (OOO310m11 Build:9399) on MacOS 10.4.11.

In this document, the paragraph text uses the “Text body” style, except for the first paragraph of the chapter, which uses the “Text body chapter-first” style (which is based on “Text body,” but has drop caps). The register-true reference style in this document is the “Default” style. The “Default” style has a fixed line spacing of 0.27″, which is inherited by “Text body” and its derivatives. To get the corrected layout, pictured on the right, I changed the line spacing of “Text body” to “Single” (i.e., single-spaced text). This did not affect the spacing of the lines as it was laid out (because I’m using register-true), but it did cause OpenOffice to realize that it didn’t need to insert a blank line at the top of the paragraph.

The Work-around

In summary, in order to work around the problem:

1. If you use styles, make sure your drop-cap style is different than your register-true reference style.
2. Change the line spacing of the drop-cap style to “Single.” (Or alternatively, change a style that the drop-cap style depends on, as long as the register-true reference style is still set to the proper line spacing.)

Unfortunately, as I said, I haven’t been able to reproduce this symptom in isolation. I imagine it has something to do with how the height and position of the chapter title &c interacts with the position and spacing of lines of paragraph text… But I can’t seem to narrow it down or reliably invoke it. So for now, I’ll just have to remember to try this work-around when I run across the same symptom in the future.

-TimK

The quick-and-dirty concept cover for Dad's new book—with a possible marketing problem that no one has noticed yet. (Click to enlarge.)

Recently, a friend commented on her little one’s first day of school. Must have been preschool. The little tyke was so excited, she was up and ready by 8:15 in the morning.

For me, though, this week, the Missus is on staycation (except 2 mornings she needs to go in and catch up on work—she’s salaried), and I was looking forward to her taking the kids out of the house to do fun things with them. The house being quiet and empty, I was hoping maybe I could post a fun video today. But so far, it hasn’t worked out that way, because the Missus has phone calls to make and stuff to clean and stuff to pack for moving and stuff to load up into my in-box, which I promised to do but I haven’t gotten a round two yet. Therefore, I really haven’t gotten much done today, and now my head is beginning to hurt, a slow, dull ache.

Oh! I can so not wait for the kids to go back to school!

(I’m going to get to the book cover. Trust me. Just give me a moment, please…)

So I hope you can understand why I’m so grouchy. And why I won’t be talking with any of you about universal healthcare. Because the next person who cites the New York Times in support of a stupid idea that 10 seconds worth of Googling would have dispelled, in the mood I’m in right now, he’s likely to get my fist up his nose. So we can just pick up our conversations later in the week… maybe.

Truthfully, though, the Missus is trying really, really hard—I can tell—not to interrupt me. She’s controlling her natural impulse to badger me about stuff I haven’t gotten done right this minute, and basically letting me focus enough to finish this blog post.

And last night I watched up through tomorrow morning’s episode of Gilmore Girls, taking enough notes for a good piece for my Gilmore Girls fansite. And watching Gilmore Girls usually relaxes me, because the characters are engaging and entertaining. Yeah, it’s hilarious how Headmaster Hanlin “Il Duce” Charleston bludgeons Lorelai with guilt and expectation in order to get her to overlook how his minions ignored Rory’s educational needs in favor of their own backwards perception of the world. Great fun! But they always end up with a happy ending. At least they did before stupid Universal fired Amy Sherman-Palladino at season 7, the season to end the show, both literally and figuratively.

(Yes, I’m an opinionated grouch. But I’m getting to the book cover. Really, I am.)

The thing is, this week is likely to be busier for me than normal. Because my Dad has a wonderful opportunity to gain recognition for his new book, which we haven’t released yet. We weren’t planning on releasing it for another few months, because we’re still finishing the final proofreading. But he has an unexpected chance for PR at an event next month, and if we can bring it to press this week, he can present it to a large, influential group connected to his target market.

Now, with most publishers, he’d be out of luck. But because I operate a lean-and-mean, Agile publishing operation—and because I’m family—he’s not out of luck; I am.

So yesterday, we had an emergency planning session: determine the minimum work needed to bring a first edition of the book to press this week. Well what’s left?

1. Complete at least one proofreading pass.
2. Assign an ISBN, and prepare the copyright page for the first edition.
3. Write the back-cover copy and inside-front copy.
4. Design the cover. (And send an image of the front cover to the people handling the book display for the event.)
5. Double-, triple-, and quadruple-check the layout.
6. Skip printing a proof copy (in order to make it within the week).
7. Quintuple-check the layout.
8. Publish it, and order the first box of books!

That last one is actually a whole bunch of steps, but I have them fairly well systematized, and only the first part of that process needs to be completed in order to take advantage of the opportunity.

The others… Let’s see. I was planning to do #1, in order to help me with #3, which I am the most qualified to do (of the people on the production team). #2 is simple enough—all standard stuff—and hopefully will go off without a hitch.

#4… My brother was going to help with the cover, but then he had to go and get married and promptly ended up in the hospital. By the way, the latter had nothing to do with the former. No, it was an injury, probably sustained by lifting at work, carrying sick people. (He’s an EMT.) Then he came home and promptly had to go back for major surgery, in order to make sure he wouldn’t sustain similar injuries in the future. Then he came home again and promptly had to go back again due to complications from the surgery. Frankly, we don’t know how much more of this we can take.

In any case, yesterday, our emergency planning session turned into an emergency design session. We looked at a million fonts, hit iStockPhoto in earnest—the picture of Hebrew toy blocks was the best image we could find to reflect the concept and mood behind the book, and frankly, I think it looks trés kewl—threw together a concept cover, I playing the designer and Dad playing the client.

Then I posted the cover to Facebook, asking my friends and friends-of-friends and friends-of-friends-of-friends et cetera to glance at it and tell, What does the cover make you think of?

Because there’s a possible impression that is not consistent with the content of the book. I didn’t think, however, that it would be an issue for our target market—primarily Christian young adults immersing themselves in their faith. Still, the only way to tell is through testing, and we’ve had next to no opportunity to test this cover design, neither in ads nor else-how.

As it turns out, no one yet has mentioned the possible misinterpretation I was thinking of, so that’s good news.

One person mentioned “children,” because of the blocks. This could be of concern, if the thought of the feeling of children turns off people in our target market. But as our target market is still young, they probably haven’t had kids yet, and so the thought of the feeling of kids probably isn’t likely to turn them off.

In any case, look at the book cover above. Click on it to see a larger version. And then comment below: what does it make you think of?

-TimK

P.S. I still have many more refinements to add to this cover before it’s done. This is only a concept cover to test the main elements.

P.P.S. All the other items on the list are fairly well systematized as well, and should go off without a hitch. #3 and #4 are the heavies.

Note that there are only 5 more days (through Wednesday, July 15) to pre-order an autographed copy at reviewer discount prices. After that, the price goes up. See the Love through the Eyes of an Idiot website for more details.

-TimK

I just finished a first cut of the cover copy.

Here’s the text from the back cover:

I’m also accepting advanced readers and reviewers. If you’d like a free PDF copy of the book to review in your blog or other publication, please email me or leave a comment below.

-TimK

The thing about a book’s cover is that people actually do judge your book by it. That is, the book cover is going to be one of the first things someone sees. The book’s cover is therefore the book’s own advertisement. So why not design it as such.

Start early in the process, and test several cover designs. I talked about this a little in my post “How Much Does It Cost to Publish a Book”. Different elements of the book cover you’ll want to experiment with include the graphics, the title, the subtitle, the layout, the color… even the size of the title text verses the size of the author’s name. (You’ll note that The Conscience of Abe’s Turn cover doesn’t even have my name on it at all. This is not an oversight. I had determined through ad testing that no one cared what my name was, which makes sense, because I’m Tim King, not Stephen King.)

One thing you can do on the cheap is to print out mock-ups of two or three different cover designs on your cheapo inkjet printer, wrap them around actual books of similar size, and show them to friends, acquaintances, and strangers. (You can see what I mean by a “mock-up” in this video about the Abe’s Turn ARC.) You especially want to find people in your target market. Show them one cover mock-up at a time, and for each one, ask, “If you saw this book sitting on a store shelf, would you pick it up to find out more about it?” In general, the cover design with the most “yes” answers wins. Then you can repeat the experiment with more and more refinements of the cover.

(Note that I haven’t actually tried this myself yet, but it’s based on sound direct-marketing practices. I’m expecting to do something like this, however, for an upcoming title.)

-TimK

If you don’t mind me asking, how much did it cost you to publish your book (or your dad’s)? You seem to be doing all of the important things that subsidy presses do and probably at considerable savings.

I’m still refining my publishing process, and I don’t intend to publish many books by other authors (which is more expensive than publishing my own books, because you have to coordinate between two people, rather than just between the two sides of my own brain). But here’s what I’ve found out so far:

• I didn’t keep track of how much it cost (in hours spent) to edit and lay out my dad’s book. It wasn’t cheap, and I also found that adding changes after layout took a long time, because I had no good process for integrating those changes. So if I were to go through that again, I would first define a process for submitting changes to a manuscript that has already been laid out.

  In general, I could easily see it costing $200 or more to hire someone to lay out a book, assuming it was already in electronic format and fairly well organized. No, I didn’t have to pay for someone to do that, because I had the technical wherewithal to do it myself. But the opportunity cost was that I could not do other things with my own time while I was hacking with Dad’s layout.

  This is usually not an issue for me, however, because when I write my own books, I write them already laid out, so there’s almost zero layout cost. (Or rather, it would cost me more just to describe what I wanted to a third party than just to do it myself.)

• The cover design for Dad’s book Can You See God in This Picture? my brother Josh put together. We used images from my dad’s archives. I gave Josh guidelines to use in designing the cover, based on my marketing knowledge, because a book’s front cover is its own advertisement. But we did zero market testing on Dad’s cover. For The Conscience of Abe’s Turn, I used a process that can be applied to any title. I used stock photos from iStockphoto, and I ad-tested the cover image and wording, even before designing the cover.

  Living in a Police State
  Every government needs a conscience
  to keep it honest. An online drama.
  AbesTurn.com

  The winning ad

  For the front cover wording, I ran text ads on the Google content network (those “Ads by Google” you see everywhere). I tried different keywords and phrasings to try to determine which ones resonated with my target market. This became “Living in a Police State” on the front cover and “Every government needs a conscience to keep it honest” on the back. While these ads were not expensive, I did spend close to $300 on them.

  To choose the image, I started with “XSmall” size images for each candidate cover image, at $1 for each different image. I used these to create image ads, which I ran on my own websites. Each ad had the same wording on it, but a different picture. Then I drove traffic to those web pages and measured the click-through rate of each image ad. (I could have spent a lot of money on these ads if I had run them on other sites as well, much more than I had on the text ads, and that might have been money well spent, but I didn’t have the cash to invest at the time.) Two images tied for the greatest click-through. I chose one to be the cover image for The Conscience of Abe’s Turn, and bought a Medium ($5) or Large ($10) size image with which to create the cover design.

  Now, while most subsidy publishers will design a cover, they’re probably not doing any ad testing. Probably not even any focus-group testing. If you can’t afford real market testing, however, I’d at least mock up the cover of a book and show it to my friends before committing to the design. (In fact, I’m planning to post a little YouTube video to try to drum up opinions on the cover for an upcoming small book. Not anywhere near as good as ad testing, of course, but it’s probably better than flying blind.)

  Laying out the cover for Abe’s Turn is something I would in future contract out in a heartbeat, if I had the money to invest, because it’s a pretty complex cover. Simpler covers are pretty easy to put together, if you have and know how to use the software. (I believe Josh used Adobe Illustrator. I used the Gimp.) I created a mock-up of a cover for an upcoming book People Stories, and did it very quickly, because it was just a stock image, front-cover text, back-cover image, back-cover text, and white ISBN block (where the ISBN eventually goes), and maybe some spine text. For the Abe’s Turn cover, start with the fact that the original stock photo was not big enough for the cover, so I had to extend the dark bars in 3 directions through graphic manipulations. Then you go from there. Way more complex. Way more expensive. You could spend $100 to $1000 and up on a cover design, once you know what elements should be on it.

• I started a publishing company, not a big one, just big enough for me. That means buying a block of ISBN’s. A block of 10 ISBN’s costs $275–grossly overpriced, yeah, but that’s what you get with a government-enforced monopoly. (I understand you can get a single ISBN for $125, but it hardly seems worth it if you plan on publishing multiple books. And if you only plan on publishing one book, you’re probably better of with a subsidized publisher or using Lulu’s distribution service.) And when you “apply” for an ISBN, you have to know what you’re doing, or else you’ll fall prey to all the useless offers Bowker makes, like trying to sell you barcode images that you can get for free elsewhere.

• I used Lulu to print up advanced copies. Lulu is much more expensive than dealing with the printer directly, but their system is completely automated and fast, and you can make changes for free. So it’s good to try things out with, but a 208-page 6×9″ trade paperback costs $8.69 + shipping & handling (which ain’t cheap). (Compare the Lightning Source price below.) I included this “Advanced Copy” step both with Abe’s Turn and with CYSGiTP, but I plan to skip it with my next title, because it doesn’t seem to add anything once I’m confident that I know what I’m doing.

• I use Lightning Source for printing, which is a very popular choice for small publishers. Lightning Source doesn’t do business with authors; they do business with publishers. So in order to open an account with them, you need to provide your ISBN prefix (because only publishers have ISBNs, by definition), and then they have an application that seems designed more to make sure you know what you’re talking about than to specify what you want them to do for you.

  For each title that I print at Lightning Source, it costs $75 to set up, plus $30 to buy a proof (if I want one, which I so far always have), plus $12 a year to have it listed in industry catalogs. (The industry catalogs are how it gets onto Amazon.com and how bookstores can order it, if they want.) It also costs money to revise the title once you set it up, so that’s why it’s good to have used Lulu ahead of time, to make sure the book is going to turn out right. But once the title is set up, I can get copies (trade paperback) for $0.90 + $0.0015 per page + shipping & handling, and wholesalers get them for even less. So for a 208-page book, like my dad’s, each copy costs me $4.67 apiece (including shipping) if I order a full case.

So I could get the actual cost down to about $150, if I needed to. That’s probably a tenth what many subsidized presses charge. And then I could get copies for a little over the actual printing cost. But this is all true only because I have such a wide range of experience in writing, layout, graphics, and business and because I did my homework before diving in. That makes me an expert, but that expertise did not come easily. And now that I’m set up, I’m hoping to outsource much more in the future, everything I don’t need to oversee personally, as my publishing empire grows.

-TimK

P.S. If you do want to start your own self-publishing company, a must-read book is Aaron Shepard’s Aiming at Amazon. (But you might want to wait for the 2008/2009 edition.) His advice on setting up as a publisher is all pretty sound, even the part about getting on Amazon. What I would add to it is that you should never depend on one sales channel, even Amazon, unless that one sales channel is you yourself (or rather, your own company), and that you should probably be your biggest sales channel anyhow.

I had made a mock-up of the final version (also showed in the video), wrapping it around Julie Carobini’s Chocolate Beach, which happens to be about the same size (about 5.5″ x 8.5″ x .78″), and which I’m enjoying more and more the further along I read it. My original plan was to print up a bunch of advanced copies through Lulu, because they’re fast, if expensive. I had expected the final version to take between 1 and 3 months to come to market. However…

As it turns out, submitting the final book block and cover to Lightning Source (the on-demand printer & fulfillment company) went off without a hitch. As I sit here right now, the proof copy of the actual book (as it will appear on Amazon) is on a UPS Overnight plane (or at least ready to be loaded onto a plane), destined to be delivered to my front door tomorrow. If it looks good (as I expect it to), the book may have a page on Amazon before the week is out. (However, it may take longer for the full details to become available on Amazon, or for Amazon to realize that it can actually order copies.) And I’ll definitely be able to order as many copies as I want from Lightning Source, at about half what Lulu charges. So, bully!

I may have to figure out to whom to give the one and only “Advanced Copy” of the book (autographed, with a notation that it’s the one and only Advanced Copy ever produced).

-TimK

UPDATE: Indeed that’s what I’m going to do. I received the proof today (September 18) and approved it. (Then I noticed a minor font problem and decided not to correct it because it only affects 3 pages and you won’t even notice it unless you’re looking for it and you’re anal-perfectionist like I am.) Here’s a video of me opening the package from Lightning Source:

Case in point: Here’s how most book publishers sell their books. Something like…

Now, you tell me, which of the above (A, B, or C) gives you the best deal? The answer is obvious.

If I were selling tens or hundreds of thousands of copies of each title for hundreds (or thousands) of titles, then, yes, A would be the best choice, because I wouldn’t want to deal with all those readers directly. I’d rather ship a smaller number of large crates of books to a few wholesalers and let them break it down further. That’s mass-market selling.

But I’m not selling hundreds of thousands of copies. I’m selling single-digit thousands, maybe, if I’m lucky. And as a self-publisher, I have maybe dozens of titles, if I’m lucky. Therefore, I should be selling directly to readers whenever possible. In fact, I should treat my readers better than I treat my wholesalers. (… a pause, for the collective gasp to subside…)

I propose an alternative discount schedule:

You’ll note that wholesalers and most book stores will not be touching Z. So how do you sell your premium titles? Those are the titles you sell to your premium customers. Those titles you must sell direct to readers. And for that, you need a customer list, a list of readers and organizations who have bought your books before. You need to send sales letters directly to them to let them know about your premium content.

You might think this is crazy. But consider this: How many TV commercials do you see where the product is “not available in stores”? Do you know why it’s not available in stores? (Hint, hint.) Do you further know how much those TV commercials and infomercials cost? (Another hint: They’re not cheap.) How much money do you think those companies are making to be able to afford to do business like that?

It’s actually not so crazy a sales model, and similar models have been successfully used by numerous very prolific, very wealthy authors, including Ted Nicholas (of How To Form Your Own Corporation Without a Lawyer for Under $75 fame) and Dan Kennedy.

-TimK

If you want to learn how to give good writing advice, the best thing you can do is to critique others’ work and to have your own work critiqued by other writers. That has nothing to do with getting published. And if you want someone to give you advice on how to tell a story, what matters most is (1) whether he has done enough research to know what he’s talking about, (2) whether he knows how to write (not how to get published), (3) whether you like his stories, and (4) whether he knows more about the art and craft than you do. These are the same kinds of questions you ask when you look for a consultant in any niche, not just storytelling.

Actually, I do have some minor publishing credits: articles, short stories, and such. This was years ago, and I haven’t tried to be published since. Part of the reason, I admit, is that I don’t like to get rejection letters. Who does? And I don’t believe rejection letters are a necessary evil, which I hope to clarify below. But there’s a much better reason. When I discovered that I had the chops to turn an editor’s eye, I ran the numbers, and I discovered that unless you’re Stephen King, there’s no money in being published. No good money, anyhow.

Now after years of research, I believe there is no use in being “published,” at least not for me. As I enter the next chapter in my saga as a self-published author, let me set down some of the thoughts that have inspired me and the risk I’m taking. And where I expect to go from here.

What’s so great about getting “published”?

I started writing this article by putting “published” in quotes everywhere. That started to wear on my eyes, so I cut it out. But the point is still valid. “Published” authors use the word to mean, specifically, “signed with a third-party publishing company.” But this is merely one path to make money with words in print. It has always been so, and in the Internet age, more options are available than ever. Being “published” is only one of the ways authors employ to be published.

And what do you get for being “published”? It’s not all skittles and beer. Firstly, you get to pitch, schmooze, and beg agents and editors. Practically all of these efforts will result in zilch-o. What kind of genius spends almost all his up-front marketing effort on tactics that he knows ahead of time will be a complete and utter failure? And success or failure does not just depend on the quality of your writing. What really matters is how many tens of thousands of copies the editor thinks his publisher can sell of your manuscript, and that may depend on factors such as whether his eyes are already glazed over from reading 70 pages of crap, and whether he had Chinese for lunch that day. Only 70,000 new titles are published each year in the U.S., but more than 8 times that are submitted to publishers. Those are tough odds to overcome. But if you want to be “published,” this is the only way.

Once you’ve finally collected enough rejection letters so that you have to move to a bigger storage facility, you finally catch a break. Your novel is accepted. Now you get to work with an editor who may or may not care about your writing. (The good ones do, though.) And he works for a publisher who probably does not care (because the publisher only cares about how fast he’ll make back his investment). In any case, you agree to give up control over your work to the publisher, because he’s taking the risk in publishing it. Meanwhile, he will do little to help you actually sell your book. You must spearhead the marketing and PR yourself, all the while working on your next book, which you may or may not be able to get “published.” And you get to do this all while living on your advance, because the profits from sales of your book pay back your publisher for that advance. Of titles published, 90% never sell out their first printing. And no one–neither the publisher nor the author–makes much money from them.

Hmm. I’m not sure if that’s the life for me. I mean, maybe if they also forced me to move to Siberia and consist on watery gruel… But I’m just too much of a sado-masochist for that, when I could instead be designing software for more money than most authors ever see.

(And I enjoy designing software. The only down-side is that I reduce myself to a commodity, selling my life to the highest bidder. Where’s the meaning in that?)

Being published is a hazing ritual.

I believe the biggest draw to being published has nothing to do with success. Rather, it’s the same draw that makes college freshmen endure cruel and dangerous hazing rituals, and then turn around and subject others to the same torments.

Dr. Robert Cialdini described the phenomenon in his landmark book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Fraternity pledges persevere through embarrassment, thirst, eating disgusting foods, exposure to the elements, even punishments and beatings and death threats. Despite the cruelty of these rites, they continue on. No efforts have been able to eliminate them, divert from them, or go around them or through them. Bans have merely pushed the practices underground. Attempts to replace Hell Week with “Help Week” have fallen on deaf ears. Regulations to control them have met with physical resistance, even riots. And despite the recognized loathsomeness of these practices, even new pledges are impotent to just say no.

The evidence shows that fraternity and sorority members are just like the rest of us. There’s nothing special about them that makes them want to undergo torment and inflict it on others. Rather, this phenomenon has a well-established psychological cause, explained by a 1959 study performed by Elliot Aronson and Judson Mills. They noticed that “persons who go through a great deal of trouble or pain to attain something tend to value it more highly than persons who attain the same thing with a minimum of effort.” Quoting Dr. Cialdini (pp. 89-90):

The real stroke of inspiration came in their choice of the initiation ceremony as the best place to examine this possibility. They found that college women who had to endure a severely embarrassing initiation ceremony in order to gain access to a sex discussion group convinced themselves that their new group and its discussions were extremely valuable, even though Aronson and Mills had previously rehearsed the other group members to be as “worthless and uninteresting” as possible… Additional research showed the same results when coeds were required to endure pain rather than embarrassment to get into a group. The more electric shock a woman received as part of the initiation ceremony, the more she later persuaded herself that her new group and its activities were interesting, intelligent, and desirable.

Revolting, isn’t it?

You can see where I’m going with this. We finally can understand what makes getting published so desirable in its own right, not because of any advantage it has over other alternatives. Being published is an insider’s club, and getting there is a kind of hazing ritual. In other artistic fields, there are no such barriers. In music, for example, independent bands book their own concerts, record their own albums, arrange their own tours. When they succeed, other musicians admire them for all they’ve accomplished, regardless of whether they get signed by a big label. On the contrary, some musicians look down on big labels, because it’s said that they cater to the lowest common denominator, squeezing out creative expression. For musicians, it’s about the music, not about the size of the signing bonus.

Remember the author I told you about? He told me I was unqualified to give advice on storytelling, because he thought I was unpublished? I’d lay odds that he agrees with at least 90% of what I write about writing. And I’d lay further odds that the remaining 10% would intrigue him. Because everything I know, I learned from other writers and from experience, the same way he did. But he didn’t even want to hear what I had to say. And he didn’t want to see anything I had actually written. He was patently uninterested in arguing my qualifications on the merits.

That surprised me, but it should not have. Because he’s an insider, and I have not gone through the initiation ritual. I bailed out as soon as I figured out I could be more happy going a different route. That makes me an outsider and “unqualified” in his mind.

The publishing industry cannot cope with micro-niche markets.

In the mass market, you’re going after as big an audience as you possibly can. You cater to the lowest common denominator, you publicize far and wide, and you hope that you can make a few bucks off of each of a few hundred thousand people. By “micro-niche,” I mean the converse. I’m talking about a business that operates in a very specific niche, catering to a highly enthusiastic audience. When you operate in this kind of niche, you develop a loyal fan base, and you design your business to thrive on this enthusiasm.

Let’s apply this to fiction. In a mass market, you try to come up with a novel that will sell umpteen gajillion copies within 15 minutes of hitting the bookstore shelf, or else it gets pulled forever. There are also smaller sub-markets: genre fiction (e.g. romance), sub-genre or cross-genre fiction (e.g., historical romance), niche fiction (e.g., chick-lit), and then…

Then what? How would I categorize Abe’s Turn? I’ve been telling people it’s “libertarian fiction,” but that’s not quite right. It’s actually libertarian SF crime romance. And it’s a serial drama, too. This isn’t even a niche. It’s a micro-niche. From a marketing perspective, I’m looking for the handful of readers who fall in love with the unique qualities of this saga, and I want to market to them over and over and over again.

If a bestselling title sells 400,000 copies or more (hardcover + softcover sales), what I’m talking about is, oh… just the 400, without the thousand. I need a business model that can make money even with just 400 customers. There are plenty of such businesses in the world. But not so much in traditional publishing. As a result, I’m finding myself questioning the traditional wisdom and structure of the book-publishing industry, because it’s designed with that 400,000 number in mind. A conventional publisher must sell at least 5,000 copies of a book just to break even. And out of all the titles they publish, most are going to lose money. So they seek out authors they think can sell hundreds of thousands of copies, to subsidize all the titles they know are going to bomb.

Here are some of the questions I’ve been asking:

• Should I hire an editor? The common wisdom is unequivocal: Yes, absolutely, no doubt about it, you need a professional copyeditor. But let’s run the numbers. One half-season of Abe’s Turn plus bonus chapters, 90,000 words (or thereabouts). At up to 8 cents per word, that’s $7,200 for a copyeditor. Okay. For a short run, let’s say I could make $8 gross margin per copy sold. Now, just to pay the copyeditor, I’d need to sell 900 copies. In other words, I lose money with a micro-niche market of 400 hard-core fans. Or to put it another way, unless a copyeditor can single-handedly bring me 900 additional sales, he’s probably not worth it.

• Consider distribution and sales channels. The traditional wisdom is that you sell your book through Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com. (Although some boutique publishers do avoid these channels.) And the author handles the burden of marketing. But to cater to a small market of 400 hard-core fans, you have to know who those fans are. Not just “know them,” conceptually, as in “know what they like.” I mean, you must know their names and addresses. You must send them free stuff. You must offer them every new book, gizmo, and extra that you can think of. That means direct marketing, and that means that Amazon is right out, because they’re not going to share their customer data with you.

  This is not as insane as it sounds. Half of all books sold are sold this way, direct-marketed, delivered through the mail. They never appear on any bestseller lists, but their authors are converting real, live fans and making money doing it.

• This model requires self-publishing, but not through Lulu. Because Lulu isn’t going to share their customer data any more than Amazon will. I can have Lulu print the books, but I need to warehouse and ship them myself. This is actually not as much work as it sounds. It may become a lot of work if I get an unexpected surge in sales and I need to establish a relationship with a third-party fulfillment house. But at that point, it’s obvious I’m not operating in a micro-niche.

• Is there any sense in getting an ISBN number? What would it be used for? To take up space on the back cover? Unless the book is to be distributed through traditional channels and sold on Amazon, the ISBN seems like just extra expense and effort.

  That said, I’m not sure. While Amazon cannot be the primary sales channel, it can be a secondary sales channel. (Ditto Lulu, but Lulu doesn’t require an ISBN.) A block of 10 ISBN’s costs about $250, so if listing my books on Amazon can increase sales by only 1%, the ISBN will pay for itself. I would then use post-sale tactics to convert a portion of those readers into fans.

Wherever along the spectrum my fiction falls, self-publishing is scalable. That is, I can start small and build up. How small? I can start with a single copy. The trick is just to make one dollar profit, and then to multiply it. I’ve done this to some extent with software development. And I’m doing it with 1001 Character Quirks. (Not getting rich off of it yet, but there’s something there.) I have all the control, and I get to keep all the profit. Why would I want to sign with a third-party publisher?

I should add that there are plenty of boutique publishers out there, some with very interesting and innovative business models. And some do cater to very small markets.

In any case, all of what I’m pursuing has been done before. I’m not proposing anything new or radical. But…

I’ll never be Stephen King.

I don’t think I want to be Stephen King. Everyone knows who Stephen King is, even those people who don’t read Stephen King. People like me. I’ve never made it through a Stephen King novel. I’ve tried, numerous times. Always lost interest during the first chapter. Someone went through a lot of effort and money to make sure I knew who Stephen King is. That was wasted effort.

I’d rather be Ted Nicholas. Don’t know who Ted Nicholas is? Don’t worry, his fans do.

-TimK

You might think that coming up with a large list of character ideas might be the challenge in a work like this. But compiling a list of 1001 of my best character quirks was by far the easiest part of the project. Actually, the concept started as a printed booklet, and that sounded simple, too. But there were innumerable little details.

• Since a book like this is far and away most often purchased by beginning writers, it must contain concrete examples and simple advice that the user can take to the bank immediately. My initial draft skimped on the advice, because I was afraid of having too many pages, because I was trying to keep production costs down. Holly Lisle generously advised me to flesh out this part of the book, which I did, adding a complete soup-to-nuts character and numerous concrete examples.

• Users like to print out ebooks, but they don’t have 6×9-inch saddle-stitch binder machines. Actually, the first cut of the book didn’t even have page numbers, because the bulk of it was the 1001 numbered character quirks. Again, Holly advised me to add page numbers, because when users print out the ebook, if they accidentally drop the pages, it’ll be impossible to get them back in the right order… unless there are page numbers. So I added page numbers and reformatted the text so users could print it double-sided on 8.5×11 paper. I also increased the font size to make the ebook easier to read on a computer screen. But the printed version still is formatted as a 6×9 saddle-stitched booklet.

• Finishing the book is only the beginning, though. After the book was done, including the cover art, I still had to come up with an offer and write a sales letter. I finally decided to release the text as an ebook at 20% less than what it was worth. (Raw ideas are a dime a dozen, so 1001 of them would be worth…) I’m also offering a free upgrade to the printed version in exchange for a testimonial I can use in my marketing. This also lets me point out that it’s an introductory offer, and that at some point I’ll get enough testimonials, and I’ll end the discount and and free upgrade offer. That’s important, because it puts a ticking clock on the offer. If you don’t act now, you’ll lose out. And that increases response.

• For the sales letter, I used as a template a known control from my swipe file. I even used some of the same wording, because it worked so well in this offer. Of course, most of the words I wrote myself, but my letter still largely follows the flow of the original. Even using a template, writing the sales letter was not trivial. And it isn’t actually “done” yet, either, because I’ll need to split test changes to it to increase response.

• Even after I had the sales letter written, there were still numerous details I needed to make sure were in the letter, things I had originally forgotten. For example, I forgot to point out that the ebook was an instant download and that it was in PDF format. ClickBank’s site was invaluable in helping me make sure I had mentioned all the little details in my sales letter. Which brings me to…

• Distribution. It’s not “just” a download, because you do need some way to distribute it over the Internet. And it’s not just on a website, because you have to accept electronic payments and then allow downloads only from people who have paid for access. I originally wanted to put up my own online store for this– and I still do. But putting up an online store is not so simple. Or rather, putting it up is easy. Getting it to work just the way you want is hard. So I decided to introduce the ebook via ClickBank. This is a tradeoff: ClickBank is faster to set up, they handle all the ecommerce stuff, and you get access to their online marketplace. But they also charge way more overhead than if you ran your own online store. And they have restrictions on what you can offer. For example, I originally wanted to offer a limited double-your-money-back guarantee, but this conflicts with ClickBank’s terms of service (which apparently do not allow publisher’s guarantees), so I didn’t do that.

• Even using ClickBank, I needed to write a number of pages and scripts for my “Quirks” mini-site. The sales letter I already mentioned. After someone orders the ebook from ClickBank, a script back at “Quirks” confirms the ClickBank proof-of-purchase code and logs the transaction in a file. So that’s a script I needed to write. Then it redirects to the download page, which I also needed to write. The download page has a link to download the PDF file, and the downloading is done via a file-download script, which I also needed to write. Customers also get the opportunity to subscribe to my “Writer’s Tips” e-Newsletter, and I needed to write thank-you and confirmation pages to make that sign-up process work. And don’t forget the privacy policy and links on the mini-site to other pages, such as my home page, all inconspicuously displayed in the page footers. Even if no one ever gets that far, search engines (and Google in particular) like to see links, even on mini-site pages.

• And then of course I needed to put together a series of autoresponder articles for the Writer’s Tips e-Newsletter. Yes, it’s an occasional mailing. But you need to deliver a blast of compelling content to new subscribers immediately, and then less frequent content over the next year or so, to lock your name into their memories, because permission ages rapidly. If you don’t do this, then when you have something you want them to act on, they won’t know who you are.

So, a whole host of details. Not “easy” at all. And now begins the truly hard part, marketing the offer and driving traffic to the mini-site. Yes, I know all the different ways to get traffic to a website and how “easy” it is. You don’t even have to spend cash for ads, right? Whatever. It’s only “easy” compared with canvassing neighborhoods door-to-door. I still need to drive enough qualified traffic to the site to prove that the offer is salable. And then after I get that far, then it can become “easy.” Because I can expand into direct mail and print and newsletter advertising and so forth. Whew!

Even before that happens, I’m already working on my next offer. But it’s a secret what it is…

-TimK