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Archive for December, 2009

The Break-even Point

Monday, December 21st, 2009

Make a Move broke even today; the income from the book passed the cost of the print run for the first time. This is a HUGE THING, and I wanted to write to thank everyone who bought the book and supported this endeavour. It took three-and-a-half weeks from delivery of the books, and the numbers include direct sales, online orders and retailer copies. I’m a very happy writer/publisher.

The risk in doing your first print run is hard to quantify, as you don’t know how family/friends/acquaintances will respond when they see your finished book; buying in principle is one thing, but laying down a not-inconsequential amount of money is another. The worst case scenario for your print run is you sell zero books and you’re in the hole for a lot of money. The 100-book run of Make a Move cost a lot – closer to a grand than not – and that isn’t the kind of loss I can laugh-off. Okay, so someone is going to buy a copy, but that’s no reassurance. It’s a big risk.

So today, I know that my risk paid off. Every penny I make from hereon in is profit (it’s actually operating capital for the next printing, but it’s not paying off a debt, so it’s all good). It’s a big milestone for me, as I can now focus on the “business” with less fear of failure. The next milestone is going to be selling enough copies to justify that second print run, but I have good ideas – new ideas – on how to do that.

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Selling to the Sellers

Sunday, December 20th, 2009

Direct sales to friends/family coupled with online ordering is a decent way to start selling books, but to reach that elusive, lucrative market of “people who’ve never heard of you”, you need to seek out other channels. Amazon Marketplace and eBay are two options, but I don’t believe your book is ever going to be the subject of an impulse buy; for that, you need a brick-and-morter store. There are still independent stores in the UK that will stock indie books (notice I didn’t say bookstores – you need to think outside that box) and even some chains (I’m working on a deal with a larger chain right now, and will report back once I have some news). Getting your book into a store means talking to the owner/manager, and that can be an uncomfortable experience for some people, particularly writers who are just emerging into the daylight with their newly printed book. Knowledge helps calm those nerves – knowing the realities of the retail process before you stat talking frees you to worry about making a good impression. Not everyone has a friend like the awesome Haroon Mushtaq (@theanonwonder) to educate them in the ways of book retail and distribution, so I’m sharing his advice – and the knowledge I’ve gained following his advice – here:

  • Retailers will only take your books on sale-or-return terms. This means you give them X books, and sign a pro forma contract that says in Y months, they owe you X books, or the selling price of your book for each book they’ve sold minus their cut. If no books sell, the retailer doesn’t lose anything other than the shelf space the book was occupying, and you get the books back. This is why you deal with indies and small chains; do you have the cash to ship 1000, or 10,000 or even 100 books to Waterstones with no guarantee you’ll see any return? Do you have the room to store 1000 returned books? I know how much room 100 books takes up – believe me when I say you don’t have room for 1000.
  • Retailers take a cut based on a percentage of the cover price. This is typically 35%. I don’t want to say it’s always 35%, but I’ve not met anyone asking for more or less, so I’m assuming it’s always. I’ve also never felt the need to haggle on that deal; as far as I’m concerned, it’s fair.
  • Retailers will take a quantity of your books based on their opinion of how well it will sell to their customers. They know their customers better than you – it’s their job to know – so you have to accept their appraisal of the marketability of your book. You don’t need to pitch the book like you would to an agent/publisher, but they’ll want to know the setting/target market to get a feel for whether it fits their customer type. As an extreme example, you probably wouldn’t be able to get erotica into a children’s book shop (unless as part of an elaborate and tasteless practical joke).
  • The above point doesn’t mean that you should accept a retailer’s assessment without question; catch someone on a bad day, and they might view your book in an overly negative light. If you truly believe your book could find a market in their shop, ask if they’ll take a single copy and gauge interest based on that. Your book might tap into a market they’ve not found yet. As with all things, however, no means no, so don’t be pushy.
  • Your book has to be able to stand on the shelves next to its mainstream brethren without looking like a dog chewed it. It has to be a quality publication.
  • The retailer hasn’t the time or inclination to read your book, so needs to make a gut call on whether it’s a) any good, and b) well-edited and proofed. Their only way to do this is to look at how you present yourself, and infer the attention to detail you’ve paid the book from that. You don’t have to wear a dinner jacket and top hat; just be yourself, but make sure it’s a clean, tidy, laundered and polite version of yourself. Oh, and I know this seems obvious, but take a copy of the real, printed book along; no one is going to make a call based on a copy of the manuscript, nor on your word that the book is awesome.
  • Get business cards printed, and make sure you have some with you. The retailer needs to be able to contact you to re-order or to return the books, so make it easy for them. Also, when choosing your design, don’t go for glossy cards, or those new “tiny” cards that are the fashion; the one thing most people do with business cards is write on them, so make that possible.

And that’s it. I’ve been following this advice for a couple of weeks now, and have placed the book in three of the five stores I’ve tried (with a couple more in-progress). The two who didn’t take it thought it wouldn’t sell to their market, which is fair enough, and brings me to my final point; the relationship between a writer and direct retailers is more like a partnership than a buyer-seller arrangement. Placing a book in the wrong store hurts the retailer as well as yourself; find the right store and everyone gets paid. Be polite, but remember that you’re in a position to make them money if your book is good and you work hard to market it. You’re offering them a business deal as an equal, so enjoy the encounter, meet someone new, and do some good business.

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Shorter Stories

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

Stories have to be the length they have to be. Some ideas are so pure, they suit the short story form perfectly – just a high concept, in-and-out narrative that is stronger for taking up less space. Other ideas have reach, grandeur, longevity, and when coupled with a couple more like-minded concepts, form the backbone of a novel-length tale. You can always tell when a writer has tried to stretch a short story into a novel, or has an idea crammed into a short that really needs more room to breathe and evolve. Ideas are born with a genetic word count, and have an inherent resistance to modification.

For the sake of discussion, let’s ignore novellas. They’re a marketing ploy to sell long short stories and short novels.

When I was outlining Make a Move, the ideas I felt drawn to write about weren’t “novel” ideas. They didn’t have the substance to carry a full-length book. Thing is, they weren’t “short-story” ideas either, as they relied on character background to work. I’d been messing with the idea of writing a book formatted as a sit-com (a British sit-com with 6 episodes, rather than the 22-25-episode US variety) for a while, but couldn’t see the point without a good story to justify it, and it was just sat in my back head waiting for a reason to use it. I think I’d just finished rewatching Spaced on DVD and was craving more. So there I was, with a collection of serial, but short, story ideas and an idea for a multi-part framework…

I think most people see the decision to write Make a Move in 6 parts as a gimmick, and I admit it was for a while. I referred to it as a lit-com, but that kind of marketing speak makes me feel dirty, and not in a good way, so I stopped. Once I started to write, though, I realised I’d hit on something that was going to inspire me in new and scary ways. I knew it was working for me when, despite not aiming at a word count, all of the episodes were dropping at 17-18,000 words. Episode 6 ran to 20,000 in the first draft, but I had to rewrite it extensively to make it not suck; the unsucky version is 18,000 words. That was the story (stories) dictating what length it wanted to be.

There was a side-effect to this structure that I became aware of early on, and I exploited it in every way. All of the writing books/websites tell you that characters have to have a reason to exist. They have to advance the plot, and must have detailed, convincing motivations in order to come alive. Fair enough. But what about all of those characters that are just cool, or fun, or scary, or sexy? Should they not exist just because they have no lofty goals? I have lots of characters like that; they turn up, do their thing, and then leave. Many writers would condemn that as frivolous, but my readers don’t, as they know that, due to the episodic nature of the book, there’s more coming, and my core characters will guide them along the way. I read somewhere (I forget where) that in writing a book, a writer establishes a contract with the reader, and they have to satisfy the terms of that contract or the reader will feel cheated. Make a Move comes with a contract too, but it’s not a pro forma deal; I changed the terms. I think my readers know that by the end of page one.

So the point of this post? A call to those writers wrestling with ideas that just won’t fit into the current accepted templates. The concept of the novel is in flux right now – some might say it’s in jeopardy – and it’s the perfect time to experiment. If eBooks get a foothold (a real foothold, not the toe poke the evangelists are currently creaming over) all manufacturing limitations will be removed, and there’ll be a market, and a platform, for stories of all length. I love short books – 100-150 pages – but they don’t cost half as much to print and bind as a 300-page novel, so they’re bad value, and I need to really like an idea before I’ll buy. Maybe it’s time for those diminutive ideas and marginalised characters to emerge. Make a Move and the (cringe) lit-com is just one idea (actually, it’s 15 ideas, but let’s not talk about that headache in this context) and it came to me before the Kindle was first hinted at; now, all boundaries are flexible, and all bets are off.

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Don’t Read Me

Friday, December 11th, 2009

So it’s illegal to import and sell eBooks from foreign territories, despite the publishers delaying eBook sales for months after the hardcover release? Is it illegal to buy a copy of a printed book in the UK, take it to the US and sell it? Possibly, but I can’t be bothered to check. And I bet the publishers/distributers can’t be bothered to care either, as the bulk of printed books prohibits excessive abuse, so it’s a self-limiting problem. US distributers/retailers lose a few sales – a few points of a percent – no problem. Enter the age of ubiquity, and now they have a problem. So they slap some DRM on it, restrict customer rights to the point of rendering the product an expensive novelty for the techno fetishists, and kill a market before its first Christmas. Interesting.

Or, not. The problem with the eBook revolution, is that not one person in any of the corporations currently fighting for market position has had what this emerging technology requires: an original fucking idea. This is the same restrictive crap the movie studios/distributers have been forcing down our throats since films went mainstream – artificially creating demand by delaying releases to get two bites at the cherry. Well look how that turned out; now they have to release simultaneously worldwide just to secure some box office take before everyone gets sick of being treated like children and just downloads the film from the torrents out of spite.

And here are the same companies owned by the same media groups pulling the same crap with the same consumers. Except you can’t do it with books, because books are perfect, and people love them. People didn’t love VHS, and they don’t love DVD. It appears they’re even less fond of Blu-Ray, and as for downloads… no deal. You try to strongarm people into how they consume books, they will walk away. There are enough books in print right now for everyone on the planet to read in their lifetime, without running out of great stories. People can wait for the publishers/distributers/tech companies/big-ass retailers to dry up their pissing contest and maybe concoct an original idea between them, instead of trying to find new ways to overcharge us for the same shit twice. You want my money? Add value. As of now, DRM stands for Don’t Read Me.

And, yes, it’s been a bad day. Sorry about the language…

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Paris, Why?

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

I believe I found my voice in the writing that followed the discovery of my muse: Paris. I know that for most people, a muse is a person, but people only have one story, while Paris has near-infinite tales. It doesn’t matter where you walk (and you always have to walk to find the stories) you’ll see people interacting, communicating, creating drama. Once you get on the Parisian wavelength, it’s a beautiful experience in which to immerse yourself, but it’s not just the natives: the tourists are as much part of the fabric of the city.

I know there are probably other cities with a comparably rich vein of narrative, but I’ve not been to them. English cities are populated with people getting from A to B as quickly, and with as little interaction, as possible. Rome felt equally focussed. Florence’s charms are hidden in its galleries. New York is like being in a film with one main plotline. Boston is refined, but too small. What happens in Vegas is mostly orchestrated. Budapest has stories, but Hungarian is such a complicated language, I haven’t a clue what they’re about. I hear that Berlin has character and excitement to spare, but I’ve yet to visit, and it’s already too late for me: Paris is my mistress.

Two months before releasing Make a Move, I went back to Paris for a few days to build some energy, take photos for the cover art and do research for the follow-up to Make a Move, provisionally subtitled “Season Two”. Just me, my camera and a couple of changes of underwear. So much of Make a Move is drawn from my observations on the streets of Paris, I have to be there to get ideas – to get the feel for the stories. Google Street View is not enough. I found so many stories this time, my mind was buzzing with ideas for the sequel while I rode the train back to Charles de Gaulle (Roissy) airport. I captured a lot of them on camera (I was practising being less “reserved” in my street photography) and I’m going to share some on here, so you can get a feel for where Make a Move comes from.

This first story is pretty obvious, but it’s the incongruity that piqued my interest:

You see this sight in Vegas all of the time: newlywed brides, with or without grooms, being photographed in front of whatever photogenic background is available, but at the foot of the Arc de Triomphe? The photographer in the picture has a pretty standard wedding setup – crop-sensor DSLR with a portrait-length lens, assistant with a similar spare camera – and there were no other helpers with additional lights or reflectors, so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t staged. I was there to try out a new photographic technique (which kind of worked…) and it took a lot of work just to fight through the crowds in the underpass to get into the centre of the Place de l’Etoile. How this bride managed it while remaining fresh-looking is beyond me. I’ve also no idea why she (they?) chose this location to take pictures, but therein lies the story. Maybe they wanted to capture the softness of the bride’s dress against the rigid lines of the arch, or to juxtapose her serenity with the swirling traffic. Maybe they just wanted a guy in shorts and fluorescent vest in the background, and this was the only spot in Paris they were guaranteed to find one.

I don’t know – maybe I’ll use it in a book, maybe I won’t. Either way, it made me smile.

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Posted in Paris, Photography, Travel, Writing | 2 Comments »

Independent Preconceptions

Monday, December 7th, 2009

I came to a realisation today – one that is both unsettling and reassuring. But first, the background.

I’ve been out talking to independent booksellers (or trying to) regarding selling my new book, and a friend was doing the same on my behalf further afield. She spoke to one bookshop owner who thought my book was too modern for his clientele, and that it would struggle to sell as it didn’t have a local setting or anything to provide an angle he could push. Fair enough – I’ve learned something there. What he said that set me thinking, though, was that he was very impressed with the finish and design of my book (both the binding and the cover) and that it was refreshing to see an independently produced hardback, as most indie books he saw were in paperback, and were typically of low quality, printed on cheaper paper and with basic or unskilled cover designs. And this is a man who is happy to deal directly with indie publishers/authors; this is not a hostile market.

After my friend had reported back, I was thinking about what I’d learned from the encounter, and that was when I came to my realisation; the perception of my book, in concept, is shaped by the actions of every independent author-publisher out there. Every rushed, unedited, cheap book that someone has tried to sell damages the perceived value of my book with potential readers and retailers. That’s pretty unsettling.

But I’m looking at that situation another way now. I’ve flipped it around. Every one of us, by doing the best job we can to produce a quality product, can reinforce the reputation of indie books as an alternative, rather than a second-rate option. That’s pretty reassuring. With the tools and technology now available to everyone, both in production and communication, the time has never been better for us to work together and create a new market – one where an indie book is judged on the quality of its content rather than its cover.

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Letting Go

Sunday, December 6th, 2009

Just a quick post after the monster that was Typesetting 101, but I wanted to capture this feeling while it’s fresh. I was skimming my print-submitted text to find a page to screen grab for that post, and I noticed a typo. And I freaked. Now, I know that this print run is small (110 copies) and that I can resubmit the files for the next run at a small charge but, man, did I feel bad. I felt bad because all of the people who have bought the book now have a “defective” copy, and they are the people who are supporting me now when I need it most. I felt bad because I pride myself on my attention to detail. I felt bad because my proofreaders (Mark and Julie) also pride themselves on the quality of their work, and I know they’d feel like they let me down.

Basically, I was freaking out and very pissed at myself.

Turns out it wasn’t a typo, and I’ve just been staring at this screen for so long I was seeing things. In my defence, the word “eighth” does look damned freakish if you stare at it long enough (never mind that my spellchecker would have caught it – thinking that was just adding to my sense of failure).

So, now that my heart has stopped hammering, I can reflect on the situation. I know there’s going to be at least one typo in the printed book. There has to be. I’ve seen them in traditionally published books, so I know that even professional teams of proofreaders miss things. The point of this post, and the question I want to ask is, at what point do you say “I’ve done everything I can to ensure I’m shipping a tested, quality product?” How much proofing is too much?

At what point can you let go?

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Typesetting 101

Sunday, December 6th, 2009

There are plenty of websites offering advice on typesetting a book, but there’s always an element of experimentation when you don’t have the final result to view. I took a long time checking and typesetting Make a Move, but I was still nervous as I unpacked the first Make_a_Move_Page1shipment of books; until you can see the results, you can’t be sure you made the right choices. I’m writing about my experiences now so you can compare my layout decisions with an image of the final text – the first page of the book, to the left – and hopefully that will make your choices easier. I did all of my typesetting in Microsoft Word, which does everything an amateur typesetter needs, and doesn’t cost anywhere near what Adobe InDesign (the accepted industry standard) does. Just to add a caveat at this point: I’m an amateur typesetter writing for an audience of amateur typesetters; if you spot something in my process that could be improved, or disagree entirely, please wade into the comments and let me know.

Bear in mind that all of my layout decisions were made with one eye on the cost implications, which is something you’ll understand once you’re self -funding a print run, so if my decisions ever seem conservative, that’s probably why. For example if your margins increase, so will your page count and, hence, your unit cost.

One warning based on my own experience: there’s some difference in page measurement between Word for Mac 2008 and Word for Windows 2003, which caused the text to reflow when I moved the file between versions. I had to use Windows to gain access to Adobe Acrobat, and I ended up having to layout the text again. If possible use the same version of Word from start to finish.

Step One – Page Setup

Setting up the page size in Word is easy: just enter the page dimensions based on the size of paper you’re going to print the book on. Most standard book printing sizes aren’t offered in Word, so you’ll need to set up a custom size. Go to File > Page Setup, and then select Manage Custom Sizes from the Paper Size dropdown. In the Custom Sizes dialog, click the + icon and enter the Width and Height into the Paper Size fields. Double-click on the Untitled entry in the list and name the new size (use the name your printer uses for easy reference). For example, Make a Move is printed on Royal paper size, 156 x 234mm. Click OK, and then click OK again to close the Page Setup dialog.

You don’t need to worry about bleeds on your text. The files are centred and the pages cut equally on all sides, so just enter the exact pages size.

Step Two – Page Margins

This is one of the harder choices to make, as you’ve no way of predicting how the book will behave, in a mechanical sense, once it’s printed: how wide will the reader need to open the book so that the left-most text is visible? How much will the pages curve, obscuring that margin? My printer suggests a minimum of 10mm on all margins, but that doesn’t take the number of pages into account, which can effect the curve as the book is opened. I chose 18mm for the Left, Right and Top margins, and 30mm for the Bottom. I set the Footer to 18mm (which left my page numbers a comfortable distance from the text and the bottom of the page) and set the Header to 0mm as there isn’t any header text.

Step Three – Justification

Select all of your body text and justify it (aligning both left and right margins flush to the edge of the printable area). Your intro pages will probably look best centre-aligned, but the rest should be justified. Just look at any published book for confirmation.

Step Four – Fonts

You may want to mix fonts in your text, either using a different font for intro pages, or maybe to highlight a particular scene in the story. Whatever you decide to do, apply your fonts as they are going to appear in the final book now. Font changes later on can push your text out and leave you needing to layout the book again.

You can use any font you want within certain rules, the most important being that is has to be easy to read. That seems obvious, but try reading a page or two with your chosen font to make sure it’s not tiring or just confusing after a while. There are plenty of suitable fonts in a standard installation of Word on Windows and Mac, so just choose a serif font that you like. If you’re using any unusual characters in your text, read my post Font-slapped: A Cautionary Tale before you start. As for font size, 12pt is a good starting point for most serif fonts. Remember that larger print is more readable, but it increases your page count and your unit cost, but don’t go too far the other way and produce a cheap, but unreadable, book. Make a Move uses Times New Roman in 12pt, and I’m very happy with the readability and appearance.

Step Five – Hyphenation

Hyphenation is the process whereby Word breaks long words over two lines to avoid spacing a line out to much, leaving lots of white space. You can hyphenate manually, but Word does a surprisingly good job with some tweaking.

First, select all of the text in the document, then go to Format > Paragraph and deselect the option Don’t hyphenate. You can reselect it for specific paragraphs later if needed. Next, go to Tools > Hyphenation and select Automatically hyphenate document. Click OK, and inspect your text. You should see words broken with a hyphen pretty soon, if not on page one. You need to decide how much hyphenation is acceptable to you. I looked at a lot of books, and decided that three hyphenated words per page was my limit, and that I didn’t want to see more than one hyphenated line in a row. In the Hyphenation dialog, set the Limit consecutive hyphens to option to your chosen value (1 in my case) and click OK. From here, it’s a process of trial an error. Read from page one until you find a page with more than your upper hyphen limit. When you find one, go back into the Hyphenation dialog and increase the Hyphenation zone setting by a small amount before clicking OK. Start reading again until you find the next page with more than your limit of hyphenation, then repeat the process. I think it took me six runs to get the hyphenation to within my limit.

Step Six – Widows and Orphans

Widows and orphans occur when the first line of a new paragraph begins at the bottom of a page, or the last line of a paragraph begins at the top of a new page. Word avoids this by default, moving lines around to join these isolated chunks of text, but this leaves pages with one or two blank lines at the bottom, which looks bad. Disable this automatic behaviour by selecting all of your text, then going to Format > Paragraph and deselecting the Widow/Orphan control option (you can do this earlier, but it should affect your hyphenation much, if at all, doing it after). You’ll now be stuck with (hopefully) a few widow/orphan lines. There are two ways to deal with this.

  • As you’re the writer, and have creative control, you can look for lines with only one or two words, or that miss breaking onto a new line by one or two words, and rewrite to force the addition/removal of a line. This sounds flaky, as who would place the needs of typesetting above the integrity of your text, but it can be valid if the change is small and yields the results you want.
  • You can adjust the line spacing for a few lines near the bottom/top of the page in question. This is the “proper” way to do it, but you need to be careful to make tiny changes to just enough lines, so that the difference in spacing is invisible to the reader. To change the line spacing, just select the lines you want to change, then select Format > Paragraph and add a point of spacing Before the selected lines.

Summary

Again, I want to reiterate that I’m not a professional typesetter, but I achieved great results using these techniques. Most self-publishing authors can’t afford the services of a professional typesetter, and might see this phase of production as an insurmountable obstacle. I want to dispel that myth, but I’d also love for any pros with advice to comment, even if they shoot down my techniques. I learned by experimentation and got to where I needed to be, but I’m still ready to learn more.

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The Economics of Fair

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

A couple of people – friends of friends – have commented that the £12.99 cover price of my book is a bit steep. I understand that people place different values on material objects, and that the low book prices they see each week in the supermarkets has conditioned them to expect more for less, and I also understand the market forces at play in the supermarkets offering books at those prices, so I wanted to take this opportunity to open up my business model by way of explaining the cover price I set. My model is actually pretty simple:

No one was shat on in the process of getting my book to market.

I’ll explain by way of a couple of examples.

  1. If you buy cheap meat from a supermarket, the animal who provided your food was subjected to the absolute bare minimum living conditions for its entire pitiful existence. Outdoor-reared, humanely-kept animals cost more in upkeep over the duration of their life, so you pay more for the meat. Of course, both are killed and eaten, but that’s another discussion. Relatively speaking, it’s the battery chicken getting shat on. Literally in this case.
  2. If you buy your kid a cheap school shirt from a supermarket, you’ll save a few pounds that you could maybe put towards Christmas, or a day out, or some sweets, whatever. The person who made that shirt got paid so little that they can barely afford to feed their kids, let alone buy them a bar of chocolate. I know that this is another situation where the politics are complicated (if you paid more, would they get paid more? Probably not…) but the balance of the equation is that they get shat on so you can save a quid or two.
  3. If you buy a book from a supermarket – say the new Terry Pratchett – there’s a good chance that the supermarket is selling it at near to or below cost (the latter tends to be the case with event titles like Harry Potter). You get the book for around £5, and the supermarket gets you through the door to spend your wages on the weekly shop. Have you spotted the person being shat on in this equation? Yes, it’s the owner of the independent book shop who doesn’t have tinned goods to sell and is relying on sales of event titles to keep trading. He/she can’t sell that book for less than cost, and their sales dry up.

Through all of the transactions that I’ve been involved with in the production of Make a Move, I’ve always asked myself this question first: is it fair? My printer was happy with the price I paid, as was I. I’m going to absorb some of the postage and packing cost for my online customers (once online ordering is live) as I want to offer a fair total price for the delivered book. When I found out how long Sam had been working on my cover art, I changed the deal, because he’d been putting in so much time, the original deal wasn’t fair any more.

I’m not trying to be a saint; I’m just trying to have fun, and shitting on people to get what I want isn’t fun. My book costs more because it’s been ethically sourced. You’re not happy with the £12.99 price? No problem.

Just head on over to Tesco and buy yourself a nice, cheap battery book.

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