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the whole megillah, including the self-addressed stamped return envelope, wait. No response from anyone? Consider self-publishing. Self-publishing houses have requirements just like regular publishers. The “why” behind any author’s desire to produce a book must be clear before forking out $25,000 to produce 1,000 self-published books. My goals were simple: Prepare a client gift for my 15th anniversary and create a respectable book to have available for speaking engagements. As a side bar, I hoped to sell a few and inspire would-be entrepreneurs. Most self-publishing houses require standard sizes, one word titles, icky paper, no color, and they hire an incredibly lackluster editorial staff. If you’re picky about wanting a book designed with as few as possible spelling errors, proper grammar, and delicious paper and graphics, then pay for the best designers from the start and do all of the work yourself. Get a terrific print broker to locate the best print shop and deal. Courage and persistence – two important words for the author with discerning taste who self-publishes. Designers have wild temperaments, bookstores refuse to handle self-published books, printers pack books in boxes that break, and books get lost or destroyed. No matter how often an author has been published, writing a book alone without the advantage of an agent and a well-established publisher with a plethora of in- house editors requires one to learn a vast number of new things. I’d advise taking an Adobe InDesign course or two for starters. It helps to be able to manage the design process and cuts down on the time spent editing. Acquire a fondness for Dropbox or any reputable cloud-sharing platform. Ensure that all contracts with all designers are shared up front, that every draft gets put into that cloud file, and that no payment is received until each draft gets reviewed. Be careful not to give anyone your entire book all at once. Get parts back and then divvy up another section. Keep a private box for the most current versions, where you have the only access and be sure to save often to that place. Being held prisoner by a designer, editor, or printer will create fear, pain, and panic. Be cognizant of costs early on. Insist on a package rate, not an hourly rate. Begin slowly. See how the process goes, then add a little more. Designers are notoriously poor time managers, so the deadlines and pace must be agreed to in advance in order to ensure that all work coincides with everyone’s expectations. Use a minimum of four editors from diverse backgrounds and geographical locations. No two people read the same way. Many eyes catch a majority of mistakes. And expect mistakes – even after publication. I read books differently today. When I see an error, I no longer snicker. I have a deep-seated appreciation and empathy for the enormous effort any author takes to produce a near perfect document of 450 pages.

FOR YOUR BOOKSHELF

Elbow Grease + Chicken Fat By Marilynn Deane Mendell Elbow Grease + Chicken Fat: Business Advice that Sticks to Your Ribs! This book stirs up the perfect recipe to exceed your business expectations. Each chapter reveals solutions to business pitfalls, intriguing ways a creative mind can improvise, along with best practices from ethical conduct to showing appreciation.

Keep an Excel document of tasks required, like registering and buying ISBN numbers, sending drafts and the final product to the Library of Congress, buying storage for books, and wading through the complicated world of self- promotion and online sales. Amazon alone can reduce the hardiest of souls to tears. Think it’s as easy as ordering a book? Think again. Amazon for self-published independent authors (as opposed to the self-published Amazon authors) has a minimum of seven different divisions, many located with call support in different countries with less than optimal fluency in English. Emails and calls for corrections go totally unheeded. One section might handle the author’s page, another sales, another shipping, another a separate personal sales page, another an independent sales page where authors compete with their own book sales on Amazon’s in-house sales. Confused yet? Someone could write a whole book on how to navigate Amazon’s book sales. Often amateurs create helpful YouTube videos, but their tiny snippets of how-tos rarely cover Amazon’s labyrinthine leviathan in total. And, who thinks about where to store 1,000 books weighing hundreds of pounds that could take up a 20-by- 20-by-20 space, when they haven’t even been published yet? There’s a cost for storage because books need to be dry and kept cool. Book storage facilities that ship books and offer to handle Amazon requests for shipping aren’t always reputable. They need contracts, too. There’s a whole black market of books that somehow disappear from storage facilities and get sold overseas at low costs. Oddly enough, they show up on Amazon or other online sales places at vastly lower prices than the author’s selling price. At this point, an author might think that a single book on demand may be the better route. Again, go back to the beginning. Paper choices, sizes, and print quality are rarely available and few compare to a well-printed special run. And it can be much more expensive per book. Despite all of the obstacles a self-published author has to navigate, the final, well-done piece selling well makes all of the effort worthwhile and gives an author an immense sense of pride and satisfaction. Keep these tips in mind as the book gets written and save in the end on time, money, and grief. Good luck and best wishes.

uary 18, 2016, ISSUE 1135

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