So many unseens hold up publications

One of our books is suffering from considerable delays at the moment. Authors, particularly newer ones, are getting quite anxious. Those who been there before are just getting on with the next piece and have probably not even noticed that we’ve passed the next dead-line.

There are so many factors we can’t predict when we set our dates. Here are a few that we’ve encountered this time:

Authors not returning edits

Authors not supplying bios

Authors not responding to emails

Hidden tables in texts that won’t be removed – we’ve had to retype whole sections of text with the greater margin for error that that brings

Okay, so curly double quotes are unfashionable at the moment, but that’s what we’ve asked for and changing the single quotes is not as easy as you might think. If you do it too automatically you can create new errors.   

Peculiar formatting embedded in the text – so it too has had to be retyped

Normally, even with up to 24 authors, there isn’t too much of this sort of thing. There will always be some. For some reason, this time there’s rather a lot. It’s come at a time, too, when we’re changing our web site and getting out royalties.

As I’m also a published writer I can see both sides of this. So, I’m not surprised that one book has that has 43 authors contributing about 1500 words each has been delayed by 18 months. Six months or so seems to be the norm these days on complex productions.  Even a piece of flash fiction I had accepted a year ago came out two weeks ago instead of November 2011. All sorts of things can happen that are not anybody’s fault particularly. Life can catch up with us all and that often explains the delays, especially when you’re dealing with a large group of people.

In productions that involve a smaller number of people, it may be hard sometimes for writer / editor / designer to agree. This isn’t about major rows and fallings out but about each person involved trying to make sure that the most professional job possible is done.

And don’t you know it. Nearly always your editor sends you your rewrites or proofs at the worst moment possible. I remember doing my minor amendments for my PhD, responding to editorial comment on two novels, giving a final critique to a novel I was editing and marking two undergraduate classes’ final assignments in the space of two weeks. I just had to knuckle down and use some clever critical time-planning. I managed it and even had time to spare most days.   

I encourage people to follow me on Twitter. And if you DM me there I’m going to reply in up to 140 characters so it’s going to take less time. But please, look through my messages first – the information you seek may already be there.    

Believe me, publishers work hard – whether they’re one of the Big Six or a small indie. We don’t always have time to communicate, much as we’d love to and much as we love you. The ten hour day is the norm and sometimes it’s even longer. It doesn’t kill us because we love what we do. It’s a vocation, not a job. There does, however, seem to be an infinite number of tasks and only a finite amount of time. We crave your patience.                           

  

Some thoughts about book covers

It’s quite easy to make a striking cover. There are some talented artists around and there are also some very good stock pictures available, which you can download for a small fee and use more times than you’d probably be able to sell books.

However, getting the cover to look right isn’t just a matter of having a fabulous picture. You need to take several other matters into account:

Is there a natural place for the lettering?

Or the blurb?

What colour / shape should these be if they are to show up well?

Will the size of the book allow you to have a decent–sized spine? One where you can fit in the title and the author?

Will the picture bleed okay without losing integrity?

Will the paper version be a good match to what you see on screen? This point can be very vexing. Printers produce colour in a very different way from computer screens. Printers who know what they are doing can make the paper version match the digital file but they can’t guarantee that they can match what you are seeing on your own computer screen. You need to set your screen to industry standards and it’s actually not quite possible with domestic screens and totally impossible with laptops.

You also have to remember that a colour will look much darker on mass than it does in small quantities in the lettering – especially if letters are against a dark background.

Be prepared to be surprised. If you’re using a professional designer, they tend to know what they’re doing, so the surprise can be a pleasant one. You may have a few nasty shocks if you’re doing it yourself. Even so, try to look at that cover objectively. Does it actually work? Does it matter that it doesn’t look exactly as you saw it on your screen? As long as you’ve actually not got any nasty clashes it could be fine.                       

Why editors and agents have to love not just like what they see

The main problem is everyone only has a certain amount of time. We sometimes feel that if we worked with an author for a while, we could eventually help them to produce something of really good quality that exactly fits our imprint. Unfortunately we probably don’t have enough hours in the day to do that nor can we be sure that an unknown author will be capable of reacting professionally to editorial comment. We’ve also got to be sure that we’ll continue to be enthusiastic enough to get behind it with our marketing efforts. So, unless we love the work rather than just liking it, it’s probably a no go.

I’m a writer too and I know how frustrating it can be to be told by an agent / publisher that they like our work but don’t love it-  especially after they’ve held on to the script for several weeks. But if they say “I’m afraid we like this but don’t love it, but we‘d love to see more of your work.”, count this not as a rejection but as an almost acceptance. They have seen the potential of your work, they can see your professionalism, and they can see that you are almost there. It’s worth carrying on.

I’m currently looking at the entries for The Red Telephone 2011competition. I’ve seen some good writing and some fascinating ideas. There are of course other judges. And I have a few more to look at. There will be a winner, whatever happens, and whichever one we choose it will be easier to be enthusiastic about a novel we love.  

This will become even more crucial for The Red Telephone shortly. Once the competition results are out we’ll be going into open submissions. We’ll only be publishing a few and I expect we’ll soon accumulate an impressive slush pile. At that point we can certainly have the luxury of only publishing what we really love. 

The Legal Deposit Libraries – curse or blessing

At first glance these seem a bit of a bugbear. Publishers have to absolutely by law deposit one copy of every book they produce with the British Library. That isn’t the rather grand building in London, but a little obscure office somewhere you probably wouldn’t have heard of otherwise. The other Legal Deposit libraries, the Bodleian of the University of Oxford, Cambridge University Library, The National Library of Scotland, The Library of Trinity College, Dublin and The National Library of Wales are entitled to request copies. The big publishers tend to send copies as a matter of course. Smaller indie publishers rather hope the libraries don’t ask – though comfort themselves if they are asked by telling themselves they must be getting important. It all costs money and eats into the scant profits.

You would think that if you send five books to the collecting agent one book would then be passed on to each library. Oh no. It’s all done alphabetically. Depending on where you are in the alphabet, your books go to one particular library. And there they sit, piled up in a room where it’s almost impossible to move, let alone find books, it would seem.

It seems such a waste.  Why can’t they be content with electronic copies? Incidentally, there is no depositing of e-books, though if they have an ISBN a record that they exist should be made known to Nielsen.

But here’s an interesting thing. We’d do well to remember the Doomsdays Books. The first one can still be read. The second more modern one, produced on BBC computer, is lost forever.

The physical book will probably endure. If a disaster happens, and all of our technology is wiped out, those books, tightly packed as they are so that they protect each other, will still be there. People will still be able to read or will find the books interesting enough that they will relearn. It may not be that dramatic. If we haven’t learnt by the BBC’s disregard for history (they lost episodes of Doctor Who for goodness sake) it may simply be that in the future we do not have the technology to read them.  

Recently the Legal Deposit libraries’ agent has requested two of our titles. They are both anthologies of short stories and were also produced for Kindle just before Christmas. Is this because we are worth preserving? We hope so: it costs us £20 a time to deposit these books.                

                 

Publishers as gatekeepers

Self-publishing and small cooperatives

Certainly the way we publish is changing. More and more people are self-publishing or forming publishing cooperatives. The sensible ones are using an editor and a copy editor. They lack the resources of the bigger publishers to promote and distribute work. However, they can sometimes feed into a niche market. This is fine.  Sometimes, however, the size and scope of the writer’s circle of influence might be what is selling the book rather than the merit of the book.

Established authors going it alone      

Some authors are going with the traditional publishers for new work but self-publishing their out-of-print titles, most commonly via Smashwords or directly to Amazon Kindle. These writers don’t have to worry too much about promotion. They already have their name. They can sell many of these titles as backlist and good old Amazon makes the link visible for them.

Crowd-funding           

There is now also crowd-funding where the great general public determine which works get published and actually offer the financial sponsorship upfront. However, again, whether a book gets published may have little to do with the content of the book but to do with how popular the writer is. Most crowd-funding organisations expect the project leader – in this case the author – to have a big following on social-networking sites. Arguably, authors should have such a following but that should be because they are good authors not because they are good at social networking.

Content overload

There is so much available to read now. Some content is offered free as an incentive and some is offered very cheaply – especially in the form of e-books. Then there are all the blogs, Facebook pages and web articles flagged up by others. We can’t possibly read it all, so how do we choose?

Developing trust  

We tend to follow the links and recommendations of people we trust, and occasionally we’ll follow something we simply find interesting. We have traditionally trusted the publishing houses to scrutinize work before it comes to us.  We all know they don’t always get it right – they can disappoint and they can also overlook gems. But on the whole, we know that the work has been vetted rigorously and some professional editorial work has gone into it.

What the reader pays for

Interestingly, many of the traditional publishers offer their e-book titles for only a few pence less than the paperback. Can we assume that this reflects just how much time and effort goes into that gatekeeping? With bulk printing, stock, warehousing and distribution only involve minimal costs. The employees of the publishing house are obviously doing something else. Cynically we might say that they are making a tidy profit. I actually rather doubt it. Even where a publishing house is doing well, if the executives put their business energy into almost any other sort of enterprise they’d make much more money. The must be some care about books in there somewhere. And in fact, publishing houses could be driven out of business because of the ease with which we can now go it alone.

Who will offer quality control now?  

If this happens how can we retain the quality control? Can this be left to the reviewers? If the publishers merely become reviewers, how will they get paid? Could they become freelance editors?

We curse our publishers often – as a writer / publisher I’ve experienced that from both sides. Both the apparently overzealous editor and the author who cannot let go of a certain character or passage of prose can annoy seriously. It strikes me though, that publishers, the big ones and the small ones still have an important role to play, even if that role is going to take a different form soon.                     

      

Submissions Etiquette

Standard formatting

There’s a sort of default standard for submitting work: double space, single side of A4, a font similar to Times new Roman 12, pages numbered and an indication of how many pages and where the “manuscript” ends. This is often the case, even when one is submitting electronically.

Occasionally a publisher will ask for something else, especially for competitions. It is of course absolutely imperative to follow those instructions to the letter, no matter how bizarre they sound; the publisher / competition organiser has put them there for a reason.

I don’t think I’ve ever rejected anybody simply because they have not obeyed convention. However, if the submission is border line, the fact that the work is incorrectly formatted may swing me to reject. It says that the author is an amateur and may not be able to go through the editorial / proof-reading process. That person may cost me more time. Significantly, I can only remember accepting one submission that was brilliant but wrongly formatted. I wouldn’t rule out others but I can’t actually remember them.

Working with electronic submissions

These days, even if the text is submitted as hard copy, the work with editors is usually done electronically. There is a swing now anyway towards electronic submission. The type-setter has gone, and has been replaced by design teams using Quark, Acrobat, or In-Design to change the Word document into a camera-ready PDF that a modern printer (I mean the machine, not the person) will recognise. And that is where another round of fun can start. A text that had looked fine when it arrived may contain all sorts of gremlins that won’t stand the conversion. Authors compromise texts by:

• Using a Word "named style" other than "Normal" for the default paragraph format.
• Using lots of different Word "named styles" for things which look exactly the same on the screen.
• Forcing paragraph indents by any means other than setting the default indent for style "Normal" (i.e. no inserting blanks, tabs or any other trick)...
• ...Indeed, using the tab character anywhere at all. If you want to tabulate text, insert a proper table. You can always hide the lines.
• Using multiple consecutive space characters.
• Inserting blanks lines for any purpose other than starting a new section of the narrative i.e. not for forcing page throws, making titles stand away from the text or any other forced formatting. The defined styles can do that. The pages in a book are usually not A4. So, this is just wasted effort.
• Inserting blanks at the end of a paragraph.
• Hiding tables for forcing formatting.
• Adding headers and footers manually.

Love or hate Microsoft, why not use it to get these things right? It makes the conversion go more smoothly.  

Shared responsibility

I can hear some saying, “Isn’t it the publishers’ job to produce the clean text?” Yes, indeed it is. But it slows down the whole process if a text is very untidy. Time is money. And if there are too many mistakes some will get missed, creating more post-proof work. In fact, designers can lose the original shape of a document, if it has not been formatted correctly, as they insert it into the book. This is the bane of the small indie publisher and is a waste of time for the Big Six. In both cases it affects the price of the book to the customer and the amount of royalty you might earn. Okay, someone’s badly formatted text will turn into a book sold at £5.99 the same as your similar but well formatted text. But all that extra work the designers have to do will gradually push up the price of all books. It’s also distressing for authors when the text comes back not looking the way they expected it to look.   

Amazon’s quirks

Another dimension comes into this, however, which is beyond the author’s or the publisher’s control. When publishing to Amazon Kindle a text can look fine, may have been rigorously controlled by a designer, and even looked right in a preview provided by Amazon, and yet collapse in its public-facing view. I don’t normally complain in public like this, but we have mentioned it to Amazon, I have seen many very poorly formatted books on Kindle and there are already plenty of forums about it There is much I love about Amazon, as a customer, a writer and a publisher, and there are some things that drive me insane. This is one of them.

In one of our books recently, Kindle failed to “print” “ŷ” correctly, even though the preview had shown it as correct and that preview had even been read on a Kindle! Amazon added insult to injury by even showing that in the “look inside” feature on its web site. Very frustrating for both us and the author. Maybe, though, it will give you an idea of how important it is to get formatting right.

A need for a new etiquette

Perhaps the etiquette needs to go deeper now. Some publishers still use old mark-up language syntax when working with authors which is actually virtually the same as HTML. It can be very time-consuming for non-fiction and academic writers who have to put in titles, sub-titles, charts and illustrations. However, at least it means that designer and writer understand each other – provided that the writer gets it right which is not always the case.

It would be convenient if all publishers used the same style and could provide a universal Word template though this is unlikely to happen; there are almost as many house styles as there are publishing houses. At least, though, the author only needs to convert to that style at the point of publication. The publisher can often even do that for you quite easily if you have used a consistent Word style throughout. The main problem occurs when you manually change something within a style.

So, is the new etiquette, don’t apply a style, then manually change how your text looks on the screen? If it needs to look different, define a different style.      

Some thoughts on marketing and publicity

I can write about this from two perspectives: as a published writer and as a publisher. I have almost finished completing a proposal for an academic book. It is actually finished but festering on my computer while I get some distance and revise once more before I send it off. As with all non-fiction, you write a detailed proposal before you write any of the book apart from maybe a sample chapter or two.  And yet still more of the questions were about marketing strategies and how I would self-promote than about the content I was going to produce.

Those of us who write fiction are only too well aware that our publishers expect us to get involved. In fact, successful writers can become so caught up in a whirlwind of book signing, local newspaper and radio interviews and readings - and for children’s authors also school visits - that they don’t have time to work on the next one.  

Shouldn’t the publisher be organising all of that? Yes, of course, to a certain extent. Yet there are only so many hours in the day and pennies in the budget. There is actually only a small window of opportunity. A publishing house, big or small, has to at some time move on to the next book and the next author. The budget only goes so far: review copies, a book trailer, and submission for prizes. Which is best? Small press or the Big Six?  The former has fewer overheads; the latter has a higher profile. Word of mouth is the most effective tool in both cases.

Sadly, the Beatles weren’t the only rock band who were that good in the ‘60’s, much as I love them. Some serendipitous circumstances came together.  I’ve read some work submitted for university assignments that is far better than some published work and I’ve read some published work that has made me cringe. There is a lot of subjectivity in this business.

On a personal note I’d like to say that I find it far easier to promote other people’s work than my own. This is where word of mouth – or word of Twitter, Facebook or Amazon review and even words in blogs come in. Quality will out but must be seen. The biggest favour we can do ourselves and each other is to shout about something we find good. Yet, if I shout about my own work too hard, or about what I’ve published, it might not quite be believable. Maybe a way forward is for us always to proactively flag up quality when we see it in others.