My editor tells me my Advance Reader Copies (ARCs) are ready and how many would I like for myself. Having never in my life been asked such a question, I'm back to being Bambi in the car headlights, but the publisher has done all this before, and tells me that most authors only order a few like 5-10 for themselves. Unsure, I order three (and later order three more). They are more expensive than what the book will actually be, because it's a different printing process.
The ARCs are mostly for the publicist to send out to reviewers. They order 50 copies. I haven't written much about the publicity part of this, but will.
For those keep track of publishing costs. I pay for the book printing, both the ARCs and the main runs.
Later the ARCs arrive:
It's a WHOA! moment. What I've written is an actual book. It's a dizzying experience to open a book and see something you have written. I post of photo of the three books to Facebook.
Monday, March 11, 2019
The Back Cover
While the book is being laid out, the back cover gets separately created.
The backcover is the marriage of the description and any blurbs you'd like to see on it.
They sent me the edited description and ask for which blurbs I'd like to see. I send them two and then the have a go at it and send it to me. I whine because they did edit them some, but after some back and forth they convince me, so I ok it.
The backcover is the marriage of the description and any blurbs you'd like to see on it.
They sent me the edited description and ask for which blurbs I'd like to see. I send them two and then the have a go at it and send it to me. I whine because they did edit them some, but after some back and forth they convince me, so I ok it.
The Designed Layout
Now the text of my book leaves the land of Microsoft Word and goes to the layout people. It's their job to position the text properly on the page. It's now set up to be put in a book and is a PDF file. Even numbered pages will be laid out differently than the odd numbered one.
At this point our only job is to look for errors that hadn't been fixed before. My copy-editor carefully goes through the whole thing and makes a list of 10 changes. We then made a list (in MS Word) of the priority of the changes 1. 2. 3. in order of importance. They gave us lengthy instructions on how to request changes. We had to specify the paragraph and which sentence. Change "old sentence" to "new sentence." It's a very careful, exacting process and I'm glad that we didn't have a lot of changes.
Remarkably the turn around was minutes and I have a full PDF copy of the book to be.
At this point our only job is to look for errors that hadn't been fixed before. My copy-editor carefully goes through the whole thing and makes a list of 10 changes. We then made a list (in MS Word) of the priority of the changes 1. 2. 3. in order of importance. They gave us lengthy instructions on how to request changes. We had to specify the paragraph and which sentence. Change "old sentence" to "new sentence." It's a very careful, exacting process and I'm glad that we didn't have a lot of changes.
Remarkably the turn around was minutes and I have a full PDF copy of the book to be.
Getting "Blurbs"
A "blurb" is a publishable comment from someone who has read all or most of your book.
It's a delicate chicken/egg problem. First off all you have to have completed at least a fairly recent and readable draft of your book. Then you have to find someone willing to read it and make comments that will be published in the book or on Amazon. What's really awkward about the whole process is that the person with the most recognizable name wins. These people will be in your Advance Reader group, but they get special status from you. You have to get the book to them in a format they are comfortable with and then you have to regularly ask them about it, without nagging them. People who have done this dance before are by far the best subjects as they get it. Be super nice to these people. You need them.
Advance Readers also called Beta Readers or even Alpha Readers and those brave souls who have agreed to read your book ahead of time to tell you if it's even a workable story.
Getting the book to them in the best of cases merely means emailing them a PDF that they can then load onto their Kindle or Tablet. If your Advance Reader needs a physical copy they you get the unfortunate job of having a book created at the copy shop. Remember college and all those heavy pamphlet books that you had to read? That's exactly it.
Blurbs will be at the bottom of your back cover, or can be on the inside depending on the publisher.
It's a delicate chicken/egg problem. First off all you have to have completed at least a fairly recent and readable draft of your book. Then you have to find someone willing to read it and make comments that will be published in the book or on Amazon. What's really awkward about the whole process is that the person with the most recognizable name wins. These people will be in your Advance Reader group, but they get special status from you. You have to get the book to them in a format they are comfortable with and then you have to regularly ask them about it, without nagging them. People who have done this dance before are by far the best subjects as they get it. Be super nice to these people. You need them.
Advance Readers also called Beta Readers or even Alpha Readers and those brave souls who have agreed to read your book ahead of time to tell you if it's even a workable story.
Getting the book to them in the best of cases merely means emailing them a PDF that they can then load onto their Kindle or Tablet. If your Advance Reader needs a physical copy they you get the unfortunate job of having a book created at the copy shop. Remember college and all those heavy pamphlet books that you had to read? That's exactly it.
Blurbs will be at the bottom of your back cover, or can be on the inside depending on the publisher.
Sales Team Tweaking of Comparables and Description
The publisher's sales team heard me about not wanting my book classed as a mystery.
To that end they and my editor have come up with an alternative set of books for them to use as sales comparables. Again a sales comparable is something vaguely close to the book but is not a bestseller. Given I find this exercise really difficult I am deeply grateful for any input about it. They give me a list of four and say choose three. I don't remember how I made the choice, but it was not a difficult one. After some debate with my editor, we decide that having one mystery on the list is ok.
Then they come up with: "The sales team wants us to emphasize the sci-fi aspect of the book in the description. I’ve reviewed it and made adjustments that I think emphasize the sci-fi aspect and also heighten the stakes so people will be able to tell it’s a thriller rather than a mystery. "
I am excited to see that they actually care about the differences and want to push them.
One thing that I'm not that good about is to make something intriguing you have to give some information away. What the sales team has come with does give away more information, and I ask my editor's opinion if it's too much of a giveaway. She then goes and spends time talking with her boss, and after some debate, they decide that it doesn't give too much away. Ok, works for me.
To that end they and my editor have come up with an alternative set of books for them to use as sales comparables. Again a sales comparable is something vaguely close to the book but is not a bestseller. Given I find this exercise really difficult I am deeply grateful for any input about it. They give me a list of four and say choose three. I don't remember how I made the choice, but it was not a difficult one. After some debate with my editor, we decide that having one mystery on the list is ok.
Then they come up with: "The sales team wants us to emphasize the sci-fi aspect of the book in the description. I’ve reviewed it and made adjustments that I think emphasize the sci-fi aspect and also heighten the stakes so people will be able to tell it’s a thriller rather than a mystery. "
I am excited to see that they actually care about the differences and want to push them.
One thing that I'm not that good about is to make something intriguing you have to give some information away. What the sales team has come with does give away more information, and I ask my editor's opinion if it's too much of a giveaway. She then goes and spends time talking with her boss, and after some debate, they decide that it doesn't give too much away. Ok, works for me.
The Proofread
A proofreader is not supposed to be an editor. Their job is to make the text work at a very fine level of detail. Every comma, semi-colon, dash. Every paragraph has to be indented or not indented just right. It's a job for a very detailed person.
They will make edits if it makes sense to do so to help the sense of a sentence, but it is not their main job. If a proofreader is doing too much copy-editing, they will stop and tell the publisher it needs a copy-edit first.
To send if off the publisher we first had to save it as a Microsoft Word document and then go over everything to make sure the conversion worked as expected. It did for the most part, or so we thought. One thing the Google Docs to Microsoft Word conversion did not handle well is to change the quote marks to be smart quotes instead of a regular straight up and down quote.
A regular quote mark looks like: "
A curly opening quote mark looks like: “
A curly closing quote mark looks like: ”
Our proofreader very kindly fixed many of them for us. I use Google Docs for computer code also which require straight quotes, so it is turned off in my version.
The proofreader was also kind enough to note a couple of sections that read awkwardly. These were sections that I was aware off and wasn't sure how well they'd work, so I let a dev editor of the publisher's choosing have a go at it. It wasn't the best choice, but she was able to give me enough feedback where I could rework those sections. It was something of a necessary pain. We actually did a repeat proofread and it's a better book because of the process. It did slip the published date by three months, but it was well worth it.
There were some things that I had to defend more than once. I like chapter titles. Apparently they are out of favor these days. Whatever. I like them and they help me a lot. So after about two go rounds about "Yes, I want to keep them." they stayed.
They will make edits if it makes sense to do so to help the sense of a sentence, but it is not their main job. If a proofreader is doing too much copy-editing, they will stop and tell the publisher it needs a copy-edit first.
To send if off the publisher we first had to save it as a Microsoft Word document and then go over everything to make sure the conversion worked as expected. It did for the most part, or so we thought. One thing the Google Docs to Microsoft Word conversion did not handle well is to change the quote marks to be smart quotes instead of a regular straight up and down quote.
A regular quote mark looks like: "
A curly opening quote mark looks like: “
A curly closing quote mark looks like: ”
Our proofreader very kindly fixed many of them for us. I use Google Docs for computer code also which require straight quotes, so it is turned off in my version.
The proofreader was also kind enough to note a couple of sections that read awkwardly. These were sections that I was aware off and wasn't sure how well they'd work, so I let a dev editor of the publisher's choosing have a go at it. It wasn't the best choice, but she was able to give me enough feedback where I could rework those sections. It was something of a necessary pain. We actually did a repeat proofread and it's a better book because of the process. It did slip the published date by three months, but it was well worth it.
There were some things that I had to defend more than once. I like chapter titles. Apparently they are out of favor these days. Whatever. I like them and they help me a lot. So after about two go rounds about "Yes, I want to keep them." they stayed.
Ironing out Details
My publisher is trying to workout the finer details of pitching the book and preparing it for being listed on Amazon.
We worked out the final details of the official description. This goes to the sales people, and to Amazon. I eventually chose to use it for the backcover as well but that was later.
I sent them a photo of myself. I'm a photographer, so I was able to take some that I actually liked.
They wanted to know what chapters they could use as "Sample Chapters." Usually that is the first or an early chapter. I chose the first chapter.
Somewhere along the line I remembered that I hadn't submitted my acknowledgements when I submitted the manuscript. Duh. We were so focused on getting the copy-editing done that I just completely neglected to do that. Their preference is for it to have been submitted along with the manuscript so it could be proofread, but they told me the other times I could submit it.
We worked out the final details of the official description. This goes to the sales people, and to Amazon. I eventually chose to use it for the backcover as well but that was later.
I sent them a photo of myself. I'm a photographer, so I was able to take some that I actually liked.
They wanted to know what chapters they could use as "Sample Chapters." Usually that is the first or an early chapter. I chose the first chapter.
Somewhere along the line I remembered that I hadn't submitted my acknowledgements when I submitted the manuscript. Duh. We were so focused on getting the copy-editing done that I just completely neglected to do that. Their preference is for it to have been submitted along with the manuscript so it could be proofread, but they told me the other times I could submit it.
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