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I use Indesign CS3 for make my books. (There are now later versions of Indesign.)
Indesign does not come with a book instruction manual and there is a lot to
Indesign cs3. I suggest you read one or two books on it so you know the ins and outs for this book making wonderful tool.
The books for Indesign CS 3 that I have are:
Adobe Indesign CS3 Bible by Galen Gruman. I use this one as a reference book.
Adobe Indesign CS3 Classroom in a BookI found
Indesign to be a fun program to work in. It has some much more to it than I use.
There are many tools and you have to familiarize yourself with them so you can use the ones you will need for your project.
The tools I used most are:
Direct Selection Tool - to grab and size pages and images
Selection Tool - moving and re-sizing images
Type Tool - the
Type Tool makes the frames needed to place your text in. To edit and format with the
Type Tool. It works much like word processing software. Indesign has auto-fill which you use
by load the
Type Tool and it flows through the text frames. However, I manually add my text
due to the amount of images, the small amount of text on some pages and how I design my
pages.
In Indesign, you make images and frames. For text frames you place your text either using 'auto fill' or cut and pasting then place a image and the two frames click together. Then you do it again for the next page, and on and on.
If your images are your pages, and you plan to add text into them you selected the
Type Tool and place the text where you want it in the image.
Before we get started, let me remain you to SAVE often while you are working in Indesign.
You start by creating a document.
Start Indesign. Choose FILE: then, NEW: then, DOCUMENT |
| Here I am opening the document. FILE: NEW: DOCUMENT |
 |
| The file opens and this is what it looks like. |
I choose for the DOCUMENT PRESET: Custom
In the Number of Pages area, I add the number of pages, including the blank first page, title page, the copyright page, dedication page (if any) and a blank page at the end of the book required by my printer for their use.
I also click the FACING PAGES check box, for just that facing pages in the book.
For PAGE SIZE I use inches, and having check for book sizes in my book printer's specs (which you should know at this point.)
At COLUMNS I add a 1, since one column is what is needed for my books.
In the MARGINS area, click on the MAKE ALL SETTINGS THE SAME icon for the same margin on all sides of the book. I add half inch/ .50, which is the margin my printer uses.
At the
BLEED area I add
one quarter in/ .25.I don't worry about the
SLUG area.
You can save your
PRESET for later use for another book.
 |
| Here you see that I have a PRESET for chapter books. |
Here the
DOCUMENT is open. This is a title page/first page of the document.
With INDESIGN you can put GUIDES around the document so you can see the margin, gutter or bleed areas and not place text or images in them.
~
 |
| A |
 |
B
In both pictures here, A and B, you can see the Arrows pointing to the top and side GUIDES. The Guides turn from read to blue when placed. You GRAB the Guides by going to the ruler, (top and left side rulers,) with your Mice and drag it to your margin, gutter and bleed areas. THAT EASY!~
~
To add an image or graphic (in TIFF Format) to a page, you use the Selection Tool and go to FILE> PLACE.
Your computer opens and you find the image you are looking for and click OPEN.
Then move the Selection Tool to the place you want it on the page and click the spot.
 | | HOW to make a text frame is you take the TEXT TOOL and click and drag on the area in the page you want to add text. |
 | To add text by cutting and pasting, you open you Word, Office Writer or other word processor
and copy from it the text you want to use and move back to Indesign and paste it where you want it. |
|
Now here I have images I have put text into. The area where the text is in these two picture is part of the image themselves. When I PLACED these images in Indesign I had yet to put the text in. So to do what
I did just what I had in the example above, and COPIED and PASTED the text from my word processor and added it to the area I had painted for that purpose.
Throughout this process you are designing your book!Now you will show how I send my BOOK DOCUMENT to my printer.
To return to Part I: http://jdswritersblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/how-i-make-my-picture-books-part-i_8924.htmlTo go to Part III:
http://jdswritersblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/how-i-make-my-picture-books-part-iii.html
By: Candy Gourlay,
on 2/5/2013
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Notes from the Slushpile
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By Candy Gourlay
Hilary Mantel (Photo: Harper Collins)
Go, Hilary!
After winning the Booker Prize a second time (with the second book of her trilogy), Hilary Mantel also grabbed the Costa Prize. £30,000 prize money. Blimey.
Sally Gardner of course won the Children's Costa for Maggot Moon.
Go, Sally !
Mantel's historic win brought back fond memories of the children's book industry's own
First of all I make sure that my manuscript is well edited and ready.
You will need to know who your printing company will be beforehand and understand all their guidelines, margins and all the printers requirements.
Next, I resize all my images. I use a few art programs to do my artwork in and resize them. They are Adobe Photoshop Elements, Corel Painter Essentials and Corel PaintShop Pro. I use each one for whatever the program does best.
(NOTE: my images and dates are not in order which does not matter for this preview)
To start with, here, I am using PaintShop Pro to resize images and add frames, edges and borders to some of them to neaten them up.
 |
| Here, I'm using EFFECTS, then choosing EDGE EFFECTS for this image. |
 |
| 1. Here, I'm using IMAGE> PICTURE FRAME. |
 |
2. Here you see there are a number of choices.
For printing books your printer will need the resolution or DPI /Dots Per Inch to be 300 DPI or 600 DPI. I always scan in my images at 300 DPI. A higher DPI means a higher quality print, image or screen resolution. (NOTE: Also know, that the larger the images the more space each image will need on your computer for storaging them. This is important to know because the more high resolution images on you drive can stop some programs from running due to limiting usable space on the hard drive.)
I pick the size of each image due to the size page that it will fit on in my book. |
 |
Making sure the images are at least 300 dpi or higher.
NEXT: Moving To My Book program: Indesign CS 3
How I Make My Picture Books: Part II |
I've actually had a little time to look at some of the Internet gleanings I've been saving up these past few weeks. And I can't wait to discuss them.
It took a while for me to get around to The Last Word on Blurbs at Educating Alice, because the documentary about Gary Shteyngart's blurbs that Monica links to runs 15 minutes. When I finally saw the little film, I found it interesting because it seems to project the pointless nature of blurbs and suggest that the literary world, itself, doesn't take them seriously, while all that same time portraying Shteyngart, a well-known "blurb whore" in blurbing circles, as a nice guy trying to be helpful. As I was watching it, I imagined hundreds, if not thousands, of writers contacting him, hoping for a blurb, not because it would say anything particular about the quality of their books but because it would be neat to have a Shteyngart blurb. I'm thinking it could be like collecting autographs or balls signed by athletes.
Some of what you'll see at Six Things I Learned About Publishing a Book That Very Few Books Will Tell You at The Huffington Post you probably have seen in a lot of books. However, I was particularly interested in Points 1 and 2. 1. The author, Nataly Kelly, talks about connecting with an editor on LinkedIn. I have wondered about whether or not LinkedIn would be useful. I rarely hear any talk of it in author promotion materials. However, my limited knowledge of it suggests that it is professional rather than social. Shouldn't that mean you'll get fewer political rants and odes to pets there and more real professional exchanges? I could be convinced to link up with LinkedIn. 2. Kelly says an agent is necessary to assist with negotiations, even if you "made" the sale yourself. I've often heard that. However, in this video Mark McVeigh did for the 2010 WriteonCon, he said that getting an agent at that point is a little late, and that for most new authors, an agent won't be able to do much more for you than the editor's original offer. Which way to go? I am at a loss.
New Developments in Self-Publishing at Turbo Monkey Tales. Note that in spite of the new technical developments related to self-publishing, the post also makes the point that self-publishing is still publishing. In order to publish a book, someone has to do the work of a publisher--"editing, design, and marketing, at the very least." If authors publish themselves, then they either have to do that work or they have to pay someone to do it. But there's no getting around the fact that it needs to be done.
And while we're talking about writers needing to spend money, as we were in that last para, let's also touch on them making money. The financial realities described for genre novelists are similar to those for children's novelists. I would add something to this quote from the excerpt from Brian Keene: "And you probably won’t see a royalty check until another year AFTER your book has been published (provided enough copies have sold to earn out your advance)." The part about "provided enough copies have sold to earn out your advance" is extremely important. Many books never sell enough copies to earn out the authors' advances, and, thus, those authors never see a royalty check, never see money beyond the original advance. Some authors only make money the years they receive advances.
Okay, we're going to end this weekend's links on a lighter note. Maybe. Take a look at 7 (More) Children's Books by Famous "Adult" Lit Authors at Brain Pickings. My personal favorite is the first one, The Crows of Pearblossom, by Aldous Huxley. It's about a crow couple who are having no luck at all starting a family because a rattlesnake that lives below their tree keeps eating their eggs. Seriously. It eats 297 of them. They trick the snake into eating two stone eggs, which, as you might guess, kills him. They then go on to live happily ever after, I guess, with the 60-plus children they proceed to produce. There is a Greek tragedy element to this story that appeals to me.
In an essay in the Independent Book Publishers Association’s monthly Independent magazine, Ingram content acquisition VP and IBPA board of directors member Kelly Gallagher showed why small and medium-sized publishers are “the industry’s healthiest and fastest-growing segment.”
The article noted that small publishers (the presses that need fewer than ten ISBNs every year year) have increased 69 percent between 2006 and 2011. Bowker now counts almost 21,000 of these scrappy publishers.
What do you think? Is this rapidly expanding segment the future of the publishing industry?
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Yesterday morning the kid literati world was all a-twitter as the ALA made its announcment of this year's outstanding books for young people. They always start with the Newbury, but since this is an illustrator blog I'm starting with the Caldecott winners:
Winning the gold was Jon Klassen's This Is Not My Hat
Honorees were Peter Brown's
Creepy Carrots (we have a signed copy, proving in fact that our family is cooler than yours), Jon Klassen's
Extra Yarn, David Small for
One Cool Friend, Laura Seeger for
Green, and Pamela Zagarenski for
Sleep Like a Tiger.
The Newbery Award went to
The One and Only Ivan written by Katherine Applegate
Three Newbery Honor Books also were named:
Splendors and Glooms by Laura Amy Schlitz,
Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin, and
Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage.
Thanks to the miracle of social media I got to send messages of congratulations to many of the winners. I have to say it was pretty weird to type "congrats on the caldecott"... made it seem a little more within reach.
Finally I'll post a couple of sketches from one of the three projects I'm currently super busy with. I picked these to go with the theme of smart-alecky fish and carrots with mind twisting skills:
The fourth session of my new course, Publish and Sell Your E-Books, started last week. I love teaching it and have had the most interesting questions in my discussion areas–in fact, one of my students commented that she learned as much in the discussions as in the lessons. I was pleased! Indeed, the ability to ask questions and get answers is the key advantage to learning in an online classroom. Otherwise, you could research everything you needed to know from a book or the Internet. A number of students have asked how to format pages for an e-book and if they can put in page breaks. This question has made me realize that one of the tough things about going from publishing “regular” books to e-books is the idea that “pages” no longer exist. An e-book is all just lines of text that display on the screen of the e-reader. The e-reader is what determines the size or dimensions of the viewing screen (digital page), plus the font display size the user selects (I love e-readers because I can make the font very large). So, e-book authors need to imagine all those lines of text displayed on anything from a [...]
STATUS: Caught the crud on my way back from New York over the weekend. It's not helping with my catch-up efforts.
What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? EL SUENO DE LA HIJA DEL REY by Savina Yannatou
As many of you already know, I was in The Big Apple last week speaking at Digital Book World. After Mike Shatzkin's interview with me and Hugh Howey, I sat on a panel with my fellow agents Jane Dystel, Steve Axelrod, and Jay Mandel.
My question was this: "What should Publishers be learning from authors who are self-publishing?"
My answer was twofold:
1) Authors who are successfully self-pubbing release a lot of content and a variety of content regularly. For example, one of my authors publishes 2 novels a year but also publishes short content in between the major releases to keep the momentum going. Also, successful self-pubbers do a VARIETY of content. If one work is building (and therefore more appealing to the audience), then the author will set aside the other content and focus on what is building momentum. Because the author is in full control of the publishing, she can make that decision quickly and immediately act on it.
Publishers need to find a way to do the same.
2) Second, success is all about the metadata. Most editors input the metadata tags when the author contract is submitted and then don't think about it again. Well, that's not what successful self-pubbers are doing and that's not what we do at NLA digital either. We are constantly tweaking.
For those of you wondering what the heck is metadata, these are the descriptive tags included in product description and in a lot of cases, embedded in the content file itself of electronic books, that allow a novel to be searchable and discoverable on distribution venues such as Amazon, BN, and Kobo.
I tell a great story about what was unfolding, literally, the week of DBW. And now I can share it with you. Some enterprising videographer filmed me while speaking (so thank you BookMarketingAME). The video starts a little shaky but evens out. Hear it for yourself.
And here is the visual I didn't include at DBW but can share with y'all via the power of my blog. *grin*
The author's editor is the true heroine of the story for being persistence with her internal team to get the metadata fixed. Within 12 hours of it happening, voila! This title was not even showing up in the top 100 or even the top 250 in ranking in this category until the fix.
And yes folks, that's the importance of Metadata in a nutshell.
By Candy Gourlay
First, let us all take a moment to gaze upon Harrison Ford in his prime.
I've been watching a lot of Making Of videos recently and was struck by director Steven Spielberg's negativity when discussing MY favourite Indiana Jones film, The Temple of Doom.
I loved that film, but googling around I discovered long discourses about how it was too dark and interviews with
Algonquin Books, a division of Workman Publishing, will be launching a children’s books imprint called Algonquin Young Readers. This venture has been in development since 2011.
This new imprint will publish both fiction and narrative nonfiction titles for readers ages seven to seventeen. Veteran children’s publishing executive Elise Howard will serve as editor and publisher.
Algonquin Books publisher Elisabeth Scharlatt gave this comment in the release: “This is an exciting step toward Algonquin’s future, a logical way for us to grow while still keeping our adult list small. We’ve been thinking about attracting younger readers for a long time and now the time is clearly right. More thrilling, though, the books themselves are extraordinary, just dazzling.”
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
By:
Kelly Hashway,
on 1/13/2013
Blog:
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Happy Monday! Here's what's on my mind today:
- Book releases! Touch of Death officially releases tomorrow! Squee! And Love All releases in 8 days!
- Arisia I'm leaving for Arisia in Boston on Saturday. I'll be on a promotion panel, doing reading, signing Touch of Death, and of course attending the Zombie Prom! I'm so excited!
- Picture book contract FutureWord Publishing, who published my first PB May the Best Dog Win, is going to publish Cricket's Drive Around Town. I'm excited to work with them again.
- Giveaways I'm giving away a copy of Love All and SWAG as part of the Bad Boy Rehab Hop. Make sure you enter here. And look for a huge Touch of Death giveaway on Wednesday.
- New covers Love All got a facelift. It's slightly different and the other two books in the series now have covers, too!
That's it for me. What's on your mind today?
Family Fun World, c/o Joe Orman.
For the past three years, whenever we visit Jake’s family in Tucson, we drive past what appear to be pastel bird cages off the 1-10. For the past three years, I’ve said to myself, “I wonder what the heck is up with that” but done nothing. This year, on our trip down for Christmas, though, it came to my attention that my husband now owns a smart phone, and voila! Family Fun World.
Family Fun World was one man’s dream to bring an amusement park to Eloy, Arizona. Richard Songers was a construction worker with a dream—to open a park on the land he purchased outside of Eloy in 1995. Initial plans included a drive-in theater, wild animal zoo, race track, and concert venue. Songers apparently ran out of money before the park could open, and well, Family Fun World became a skeleton of unfulfilled dreams. Nothing remains, beyond these bird cages (originally part of a ride called “The Galaxy” from the Magic Mountain Amusement Park in California) and, from what I’ve read, a very angry guard dog.
A bird cage at Family Fun World, Eloy.
What became of Richard Songers? I guess he still lives near Eloy, since one Family Fun World visitor claims to have met the guy. What does he do with his days, I wonder? Has he moved on to the next dream, or does he mourn the loss of the dream unfulfilled?
It’s a new year, 2013. I’m not going to get into my goals (they’re not “resolutions;” they’re goals). I look toward this new year with joy and excitement, because so much can happen in a year. So much can happen in a month! However, there’s been an unfamiliar feeling, too—an invisible finger itching the back of my brain. This feeling woke me up almost every morning when I was home for Christmas in Ohio. This feeling wakes me up at 2 AM sometimes, too. The feeling is fear. Now, I love horror movies. I love haunted houses. I love dark walks with no flashlight. Fear is a feeling I usually embrace, because, like the time I swam with sharks in Belize, fear makes us feel alive. This fear is different. This is the fear of never amounting to anything.
This is the curse of the “artist.” I’m not talking about the movie, The Artist, although the theme fits, as we watch George Valentin sell off his possessions and sink into anonymity. Fear of failure is the curse of anyone with a dream, although artists generally are more susceptible, because we rarely have anyone tell us “good job,” “here’s your promotion,” or “you need a raise.” I live behind a computer screen in pajamas, and although I have a couple essays published, the accomplishment is not enough. I want my novel published, and as I try to sell the one from last year, I work on a 2013 manuscript and hope, because the doubtful voices get louder every year.
What if your book is never on a shelf at Barnes and Noble?
What if you never become that smiling author on The Daily Show?
What if professionally, you never become anything but a marketing copy writer?
What if? What if?
By Kelly Rae Roberts.
I have crushing days of failure. I have days when I pay my career no mind at all. I have days when I don’t want to write and days when I can think of nothing but writing. So here we are, in 2013. What will this year bring? Will that long-awaited call from a literary agent arrive, or will I be crushed beneath the weight of my own terror?
I bought something while we were in Tucson, after passing Family Fun World and spending a good half-hour thinking about poor old Richard Songers. My recent purchase was an ornament from a coffee shop: a painted picture of a skinny girl like me with three words: “create (tell it).” The ornament sits on my desk, because that is what I do. I create and I tell it like I see it. I can acknowledge my fear, but I must also acknowledge a tireless drive to dream. Not even fear can blow that candle out.
By:
catugeau,
on 12/31/2012
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from CAT artist Priscilla Burris with one of her so special visual moments…… we all wish you all many of these enjoyable, loveable, shared, cozy moments in your future!
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ONE AND ALL !
By:
catugeau,
on 12/24/2012
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No matter what the year seems to bring to us all, this time of year will bring LIGHT and HOPE and JOY to grab. Thank your ‘higher power’ and rejoice!
Have you ever heard that there are seasons in publishing? This time of year, most publishers are winding down and closing up for a while. It's very much like how many publishers slow down in the summer months.
But somehow this year seems different. I'm getting edits and proofs for my own books and tons of edits for my clients. I kind of expected things to get quiet for the holidays and pick back up in January. Not so. I feel busier than ever. It has me wondering if there aren't off seasons after all.
Anyone else noticing this?
*On a side note, I've been so busy I forgot my own blogiversary! But I am currently running a giveaway for an ARC of Touch of Death and SWAG for Touch of Death and Love All, so make sure you enter here.
There will be no visuals with today’s post. There can be none that wouldn’t further break our collective hearts. I brought my three children up in Ridgefield CT for 30 years…just a short drive from Newtown. I know people there effected by this horror I’m sure, and I hope they know my pain and hope is with them.
We are lovers of children’s stories and books, and much of that involvement comes from a love for innocent, learning, growing children and their promised hope for the future. It’s inconceivable that any evil comes to sweet children anywhere, but of course it does too often. This was just an extreme event of random evil that just can’t be truly taken in. My family just celebrated the birth of a new granddaughter, our 7th grand child in fact. We were, and are still, feeling very very blessed at this blessed time of year. Suddenly we also feel betrayed and helpless. What can we really do to protect anyone…even ourselves. Life doesn’t always make sense. It’s not always joy and blessings or even quiet unmemorable moments! How to grasp that and move on into life, but we do, and must. This holiday season is a time of sincerely warm spirit and deep emotion…. and we need to still allow that story into our hearts, as this other horrific story has forced its way in. We need to hold onto the story of love, sharing, caregiving of family and the future’s hope for all. Particularly for those devastated families in Newtown. We need to hold onto our loved ones and feel the blessings of their being. Just their being here with us.
The Twelve Burps of Christmas
Green burp juice on Santa's beard, ugly Christmas sweaters, embarrassing holiday decoration destruction all in the latest George Brown book!
Synopsis-
"In the first Super Special of Nancy Krulik's popular series, George stars in two stories! Between the class play and his old best friend's surprise visit, the Christmas celebrations are shaping up to be a season of fun! But of course the magic burps--an even dozen of them--put a crazy spin on all his plans. If only Santa could leave George a cure for burps under the tree!"
A few fun festive spreads-
At our Media App Summit today, our App-Centered Outreach for Non-Profit and Institutions panel discussion confronted one of the toughest problems facing publishers: how can indie writers, small presses or nonprofits afford to build mobile content?
1. UNICEF project manager Rhazi Kone advised readers to link with academic institutions and young creators. They worked with students at MIT with mobile content, and he explained: “lots of students were really excited to work with us.”
2. Is an app really what you need? If your funds are limited, maybe you should just make sure your website is mobile friendly.
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Do Publishers Need to Offer More Value to Authors? by Jane Friedman is full, full, full of interesting material. The comments are juicy, too.
There's an awful lot of information there, but two bits of info that were striking to me:
"If you sign a traditional deal with a Big Six house, you’ll receive an advance. But most authors (up to 80%) never see royalties; their books never earn out." I was aware that it was not at all unusual, and maybe even common, for writers to never make more on a book than their original advance. But for this to be happening with "up to 80%" (what does "up to" mean?) of writers is significant.
" It boils down to three desirables that publishers offer.
- Money
- Service
- Status"
Friedman pretty much writes off money (we've just seen that most writers don't make much beyond their advance) and service and dwells on the status that publishing with a traditional publisher brings an author. Yes, it's true that publishing with one of the Big Six publishers "can open doors and lead to other types of paychecks." It opens doors to literary blogs, review journals, and conferences, though, in my experience, not necessarily to bookstores. But as Friedman points out in one of her comments to her own article, readers rarely know the publishers of the books they read. I have definitely found that to be true. So the status we're talking about here is status within the publishing industry, not status within the greater culture. How long and how much are you going to care what the cool kids in your cliche think about you? Cripe, we're grown-ups.
I think the major desirable publishers offer is service. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that marketing and promotion are the big devils on everybody's backs. But publishers also offer editing. I do not mean
copy editing, though they do offer that (mine always did) and that is definitely important. But more significantly, they offer
content editing. This is crucial. It is a rare manuscript that will not benefit from a second mind helping to look for inconsistencies, meanderings, unnecessary characters, and a long list of other things.
At a publishing house, your manuscript was acquired by an editor who has some kind of interest in it, presumably "gets" it and "gets" you, at least in relationship to this one particular piece of work. Because they are being paid by a third party (the publisher, not you) they they are free to go back and forth with you to help you shape your book into something more polished and finished than your (first) final draft.
The money might not be great with a traditional publishing company and your neighbors and family may be totally unaware of your elevated status because you're publishing with one. But so long as the traditional publishing companies have content editors, they'll have one very big desirable to offer.
Bertelsmann, the corporate parent of Random House, has purchased a 100 percent stake Random House Mondadori. Random House created the publishing house for Spain and Latin America in 2001, splitting the shares 50/50 with the Spanish publisher.
Spanish antitrust authorities still need to approve the acquisition, and the name will be changed “in the near future.” The move came one week after Random House decided to merge with Penguin next year, creating Penguin Random House.
Bertelsmann CEO Thomas Rabe had this comment: “Bertelsmann believes in the creative and commercial potential of the book business and, by maximizing its holding in Random House Mondadori, is embracing an opportunity to significantly improve both its position in the Spanish book market and its access to the growing Spanish-language markets of Latin America.”
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
The literary community has created a number of relief efforts after the destruction of Hurricane Sandy.
If you want to help, you bid at the Kidlit Cares auction raising relief funds. Some of the items include Skype author visits with Elephant & Piggie author Mo Willems, Speak author Laurie Halse Anderon and Divergent author Veronica Roth. Nonprofit group First Book is asking for donations so that they can give new books to children affected by the storm.
Check out NYCService.org to learn about ways to help out in the New York City area. For the readers who don’t live nearby, but want to come out to the East Coast to volunteer, travel service Airbnb is offering fee-free rentals until November 7th.
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
I’ve often heard people—Publishing Professionals—talk about wanting to “publish books that stand the test of time.”
There’s something unnerving about the way the phrase is used. As though it were written into their code, rather than contemplated carefully and reevaluated case by case. It’s a slogan, rather than a creed. And there’s a reason for that.
While it sounds good to be the publisher known for publishing books that “stand the test of time,” publishing is a business. And in order to be successful, units need to be moved. Not books. Units. Units do not stand the test of time.
Now, it’s true, publishing professionals often come to their jobs with a love of books. And for that reason, they often sell books in spite of their better judgment. They sell them out of love. Sometimes the PP will wake clear-eyed at a meeting a year later, looking at some abominably small number in a column and wonder what they ever saw in that silly little volume.
But sometimes that love will win the day and that number will not be small. It will be large. If it is large the first year, it will, perhaps, continue to be large the second year (this is often the case with the books that are loved very well). In fact, it will sell year after year. And we will, indeed, end up with a book that stands the test of time.
Friends, this is where you come in. When you look at a bestseller list of picture books, you are often—not always—looking at a list of units. When you look at shelves of sparkly pink princesses and less sparkly dumptrucks, you are looking at units. So, as you are making lists of ideas, I want you to consider the following five point entreaty:
- Don’ t pull your ideas from the bestseller list. Pull them from your soul. What combination of experiences, relationships and ideas has come together to make your thoughts what they are? This is the same equation that should make your book. Don’t try to insert some new variable derived from market research.
- Don’t follow the rules. At least, don’t follow them just *because* they are the rules. Use them as guidelines. Mitigate them thoughtfully with your own point of view.
- Your structure is a springboard. If you are using a traditional structure, of the kind that Tammi Sauer recommends in this post, great! But don’t use it as a fetter, let it be the springy energy beneath your feet (or keyboard, as it were).
- Don’t be afraid to steal. But if you’re going to steal an idea, make it good. Pay tribute to something that you’ve been in love with for some time and can’t seem to forget. Don’t riff on something because it’s marketable. Do it because it’s good and you love it.
- Be giddy. You know those ideas that are so good you can’t believe that they came from your brain? The ones that make you do a little dance and clap your hands with glee? Those are books. Use them.
There are a lot of wonderfully quirky picture books that are having their day out there. And you can bet that these books are not a result of market research. They are a result of love.
Tamson Weston is a published children’s book author, founder of Tamson Weston Books, and an editor with over 15 years experience. She has worked on many acclaimed and award-winning books for children of all ages. When she doesn’t have her nose in a book, Tamson likes to run, bike, swim, lift heavy things and, most of all, hang out with her family in Brooklyn, NY. Visit her online at www.tamsonweston.com.
Lately I've been coaching people writing fiction, and have noticed some big differences between published and unpublished manuscripts. The first 4 can all be corrected if the writer wants to take the trouble to correct them; the next 3 three I think depend upon having some talent......
The list helped me fix my OWN writing and I sent it along to one of the people I coach, too. He also found it helpful -- maybe some of you will.
If you disagree with some or can think of others I haven't mentioned, PLEASE comment.
1. Published writers use dialog to move the story along or develop character. Unpublished writers use it to take up space or give the reader information that could be more economically given in some other way --
"Hello, Tom -- we haven't seen each other since the Gold Rush, though of course I"ve known you since your unknown mother deposited you on my doorstep in 1828....."
or left out completely.
UPWs almost always let their dialog go on way too long. Conversations in books (unlike conversations in real life!) should end as soon as their dramatic purpose has been achieved.
2. PWs give readers just the right amount of back story/information about the characters and situation -- not too much, not too little. UPWs tend to either give WAY too much -- telling us all much more about the characters' pasts or the present situation than we need to know -- or so little that we are completely confused.
3. Simiarly, UPWs often spend more time describing a scene/setting it up than letting it play out. PWs concentrate their energies and our attention on what happens -- and in every scene, something does.
4. UPWs introduce characters, facts, situations and then abandon them without developing them or bringing them to a conclusion. PWs make sure that if there is a gun lying on the table, it goes off, or fails to go off, or gets confused for the murder weapon or plays some other role in the story. Otherwise, why mention it? Similarly, if they describe a character in Chapter 4, that character has a role in what happens. He doesn't just get introduced in a paragraph of backstory, stroll in to ask about the weather, and then disappear.
5. It is amazing HOW MUCH HAPPENS in a well-constructed novel. Many amateurish attempts simply contain too little -- they're too slight to be interesting.
6. PWs write about people who come to life in the readers' minds -- their characters seem real, we care what happens to them. UPWs' characters are hard to tell apart or remember, or they're unconvincing -- they seem made-up/flat/fake and we don't care what happens to them (and often, not much does -- see #5). Conveying what a person is like with a few well-chosen details IS an art, but being interested in other people and noticing things about them is a really good start!
I remember an amateur writer -- a doctor -- who was incredibly good at this, even though he had no writing experience. For example, he described a character as dressed in a cowboy hat and boots, and adding the comment that on anyone else, it would have looked silly or affected; but on him, it looked natural and stylish. Later in the scene, when this character replied to something another character had said, the narrator commented that he couldn't tell what he was thinking:
"His was a poker face."
When, later, this same character saved the day with a really brilliant move, it all fit, we believed it -- because the author had chosen the right details to describe him/let us know what he was like.
7. Some writers (both published and unpublished, IMHO) simply have nothing to say -- and these people shouldn't be writing at all, or should wait until they've thought of something.
8. PWs
"Use the right word, not its second cousin." -- Mark Twain
Some UPWs just plain can't write: they misuse words, make grammatical mistakes, are incredibly wordy, use way too many adjectives, always embellish the word "said" or avoid it in favor of words they consider more interesting -- which is like avoiding the word "the".....
This (#8) can be corrected by a little work on the part of the writer: using a dictionary (not a Thesaurus, a dictionary), mastering the concepts in a book like The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, simply paying attention!
Of course, #8 can also be fixed by a good editor, but it's been my experience that those who commit #8 also do so many of the others that I don't think any editor is likely to bother. So the ms. will never get that far.
____
Lastly, I hope this doesn't sound snobbish: I did begin by admitting that MY writing, especially in the earlier drafts, contains some of these things ...and maybe that brings me to one more:
9. PWs usually rewrite -- many, many times. UPWs seem to think one draft is enough, and when it isn't, they give up.
One of the hardest things about writing is that YOU JUST DON'T KNOW -- maybe those who give up are saving themselves a lot of wasted time and energy (if writing something that never sells is a waste of both). Or maybe they're missing the chance to find out, or get something great out into the world.
There are no guarantees, and until you've done your very, very best work I don't think anyone can tell you.
Every week we receive emails from aspiring writers looking for guidance about publishing a book on the traditional publishing route. We always offer the same advice: find the best literary agent for your manuscript.
Every aspiring writer needs to make a list of literary agents they would like to pitch. If you are looking for an agent, there are five simple steps that everybody should follow (whether you are a small town writer or a business leader with a great story or a GalleyCat editor).
We’ve collected five foolproof methods for finding the best agent to pitch with your book–any suggestions to add?
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
I know, I know. It's only the third of December.
Traditionally (a tradition of 24 years standing this year), we have four birthdays in January. So I am preparing about ten days earlier than everyone else. (Who else saw that hilarious Kikki K insert in The Age on Saturday? that calendar had NO TIME FOR SHOPPING in it. Just 'list' seguing effortlessly into 'wrapping'.)
Some of these are quite old. So forgive me if you have seen them already.
If you are feeling the pull to slow down over this busy time of year, the ABC has been running a program introducing meditation over the past six weeks. I heard about it through the Melbourne Meditation Centre, but it may well have been bruited elsewhere. Here's the toolkit. (You can easily trawl down the page to week 1 and begin at the beginning.)
I was interested to see this app, Flipboard, mentioned on the Killings blog by publishing researcher Caroline Hamilton, as I follow one of its developers on Twitter. And it looks to be a very pretty way of aggregating all your stuff on your iPad, too.
Caroline also mentions a 2010 article by Craig Mod that I really thought I'd read already. As it's not in my bookmarks, then I guess I will have to read it now, but it sure looks familiar...Books In The Age Of The iPad.
It's probably a bit late for Australians to order these and have them by Christmas, but this gorgeous Swiss toymaker's website is fun to look at, and I dare you not to order something one day. Via Things magazine. (Being the non-starting quilter I am, I have this on the wishlist.)
Something else I still haven't read - Terry Eagleton's review of a new bio of Derrida, from The Guardian.
Robert Crum, a couple of weeks back, had things to say about book marketing, coming up as a result with a list of lit-labels of his own which included the rather clumsy 'lit-lit':
The development of the literary marketplace in the past 30-something years has been echoed by a new, and acute, sensitivity to the place of genre within the trade. In a market-savvy creative economy, you could say that genre has become everything. I have been able to identify 15 contemporary shades of "literature".
I'll leave it to you to decide if his colours of writing are to your taste. Happy Christmas - if Typepad is listening, I want a better clipping tool, please. Like the one I have already on this blog, where, regrettably, you will be more likely to find me in the lazy, hazy days of summer. Thanks for reading the very intermittent postings here this year.
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Thanks for the encouragement, Neil!
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Great post, Candy!
Fascinating post. It has made me think a lot and I still know that I am not confident enough to self publish. I need that publisher to validate my writing. I think that says more about me than anything else though.
Fab post - I recall very clearly Greg Mosse telling all of us Creative Writing MA graduates to remember that the industry needs US - not the other way round. As for the gritted teeth bit - oh yeah! It makes me reluctant to say too much about any good news, though.
I have argued often for publishers to work better with their authors, in partnership, not with the publisher occasionally patting the author on the head and saying "Run along now." I've done some self-publishing and it brings me a nice/modest regular income but it has stopped me writing because the publishing/distributing/selling side is so time-consuming. And that has taught me
Great post, Candy - interesting and thought-provoking. I know that Nosy Crow have done an infinitely better job than I could ever have done at packaging, marketing, publicising and selling my book. But I'm sure that the more people are talking about books, buying books and reading books, no matter who wrote them or who published them, the better it is for all of us, because it all creates a
It's interesting, the idea that publishers are the ones with a self-confidence problem - it turns the usual model on its head! I'm a publisher and a writer - how neurotic does that make me now?!?
Bookmarks ... which reminds me to have some more made!
Thanks for the thoughtful ramble. The publishing world is a fascinating mix of the commercial and the sublime ... by definition I guess it's hard to combine doing things for money with doing things for love (something we authors know only too well). When publishers get the balance right it's just magic.
Tis true ... but so much also depends on writing the right book at the right time. How many rejections have you had saying it's not right for their list? I was chatting to an editor friend the other day about a book we both loved which editor friend sadly passed on. The reason? It really wasn't right for their list because it was too similar to a book they'd only just signed.
The good news with this expanding digital world is now more than ever there's a huge need for storytellers.
Yes! I was surprised too! But it didn't surprise me that much... the changes our industry is going through are seismic. Hugely heartened though by the verdict that a lot of great books are getting published anyway.
Independent publishers like Nosy Crow are quickly building author cred because they appear to have more personal engagement with their authors and look positively fleet of foot next to more corporate publishers!
Thanks Colleen!
Lets cheer their success as without the best sellers there won't be any bookshops to sell in<br />And then what?<br />Cheery thought for the day
I found that interesting too. There's probably been quite a few meetings that have begun with 'Right, guys, Amanda Hocking. Discuss.'<br /><br />And Nick - you're doomed.
I've had the 'not right for our list' line quite a few times in the past - then after the fact once met one of the editors who told me just what you said (it resembled the work of another author so they couldn't do it). So perhaps not just a line all the time!