Gordon Woolf's Blog

All those great unpublished books?

Having sold The Worsley Press to business consultant and fellow author Geoffrey Heard a few years ago, I've been slowly clearing out a lot of old paperwork.

Part of that was that I decided to rid myself of a stack of old manuscripts which I'd rejected, and not returned because they didn't come with a prepaid envelope or because return was not requested.

I decided to check a random sample by searching on Google for the authors' names.

Of about a dozen which produced some reference, only one was published (and by the larger publisher I suggested the author contact!) though it does not seem to have warranted a second edition in around 10 years.

Another came up with an author's site which featured her several successful novels but no mention of the book she submitted to me on how to run a low-cost wedding. Her novels have been published on three continents in several languages.

I was a just a little concerned that I might have rejected that major title which someone else picked up (after all I did listen to Brian Epstein extolling his new band which was to play at the Cavern club that night in Liverpool in the 1960s and did not take up the offer of a free ticket).

Fortunately, or unfortunately, according to your point of view, it seems that did not happen with these manuscripts.

Jack's an artist. That's what we need for the layout

It is a common question: The illustrator for my book is a talented artist, but should I ask him (or her) about doing the book layout?

It may also be suggested with magazine layout: he's a good artist, we should ask him to do our newsletter.

The real question should be to ask whether he has any experience and whether he wants to do the work. Then the publisher, or self-publisher, should ask himself or herself if they have time to cope with problems.

In a recent case the artist was being honest, and would have been prepared to put the time in (at his cost) to find out all the technical information he needed to know. However, there should be at least one person who has the professional knowledge of what makes a good book or magazine layout in the team.

The danger lies in the fact that publication layout and file preparation for printing is detailed, systematic work, and the skills for that are seldom those needed to be an artist and illustrator.

There are a few who manage to combine both skills but they are a minority and deserve every cent they can command. They will, for example, know that the uses of a book cover for thumbnails on the web or in catalogues and ads and possibly for posters as well as for the cover itself, puts severe restrictions on artistic talent.

More common are those designers and layout people who can take other people's illustrations and turn them into good looking and good working covers and pages and produce files which will print without problems. The person who creates good publication files and the illustrator and graphic artist may use much of the same software, but they tend to use it in vastly different ways.

The kind of questions one could ask someone who may be able to do this work could be whether he or she knows the common standards for relative margin widths, on the differences in specifications for different binding methods, and, for example if this includes, as is most likely, an all color cover, the maximum ink levels according to the printing process and paper stock.

He or she may not know the detailed answers but should know what you are talking about (even if you do not). Then (especially if there is time to go elsewhere if necessary), by all means give him or her a go.

Get ready for the ISTC - a new book identifier

ISTC (International Standard Text Code) is likely to come into use in the book industry worldwide late this year or early 2011. Basically it goes beyond ISBNs (International Standard Book Numbers) to identify content rather than edition.

Different editions of a work, even from different publishers, should have the same ISTC.

It will look something like:

ISTC 0A9-2010-12B4A105-7

and may appear on the back cover but is more likely to be referenced just on the copyright page and will be listed in database information about the book.

In this way, you'll be able to tell instantly whether a trade paperback, a hardback, an audio book or an ebook have the same content. It should also help end the confusion on whether different presentations of the same book should have the same ISBN. They should not. They should have the same ISTC.

The issuers of ISTCs will almost certainly be the same as the issuers of ISBNs, in other words the biggest players will be Bowker and Nielsen under the supervision of the ISTC Agency and using a single, global XML database system.

Items covered are described as "creative works" such as prose, peotry. lyrics, original screenplays, audio and stage scripts. Photographs, although they can be part of such works, are not in themselves covered and while graphic novels would be, the registration would cover only the text elements of these.

The registration agency will run a computer test to check whether the content has already been registered.

Works can be registered by an author, publisher, agent, library, rights management or collection agency or distributor. It is not yet clear what the fee structure is likely to be. The present ISBN structure is commonly a price per code which reduces with quantity, although there are provisions is some countries for free issue of ISBNs, especially single registrations.

The ISTC identifier is a 16-character code (using numbers 0-9 and letters A-F, i.e. the hexadecimal system) in four sections to identify the registration agency, the year of registration, the identifier and a check digit.

It has no section for registrant, so the same content can be published by diffreent publishers but would have only one ISTC. That's a major difference to the ISBN which identifies primarily a publisher.

A work that is translated, abridged, annotated, a compilation, criticism, excerpt, expurgated, revised or adapted, will get a new ISTC but the metadata for that must state the original ISTC and just what its relationship is.

This will also be a problem for authors and publishers of non-fiction works which have frequent editions. New ISBN are usually adopted if there is anything but superficial changes but often there are substantial changes between editions, and all degrees inbetween. It seems it will still be a matter of opinion with the publisher making the decision whether to use the same ISTC or gain a new one with a reference to the original.

There will be internet search engines to identify works from the ISTC and for prospective publishers etc to search on title, author etc to establish whether a work has been registered. They will not link to ISBN data and it would be normal for a work to be registered for an ISTC well before it gains an ISBN, such as that an author might register it before submitting to an agent or publisher, or an agent might register a work before submitting it to publishers.

No one will own any single ISTC once it has been created and an ISTC will not imply any rights to the material. (To my mind, however, it may discourage plagiarism).

It may help in book searches, since once a particular example of a work has been found, that will provide the ISTC which is what is needed to identify the work in other formats, even if they have a different title. It may also help avoid duplication of axquisitions by libraries.

The usefulness of ISTC will increase with time, more rapidly if the registration agencies and especially those who already maintain databases used extensively by the book industry decide to start entering past works. There seems to have been some indications that this will happen though that may depend on what they see as possible financial benefits.

For an author or small publisher I would suggest that ITSC is not something they need to act on instantly, but they do need to watch what is happening. Once the codes start to appear for new works by major publishers in your genre then that will be the time to act.

In the meantime you may like to delve further:

ISTC: http://www.istc-international.org/ (see resources page for a link to the user manual)

Book Industry Study Group discussion paper:
http://www.bisg.org/contentweb/papers/the-international-standard-text-code-istc-a-work-in-progress/

A 2009 overview by Andy Weissberg, VP of Identifier Services at Bowker: http://www.myidentifiers.com/multimedia/pdfs/ISTC_overview_ISQv21no3.pdf

'Large print' is not just type set larger

An interesting suggestion I saw on a publisher forum a while ago was to produce a large print edition and to just reduce the pages of this to make the standard edition. The logic was that some of the readers for which the book was intended were sufferers of diabetes, which often brings sight problems.

Unfortunately the internationally researched standards for large print books, are not just an enlarged form of normal typesetting. And there is a big difference in producing books for those who are substantially sight impaired, and books for those of us who may have a slight deterioration in sight within the normal ranges of variation with age.

A chapter in the current edition of Type & Layout (the book by Colin Wheildon republished by The Worsley Press) -- although this is a chapter in the additional material by Geoffrey Heard -- does describe how preparing a book for the non-fluent reader is different to preparing a book for a fluent reader who may have minor sight problems, or no problems at all.

Just one quick example: although Wheildon's research showed that for reasonably fluent readers, justified serif type is by far the most readable, that is not true for someone who is less fluent, either through education or sight.

The chapter also includes information on the alternative of "Clear Type", a standard developed by the Royal National Institute for the Blind, with standards which, while being acceptable to a wide range of those with site problems, is more acceptable to others. While tending towards sans faces it does accept fonts with a good serif definition such as Bookman.

I would therefore warn against producing a smaller version of a large type, or even "Clear Type" book as a normal edition.

If the text of a book is correctly tagged in its preparation it would be a very simple matter to run it through with alternative layout specifications. I'd estimate an hour or two in a program such as InDesign, maybe even less in an entirely tag based layout program such as TeX.

There will need to be an entire new round of research into legibility on ebook readers.

Libraries: a story of hope

I wrote the following in 2005, and it disappeared in a blog reorganization. It is just as current now as I've recently read several anti-library comments, mostly from publishers:

A couple of times in recent months I've read stories of libraries in the USA just not buying books any more. One recent discussion list post asked "Imagine if you could walk into your public library and it looked like Barnes and Noble, or Borders, or your independent book store."

Well, despite there being tales of constant budget cuts and pressure for funds to be transferred to the electronic services of libraries, it gave me hope that local libraries at least near me in Australia do look bright, with comfortable seating, helpful staff, and no shortage of custom.

When the latest Harry Potter book was released here, it wasn't the local bookstores putting on a major show, it was the local public library. The release time here in Australia was 10am and, at 11am they had the books arrive, a dress-up contest, a reading of the first chapter, displays of other recommended children's books and names could be added to the waiting list of those who wanted the HP copies. Of course the other recommended books by other authors, including several local authors, were available for instant loan.

And I should add that authors and publishers get paid an annual fee for books in public libraries -- a little over a dollar a book for authors, a small fraction of that for publishers. It's done on a random sample basis so payments aren't absolutely accurate but that does keep admin costs of the scheme down. I have a book published more than 10 years ago which still shows up in the survey so I've received around $10 per copy in libraries as the author of that... It will almost certainly go below the 50 copy national threshold this year but that book would have almost been worth writing for library sales alone.

I just hope that the USA realizes the importance of public libraries and adopts the way of the UK, many European countries, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, etc. See http://www.plrinternational.com/

I've seen comments from small publishers that library sales could be hurting their other sales. I just cannot see that. It is not uncommon for the letters or emails we get at Worsley Press from people who order direct to say things like "I borrowed the book from the library but I want a copy for myself" and I'm sure that is only the tip of the iceberg.

A real reason to publish it yourself

Some people publish their own book because that's the way they want to do it -- to retain control, regardless of the effect that has on sales.

But take a look at this blog interview with someone who has seen both sides. (And with 25 books published, mostly by big publishers, he has major experience!) In 10 years, and with new editions as needed, John Bear sold more than 200,000 copies of his guide to distance learning for degrees; then it was taken up by a major publisher . . . which just did not do as well as he continued to do with his own edition which, through a stroke of luck in contract wording, he was able to continue to sell direct.

Such direct comparisons are rare, but it shows what a small publisher can achieve with a book that fills a need. I quote:

"It's so easy to get carried away, as I was, by the heady feeling of being published by someone big and famous. Perhaps that ego boost is reason enough. It is fine to hope for big sales, but one should not hold one's breath."

He adds:

"Even with more than 25 books published by the big guys (Ten Speed, Time Life, McGraw-Hill, Harcourt, Price/Stern/Sloan, Career Press, Prometheus), the most fun I had, and, by far, the biggest profits I had, were from the self-published, self-promoted books. While Bear's Guide was the most enduring, the most successful (over the short term) was one I bet you don't know about: Mailing from Mexico. Boy, talk about finding a niche. This was a 64-page 'manual' with information you couldn't get anywhere else, so my co-author and I sold it for $100, and we sold 1,000 of them from just two ads in Entrepreneur Magazine."

And that is also an important point: books are information and their possible sale price is related to the value the prospective buyer will put on them. In a book store books tend to be compared, even subconciously, with other books: why does this one cost $70 and that one, which is bigger, only $30? By mail and email and internet order you are selling the information. If you can find that niche, it becomes less a book and more a study guide, a manual, and some may prefer to put it out in a report format.

With one of my books, an early version of the one on PageMaker, I put out two versions: the normal book and the same information as a looseleaf manual for several times the price. Why I didn't stick to that format is anyone's guess. The numbers sold were smaller, but the profit per sale was very high and there were no middle men; every copy sold directly to a newspaper somewhere in the world.

Incidentally, that interview is on the Small Press Blog, run by Thomas Nixon, and though he now posts infrequently, it is still a good site for information on the small publisher world. And note that Mr Nixon calls it the "small press" blog with the subtitle "Your guide to independent publishing". There are mentions there of the dreaded term "self-publishing" but presumably they are to give the important keywords which will bring those who think it is the right term to his sites.

My own book on publishing your own book is Publish Your Book and though it is available from a publisher, Worsley Press, that is the publishing firm which I started and where I first produced that book on a copier, bound it myself, guillotined it to size and packed copies to mail out.

"I want to be a writer"

The words appeared on a forum to writers and small publishers: "I really want to become a writer."

If you want to be a writer, you write. You may be an unsuccessful writer or a successful one but it is impossible to stop a writer from being a writer.

As one of those people, I started writing as soon as I was capable of stringing words together with stories pinned up on school noticeboards and in school magazines.

I used my first wages to buy a typewriter and wrote a book which was never published. Eventually I found the one thing which could stop me writing -- the publishing business I started to publish my books after my initial publisher went broke. I went on to publish books by others and I had no time left to write. So the publishing company had to go, and I sold it to one of my authors. I wonder now if he is finding the same problem.

Writers have to write. You do not "become" a writer by applying to be one or taking a course.

Nost recently the writing urge has been satisifed by rewriting some of my older articles which, though published, were ones where I retained the copyright and therefore could use a basis for updating. (And that is an important point: because writers have to write they often overlook the aspects of being in business as a writer which will enable them to keep control of their writing; those aspects of being a writer can, and should be, learned).

The rewritten items do not have the same value as the original, so I am making them available at no cost under the Creative Commons licensing system for free use in ezines and blogs, etc, provided they mention me as the source and the name of at least one of my books so I may achieve a small extra income from those. You will find those articles at http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Gordon_Woolf

Do-it-yourself publishing

"I've just got a price for laying out my new magazine/book/other printed project and it is a lot of money. Should I buy InDesign or QuarkXPress to do my own layout?"

That's the kind of email I get directly or see on email lists and forums just about every week. I'm an enthusiastic user of InDesign but the last thing I'm going to do is tell such a potential publisher is to rush off to the Adobe web site and buy it.

The first thing I'll ask is: "Have you costed in the time and training (either personal or by means of reading and practising)?"

I'm all for such a person learning to use InDesign if he or she will take the time to learn to use it and, in the case of a book, will use it for many other tasks in future.

After many years of using Ventura, then PageMaker, I did not do a book in InDesign until I had worked on a number of smaller jobs to make sure that I could work efficiently in the program. It is a very powerful program, but that makes it very easy to do a bad job.

There is also the likely situation that a newcomer will get quoted a lot more for a layout job by a designer than an experienced publisher would be charged for the same work. The book layout jobs I take outside of my own books, I do only for experienced publishers and know that, most times, I will only have to do the job once, so can quote lower prices. As an extreme example, when I did tabloid newspaper layouts I quoted $20 a page for work from newspaper publishers -- and $100 a page for anyone else. Subsequently I just stopped doing the $100 a page jobs as they were not profitable, whereas the $20 a page was.

Yes, the would-be publisher should by all means buy InDesign but should also realize that this involves learning yet another skill. Do you have the time for that? In general the answer has to be "no" unless you can find a skilled person who is prepared to charge you on a basis that they are also teaching you to do the job. That designer will expect and deserve a high fee -- but it may be the cheapest long term solution for the publisher.

What is a self-publisher?

(I admit I wrote this 5 years ago, but it is no longer available from the original blog site and I was asked about it this week.)

Why would any self-publisher go around saying they are a self-publisher unless he or she has no intention to ever do more than publish one book and disappear? (And there is nothing inherently wrong with that!)

"Small publisher" includes everything from one book upwards. Surely that single book is just the first book, and if you've found out how to do it and done it successfully, is it not likely that you may then do the same for an even more struggling author?

I'm not even sure I like the term "small publisher" except that it does distinguish us from the big boys in New York who try to rule the world of books and do it so badly. In that sense small publishers include firms employing hundreds of people, firms I'm proud to be numbered among, firms like the publisher Lonely Planet built in this same city by two people who wrote, edited, laid out and hawked their first travel guide and which is now a world-wide employer.

I did it differently -- my business was me alone, working from home, but giving employment to others via contract work, and I was proud to be among other home workers such as the magazine publisher couple I know who turn over more than a million dollars a year from four titles. When I sold my publishing business I had eight current book titles and five authors.

Step one in publishing is to divorce you the author from you the publisher. I don't mean hiding that you are both, but, with all that effort which has to be put into publishing a first book, some of that effort should be put into building a publishing name that can be used in future.

I have sympathy for the reviewers who won't handle "self-published" books. Even if the quality is reasonable, it still says "I don't really know what I'm doing". There is a big difference between self-published and the first book published by a new publisher owned by the author.

My "small publishing" business is still successful. I sold it to one of my authors, Geoffrey Heard, and became one of his. It's web site is still at www.worsleypress.com

The biggest typo of all

A typo is a typesetting error, and Typo is a book about the biggest typesetting error of all time. The Full title is Typo: The last American Typesetter or how I lost 4 million dollars. And actually, on the cover the subtitle is typeset as “...or how I made 4 million dollars” but made is crossed through with the common handwritten correction mark for delete and above it is the insert mark and the word “LOST” is written in. That has led to the book being listed on Amazon as Typo: The Last American Typesetter or how I made & Lost 4 million dollars. It is appropriate that such an error creeps in. This is a true story in as much as it is author David Silverman’s account as one of the two people who borrowed to buy the Clarinda typesetting company at a time when the industry was going bad. He and mentor Dan Coyne were sure they could save not only Clarinda but by taking over the rest of the industry in the US and combining work in the US with outsourcing to Manilla they could stave off the disappearance of US typesetting to India. It almost worked, and might have if they had not had to deal with publishers and their own staff. This is not just a book for people in the printing and publishing industries -- it has lessons for anyone who runs a business and especially anyone who has ever moved in to an existing enterprise as “the new boss”. I can sympathise as David deals with situations such as the internal financial controller who just refuses to introduce new systems and makes sure that anything new does not work. As the new manager of a newspaper I had an office manager who almost every night, as I found out later, was phoning the owner to ask “has Gordon the right to do that” and similarly making sure new methods always  seemed to fail. David faced the same reluctance to sack anyone, let alone people he suspected were refusing to co-operate in any efficiencies. And there were inefficiencies galore. A woman was employed to check every laser printout of an online file with the original printout from the publisher because years ago laser printers would sometimes substitute Courier for some typefaces. Then the printout pages were numbered with one of those old fashioned numeric stampers because a printout could be dropped on the floor and they’d have to recollate, despite that having happened once in several years (and would take maybe an hour or two to put right). Even worse, should that woman be away, a senior typesetter would take over her job leaving them one down in the only department which might have been making money. The IT technician certainly installed the new 100MB network cables, but connected only four wires at each device, so that the system continued to run at 10MB (a new tech was amazed that it had worked at all). A fireproof storage room contained Syquest disks from the 1970s while current backup tapes lay on the floor outside. A fireproof filing cabinet was empty save for a key which did not fit anything they could find. The litany of these things covers three pages which every company tech and director should read even if they ignore the rest of the book. (Do a search on “rubber bands” in the look-inside section on the book’s Amazon page). Such items from David’s experiences make for a laugh but I’ve seen such things and I’m sure they are true for many, many businesses today. Then there were the publishers who refused to send work if it might be outsourced to Manilla despite being almost sure that other typesetters they did use are subcontracting to India. There’s also a slowly dawning realization for David that although their Manilla office seems to be the only section making a profit, it is still a high cost operation compared to India. You’ll know so many of these people: the salesman who persuades a client to phone threatening to take away their work if the salesman is sacked who David has to tell has not given them any orders for two years. The meals booked as expenses which turn out to be meals for one. The manager who keeps a van driving daily between offices long after all urgent work has gone electronically. But all these problems surfaced only when it was too late. In the early stages the new owners were intent on the big picture, increasing sales -- unable to get from an ancient accounting system the facts such as that for every extra book put through the typesetting system at even the most efficient of their US offices was losing money. The only profit source seems to have been corrections because of high fees and a hit-or-miss system which meant that invoices bore little relationship to the actual work. Typo: The last American Typesetter or how I lost 4 million dollars, by David Silverman, published in the US by Soft Skull Press, 2007 and in Australia by Scribe Publications, 2008. For more info and extracts including videos see http://agman.com/