Under the covers

Tags

cover, design, Design for Writers, indie publishing, proof copy, proofreading, research, The Solo Squid

One of the most exciting aspects of indie publishing is having control of the appearance of your books.  I once spoke to a “professional” author (i.e. one whose books are published the traditional way, via a contract with a publishing house) and he said how much he loathed the covers of his books – and I thought that was very sad (a bit like having to admit that your children are ugly).  As regular readers of this blog will know, I have no visual artistic talent at all, but I know a man who does – and he is “my” marvellous cover designer Andrew, at Design for Writers.

I am about to publish a short business book called “The Solo Squid: How to Run a Happy One-Person Business”.  Andrew has done the covers for the Sam Plank books and for all the money laundering piggy books, but “the Squid” is a new venture.  His first requirement was for me to look at other business books aimed at the small business and tell him the covers I liked and disliked; among my dislikes were anything too shiny and corporate and American or anything too cute-sy and homemade.  And – of course – I wanted a squid on the cover.  (Inevitably, with my love of research, I spent a happy half-day reading about the differences between squids and octopuses, and the use of squids in legend, literature and medicine, and discovered that those who study squids are nicknamed cephalopodiatrists.)  Poor Andrew – imagine trying to make artistic sense of that lot.  But he worked his usual magic (which, like all magic, requires enormous amounts of work behind the scenes) and came up with two options:

   

I adored them both, of course, but in the end plumped for the blue/sea-green cover for a few reasons:

• The red cover looks more mysterious – perhaps better suited to fiction than to a business book
• The subtitle – and particularly the word “happy” – is much more obvious on the blue cover
• The shape of the squid on the blue cover coincidentally quite closely matches the squid-like bullet points I have used in the text of the book
• Some people said that they found the red squid scary!

Andrew is now completing the back cover and spine of the book and then it’s on to the next stages: ordering a paper proof (which I always do with a new title – I don’t bother if it’s just a revised version), final checking and editing – and then publication.

With many thanks to Andrew at Design for Writers for permission to reproduce his cover designs in this blog post.

Punctuation for the petty-minded

Tags

prizes, proofreading, punctuation, Samuel Plank

I’m back from my hols in Ischia – an island in the Bay of Naples (it’s the less glitzy neighbour to Capri).  It has the most amazing Aragonese castle which we overlooked from the roof terrace of our Airbnb lodging, and which we toured for an afternoon (you have to read about what they did with the dead nuns).  I’d love to include it in a Sam story but I can’t think of any earthly reason how or why he would find himself in Ischia.  Perhaps I’ll save it for a post-Sam novel…

Before we went I visited our local library and selected eight books for the ten days; I finished them all, plus two from the shelves of the Airbnb (one of which I might have chosen, and the other turned to in desperation – it was that or a tome called “The History of Socialism”).  Two of the eight I enjoyed enormously: “The Street” by Bernardine Bishop and “Euphoria” by Lily King.  But one left me puzzled.  “The Hiding Place” by Trezza Azzopardi was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2000, and the cover tells me that the Observer thought it “a scalding, thrilling book”.  It’s about the Maltese community in Cardiff, and is written in the first person by Dolores, the youngest of six daughters who grew up there in poverty in the 1960s.  Now it’s a good story, with an element not quite of whodunnit, but rather “heavens, what’s going to happen next?”.  But I found it a difficult read for two reasons.

Firstly, the author does not use inverted commas to indicate speech – just indents.  (And you know that I have strong views on inverted commas…)  But then indents are also used for new paragraphs, so it’s sometimes hard to tell whether it’s speech or explanation.  And secondly, the story jumps backwards and forwards in time, but with no indication of where you are except the text itself – in other words, you don’t know at the start of the chapter/scene and have to deduce it from what is happening.

So in order for a book to be considered thrilling and prize-worthy, does it have to tread new ground stylistically?  A bit like modern art, does it have to do something more/else than just telling a good story or showing a good depiction of something recognisable?  I’m not being a grumpy old woman (well, not much…) but I do wonder why I spend all those hours proofreading and checking, when I could simply leave in all the typos and pretend it’s an intentional stylistic affectation to show my impatience with the petty bourgeois norms of grammar and punctuation…

Going goggle-eyed with editing

Tags

cover, CreateSpace, e-book, editing, proof copy, proofreading, template

I know you think I’ve been lounging around in a silk kimono, watching Hollywood movies and eating bonbons, but in reality I have been editing like a demon.  And I can finally report that the finish line is in sight.

I have done my last edits – so if you don’t like the story the way it is now, that’s just tough.  I have uploaded the interior file to CreateSpace, so that it can calculate the number of pages it will need to publish the paperback (328, as you’re asking).  It has now told me how wide the book’s spine needs to be, and I’ve sent this vital statistic to the cover designer, who can then finalise the cover.  Once I upload that to CreateSpace, I can order my proof copy, which takes about a week to get to me.  And if I’m happy with that copy when I see it, I will press the big, red, flashing, honking Publish button – oh, how I wish it was that exciting a button, but it isn’t – and you will be able to rush to Amazon in your thousands to buy your own copies.

In the week’s gap while I wait for my proof paperback, I will return to the hell that is formatting, in order to create the various e-versions of the book – which means taking out all of the beautiful formatting that I have just put in.  Such is life.

But in short: we’re nearly there!

Caution: plot holes ahead!

Tags

cover, Design for Writers, Plank 5, plotting, proofreading, writing

I can see the finish line – “Plank 5” is almost there.  And as I wrestle with the final chapters, I have lined up my usual fabulous team to help me to publication: the cover designers at Design for Writers; my husband (for eagle-eyed proofreading – how he does love to catch me out in a spelling mistake); and Roy in Jersey.  Roy’s job, right from “Fatal Forgery”, has been to read the first proper draft for sense, looking for inconsistencies and what he has taken to calling “plot holes”.

Isn’t that a great phrase?  You can just imagine them, nasty great gaps in the story that sit there unseen.  Your reader is cruising along, enjoying the journey, when all of a sudden, crash!  They go into a plot hole and – metaphorically speaking – the wheel comes off and the journey is over.  I’ve spotted a couple of them myself (along the lines of “but how did he know that she would be there?”, or “what made her ask him that?”) but no doubt Roy will see a few more.  Sometimes the writer has her nose so close to the tarmac that she can’t see the plot holes herself…

All systems are go!

Tags

cover, editing, Fatal Forgery, proofreading, radio, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat, Worm in the Blossom

Well, what a weekend (it’s a Bank Holiday Monday here in the UK, so we’ve had three days of weekend).  I spent all of Saturday formatting the text of “Worm in the Blossom” so that it matches the look of “Fatal Forgery” and “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” – I achieve this by using the same interior template for them all, and cutting and pasting the text into it.  (Slow but strangely satisfying work, as it finally starts to look like a book rather than just a really long essay.)  I bought a one-off licence for the template for “FF”, and then extended it to infinite use for “Canary” and beyond.  It’s a nice “space-y” template – i.e. the text is not crowded on the page – and it uses a traditional font that matches the historic feel of the books.

Then Sunday was for proof-reading – and that certainly gives you tired eyes.  I don’t know if it means I was editing too much, but my red pen ran out halfway through and so the second half was marked up in bright pink.  And this morning I made all of those changes to the text and sent it – along with the full cover (front and back and spine – yes, the cover designer was also working on BH Monday) to CreateSpace for their “quick and dirty” check.  This is an automatic check to make sure that everything fits and is the right size – and it is.  And about three minutes ago I received an email from them to confirm that I can go ahead and order a printed proof copy – which I have done!  Hurrah!  So this will be waiting for me when I get back from holiday, which gains me about two weeks on my original timetable.  This doesn’t mean that I will publish earlier – I’m still looking at 16 October – but it does mean that I will be able to order my first big box of copies from the US using a slower delivery method, and so save a bit of money.

Well, my husband is hovering to turn off the computers and network, so I’ll finish for now.  When I get back from my travels (mid September) I’ll tell you all about the invitation I received today to talk about my books on local radio!  As I said, what a weekend!

Picking nits and splitting hairs

Tags

author, editing, Fatal Forgery, print-on-demand, proofreading, self-publishing, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat

I have just had my fifth review of “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” on Amazon, and it’s a lovely five-star one – you can read it here.  And one bit of it that made my grammar-loving, spelling-obsessed heart soar was this: “This is the first Kindle book I have read which had virtually no spelling or grammatical errors of any kind.”  (I choose not to focus on the word “virtually”, as I have read even best-selling paperbacks where the occasional typo has slipped through.)  But recently I have been reading quite a few Kindle books myself, and I have to say that the standard of proofreading is generally very poor.

Those who disagree with the whole concept of self-publishing often cite this as one of their main objections – that self-published books have not been subjected to quality control (of plot and form, or indeed of spelling and grammar).  The former is a different problem, but when it comes to checking your manuscript for errors of spelling and grammar, what can you be thinking?  I have just given up on one novel which – although very exciting and gripping – distracted me on almost every page with the misuse of “it’s” and “its”, “your” and “you’re”, and the use of the comma where a semi-colon or full-stop was needed.  I know that some people missed grammar classes at school, that some people have English as a second language, that some people are dyslexic.  But if you’re going to ask people to pay good money to buy your words, and invest good time in reading them, you need to take the trouble to check those words.

I have a degree in English, so my grammar and spelling are pretty good.  But when you have written your own book and then read it several times (I read “Fatal Forgery” about twelve times, and “Canary” about ten), you stop seeing it properly.  So I asked my lovely beta reader Roy to have a go, and he spotted dozens of things that I had missed (as well as raising some excellent plotting points – thank you again, Roy).  Once the books were published, I asked friends who read them to PLEASE let me know if they spotted anything, as the beauty of print-on-demand is that you can update the file whenever you like – so errors can be corrected immediately, and any copies ordered from then on are the corrected one (there are no piles of old, uncorrected stock).

The Killer Blurb

Tags

blurb, Fatal Forgery, marketing, proofreading, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, Susan Grossey, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat

Yes, yes – we all know the importance of the back cover blurb.  You have only to watch people in bookshops, picking up books, glancing at the back cover and then putting them down again to see how vital it is.  Which makes writing one Very Scary.  And I need to get a wriggle on with mine for “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”, as the cover designer needs it before he can, well, design the cover.

I have reached the end with writing “Canary” – proofreading and very minor editing only from now on, so there is no excuse for not knowing enough about the story to be able to write The Blurb.  Curses: I was rather enjoying having that excuse.  When I wrote the blurb for “Fatal Forgery”, I showed it to several people and blogged about it here too, and got some really excellent suggestions for improvement – so I am going to be cheeky and do the same again.  As I understand it, the blurb is meant to tease and intrigue without giving away too much.  It is meant to show the flavour of the writing and suggest the type of book it is (so the reader should get fair warning of gory violence or graphic sex), and certainly should not mislead the reader in anyway.  Bearing all of that in mind, and quaking in my boots, I offer this as my very first draft (she says, so that you won’t be too harsh):

“In this new Sam Plank mystery, the curious constable struggles to find the link between a self-murderer, an embezzler, an arsonist and a thief.  No corner of Regency London is untouched by these crimes, as Sam travels from the aristocratic mansions of St James Park back to his own boyhood haunts among the dank alleyways of Wapping.  He pits his financial wits against the greed and determination of some most unsavoury characters – one of whom Sam had hoped never to see again.”

So, what do you think?  Interesting?  Intriguing?  Would it make you want to read it?  Any comments will be so very, very helpful, so thank you in advance.

The Grossey glossary

Tags

author, editing, plotting, proofreading, Regency, research, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat, writing

Try saying that after a few glasses of Pimms…  Someone who read “Fatal Forgery” and knows that I am nearing completion of “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” (title now decided, and many thanks to all of you who made suggestions and voted) suggested that it might be useful to have a glossary in the back.  I try not to be too “gadzooks!” about it all, but some of the Regency vocabulary is such fun that I do like to include it – and of course it helps remind the reader that this is an historical novel.  So on the last read-through, I was looking for words that I now take for granted, but that first-time readers might stop and wonder at.  I used my husband as a guinea-pig, and asked him if he could guess what “flash the hash” might mean.  (No typo: hash, not cash.)  Granted, it was out of context for him (he doesn’t like to read my books until they’re finished, so has not idea what this one is about), but he was nowhere near.  It means to throw up – but what a great way to say it!

Long story short, I have now put together a little glossary for “Canary”, and the plan is to take it from book to book and expand it as I go.

Big phew!

Tags

editing, financial crime, paperback, plotting, proofreading, research, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, Susan Grossey, writing

Well, my lovely beta reader has come back with comments, and I am sure he won’t mind my quoting the bit I like best: “I thoroughly enjoyed it.”  Well, as a writer, what could be better?  Of course he has some suggestions for improvement – which is why I so trust and rely on him as a beta reader – but I’m just so relieved that he didn’t come back and say, “Pfffft – what a let-down!”.

I have two long train journeys this weekend – and with “scheduled engineering works” and unscheduled snafus, who knows how long I’ll be on the rails? – so I am printing out “Plank 2” for the first time.  I will look at my reader’s small corrections and typo spots, and then consider his suggestions for more radical plot alterations – I may have to take over the whole train carriage to lay out all the pages and shuffle them around.  It’s always very exciting to see the words on paper for the first time, rather than just on a screen – makes it seem more real, more book-like somehow.

As ever, my mind returns to the conundrum of a title.  Looking at the results of my poll here, I see that “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” is the current favourite.  My blessed reader thought that “Magpie in a Canary Waistcoat” might be fun and more intriguing – a magpie being Regency slang for a certain type of fraudster, of which there are plenty in the book.  What do you think?

The best laid plans

Tags

Fatal Forgery, paperback, print-on-demand, proofreading, publication date, self-publishing

Those of you who know me personally will not be surprised to hear that I have a rather large project plan for this publication extravaganza.  I set the publication date (a week on Friday – scary!) and then worked back from there to make sure that I allowed enough time for all required tasks.  What I did not allow was contingency time for stupidity, inefficiency and general snafus.  Let me explain.  Before I go ahead and approve the POD version of “Fatal Forgery” for publication and sale, I need to see a proof copy.  Knowing that I was going on a fortnight’s holiday, I ordered it the week before leaving, figuring that it would be waiting for me on my return.  What actually happened was that it arrived the day after I left, the courier didn’t think to leave it with a neighbour, and now it’s winging its way back to CreateSpace in America.  Grrrrr.  So the time I had allowed for a leisurely yet thorough checking of the proof copy is going to be squeezed.  I have spent most of today in a panic about it, but a quiet little walk around my local park, chatting with the ducks, has cleared my mind and allowed me to see that There Is Still Time.  The project plan continues, modified but victorious!