Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Book writing and self-publishing

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Posted by Peter Berrett (Member # 672) on 11-19-2005, 01:00 AM:

This has an indirect link with the movie industry.

I have been looking into the book publishing industry and how to become an author. I am interested in the idea of writing a children's book but the stories I have read make it sound like getting your book published is as difficult as buying a Churro in Melbourne i.e. nigh impossible.

I have noticed though a burgeoning industry in self-publishing although the numbers of books being sold is still nothing major. In particular the site Lulu.com does seem interesting.

Do readers have any thoughts about which way to go for a budding author? Should one try go down the traditional publishing route or would Lulu be a better option? Is being an author a waste of time with little prospect of success?

That aside, should one day I write a book and achieve some success, I can think of nothing more personally satisfying than seeing one's book turned into a movie and be shown at one's local drive-in. Then again if Jerry Bruckheimer gets involved it might be my nightmare! I don't want my toadstools exploding or dramatic Leprachaun car chases in my book.

cheers Peter

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 11-20-2005, 12:34 AM:

Dan Poynter is the guru of self-publishing. His Self-Publishing Manual is the bible on the subject. While it deals primarily with writing non-fiction, the book is a valuable treatise on the publishing industry. He teaches you exactly how the business works and how to write, print, promote and sell your book.

Check out his website for lots of online info, too. Para Publishing

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 11-20-2005, 08:29 PM:

In the USA, children's books have become popular, so there's a lot of competition, thus it's harder to get one published. I mean, Madonna wrote a children's book (although I bet she had a ghost writer.) Some of these children's books seem strange to me, like 'Walter the Farting Dog.' I'm not against it, but I don't get either, which means I guess I'm really the old fart.

Posted by Peter Berrett (Member # 672) on 11-21-2005, 01:37 AM:

Hi again

I've already started writing the book - it comes pretty easy to me fortunately. Last night I wrote 1500 words in 4 hours. Mind you I will need to polish it a bit later.

I am thinking of adopting the following marketing strategy.

First, I will publish in both electronic and paperback versions at Lulu.com. I will let people read the electronic version for free as I figure that if someone likes the story they will order the paperback version for their library.

I kind of got this idea from the experience of VCRs and blank tapes. People once said that VCR's would kill the movie industry because they encouraged piracy and gave people the opportunities to see films at home. In fact the movie industry benefited as the availability of films on video stimulated people's interest in seeing films and more particularly, in seeing film as it was meant to be seen - on the big screen. I figure that DVDs will do the same.

In a similar vein I think that making books available for free download will stimulate people to buy books because they will already have had a chance to look and see whether the book in question was what they wanted to buy. If you read a book online and really liked it you'd probably want it on your library shelf.

Next - making people aware of the book. I plan to make say, 100 copies of my novel and put them on 3 1/2 " disks and then mail the disks to various reviewers of books, explaining of course that people can come to Lulu.com and download the book for free. It would be prohibitively expensive to print 100 books and mail these to reviewers but disks come cheap. They also might be attracted by the fact that people can download the book for free which is a bit of a novelty in a world of user-pays.

Has anyone here ever had a book published? Did you achieve any success?

cheers Peter

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-24-2005, 04:23 AM:

My first one finally came out in August. The process of researching, writing and editing it took around three and a half years.

Self publication, fiction and/or writing for children are not areas I know anything about or have any experience of; though a friend of mine has published two political/crime thrillers. When we compared notes, we found many points in common as far as dealing with publishers is concerned.

Step 1 is to do some careful research to identify (i) the nature and size of your potential market, (ii) whether there's a gap in that market, and (iii) which publishers already have a track record in selling to that market. This should produce a list of publishers to target.

Step 2 is the book proposal. Different publishers have different guidelines for what they expect to see: but basically this document is a sales pitch which states what you're offering them, how many and to whom do you expect it to sell, what your evidence for that is, what your track record is to show that you can deliver, etc. etc. Sometimes they'll want extra, more specific information relating to your proposal: how many illustrations are there, who's going to foot the bill for clearing them; that sort of thing. Many publishers have guidelines for submitting proposals (and even a PDF form in some cases) on their websites.

A publisher will want evidence that you can deliver what you're offering. In my case I hadn't published anything of that length before, but had published a few journal articles and reviews; and so I included a sample of those with the proposals. For first time authors of fiction, I gather that the usual route is to submit a sample chapter. A publisher's reader will look for written style, evidence of ability to construct, sustain and develop a consistent plot, and so on and so forth.

If the publisher bites, then step 3 is agreeing and signing a contract. Read it carefully, making sure that there's nothing in there you're not happy with (like making you liable for a five-figure sum for copyright clearance on pictures, for example).

Step 4 is the easy bit - writing the thing.

Step 5 is realising that you'll never make the deadline, you're less than half way through the first draft and you've already exceeded the agreed word length. In the case of Moving Image Technology, I was working to a limit of 100k words and the finished first draft came in at 142.

Step 6 is the editing and revising process. The publisher's reader(s) will come up with a whole load of queries and suggestions, while at the same time you'll have accumulated a list of them yourself - things you decide to park during the process of writing the first draft but now need checking out and putting to bed. In my case it was checking and double checking names/dates/facts etc. This is only a guess, but I'd speculate that with fiction, checking for plot consistency would be a big issue - you don't want to introduce a character in chapter 1 as having had his right arm blown off in the war, and in chapter 3 have him shoot someone with the gun in his right hand.

Step 6 gets repeated several times, probably (3 complete trawls through the text in my case). Eventually you just have to decide to call it a day and send it to press. Minor gremlins are bound to get through: so far I've spotted three typos in the final, published version of Moving Image Technology and two factual errors that slipped through the revisions stage. In the case of non-fiction you may have to do an index as well. In my case, I had to produce the list of terms, and then they linked the page numbers to them.

Step 7 is fielding a bombardment of queries from the publisher over the final proof layout, marketing and promotion.

Step 8 is getting your hands on the finished book and waiting for the reviews and sales figures to filter through. I haven't heard anything about sales so far and only two reviews have appeared so far to my knowledge (one very positive, one slagging it - so the scores are even at the moment!).

One thing that does occur to me is that if you do decide to go down the self-publishing route, you're shouldering all the financial risk and all the marketing effort single-handed. OK, if you sign with a publisher, (s)he'll take a hefty cut: but a publisher will also take a lot of work and up-front investment off your hands, too. My royalty will only work out at around £1.15 per copy sold; but the quid pro quo for that is that I haven't lost any money if it fails to sell and ends up in the remainder stores.

Anyway, good luck! I'm now in the proposal writing stage for my next book, a biography of Lee de Forest. Having chatted informally to three publishers they seem much less enthusiastic than was the case with Moving Image Technology, for the simple reason that the potential size of the market is a lot lower. In retrospect I was pretty lucky with my last project, and will probably end up having a rougher ride with this one.

Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 11-24-2005, 07:03 AM:

You will gain instant credibility with Leo by having it published by McFarland.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-24-2005, 07:20 AM:

Drat! Should have thought to send my proposal to them! [Mad]

Had a quick look at their website, and from what I can see, McF doesn't do self-publishing (or at least if it does, it doesn't advertise the fact). Given that the front page of McF's website states that...

quote: McFarland's Website
McFarland is a leading U.S. publisher of scholarly, reference and academic books. Located in Jefferson, North Carolina (in the Appalachian Mountains), McFarland publishes books that can be found in libraries worldwide.

...it would seem that they're essentially in the same niche market as Edwin Mellen Press, i.e. small print runs of hardback monographs and reference books which sell to a very restricted market, mainly university libraries. Certainly the only McF books I've got are ones which ended up in remainder shops for around a fiver: with list prices in three figures for some titles, individuals are hardly likely to buy them.

However, unlike Edwin Mellen Press, McF doesn't seem too particular about what it publishes. Some of their reference stuff is obscure but can be useful. But many of the monographs are, frankly, the result of dubious 'research' and writing, the example (The Theatregoing Experience or similar title) Michael Coate took apart on this board being but one. That book looked to me like it must either have been self-published or the result of an editorial review process that went horribly wrong; there were just so many holes in it.

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 11-24-2005, 02:15 PM:

I summarily dismiss considering the purchase of anything from McFarland. They are over-priced, considerably more than the library binding justifies. I suspect they are little more than a technical vanity press.

Btw, congratulations on your book, Leo! US link

Posted by Peter Berrett (Member # 672) on 11-25-2005, 06:17 AM:

Thanks everyone

Congrats Dr. Leo on getting your book published.

I think your comments and strategy are probably well-suited to marketing non-fiction books. Children's books have a huge potential audience though. Move over Enid Blyton.

On the subject of marketing costs, print on demand is good becuase the books are only printed when the customer orders. No wastage. I figure that free downloading will attract a lot of interest and Lulu.com pays all the hosting costs so I'm not out of pocket.

The major costs will be postage and disks to send to reviewers.

Regards

Peter

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-25-2005, 09:06 AM:

Ta for the congrats.

quote: Tim Reed
I summarily dismiss considering the purchase of anything from McFarland. They are over-priced, considerably more than the library binding justifies. I suspect they are little more than a technical vanity press.

I have wondered if they're in the vanity publishing market (i.e. the author pays them to print, distribute and market the book), but if they do accept contracts on that basis, there's nothing on their website which says so. I've also noticed a lot of McF titles in remainder shops: whenever I have a London meeting I usually try and pop in to the remainder shops on the Charing Cross Road which have good film/history sections, where there'll often be 3 or 4 McF titles, often going for as little as £5 for a hardback.

quote: Peter Berrett
Move over Enid Blyton.

'Woof woof', said Timmy!

BTW, she had her problems with publishers, too.

quote: The Sunday Telegraph, 20 November 2005
Enid Blyton, one of Britain's best-loved children's authors, was branded a racist and ridiculed for her absurd plot lines by her own publisher, the Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

Documents discovered in the archives of Macmillan show that the company, which had previously published eight of the author's works, was scathing about her 1960 offering The Mystery That Never Was.

An internal assessment of the book, which was submitted at the height of the author's fame, does not pull any punches. The report compiled for Macmillan by Phyllis Hartnoll, the theatre critic, who also worked as a reader for the company for 35 years, is critical of almost all aspects of the work.

Ms Hartnoll wrote: "There is a faint but unattractive touch of old-fashioned xenophobia in the author's attitude to the thieves; they are 'foreign' (though one of them is called Harry and they generally talk in English) and this seems to be regarded as sufficient to explain their criminality."

The book tells the story of a boy called Nicky Fraser who invents a mystery tale while he is home for the Easter holidays. Nicky, who is aided by his best friend Ken, hopes that a false trail of clues will engage a visiting uncle who has been feeling down.

To the amazement of both boys and the uncle, the clues become real and the mystery takes on a life of its own. The story reaches its climax when the boys confront a group of thieves in an underground cave. Ms Hartnoll is scathing about the plot, which she says has "no merit beyond superficial competence".

"The characterisations are painfully thin and the plot does not stand up to examination," she wrote. "We never know why the treasure was left in the cellars or how the thieves know about it. They behave with incredible stupidity and the device of signalling from the hill, which would have attracted the attention of half the neighbourhood, is transparently absurd." She concludes: "This is not a book that would reflect any credit on our list, and I think we should reject it."

The review is one of hundreds of readers' reports in the Macmillan archive which have been recently purchased by The British Library. Ms Hartnoll's comments seem to predate criticism of Blyton which became fashionable for a short time in the 1980s. In 1982 Channel Four's Comic Strip series lampooned some of the author's most famous characters in Five Go Mad In Dorset.

The revelation that a company which published her work was making similar criticisms in 1960, however, will surprise many. Gillian Baverstock, 74, the author's daughter, said she was unaware of Ms Hartnoll's review and last night defended the book. "It is not one of her best but it is a perfectly acceptable story," she said. She added: "I think in those days when you were looking for characters or people who did wrong things you went for foreigners or people from foreign climes. It gave the story an extra frisson."

Tony Summerfield of the Enid Blyton Society, last night said he was astonished that Macmillan had been so scathing about the book given that the company had previously published some of her most famous works including the hugely successful Island of Adventure.

He said that Ms Hartnoll came across as a "prim librarian" in her review and was guilty of reading a children's story with an adult's eye. "Enid did not give a damn about what the critics said. All she cared about was what the children thought. I think Macmillan were stupid to turn the book down because she was selling very well at the time."

Blyton, whose books have sold 400 million copies in 40 languages, would appear to have had the last laugh. The book was subsequently taken up by Harper Collins who printed it in 1961. It was published again in 1965 and 1983. Blyton, whose most famous creations included Noddy, The Famous Five and The Secret Seven died in 1968.

Other readers' reports in the archive concern the works of Vladimir Nabokov, William Golding and C P Snow. They show that Macmillan was not adverse to publishing titles which were criticised by its professional readers if it thought there was a chance of commercial success. In 1951 it published Snow's The Masters, a story of academic intrigue at Cambridge, which its own reviewer had described as "wooden, seldom lively and a bore".

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 11-25-2005, 01:48 PM:

Btw, please forgive me, Dr. Enticknap. I never knew you were a PhD.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-25-2005, 02:13 PM:

Leo will do just fine! It has done ever since a friend who graduated at around the same time as me described how she was on a plane, heading off on holiday. She'd followed the advice of someone else in using the title 'Dr.' when she booked, thanks to an urban legend which holds that doing so increases your chance of an upgrade. In her case it didn't (and I must confess that I've tried it too, with equally little success!), but somewhere over southern Europe a flight attendant came up to her and asked if she could help another passenger who was 'a bit distressed', suffering from asthma and feeling short of breath. My friend replied that she'd be glad to help if she could, but writing a 100k word thesis on the 1935 general election campaign didn't exactly qualify her to treat an asthma sufferer!

I'm not sure if this is also true in the US, but the norm here is that PhDs generally don't use the title 'Dr.' except in a very formal context and within (or between) universities or research institutes.

Posted by Ron Keillor (Member # 1790) on 11-25-2005, 02:54 PM:

[QUOTE I plan to make say, 100 copies of my novel and put them on 3 1/2 " disks and then mail the disks to various reviewers

Floppies are becoming obsolete - supplement with CD copies to ensure usability.

Posted by John Lasher (Member # 968) on 11-25-2005, 11:22 PM:

quote: Peter Berrett
...and put them on 3 1/2 " disks...

Say Pete , it might be a bit less expensive to use CD-Rs (3.5" floppies are usually $1/ea. here in the states. CDs can be had for $20/100. $100 vs. $20) Not sure what the situation is downunder though, but check it out.

P.S. You might also want to look into cardboard self-mailers, they cost very little and make for a very efficient way to mail your disks.

... Yeah, what Ron said.

Posted by Peter Berrett (Member # 672) on 11-26-2005, 12:00 AM:

Thanks guys for the tips

I can't think why I didn't think of Cds? In fact I have a stack of blank ones so I don't even need to go out and buy them. Cds would give a much better impression and better still the increased capacity would allow me to put the book in a better format ie.e Adobe acrobat so that the reader would be able to look at the associated graphics.

Regards Peter

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-26-2005, 04:22 AM:

Also, floppies are pretty fragile and can suffer data loss when sent in the post if they get bashed about.

Posted by Peter Berrett (Member # 672) on 11-26-2005, 05:06 AM:

Thanks - CDs it is

I am well advanced on my first chapter. If anyone is willing to have a read of it and give their honest opinion (positive or negative) please send me an email and I will send chapter 1 to you for comment. I would be particularly interested in any grammar or formatting tips.

My email address can be found in my profile.

Regards Peter

[ 11-28-2005, 03:39 AM: Message edited by: Peter Berrett ]

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 11-27-2005, 03:32 AM:

My first novel has been out for a while now, I think it was actually quite successful and it's now out in paperback. I decided to publish it under a pseudonym though - I didn' want all the media attention that goes with being a bestseller author.

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 11-27-2005, 04:04 AM:

quote:
Leo will do just fine!

.....I'm not sure if this is also true in the US, but the norm here is that PhDs generally don't use the title 'Dr.' except in a very formal context and within (or between) universities or research institutes.

Thank you, sir. I assume PhDs regularly use the title here, since I automatically associated your degree with it, but I can't say for certain whether they do or not.

Btw, are you autographing any copies of your book? I'd like to get one.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 11-27-2005, 05:51 AM:

Apparently the book has only 208 pages. Not a whole lot for such a complex subject. Does it have pictures?

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-27-2005, 09:56 AM:

It's actually 280 pages (total length 101,724 words excluding the index). I've emailed Amazon asking them to correct that, but they only accept requests for those sorts of corrections from the publisher. Wallflower Press has done likewise, but Amazon has not responded as yet.

quote: Michael Schaffer
Not a whole lot for such a complex subject

The point of the book is to 'boil down' a complex subject for people who need a starting point. Believe it or not, it would have taken me half the time to write if I'd been allowed three times the length. Editing text down to fit a word length limit was, I found, the most difficult part of the whole business, and gave me a lot of respect for newspaper journalists who have to boil down often complicated issues into 300 or 500 words day in and day out. Specialists in those issues are of course going to complain that the journalist didn't get that judgement call right, but as a writer you've got to make the best judgement you can as to the most important things your reader needs to know within a given limit.

quote: Michael Schaffer
Does it have pictures?

Yes, but not as many or to the quality I'd have liked. Again, that's a budget issue. Some of them I took myself, and others were licensed in. The worst moment came when I got the first set of proofs back. In the chapter on archival preservation I'd prepared 'before' and 'after' colour fading pics (a scanned frame from an element in our collection), similar to the ones Stephen Furley posted on another thread here. There was a detailed caption underneath explaining how dye fading happens ('The picture far right has a pink hue because...') and how archivists can correct it. When the proofs arrived, these pictures were there in black-and-white! In the end the publisher wasn't willing to go to the expense of a colour page, and so those pictures were taken out altogether (for obvious reasons). The relative weakness of the illustrations has been picked up in one review, which was a fair comment.

OK - a shameless self-promotion exercise, I admit - would anyone like to review the book for Film-Tech (in the 'ancillary equipment' section, I guess!)? I could bring a copy for Brad when we meet in Austin next week.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 11-27-2005, 10:25 AM:

Congratulations Leo.

I need to order some things from Amazon in the next week or two; I'll add a copy to the list.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 11-27-2005, 11:43 AM:

quote: Leo Enticknap
I could bring a copy for Brad when we meet in Austin next week.

That's a good idea, then Brad can scan it for the library here [evil]

Seriously, I don't think anybody minds when you talk about the book. I talked about mine too (see above).
You could give a chapter list or something like that so we can see how the content is ditributed and if it is interesting for us to read. How basic is it?

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 11-27-2005, 04:25 PM:

Michael, it's $24, just order a copy.

Posted by Peter Berrett (Member # 672) on 11-28-2005, 02:22 AM:

Dr Leo

Does it have a centrefold? I.e does it have a picture of a naked, reclining Pathe projector, its wheels squealing as the 35mm film rolls gently over its seductive body, its frame spread wide open invitingly, its knobs just waiting for someone to grasp them...

[Eek!]

cheers peter

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-28-2005, 02:41 PM:

I wish!