Ramblings-n-Writings » publishing

Choices for getting your manuscript published

Kara_S — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:26:05 +0000

With the changing economy and lay-offs, quite a few people are expressing interest in writing. Some hope to write the next Great American Novel while others want to make a living freelancing.

Eleven years ago, I graduated from college with a degree in publishing. I loved every minute of the coursework and am confident I chose the right major. So many people go to college and then end up working in a different area. Thankfully, I’ve used my degree every year for the last eleven years!

A year ago, I wrote a three-part series on the choices for publishing your manuscript. I know there are others out there, like Michael Hyatt and Rachelle Gardner, who are far more qualified to speak on these topics, but I hope this series will give you the basics.

Part One: Traditional vs. Self-publishing

Part Two: The Difficulties of Self-publishing

Part Three: The Alternatives to Self-publishing

A Must for Every Christian Writer & Freelancer

Kara_S — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:16:00 +0000

Have you seen Christian Writers’ Market Guide 2009by Sally Stuart? What an amazing resource with a wealth of information! In previous years, I’ve used the regular Writer’s Market (I actually just got rid of my 2003 edition), and I have to say that the Christian Writers’ Market Guide 2009 is easier to use by far.

The guide breaks the writing market into three broad categories – book publishers, periodicals, and specialty markets (greeting cards, gifts, software, games, CD/DVD/Video).

The book publishers section starts with a listing of topics and the names of publishers interested in that topic. Over 150 topics are included ranging from autobiography to fiction for teens to marriage to self-help to worship resources. What a great way to find publishers to target!

Following the topical listing is a detailed listing of each book publisher. The alphabetized listings detail contact information, basic guidelines, special needs, and lots more for each publisher. A separate section is devoted to subsidy publishers. Those publishers that do not accept unsolicited manuscripts and require an agent are noted along with those who accept book proposals via The Writer’s Edge and Christian Manuscript Submissions.

Next is a list of book distributors followed by a market analysis. This section is useful for the discerning writer who wants to target the best publishers. The analysis covers the number of books published, what topics are most popular, and who had the most bestsellers.

After book publishers comes the periodical section. The divisions are similar to publishers – topical listings, alphabetical listing, and market analysis. The major difference is within the alphabetical listing, the periodicals are alphabetized within their type, such as children’s, pastor/leadership, music.

Because of this method of organization, when I found a periodical in the topic listing that I was interested in, I turned to the index for finding the detailed listing of the magazine. Otherwise, I would have to look in each periodical type for the name.

The back section of the book contains valuable information for writers – conferences and workshops, writers’ groups, editorial services, literary agents, and contests. With the exception of literary agents and contests, the groups are organized alphabetically by state location.

As a special bonus, a CD is included with the book. This CD is perfect for the writer that travels frequently and doesn’t want to lug around the actual book. What’s on the CD? The entire book in a searchable format along with additional resources for writers! I could spend hours pouring over the additional resources and have barely comprehended all that is included. To say that the CD is priceless to a freelancer, a beginning writing, or an author doing his own promotion would be an understatement.

The big question on my mind about Christian Writers’ Market Guide 2009 was “Is it usable?” Not having an immediate project that I needed the guide for, I put myself in the shoes of a friend of mine who recently wrote a short story and needed possible magazines for submission. The problem is her story is a little longer than what the average magazine accepts.

I flipped to the teen section of periodicals since her story is geared for that age level. A couple of minutes of scanning gave me information for 2 magazines that will accept her word count. Then I looked at the topical listing section for periodicals, cross-referenced the names to the alphabetical section, and found another possible magazine for her. Two of the three magazines are ones that I’ve never heard of so probably wouldn’t have found otherwise.

If you’re concerned about the cost of a book that will go out of date in a year, realize that the detail listings for most companies include their website addresses. While the contact information, such as the editor, might change over time, a website address will probably remain the same and give you a good starting point for finding the current information in the future.

If you are a writer interested in the Christian publishing world, buy your copy of Christian Writers’ Market Guide 2009. You won’t regret it!

Product Details:
List price: $34.99
Paperback: 560 pages
Publisher: WaterBrook Press; Pap/Cdr edition (January 13, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307446433
ISBN-13: 978-0307446435

Plodding: An Editing Journey

Kara_S — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 04:46:00 +0000

I recently mentioned that I was heavily involved with my current WIP. I still am. I got to the point where I had to take a break. My mind is simply tired. The mental activity involved in editing exhausts me to point that it feels like I run a marathon at times. My deadline was self-imposed so I won’t feel too awful if I miss it by a little bit.

If you are a writer, do you ever wonder what it would be like to be an editor or what it is like on the other side of the desk? While I would love to be a writer, I know I am an editor at heart. Editing is my God-given talent. I don’t say that to sound pompous, but it comes naturally to me just how playing a piano comes naturally to some. Writing takes effort for me, probably because I can’t simply write a sentence. I have to backspace, rewrite, delete, evaluate for grammar, write again before going to the next sentence. I’m one of those people that has to have everything close to perfection before moving on.

Somewhere, and I have no clue where, I came across “categories” for writers. Some writers are plodders, some writers are sprinters, and some writers are something in the middle that I can’t remember what it’s called. I’m a plodder. I take my time. Once I finish an article or whatever I’m working on, it rarely has to be overhauled. Everything is in its proper spot and a quick once-over to catch the minor problems makes everything good. A plodder is a writer who will take about an hour to write a 250 word article and spend about 5 minutes revising it. The sprinter is the complete opposite. They want to see the finished product. They don’t care if they make mistakes; they just want the story to get on the page. The sprinter will spend 5 minutes writing the 250 words and an hour revising. They are the people that go through multiple revisions before coming to a finished product. And the writer in the middle that I can’t remember is one who is the ideal writer. The one who writes a draft, revises it, all in equal sections of time. Anyway, all of that is to say that I am a plodder when it comes to writing.

Back to editing… At any given point while working with a manuscript, I have three things running through my head, often simultaneously. First, the actual words on the page. My husband thinks I’m nuts, but I often read the manuscript aloud. This, of course, gives him the right to say that his wife talks to herself. =) I read sentences, paragraphs, sometimes whole chapters this way so I can “hear” the grammar, the flow of words. Believe it or not, I pick up on quite a few word order problems and some other things by reading aloud. At the same time my brain is processing the words, my eyes are looking for punctuation errors, misspellings and the like. Some proofreaders will actually see a comma and say “comma” but I don’t go that far – my DH would send me off to the loony bin for sure! The third thing happening is a constant lookout for logic problems, repetition, inconsistencies, ways to improve, and anything else. Each issue that is found, whether minor like a missing comma or major like repetition, has to be marked, corrected or rewritten. A rewrite requires careful attention to the author’s voice and style so the correction doesn’t stand out as written by someone else. Then the process continues on. At no point do I simply read the manuscript; no matter what stage the manuscript is in, the process is always the same.

The other day I had what turned out to be an amusing thought. I really wanted to get through the final stage and finish with this project. (Who wouldn’t since it’s been lurking around in its various stages for about six months?) So, I thought to myself, “If I can read a 300-page novel in a couple of hours, why can’t I read a 250-page manuscript the same way? Surely, I can have this whole thing done in 3-4 hours if I’m not interrupted.” I sat down with my stack of pages and proceeded to think I would be done by dinnertime. HA! In the time frame of 3-4 hours with almost no interruptions, I completed about 50 pages.

Editing is a slow, tedious process. Perhaps slower than writing. Mentally, it is exhausting. But in the end, it is equally rewarding to writing when I get to hold that printed, bound manuscript that I shared in creating. =)

Interesting Grammar Question

Kara_S — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 02:17:00 +0000

I was working with a student tonight, and he asked a simple grammatical question that gave me reason to stop and think. In a sentence, he had the phrase “the land.” He asked if he changed it to “Russia” would he leave “the”? At first I thought it an odd question with an obvious answer. Then I realized that for some countries we do use “the” and for others we don’t.

For example, we say “the United States of America” or “the British Isles” or “the Philippines.” On the other hand, we don’t say “the Russia” or “the Britain” or “the Portugal” or “the Kenya”…you get my point.

Why is that? Is there a pattern with the ‘s’ ending (states, isles, philippines)? If so, how does something like “the Caribbean” fit in?

Under the gun with my WIP

Kara_S — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:51:00 +0000

Don’t you love the pressure of a deadline? There’s something about D-Day that gets my blood pumping. How about you?

I haven’t been blogging much; well, other than those few random things that didn’t take much thought. I am feverishly working on the final edit of an author’s manuscript. Tomorrow I plan to dump the manuscript into its book layout, and this project is out of here!

I’m hoping that the gremlins that invaded the manuscript don’t invade the layout. Seriously, I found some very naughty gremlins in this project!!! Things (aka mistakes) that I know weren’t there before are there now. Hmmm…definitely gremlins. Every manuscript I work with goes through 3 to 4 stages: Stage 1 = first read, return to author with queries; Stage 2 = second read, review author’s changes, return to author for approval; Stage 3 = another read, not always necessary depending on the original condition of the manuscript, return to author; Stage 4 = Approve minor changes from Stage 3, dump into book format).

I usually do 90% of my editing on-screen. It’s so much faster since I don’t have to do the edits on paper and then transfer them to the computer. When I first started working with this manuscript months ago, I did start with what I call a “paper edit” – all done on paper. However, there were some extensive rewrites, and after working with the first chapter, it seemed more feasible to work on-screen. I probably should have done a paper edit in stage 2, but I stuck with the on-screen process for this particular book since stage 2 was still a little rough with a lot of changes.

Tuesday evening – wrapping up Stage 3 and rapidly approaching Stage 4, I printed out a chapter to take with me since I would have some downtime while playing bingo (yes, bingo – my husband and his mother used to play a lot years ago, so they wanted to go last week. I tagged along and surprisingly, my DH won the jackpot game. We sorta felt obligated to go back this week. ) Anyway, I am so thankful I printed out that chapter! Somewhere between stages 2 and 3, something happened. I know I have an eye for punctuation and grammatical problems, but that printout definitely didn’t show it! I found random commas, misspellings, odd punctuation, huge inconsistencies…My plans were to dump the book into layout on Wednesday, but seeing those 20 pages persuaded me otherwise! Now I’m trying to finish 272 pages before tomorrow. Guess I shouldn’t be blogging, huh?

The Alternatives to Self-publishing

Kara_S — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 02:35:00 +0000

So far this week we have talked about the publishing process as well as the difficulties of self-publishing. I ended yesterday’s post with a question about other options besides self-publishing.

First, the obvious alternative to self-publishing is traditional publishing with a publishing house. Now, the major difficulty here is actually getting a foot in the door. An occasional self-publishing author will have the self-published book picked up by a publishing house or be contracted for another book as a result of the self-published book. However, those scenarios are often rare.

Many authors lament the rejection process of traditional publishing. Having never tried submitting a manuscript to a publisher, I really don’t know what it feels like to receive the rejection letter, but I can’t imagine I’d like it. So how do you get a foot in the door?

The best option is to attend and participate in writer’s conferences. (Side note: I’m experiencing a grammatical dilemma – is it writer’s or writers’ conference? Ack!) Publishers attend the conferences with the intent of finding new authors, so go prepared with query letters, manuscript samples, and a selling speech.

Now, in case the obvious isn’t obvious, attending a writer’s conference costs money, so wouldn’t the better option be investing the money in self-publishing? Not necessarily. At a writer’s conference, an author can take advantage of critique groups, become acquainted with various publishing houses, attend seminars, and essentially improve the existing manuscript as well as gain insight for new ideas and what publishers are looking for. The word that comes to mind is … networking!

The second alternative to self-publishing is hiring a literary agent. My knowledge in this area is quite vague, so this will be short. A literary agent will cost money if they sell your manuscript, but agents also have established contact with publishing houses. An agent will know the best houses to choose for querying about your manuscript. Think of the literary agent as an admissions counselor for a university. A review of the application (the query letter and manuscript) tells the admissions counselor (literary agent) if the student (author) is a good fit for the university (publishing house).

If you’d like to learn more about how a literary agent works, jump on over to Rants & Ramblings: On Life as a Literary Agent. Rachelle’s blog is an amazing resource for learning about publishing, what agents look for, and all things related to writing.

The third alternative is to contact smaller publishing houses. These publishers may not offer all of the features like a larger publisher, but they will manage the details that an author shouldn’t need to spend time focusing on. (In fact, this is the type of publisher I freelance for.) Some will pay the author royalties like a traditional publisher, while others work more like a one-stop self-publishing source where the author purchases the service.

What is the benefit of paying a smaller publisher for services vs. self-publishing? Remember the discussion yesterday about the details (basic marketing, editing, design, printing, ISBN, legalities)? The details are managed for the author and each service is considered an option.If the author feels that the manuscript is good without editing, there’s no need to pay for the editing. Or maybe the book is in its final form and just needs to be printed. Some authors that have out-of-print books with larger publishers end up reprinting with smaller publishers.

A publisher will have access to printers and discounts that a self-publishing author would not have available. Plus the publisher speaks the printer’s language and the author is guaranteed a quality product. (The publisher wants a top-notch product because the book has the potential to generate future contracts for the publisher.) In addition, authors gain the advantage of book promotion through the publisher’s catalog, advertising, website and conference attendance.

Overall, as I consider the options in publishing – traditional, self, literary agent, and small publisher – I would definitely place self-publishing at the bottom of the list after I had exhausted all other means. Of course, if somehow my manuscript wasn’t accepted by a traditional publisher, a literary agent, or a small publisher, I would wonder if my work was worthy of publication!

Do you have a question about publishing? Leave a comment and I’ll address your question next week!

The Difficulties of Self-Publishing

Kara_S — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 03:35:00 +0000

The first post in Traditional Publishing vs. Self-Publishing series addresses the publishing process and promised to discuss some of the difficulties of self-publishing. I briefly mentioned the idea of marketing at the end of the post and would like to pick up there.

When an author publishes with a traditional publishing house, the basic marketing is already in place. The publisher promotes the book on its website, in its catalog, in other sources like magazines, and on other websites, such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble. They also typically provide authors with resources to create press releases, arrange book promotion events, and issue preview copies to start the book “buzz.”

As a self-publisher, all of that work would fall into the author’s lap. To me, if I wanted to be a successful author, I wouldn’t want to concentrate my time on marketing per se, which could very easily happen if I felt the necessity of selling a certain number of books to cover the costs of production. My concentration should be on starting the next manuscript, not figuring out the details to publish this one.

Think of it this way – do you know the qualifications and process for submitting a book to Amazon? It’s probably safe to say that most of us don’t. (I have a vague knowledge of the process simply because I work closely with a publisher, and if I remember right, it isn’t the easiest process.) Do you know how to obtain ISBN numbers and apply for copyright? What about submitting Library of Congress information? If you quote other sources in your manuscript, are you ready to request permission to use those sources? What are the recommended margins for a 6×9 book? How much of the edge of the cover will be lost in the trimming process? What’s the difference between 60 lb. text paper, 60 lb. cover paper, and 10 pt. cover? Do I want a printer who uses a sheet fed press or a web press? What should the book price be? Wow! The list could go on, but every one of those questions is one a self-publisher must ask and are all questions a traditional publisher will handle for the author. How much time do you have to invest in educating yourself about the nitty-gritty details of publishing?

Another factor to consider in self-publishing is the cost. In self-publishing, the author must pay for all services; traditional publishers pay you to use them. Self-publishing costs include hiring an editor, a designer, and a printer. If you prefer to design your own book and cover, replace the cost of the designer with the cost of software. Some printers are very specific about the types of files they will accept, so the self-publisher may need to spend $500-1500 on software. If that’s the case, also consider the cost of time to learn to use the software efficiently. Some will opt to use programs already available such as Microsoft Word, which is fine, but realize the options for layout are extremely limited in Word (yes, this is the designer in me speaking out for the usage of true design software, not word processing turned designer). While I’m not sure what the current printing costs are for books, I do know that a substantive edit of a 250-page manuscript can easily start at $1000, if not higher depending on the editor’s experience. Should every manuscript have a substantive edit? Yes!!!

Another minor factor to consider when self-publishing is storage of books. Do you have some place to store 5,000 books or however many you would like to publish? Can you keep detailed sales records and inventory? Will you be able to afford re-printing when the first stash runs out or did the first printing drain the bank account?

So, if self-publishing is beginning to seem like less of an option, what options do you have? That seems like a great question for another post!

Traditional Publishing vs. Self-publishing

Kara_S — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 03:17:00 +0000

A couple of week’s back, Cyndi at Modern Christian Homestead wrote a post about publishing your writing. She touched on e-publishing and self-publishing your work. Some of her points prompted some thoughts in my mind that I wanted to share as far as using a traditional publishing house vs. self-publishing.

While I have never been through the publishing process as an author, my bachelor’s degree is in publishing, and I have worked as a freelance editor and designer for quite a few years. If I author a book in the future, my personal preference would be to use a traditional publisher. I’ll explain why after we review the publishing process.

No matter the size or the affiliation of the publisher, the traditional publishing process is still the same as years ago. Manuscripts are submitted, some are accepted, and some are rejected. Upon acceptance, contracts are formed and the book enters the editorial process. To me, this is one of the most critical points in the process, and perhaps the lengthiest. The manuscript is reviewed for accuracy, facts and sources are checked, logic and comprehension are addressed, and suggestions are made for improvement.

Following a review by an editor, the manuscript is handed over to a copyeditor, who reviews the grammar, queries questionable sentence structure and organizational problems, and makes the manuscript as perfect as possible. Typically, once the copyediting is complete, two to three rounds of proofreading follow.

Next, the manuscript enters the design stage. At this point, authors get a feel for what the interior pages of the book will look like. More than likely, cover design is going on simultaneously. Once layout is finished, the book is returned to editorial for another round of proofreading. (The purpose of proofreading at this stage is to make sure none of text was lost in layout and to search for widows and orphans within the chapters – mainly cosmetic details.)

During the entire process, the author is kept abreast of changes and required to approve various stages. Not long after the manuscript enters the publishing process, the marketing department develops a plan for advertising and promotion of the new book.

By the time the book has reached the printing press, the contents have been scrutinized by at least five different sets of eyes – editor, copyeditor, two proofreaders, designer, proofreader – all who are professionals at what they do.

Personally, the value of having five different people read my work for mistakes outweighs the “ease” of self-publishing. I could hire an editor, I could submit my work to a critique group, I could ask friends to read. However, if there is any sort of personal relationship with any of the people involved, I would question their honesty. Not that I think people would lie, but our human nature is to tell others that their writing is great…even if we didn’t like it or had problems understanding parts. It’s kind of like the commercial about adoption where the mother gives the daughter the hideous sweatshirt with the embellished butterflies, sequins and flowers. The daughter has to pretend to like it because she doesn’t want to offend the mother. Those we know may not be completely honest; however, the people working at the publishers usually aren’t our friends and get paid to be honest.

Now, please understand when I referred to the “ease” of self-publishing, I wasn’t saying that the self-publishing process is easy. In fact, I think it is a much harder road than traditional publishing, especially for those who enter it naively. Tackling the writing, the editing, the production process, the marketing by yourself = work. To those who have a very loyal following, such as a self-help guru or a big-name evangelist / preacher, self-publishing may work simply because of the already established customer base. However, for the average author, the few books that are sold to family and friends won’t even begin to cover the costs of printing, let alone provide a profit.

So besides potential marketing issues, what are some of the difficulties with self-publishing? Read those here!