A.C.E. Writers

Publication requires many aspects of writing to be performed and completed prior to actual publication. With traditional publishers, you submit a transcript according to the publishers requirements and they do the final work of publication, if your work is accepted.

If you’re going to self publish, you’ll want to do those things yourself. The preparation work to become published isn’t difficult, but it is necessary that you fulfill all the various levels of preparation prior to putting your work out for others to read.

In the early days, I wasn’t aware of “translational text” so I often used fonts in my publications that became scripted in the actual publication. I hadn’t realized this even happened until my first publication had been out and available on www.lulu.com for a long time. It’s still available there, with my imperfect script on my book store at www.lulu.com/janverhoeff and over the years, I’ve considered a revision. I’m still considering it, but it’s awesome to watch how many of my books sell each month, and know that those people contact me and want more of my work, EVEN with all the YUCKY stuff in the actual book. Often another writer contacts me about a misspelled word, and comments that they wish they had the guts to publish their work, even if there might be a few errors in the published book.

Will I republish that one? Maybe. However, I’d be most likely to publish a new version with more and better stories in it, and fix the fonts too.

My point is, there are things you may not know about publishing your own work, and you may not find out about them until later. That’s okay. Your work doesn’t have to be ALWAYS perfect to market well. I make a nice tidy profit each year from my books on www.lulu.com/janverhoeff and keep publishing more and more. Now, I do my own script translations so I don’t have to worry about the errors so much. My translator understand my computer formats.

So…

Let’s start with steps to publication:

Critiquing –

This is the critical point of editing where you make sure all the stories in your book are complete. They should have a beginning, a middle and an end. Your characters should be effective and complete. And when you get to plots, be certain the plots are well thought out and follow a distinctive path through the book. Do they have a culmination and a solution? These are important.

Final Editing -

Grammar and spell check are important. Don’t count on your computer to do the job. Failure in this area is often due to computer error. Most computers don’t recognize that you’ve used the wrong word, they just recognize if it’s misspelled. Be sure you look at synonyms to make sure your words haven’t been changed to the wrong word.

Formatting -

A bit more than just arranging your book in a readable format, you’ll be responsible for writing in the copyright information, setting fonts (remember my horror story of fonts) and aligning the type for publication. One of the most impeccable issues I’ve run into is setting titles for the new page of the next chapter… Does it go on the right or the left? Should it be half way up or half way down the page? and what if there’s a whole blank page preceeding it? Should I leave it blank or fill it up? Do I need graphics or should I avoide putting in pictures? What about those other details… like where do I put the page numbers? Should I insert the web address? What about…

STOP already!!! Pick up your favorite book and look over the formatting. You don’t have to COPY it to get the idea. Use the concept and follow through with your book.

Now Translate to .PDF format — perhaps I’ll tell you how in the next blog post…

Have a great night!