Archive for September, 2010

by Bill Ruesch

Rosanne Dingli, a Chicken Scratchings reader wrote, “This is great Bill (referring to the previous post How to Lose a Book Sale in 2 Seconds Flat!) now tell us a bit about the actual graphics that go on the cover of a standard perfect bound.”

Good question.

You’ll think I’m copping out if I respond with, every publisher whether traditional or self wish they knew the answer to that. Wouldn’t it be great if there were an ABC design formula guaranteed to grab the reader’s attention? There isn’t one. At least not one that I know about. On the other hand, there are design faux pas that contribute to buyer indifference. Avoid them if you intend to sell books.

1.  They create cover art that misses the target. For example, and this would be an extreme example, you would not want a pulp romance style picture on the cover of your children’s book, nor would you want a children’s book illustration on a political expose’. The artist should be familiar enough with the content to design images that reflect the purpose of the book. To do otherwise is like dressing a member of the board of directors of a large financial firm in a clown costume and sending her into the most important meeting of the year.

2.  They attempt to design over their heads. A self-publishing author doesn’t have to spend top-dollar to hire the best graphic designer in the world, but employing anyone other than a professionally trained graphic designer is a mistake. Computers and design programs have come a long way. Owning a computer and buying a graphics program doesn’t make one a competent designer. Keep in mind that computers are just tools just the way a hammer and saw are tools. In the right hands, a hammer and saw can build the Empire State building. In the wrong hands, like mine, the best they can do is build an off-kilter birdhouse. Give your book a fighting chance by investing in a professional. It’s well worth the price.

3.  They play Hide and Seek with the title. Authors give a great deal of thought to their titles. The title is meant to reveal something about the book and intrigue the reader. If an artist, just to be artistic, buries the title in graphics, it is a big mistake.  What do I mean by bury it in graphics? If the title isn’t clearly visible because of poor font, graphics, or color choices then it is buried.For example, let’s say the cover has a beautiful but busy illustration. You can lose the title easily with a font that is too thin, the wrong color, or too small. Remember this rule–the title must be clearly readable from a distance of 10 feet.

Four examples of brilliant cover design.

4.  They practice TMI (too much information). Think of a book cover like a billboard. The most effective billboards are those who deliver their message to drivers going  freeway speeds. Books are just like that. Whether browsing at a bookstore, online, or looking through a catalog the buyer makes a decision based on precious little information. Do not ever try to give them more than they need to choose to buy the book. It won’t work.  The job of the cover is to attract attention and setup the sale. That’s all.

5. They capitulate to the author’s ego. Authors are proud of their accomplishment and they should be. They naturally want everyone to know that the book is theirs, but unless the author is a well-known celebrity, who cares what they look like? That sounds mean spirited, but really who cares, other than friends or family members? Do not put an author’s photo on the cover, front or back. Also, withhold most endorsements. Are you convinced to buy the  because a notable stranger is quoted as saying they like book? Either it stands on its own or it doesn’t. Now if someone you know, like a friend, or a teacher recommends the book, that’s an entirely different story.  What should go on the book besides the title, author’s name, ISBN and compelling graphics, maybe an excerpt from the book? That’s about it.

Before this post gets overly long, I think I’ll hold off on the other 5 Stupid Things and put them in my next post.

by Bill Ruesch

Maybe two seconds is generous. It’s really a second or less. No one will even pick up a book if it isn’t appealing. No one. A glance is all you will get–if that.

What is the first thing a reader sees when they decide to look at your book? Think about it. That’s right–the cover.

If your mind jumped to cover art–Stop!–and back-up. There are at least nine other things you need to consider before exploring cover art.

I’ve spelled out  nine basic cover and binding methods self-publishers  would be wise to consider before printing their books. Before choosing a binding method there are three basic questions to explore:

• Who will read this book? How old are they? Do they come from specific regions or have a common ethnicity? What is their level of education? Is it intended to be educational or entertaining?

• What do they expect to see in a book? If sitting on a bookstore rack what would attract the reader’s attention over your competition?

• Is the intended cover and binding method in harmony with the intention of the book? For example, I once saw a book that looked like a how to book. It’s cover announced that it would be informative. The title of the book was Everything Men Understand About Women. I opened the book and all of the text pages were blank. There wasn’t a line of type to be found. It was a joke, of course, and everything worked together perfectly to set the reader up for the humor.

The first two questions have to do with the demographics (external features) and psychographics (motivations and values) of the prospective reader. Once you understand who and why, it is vital to determine how. Give them what they expect. If you are too far afield of what they are looking for, they may not recognize it when they see it. For example, it would throw a reader off to discover an in-the-shop trade manual with a premium hard cover. Alternatively an autobiography of a respected person printed initially as a commodity paperback. It would be as discordant as seeing a well-heeled gentleman drive away from Beverly Hills mansion in a 20 year old beater with car cancer.

Elements of a Premium Hardcover

1. Premium Hardbound. Could include expensive features like leather, gilt edges, bookmark ribbon, foil stamping, printed end sheets, and premium text paper. Could be sewn as well as glued. May or may not have a dust jacket.

2. Good to Fine Hardbound will have features like cloth wrap, foil stamps, maybe PUR glue, burst bound. Almost always has a dust jacket.

3. Hardbound with a printed wrap. Children’s books are often printed this way with pictures or art on the cover. Some will have dust jackets, but it isn’t necessary.

4. Commodity hardbound. Most self-publishers will never order enough books to make this a viable option. These are the types of hardbound books sold by book clubs in mass. They are hardbound books but made with inexpensive materials.

5. Perfect bound Trade Paperback. The text pages are glued directly to the spine and the spine is squared. This method is highly favored by self-publishers. The book size is generally larger than paperbacks on the rack and the materials are of higher quality. Selling enhancements could include foil stamp, foil emboss, and high gloss cover coatings.

6. Standard perfect bound. This method is very similar to Trade Paperbacks but made with less costly paper and cover material to minimize cost.

7. Commodity or rack paper backs. These books are printed as cheaply as possible and generally in larger runs. When an author sells paperback rights to a publisher this is the production method utilized. These books romance novels, murder mysteries, sci-fi thrillers, are meant to be disposable.

8.  Plastic coil, wire-o, or comb binding are used for books that must stay open and flat. Cookbooks, repair manuals, and other how-to books may opt for these types of bindings. The drawback is that they don’t have a printed spine. When put on a bookshelf the reader has to pull the book out.

9. Saddle-stitched. Saddle stitching is printer talk for two staples in the backbone.  This can be found more commonly on thin catalogs, or magazines. Think TIME magazine. It is the least costly way to go but has several drawbacks, there isn’t a spine, it seems like the book is not a book but publication, and there is a limit to the number of pages.

Can You Spend More to Sell More?

Making a wrong choice will impact your sales, there is no doubt about that. The funny thing is you can’t hedge your bet with spending more. Not only could you be wasting money, but it might backfire and decrease rather than increase sales. The rule is make sure your book cover and binding method are in sync with the demographics, psychographics, and expectations of the reader.

IBM Selectric Typewriter

by Bill Ruesch

I nearly tripped over an IBM Selectric typewriter, once the King of all the offices,now leaning against a painted door, relegated  to a basement hallway’s supply closet, forever consigned to be a lowly doorstop.

My, how things have changed.  What was once considered swell was using the word my as an exclamation at the beginning of a sentence, or even using the word swell at all for that matter. I’m not really into archaic slang, it just seemed somehow appropriate to the topic.

Indexing somehow seems like a quaint idea, more fit for the 19th century than the present. After all aren’t there more and better solutions via the Internet and such? Tia Leschke contacted me to ask if an article on indexing would be of interest to Chicken Scratching readers. She sent the information below and we send to her our thanks.

Tia Leschke’s four very important things to consider when it comes to indexing

Tia Leschke -- Indexer

An Index? Why?

You’ve finally finished your book. It’s been edited and proofread and has a wonderful cover design. You’re looking forward to reading sales figures and doing signings. Wait a minute…if it’s a non-fiction book, it should have an index.

Wouldn’t a key word search on an e-book be better?

You wonder, “Why would my book need an index?” If it’s an e-book, you might believe that a simple keyword search function will be sufficient, and maybe it will be. Your readers might get frustrated trying to find the right keyword, though. Let’s say she wonders whether there’s information about vaccines in the infant health book she’s browsing, so she searches on vaccines and finds nothing. The author used the word inoculations. A good index would have a see reference to guide her from vaccines to inoculations. She might also be guided through see also references to information about vaccine safety, as well as the various diseases for which vaccines are available.

Searching for information shouldn’t overwhelm one with a zillion barely connected hits.

We’ve all run Google searches that gave us thousands of hits. Most of us don’t go beyond the first page. In an e-book, the search will stop on every instance of word usage. Let’s say there’s a reader looking for information about using Twitter for business. A general book on social media will refer to Twitter probably hundreds of times, but how many mentions will be relevant to their particular search? Moreover, how much time is wasted by  readers checking every single reference?

Indexing is one of the least respected sales tools.

One more reason for having an index is that it can help a purchaser decide whether to buy your book. If she glances through the table of contents and doesn’t see anything about her particular interest, she might put it back on the shelf without realizing that there’s actually quite a bit there. A glance at the index would show her that, if there’s an index to peruse.

A quick off-the-shelf reference is not so easy to lose.

Whether your readers are wondering whether certain information is actually in your book, or whether they remember something that they want to refer to again, an index is the map for finding that information.

For more information, you can reach Tia at http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/tia-leschke/14/923/a09 or http://tia-leschke.ca

by Bill Ruesch

In many posts, I have been very vocal about the Internet Wolves and Knaves that lay in wait to snare self-publishers. I’ve witnessed what happens to authors hoodwinked into spending their savings with little or no results to show for it. I’ll continue to rant about those dirty rats. You can count on it. I’ve even advised self-publishers to visit Victoria Strauss’s Writer Beware web site because she is doing a reasonably credible job warning us about traps and dangers.

Who has bigger dreams and expectations for your book manuscript than you?

No one. What attracts those who prey on self-publishers, especially new ones, is the rookie author’s general lack of knowledge of the process and their wide-eyed belief in the value of their manuscripts. Getting a book published is a lifetime dream for most. When someone says you can have your dream come true for just (whatever the dollar figure is) you may feel you just won the lottery.

Knowing what to avoid is a good thing, but it doesn’t go far enough. Authors need to know where to find legitimate, competent, and cost effective assistance. I don’t care how brilliant you are, a first-time self-publisher isn’t likely to successfully negotiate the complexities and produce a commercially credible book on their own. Professional help is required.  After all, you wouldn’t set out on a safari through the darkest jungles without guides, would you?

BookWise & Company, BookWise Publishing, and WriteWise Mentoring

Recently I attended a self-publishing boot camp, known as a Book Camp, organized by BookWise Publishing. This isn’t the old BookWise & Company, founded by bestselling authors Richard Paul Evans and Robert G. Allen. BookWise & Company was a multi-level marketing enterprise.

It seemed like a great idea at the time.

The idea was to give 100 new authors the opportunity to learn how to publish or get their books published with the aid of two New York Times bestselling authors as mentors. For a reasonable flat fee, newbies could submit their manuscripts and have them edited by peers of published authors, designed by experienced and talented designers, printed by excellent presses, and marketed by the authors themselves, with hands-on coaching from Richard Paul Evans, Robert G. Allen and other experienced pros. What would it be worth to a green, untested author to be given the attention of people like these instead of just being dumped on some clerk’s desk, in a forest of cubicles, inside a cavernous room, deep in the basement of some publisher’s impenetrable fortress?

The thought was that if a book received very professional treatment from the outset it would garner greater attention should the author wish to go the traditional route, or give them an edge should they decide to self-publish.

No one can guarantee a book’s success. Some felt that their books deserved to be bestsellers because they paid for mentoring. It doesn’t work that way.

Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware panned the old BookWise & Company.

She had a point—when she was talking about the multi-level part of the company. BookWise Publishing is not BookWise & Company. BookWise Publishing owned and operated by Karen K. Christoffersen and Meagan Bunten is carrying on helping the authors and assisting their progress. Currently they have over 200 authors in the pipeline and have completed over 65 books over the last two years.

Despite Ms. Strauss’s good intentions…

the problem with the Internet is like the old story of the woman with a gossiping habit. As a lesson, her minister emptied a feather pillow into the wind. Her impossible task was to retrieve all the feathers. Once something hits the net it spreads like feathers in a breeze, probably further and even more impossible to call back. BookWise Publishing doesn’t deserve the stigma. It is not a multi-level enterprise.  It is a company with the same name but different owners and management.  Karen Christoffersen asked a brilliant young woman, Meagen Bunten, to be her partner in  the new BookWise. They have no relation to the old MLM and are building BookWise Publishing as an independent collaboration of top people in the publishing business who are dedicated to assisting authors with everything they need to effectively produce and market their books. Costs are contained and kept reasonable by the fact that all services are virtual. There is NO overhead and every associate is self-employed.

Experience matters.

The difference between what BookWise is doing and what hundreds, if not thousands of others are doing, is that they have collected many experienced associates with real life publishing skills. They didn’t  hire the brand-new-just-graduated-learn-on-the-job-beginners and let them loose on unknowing customers. They have real-honest-to-goodness experienced experts.

Am I prejudiced in my assessment? You bet.

I came across BookWise Publishing a couple of years ago, sort of. I had written a novel and even though with my print background I can produce a printed book in my sleep, I didn’t have the foggiest idea of how to sell it. I called Karen—and this is where the sort of comes in—because I knew that she had done a lot of marketing work for Richard Paul Evans and his books over the years, I figured that she could help me if I asked nicely. That’s when I learned about BookWise, the old BookWise. Karen was doing a lot of work preparing the books to go to print. She was burning the candle at three ends.

One thing she could sweep off her plate was the print production. Well hey, there I was, an expert print manager walking right through her door. Since that day I have helped her with the printing side, and she’s been helping me with my writing. I tell you this because I have a special interest in BookWise. BookWise sends me business and they like me so much that my bio appears on their website as the printing expert. I don’t mind. I am an expert and I do consult with them on their printing needs, but I am not an employee nor owner of the company.

The question you should be asking right now is, “Is Bill Ruesch’s opinion of BookWise tainted?” The answer is yes, but that doesn’t make it wrong.  I encourage any self-publishing authors reading this to contact BookWise Publishing, compare their expertise, check their prices, and be prepared to be very impressed. They will be happy to give you the names and contact info of some of their authors so you can hear their testimonials. These are real people and they won’t pull any punches. This is a relatively small, intimate group of new authors who love to get together 2 or 3 times a year at Book Camps in Salt Lake City (and once a year at Book Expo America) to rub shoulders with each other and perfect their craft.

Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.

BookWise Publishing isn’t just another me-too author’s production resource group. It has the talent, connections, and brains to become a real force in the traditional and independent publishing worlds for years to come. Watch them and see for yourselves.