How to Self-Publish: Basic Styling Rules

The popular Amazon Kindle

Can you guarantee what your ebook will look like on your audience's ereaders? Ebook reading devices come in so many shapes and sizes it can be bewildering but a few simple rules will help you prepare your own text for every eventuality.

After you’ve written your text (spell-checked it, re-read it three times and asked a proof reader to check through it, of course) there are some basic issues to sort out when preparing your text for ebook publication. That’s because the formatting requirements for the Nook, Apple iBookstore, Amazon Kindle, Kobo and the rest, are all be slightly different.

It’s important to bear in mind that an ebook is really a computer file and therefore very different from a physical book. In traditional publishing, apart from the editing and proof-reading, the fonts and line spaces are chosen, the pagination is fixed, the cover designed, and somewhere along the line, an ISBN is assigned so that booksellers worldwide can identify the book. This can take 12 months.

Although the route to epublication is much shorter (two months at most), some of these processes apply to the ebook route too, but the differences lie in the need for text to adapt to a hardware device, that is, any device that can read ebooks: computers, tablets, ereaders, smartphones. For instance, there are variations in the default font choices between similar devices and between operating systems on similar phones. It's worth noting that the ereading software on a device is designed to give consumers the power to consume in a manner that suits them: font sizes can be changed, typefaces can be changed, orientation of the screen can be changed.

So, to give your book the best chance to be readable on all of these devices you need to follow some basic rules:

1. Use the most basic software writing tool you are comfortable with: beware of Ms Word which creates hidden styles.
2. I prefer to type in plain text, underline italics and headers, then, when I'm happy with the writing itself, transfer the text into Ms Word or Apple’s Pages for the final styling.
3. Every space and word must be given a style so choose a basic text style and apply it to the whole text. 
4. Methodically work through your text and exception style headings and italics.
5. Try to keep the number of styles down - a basic indented text style, a paragraph starting non-indent style, plus headers (A, B and C), a bold character style and italic character style will cover most fiction needs. Adding a list or bullet point style is useful for non-fiction.
6. Use a standard typeface, i.e. the one’s you see on every computer, so Times, Times New Roman, Helvetica or Courier New. 
7. Use 12pt for the main body of your text, 16-18pt for the headings. Most ereaders look at the proportional differences in font sizes to work out what do with your text, not the absolute size.
8. Don’t use soft returns 
9. Don’t use page breaks within chapters.
10. Don’t use tables, sidebars.

These are really simple to follow. Once you've mastered them you'll find it's all quite liberating. I spend a great deal of my own time planning and styling books for print publication and it's a great joy to hit a simple manuscript which requires basic ebook styling.

Coming soon: More Editors for eBooks; Software Choices

How to Self Publish: Enjoy it!

Cartoon © David Gifford 2012

There’s one major advantage to self-publishing: anyone can do it. There’s also one major disadvantage: anyone can do it! For two centuries publishers have vetted and controlled the market, with Literary agents mediating between authors and publishers. But now, anyone can write a book, submit an MS word document and through various, inexpensive means, publish their book to the world, online and through print on demand, if they think it’s worth it. Traditional publishers are up in arms because suddenly their slush pile is being self-published, vanity publishers are fast becoming irrelevant and literary agents are finally having to work for their fee.

So, surely this is all good news for the budding self-publisher. Well, yes, but the ease of access means there’s a massive increase in competition. The bigger publishers used to worry about the marketing campaigns of their equally large competitors, but now they have to think about an army of marketing-savvy 17 year olds who have no respect for tradition and live/breathe social media.

So, the advantage of self-publishing is that anyone can do it.

That’s still true. You can write your book, control its look, decide to publish immediately, determine the price and benefit from a greater share of the sale price of the ebook. And competition is good. It makes you think harder, plan more carefully and work harder at making your book a success.

But there’s one more ingredient: enjoy writing the book. Some people love the physical process of writing itself, others revel in the thinking and the planning, some even enjoy the marketing afterwards! Most writers though, use the writing as a form of expression or escape from their daily lives.

I have a nom de plum, Jake Jackson. I write practical music books on reading music, guitar and keyboard chords and a Songwriters Rhyming Dictionary. The books have sold many thousand physical copies throughout the world. Now I’m writing a fiction trilogy. I’ve been writing it for three years, just fours hours a week, mainly at weekends, and I’ve loved every single second. My everyday job is as a publisher of illustrated non-fiction, so I know the industry, I know the disappointment that would-be authors succumb to, but even so, I have kept writing because I love the process. If, eventually, 10 people buy the books I’ll celebrate.

Writing is a mission, it’s a vocation. Of course we all want success, but ultimately, we have to enjoy what we do. There’s a great article from the Guardian newspaper, with interviews of a range of interesting writers, from P.D James to Roddy Doyle. In it, Neil Gaiman says: ‘The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you're allowed to do whatever you like... So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it ­honestly, and tell it as best you can...’

How true.

Coming soon: Proofreaders or friends? and How to Blog to promote your Book.
For the cartoon at the top of this post, many thanks to Kingston University and David Gifford at inscript design.

Editors for eBooks

One of the main purposes of this blog is to encourage the proper use of freelance editors and proofreaders. The problem is, there are plenty of good ones around. If you're just starting to write, and have no connections within the industry, a simple Google search will report thousands of editors, from different continents, all brilliant, all available.

So, to help with this, I've just set up a Facebook group called Editors for eBooks. It will take a while but with some heavy networking it will become a useful resource for those who need to be put in touch with a good editor or proofreader. To join the group you have to become a friend of Nick Wells and then Editors for eBooks. This allows me genuinely to recommend the services of a professional. I'll tie it up to twitter lists too (@flametreetweet), and Linkedin.

Coming soon: Good Reasons to Self-Publish 1; Marketing Lessons from the Music Industry.

Self-Publishing eBooks: Ask Yourself Some Questions.

So why not find a good freelance proof reader, and an editor, perfect your book, then release it as an ebook, straightaway? 

In the last post I looked at some of the issues relating to finding a traditional publisher. While there’s much more to say on that subject, the real purpose of this blog is give people information and inspiration about self-publishing. That’s because there’s so much on the internet about this, it can be difficult to relate it to individual needs.

So, yes, absolutely it is possible to write a text, find a good proof reader and a constructively critical editor, find some simple software and send it off to Amazon, the Apple iBookstore and Google. Self-publishing for the modern world. 

But before you take the plunge you need to ask yourself some questions:

1. Am I passionate about what I’m writing?

2. Will I be able to advocate for it, at every opportunity?

3. Am I interested primarily in the writing itself, the achievement of having done it?

4. Do I want recognition for my achievement?

5. Is the nature of the recognition more important than the sales?

6. Are sales, and a means of earning a living, more important than kudos for its own sake?

7. Am I promoting some other product (seminars, exhibitions, healthcare products)?

If the answer to 3 and 5 is yes then self-publishing may not work for you. That’s because, in the digital community the marketing of what you write is at least as important as the text itself. 

If the answer to any of the other questions is yes, then you’ll need to embrace, if not master, the power of marketing in all it all it’s forms. At the most basic level, engagement with social media is essential, using Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and the rest. It’s about momentum, talking to friends and family, asking them to recommend your publication and help you advocate for it. 

Coming soon: Which software is best to make ePubs? How do I create a Facebook Page for my book?

So, Authors Do Need Publishers?

According to @The Bookseller, Ian Rankin, crime writer extraordinaire, at a posh event to celebrate 20 years of Orion, said “publishers were needed by authors to produce "well put together, well edited, displayed and marketed" stories to "fans of the written word in all its forms". "Publishers need authors but authors really need publishers, especially as more content flood the market of varying quality.”

It’s hard to argue with this if you are an already published author, with a good track record and have an agent who is constantly pressing the publisher.

The reality for the majority of mid-list or new authors is that while the book will be edited well (because editors by their very nature really do care about what they do), the retail visibility and marketing will be close to zero. It’s a simple equation. In many other industries (fashion, cars, furniture) the number of items being promoted is far lower, so the focus is far greater. Traditional publishers have a very difficult time doing anything other than provide sales material to their selling organisation and paying merchandising fees to retailers. And do you know how far ahead they have to sell to the main trade wholesalers? Nine months! So a traditional publisher has to plan a very long way ahead. You might have the best manuscript since the Highway Code but you always have to wait a long time to see publication.

50% of Penguin USA’s fiction sales are now digital. So why not find a good freelance proof reader, and an editor, perfect your book, then release it as an ebook, straightaway? 

I’ll look at this in the next post.

Easy Steps to eBook Success

Over the next few weeks I'll be looking at the entire process of creating and publishing your own ebook. This will cover several key elements:

1. Writing
2. Editing and proofing
3. Making an ePub
4. Distributing your book through Amazon, Apple, B&N etc
5. Online marketing, including Google Ads
6. Social media, using Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc
7. Traditional marketing, with a special focus on your local media