I gave a workshop on August 24, 2010 on e-book publishing. Click on the image to see the charts (takes you away from mtsneffelspress.com)

UPDATE: Here are two questions posed by Cheryl:

Question: Hi Dave,
I enjoyed your workshop at the library yesterday. I have questions! When preparing my book as an e-book, do the various ‘stores’ have a preference for number of pages in the book. In an 81/2×11, single-space format, my book has about 108 pages, including the cover. In 5.5×8.5, single-space pocketbook format, it has 218 pages. Does length of book matter? Does page size matter? Also, I’m still looking for a POD company. Do you offer that service? Thanks, Cheryl

Answer: No, there is no preference for size. In fact, the size of the paper is not a consideration. An e-book is simply a file that an e-book reader, such as Kindle, formats for display. The reader determines how big the text will be (see the samples on this chart). So the concept of page numbers is meaningless. And, no, the length of the book does not matter. That’s entirely up to you. And, re POD, no, I don’t offer that service. There are any number of outfits online who will do that. I personally have a rather low opinion of such companies, many of whom charge large ‘setup’ fees that I don’t think are necessary. But I can point you toward a printer I like. See the Technology Page. In all fairness, I should point out that Amazon has a POD service and so does Smashwords. But you will have to provide finished files for them—just as you would for a printer.

Question: Okay, Dave – more questions. When I’m taking out ‘white space’ in my document, do I take out the space between one chapter and the next? Also, this book was started years ago on a different computer with an ancient version of Word. Now, I don’t know how to take out page breaks, or page numbers. It is in both Word 2000 and Word 2007 now, plus PDF. My head is spinning…Thanks, Cheryl

Answer: Your submitted text should be pretty much continuous. The Smashwords Style Guide and Smashword’s sample manuscript give examples. You end your chapter, hit return a couple times, put in your chapter title or number, hit return, and continue with your text. Smashwords offers an interesting idea: after carefully making a backup of your original manuscript, save your document as pure text, then import it back into your word processor. (I use Open Office Writer instead of Word—it’s free and better-behaved.) Doing so completely eliminates the formatting. You may want to go back in and bold your chapter headings or do other minor formatting. At the same time, take out all the white space (long strings of carriage returns without any text). Both Amazon (Kindle) and Smashwords (Nook, etc.) do not like .pdf. I tried it once—it came out really weird. They do like Microsoft Word .doc files. (Open Office Writer can create these too.) But if you have strange formatting in your .doc file, and it sounds like you do, very carefully save a backup copy and name it something else, and then experiment with the various ways to export your manuscript as text (Word has two or three ways to do this) and experiment with importing them back into Word until you get what you want.

Our thanks to Office Depot for being the model of customer service! Our three-year-old, much-used Okidata war-horse-quality color laser printer was pretty worn out and insisted it needed some expensive new drums, so we replaced it with a Lexmark 540n from our local Office Depot. The difference in printer generations was immediately apparent; the Lexmark print quality was superior and the photographs much better. We quickly went through the toner in the “introductory” cartridges and paid a king’s ransom for another set (which is to be expected), and had just installed them—about $280′s worth!

Alas, there was one difficulty. Just 14 days after we purchased the printer (today) I was printing our Christmas letter when the red light came on with a message saying there was a jam and I should open the paper tray. I did so and to my surprise, sitting in the paper tray were a little wheel and a couple ball bearings. Oops! Close inspection with a flashlight revealed that indeed it was not just parts coming loose; a little retaining mechanism had in fact broken.

I called Office Depot. After talking through the problem the fellow on the phone noted that I’d purchased it just 14 days ago—the maximum time they allow for returns for just any old reason. I had purchased an extended warranty and of course the printer was still under the manufacturer’s warranty, but he suggested if I could come in right away, they’d just treat it as a return.

So, we hopped in the car and made the 15-mile trip to Montrose (the nearest city of any size, if you count 16,000 people as a city of any size). Our first thought was simply to exchange the printer for another. But we talked at length with one of the floor folks, Will, with whom we discussed the pros and cons. We decided that the Lexmark might not be the best option, so we went with a Brother HL-4040CDN, a titch more upscale with some additional features that our original Okidata had that the Lexmark did not. The store manager not only processed the return, but allowed us to return the new toner cartridges. We’d barely started on them. I fully realize they’re now useless to Office Depot, but customer satisfaction is high in their value set. We ended up getting all our money back for the Lexmark (and cartridges) and applied it to the Brother (and an extra set of cartridges). And Will stayed with us the whole time and then loaded the (big, heavy) box into our car. All told, he spent about an hour with us.

Our thanks and a tip of the hat to Office Depot! They knew how to solve a big problem for us and get us back in production. Well done!

Update Jan 13, 2010: I guess I should tell you that the Brother didn’t work out. For whatever reason, and believe me we tried everything, the color in the printouts was unsaturated and faded-looking. My wife sells greeting cards (see her site) and they have to look good. And we know of someone who has the same Brother, and they have the same problem, so we think it’s systemic rather than an aberration. So we returned the brother and purchased another Lexmark C540n. The print quality is wonderful, although we’re leery of its mechanical stability. We bought the Office Depot extended warranty just in case, and we’re treating it with kid gloves. Unfortunately, I became addicted to the Brother’s ability to print both sides of the paper, a feature the Lexmark doesn’t have. So when I print a manuscript or a large document, I have to get the print settings exactly right, then flip the pile of paper over and put it back into the input tray. If I’ve been careful, I now have a duplex copy.

Broom 1 is now available at the Kindle Store (click on image)

Yes, Kindle doesn’t have color. But it’s apparently creating quite a stir. I haven’t looked at the competitors, so if you have, please add a comment to this post.

So, Broom 1 is available now four ways: a free chapter a week via e-mail, via the Catalog Page on this website, via Kindle, or hard copy from Amazon.

Now, that brings us to plans for Broom 2. Broom 2, The Story of the Great American Flying Broomstick Book 2: The Missing Wand, is only available in paperback, and only available on this website (and a few local bookstores). But…it’s so easy to upload to Kindle that I plan to add Book 2 shortly—watch this website for more information.

And Broom 3, The Story of the Great American Flying Broomstick Book 3: FOG at the Crossroads, will be available for purchase soon! It will, of course, be available via this website for only $9.95 plus shipping. And, yes, I plan to put it on Kindle too.

Saturday, March 21st, will feature two morning presentations and one in the afternoon. Saturday, March 28th, will again feature two morning presentations, the first of which I will give on “Marketing on the Internet.” The event after mine will be a panel discussion and I’ll be part of the panel. The afternoon session features an author reception with about 20 authors (including me).

Here are topics I plan to cover in my presentation:

• Getting onto Amazon–the pros and cons
• Setting up a blog on blogspot.com or else using WordPress (free) on your own website
• How to get your own URL and how to use it–how to find a hosting provider such as Yahoo or an independent
• Web contact forms–without the spam
• Web mailing lists–meeting the legal requirements
• Posting or commenting on other author’s blogs–getting the word out
• Video–the YouTube revolution–as easy as a webcam–using XP’s built-in movie maker
• Facebook and Twitter–connecting with Millennials–and Baby Boomers!
• Setting up on-line ordering on your website or blog
• PayPal (or Google or others), with Buy Now buttons and Shopping Carts (it’s not that hard–really!)
• Shipping (UPS or else USPS Media Mail)
• Collecting and paying state sales tax for Colorado sales
• Demo of a blog (this one) to show how easy it is to post new material (I’m assuming the library’s WiFi will reach into the presentation room

See you there! Use the contact form if you have any questions.

Uh, that’s so 20th-century. Actually, maybe more 19th-century. Ah, the golden years. But memory weeds out unpleasant realities. Such an era never existed.

And it exists even less now, if that’s possible. Publishers are hurting and laying off staff. No one reads anymore, they say. The book is doomed. And yet a recent Time magazine article notes that overall readership is up 3.5%. (They didn’t say over what period.)

What’s happening is a complete restructuring of the entire market mechanism for moving words from authors to readers. And with it is a shift in the business of moving those words.

Publishing got to be big business. Consolidation has cut diversity and leaves us with only a few big houses. And big business means big money, and that means risk. A declining market makes managers (and editors) risk-averse. Like old TV networks, they stick with some variation of a previous success. Creativity and experimentation are four-letter words.

So what’s the future of publishing novels? Predicting the future is notoriously inaccurate because we act like those old TV networks and use the past to guide us into the future. No go. The mechanism for moving words from authors to readers is undergoing radical revision. Will it settle out into something new? Maybe.

Let’s look at some trends. Not all that long ago, self-publishing was viewed as the kiss of death. You had to have a towering ego to think that people would read something the literati had rejected. That is changing. Self-publishing has become remarkably inexpensive and the resulting book can be indistinguishable from the tomes the big boys put out. What seems to be changing is the money.

Are you of such an age to remember when there was just rock music? Everyone under 30 listened to the same stuff. Elvis. The Beatles. But then some genius in some ivory tower in Hollywood decided to segment the market. We had hard rock. Acid rock. Experimental rock. By segmenting the market, the thinking went, the overall market grew. But what was lost in the process was the sense of community that young people felt when they all listened to the same music.

The same thing happened with television. Three networks. The entire country watched either the networks or a local station. That meant you could go to school or work the next day and socialize based on a common experience. No more. With hundreds of channels available, there are few entertainment experiences we share, perhaps with the exception of American Idol.

That’s happening in the publishing industry now. The average bookstore now has acres of floor space to cover the thousands of books that each appeal to a niche market. In Hemmingway’s day, a bookstore was a cubbyhole and everyone read the same things (well, everyone of a literary bent). No more. No common experience. Segmentation reigns.

This is not sustainable for big businesses. Market fragmentation means many products, whereas big businesses require economy of scale. Sell a single product to as large a market as possible. And so the big businesses are proving to be unsustainable.

Where does that leave you? Your novel probably won’t hit the New York Times bestseller list. I can say this with about 99.99999% surety. But there are people out there who would be delighted to delve into your world. Maybe not a crowd, but some. Nothing they see on the bookstore shelves interests them.

So, decouple money from the process of moving words from authors to readers. If nothing else, think of novel writing as a hobby, since it certainly won’t pay the bills. You do it for the love of the art and the thought that somewhere out there, you’re delighting someone.

Your options, if you want to see your words printed on paper, are slim, pretty much limited to self-publishing. Your options expand if you consider the Amazon Kindle and similar devices. You can also invent an entirely new novel form where you serialize it on the web—and reader feedback influences the ultimate outcome. Actually, that’s not a new idea. Novels were regularly serialized back in the 1800s. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was originally serialized. In fact, serialization started before the novel was finished, so reader feedback had real effect.

The fact is the mechanism for moving words from author to reader is changing rapidly and evolving as authors experiment with new delivery mechanisms. I chose to self-publish the Flying Broomstick books because I believed in them and the feedback I received was positive. It still is. I find I can sell books easily, even if they don’t sell themselves. (Marketing is a whole ‘nother story.) And I have a pretty long list of people who receive a free chapter a week via e-mail.

I hacked my way through the thicket of business and technology problems that stood between me and a published book. As a side benefit, I can help others through that thicket, and Mt. Sneffels Press has moved from self-publishing to a micropress—Paul and Becky McCreary’s book is on our list, with more on the way. And my third Flying Broomstick book is in final review.

So, while you’re creating your world-shaking novel, think about world-shaking mechanisms to move your words to your readers. Maybe you’ll create the next publishing revolution!

Similarly, when writing your novel you may be putting some conditions on what you will deliver. For example, if you are writing through the voice of a narrator, the narrator may have limitations that keep your customer from seeing the full story. Perhaps you want to create ambiguities that you will resolve later. But be careful. Will the ambiguities frustrate or fascinate?

And, just as a proposal sets the scope of work, your introductory chapter sets the scope of what you will do for your reader. For example, if your story is a fantasy about a faraway castle, your reader better know that within a few paragraphs. Ask yourself if by the end of the first page your reader understands what your novel is about. Are you going to develop an interesting character? Are you going to describe a long historical chain of events? Is this novel filled with humor? If you lead your reader in the wrong direction and suddenly make a course correction, you may frustrate and possibly lose your reader.

So, think of your first page as your proposal. You are telling your reader what you will do for him or her. The reader may or may not be interested.

One of the other aspects of the proposal I’m helping to write is that it has to lay out the benefits the customer will receive if they choose us. Can you lay out benefits your reader should expect from your novel? In novel writing we use the term “hook.” But isn’t this really just communicating to your reader why he or she wants to read on? It certainly is! Think of it. You are in competition with thousands of other writers. People cannot read everything. And in these hard economic times, readers are becoming scarce.

Indeed, you are in fact writing a proposal for customer. You want the reader to choose your book instead of someone else’s book. No one reads a book without taking a peek first. Perhaps they look at the text on the back cover. Perhaps they have read a review that struck their fancy. Maybe the cover art is particularly fascinating. In other words, you are selling.

So, thinking of your introduction as a proposal, you must do several things. You must tell your reader what you are going to do. Will it be a mystery, fantasy, a gritty character-driven novel, or something out of the English countryside? Next you need to lay out the benefits your reader will receive. In just a few sentences your reader will be able to tell whether she thinks her money is well spent. Or, maybe she will want to spend her money on something else.

So, you are placing a proposal in front of your reader. Your reader has to understand what you are offering, how you will deliver it, how well you will deliver it, and what benefits the reader will get from reading the book. Is your reader going to be entertained, instructed, berated, coddled, or see the world in an entirely new light?

So sit back and look at your first page. Would you buy your own book? Will it give you ten bucks worth of satisfaction? Can you really take yourself into that fantasy world? Can you really navigate inside your flawed hero? If your reader can’t tell what you’re up to, he’ll move onto something else.

So, forget those long-winded, dreamy introductions. In your first sentence you must convey the scope and the benefits of your book. Yep, there’s not much difference between writing a proposal and writing a novel.

Bunk. Don’t quit your day job. Look at this realistically: for every book published through one of the major publishing houses, there are probably a thousand submissions. The odds are seriously stacked against you.

But, you say, someone has to be published, right? It’s just a matter of marketing yourself! Well, this is true, someone will be published. Perhaps that will be you. But think of professional sports. Count up the number of major league baseball teams and multiply by how many players they keep around (maybe 30). Now multiply that by the number of high schools in the country that have baseball teams. How many aspiring ball players? Tens of thousands! Very, very few make it to the major leagues, and those who do often get there for reasons other than sheer talent. It’s the same in the music business. For every pop star there are thousands of garage bands, all of whom think their music is better than what’s published. Oh, and it’s true for painting and sculpture and so on. The days when a person could make a living writing novels is long gone and won’t come back.

So what is one to do? You are in love with your novel, your characters spring from the page, the plot sizzles, your themes are probed deeply, and you end it all with a twist.

Let’s look at some cold, hard facts. The market for printed books is shrinking at a worryingly rapid pace. Amazon long ago expanded beyond the book market to stay alive. So, for publishers, the business doesn’t look good. And what do business people do when under stress? (And please believe me, these are business people!) When an organization is under stress, it gets conservative. Careful. Deliberate. Risk averse.

That means they’re not going to take a chance on you.

So, what do you do? Well, you keep on going, of course. After all, this is art! You create a wonderful novel, have it printed by a good printer like the one I use who is quite inexpensive for small quantities, you sell some locally, you give copies to your friends, and you bask in their compliments. It’s great!

Perhaps a friend of a friend of a friend of an agent will see your book. It’s happened. Just not often. Think hard about writing as your passion and your hobby and think about your employer as your friend and shelter and mortgage-payer. And stop making yourself sick waiting for your ticket to the top.