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Technology Risk and the Independent Author

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Two years ago I looked at hundreds of WordPress themes in anticipation of putting up this site. I’d never paid for a theme before, but time and again I kept coming back to the themes at StudioPress.com. Their designs were clean, their support seemed solid, and after a while I decided to pull the trigger on their Streamline theme, which is the theme you see on this site.

For a year and a half I was perfectly satisfied. The support was excellent, the theme performed as expected, and I was able to get on with the business of blogging.

About six months ago, however — give or take — StudioPress became a subsidiary of CopyBlogger, the underlying software for the themes was radically altered, and the support on the site became spottier and more contentious. I never faulted the moderators for putting limits on the amount of customization they offered, but the tone and frequency of such reprimands seemed to signal an intent to drive additional fee-for-service revenue from the basic themes being sold.

Because I knew upgrading my current theme would break a number of modifications I’d made, I put off the upgrade as long as possible. At the same time I faced an ever-growing backlog of changes I wanted to make on my site, and at some point it became obvious that I should upgrade before making any additional changes to an older version I had every intention of migrating away from.  [ Read more ]

Formatting TYOTE for CreateSpace POD

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This post documents the workflow I followed while formatting my short story collection, The Year of the Elm (TYOTE), for printing with CreateSpace. If you’re venturing down the same print-on-demand (POD) road I hope my experience makes your project a little easier. I also fervently hope this post reminds me of all the useful things I learned the next time I have a manuscript to format. (Had I not kept notes, ninety-percent of what follows would already be lost.)

As posted previously, I finalized my cover redesign, uploaded the files to CreateSpace, and got the proof back in short order. To my utter amazement, all of the decisions I made turned out exactly as I hoped, and I was quite pleased with the result.

But I worked hard for that happiness.  [ Read more ]

Two Spaces After a Period

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It is acceptable to use two spaces after a period.

Why am I moved to make this declaration? Because every so often a typographic tyrant goes off their OCD medication and launches a caustic diatribe at anyone who prefers to use two spaces between adjoining sentences. These deranged attacks, absurd as they are, can do real damage to writers. Ditchwalk will not tolerate anyone who uses authority or prominence to ridicule or intimidate writers, or in any way make writing more difficult than it already is.

The Question in Context
As a writer of any kind — private, professional, traditional, experimental — you have two obligations. The first is to be honest about your own intentions. The second is to communicate your intentions to the intended reader as effectively as possible.

These obligations hold whether you are writing an email to a single person or publishing a work for the masses. They remain your responsibility even if you choose to involve others in the process. Agents, editors, publishers, typographers and others who make a living off authorship are peripheral to your work as a writer. They may be central to your goals as a business person, they may be central to your ability to produce a physical book or e-book file, but they are not writers.

You are a writer. Your job is to write for your readers. That’s true whether you’re an established author or just starting out. The problem, of course, is that when you’re just starting out you’re not sure what you’re doing. Complicating matters is the fact that some of the agents, editors, publishers, typographers and others who make a living off authorship will gladly claim expertise and authority even in matters they know nothing about. This includes everything from telling you what your obligations are as a writer to how many blank spaces should follow a period.

Why would someone do this? Because it makes money. Because they are control freaks. Because they genuinely believe their little corner of the universe is the only thing that matters. Because they have confused the needs of the reader with the demands of the market. Because they hate the fact that you can write and they can’t. Take your pick.

Whether you choose to defer to peripheral voices or ignore them, no choice voids your basic obligations as a writer. There are no shortcuts. You must ask and answer a million questions in order to write well. At times you may find there is no agreement about an issue. In those instances you will have to choose what you prefer or think best, not what’s right or true.

The most important thing I can tell you about navigating any writing issue is this. The second most important thing I can tell you is to always keep perspective. Relative to the eternal obligations of every author, the question of how many spaces should follow a period is a flea on the great stellar flank of our galaxy.

You should also be particularly wary of any agent, editor, publisher, typographer or other person peripheral to the writer-reader relationship who uses a claim of expertise to cow you into conformity. Authorship is about making conscious, informed choices, not about blindly accepting the opinions of others.

How many writers have ever said that two spaces after a period is a sign of amateurism? How many writers would dismiss your content outright if you used two spaces instead of one? Is this a common source of discussion at writing workshops and retreats? Have you ever seen a breakout session at a convention titled The Two-Space Debate? Has anyone ever said, in the entire history of the world, “This would have been a great book, but because the author used two spaces after a period it is an unmitigated disaster.”

If you are writing a book narrowly targeted at people who believe two spaces after a period is a portent of the End Times, then yes, you should probably use a single space after a period. Other than that, you should learn as much about this and every other issue as you can, then make your own case-by-case decisions.

For myself, I have generally used two spaces after a period to no ill effect. No one who has ever paid me money to write, or ever received a document written by me, has ever asked me to use a single space after a period, or even commented about my practice. Recently, however, after twenty-five years of writing, I did come across an instance in which I found two spaces to be distracting, and I will expand on that experience below.

In the remainder of this post I intend to: dismantle a recent diatribe against the use of two spaces after a period; explain when and why I use one space or two spaces after a period; make the case that excessive interest in this issue should be included as classification criteria in DSM-5.  [ Read more ]

The TYOTE Proof Arrives

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On December 31st I ordered the proof for my first print-on-demand (POD) book, a short story collection titled The Year of the Elm (TYOTE). I’m using CreateSpace (CS) to manufacture the book, and CS gave me three shipping options for the proof. I chose the slowest and cheapest option: three weeks for a little over three dollars. I did so because I couldn’t imagine it would actually take three weeks for the proof to arrive, and it didn’t. It took eight days, including a long three-day weekend.  [ Read more ]

Sticking a Shiv in Mark Twain

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I ran across a story yesterday about NewSouth, Inc’s intent to publish an expurgated version of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in which the n-word has been replaced. At first I assumed this to be some sort of fringe, crackpot effort. Upon reading further, however, I realized that a lot of thought had gone into the decision, and that the people behind the effort seemed sincere. That their objectives are misguided and ultimately untenable in light of their own stated beliefs only makes the decision to go ahead with the project that much more confusing and disappointing.

Before I question the individual and collective rationales that have led what appear to be otherwise decent people to the precipice of insanity, I want to make a larger point. Anyone over the age of twenty knows that you do not alter an author’s text to fit your world view. No matter how personally offensive you find an author’s words, no matter how society may have changed since a text was written, no matter how difficult open discussion of an author’s work might be, you do not, ever — ever — change an author’s text to make your life easier or better. You can write your own book, you can write volumes of criticism about the original text, but you’re not allowed to rewrite history for your own ends.

Everybody knows this, and until now I assumed that literary scholars and publishers understood the reasoning behind this prohibition better than most. That the initiator of this particular act of literary barbarism is Twain scholar Alan Gribben, a long-time English professor and head of the English Department at Auburn University at Montgomery, is almost mind-boggling. The publishers aiding and abetting Professor Gribben at NewSouth are Randall Williams and Suzanne La Rosa.

Anticipating pushback against his bastard child, Professor Gribben has already gone on a name-calling offensive:

Gribben has no illusions about the new edition’s potential for controversy. “I’m hoping that people will welcome this new option, but I suspect that textual purists will be horrified,” he said.

If you’re not familiar with the hallowed halls of academia, this is the kind of thing that professors say when they they’re trying to protect shaky intellectual turf. Accusing people of textual purism is a transparent preemptive attempt to demonize those who object to Professor Gribben’s literary crime. It also conveniently ignores the fact that intentionally changing words in order to make a work more appealing or salable has nothing to do with textual purism. What Professor Gribben is doing is not disputing or advocating for a version of Huckleberry Finn, but actively rewriting Mark Twain in a demented attempt to save Twain from himself.

That NewSouth has decided to publish Professor Gribben’s version of history is perhaps understandable from a business perspective, but disappointing in terms of the cultural stewardship we hope all publishers embrace. Again, no dissection of the publisher’s motives need be undertaken in order to understand how flawed this decision is and how completely it undercuts the foundations of authorship, history and culture. Any publisher’s attempt to alter an author’s words is a violation not just of that author’s work, but of every author’s work, and anyone who proposes going down that road for any reason — and I mean any reason — by definition lacks the necessary steel to assess, edit or publish literature.  [ Read more ]

CreateSpace Shipping for Proofs

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My desire to offer a print-on-demand (POD) version of my short story collection, The Year of the Elm, is close to fruition. I’ve completed the content formatting and cover design, and passed CreateSpace’s submission tests for both files.

Yesterday I ordered my first proof. While filling out the ordering form I was given the following shipping options:

  • Economy Shipping $3.61 Estimated Arrival Date: Tue, Jan 18, 2011
  • Standard Shipping $6.39 Estimated Arrival Date: Wed, Jan 12, 2011
  • Priority Shipping $24.78 Estimated Arrival Date: Tue, Jan 04, 2011

Now, keep in mind that I ordered my proof on December 30th. That means the estimated shipping times for the above options are 19 days, 13 days and 5 days respectively. Those times also include 3, 2 and 1 weekends, respectively — and all include a national holiday for New Year’s Day.  [ Read more ]

Independent Authors and the Bookware Biz

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In a recent post I rejected the idea that self-published authors always need to own their own ISBN’s. My rationale was primarily financial, but it was also influenced by my belief that independent authors should not try to mimic the publishing industry’s traditional business model:

Still, as a self-publishing author I think it’s important to remember that what I’m doing is not what most people in the greater publishing industry are doing.

I may be looking to use the same sales channels that everybody else is using, and I may be packaging my content in the same delivery vehicle (a book), but in terms of scale there are significant difference that shouldn’t be ignored.

It’s understandable that independent authors would look to the book industry for a template upon which to base their own self-publishing efforts. It’s understandable, but it’s also a mistake. To see why, imagine for a moment that you’re a potter. Your goal is to make your own pottery in your own studio, and to sell that pottery in a small shop. Would it make sense to base your manufacturing and sales decisions on the business models used by Corningware or Dansk? Or might you find more practical utility in mimicking the business models of other local artisans, even if they produced paintings and jewelry?

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Site Seeing: Joleene Naylor

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I found Joleene Naylor while searching for a cover designer for the POD version of my short story collection, The Year of the Elm. As I’ve said many times, the best thing about the internet is that it’s possible for anyone to connect with anyone no matter where they are. Despite this insight, however, I still tend to assume that 99.724% of all people on the interwebs are curled up in an overstuffed chair at an urban coffee shop, wirelessly transacting their way to hipster happiness.

You can imagine, then, that the following line in Joleene’s bio caught my eye:

She grew up in southwest Iowa surrounded by corn and very little entertainment — so she made her own.

As regular readers know, I grew up in Iowa myself. As regular readers also know, The Year of the Elm is about a boy growing up in a small town in Iowa where there isn’t a lot of entertainment, so as often as not he has to make his own.  [ Read more ]

The TYOTE POD cover

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Having had the smarts to avail myself of the experience, insight, technical skill and patience of designer Joleene Naylor, I now have a cover for the print-on-demand (POD) version of my short story collection, The Year of the Elm. I’m not only satisfied with the result, I’m thankful I didn’t have to produce it on my own. Whatever time it might have taken to do it myself, and however much I might have learned along the way, I wouldn’t have been able to replicate the give-and-take that helped us arrive at the solution you see here.

TYOTE Wraparound Cover

All of the issues I wanted to deal with or resolve have been dealt with or resolved. The look of the POD cover is an evolution of the original e-book cover, but it also speaks more directly (albeit suggestively) to the contents of the stories. I can’t help but feel that it’s an improvement.

Total cost for all of the advice, artistic input, technical wizardry and plain old common sense that Joleene provided: $50.  [ Read more ]

The ISBN Ownership Question

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In preparing to publish my first print-on-demand book I’ve had to confront a number of issues. Along with formatting and pricing and cover design I’ve gone back and forth about the ISBN ownership question. In the end I’ve come to a conclusion about ISBN’s that surprises me a bit, but I think I’m right. And if I’m not right, I don’t think it will cost me anything.

If you don’t know much about ISBN’s, don’t feel bad. I didn’t know anything about them until a year ago, when I set out to learn what I could. It’s a measure of how naive I was that I thought ISBN’s were some sort of quasi-governmental tracking number. In fact, ISBN’s are a product sold by the monopolistic R.R. Bowker company (which doesn’t go out of its way to make clear that it is not, in fact, a quasi-governmental agency).

I don’t dispute the publishing industry’s need for something like an ISBN. Given that a single book can be published in different versions and editions, and in different languages and countries, there obviously needs to be some way to differentiate between all those variations. If you want the Romanian large-print edition of Moby Dick, you need some means of ordering that ensures you get the version you’re expecting. The ISBN system makes that possible.

I’m also not against the idea that a for-profit company services the ISBN market. I don’t like monopolies, and R.R. Bowker is clearly a monopoly. But every publisher, bookseller and book manufacturer relies on the ISBN numbering system, and until that changes — or somebody shoves the Sherman Anti-Trust Act down Bowker’s throat — there’s no point in fighting the beast. (Some of you are wondering how multiple companies could hand out ISBN’s without the whole system collapsing. It’s a fair question, answered in full by the various companies registering domain names all over the world.)  [ Read more ]