The SLUSHPILE Blog

If five years in business has taught me anything, it is that if anything major is going to go wrong, it will be right before we release a new title. I remember that with one of James Spurr’s it was the hard drive melting down. Another title, maybe one of his, maybe not, the pdf maker crapped out. Today, with Janjaweed a day away from being declared ‘done’, the computer simply quit running. That was at 5:30 a.m.

By 9:30 a.m. I had made a trip to Staples and picked up a new cpu. Nothing fancy, just something to get me through until I figure out what I really want. The rest of the day I spent reloading software (all of which ‘took’) and copying all the files on our external hard drive back-up from the old computer into the new computer. Thank heavens I back up religiously. Thank heavens it all actually worked (sometimes you wonder when you’re backing up, what happens if the back-up doesn’t work?)

Anyways, I’m back, with the total loss of a day and nothing more.

But it has been one LONG day.

Everyone have a grat weekend.

Royalty Statements and accompanying checks for sales period closed 6/30/2010 were mailed today.

Yesterday, I emailed off the electronic ‘galleys’ to the authors of Janjaweed. Galleys used to be on actual paper ran through the printing press using the first printing ‘plates’ for the book. They would consist of many and sometimes massive mistakes. Little of the mistakes would have to do with editing, that was already done. Most of the mistakes were due to the typesetting, a long, laboroius task. 

I wish I could say that electronic galleys were not as prone to error as the old-fashioned ones. But they are. By the time I’m emailing off the galleys to the author, their manuscript has been through three different software programs on its journey, resulting in the near-end product having weird occurences in the text. Odd spacing. Uneven indents. Mismatched fonts. So once again, we go through the weeding out process.

The fun part is that for the first time, we’re reading through the work in the actual format that the reader will see it. It looks like a book, and it reads like a book (there is a difference). It’s no longer a manuscript, and one starts getting a good glimpse of the full power of the work.

Just another reason I love publishing.

Today and tomorrow of editing Janjaweed, and I will be done. I’ll format it over the weekend and shoot the pdf off to the authors as soon as it is done. As soon as they have a chance to go through it a final time (and I’ll be reading through it a final time, also) I’ll upload to Kindle and iBooks. Then we’ll send it off to reviewers and let it marinate for about six weeks while they read it.

This would bring us to an official release date of about September 11. Which brings up the interesting quandary of do we avoid that date like the plague, or go with serendipity and make that the official date? Both the authors and I have discussed the possibility that we may all end up with a ‘fatwah’ on our butts after the release of this book. Releasing it on 9-11 may add to the perception that we’re trying to be inflamatory (we’re not – facts are simply facts and if certain sects of the moslem religion come out looking less than well there is little I can do about it. If the release date coincides with the date when they made the unfortunate choice to kill several thousand americans – there’s little I can do about that either, other than change the release date – but why should I have to?)

So, September 11, 2010, it is. Available on Kindle and iBooks August 1st. Pre-order information will go up Monday, July 26.

I’m on the second round of edits for Joe and Jane Matthews’ Janjaweed. Normally, 2nd round edits go quickly and easily because I’ve already been through the ms once, the author has again gone through it, and thus I’m only looking for things missed on the prior go through. Usually I would be formatting it simultaneously.

With Janjaweed, however, Joe, Jane and I all agreed that some material could be added that would add to the setting and background of the story and the very real events that are currently happening in Sudan. So Joe and Jane got to work and added the material. Added material to an already edited work equals no quick 2nd round edit, but a much more detailed line-by-line and character-by-character read through again, which will be followed by the ms again going back to the authors, and then a 3rd round by me once it again comes back.

Normally I avoid additional material going into an already 1st round edited work like the plague. My number one rule in editing is that all the revisions, rewrites and major adjustments need to be done before we start that line-by-line, character-by-character edit. Editing work that is still in flux is like vacuuming the floor while the party is still going on. No sense cleaning up the confetti until it’s all been tossed.

But some things are just worth the extra time and effort. Material that may help readers better understand the overall situation and perhaps motivate them to be of some help after they are done reading may mean a lot to someone currently enslaved in Sudan.

In spite of having to put in extra time on it, I’m tentatively shooting for a September release date. Initially I was hoping for the first, but I’m thinking now that it will be later in the month, although it should show up in ebook form prior to that, possibly as early as August. But for the printed book, we need time for reviewers to get a look at the finished text and actually write a review. Hence, the official release date will be a little longer than the ebook availability.

Everyone have a great weekend. Going off this evening to help my mother pick green beans. The upside is she’s feeding us supper, including freshly picked blackberries in a freshly baked blackberry pie. I can pick a few beans for that.

And the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith. – Luke 17:5

Chart courtesy of Foner Books http://www.fonerbooks.com/selfpublishing/?p=213

Chart courtesy of Foner Books

Just so you all don’t think I’ve been doing nothing for the last couple of days (brief pause while I laugh myself into hysterics over that thought), here at last is the mock up cover for Janjaweed – Devils on Horseback.

This will probably go through some tweaks yet, and I’m NOT AT ALL HAPPY with the quality of the web image! Said cover looks much better in ‘real life’ than on web. But the web does not like a) transparencies, and b) textrues.

But a poor imitation of the real thing. Web does not like transpariencies or textures.

Here is the accompanying blurb (also subject to tweaking):

June 30 marked the ending of the six month sales period from 1/1/2010 to 6/30/2010. All our books are on a six month sales period for the first two years of their published life. After two years, they’re on a yearly sales period running from July 1st of the previous year to June 30. This is a standard contract addendum which has been in place for many years within the publishing industry and is not unique to ourselves. I have to wonder, however, how necessary it is.

With the advent of ebooks and their growing popularity, a trend I can’t help but see growing for many years to come, the old rules of shelf life on new releases no longer seems as cut and dried as it used to be. One can no longer assume that the majority of sales to be had will be within the first two years and that it is all downhill after that. Anything in the news that relates to a book’s subject matter can respark interest in it, and because of both pod and ebooks, said book is readily and easily findable.

It doesn’t just seem to be a rekindling of interest due to what’s in the news that keeps a title selling after that two year mark, either. Readers, catching on to the fact that titles now have an ‘infinite’ shelf life, are no longer as driven to get the latest and greatest. Are there still mega-best-sellers that readers snatch up as soon as they are released? Of course. But readers seem less hung up on publication dates than what they used to be. They’re more likely to browse for what truly interests them than what the media or PR machines tell them should interest them. POD and ebooks have allowed readers much more freedom of choice and they’re exercising that freedom.

The two year birthday of a book no longer means that its best days are over. Indeed, in the world of independent publishing where word of mouth is crucial and counted upon, two years may just be the beginning of its best days yet to come.

So will I keep the standard two year pub date equals once a year royalty accounting? For the near term, yes. But at some point, I may do away with it because other than cutting own on paper work for me, there doesn’t seem to really be a point to it anymore.

When I’m in the midst of edits, I slip through a hole and out of the universe for a while. Probably the only person more intensely connected with a book than an editor when editing it is the writer when writing it. If the work is of a subject the editor is not interested in, then editing becomes a long, slow slog. But if it’s a fascinating subject with fascinating characters, its no longer a chore, but an anticipated pleasure. Needless to say, the edit goes much more quickly when one finds oneself reaching for the ms at every convenient moment.

The downside is that an editor tends to miss more as they find themselves wrapped up in the story and forgetting to do their job.

At about 1:00 a.m. last night, I returned to the universe everyone else lives in as I finished the last of the first round edits on Joe Matthews’ Janjaweed-Devils on Horseback. After a last minute incorporation of a changed scene that he submitted for chapter 23, I’ll be ready to email him back the edits for him to begin going through. While he’s going through the changes, I’ll be working up a concept for the cover image. After I have a concept worked out, I’ll determine whether the cover will be one I can do in-house, or whether I need to out-source it to one of our free-lance artists. Cover Art subject and theme will decide which artist gets the work.

While the cover is being worked on, we’ll start compiling a list of pre-release reviewers and contacting them to see if they are interested in reviewing the book in pdf. Many of them are, and many more are willing to review it on Kindle or iBook.

Kindle and iBook reviewers are a new challenge for us and requires us changing our printing plan to accomodate them. Previously, we released our titles in hard-copy first (printed book form) and uploaded to Kindle, and then iBook, as an after thought. This will be our first book where we will be uploading to Kindle and iBook as soon as we have a text block, but sans the final cover image (as that will still be getting worked on and can’t be completed until we see what quoatable quotes we get back from reviewers). We will work up a quick mock-up as Apple won’t accept books with no cover image. But the entire purpose, at this point, of uploading to Kindle and iBooks is to accomodate reviewers. We’ll send them a coupon to download for free. Any sales to the general public that happen along the way are purely coincidental.

After we have quotes, we’ll add them to the now finished cover and ship the entire thing off to the printers. We also will replace the mock-up cover on Kindle and Apple with the real deal. The lag time between initial e-book upload and the release date of the book proper will be about six weeks.

Although e-books have already changed the look of our bottom-line (for the better) and are now changing our publishing process, I’m anticipating that this, too, will be for the better. One of the challenges of publishing is estimating the amount of books needing to be printed on that first print-run. Print too many, and the savings you see in a higher bulk print rate are eaten up with copies that never move, or move too slowly. Sales that happen because of the early up-load to Kindle and iBooks will help us determine the amount of interest the title is generating prior to that first print run. Also, I’m hoping that the availability of the title to reviewers on Kindle and iBooks will help streamline the review process to a faster turn-around time of the reviewer receiving the review copy and actually turning in a review. Something that can sometimes take far too long for something we’re not even certain will be usable for us in marketing.

I’m sure that by the time we hit our next title, that we will be tweaking the process, but I’m looking forward to how it goes this time and seeing the results.