The Long Road Part Three - Making a Novel into a Book
THE LONG ROAD TO SELF-PUBLICATION
“Five Ferries took 39 years to write & 16 months for everything else,”
Part 3 – Making a Novel into a Book
After nearly 40 years of effort, I have published Five Ferries, my first novel. The writing took up most of this time, but in the last year and a half I entered the world of self-publication, and this is a story in itself.
After seven months of editing, I learned what remained to be done before I could publish.
I would have to decide upon the dimensions of the printed page. Several formats are standard, while others require custom printing. This sent me to my bookshelves with a ruler.
I had to choose a font type and size and consider the spacing of the lines, where the page numbers would appear, and what page header to use (book title, author’s name, chapter name, something else, or nothing?). I had to choose a chapter title format, and a symbol (or just extra space) to separate sections of text, and decide whether the first letter of a chapter should be enlarged (a “drop cap”) and, if so, above or below the line. Each question from my editor sent me spinning around my apartment, pulling books off shelves, making a general mess to find examples of what I what I thought I remembered about novel format.
Next was the design of the title page and the copyright page, and whether to include a table of contents, an introduction, a preface, a dedication and/or acknowledgements (in front or back)? Would I include an author bio—with or without a photo (a current photo or one from 1978)? Also, what retail price should I choose, understanding that the cost to print would depend in part on the number of formatted pages. For this, I visited The Strand, my go-to bookstore in Greenwich Village (“14 miles of books”) to survey the prices on novels of similar size and genre. Coming up with a cover was a process onto itself, which I’ll leave to Part 4 - Worth A Thousand Words: Cover Design.
There remained a number of business decisions. Should I purchase a Pre-assigned Control Number (“PCN”) from the Library of Congress—which requires submitting a finished copy, register on the Publisher Catalog in Publication (the “PCIP”)—which libraries use to catalog books, purchase an International Standard Book Number (an “ISBN”)—which identifies a book’s publisher—or take a free ISBN from a specific publisher (which would tie me to that publisher, unless I republished under a different ISBN), obtain a barcode (otherwise part of the ISBN)—important for commercial sales and typically including the retail price and/or should I register on the Bowker website—which libraries use to find the ISBN list and details about books.
What printer(s) should I use? Amazon is where most people I knew would buy their books and Amazon’s Createspace paid a high royalty rate on print sales, but did not permit returns. IngramSpark produced high-quality books, had global reach through bookstores, and allowed book returns (which bookstores often require). I set up accounts with both services, and shared my passwords with my editor/publisher.
Having heard horror stories from my brother about formatting his novel, I left much of the above to my editor, who became a sort of general contractor, and I simply responded to her email inquiries. I nonetheless had to draft a summary of the book for the back cover, a shorter blurb for Amazon, a copyright page and acknowledgements—which had to be lengthy given all the help I got. And, I had to deal with the cover (see Part 4 ).
While my editor completed the formatting, I emailed two proofreaders she recommended, explaining my story was set in various countries with characters who spoke in foreign attempts at English or slang from English-speaking countries. One proofreader asked to see the manuscript, so she could determine if she’d have trouble completing the job. She said she’d get back to me within 24 hours but I heard nothing for three days. When she responded, she said she was late because she couldn’t tear herself away from the book. I thanked her for the great review (no longer fearful of smoke up my ass) and hired her.
Once I had a cover design, CreateSpace printed a draft of the book and sent it to the proofreader. Three weeks turned into five weeks, partly because of a misunderstanding about fact-checking. She was so meticulous she advised me she couldn’t find a “The Prince William” pub in Central London and I had to advise her the book was fictional and included lots of made-up names. But she finally she sent corrections to my editor, who layered her own comments over the corrections and sent the book to me. I approved most of the changes and debated others with my editor, and then she sent it back to the printer for another draft book.
By this time, Amazon had closed down CreateSpace, sending it clients onto Kindle Direct Publishing (“KDP”). To avoid getting caught up in the confusion of this transition, we asked IngramSpark to print the second draft. I had nearly run out of volunteers at this point and so had only two copies printed, for one friend and myself, and did my final read-through. Then my editor passed the few remaining corrections to the printers, and the manuscript was locked down for distribution. Then came the celebration and then the hard part: marketing.
See Part 4 – Worth a Thousand Words: Cover Design, and Part 5 – Novel Marketing
Formatting Resources:
Publisher Catalog in Publication (PCIP): https://www.loc.gov/publish/cip/about/process.html
Pre-assigned Control Number (PCN): http://www.loc.gov/publish/pcn/
International Standard Book Number (ISBN): http://www.isbn.org/
Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP): https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US
IngramSpark: https://myaccount.ingramspark.com/account/signup