Vince Donovan's Blog: With her hands around my neck...

After a few go-rounds, Priti modified the cover to fit Andy's A5 layout. This was followed by a certain amount of Lulu publishing wizard back-and-forthing, but here it is finally:

Sunny Valley on Lulu

Lulu says it may take up to 8 WEEKS until it is available on Amazon.

Things are just coming together when disaster strikes. Priti has finished the cover and sent me the file. Andy is making some last minor corrections to the text. I send Andy a copy of the cover just so he can see it. He writes back and sez: "Hey, this cover is 6x9. I've formatted the text for A5."

This is just the sort of thing that Andy would check and I would never check. I didn't notice that his review versions were A5 although he sent me several. I told Priti that book was going to be 6x9 because all of the other Lulu books I've done have been that size.

So now either the cover has to change, or the text. Actually, the cover has to change no matter what, because if Andy converts from A5 to 6x9 the page count will change, which changes the spine width, so at the very least the spine has to change.

Oh and: my friend Jennifer is back from a long adventure in India. I proudly showed her a printout of the new cover. Jen, an editor, immediately finds a typo.

Priti's new cover is AWESOME:

Andy got the "final" draft manuscript on Friday and has already turned around the page layout, which looks amazing. I'll admit that I didn't think layout was very important, but his work really makes a difference.

Now that I have the page layout, I can calculate the final dimensions of the cover. The book is 253 pages long now, so going to the Lulu Spinewidth Calculator, I find that the spine will be:
38.11 Postscript points
or 0.53 Inches
or 1.34 Centimeters
or 159 Pixels @ 300 dpi

I sent this off to Priti so she can finalize the cover. Once she is done all I need do is upload the two components--cover and text--to Lulu and I am basically done with the production end of things.

I received a very nice email from my friend Julie, who read and enjoyed THE CALIFORNIAD, my earlier novel. I gave her a pre-release draft of SUNNY VALLEY to see what she had to say.

"I would characterize it as a good and twisted Greek tragedy - wow ;-). I started it while waiting for a doctor's appointment and I wasn't feeling too hot. When I got out of the appointment I went home, called in sick and finished it up at 6:30 pm that evening."

It's always a good sign when someone calls in sick to finish your book!

My ad in the upcoming edition of Opium says: "Available online or at a subversive bookstore near you." Is that true? Is SUNNY VALLEY going to be on the shelves in bookstores around the country?

Like many, many people, bookstores hold an important place in my soul. I've spent thousands of hours in bookstores all around the world being nourished and fascinated by what's on the shelves.

And, like many people, bookstores are no longer my primary source for books. I used to live across the street from Booksmith in the Haight, an excellent bookstore, but we moved last year to a bookstore-deprived neighborhood so I had to find alternatives.

I have a Kindle now, so I download a lot of stuff. I also buy print books from Amazon. Since Stacey's bookstore closed, Amazon is the only place to get technical books unless I want to drive all the way down to Palo Alto.

So do bookstores matter to readers? Should I even try to get SUNNY VALLEY into bookstores--subversive or otherwise--for this release?

I managed to place my last self-published novel into several independent bookstores in Central California (where the story was set and where I received a review in the local paper). They each took four copies. I even sent them a poster with their order.

They sold all their copies within a few weeks but none of the bookstores re-ordered. When I called and asked why they said they figured that was about all the demand there was going to be. I asked if they would recommend my books to book clubs and they said no, their clubs had their lists full for the rest of the year.

What was my profit from all this activity? From calling the bookstores, making the poster, shipping the books, and making follow up calls? About $16. I sold ten times more copies over the web with ten times less effort.

Do bookstores matter to me as a self-published writer? Maybe. I think they still have a profound influence on the buying decisions of some people (not all). Because of this they receive an avalanche of marketing from publishers: press releases, standups, book tours, publicists, paid placement, etc. And bookstores, like everyone else, must play the marketing game. They must offer what people want to buy.

I'm not going to put a lot of effort into bookstores for this project. Even if a store would take my book, the marketing noise in a bookstore is much too loud for my book to get noticed. The only reason my book will sell in a bookstore is if someone comes in specifically looking for it. That person is actually more likely to buy it on the web and never bother with a bookstore.

Still, I wish I could preserve my relationship with bookstores. My ad in Opium says "available online or at a subversive bookstore near you." What I would like to do to deliver on my "subversive bookstore" promise is to try to convince one very cool bookstore in each Opium launch city (Boston, NY, SF) to to carry the book. I will tell them that they are the only retail outlet in their city, and that Todd is going to mention their bookstore at the launch.

And we'll see. The bookstore might make a little money if we drive some business their way. I won't make any money (the bookstore will take my profit), but it might lay the ground work for something in the future.

We'll see.

Marketing budget of SUNNY VALLEY is going to be a number similar to what bank CDs are paying in interest right now: right around zero. All those books about books that we read writers are supposed to read say that we should engage in guerrilla marketing. Hopefully that means free marketing.

I asked fellow writer and all-around smart guyShya Scanlon for some guerrilla marketing ideas. Here is what he came up with (with my comments following):

1) Read particularly exciting excerpts and put them on youtube, linked to from your website. Also look into audible.com - where I think you can post audio files of your reading.

I haven't started recording yet, but I think this is a good idea. I enjoy reading aloud anyway, so I'm looking forward to doing this. I don't know about Youtube: who wants to see a video of me reading from my own manuscript?

2) Create a goodreads page for the book, and reach out to other goodreads people.

Well here I am on goodreads. I am already part of the author program and there is already a page (not created by me) for my second book, THE CALIFORNIAD. I'll have a page up for SUNNY VALLEY as we get closer to the pub date. Fortunately goodreads make this very easy.

I love how goodreads is, by definition, a community of readers, of people who love books.

3) Create a facebook page for the novel and send out notices about the book

Facebook also makes making pages very easy, so you I can easily do this prior to publication.

4) Do LDM and/or other readings in your area. you might want to reach out to an author who has more pull, and do a reading with him/her, so you can expose your work to avid readers

Todd hasn't promised me a spot in an LDM, but I bet he will if I put my hands around his neck and squeeze hard enough. (If you've been living in a cave and don't know about the Opium Magazine Literary Death Match, go here)

Hooking up with another author will be more difficult. I know a few published authors in town, but I'm not sure that they will want to use their precious reading time to promote someone else's book. I wouldn't. Still, I will certainly ask.

5) Try to put your book release on the announcement pages of any blog or literary journal web site you've ever been associated with in any way.

I think the secret to this is to establish on-line relationships early on. Don't just throw a post at a blog or online community you never read or comment on yourself and expect it to stick.

So, good ideas, and all things I can easily take action on. Will it help in ANY way, shape or form? Probably not. But these things are free. I'd be a fool not to try.

It's 5am. I'm in Seattle on business and still a little jet lagged after my flight from New Zealand. This seems like a good time to knock a few minor tasks off my SUNNY VALLEY publishing checklist.

Priti needs the exact dimensions of the cover so she can start on the design. I log in to Lulu to look it up, thinking this will be a quick task but oh no.

SUNNY VALLEY is going to be printed as a 6x9 perfect bound paperback. A trade paperback, if you will. When I've used Lulu in the past, I just loaded up a few .jpgs and text and allowed Lulu's cover wizard to generate the cover. They look pretty good but do have a sort of home-made quality.

This time I'm hoping for a more professional look by having a pro (Priti) design the cover. She will create a .pdf (using Photoshop, presumably) of the entire cover which I will then upload to Lulu prior to printing.

So what are the specs? The Lulu Book Covers FAQ sez:
This is the equation for determining the width of a one-piece cover for a paperback:

Bleed + back cover + spine + front cover + bleed

This calls for a little high school algebra. I'm relieved that it has finally come in handy. If the front and back covers are 6 inches wide, the total width will be:
12 + (2 x bleed) + spine
(It doesn't say anything about the height of the cover, which I guess we'll have to assume is 9 inches.)

Uh oh. What's the "bleed"? What's the "spine"?

Even worse on the same page, Lulu gives a TOTALLY different formula for calculating the cover width for a 6x9 book:
12.25" + spine x 9.25"

What the hell is that equation? What happened to "bleed"? It looks nothing like the first equation. Which one should I use? I'm a writer, not a mathematician, dammit!

On a DIFFERENT page I find the following which has some useful information but doesn't exactly clear things up:
Requirements for all book covers:

If including the retail price on the cover, it must exactly match the retail price for the book. Lulu does not add the price to the book cover.

Keep all important text and images at least 0.375" (.25" bleed area + .125" safety area) from all sides (including the spine) of the cover. This area may be trimmed off or obscured by the cover bend.

Spine text must be at least .0625" away from all edges of the spine.

Cover must have correct 13-digit ISBN/EAN.

Bar codes must be provided in black and white.

Bar codes should be 1.833" wide by 1" high.

Hmmph. I've got the ISBN, and the bar code and the price all covered. But what's the "bleed"? 0.375? .25? .0625?

And what's the spine width? Fortunately on the same page there is a link to the Lulu spine width calculator wherein you enter the type of book you are making and the number of pages and it tells you the width of your spine. I mean, your book's spine.

Ah, Houston we have a problem.
A. Even if I could figure out which formula to use, I need the spine width to calculate the total cover width.
B. The spine width calculator needs to know the number of pages.
C. But I won't know the exact number of pages until I'm done with the last edits on the manuscript and Andy is done with the final page layout.

I am suddenly very sleepy. Have I discovered the cure for jet lag?

Todd Zuniga kicked this whole thing off. He offered me a half-page ad in the next issue of Opium Magazine. I remembered the words of Kurt Vonnegut: "unusual travel suggestions are like dancing lessons from God". Okay, Todd is not God--yet--and this was not exactly a travel suggestion, but you get the idea.

His offer spurred the idea to self-publish my third novel, SUNNY VALLEY. I've been shopping it to agents for about a year, getting plenty of reads but no bites.

Or, I should really say, it ALL bites. Writing a novel is hard, a battle, but one really does feel happy when it's done. That happy feeling disappears quickly when the queries start to go out and the inbox fills up with rejections. Or--worse--the inbox doesn't fill up because agents aren't even bothering to reject your submission.

Querying agents is about the most depressing activity known to man. It is slightly more life affirming than being scanned for head lice.

I have self published before. I had an agent for my first novel GARAGE LOVE, but he dropped me when I turned in my second novel, THE CALIFORNIAD. He hated it, partly, I think, because it wasn't the book he had asked me to write. I went through the horrible agent search again for a year before giving up and printing it myself through Lulu.

I had mild success with THE CALIFORNIAD, selling about 200 copies both online and in bookstores.

I found it difficult to get any sort of traction with readers, however. I would mail someone a copy and then never hear back. If I mentioned it to them later they would say "Oh, I absolutely LOVED it. I was up all night reading it." When I asked them if they recommended it to anyone else they would say no and look puzzled. Why would they do that? When I asked if their book club might be interested in reading it, again they would look puzzled. No, they just read books like A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS.

Why wouldn't someone who liked a book recommend it to other people? Let's be honest: maybe they didn't really like the book as much as they said. But I also think there is a marketing effect involved. By reading a heavily-promoted book like A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS, you are entering a community, of sorts, and a safe place. You receive instant approval when you tell people what you are reading without having to explain what the book is and what it's about. You form an instant (if perhaps sub-concious) bond with many thousands of other people who are reading the same book. A small-run, self published book does not offer that.

What will be different this time? Probably nothing. But I am going to try to be smarter with marketing, in hopes of creating a tiny amount of marketing effect. We'll see.

Anyway, here's the ad:

Lulu's help pages (which are extensive, if not well organized) tell me that the next thing I need is a bar code. This encodes the ISBN and the price and must be included on the back cover. So I need to get this sorted out before Priti can start work on the cover.

Not surprisingly, there are free resources on the web. Lulu pointed me to this site, which has an online barcode generator.
http://www.tux.org/~milgram/bookland/

But to run this thing, I need the price of the book. What's the price? Trade paperbacks seem to run about $14.95. I want to price my book as cheaply as possible to encourage people to buy and read it. So what price can I charge?

It turns out pricing is a little complicated when you are packaging for retail distribution (including Amazon). There's the $$$ you want, as publisher, plus Lulu's cut, plus the retailer's cut.

Fortunately Lulu provides a mini spreadsheet to figure this out when you setup your book. I mess with this a little, trying to get the price close to $XX.99, which seems like the done thing. In the end, here is the price breakdown for retail sales:

Manufacturing cost: $5.20
Lulu's cut: .36
Retailer's cut: 6.99
My profit: 1.43
----
Total price $13.97

I put this number into the online barcode generator and VOILA!