Virginia S. Anderson's Blog, page 32

Advertising/Marketing for Indie Authors

Brittney Sahin often shares her experiences as a savvy Indie author. This post has lots of good marketing information.

brittneysahin

Up until a few weeks ago I was paying $50 to have Facebook ads/banners created. I am not great at graphic design, so I didn’t think I’d be capable of creating my own. But when I saw how much I could purchase images from shutterstock.com (5/$50), I decided I needed to create ads/banners/teasers on my own.

This information is probably old news to most, but if I can even help 1 person I’d love to share what I have learned. After a lot of research I discovered canva.com. This website is amazing. The price for each ad/banner/design is between $0-1. Hmm. Free/$1 or the $50 I was spending before–not a tough decision. I can create so many different ads/banners/teasers.

I spent a lot of time playing around with it, and I am still learning, but here are a few sample ads/banners/teasers I have created. Just note- be careful for the ratio of text to image for Facebook…

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A Good Review on Basics: Avoiding Writing Scams

This piece from Just Publishing Advice distills some important basic considerations to attend to for those of us trying to learn the book-publishing and marketing process. I get “requests” to submit manuscripts quite often and have usually wondered who it is that’s so desperate to see my work when traditional agents turn down hundreds of submissions each week. This article helps to put the situation in perspective.

Formatting for IngramSpark in InDesign: You’re Almost Already There!

I’ve encountered some debate as to whether the learning curve for InDesign makes sticking with Word the wiser choice, even if there are trade-offs in sophistication and control. Today, in the second post in this series on formatting for IngramSpark, I’m going to focus on encountering InDesign as a beginner and on my sense that, in fact, for a basic book layout, InDesign is surprisingly easy to learn.

I’ll begin by repeating my disclaimer: These posts are NOT how-tos. I am not an expert on InDesign, on formattiing books, or on Ingram’s requirements. I am simply sharing some observations and experiences, ideally as encouragement or in solidarity with others who blanched at the torrent of unfamiliar terms and commands in Ingram’s file-creation instructions and thought, “I can’t do that!”

It may turn out that I can’t do it either, but I’m giving it an honest try and reporting as I go. Please share your own wisdom and experiences—even if it’s to tell me I’m nuts!

An InDesign Formatting First Step: Using a Book.

Yes, this will add to the expense. Any book on a popular digital program will cost. In my previous post in this series, though, I explained why, for me, a book was essential.

That said, like many of the various how-to tomes I examined, the book I chose, Classroom in a Book, introduced me to many skills that are not bad to learn but are not really necessary for those of us working with plain black-and-white narrative text.

For example, I skipped the chapter on color. However, many of the basic formatting procedures, like how to use the “Pages” panel, were covered in sections involving graphics; what’s more, a lot of the locations I needed to store in my working memory, such as where to find “Fit Spread in Window,” were explained early on in connection with using graphics.

So I completed the early chapters in toto. If you’re contemplating diving in as I have, you may need to budget time to work through the instructions that give you these basic skills.

Book Formatting with InDesign: Today’s Good News!

As I wrote in the previous post, you almost certainly already have many Word skills that will serve you well in InDesign:

Styles.

The Styles panels live at various places in Word, depending on your version. In my version, Word for Mac 2008, the Styles dialogue box is always available in my “Formatting Palette” but is also shelved under “Format” in the menu bar.

You may have already learned to use Styles in order to format an acceptable ebook submission for Smashwords or Kindle. Styles in InDesign work virtually identically: you create a style by telling the program, to begin with, what font you want, what size the font should be, what line spacing you need, how much of a first-line indent you want, and how you want the text justified. You can adjust a couple of other options in InDesign; I’ll mention the ones I found important in future posts.

In both programs, once you’ve created a style, it appears in a menu in the dialogue box. To use it, you simply select the appropriate style and the text you want it to govern and click apply. In both Word and InDesign, such formatting moves as centering, italicizing, and bolding should all be set with Styles rather than the clickable commands in the Word editing panel.

Key Commands and Editing Conventions.

Basic steps in editing remain identical across multiple platforms. Of course, CTRL on a PC becomes COMMAND on a Mac, but CTRL-Z still means Undo, CTRL-A means Select All, CTRL-F means Find, CTRL-S means Save, etc. The Text tool cursor in InDesign functions pretty nearly like any other cursor you’ve worked with: Dragging the cursor selects, clicking elsewhere deselects, the number of times you click in a block of text determines whether you select a word, a line, or an entire paragraph. Holding down “Shift” as you click adds whatever you click on to the selection. Old friends like these comforted me as I traversed new ground.

Basic Keyboarding

Same-old, same-old, except that you type into text boxes, a step that usually isn’t necessary in Word. You can type directly in the text boxes in InDesign, but from what I gathered completing the Classroom in a Book lessons, it’s generally standard to create your text in Word, then use the “Place” command to import it into InDesign rather than to try to compose in InDesign. I did, however, edit and correct directly in InDesign. Seems to work okay.

Basic Document-formatting Steps.

Setting margins also works the way you’re used to, as does selecting fonts. However, headers and footers are part of the new territory; I had a bit of a battle with these, which I’ll detail in a post coming up.

Find/Replace = Find/Change.

This is a vital word-processing application, and it’s equally vital in InDesign, where it works very much like the Word version you should be used to. As in Word, you can ask the Find function to locate formatting as well as “special characters” like spaces and line breaks. Since applying a paragraph style globally can wreak havoc with more specific formatting like italics, knowing how to manipulate the Find box can save you a lot of time.

My Takeaway: Easier Than It Looked!

Three translucent runners silhouettes over rainbow rings background

Because so many of the functions I already knew how to perform were immediately transferable, the new skills specific to InDesign have turned out to be add-ons rather than the total cognitive cliff-jumping I expected when I first looked at the crowded screen. A lot of all that gobbledy-gook is old stuff, repackaged. with bells and whistles added. Better than Word? The jury’s still out on that.

Next post: new functions I found useful in InDesign.

What other functions do you use regularly in Word? Do you know whether they also work in InDesign? Let me know!

 

 

How to Tell Which Self-Publishing Company is Right For You

A really informative checklist!

A Writer's Path

The following is an update of a post I wrote for Joel Friedlander’s ever-helpful blog at TheBookDesigner.com.

On the path to self-publishing, your first decision will be whether to:

Engage a self-publishing service company (SPSC) to do everything from editing to distribution. Some SPSCs are BookLocker, Mill City Press, Outskirts Press, and Dog Ear Press.
Do it yourself (DIY) by hiring editors, designers, and other freelancers and uploading your finished, formatted cover and manuscript to POD providers such as CreateSpace and IngramSpark and ebook distributors such as KDP and Smashwords.

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A Serious Question about Goodreads Giveaways

While there seem to be many “advisors” out there telling me that Goodreads Giveaways is a path to selling books, I’ve been reading an awful lot of negatives from people who’ve actually run them. Has ANYBODY who has actually run one found it to be a route to selling books? If so, please share your real-life positive experiences and explain to us how you made the process work. Ideally, I’d like to know if this can be a good route to more sales from people who do NOT already have strong or established platforms. Thanks!

Victoria Strauss: Small Presses to Beware of!

Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware reports on three small presses that have run into trouble in various ways. Sharing the word!

An Oldie but Goodie: 10 Things Writers Don’t Tell People

I think my non-writer friends probably don’t know these truths! Do yours? From Aliventures. (And I love her little riff on that/which at the beginning of this post. I’ve had some fun with the that/which distinction myself!)

“King of the Roses” FREE on Smashwords!

A Great Site on Increasing Blog Traffic. World, Look Out!

I enjoy creating new content, but I’m looking forward to widening my range and sharing more. This site, Torque, has great advice and tools for effective blogging.

Crazy Journey: Designing My Own Book for IngramSpark

Advice from a number of other self-published authors and bloggers led me to decide that my preferred path to getting my two previously published horse-racing mysteries out in print under my own copyright was to buy my own ISBN and start out at Ingram before moving on to Amazon’s CreateSpace. But I’m probably not alone in my panicked reaction at downloading the IngramSpark “file creation” specs.

My experience creating my ebooks for both Smashwords and Kindle Direct Publishing at Amazon was a breeze. I formatted my mss. in Word, uploaded them, and voilà, I had books. No errors, no “tickets.” But IngramSpark? Holy barf, Batman! What does all this stuff mean!

I hereby report that I am moving forward in my quest to conquer Ingram’s formatting requirements. I thought I would post progress reports, perhaps in hopes of encouraging others whose guts churn like mine did at the site of all those incomprehensible and unfamiliar commands.

If you’ve been through this, I hope you’ll take a moment in the comments to share your experiences, good or bad! (Even to tell me I’m just plain nuts. I won’t be offended! Really!)

 

Please note up front: The posts I envision chronicling my journey for better or worse are NOT how-tos! I am not an expert on InDesign, on formatting books, or on Ingram’s requirements. I can’t possibly match the expertise of professional book designers. I am simply sharing some observations and experiences, ideally as encouragement or in solidarity with others.

I have no idea where this effort will land me. I may be wasting my time on a task that doesn’t lend itself to amateur efforts. And after all, Ingram will sell you a template for around $50, as will other book designers—I haven’t tried a ready-made template, but might for the next book. I do have a funny feeling there’ll be some of the same technical work and correcting that I’m doing for my InDesign proof. We’ll see.

But here’s my rationale for moving forward on my own:

First and foremost, it’s possible that I CAN do it. I won’t know till I try.
Trying this out is not prohibitively expensive. One blogger who considered Ingram’s requirements beyond the pale counted $500 in purchased ISBNs as part of his costs; I haven’t made a decision about that phase of the process, but I do know I won’t be writing 500 books in the next few years—and I’d still have to buy ISBNs if I want to be distributed through Ingram, whether I hire a professional designer or not. In the meantime, I’m making a $20/month investment in software and an hour or so a day in time.
I’m not on a strict deadline: I see this whole business of learning to market my books as a long-term project. Okay, so it takes me a month to do what a professional designer could do in a day. That’s not prohibitive, either, though for others it well might be.
Besides, I like learning new skills. Weirdly, I find this fun! It empowers me to see how well I can accomplish what, at the start, looked so daunting. And maybe I’ll put these skills to use in the future. So if it turns out I have to give up and hire a professional, I’ll be out a nominal sum but I’ll have gained an experience I value. Again, my idea of value is probably not everyone’s.
I’m not alone! Book designers are wonderfully generous with their expertise. I spent a whole day reading almost every article on Joel Friedlander’s superb site. I’ve found other marvelous sites I’ll share.

Since this is a preliminary report, I’ll start with some preliminary stuff. Baby stuff.

Like figuring out what “trim size” means.

Basically, it’s about how big (height and width, not page length) I want my book to be. (Here’s an infographic on trim size.) Ingram supplies a list of options, and I measured a few of the trade paperbacks on my shelves with a ruler. Smaller trim size means more pages. I started out choosing 5.5X8.5.

Like figuring out that I needed some software.

Working with the graphic-design program at my university to produce a slick magazine told me that the designers’ preferred platform was Adobe InDesign. But InDesign came with some built-in liabilities:

It’s expensive.

It’s scary as hell.

Could I just use good ol’ Word? After all, even my ancient “2008 for Mac” version offers all kinds of formatting options that I’d already mastered for my ebooks.

I invested some time searching for “InDesign vs. Word” online. Not surprisingly, the professionals gravitate to InDesign as offering more control and more options even for plain text documents like mine. Not surprisingly, the comments sections were sprinkled with claims that a) everybody already had Word so it was effectively free; b) Word works fine; and occasionally, c) sure, professionals tout something we all have to pay them to do.

To me, comments like c) denigrate professionals and the expertise they’ve built up over the years. But were the rebels right? Could Word do the kind of job Ingram accepts (and readers want)?

I actually don’t know the answer to that. (Do you? Share!)

You can use Word: the File-Creation Guide at Ingram directs you to be to sure to create your pdf using the print dialogue box, which is where you can find the specific Adobe Acrobat formats you need.

But the Guide specifically says that they can’t support material created in Word. So using Word looks as if it might limit my chances for getting help from Ingram if I need it.

According to the designers, justification in Word can’t match an apparent algorithm in InDesign that prevents “rivers” of white space from irregular word spacing and other anomalies from marring your pages. It does seem that InDesign’s kerning, tracking, and leading options are more sophisticated. (Are they? What do you think?)

Challenge: Money! Adobe stuff costs $$$.

Solution: Adobe allows a 30-day free trial and then the $20 monthly subscription plan. Twenty dollars for a few months—the cost of one meal out each month—doesn’t seem outrageous, especially when I’m having fun.

Challenge: Learning Curve! Adobe stuff is hard!

Solution: Buy a freakin’ book! Sorry, all you sweet video producers. A, I can’t watch your videos from home because they devour my data; and B, I can’t remember enough and have to watch again and again. At my university, we have access to the inestimable Lynda.com; I’ve watched the videos several times. But when you’re sitting at home staring at a blinking cursor, you must be able to thumb through the index and look things up!

My local Barnes and Noble offered a few alternatives. I chose Classroom in a Book because I liked the pictures. Uh, okay, I chose it because it did look as if it gave me a step-by-step combination of visual and text instructions. I’ll review it as a learning tool down the line.

I’ll end this first post with a quick word of encouragement: if you’ve ever delved at all into formatting with Word—using Styles, for example—or if you’ve ever worked with an app like the Mac “Preview” program, or “Paint” on a PC, where you can select, resize, edit graphics, etc., you already have a majority of the skills you’ll need to do basic text formatting in InDesign.

So, today’s takeaway:

You can get definitions and guidance through some terrific online resources.
You may or may not need software. If you do decide tackle InDesign, it’s not prohibitively expensive.
You can learn the software. You’re probably two-thirds of the way there! I’ll report on how I did it in future posts.