The Four Hidden Gems of Self-Publishing

This guest post from Nikolas Baron (Grammarly.com) is on self-publishing.

By Nikolas Baron

The Bible’s book of Ezekiel, completed around 591 B.C.E, uses the imagery of jasper stone to describe the glory of God. However, I have no idea of what jasper stone looks like. A precious piece of jasper stone could be lying in my backyard, and I would never know! This article discusses five hidden gems of self-publishing that reduce or eliminate costs. There is no need for digging; I have already uncovered their secret location! Keep reading to learn how to identify these helpful resources.

Gold: Copy Editing

Grammarly, the company I work for, provides proofreading on their website within moments. In my years of working there, I see an abundance of easy-to-correct mistakes suggested by the grammar checker. Save yourself time and money by finding and fixing errors before contacting an editor. Then, submit a finalized copy to a professional editor for one final edit. Copy editors carefully sift through the words of novels. They seek errors. Like iron pyrite, or fool’s gold, errors look fine to an untrained eye. Experienced editors find awkward phrases, grammatical errors, and unclear explanations. Before submitting work to a professional editor, perform a preliminary search for mistakes.

No Geodes Allowed: Cover Design

Geodes look plain and ordinary on the outside. However, inside these rocks are sparkly and colorful.  You do not want your book to be like a geode! From the cover, catch the eye of the reader with engaging art and an intriguing title. Be prepared to invest a significant portion of the budget on this aspect of your novel. Check out this Directory of Self-Publishing Resources. The website lists cover artists with experience working with self-publishers. The counsel that they provide is invaluable.

Diamonds:  Promotion

According to the Diamond Price Calculator found on the Washington Diamond website, the value of an internally flawless one-carat diamond is almost $17,000. However, the cost of an imperfect diamond is only about $1,300. The difference in cost reflects the difference in quality between an internally flawless diamond and an imperfect one. To the inexperienced eye, both diamonds sparkle but experts easily discern which diamond has more value. Advertisements on social media websites, such as Facebook, are flawless diamonds in the sense that they reach thousands of potential readers. The hidden gems are blogs!  Maintain a writer’s blog and promote your own novel. Use the successful blogs of colleagues and acquaintances. Offer to trade services:  “I will post your announcement if you post mine!” One article, “Top 10 Free Online Blogging Platforms”, compares a number of websites that host blogs at no cost.

Pearls:  Printing Advance Copies

To find a pearl, you open the oyster and look inside. To find a great deal on the printing of advance copies, you shop around to find the best prices. Advance copies, sometimes referred to as galleys, sell in lots. While prices are usually cheaper for larger lots, do not waste money printing hundreds of books that may never sell. Instead, estimate a reasonable amount of galleys to prepare or find a shop that will print samples in short runs. One company, Country Press, prints as few as 11 copies per batch!  If you are the handy type, attempt to make your own advance reading copy.

These jewels are within your grasp. Copy editing is unavoidable, so use online proofing websites to identify simple grammar errors. Do not underestimate blogs, which are invaluable in spreading literary news. If you do not currently write a blog, start one today! Avoid book covers that obscure the beauty of your writing. Invest money in an attractive cover that represents the content of your book. Finally, open as many oysters as possible. Shop around to find the best printing deals. Print in small batches. By taking advantage of these tips, your novel will be a jewel.

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by Nikolas Baron

Nikolas discovered his love for the written word in Elementary School, where he started spending his afternoons sprawled across the living room floor devouring one Marc Brown childrens’ novel after the other and writing short stories about daring pirate adventures. After acquiring some experience in various marketing, business development, and hiring roles at internet startups in a few different countries, he decided to re-unite his professional life with his childhood passions by joining Grammarly’s marketing team in San Francisco. He has the pleasure of being tasked with talking to writers, bloggers, teachers, and others about how they use Grammarly’s online proofreading application to improve their writing. His free time is spent biking, travelling, and reading.

Image: The 182-carat Star of Bombay star sapphire, via Wikipedia.

Soliciting input

Obviously I haven't posted here in a while; I've been focused on a new book project unrelated to the topics of What Things Are Made Of. It's a book in The History Press' "Lost" series about buildings gone from Butte, Montana: information and blog here.

For What Things Are Made Of (this blog) I'm asking for input from readers: What would you like to see here? Either reply in the comments here, or send me an email at rigibson@earthlink.net with questions or ideas that you'd like to see addressed. Anything within the realm of resources - minerals, coal, oil, etc. - is fair game: geology, distribution, imports, uses, etc.

Thanks for your help and support.

What Things Are Made Of

What Things Are Made Of is now available from Booklocker.com. 

312 pages. The print-on-demand version is $17.95 + $3.00 shipping; the initial e-version (PDF) is available for $9.99. Additional e-formats in the works. It will probably be cheaper for you (and faster) for you to order through the publisher's site (link above).

Thanks for your support!

It's a book!

I received the galley print from the publisher today. It looks like a book, feels like a book, smells like a book. It will probably be a few more days before it is "for sale" but of course I'll make a post about that, with links! viii + 295 pages.

A slight change

Now that the book is about to become available - the publisher uploaded it to the printer today, for a check-print for me before it is actually for sale - I'm going to change my approach to the blog a bit.

I'll try to focus on updates, connections to things in the book that supplement and expand on it, and changes and news related to the topics in the book. It's a certainty that some aspects of the book will be out of date as soon as it is printed, because of the dramatic and speedy changes related to some materials. Rare earths come to mind: the demand, diverse uses, and global distribution of rare earths are in the news weekly if not daily. And there will likely be a bit more about oil and natural gas.

The blog and my web site will also become venues for interesting tables of information that I could not reasonably include in the book. And pictures!

Thanks for your interest. The book ought to be available for purchase by the end of March or possibly sooner. I'll post the link here instantly!

What Things book: Another update

The book is done and has been accepted by my print-on-demand publisher of choice. It will end up about 316 pages (6x9 paperback format) and will probably cost $17.95 for the printed version, which should be available in a few weeks. Details on electronic versions to come, but it will definitely be available in the Apple iBookstore.

Thanks to all for your interest and support!

Jargon

Today I take my text from Charles B. Hunt, US Geological Survey geologist mapping the Henry Mountains in southern Utah in the 1950s.

"A cactolith is a quasihorizontal chonolith composed of anastomosing ductoliths whose distal ends curl like a harpolith, thin like a sphenolith, or bulge discordantly like an akmolith or ethmolith."

In the 1950s US Geological Survey publications were intensively reviewed for style and accuracy, so it’s a minor miracle that the definition got published. This was Hunt’s way of poking fun at the proliferation of –lith words for various rock bodies (the suffix derives from Greek lithos, stone). The definition has a cult following among geologists – I love to roll it off my tongue at parties, where people then stare at me with more than the usual concerned look – so much so that when it was removed from the Glossary of Geology, the hue and cry was such that it returned to future editions, where it remains to this day.

All scientists, all specialists, have their own argot, jargon, and particular terminology that tends to exclude the uninitiated from their secret club. At this stage in my career, one important motivation for me to write What Things Are Made Of is to try to open those secret doors to give non-scientists a look at geoscience. Whether I succeed or not can be argued, but I am trying. Will I be the next Simon Winchester (The Map that Changed the World, Krakatoa) or John McPhee (Annals of the Former World)? I’d be the last to compare myself to them, but they give me a clear target for lucid writing to which I aspire.

Disclosure

This probably doesn’t apply to me, but just in case.

The Federal Trade Commission requires bloggers to disclose any freebies or promotions they get in connection with any products they discuss.

So:

No one gives me anything. Well, sometimes a friend of relative does, but I’m not endorsing them, either. I don’t get any kickbacks from the government of China for describing the Bayan Obo rare-earth deposit. Toyota isn’t breaking down my garage door to give me a Prius because I talk about the neodymium in its motor or the lithium in its battery. In case that should happen, I’ll be very happy to disclose the fact.

My goal is to be objective anyway, so if a company gave me a freebie, that wouldn’t guarantee much, anyhow.

Good enough?

My battle with “of”

I think scientists generally put lots of “ofs” in their writing. At least I do. I know it, I hate it, and I still do it.

Combined with the discovery of the vast copper resources of Chile, this spelled the beginning of the demise of the copper business of the United States. 

One of my first editors, my friend Sally Lawrence, read that line (and the plethora of other prepositions I had peppered my prose with) and wrote “Oh woe is me—prepositions are the downfall of many a good geologist.” I find now that I must force Word to highlight all my “ofs” so that I can ruthlessly, tediously reduce their number. I have trouble avoiding the word: I’m so accustomed to writing things like “the geology of Canada contributed to its position as one of the world’s leaders in production of mineral resources” – yikes! When I see that now, I really cringe! (But only when I’m on alert, in editor mode, and watching for such literary atrocities.)

But at least overuse of “of” can be repaired. Or maybe I should lose the “ofs” and say “I can overcome this problem.” Sometimes.

I’m prone to happily split an infinitive here and there, and I agree with Winston Churchill’s lines ending in prepositions, at least occasionally. And “of” is a useful and necessary word. I’m just trying aggressively to improve my writing by controlling its unchecked spread.

I hope you like the revised sentence about Chile’s copper. It may not be perfect, but at least it’s a little better, I think!

Combined with vast copper discoveries in Chile, decreased demand drove the U.S. copper industry into a long, generally downward spiral.

Thoughts on self-publishing

When I read these days about self-publishing, I have to smile. So many choices – print-on-demand, publish to the web, hire a publisher (which can range from a real vanity press to a clandestine vanity press to some version of “real” publisher).

Way back in the before time, 1994, when I self-published the History of the Earth Perpetual Calendar, I don’t think I even had reliable e-mail, much less 45,300,000 Google hits for the topic of self-publishing. To me, self-publishing meant that I would write it, get the illustrations, do the layout, then somehow get all that to a printer who would print and bind the thing and give it back to me, and then I’d sell them all and retire.

Right. That was all correct except the part about selling them all and retiring.

The biggest challenge, apart from finding money to pay the printer (thanks Mom and Dad), came when I got the 54 cases of books home – four trips in my pick-up to get all 2000 of them. It had been easy to decide to go to a press run of 2000 instead of my initial plan of 1000. One thousand would have cost about $10,000, but 2000 was only $2,000 more. A no-brainer.

After sorting out some issues with the printer (the book is laid out with one page per date in the year, and I might have thought that anyone would know that March 27 is NOT followed by April 6, but no) I had the books. For 16 years now, the boxes and boxes of books have supported a platform for my spare bed—comfortable enough, by most accounts. Even after selling 1,620—which, Google now can tell me, is a pretty decent record for a truly self-published, self-marketed, and self-distributed volume—I still have enough to hold up the mattress, although some of the boxes are empty and in danger of collapse. But then, I don’t get as many visitors to Butte as I did when I lived in Golden, Colorado.

Distribution and sales improved when the Internet arrived and I created my web site in 1997. Ten or twenty sales a month, with the occasional purchase of 10 or even 36 at a whack. A nice mention in the now-defunct Earth magazine helped tremendously, with about 150 sold in a two-month period.

The world of publishing has evolved, no doubt about it. We’ll see what changes are wrought by kindles and nooks and other technologic advances. As for me, I’m really quite happy with my experience as a “traditional” (old-time) self-publisher—and ready to move into whatever realms appear as I try to get What Things Are Made Of published, this time by someone—anyone—else.

Additional interesting takes on self-publishing at Nathan Bransford's blog.


Answer to Dec. 18 Quiz: Of gold, bauxite (aluminum ore), nickel, and tungsten, the U.S. is a net exporter of just one: gold.