A Peek​ Behind the Curtain

I was at dinner with my father-in-law and I told him I was in the middle of publishing The Reluctant Agent . He asked, “How do you publish your book?” to which I replied, “With a lot of cussing.” (Note: That is no exaggeration…more on that later). I’ve been thinking about that ever since, and I thought I’d share what I do.

1. Finish the damn book – This means getting the book edited, proofread, and proofread again.

2. If you’re using something other than Amazon for print, get ISBN numbers – If you only use Amazon for print, you don’t need an ISBN number for your book. Likewise, you don’t need an ISBN number for e-books. But if you use another service, you WILL need an ISBN number.

3. Format the book – Here, I have a bit of a secret weapon. I use a piece of software called Vellum that only runs on a Mac. It does all of the heavy-lifting of formatting my Word document into something that looks professional. I didn’t know about it during the first printing of The Reluctant Captain and the difference between the two editions is night and day. Vellum costs approximately $200.00, but I think it’s some of the best money I’ve spent as a writer. There is also a free alternative at reedsy.com. One drawback to both of the tools is that you don’t have complete control over the formatting (for example, I wanted to use the cover font for the chapter titles, but that wasn’t possible). The reedsy tool only has three choices of book styles, while Vellum has anywhere from 3-7 styles for each element of the book.

4. Create the print and e-book versions of the book – I opt to try to sell my book in as many places as possible, so I have to come up with e-book versions for Amazon, Apple, Nook, and Kobo, as well as the PDF for the print book. Here is the other reason that Vellum is worth it – I can push one button and generate all of these formats AT ONCE.

5. Create the cover for the e-book – This is relatively easy. Once I have my scanned cover art, it’s pretty straight forward to make the cover for the e-books – the only trick is making sure you have the correct size, resolution, and format for each platform.

6. Create the cover for the print books – This is where the cussing occurs. To produce hardcover and paperbacks, your cover has to fit in a specific template provided by the printer. In my case, I use Amazon for the paperback version I sell on Amazon and I use IngramSpark for a wide distribution paperback and the hardcover edition. Each platform has its own requirements for size, positioning, print resolution, and format. The only tool I have for this is GIMP, an open source tool that pretends to be like Photoshop. It is not very easy to use (selecting and copying a section of a picture seems to only work on a whim). So that’s the beginning of the cussing. Then you upload it. And it’s often rejected immediately because the resolution wasn’t correct or it’s the wrong format. So you fix it and re-submit. And it works…except you get an email in a day or two that tells you that something is too close to the edge or not close enough, and it’s back to the drawing board. To give you an idea, I have 9 copies of The Reluctant Agent hardback cover on my computer. As you can imagine, there was a whole lot of cussing going on!

7. Upload the files and information to all of the platforms, set your prices…and wait – You would think after writing one hundred thousand words for the novel, writing the sales description would be easy…and you are wrong. It is tough. On some platforms, you have a limited number of characters (not words) for your description. But eventually, you wade through it and if you’re lucky, everything is accepted in a couple of business days. If not, you’re back to any step between 3 and 6…and repeat ad nauseam.

In the end, it really is worth all of the cussing. I’m very happy with how the hardcover editions of both The Reluctant Captain and The Reluctant Agent look. They look like real books! Which reminds me…the links to buy The Reluctant Agent are over there on the right. You can also sign up for my occasional newsletter. It’s an easy way to keep updated on what I’m doing!

Until next time,

Happy Journeys!

Mike

1 Comment

  1. John
    Jun 25, 2019

    Loved the second book as much as the first

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