5. What to do with the extra pages that will be necessary now that I’ve written the Acknowledgments and it ran to two pages and now I need to add seven more so there are multiples of eight (not sixteen, thank goodness) but really only six because I forgot about the About page. Phew. Breathe, chicky-babe, breathe!
I’m sure there will be more decisions ahead. Every time I think I’m almost there, the location of “there” changes! That is the world of self-publishing, and I’m THRILLED that I get to make the decisions instead of a publisher.
Doesn’t this deer look a little baffled? I can relate.
Getting closer every week. . . closer to what? Getting the book, The Cabins of Wilsonia, to the printer, that’s what!
Shooting stars are small, but in great numbers they make an impact, just like all the tasks left to do before the book goes to the printer.
What’s left?
1. Figure out how to align the page numbers perfectly so when you flip through the book, they don’t jump.
2. Redo the page numbers, which are off because I added 4 more pages in order to have multiples of 16.
3. Make sure the page numbers match the table of contents.
4. Write the acknowledgements page (and stop asking people to help because the page will need to be revised every time someone new helps!)
5. Decide if I want a Library of Congress Card Catalog Number.
6. Figure out how to convert the whole thing to the format required by the printer.
7. Count my pennies to see if I have enough to start the printing process.
8. Oh yeah – choose the paper for the pages. They don’t have my first choice, so I will have to be sure that I don’t get careless and accidentally choose my third choice instead of my second.
Small stuff, except for that page number repair business.
See how all those small shooting stars make an impact when assembled in a meadow. Very soon all my small drawings will be assembled in a cover!
The process of building a book on the cabins of Wilsonia began in the summer of 2011. It seemed too big, too many tasks to break down, too many decisions, too many cabins.
I started by getting to know the layout of Wilsonia and becoming familiar with one area at a time, taking photos at different times of day. I spent lots of time walking around and studying the details, reviewing the lanes, taking notes along with the pictures.
It was quickly apparent that it would be impossible to make a manageable book if every cabin was included in its entirety. It was impossible to even include a detail from every cabin.
Decisions had to be made: typical and atypical had to be chosen.
Sometimes I chose a view because the light was so beautiful. Sometimes it was because there were interesting roof angles. Sometimes a place looked so charming, so inviting, so irresistible that I photographed it over and over, time and time again.
Sometimes the light wouldn’t cooperate: the shadows were too strong or the light was too flat. Sometimes I couldn’t find a good angle or a pleasing detail, no matter how many times I returned. Sometimes the cedar trees obstructed the view and there was no way to capture a place. Sometimes a cabin was occupied, with too much porkadelia, and I didn’t want to intrude. Sometimes a cabin looked too much like another, and I don’t want the book to be repetitious, so I made a decision. Sometimes there were barking dogs, and I respected their warnings.
The end result is that not every cabin will be in the book. Every lane, every road, every street will be represented. Every style of cabin will be represented. Most of the folks who talked to me about cabin life and gave permission to be quoted will find their words in the book. I said “most”. . . please don’t misread that last sentence.
This book is my doing – my idea, my design, my work, my risk. It is both for me, because there is nothing as satisfying as a project completed well, and it is for you, because you have a treasure of a cabin community that should be preserved and celebrated.
It is my hope that most people will be pleased, excited, and proud. It is inevitable that a few people will be disappointed and maybe even angry. So be it. Please forgive me for the use of an irritating cliche, but here goes: it is what it is.
The design is complete (in spite of having to do 5 more drawings) and The Cabins of Wilsonia will be published. I hope you and your family and friends and guests will enjoy it for a very long time.
Yeppers. I have to draw five more pictures for the upcoming book, The Cabins of Wilsonia.
But WHY??
When books are printed, they need to have their total number of pages divisible by 16. (That means 8 pieces of paper, in case you were getting confused.)
My book had 164 pages, 4 short. I thought it was no big deal – just put a little page here and another one there.
Wrong.
The design is locked up with chapter headings designed just so. One added page, and everything shifts from the one side to the other, and it looks wrong there, because it was very very carefully designed to fit the side it is on.
I did a tally of cabins per street from looking at a map and then counted the numbers of pages per street. Alta didn’t have quite enough pages for the number of cabins, so I am adding two more drawings and rearranging the others to fill. President’s Lane also didn’t have enough pages for the number of cabins, so I have three more to draw for that chapter.
“Unknown Dog on Porch”, sold
Good, bad, or indifferent, it is now necessary to put down the computer and pick up my pencils.
WOOHOO!! I got the green light from The Book Designer (self-publishing consultant) that I am making the correct computer corrections on my drawings!
It also means that I can now sell the drawings because THEY DON’T HAVE TO BE RESCANNED!!
Excuse me for shouting. I am SO RELIEVED.
Sorry. Trying to get a grip here.
It also means it is time to figure out prices. The pencil drawings are odd sizes, unlike the standard sizes I usually draw for commissioned pieces.
Gotta go – lots of work ahead!!
P.S. For the benefit of Mr. Google and anyone looking for my upcoming book, these are pencil drawings of the cabins of Wilsonia for the upcoming book The Cabins of Wilsonia. Really! It is coming up and sooner than I thought. No date yet. . .
P.S. #2 Speaking of dates, 6 years ago I began blogging about life as an artist here (it will open in a new window if you click on it.) And, 10 years ago on this date I broke three bones in my ankle, had lots of metal inserted, had a year of several surgeries, now have a Frankenfoot and am deeply grateful for the ability to walk.
Yup. That’s me. Fighting the battles of book design, technology and self-publishing.
Combining Photoshop Elements and Adobe InDesign is stinkin’ hard. I spent a long time on the phone with my friend Carol in Washington, trying to figure out how to resize the photos in Elements and then put them in InDesign with the correct “effective ppi”.
Are your eyes crossed yet? Here, rest them briefly on a photo of poppies.
We couldn’t figure it out. I remembered that several people who visited my studio during the recent Three Rivers Arts Studio Tour had offered help. I emailed one of them, plus a friend who sold me my first 2 Macs. That friend said, “There seems to be a divorced couple attitude between Apple and Adobe. (They blame each other for the software problems.)” Oh yeah.
After many emails and trials and lots of errors, I began tracking each step by keeping notes. This size export equals that many ppi which turns into this many eppi when moved into InDesign, which isn’t right so try it in another size export. I felt like a scientist.
All I want to do is convert these drawings to grayscale, scrub out the mafugo*, and resize them so the “effective ppi” is 300 in Adobe InDesign. But NOOOOOOO, the normal and sensible and simple steps don’t do the trick.
Eventually, I figured out a way. This is going to be a ton of work, but it will be worth it. I can do this because I AM A WARRIOR!
*“Mafugo” is a word I stole from KMJ’s Chris Daniel. He and I are both “proud owners of nothing but Honda since 1983”. In addition, I write to him in cursive on notecards in envelopes with first class stamps, and he reads and comments on my notes on the air. Do you listen to Chris? I think he is brilliant!
After some computer research into Adobe Photoshop, which sells for about $600, I learned that Photoshop Elements, the dumbed down program for hobbyists, sells for about $60. If it is “dumbed down”, a degree in advanced computer design may be required for the big girl version!
Perhaps by looking through the window as I did when beginning the project all full of excitement and hope will restore a bit of excitement and hope as I recover from some hard truths.
I bought Photoshop Elements and it should arrive within a week. Because it is by Adobe, the same outfit that made the program I used to design the book, I’m hoping the learning curve won’t be terribly steep. A few years ago, I dabbled in the very earliest version of Photoshop Elements, so maybe this won’t be too hard. Lots of maybe and hope there. . .
The Book Designer recommended a book printing company in Michigan. I sent the preliminary info for a preliminary estimate on the cost of printing. One of the questions was “How many book titles do you publish a year?” Heh, heh, heh. My last book was printed in 1998. That would make about 1/16 of a book title published per year.
Holy cow, oh my goodness, fly-over-the-handlebars with sudden stopping jolting shock.
I spoke to a self-publishing consultant. He graciously (for a larger amount of money than I typically earn in a week) spent a fat hour on the phone with me, first thinking like a book designer and second, thinking like a book publisher.
He taught me a lot.
I knew there were problems in Pictureland, irritants in Imageville, and difficulties in Drawing World, as I went through my adventures in Adobe Indesign.
Yeppers. Good thing I didn’t sell any of those originals yet, because I need to rescan them. Then I need to buy Adobe Photoshop and learn how to use it. Then I need to put the new scans in Photoshop to do some computer converting and some magical mystery adjusting.
No biggie. 268 drawings, minus the 2 that I accidentally amputated, and the 4 that I drew as commissions and let the customer take equals 262 drawings to be rescanned.
When Mr. Consultant learned I did this project on a laptop using iPhoto, he called me “a warrior”.
Well, yea, I can feel good about something as I muddle along in techie ignorance.
Now I need to figure out how to procure Photoshop without subscribing to the “creative cloud”. Barf. Just sell me the dang program.
Attitude, attitude, attitude. Think and act like a warrior.
Yikes – do I need to find a rifle and shoot this project?
In the olden days, people self-published a book when they had no agent, no experience, no market and no hope of finding any of those necessary elements.
I exaggerate to make a point. There were other reasons for self-publshing, and not all self-published books were as pathetic as that sounded.
When Jane Coughran and I self-published The Cabins of Mineral King, we chose to go that route for multiple reasons: we knew exactly how we wanted our book to look, we wanted to make money and not share with a third party, and we knew our market and how to reach them.
The Cabins of Wilsonia is the same sort of project for me. Now days, there are many assisted self-publishing companies that didn’t exist back in 1998 so the options are much broader than simply going it alone.
Assisted self-publishing means that a company provides limited choices in paper, book shape and format, types of binding, types of covers, and numbers of pictures and pages allowed. They might provide an editor if you pay more, and often they print the books as you sell them. (This is called “Print On Demand”.) They provide an ISBN and a bar code, and they are listed as the publisher. They do limited marketing, using Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and their own company. Sometimes they provide a handful of bookmarkers, postcards and publicity posters. You may have heard of some of these companies: Blurb, Lulu,and Create-Space are a few of the biggies. This type of publishing works well for some, but won’t work for me, for the same reasons as when we did The Cabins of Mineral King.
So, I’m acting as a contractor and either doing all the pieces myself or finding experts to do the work. For example, I am doing my own book design, which includes deciding how it looks, typing out all the text, scanning the drawings, sizing and arranging it all, and using a complicated computer program to get it ready for a printer. Friends and Youtube have shown me how to do these things.
In addition, I’ve hired a professional editor and may rent the brain of The Book Designer. It is my hope that he will take the slack out of my design and point me to printers and binders and perhaps a cover designer so that I don’t make any gross errors, or even any minor ones.
Being my own contractor means I have to figure out all those steps. The type of cover design I used before won’t look good on Amazon, which may not have been in existence in 1998. The printing company I used is out of business, and I can’t remember who the binder was. Last time we had to find a shipping company with a loading dock so the books could be delivered from the bindery. Then Dad and my husband went to Fresno with their pickups to get the books. Now I have forgotten who the trucking company was, Dad is gone and so is his pickup. (Michael’s pickup has 310,000 miles on it but it could go to Fresno for a load if needed.)
Then I had to store all the books and mail them out to fill the orders.
So, still lots to do and figure out.
And that’s the current status on the book process.
Oh, and I have to plan a few book signings.
Wait, did I mention that I need to figure out how to presell the books so I can pay for this?
Have you been wondering if I gave up on the book, The Cabins of Wilsonia?
Nope. I’ve been painting a mural, and also did a couple of final little decorative pencil drawings for the book.
Meanwhile, my computery friend north of Seattle has been refining my book design. The idea was to work together remotely. Turns out “remote” is the operative word here. I live in too remote of a place to have decent internet speed, sometimes cannot get my email, could not even buy a particular back-up service for my computer because of the slowness and finally realized chances that we can do this remotely are quite, well, um, remote!
So, I’ll jet off to Seattle and we’ll knock this thing out together.
What is “this thing”? We will be finalizing the computer design. This means I am no longer accepting quotes.
