Book Production

Book Editing

By / May 8, 2013 / 2 Comments

My day began with this:

Each of those little paper flags sticking out of the pages is an error that needed fixed before Body Politic could go to print. I went through flag by flag and fixed all the errors. There were at least 80 of them. It always amazes me how many dumb mistakes I make when putting a book together. Then I print it out on paper and suddenly they are glaringly, embarrassingly obvious. When all the things were fixed, I exported the book to a PDF and paged through it again. I found 30 more errors. I fixed those and exported again to PDF and handed the file to Howard. He found 14 errors. This is always the process. We go through iterations of book creation, each time focusing our attention on a different way of reading. Sometimes I read every word. Other times I just flip pages and look at image spacing. Eventually my eyes glaze over and it all looks like a blur and possibly even a bad idea. At some point we declare it done and I send it off to print. It is out of my hair for a couple of months until it comes back home bound in paper. By then I’m not tired of the book anymore. We’re excited as we open the boxes and see the book made real. But I guarantee that on that first flip through we’ll find a mistake we missed. It happens every time.

Cobble Stones Available and Switching into High Gear

By / May 2, 2013 / 1 Comment

See the lovely book cover lingering over there to the right? This morning I finally put the newly re-sized Cobble Stones books into the store. I’m supposed to take delivery of Cobble Stones 2012 on Friday and can begin shipping as soon as I do. This means you can place your order now, I’ll start shipping on Friday, and the books can be in your hands–or the hands of a mother you know–before Mother’s Day (if you live in the continental US.) At $5 per copy these books are a great giftable size and price. If you’re local, I will have both of these books along with Hold on to Your Horses available for sale at LDS Storymakers conference. The conference itself is sold out, but the bookstore they run is open to walk-in traffic. At 5 pm on Friday May 10 there will be a mass signing that is open to the public. Just come to the Marriott hotel in Provo to meet a room full of authors who will be happy to talk with you and sign books. I’ll be there and I’ll have my books with me.

In other news, I’m behind on all of my work. I was already behind on all of it when I spent yesterday on a 4th grade field trip shivering in the cold wind out by Utah Lake to learn about biomes, invasive species, adaptations, and to have a giant walleye fish leap out of the ranger’s hands right at me. I may have made an alarmed noise because it was a big fish (easily three feet long) and they’d just finished showing us how it has teeth. Fish attacks aside, I’m glad I went along on the trip because Patch was obviously thrilled to have me there. He’s why I went, even though I was ready to fall asleep on my feet and even though I got so chilled that it took the rest of the day for me to feel warm again. The trip and the cold shut down my work brain.

It did not help that when I finally warmed up enough to think, I had to spend all of my thinking to help Gleek put together her history fair project of doom. I’m only sort of kidding about the “of doom” part. Anxiety has been an issue with her these past few months. Her science fair project in February was a series of emotional battles and stress. The theme of the history fair is “turning points” and while Gleek quickly became fascinated with her chosen period of time, getting her to narrow down to a specific turning point was difficult. “We need to show how all these escapes from East Germany made the world change.” I would say when she was dictating a barrage of facts about how the Strelzyk and Wetzel families made a hot air balloon and floated themselves over the border. I began feeling like that one character in the Star Wars moving, chanting “stay on target, stay on target.” I’m still not sure if the project hits the target in the way the teacher would like, but we’re in the vicinity and whatever we’ve managed to hit, we’ve done it very thoroughly. Gleek has not under achieved on this one.

Of course the most urgent work of the week is finishing up The Body Politic, which is mostly waiting on me. I’ve got copy edits to enter, footnotes to place, footnote boxes to build, and test prints to run. These things all need to be done last week, because this week I was supposed to be turning my eyes ahead toward Phoenix Comic Con and making sure that everything is lined up for Howard’s trip there. I’ve also got to help Kiki put together artwork for her two panels at Conduit, which is taking place the same weekend as Phoenix. Also, I should probably create and print up Kiki’s graduation announcements because the relatives would probably like to hear about that event before it actually takes place. With all of this rolling around in my brain the Monday night insomnia which made me so tired on Tuesday and Wednesday begins to make sense.

Time to get moving and do all of the things.

My Cobble Stones Books

By / April 24, 2013 / 4 Comments

I just dropped the files off at the printer. Cobble Stones 2012 is temporarily out of my hands. In a few weeks I’ll need to put it in the store, open ordering, and begin the promotional push. I’ll also be re-introducing Cobble Stones 2011, which really didn’t get a proper launch of its own. Instead I just declared it done and moved onward because so many other things were demanding my attention. Several months ago I picked up the trade paperback size of Cobble Stones 2011 and realized that I’d made a mistake. These are sampler books, they should be small and light. People should be able to pick them up on a whim and read few a few essays. If I wanted the book to have those qualities, I needed to make the books smaller and less expensive. I sat down and re-designed them. Going forward all of the Cobble Stones books will be 4×7, which is the same size as a mass market paperback. The paper and binding will be the same quality as the larger book, but the smaller size lets me lower the price to $5 per book. I’m very pleased about this. I also love that the books are now an excellent size for tucking into a purse or bag and carrying along. This is the way these books ought to be. They’ll make their big debut in the store sometime next week. For now I have the last 30 copies of the 6×9 size. I suppose those 30 copies qualify as collectible since they’re at a discontinued size and they were printed before I redesigned the cover to include the year 2011 in the typography.

Putting together the second book was a fascinating project. I was able apply new things that I’ve learned about graphic design into the page layouts. It was also interesting to compare the content of the two books. There are some obvious thematic similarities, but you can tell that 2012 was a year when I was really wrestling with my tendency to struggle with anxiety, where the 2011 book just has hints of that and is far more focused on self discovery. It was why the snowy cover felt appropriate for the 2012 book. I’m hoping and picturing the 2013 book with a summery cover, perhaps on grass. Or maybe there won’t be an individual book for 2013, right now I have a hard time believing I’ll have enough solid essays to make a third book. I have to not focus on that. I write when I can and life is calming down so I’m able to write more often. Instead of fretting over the fate of future projects, I need to look at these two books I already have. I made two books. They’re pretty! And in only a week or so I’ll be able to show them to others. This is cause enough for rejoicing.

Glad for a Boring Work Day

By / April 22, 2013

Over the weekend both Howard and I had our eyes on today and hoped for normal. We wanted a boring work day during which nothing amazing or upsetting happened; a day when we could just put one foot in front of the other and be able to see significant progress by evening. I have now arrived at 7pm and that is the sort of day that I have had. Report from Howard’s drawing table tell a similar story. This feels like the first good work day we’ve had in weeks. I hardly dare hope that we can have two in a row, but I do hope for it.

I spent the day finishing copy edits and working layout for Cobble Stones 2012. I’ll review it tomorrow and then send it off to print. This means I’ll have copies with me at LDS Storymakers and they should be available online before that. Perhaps I’ll post the cover image tomorrow.

In family news: there isn’t much. Yay! No one had crises today, homework is being completed as I type. The kids appear to have been happy at school. At the end of the week I’ve got meetings with staff at two schools as I arrange for both Link and Gleek to transition smoothly up to the next school in line. I hope these can be routine paperwork meetings. That would be so very lovely to have a meeting where I had to haul myself all the way over just to be briefed on things I already know and to sign a paper saying that I’ve been briefed. Because the alternative is that the meetings will have new information and lately new information requires emotional management. I’ll note that this will not necessarily always be the case. Sometimes I’m interested and enlivened by new things, but in this context boring is good.

Perhaps this week we’ll finally find time to mow the lawn, fold the laundry, clean the bathrooms, and all the other things. That would be lovely.

Not All Likes are Created Equal

By / January 22, 2013 / 7 Comments

I’ve been doing a social media push these past couple of weeks to promote One Cobble and Hold on to Your Horses. I should probably call it a social media creep, because I’m reluctant to be pushy. So much so, that my sister, who was watching for announcements and information, did not see any. She suggested I might want to increase the volume just a little to get any results.

My reluctance stems from a belief that merely collecting Likes or followers is not inherently beneficial. The person who is excited and interested in Hold Horses will click Like, watch for updates, and be a willing supporter of the sequel. Someone who has just clicked Like in order to enter a contest or win a freebie will probably evaporate when the time comes to support the sequel. I could be wrong about that. It could be that once people show up, they’ll stay and become engaged. I just feel better about hawking my wares if I believe I’m talking to an audience who wants to hear about them. I’m not trying to inflate the number of Likes on the Hold Horses page, I’m trying to use the number of Likes to gauge interest in a sequel. That effort will fail if I use contests or giveaways to artificially inflate the number of Likes. this article is most talking about how buying likes leads to false search data, but it also supports what I’m saying. Spending money and effort to acquire Likes or followers is wasted. Instead I must focus on creating compelling content and use social media to help people become aware that the content is available. Good content + awareness = a growing group of people interested in new projects.

So I’m working hard to be content with a slow-growth model of building fanbase. Yes I get impatient. Yes sometimes I feel like I’m tap dancing to an empty theater or an unresponsive crowd. But I’m still pretty convinced that this is the right way for me to approach social media. I just hope I can build up enough momentum to support the sequel I want to do.

Adventures in Social Media

By / January 22, 2013 / 6 Comments

I want to fund a picture book, The Strength of Wild Horses, and the obvious choice for that is to run a Kickstarter drive. However those who are wise in the ways of Kickstarter have advised me that the project has a better chance to fund if I do some community building first. This makes sense to me.

Completely separate from my Kickstarter project I have been thinking about ways to build community and about some ways I’d like to do that which are difficult to do from this blog. Or rather, I could do them from the blog, but I am interested in seeing how it would feel to run a different sort of place on the internet. I want to run a series of posts talking about different picture books, how they show character traits which are common in high energy ADHD or Autistic kids, and how parents can use those books to help kids and their siblings to come to terms with these traits. It was to accomplish exactly this that I wrote Hold on to Your Horses in the first place. I’ve had a growing list of books for years and would love to find a useful way to share that list.

I’ve also been thinking about stages of parenting. I’m in the middle of parenting headed for the endgame. Several times I’ve had parents who are just starting out come to my blog hoping to find posts about the early years of parenting. There are some. Patch was only a year old when I began blogging, but I’ve grown as writer since then. I’ve grown as a parent since then. My perspectives have changed and I have new thoughts about old topics. I thought it would be interesting to run a series where I link to an old post and then provide commentary from my current perspective. It isn’t the same as me going through being a young parent myself, but it would help me delve into those topics. It is certainly a worthy experiment.

I’ve also been thinking about cross promotion. Many times people find Howard because of Writing Excuses (or some other project) then they find me because of Howard. Having multiple creative pursuits reaches into different groups of people. For a long time I’ve been dependent on Howard’s internet stature as the primary promotional tool for my creative work. Except we have different audiences and I’ve been feeling like it is time for me to strike out on my own to build my own community which is not annexed to his. In the long run I must do this if I want to be able to afford to create the things I want to create. I need to believe that Hold Horses and One Cobble are works strong enough to be the foundation of a community.

All of these thoughts connected with the advice to build community in advance of running a Kickstarter and the result is an experiment that I intend to run for the next several months. I’m going to extend myself a little bit further online to see what I can accomplish. I’ve picked venues where I’m already comfortable and have been for awhile: Facebook, G+, and Twitter. These are places I like to play already and so I’m just introducing a new game into those spaces.

On Twitter I’ve just set up an account @OneCobble. It will be a simple feed of links back to this blog. This provides a simple way for those on Twitter to follow the blog without me feeling like I’m spamming everyone with links to blog entries. People who want to see every single blog entry will follow @OneCobble. Others will be able to blissfully ignore it.

On G+ I’ve used the new communities feature to set up a One Cobble at a Time community. This is where I’ll post those blog links with commentary. I’ll also post links to articles of interest. I’m sure I’ll come up with other things as well. I’ll be deliberately trying to encourage conversation about these topics.

I’ve also set up a One Cobble community on Facebook. At first I expect it to be nearly identical to the posts on G+, but I’m quite curious to see how the two communities develop differently. If they don’t become different, it will be because I’m talking to myself and I’m pretty sure I’ll get tired of that in a hurry.

Facebook also has a Hold on to Your Horses page. This is where I’ll post about those picture books. It is also the measure I’ll use to figure out when I have enough community support for a Kickstarter to be successful.

A month from now I’ll evaluate to figure out which of these ventures is adding happiness to my life and which is adding only stress. I’ll see whether I can feel an increase of interest in the things I write and do. Perhaps at the end of that month I’ll pull back inward. I don’t know for sure. I just know that this feels like the right experiment.

I haven’t yet sent out invitations to these new feeds and communities. I’m still debating whether I should or if that feels spammy to me. (It is pretty important to me that I not annoy people by misusing social media tools.) If I do, it won’t be for at least a week. I want to make sure that I’ve already got interesting things in the spaces before inviting everyone. However if any of you blog readers want front row seats while I figure this stuff out, I’d love for you to join me. You’ll be like the guest who arrives early and helps set out the snacks for everyone who will come later. If none of those things sounds interesting, feel free to hang out here. I’ll be keeping this place the same.

Let the social media experiments begin.

Making Books

By / January 2, 2013

My blogging has been brief the last few days because I’ve been putting the last of the 2012 entries into my blog book for that year. Any time I’m placing blog entries into one of these books I spend some of that time wondering why on earth I’m so very wordy. The book for 2012 is 496 pages long, which is a full 96 pages more than the 2011 book. I wrote more this year. The project is packaged up and off at Lulu.com for printing. While I was in my Lulu account I paused to count. I’ve created 22 books through their website. These are the family photo books, blog books, and a couple of other personal projects. Add in the ten books I’ve produced through offset printing and I’ve created 32 books in the past eight years. It is amazing what accumulates when I’m not looking.

While I was doing layout, I noticed that Lulu had an option for pocket sized books. I’ve always been a bit dissatisfied with the trade paperback size of Cobble Stones. It is a sampler book meant for gifting or as something small to be taken along. A smaller book with the dimensions of a mass market paperback would be better suited to the material. So I spent a few hours and re-packaged Cobble Stones into a pocket sized format. While I was at it, I added 2011 to the title so that it will match the Cobble Stones 2012 book when I release it later this year. This project was one of those moments when I realized that I’ve accumulated some significant skill in producing books. A similar moment occurred when I assembled a cover for my blog book in only a few hours. Last year’s cover took hours and hundreds of pictures while I figured out how the format needed to work. This time (Thanks to a nicely placed snow bank and some fortuitous late afternoon sunlight hitting that bank of snow) I think I’ve got the cover shot I need in a single photo session. Next year may require more effort, but I’m trying to just believe that I’ve learned and grown as a maker of books.

I’ve got four book projects in process right now. The Body Politic is the next Schlock book and my role there is pure graphic design and art direction. Howard does the heavy lifting on creation. For Cobble Stones 2012 I may already have a cover, but the editing has only begun. I need to finish selecting and arranging essays. After that will be critiques, revision, and copy editing before the book is ready to print. Putting together the book Strength of Wild Horses will be fairly simply for me, but before I can get to that fun part, I have to face the Kickstarter process to secure funding for the book. Also in the beginning stages is the 2012 Family Photo Book. I’ve collected the stories, but I have to select pictures, scan pictures, and then take time to lay out everything into pages. It is a massive project every year, but one which I always enjoy. Even better is when I see the kids sitting down to read the stack of photo books from previous years, re-living the family stories from their earlier childhoods.

Bit by bit all of these projects will become books. After that there will be new book projects. Because I like making books and intend to keep doing it for as long as I like it.

Facing the Fear

By / December 27, 2012 / 3 Comments

This morning I sat in Howard’s office while he worked on painting a miniature. His hands are busy, his ears are available, and he’s likely to stay put rather than wandering off to go work on a project. I enjoy talking to Howard while he’s painting. I’m not sure whether he can say the same, because the times when I’m likely to sit down and just talk to him are usually when I need to sort my brain about something. Otherwise I’m off and running around tending to projects. We’re a pretty good pair.

I wanted to talk about one of my intended projects for January. I’m planning to run a Kickstarter for Strength of Wild Horses and the thought frightens me. I’m not at all certain that I have enough skill or social media reach to get a picture book project funded. I think what I hoped for was that Howard would take the role of cheerleader, that he’d pour encouragement on me and I could use the borrowed energy to proceed. Instead Howard stayed firmly in the role of business partner, discussing options and likely outcomes. He’s not sure we can pull it off either. He also spent time as Good Husband, expressing his intention to support me through all of it. Even the parts when I go neurotic or weepy because things are hard. I had to walk myself onward into the day because there was no tide of borrowed enthusiasm on which I could surf. I really wanted that tide, because the day just seemed hard and all my projects of questionable utility.

I was supposed to focus on shipping, accounting, and house cleaning. Instead I sat and thought for a bit. I came to some conclusions. I can either be a person who depends upon others to help her believe in her work, or I can proceed as if I believe because I probably will at some point in the future. Also, fear of failure is a bad reason to give up something I want to do. Howard is willing to follow me through this Kickstarter venture and catch me if I fall. That is a huge expression of love and trust. I need to see it.

Thoughts sorted, I went to my computer to begin accounting. Except once I got there, I opened up my 2012 One Cobble book instead. This is the layout project where I print all of the 2012 blog entries into a book for my own reference. While doing so, I was also collecting stories for our 2012 family photo book and for the 2012 edition of my blog sampler book. I happened to be working on the months of April and May, which were just about the craziest months out of this year. I took a trip to see my sick Grandmother while simultaneously remodeling my office, I taught at a conference, hosted my mother as a visitor, went to the Nebulas, helped my son through a diagnostic process for learning disabilities, managed the end of the school year, managed pre-orders for the latest Schlock book, and sent Howard off for a trip. It was the craziest mish-mash of business and personal that I could possibly arrange. Yet, as I placed the entries onto their pages, I began to see how books I’ve created in the past made a difference and how me continuing to make books will play a part in our future business. I remembered why this project matters and why Kickstarter is the best shot it has to succeed. I found, not a tide of enthusiasm to carry me, but some firm ground to stand on while I continue forward.

So, come January I will make a video of myself talking enthusiastically about Strength of Wild Horses. I will feel awkward and will dislike the result, but I will post it anyway. Then I will be sure it will all fail even while secretly hoping it will succeed. It will do one or the other and I will manage the aftermath, which will either be scary or sad. I’ll do all of this because I think it is one of the right next steps for me to take. There are other steps for me to take: finishing a novel, continuing this blog, supporting Howard in both his prose and his comic, teaching and guiding the kids, fulfilling my spiritual responsibilities, submitting for publication. All of these steps together are taking me places. Hopefully there will be wonderful places after the hard and scary ones that I can see. I’m scared, but that won’t stop me from moving forward.

The Steps to Deciding on Merchandise and then Managing It

By / October 4, 2012

My inventory day yesterday required me to stare at all of the various merchandise that we’ve made over the last few years. Then I started thinking about the decision making process behind creating that merchandise and I thought it might be useful to outline how that works.

1. Cool idea! This is the fun part of creating merchandise, before any work is invested. We’re able to say wouldn’t it be cool if… we had miniatures, there were a t-shirt with a maxim on it, we had schlock patches. Howard and I come up with fun ideas all the time. Fans come up with them too and tell us about them. They have to pass the rest of the steps before they can exist.

2. Broad appeal? For every cool idea, Howard and I have a discussion of whether it will appeal to most Schlock fans or if it will only interest a few. No merchandise will interest everyone, but the more people we can interest the better. Other wise we have a basement full of stuff that no one is buying. Books and calendars interest many fans, water bottles and miniatures only interest a few. We can still make the lower interest items, but it affects pricing and quantities.

3. Costs. There are different kinds of costs involved in merchandise. Production costs are the most obvious. We have to find a supplier who manufactures the merchandise we want. We would dearly love a bowl-sized yellow mug printed with Tub of Happiness, but we’ve never found a supplier who can do it the way we imagine. Space is another cost. Bowl size mugs are physically large and I only have so much room to store things. Every inch of space I give to mug storage can not be used for book storage–and books sell better. There are costs in effort as well. T-shirts take lots of effort because I have to track sizes as well as styles. Merchandise also gets rejected because of shipping concerns. We tend to avoid things that break easily in transit. We also avoid things which require new packing methods. I’m already stocking eight different types of shipping containers. Storing those shipping supplies also takes up space.

4. Price point. We have to evaluate all the various costs of the item against the price we think people are willing to pay. Some really cool ideas are simply not profitable because they cost too much for the amount of money they can earn.

5. Budget evaluation. We only have so much money available to fund new merchandise. If we have to choose between printing a book and making goopy Schlock in a cup, the books are going to win every time. Every item of merchandise we choose means there are at least three others which we can’t fund.

6. Design. All of the above steps are discussion and research. We can do those in the space of an hour if things line up right. This one is when Howard commits art. We have to find space in Howard’s schedule to create whatever thing we’ve pictured. Many cool merchandise items stall in this stage for a very long time. Sometimes we even lose track of them because we’re too busy.

7. Production. This stage begins with sending files to a supplier. Usually there are a couple of rounds of merchandise approval, but mostly this stage is made of waiting.

8. Marketing. With merchandise in hand we have to sell it. Sometimes the marketing begins before the design and production phases. When we run a pre-order it is often to answer the questions of appeal and quantity. It also helps to build interest in the merchandise. Older merchandise still benefits from marketing attention. Most of our marketing plans are “Howard will announce it from the Schlock blog and tweet it.” This works great for Schlock merch. It did not work well when we put out Hold on to Your Horses and realized that Howard’s audience is not mine. For non-established businesses the marketing discussion needs to be up there around step 3, before any money is spent.

9. Inventory management. And now we’ve come full circle back to my inventory day. I have to keep track of all the merchandise so that I do not sell more than we have in stock. It is also critical that I be able to find merchandise and ship it within a day or so of when it is ordered. I have to manage both the physical inventory in my house and the inventory listed in the online store to make sure that they match each other.

Merchandise is a lot of work, but there are rewards that aren’t measured in money. We love the moment when someone walks up to our booth at a convention and lights up “Oh I have to have that t-shirt! It is perfect!” We agree. It’s why we made the shirt. I just wish that more of the cool ideas passed the rest of the steps into reality.

My Self Publishing Experience Thus Far

By / July 9, 2012

I wrote myself a royalty check last week. It is the first time I have ever done so. With the creation of Cobble Stones, and Hold on to Your Horses finally being profitable, I realized that it is time for the publishing company I run to be paying me as a writer. So I did the spread sheet, calculated the numbers for last quarter, then wrote the check and signed it. Right afterward, I flipped it over and signed the back so I can deposit it. Before I tell you how much money, let me tell you a couple more things.

Hold on to Your Horses took me a month to write. Granted, I probably only worked for about 10 hours of that month, but during that month I wrote little else. Finding an artist to work with used up at least 30 work hours. Back and forth with the artist took 40 work hours over three months. Layout and design took at least 40 hours, this includes the hours I spent curled into a ball crying because I was sure that I’d completely ruined the project and would never be able to make it work right. I had to wait three months to get the books. Then I took the books with me to every convention I attended. I talked about them to customers over dealer’s room tables. I did that over and over again for four years. I talked about Hold Horses on the internet. I did interviews on local television, radio, podcast, and the internet. Howard blogged about the book to all his readers. The project finally broke even financially last year. It has now paid my artist a fair rate and paid for printing costs. My royalty check for this month, the first money I’ve ever made on the project, was $15.

Cobble Stones is newer. It took me 20-30 hours to edit, layout, and create. I paid someone to help me put it into kindle and ePub formats. I spent at least 30 hours making the cover through trial and lots of error. I don’t know how many hours went into the original essays. I haven’t spent much time marketing it yet. The release got swamped by the Sharp End of the Stick pre-order. It was more a kick-this-thing-out-the-door-to-fend-for-itself than a celebratory release. I find it amusing that I co-own the publishing company, but my book got sidelined by a big money maker. There is a lot more work I can do to promote this book, but the truth is that my profit margins on it are very slim because it is a Print on Demand book. It will never make very much money. My total royalty on this book is $9.

I give all these numbers because people considering self-publishing should know. It eats a lot of time and usually does not pay a lot of money. I’m not sorry I did the projects. I continue to hope that they will earn more in the future, but they have not even begun to pay me back for the financial value of my time. Emotionally both projects are paid in full and then some. Except, perhaps, in the moment when I hold a $24 check and think “that’s it?”

The Schlock books are also self-published. They support our family as well as allow us to hire a colorist and an occasional shipping assistant. Neither Howard nor I has been able to leverage the fervent Schlock audience into sales for my books. The works are too different. My writing has to find its own audience, and I’m working on that slowly. I’m treating this first $24 check as a promise to myself. It is a starting point from whence I can grow. It certainly beats the zero dollars I was getting before. Self publishing is a long game, I need to be willing to keep working at it for years to come.