self publishing – Page 5 – President of Outskirts Press

Contenders for the 2011 Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year Awards

Last year we crowned the author of our first Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year Award. Doris Kenney Marcotte published The Beads of Lapis Lazuli with Outskirts Press in 2010. That fall she was personally nominated for the Colorado Independent Publishers EVVY Awards along with approximately 5% of our published authors, all representing the very best from Outskirts Press. When the EVVY Awards were presented the following spring (March 2011), Doris won first place in the Fiction category. She went on to become a finalist for the 2010 Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year awards along with finalsts Frank B. Leibold, Ph.D., and Robert J. Mignone, M.D., F.A.P.A.

Once the three finalists for our Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year award are determined (based upon them winning a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place EVVY Award), they must each collect enough votes to be crowed our Best Book of the Year award winner in a public poll held on the Outskirts Press blog. You can see the poll that determined Doris’s win by clicking here. It was a close race between her and Frank.

Well, we’re closing in on the exciting conclusion to determine the 2011 Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year award. Last December we nominated approximately 2% of our published books for submission to the Colorado Independent Publishers Association EVVY Awards. Winning an EVVY Award is required to become a finalist for the Best Book of the Year award. The EVVY Finalists have now been announced and those award winners will be recognized at the Awards Ceremony next Thursday, May 17th.

Among all the EVVY Finalists are these thirteen Outskirts Press books. One of these will be our 2011 Best Book of the Year winner. Who will it be? Stay tuned to this blog or our Outskirts Press blog for the next several weeks to find out… Let’s wish them luck!

Are you the next award-winning author from Outskirts Press. Start publishing today…

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A self-publishing author’s experience with Outskirts Press

Last week I shared an email I received from one of our authors in relation to the custom covers we designed for her. I’d like to share another email I received, this more a more general reaction to the entire self publishing experience as a whole. All of us at Outskirts Press work hard to make sure all our authors have wonderful experiences (and we get it right 99% of the time), so it’s always gratifying to receive emails like this from one of our recently-published authors (I recevied this roughly around Easter).

“Dear Anna, Brent, and Jodee:

I really wasn’t expecting my free copies of A Guide to the Psalms of David when it arrived earlier today, since there was no entry under shipping and I assumed “processed” under orders simply meant my entry on the website was accepted and my book was now in the queue to be printed. Unprepared, I can only relate that when I opened up the package and saw my book, I was stunned; elated, on the one hand, because of the gorgeous cover–in which credit goes, as you know, to my wife Audrey–terrified, on the other hand, with the realization I now have to rev up to a significantly higher standard if I expect to go out into the world and inspire people with, in the words of John Adams, poetry “superior to all odes, hymns, and songs, in any language.”

But regardless of what the future brings, I cannot thank each and every one of you enough for helping me bring this creation–because it is more than just a book–into the world. And I dare say, the cover alone, is healing: the colors and the representation of David contemplating his harp. (You might recall from the Bible when King Saul had attacks of melancholy, David’s harp playing soothed him.)

All the best, and whatever holiday you are celebrating at this time of year, may it be with much Joy!!!

Sincerely,

Steve Rosner

P.S. Please thank the elf who corrected the interior cover by removing a superfluous ‘the’ in the title. Although it was discovered at the last minute and corrected on the cover itself, I opted the leave the interior as is, not wanting to delay the book any longer.”

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A Tale of Two Custom Covers: A Self Publishing Author’s Reaction

After seeing her two custom covers, Ellen wrote me this email (after all, I’m just an email away for our authors), which she gave me permission to share:

“Brent,

Since I was quick to yell for help a few weeks ago, I thought it only fair that I also yell to shout Congratulations and WOW! I received my two options for the cover of my book: Tales of a Lion from Jennifer Rush on Thursday and I LOVE THEM BOTH!!!! When I think about the possible cover I threw together and what I am being presented with now, I have to wonder – What was I thinking???? Your team is fabulous!!!!

Incidentally, a sequel is planned for this book. I would like very much to use both of these – particularly since I can’t decide between them now. Don’t know how that would work out…or if it is even permitted. The sequel will be entitled: The Lonesome Wail of the Lion’s Roar.

In between times, I will complete what I am writing now: Wish List….which I would like to have Outskirts publish as well. I am targeting a handover to Outskirts sometime January 2013. That will leave me writing the sequel during 2013 and publishing that no later than January 2014.

I hope I can use the second option of the cover! Mostly, I just wanted whoever did these to know how very much I appreciate their work.

Excellent Job!

Ellen”

And yes, we arranged for her to secure BOTH custom covers, one for her first book and the other for her sequel. Another happy ending for another Outskirts Press author…

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A Tale of Two Custom Covers: Author Submitted vs. Professionally Designed

In yesterday’s post I talked about our custom cover option and how we often have to walk a delicate line when working with authors who have submitted their own cover designs and who we want to diplomatically point toward a “better” direction. One of our authors, who has given me permission to recount her experience, recently went through this exact scenario. She had designed her own cover and submitted it for her book. It looked like this:

This is a relatively average example of the author-submitted covers we receive at Outskirts Press. They are almost always white (since designing on color or backgrounds introduces a whole host of technical problems that most authors simply choose to eschew) and it lacks a spine and a back cover. But that’s why they come to us, right? To make their book even BETTER than it already is… In some cases we’re able to convince the author to consider a professionally-designed custom cover, given the overall importance of covers. In other cases, we’re not so successful and they end up publishing what they (or their designer friends) have designed in a word processor. Fortunately, in Ellen’s case, we were successful in communicating to her the importance of a great cover; and as a result, our book designer created the following two custom covers for her to choose from:

What was Ellen’s reaction? Stay tuned…

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A Tale of Two Custom Covers: Part One

One of our most popular options at Outskirts Press is our Custom Cover option, where one of our talented designers will create TWO completely separate custom covers for the author’s book, based upon the author’s own input and preferences. The author then selects the one he/she likes best and provides further input to fine-tune it. In general, covers are one of the “trickier” aspects of what we do because it’s a passionate subject. All authors have very strong feelings about their covers. Many begin the process already with a cover clearly in their mind. In fact, many have already designed what they believe is a very good cover. In those cases, some authors are resistant to consider any other alternatives, even if their own cover may lack basic components of a true cover design (like a spine or a back, for instance). It sometimes puts our people in awkward positions where they have to walk a fine line between supporting the author’s desires and at the same time bring to the author’s attention the reality that their covers, actually, aren’t very… well… good.

More often than not, we acquiesce and watch the author use what they supplied. After all, it’s their book. But it can be frustrating, because our designers have often created really wonderful covers that all too often go to waste at the author’s whims. On one hand, we always want our books to look as awesome as possible; on the other hand, we want to answer to the author’s wishes and give them exactly what they want. Granted, sometimes these are financial decisions, since a professional custom cover design starts at $299 (compare that to $900 and higher at other self publishing firms); but other times the decision doesn’t seem to be based upon anything other than a skewed reality of what comprises good cover design.

So with one of our authors’ kind permission, I’d like to present just such a case study over the next two days… stay tuned…

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Submitting cover galley edits with Outskirts Press

Requesting edits to your cover file is simply a matter of entering two pieces of information into our online form: the “error” and the “correction.” Additional information and help is available from this screen by clicking the little question mark icon.

This process is admittedly a little cumbersome, because the .jpg image of your cover doesn’t allow you to “cut” text and then “paste” it into the form, so one has to enter both the “error” and the “correction” manually into the applicable boxes (which of course, opens the door for NEW errors — so be VERY careful when completing this process that you do not introduce a new error when fixing one).

The good news is that most covers only require 1-2 changes, if that, so this process is usually painless. Along with indicating the error and the correction, we also need the “location” of the issue, which for the cover could be the “back” or the “spine” or the “front.”

We provide 10 free fixes, so 10 rows are presented on the screen. If for some inexplicable reason, you have more changes than 10, you can order more edits in blocks of 10 for a nominal fee (which is why that “Galley Edit Balance” is shown in red, to keep you abreast of your galley fees, if any). 90% of our authors have no changes to the cover and 99% of those have less than 10, so very rarely do any additional fees ever apply here.

Once you’re done entering all your edits (double and triple check your work, please!), you will then click on the “I’m all done with cover edits!” button on the bottom of the screen.

Two more pop-up message appear, one after the other, verifying that you are indeed done, and that if you change your mind about making any further changes to your cover at a later date, additional revision fees will apply. Fair enough; after all, you get lots of free chances to get it right this first time, so make them count.

Click “Yes” and “I accept” respectively to move on to the next step…

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Self publishing with Outskirts Press – Free interior galley edits

Submitting your interior edits requires a quick check-out process through your shopping cart. If all you had were 25 edits or less, your revisions are completely free:

And then, just like when you first began the production process, your Publishing Center returns to the Production Phase screen, which means we have received your edits and are correcting your book according to what you provided to us:

This period of time depends upon the number of corrections you’ve submitted, obviously, and ends when you receive another email notifying you that your Proofs are again ready to review. At this point, the Review Process begins all over again. And hopefully you caught everything the first time so now you can just “Go to Print!” on your files.

Once you have approved both your cover file and interior file, we initiate our own internal QC and Pre-Media review. This is not a subjective review of your book to make sure you didn’t miss any spelling mistakes; that’s your responsibility and we trust you reviewed your proofs thoroughly before telling us to “Go to Print.” No, our review is a technical one to make sure your book is going to meet our high standards from a technical standpoint. Once it passes both our QC and Pre-Flight tests, we submit all your information for print-on-demand printing and distribution-on-demand wholesale & online distribution…. And what happens next? You receive an exciting email notifying you of publication…

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Fandemonium Volume 2 is published

Let’s take a small break from the Outskirts Press pre-production process (which we’ve been covering for the past month), and the production process (which we’ll cover next) to make a few announcements that I haven’t yet had an opportunity to mention.

For instance… late last month we published our second annual Facebook anthology, Fandemonium Volume 2, which is another collection of writing from our talented community of Facebook friends, all 4700 of them (and counting). Congrats to all who are represented. You can save 10% on your copy by ordering directly from our bookstore at http://outskirtspress.com/bookstore/9781432788001.html; although, like approximately 8,500 of our other books, it’s also available on Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble’s website if you’d prefer to buy there. Either way, the American Red Cross gets $7.51 (100% of the royalties of the book) for each sale. They appreciate your support.

Here is the table of contents, to see what work is presented and which authors are represented. Unlike our Outskirts Press specific anthologies, of which we’ve published three, it’s not necessary to be a published author with Outskirts Press in order to appear in our Facebook Anthology. All you need to do is be a “friend” of our Outskirts Press page on Facebook. But, I noticed that many authors who were new to Outskirts Press and represented in our first Facebook anthology are NOW Outskirts Press authors, and that’s always gratifying to see. So thank you.

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The Self-Publishing Pre-Production Process at Outskirts Press

Publishing our 2nd annual Facebook anthology, Fandemonium Volume 2, provides a great opportunity to walk step-by-step through the entire publishing process with Outskirts Press from start to finish. That way, new authors who are considering their publishing options can see first-hand what the online experience is like. And since I’m not only the CEO, but also a writer, I can also use this opportunity to share some “best practices” and suggestions that will help writers who read this series of posts better navigate our book publishing website to get the most “bang for their buck.” I happen to have some “insider-hints” that can serve the savvy author well.

I will cover two phases of the publishing process in two separate series:

Pre-production – the part of the process leading up to clicking the “I APPROVE PRODUCTION TO START” button.
Production – the part of the process after Production Approval and leading up to publication.

So… onward to the pre-production process:

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Self-Publishing with Outskirts Press – Selecting a Package

For the purposes of this self-publishing walk-thru we will use the 2nd annual Facebook anthology, titled Fandemonium Volume 2, comprised of submissions from our Facebook friends. Since we’ve already published the first volume, I am greeted by the following screen when I sign-in to my Publishing Center at http://outskirtspress.com/authors.php:

This dashboard allows me to manage my current publication, Fandemonium Volume 1. I can order books or marketing options, among other management tools. I can also start publishing a new book by clicking the “Click here” link circled along the left-hand side under my “Active Titles” list.

If I am publishing my FIRST book with Outskirts Press, I would click the Publishing Packages button along the top menu tabs (circled above).

In either case, I am taken to the Publishing Packages screen to choose the publishing service I wish to order:

If I don’t know what book publishing package to order, I would order the “Down Payment on Book Publishing” option, which applies a small deposit toward the package I will eventually choose. It also gets my production team assigned so I can consult with my Publishing Consultant personally. Some authors assume they must pay this deposit in order to get help or speak with someone on the phone, but that’s not true. We open lines of email communication with every author who registers for a free Publishing Center from our site at http://outskirtspress.com/authors.php when they download our free e-books. And our toll free number is listed on just about every page of our website. But when it comes to priority and allocation of available resources (people), it’s probably easy to understand why someone who has paid a down payment on their publishing package gets more attention than someone who has not.

So here are some hints to skip the Down Payment and go straight to a publishing package, where all the Outskirts Press service really kicks in: If you have any color inside your book, you need the Pearl package; it’s as easy as that. All of our covers are full-color, so this consideration is solely related to the interior of the book.

If your interior is black/white, you have more choices, although over 60% of all our authors choose the Diamond package and about 25% select the Ruby. Here’s why: The Emerald doesn’t include an ISBN nor distribution (less than 2% of our authors choose this one), and the Sapphire is pretty limited in terms of available formats and options (less than 5% choose this one).

But perhaps the best reason is because authors publishing under “higher” packages earn higher royalties and their book copy prices are less expensive. Let’s look at a chart (which also compares 3 of our competitors):

Not to get too complicated, but in this chart, you’ll notice that competitive publisher “U” pays less royalties than the Diamond or Ruby package but more than the Sapphire package for this example book. But keep in mind Publisher U’s retail price in this example is also $4 higher.

So for this reason, among others that I’ll elaborate on later, I’m going to choose the Diamond package for our Facebook anthology. And we’ll continue with that next time…