I’m super proud to be speaking at this year’s The Word On The Street Festival in Vancouver, BC. On Sunday, September 26th, the other two Book Broads and I will be hosting a FREE panel titled “Build it and they will come – NAH!” It’s all about book marketing, publicity, and generally being in people’s faces.

The description of our talk goes something like this: “Many writers assume once the book is complete, it will sell itself, right? Wrong. No matter the method of publication — traditionally published, entrepreneurially published, or electronically published — the onus of promotion falls on the author. The Book Broads offer practical advice for writers (published or not) to raise their profiles, extend their reach and build their fan base.
Join Angela Crocker, Kimberly Plumley, and Peggy Richardson as they take the sting out of the overwhelming prospect of media interviews, blog posts, Facebook updates, podcasting, and so much more.”

Queue up early! We start at 1:45pm downstairs in the Peter Kaye room of the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library. (Yeah, that building that looks like the Roman Colloseum.)

See you there!

I’ll be speaking with the other two Book Broads on Sept. 25th for the Editor’s Association of Canada (Editors.ca), about Creating and Editing Social Content, from 10am to 4pm at SFU’s Harbour Centre Campus, in downtown Vancouver. George Plumley, the Author of WordPress 24 Hour Trainer will be joining us to talk about WordPress, the world’s most widely-used blogging platform and content management system. (And the platform upon which this blog you’re reading is built.)

The focus of our talk is about creating that which really drives social media: CONTENT. Without loyalty to platform, we’ll talk about various platforms and their advantages and disadvantages, including blogging, FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many many others. We’ll send you away with some fast tools that you can put to use right away, and of course, some chocolate.

Early Bird pricing ends Sept. 14th, $100 for Members of the EAC, and $160 for non-Members. Click here to register.

Here’s a checklist to help you create a project timeline for your self-published book or ebook, and understand how long to allocate for each stage of the process.

There are two philosophies about when to release your book. One dictates that you should pre-determine a particular event or time of year with which to coincide the release of the book for best effect. This means picking a release date well in advance, and then counting backwards on your calendar in order to determine when you need to have certain milestones completed.

The second philosophy suggests that if your book is “timeless”, you can simply release the book on your own self-determined timeline, and take a more long-term, big-picture approach, because you’re in this for the long haul.

I suggest a compromise between the two: rather than just working along as in the second philosophy, pick a date that is practical for you to achieve, because otherwise, the book won’t ever happen. After all, every book project is for the long haul. Then follow this checklist to get the book ready in time. Rushing it rarely offers a concrete advantage, but dawdling doesn’t make you any money, either.

For a print book, the timeline must include printing, which frighteningly, relies heavily on someone other than you and your core team: Your Printer. Your printer will be your best friend on this project, so be certain that you call them as early in the project as possible (see #3 below for the best time to call them) and see what their press schedule is like. Press time can be booked over a year in advance for some large companies, but for small jobs, many companies adopt a “we’ll fit you in” sort of attitude. The print timeline is also determined by the style of book you choose, including options like hardcover vs. perfect-bound, paper choices, and so on. Your printer should prepare a clearly laid out quote with all of these options and discuss them with you in detail.

I love my printer so much that I feel I should tell you about Friesens, based in Manitoba, Canada. They have grown to become one of the largest book printers in North America, (the world?) and frequently print for the big publishing houses and many other American companies as well as their native Canadian market. My rep is an amazing guy named Gerhard Aichelberger, on Vancouver Island. (Reps are determined by where you live.) He’d love to talk to you about your print needs, and no, I’m not being compensated in any way for saying that. He’s just an extraordinarily nice guy who has repeatedly bent over backwards to make my Authors happy. All of the Friesens reps are great, and the company is made up of people that are more like a huge family than employees. There is no style of book that they cannot print, stock, and ship, and their quality controls are ISO certified.

Here are the basic timeline elements, with a sample time frame below in [brackets], based on an imaginary project where; there is only one Author, the subject is one with which they are already familiar, there is a marginal amount of additional research to be done, a simple design will be chosen, the book will be simultaneously paper and ebook published, and the Author intends to perform a combination of self-marketing and traditional print book marketing through retail channels.

1. Market Research

The most important thing in the entire project. This might take minutes, or it might take months. Don’t over-do it, but you should have a clear idea as to the size and viability of the market, how they are currently receiving information in this topic area (ebook vs. book, styles of either…) and what niches are still available for you in the market. Be sure to include keyword research in this section, and purchasing of appropriate domain names. (See my earlier post for choosing a domain name, which tightly steers your book titling process.) Secure your social media outlets, like your Twitter account and YouTube channel, along with your Facebook fan page. Brainstorm about more stuff like this day and night.
[2 weeks, including time to bounce the idea off a few people in your network. Future posts will tell you a bit about how I do this with my clients.]

2. Outlining

This feels like a grade school nightmare, but it is essential. Don’t skip it. It is almost as important as #1, because this is how you will know how many pages your book will be, how you can modularize it, how you will format/design it, what associated products you will create, how large a team you will need to help you, how much research help you will need, and much more. I can often complete an outline in a day-long marathon session, with the Author’s core team involved if necessary. This is also the time to secure things like your ISBN number, your UPC code, and so on. Get the technical and legal crap out of the way so you can get to the fun stuff. Set up your initial website, and start blogging. Make a video for YouTube – you’ll make more specific ones later, but start to build your audience.
[3 days, including adjustments to the marathon plan.]

3. Specification

This is the stage where you determine how long your book / ebook will be , how it will be printed (if at all), how it will be graphically designed (work with the designer to get a quote at this stage), how it will be marketed, how it will be sold (that is, the technical or real-world logistics), and many other items. Now that you know how long it’s going to be, you can calculate how many pages it will take up, based on a calculation involving page size, number of words designated or estimated per section, and how many words / illustrations / diagrams fit on the chosen page size. This means that you can now get a quote from your printer, and book your press time well in advance.
[1 day to 2 weeks, including a small amount of additional sales research. Our sample will be 2 weeks.]

4. Initial Content Development

Here’s where you start actually writing. Most clients who work through my process are extremely frustrated by the fact that they don’t get to start writing until now. My answer is: do you want to write, or do you want to make money?
[Time varies widely based on the working speed of the Author. Some people can write an entire book in a long weekend - I once wrote a 30-page ebook overnight, but I don't recommend that! For some, it can take months, but let's hope for something in-between. For our sample project, let's call it 6 weeks.]

5. Editorial Stage

There’s a lot of back-and-forth at this stage. Do not let this frustrate you. Your Editor’s job is to preserve your voice, but to make the data as saleable as possible. They should remain objective and be representative of your designated market. Usually, the book will be shorter when you get it back from your Editor, and you may have up to about 6 revisions on some areas, though more than 3 is not typically efficient. Do not indulge in dangerous emotional attachment to your content – it is only a product.
[7-10 days is often enough for a medium-length book that is essentially well-written to start with.]

6. Design

Once the content has been completely, 1000% revised, there are no more changes or spelling errors, no bits that you forgot, and your diagrams or tables have been laid out for the designer to re-create, you hand the manuscript over to your typesetter/designer. See other posts for tips for working with designers, but just be sure that there are no more changes to the content before you hand it to them, as changes after the design has started can be costly both in terms of money and lost time. Be sure to include time to design an appropriate website, hopefully in tune with your book’s design, to create wholistic and congruent communication with your reader base.
[1 to 3 weeks and up, depending on the length of the book and how clear you were in stage 3 with your design choices. Our example project will be 2 weeks.]

Tip: If you feel qualified to perform your own typesetting and design, it is often a good idea to actually write the book in the design template. Adobe InDesign and InCopy is especially good for this, but I have also successfully used open-source applications like OpenOffice.org. Writing in the design template allows you to see how words flow, gives insight into subtle things like aligning style and content, allows you to create flyouts and featured content more easily, and may help you spot trouble before you’ve gone too far.

7. Pre-Press

Some might say that this stage is not really worthy of a numbered point by itself, except that if there are any problems with the file that is uploaded to your printer, it can mess up a lot of other time frames. Ideally, this should be an invisible part of the process that takes minutes, but I’m adding this in as part of my “hope for the best, but plan for the worst” philosophy.
[Ideally, minutes. Possibly, a couple of days to figure it out and correct the problem. Keep in good contact with your printer during this time to ensure that you don't lose your press booking and that they are still on schedule. Our example project will not include any time for this.]

8. Printing

The day you send the book to the printer, you will not sleep that night, and will instead spend the night staring at the ceiling, wondering what you forgot, misspelled, left out, etc. I advise you to have a glass of wine or go to a movie and just try to get through it.
But remember, this is *not* the time to sit on your hands! If you have an ebook that was created at the same time as your print book, get that sucker out there are start hawking it – hard. Call the book distributors and retailers that you’ve been talking up and give them an update. Plan events. Create downloads for your website. Blog till your fingers bleed. Start doing interviews. Tweet like a songbird. Just keep building the momentum until it comes back from the printer and lands on your doorstep.
[2-3 weeks including freight, but this depends heavily on your printer's press schedule. The earlier you book, the less time you need to budget. Our example project will be 3 weeks.]

9. Safety Margin

It’s rare, but print errors happen. Freight gets lost, snowstorms tie up deliveries, and sometimes people just catch the flu. This time is your margin for error that ensures if you have promised delivery of the books to someone, you can deliver them early and look like a genius, or you have time to fix the mistake / wait for the snow to melt. Planning this time into your calendar at the outset will reduce a lot of stress, but if you end up with the books without delay, consider it bonus marketing time. Send out more review copies, get more last-minute interviews, do a few more talks or lectures, and just work it baby, work it.
[2 weeks in summer, 3 weeks if in winter, not because of weather, but because if you are printing at a busy time of year, you will need more time to get back on track. Our example project will be 2 weeks.]

10. Book Release Date

This date is not the end of your book journey, but the beginning. A well-designed book should have an active life span of 2-5 years, and perhaps a great deal more for an ebook, as it is a living document and can be revised to a new version any time, replacing the previous version on your website. You now have a full-time job of being an Author, and should continue to perform all of the marketing activities that you’ve been ramping up before this time, adjusting for market fluctuations and actively marketing your personal services alongside the book.

All of these time blocks, including the Safety Margin add up to: 19 weeks, or about 5 months. That sounds like a lot of time, and it is. I’ve seen Authors who work solo do it in less than 3 weeks plus press time, and it is of course possible to produce an elemental ebook overnight. 2-3 months is still practical for a paper book all in, assuming that there are no problems, and that the Author is decisive and well-prepared.

It’s up to you to process each of these stages and design a timeline of your own, but just be sure that you give yourself enough time to include proper market research up front, and a margin for error. The market research will guide you for the length of the project and steer every decision from content to design to printing to marketing. It’s first on the list because it is most important.

This was a long article, but I hope it’s encouraged you to think of your project in terms of the big picture – the picture where you are a successful, independent, and slightly wacky Self-Published Author.

What a weekend it has been for Humanus Publishing! A launch party for one of my authors, a new release from another of my authors, and the rollout of our new affiliate program, all in the last 4 days!

Sunday was the launch party for The Freshman FlyFisher, (ISBN 978-0-978-3292-1-1) by Rick Passek of Surrey, BC. Rick held his launch event at the Little Campbell Hatchery at the Semiahmoo Fish and Game Club on 184th in Surrey. What a huge success for all involved! Rick not only sold plenty of books, but made numerous contacts related to promoting family outdoor events in the Surrey area. We are grateful to the Rotary Club of Cloverdale BC, for their wonderful management of the food concession stand, and to the City of Surrey for their support. As always, Rick was a real star, and was cool as a cuke from Friday morning’s appearance on Breakfast Television on City TV, to his interview on CBC Radio’s BC Almanac Friday afternoon, right through Sunday’s festivities. My favourite moment was little 6-year old Gracie’s fishing lesson on Breakfast Television Friday morning. She picked up the fine art of casting in a matter of minutes, due at least in part to Rick’s careful tutelage. Good going, Rick!

Another one of my authors, the lovely Jeri-Lyn McCrea, is the author of Words in Action – A Journal to Inspire Change, (ISBN 978-0-9809325-0-8) which is scheduled for release on April 25th. I saw the first copies back from the printer’s on Saturday, and boy, do they look fantastic!! The matte-coated hardcover is sooooo soft in the hand, and the pages look truly inspiring. I’m really excited about this journal (I guess we should stop referring to it as a “book”), because it breaks entirely new ground in the area of motivation and self-improvement titles. Jeri is so right when she talks about people “figuring it out for themselves”, and not looking to others to “complete their lives or tell them what to do”. Her journal is a book you ultimately write for yourself, and get a little burst of energy and motivation every day. Setting goals and making up your mind to achieve them – that’s what Words in Action is all about. Watch this blog for more info about events coming soon to the Langley and Surrey areas.

The cherry on the cake of this weekend was our new Humanus Publishing Affiliate Program. I started this project a few weeks ago to solve the problems of one author’s quest to market their product online, and it has now snowballed into something that can be used by any self-publishing author who wants to sell their books direct to consumers over the internet. Authors want to be freed of the hassle and overhead of online sales in order to keep writing, and this system means that they do not need to put up any money up front to make that happen. It’s cheap, fast, and keeps writers doing what they should be doing – writing. I hope that this system will expand into something resembling a marketing co-op for self-publishing authors, while continuing to align itself with the values of Humanus Publishing. If you know of a publisher who wants to sell their products through our program, you can earn money by referring them. Simply email me and let’s find a way to make it happen.

I’m so excited I might lose my line – this coming Sunday, April 6th, 2008, is the official launch party for Rick’s book, the Freshman FlyFisher, ISBN 978-0-9783292-1-1. The response to this book has been incredible. Rick is getting so much press coverage it’s crazy – Urban Rush, Weather Network, BC Outdoors Magazine, and many other magazines and media outlets. Everybody loves Rick!

The launch is a flyfisher’s dream: an all-day party at the Semiahmoo Fish and Game Club in south Surrey, on 184th, just north of 8th avenue. (Near the Hazelmere Golf Course.) Join us anytime between 10 and 4 that day for casting lessons, fly tying, knot tying, various roaming entertainment, and let’s not forget a kid-friendly bbq manned by the Cloverdale Rotary Club! Hand me a hot dog!

This launch party will be a bit different from others in the book world. I doubt you’ll see much that looks like this:

But there will probably be plenty of stuff that looks like this:

Which is not nearly as pretty, but just as fun! SEE YOU THERE!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:59 — 31.1MB) | Embed

Bowker, the USA ISBN agency, is making plenty of changes that are especially helpful to self-publishers and small presses. I was very lucky this week to be able to get Andy Weissberg, a recently appointed GM at Bowker, on the phone for what turned out to be a rather lengthy interview.

Andy is a great guy, and his job is to head up the Identifier Services division, which is the office responsible for issuing ISBN’s and similar products. Andy generously gives us a gut-spilling interview that is a full walk-through of the entire process for a self-publisher or small publisher.

Andy has brought a fresh, digital marketing-based approach to an old organization that has plenty of credibility and stablility. From the standpoint of anyone who is self-marketing their information product, it’s a match made in heaven. Thanks to features that make the best use of meta-data that publishers insert for their titles, the playing field is becoming more level between large and small publishers.

Key changes include;
- enhanced meta-data optimization for top search engines
- social media enhancements
- self-management of issuing ISBN’s via the web (coming soon)
- dramatic changes to the pricing structure, especially to reduce costs to users who only need a single ISBN (coming soon)

I was particularly impressed with Andy’s statement that it is at least partially the self-publishing movement that is prompting Bowker’s changes. Books, they are a-changin, and Bowker is keeping pace nicely.

Watch for more interviews like this in April, and I’ll be meeting up with Andy at Book Expo America in Los Angeles between May 29th and June 1st for a video podcast. Thanks Andy – it was a real pleasure.

This podcast can be re-distributed without royalties provided that appropriate credit and cross-linking is given. To link back to this podcast, please use the direct link for this post, which is here. (Or, just copy what’s in your browser’s URL bar right now.)

You can also download the MP3 and host it elsewhere, using the tiny “audio mp3″ link right next to the player built into this page. The cross-link must use the link referenced in the previous paragraph. Credit must be given as “All content copyright Humanus Publishing, Inc., 2008. All rights reserved.” Thanks!

Why might you possibly need a UPC code plus an ISBN code for your book product? Read on to find out. This seems to be a confusing thing, when it’s actually quite simple. It’s all about using each term correctly, rather than interchangeably.

An ISBN number stands for International Standard Book Number, and when you are assigned one for your book product, each number is totally unique. A modern ISBN has 13 digits, as of January 2007. Embedded in each number is a code that identifies your country, you as a publisher, and the unique publication. (See a future post for nerdy details.)

There is one ISBN governing body for this entire planet, and each country has an agency devoted to administering it for their country. In Canada, this is Library and Archives Canada – an office in our Federal Government, and in the USA, along with a few other countries, it is run by an organization called Bowker.

A bar code is really a computer font. When you enter a series of numbers and convert them to this font, it appears as a series of lines of varying widths (or dots, or whatever – this technology had matured recently) which can then be read by a computer with the appropriate hardware, a bar code scanner.

An ISBN can be used to create a scannable bar code for your book, making it uniquely identifiable to booksellers who subscribe to the ISBN database. Your ISBN is a totally unique number, making it very easy to convert to a totally unique bar code using the special font.

A UPC code, or Universal Product Code, is a type of bar code, but the core number which is used to create the scannable code is derived from an entirely different source than the ISBN number. A UPC code has 12 digits rather than 13, and is grouped into two sections of 6 digits each. There is one large UPC organization that tracks and issues all the codes for the USA, called the G1-USA. They are part of the G1 organization worldwide, who also has a representative in Canada.

Why have a UPC code plus a bar code on your book? If your book is a product with wide appeal, and is likely to be sold outside of bookstores in venues like giftshops or consumer stores, a UPC code guarantees that any retailer can scan your book successfully. Not all retailers can scan an ISBN bar code, because there are more digits, and they may not have the ISBN database to relate it to.

So to sum up, both ISBN scannable codes and UPC scannable codes are types of bar codes. An ISBN is only assigned to a book or similar product, while a UPC code can be assigned to a book or virtually any product that is meant to be scanned in a retail store. My recommendation to clients is typically that they have both on the back of their books, in order to maximize market expansion options.

AND, always make sure you TEST your bar code before your book goes to press to make sure it scans properly! Your printer may offer to do this for you.