Day 12.1: Importance of Layout

Happy Mother's Day, everyone! I just got back from a fine brunch myself, and am spending some time with my family today. I thought I'd temporarily shift the focus of this blog from online moneymaking back to self-publishing and offline work.


I've used both Createspace and InDesign to craft my own books before, and there were some things about it that caught me off guard. Whatever you do online or offline, you want your work to look professional. You want to give people confidence in your service, and you want to give them the feeling that you know what you're about. To do that, you need to be an observer.

When self-publishing a book, you need to know everything about books. Inside, outside. If using Adobe InDesign, it's a good idea to pick a few printed books that you like and examine their layouts. How thick are the margins? How big are the pages? How is the Table of Contents laid out? You should  keep in mind also that it's not a word document. The paragraph indents will probably be not nearly as dramatic as on the computer, and the font size is probably going to be smaller than you use typing (usually p10 or p11). With Createspace it's much easier to design a book for mass production, but you still need to study the details. Without a professional editor you should keep an eye out for the tiniest of errors. Ordering or printing a proof copy is an important step here. With a proof copy you can examine the physical book and decide what needs to change.

Hopefully these tips will help those of you who are specifically interested in self-publishing. If you're more interested in online publishing, you should also take into account the layout of your page. Is it easy to maneuver? Does it look pleasant, and does it give off the over-all feel of whatever your writing?

I'm not that great of an artist, but people do judge books by their covers, and the details do make all the difference.

Please follow me for Twitter for more updates and tips, or join me in Clixsense for some fun!

Day 5.1: Writing for Profit Online

Seeing that my self-publishing articles have been doing significantly better than my other articles, I thought I might try to emphasize it a bit more and get more in-depth about the possibilities. Let's say you're excited about self-publishing, but also intimidated. It takes a lot of work to publish your own book, and there's no say that anyone's going to buy it. You could put in years of precious time perfecting your book, designing the cover, and working out a publicity scheme. But what are you going to do if no one's interested? I've had good friends of mine say that for sure they'd buy a book of mine if it was on Amazon or something. I tell them about my Createspace books, and they never bring up the subject again. And if friends won't buy my own books, then why would strangers?

Fortunately, we live in an age of information. The Internet has given us new means of networking that have never before been available. If you want to be self-published and make a profit, you have options. Let's take a look at how to make money by writing online. What's available?

1. You could join a company to write for. I did this with Comicbooked.com. It's a fabulous way to get experience and publicity, but your writing is not entirely your own. You're not really "self-published," so you're bound to the company's own regulations and scheduling. It can also be a challenge to join a company that will pay well, as you must go through many of the same processes that you would for any other job. But as far as learning and publicity go, this is a great option.

2. You could blog. Like I'm doing here and now. By this way you can work your own hours writing what you want to write, and sites like Blogger.com and Wordpress can give you a site for free. Publicity and generating traffic can be a serious challenge with blogging, though, especially if you're wanting to do something more creative, like poetry or fiction. I've been surprised to find that blogging actually seems to take even more work than writing for a company, but the work gets easier as you start to find out what works and what doesn't. All the same, don't look at blogging as an easy way out.

3. If you're not sure if you could handle independent blogging, but don't want the commitment of joining a company to write for, you could write articles for sites like Squidoo and Hubpages. You can generate a fine income by writing these articles and get better publicity than if you were on your own. Just keep in mind that the profits are split, and you can't depend on having an audience come back to your writing over and over again.

4. Are you an artist or do you want to write comics? You might not generate much of a profit, but webcomics are becoming increasingly popular. DeviantArt is also a fabulous way to get your art out in the eyes of potential clients as well as getting constructive criticism from a passionate community.

Writing for profit online is harder than it sounds, and if you choose to go this route, be prepared to spend many long hours staring at your computer screen writing and sharing your articles. However, it can be a fabulous way to establish your reputation as an author and build up an audience. Later if you decide to publish something in print, you'll already have a loyal group of followers to share your work with.

Happy writing!

Day 3.2: Different Methods of Self-Publishing

There's a lot more to self-publishing than simply signing onto a self-publishing website and clicking a few buttons. The kind of book you want to publish, the distribution and audience, and how much you want to pay or spend all must come into account. For this blog I'm mostly going to examine mass distribution methods, but right now let's just go through all the options.

First is the production of the book itself. Do you want to make the copies yourself or have them printed professionally? If you have a computer, a printer and a stapler, then art books or small booklets can be produced easily at home and then distributed. You can ask local businesses if they would be interested in carrying a few copies, and pass other copies out to your friends. For a more formal copy or a longer book, other types of binding may be needed. The book Indie Publishing by Ellen Lupton has everything you would ever need to know when it comes to self publishing and binding, so if you wish to take a more formal route in making your own books, then I really highly recommend it. The hardest thing I have experienced when it comes to making books is arranging the layout. I've tried several design programs to help formatting the book to make it look professional, and so far the only one that is not a total nightmare is Adobe's Indesign. Even with that, however, it helps to have an Indesign manual or booklet at hand. Take a look at the links below for more info!



Using the services of a professional printer and/or distributor is highly recommended if you want to make a profit from your book. As I mentioned earlier, I'm a big fan of Createspace, but whatever publisher you go with also depends on what you want. If you're going for the best of the best, some companies, like Wine Press Publishing, offer professional cover design, editing, and marketing tools. It's a bit pricy, but the results are incredible.

Whatever you decide to go with, make sure it's in your budget. If you're not an artist or designer, then ask a friend who is. Createspace offers many opportunities for quality self publishing at a low cost--even free, if you're desperate (though you should at least order a proof, for editing purposes).

Day 3.1: Five Reasons to Consider Self-Publishing

As I mentioned near the beginning of this blog, I'm a writer who would like to remain a writer. I want to be able to work on a good novel all day long every day and not have work get in the way. I also want to have some means of getting an income. Hence, this blog. I am out to explore the possibilities!

Today's topic is self-publishing. As a former English major, I know that self-publishing is largely still frowned upon in serious writing communities. There aren't any quality requirements for publishing your writing yourself, it's expensive and a lot of hard work for little acclaim. However, I've noticed that much of the same could be said of published books. I've seen horribly written published books, books that looked bad on the inside and out. Getting a book published professionally doesn't seem to depend so much on being a good writer as it does on being in the right place at the right time and having the right editor getting his hands on your manuscript. It's a hard world out there, and even if you do get successfully published, you must cater to the publisher's every whim and forfeit the rights of your own book. If it's a small publishing company, it will probably give a higher priority to your book, but most bookstores will likely not bother carrying it. If it's a huge and well respected publishing company, your book will probably be a the bottom of their priorities. It's time for a different strategy.

When I first decided to self publish a book, I was a skeptic. Actually, the only reason I decided to go for it was because of the code I got after completing NaNoWriMo that year. That was how I discovered Amazon's Createspace, a stunningly high quality self publisher and distributer. I would have taken it for a scam if one of my friends hadn't already used it, and I couldn't resist. When I got my copy of the book in the mail, I was shocked to see that not only did it look nice, but it looked better than several published books I had seen.

I'll save the details of Createspace for a later post, but for now, let's just focus on why you should give serious consideration to self-publishing if you want to be a serious writer:

1.  There are a ton of options. What do you want to make? Do you want a solid, physical book? A blog? An e-book? Something to sell on Kindle, or something that will invade all sorts of media? You got it.
2. You save time and anxiety. Traditional publishing includes a lot of waiting and a lot of rejection. Writers often spend years going from agent to agent and publisher to publisher without any success, and often it takes months until you learn that you were rejected in the first place. If you hate rejection, you're not going to like this.
3. A testing ground of inspiration. If you have a manuscript that you'd like to be published, but you're not sure will make the cut, self-publishing is a great way to see for yourself what it would be like. With Createspace, you can order a test copy of your book to review before officially "publishing" it, and trust me--it's fun to see your own book in print.
4. You're in charge. You can do your own publicity and make sure that the book is going where you want it to go. Yeah, it's work, but it's better than no publicity at all!
5. It's fun. Seriously, I love going through the different templates available on Createspace and working out something that really fits the book. Whether you want to do everything yourself or just slide around pre-made options is entirely up to you.

I have self-published several books now, some more casual and some more serious. My biggest problem has been the fact that even though I've been at it for several years, I've never made more than about $20 income from it. I'm terrible at publicity, and again that leads me to why I started this blog in the first place.

Self-publishing is an awesome way to make an income from home, and it's easy to go about. First of all, however, you need to be able to sell your book! Get the word out there. And speaking of which, here are some links to the ones I've written, if you want to take a look.

The Chrononaut was my first. Not the best story or cover, but considering how new I was to the whole thing, I was very pleased with the results.

Temporation is the sequel to The Chrononaut, though also readable on its own. My designing is still below par, but the writing is much better.

The Star Chronicles is the first book in a set of six, though I have not yet decided whether to publish the other five.

Anyway, those are some of my other projects, and I encourage you to take a look if you're considering self-publishing. It's a fun and easy process, I can assure you!