“90% of everything is crap,” says sci-fi writer Theodore Sturgeon, as quoted by Austin Kleon in Show Your Work!
So don’t worry about it. Create enough to have that 10% that isn’t crap.
“90% of everything is crap,” says sci-fi writer Theodore Sturgeon, as quoted by Austin Kleon in Show Your Work!
So don’t worry about it. Create enough to have that 10% that isn’t crap.
This summer my 6-year-old daughter, Lexi, and I wrote a book: The Stephanies. It was a much-needed summer project and this fall we raised money through Kickstarter to publish it and released it on November 6. A lot of kind folks have applauded this daddy-daughter project, but anyone could do it.
First of all, writing stories is awesome. Kids should have that opportunity to create stories and tell wacky, funny, unique tales. Every kid has these stories and turning them into a published book is just a process.
Old School Publishing
I did this myself as a first grader with my epic masterpiece known as Mike, The Cat. In 1986 we didn’t have print-on-demand publishing technology, so they just handed us a blank book and told us to get to work. That means there’s only one print copy of Mike, The Cat, but it still has a cherished place on my shelf.
That’s one way of making a book. Another way is to simply get crafty, print out your story and create a construction paper cover. In fourth grade I “published” another epic story, Fred and I the Spies, using one of those three-tab folders. You can also go up a notch and take it to a copy place for one of those spiral plastic jobs.
Print-on-Demand Publishing
But today we have new technology that makes it even easier and cheaper to print (and sell!) your book. It’s called print-on-demand publishing and it basically means that they don’t print your book until someone orders a copy. It’s more expensive per copy, but it saves you from having a basement full of books you can’t sell (as awesome as your book is, 79% of books don’t sell more than 100 copies).
We used CreateSpace for The Stephanies, a service of Amazon that I’ve used before. They have reasonable royalty rates, you don’t have to pay up front (this is big; you shouldn’t have to pay to publish your book—you should only pay for the copies you buy) and best of all the book goes on Amazon, which is really the only place you need to be.
The process was pretty easy: Lexi drew the pictures and I scanned them, doing some basic resizing and very minor photo-retouching in Photoshop. Then I did the layout in Microsoft Word and created the cover in Photoshop. I uploaded both files to CreateSpace and that’s about it. They have an online proofing option and you can also order a proof copy (highly recommended). Keeping the design simple helped. The more complicated you get, the more things can go wrong.
Digital Publishing
So far The Stephanies has sold more digital copies than print copies. Creating a digital version is even easier. I used Pages to create an epub file, uploaded that along with a cover to Amazon’s digital publishing site and it’s available on the Kindle. Digital is a little more complicated than print since the text size and screen size can vary wildly depending on the device. Basically it means you lose a lot of control for how the final product looks and that can be hard with a picture book. But it seems to work well enough.
An Easier Way?
If that all sounds a little complicated, don’t worry. You can also check out Scribble Press. It’s a fun way to create and publish your own books online or using an iPad (though you can’t sell them—you can just share them and order print copies). They also have fun templates and fill-in-the-blank stories if you need help getting started.
Do you have a book you want to publish?
I’ve been tweeting and blogging about the SXSW Pepsi Challenge all weekend (and will be until midnight tonight) trying to win a $50,000-grant for homeless advocate Mark Horvath and his InvisiblePeople.tv project. A few tweets could earn Mark the support he desperately needs. The guy has been on the verge of homelessness since 2008 when he started this project to help the homeless. That’s dedication.
I’ve been tweeting like mad because I believe in what Mark is doing. Unfortunately he’s losing to an idea supported by the tech site Mashable, a site with more than a million views a day. (An idea, by the way, that no one has yet invested in or proven—Mark has been doing his thing since 2008; OK, sorry. Shouldn’t rag on the competition, I’m just a little bitter about that.) I’m so passionate about this because a few tweets could give Mark some major support. It kills me that he doesn’t have the support he needs.
So I tweet like mad. But if all our frantic tweeting doesn’t get Mark the $50,000 he deserves, it’s not a total loss. At least we’ll have helped spread the word about what he’s doing.
But the reality is that I’ve been doing a lot more than tweeting.
I’ve got a secret: I’ve been working on a book about homelessness to support Mark’s work. In my wildest dreams I thought I could have had the book ready by this past weekend—conveniently in time for Mark’s appearance at SXSW.
My post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel Least of These is now published and widely available (the e-mail newsletter subscribers got the early word last night: subscribe now to be in the know). So much to talk about, I don’t even know where to begin.
What’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi? Think Mad Max’s Road Warrior. It’s the genre I go on and on about all the time. The world has barely survived some apocalypse (duh) and the survivors try to piece together an existence in the aftermath. There are usually recurring themes of boiling life down to its simplest elements, both in day to day survival and in bigger picture terms.
What is Least of These like? It might be comparable to the recent Denzel Washington flick The Book of Eli. Sort of. Mine has some action, some stock villains, a heroic female. But no iPods, swinging machetes (but arrows!) or utter desolation (or Denzel). I wrote Least of These in 2008 as a part of National Novel Writing Month. It’s been very lightly edited and published as a rough draft (hence the lame-o cover). It’s not deep literature, but hopefully it’s good for a rainy afternoon bit of fun (do people still consider reading fun?).
Why is the Internet so cool? Because I published this thing in three days. I got the idea on Tuesday. I went through the manuscript and made minor proofing edits (and missed loads, I’m sure), I did the layout in Microsoft Word, slaved over the cover in Photoshop and by Thursday was uploading a PDF file to CreateSpace. Three days. On Friday I ordered my proof copy. It arrived on Tuesday. You could buy a copy online that night. It was up on Amazon about a week later. Of course it helped that I had a manuscript lying around and had already read through it making editing notes. Go Internet. It’s a cool time to be creating stuff.
Why does the cover suck? Remember ‘published in three days’? Yeah, I have lots of friends who could design something better. Heck, Lexi could design something better (brainstorm!). But I wanted to crank it out quickly. Plus there’s that whole rough draft thing. It seemed disingenuous to put a lot of effort into the cover when I haven’t put a lot of effort into the editing (except for the last time I did that). It’s a rough draft, all the way around. I kind of like the idea of publishing rough draft versions like this. Get it out there, quick and dirty.
Where can I get a copy? You can score yourself a print copy of Least of These for only $9.99 or download the free PDF if you want to take it for a test read. For the record, I get a bigger royalty if you buy through CreateSpace. But buying through Amazon is pretty swell, too, since you can use your shipping deals and throw my book in with your regular shopping.
So there you have it. I had hoped to announce this a week ago, but that’s how things go.