Commercial publishers provide services, at least to their more famous authors, that handle every step from editing to marketing. Some even suspect the writing. They often use outside printers. On demand publishers, essentially, take over the functions of the job shop, and leave the rest to you.
The tasks you assume require some knowledge and some computer software, most likely Microsoft Word and Adobe Reader. Before you dismiss services as so many high-priced automotive accessories, consider what it would cost to do something yourself, and how important it is to be done well. Remember, even your nearest and dearest will resent buying a sloppy product.
The first step is the editorial work. To writers this should be the easiest. I had a manuscript I was comfortable with, so didn’t care about editorial services. Actually, I wouldn’t have minded a skilled editor, but I thought my chances of getting one were slim. I’ve rarely found someone who could do critical reading as well as I needed, but then I’ve worked as a technical editor and taught English composition and can do the basic work myself.
If it’s been years since you worried about grammar and punctuation, the surcharge may be worth it. One thing many don’t advertise is the cost of errors. Many publishers invoice you for every correction they make, once the manuscript is accepted. I discovered my space bar had stuck and my spell checker hadn’t caught problems when words merged with dates. The bill for putting back the spaces was $2.00 a space, plus baseline fees.
Other skills in the editorial process that are not disclosed are the techniques used for revisions. My publisher sent the proof in an Adobe file. For the first galleys, I read 500 pages aloud from my small screen. For the second iteration, I printed it and read the typescript. For the final, I only ready the pages where I expected corrections. It doesn’t take long to learn how to "go to" specific pages in a PDF document, or to print them out.
The method for requesting corrections was another matter. My publisher expected me to enter them into a Word table. It took me a while to figure out how to manipulate the table features, then I had the usual problems with Word converting initial letters into capitals. If I didn’t catch the inadvertent changes then the publisher’s literal minded clerk put unwanted capitals into the manuscript, and I had to pay to have my text restored.
A hard copy option for corrections exists, for a price.
Once you consider the tariff for mistakes, professional help may be a good investment. Mine finally ran to about $300. If you live near a college, there’s always a pool of talented, conscientious people who need money who post their names in the copy shops. Alas, there’s also a pool of the untalented or avaricious. If you discover this is what you’ve got, remember it’s probably easier to break a contract with a local than with your publisher, and you have less to lose in the battle.
The proffered levels of help range from simple proofreading and grammar checking to something more. One offered referrals to ghostwriters, and some will type your manuscript.
The second step is preparing the submission package. Most companies ask for the same things: a manuscript, cover art, and cover text. Essays for a web site are required if that is part of the marketing service they provide, not just for you, but for themselves. I learned the last could be changed later without penalty.
Most companies take your manuscript and prepare it for the text publishing software. That is, they do the aesthetic work - change the fonts, add page numbers and page headers, chapter breaks. However, the fine print for one company required the writer send a print ready manuscript. The usual service was an option for every price level.
What "print ready" appears to mean is that you take your manuscript and convert the paragraph structure to the standard indented first line you see in most novels, not the blank space and flush first line used in scientific writing and this column. Then, I assume you do all those formatting changes that make a page look like a book, and finally save the results in a PDF format.
The current list price for Adobe software that will produce, not just read, a PDF file is $450, about the price you’d pay for the base package from a number of publishers. If you already own the software or have a future need for it, then you can weigh various costs. Otherwise, select a publisher that only requires a Word or text file.
However, beware there are still potential problems. My publisher claimed all I needed to submit was an electronic document and it would do the rest. I had problems when it transformed my scientific style paragraphs and there were block quotations in the paragraphs. The software assumed the sentence following the quotation was a new paragraph and that every quotation ended a paragraph. I could not get my publisher to correct problems when the quotation was, in fact, embedded in a continuing paragraph, and I had to refuse accepting the final proofs until some paragraphs were corrected.
My second problem came with my word processor. I use WordPerfect. I had Word translate the text which introduced more errors than if I had let WordPerfect do the conversion. Special characters were not interpreted correctly, including double and single quotation marks, dashes, cent signs, British pound signs, and some special letters in foreign languages. The usual French and Spanish letters like ç and ñ presented no problems.
During the production process, my publisher allowed me to separate my errors from its, and only pay for the former. What I discovered was that it was much easier to get my errors corrected than its. I was still trying to get some special characters corrected when I refused to accept the final proof. The most egregious were Riga and Kyoto, with a club in the Latvian word and an omega in the Japanese. In the end, Riga appeared without a line over the i, while Kyoto had the proper line over the first o. As happened at several critical stages, I ended up having to accept less than I wanted to get the book out.
Most of my serious problems could have been avoided if my publisher had assumed an author was capable of doing some of the preparation. It needed to provide two levels of customer support, one for people whose computer literacy was limited to email, typing a manuscript and shopping on-line, and another for people like me with some experience with computers.
The best defense is to try to get technical specifications from as many publishers as you can, and assume the rules for one apply to all. Then, reformat the manuscript into the standard paragraph form, making sure you use what are called curly single and double quotation marks. If you have special characters, make a list and include it with the submission as a warning.
Don’t go any farther. Formatting directions are part of the information you send with the manuscript, not embed in it. It’s a good idea to play with the various formats and fonts available with your word processor, but only so you understand the questions asked by your publisher.
Remember, at this point, your only audience is a computer program manipulated by a technician who is not paid to read your book. It is always easier for everyone if you send a simple manuscript with accompanying notes, rather than introduce problems by trying to do formatting that may look beautiful, but is not what the computer expects.
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