Case Study: Publishing a Chapbook with Amazon’s CreateSpace by guest blogger Amy Miller

Author Bio: Amy Miller is the author of 10 chapbooks of poetry and nonfiction, including In the Hand and Beautiful Brutal. Her writing has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Nimrod, Northwest Review, Rattle, and ZYZZYVA, as well as The Poet’s Market, Fine Gardening, Asimov’s Science Fiction and numerous anthologies. She blogs at Writer’s Island [http://writers-island.blogspot.com/].

Case Study: Publishing a Chapbook
with Amazon’s CreateSpace 

                                                                     by Amy Miller

All those nights when you can't reach me?
I'm making these things.

When it comes to poetry chapbooks, I’m a DIY gal. So far I’ve self-published nine chapbooks at home using InDesign or QuarkXPress, a couple of desktop printers, and a huge stash of paper from a print shop that went out of business*. I edited books for a living for many years, and I still get a creative rush out of designing and assembling them. So if it means giving up a few evenings to print, fold, staple, and trim chapbooks while listening to Bollywood music, that’s OK. I like it. It’s fun.
        But recently I went a different route and published a chapbook through CreateSpace, Amazon’s print-on-demand program. A client had asked me to help him marshal his book through the CreateSpace process, so I decided to use one of my own chapbooks as a guinea pig first. I figured if things went badly, I could steer the client away from the mistakes I’d made. And if it went well, it would be smooth sailing for him…and I’d get a spiffy new book at the same time.

Something for nothing?

In a nutshell, CreateSpace works like this: You design the book (either by yourself, or with the help of their online templates and design services), and then Amazon
prints and ships copies of the book whenever customers order them. If you design it all yourself and
simply upload your PDFs to their system, it’s completely free and seems almost too good to be true.
You do pay for any copies of the book you order for yourself—say, a few dozen for your own readings or book shows—but you buy them from Amazon at such a deeply discounted author price that it works out
to about what you’d pay a local print shop to do them (for most chapbooks, a little under $3.00 per book, including shipping). And, unlike with a local print shop, your book gets listed on Amazon and is handled and shipped by them, which means your readers can find it easily and buy it while they’re shopping for frying pans, yoga balls, and Breaking Bad DVDs. I’ve got to admit that, even for an independent-
bookstore lover like myself, it was all weirdly attractive.

The CreateSpace portal.

        To back up for a moment, let me repeat one point: CreateSpace is only free if you can design the whole book—interior and cover—either completely by yourself, or by using their simplest templates. (They also have fancier templates, for a fee.) Obviously it’s great to have InDesign or Quark to do the interior layout, but you could probably use Word, assuming you’re good at it (which I’m not) and your book is something simple like poetry or fiction. For the cover, you might be able to figure out how to lay it out in Word (again, if you have more prowess with Word than I do), but just about any graphics program will work, as long as you can save your final design as a PDF.

        If you don’t want to wade into the world of design on your own, CreateSpace can do that for you too, but this is where it can get pricey. They offer all sorts of professional services and packages, ranging from design and copyediting to help with marketing and publicity, costing anywhere from a hundred dollars to several thousand. And judging from the online forums that I’ve scoured over the past few weeks**, many authors do use these services, and some are perfectly happy with them. But I didn’t wade too deep into that; I figure that thirty years in publishing should have taught me a few skills. And besides that, I’m a cheapskate. I was going it alone or bust.

Enter the guinea pig

Editing—in my house, anyway—
still takes paper and patience.

For my test case, I decided to do an expanded version of my book Beautiful Brutal: Poems About Cats. I chose this baby for one reason: I sell a lot of copies of it. Now, I pride myself on being a real poet, but this little novelty book has turned out to be surprisingly popular—it always sells well at book shows and writers’ conferences, and people contact me out of the blue to order five or ten to give away as gifts. I spend a lot of time printing those little books.

        Beautiful Brutal started life four years ago as a palm-size nugget of a book, 5.5 inches high by 4.25 wide. So I took a couple of weeks to add a few new poems to it, revise some of the old ones, and do a little re-ordering. I also gave it a larger, airier trim size (6 x 9), fancied up the interior design, and built a new cover around a 17th-century painting*** by Georg Flegel that I particularly love and that is firmly planted in the public domain. Finally the files were ready, and I followed CreateSpace’s easy directions and made the PDFs.

Ready…set…stop

The next step was to register the book with CreateSpace. This is where you let them know what you
want your book to look like—page count, trim size, paper color (white or cream; I chose cream), cover finish (glossy or matte; I chose matte). At this point you also set up the book’s Amazon page, which entailed a couple of curveballs I didn’t see coming, such as deciding on a cover price and where to send the royalties, and that brought the process to a grinding halt while I pondered them. The toughest was
the “book description,” that little marketing paragraph that you see on the book’s Amazon page. I tinkered
with that thing for a long time, trying to make it descriptive but not dorky.****

        Filling out the online forms was fun, but then came the meat and potatoes: uploading the PDFs of
the book. That part went quickly. I clicked through a few windows to send the files, their system processed them in just a few minutes, and then a digital proof of my book appeared on my screen. Many printers use online proofing systems, and CreateSpace’s is particularly attractive and realistic, with animated pages that appear to turn. My book looked fine—nothing had shifted or reflowed, and the fonts looked the way they were supposed to. The one hiccup was that the system froze up twice while I was sending the files, and I had to quit out of my browser and go back in. Also, they didn’t process the cover file right away, I presume because I asked them to insert the UPC barcode on the back (another free option). They finished it the next morning and sent me an e-mail; I looked at an online proof of the cover and it looked fine too.

The moment of truth

Sharp yet velvety.

The last step in the approval process was to order a print proof of the book. This is the only part of the process that cost me money, and the total was $5.74—about $3.00 for the book, and the rest for shipping. You don’t have to order a proof; you can just have them print the books without seeing a sample, but I wouldn’t recommend that no matter what printer you’re using. And I especially wanted to see how the matte cover and cream paper looked, since I’d chosen both sight unseen.

        The proof arrived in my mailbox about three days later. Just like in my book-editor days, I opened the package with a mixture of excitement and dread. I pulled the slim volume out of its little box, leafed through it and sniffed it. I scrutinized the cover: handled its silky matte finish, pressed my thumbs on it to try to make fingerprints, and lightly scratched it to see if it got easily marred. It passed all the tests. And I’ve got to say—it was beautiful. The matte cover felt velvety, the type was clear, the cream paper robust, the perfect binding elegant and crisp. I was pleasantly surprised. This system actually worked.

Next up

So now Beautiful Brutal has a new home on Amazon (see its page here). I like the way it holds its own alongside the Hawthornes and Lemony Snickets—there’s a wonderful sort of democracy at work*****,
 not unlike the internet itself. I also did a Kindle version (which you can see here) while I was at it—it
was like, I’m in the hospital already, so while they’re fixing my knee, I might as well get my gall bladder
out too. That’s a whole other story, which I’ll write up at a later date. And Amazon is a world unto itself, with author pages and analytics and keywords and search engine optimization, which I will also write
about later. For the time being, I’m just trying to figure out how to get the print and Kindle versions on the same page. Apparently the Amazon robots, which take care of such things while patrolling the system
like so many Skynet terminators, haven’t figured it out yet.

How to Deal with Rejection

I wrote a novel, got an agent, and the novel was sent to about twenty editors.  One of these was even Hosseini’s editor. I received these oxymoronic letters: the writing is strong, or evocative, or lyrical or spellbinding, BUT it’s not marketable. How could that be?

Okay, I thought, I’ll put it away and write another.  That’s precisely what I did, and that’s precisely what anyone out there who has faced rejection should do.  Write another novel.  Now this second novel will be your first, and if it is picked up, will probably stand more of a chance then your first one, which will now become your second novel.  With the experience of writing another novel, you can now face that first one now dubbed “your second,” and make it stronger and marketable. 

Maybe, just maybe, it’ll be better than your first.  Why? You’ve gained much more experience. Surely, you won’t have trouble beginning it, because all you’ll have to do is read it over, make notes, and then revise it. Read it again and make final changes.  You’ll save yourself time, emotional roller-coaster feelings of self-doubt, and be able to send your agent that “second novel” sooner rather than later. How long did it take you to get that final draft you sent out? Think of all the time saved! And if, like me, your agent drops you, send the manuscript to more agents and publishers. 

Of course, it helps if you have a terrific writing group like the one I have to give you support.  It helps if you have co-authored: Writing in a Changing World--but if you haven't, you still can read it! 

Available on amazon.com for $12.95 here:

http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Changing-World-Mariana-Damon/dp/0615405142/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1428512719&sr=1-11&keywords=writing+in+a+changing+world

m/Writing-words=writing+in+a+changing+world

There is no perfect writing—there is only re-writing. Deal with it. Good luck.

Where do ideas for writing come from?

"Always be a poet, even in prose." 

~~Charles Baudelaire

This morning I asked my husband, a NON-WRITER, if he were a writer what would he like to read about on a blog, and without hesitation he said, "Aspects of life." And I thought--gotta keep this guy around.

So many people ask writers at readings: "Where do your ideas come from?" It's happened to me many times, and I've heard the question from people in the audience at readings given by A. S. Byatt, Dennis Lehane, Joan Didion, John Dufresne, Amy Tan, Junot Diaz, Campbell McGrath, Marie Howe, and countless others.

The answer is that ideas come form our daily lives.  I've never kept a journal or diary, and was embarrassed to admit this in some writing classes.  But I always have notebooks filled with things: lists of wines, types of flowers and trees, names of rivers, book titles, recipes, names of bottled water, names of oysters, constellations, stars, bits of dialogue, snatches of scenes, pieces of eulogies, prayers, dreams, song titles, titles of poems, descriptions of places I've traveled to, names of people, towns, and streets from foreign cities and those Stateside...like Dubrovnik, Seattle, Bejing, Boise, Paris, Singapore, Bora-Bora, Kuala Lampur, Venice, Mandalay. You get the picture.  So I guess I've been keeping a type of "writer's journal" all these years after all. 

Ideas come from all aspects of life.  Nothing is too insignificant to take note of or jot down in a little book you carry with you...everywhere. Keep a notebook in the car, one on your nightstand, one in the kitchen, one in the bathroom, one by the computer. 

My first guest blogger: cozy mystery writer Marni Graff

Marni Graff

The Art of Mystery: It’s Not Just a Puzzle

There’s a reason Agatha Christie’s mysteries are outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Despite the differing variations within the mystery genre, they all have one thing in common that readers embrace: the solving of a puzzle.

Subgenres are categorized by the level of violence contained in them, and this ranges from the least, such as cozies and amateur sleuths like Miss Marple where the puzzle is the prime factor, to action and thrillers, which up the ante in violence and psychological suspense.

Yet all of these variations can probably be classified into three main categories:

Whodunit: where the identity of the criminal is initially unknown, and discovering that identity is the focus of the story.

Whydunit: where the criminal’s motive is the focus; sometimes their identity is revealed early in the story.

Howcatch’em: where the focus is the means by which the detective/PI/hero catches the killer, and both identity and motive may be revealed earlier.

Devices all of the subgenres will contain are:

Red herrings: a clue or piece of information intended to be misleading, or distracting from the actual question or situation. This can be suspects, physical bits of information and evidence, even misleading lines of inquiry that don’t pan out.

Plot twists: a radical change in the direction or outcome of the plot, used to keep the interest of the reader, surprising them with a revelation, new evidence, or a change in action. Some ‘twists’ are foreshadowed.

Foreshadowing: hints to readers at a possible outcome or twist, within the confinement of the narrative. Can pertain to theme, plot or ending. Can use similes, metaphors, symbolism or dialogue.

Cliffhangers: put a main character in a precarious or difficult position or dilemma, or have them confront a shocking revelation. Used often for chapter endings to push readers to continue on to the next chapter.

These are the usual conventions of crime fiction. But how does the writer distinguish between mystery and suspense and know which they are writing?

When writing true mystery, the reader should discover the mystery (puzzle) along with the protagonist. The reader expects the author to be fair. Many readers hope to figure out the puzzle before it is revealed to the protagonist.

When writing suspense fiction, the reader should know more than the protagonist. The author can show the reader things the protagonist doesn’t know, such as chapters from the antagonist’s point of view, to build suspense and the reader hopes the hero fill figure it out in time.

One caveat: both contain ‘suspenseful’ elements, which is created by increasing tension from the opening and not answering your pivotal question until the end—either whodunit, whydidit, or howcatch’em. Writers need to build on small clues, red herrings, cliffhangers, and plot twists to answer some of the minor questions while keeping the reader turning pages to get to the final big answer.

That’s it in a nutshell. But for anyone wanting to take a stab at mystery, be aware that most readers across the subgenres, from the sweetest cozy to the toughest violent action thriller want the same thing at the end: resolution that restores order.  This can take the form of the killer being caught or brought to justice (and the manner in which this is accomplished varies widely), or the kidnapped child restored to its parents, or the hidden family secrets revealed, or… whatever your imagination can dream up!

On Submitting work

Don’t let procrastination, hesitation, lack of marketing experience or fear stop you from submitting your work! (and be careful of those exclamation marks!!!)

We’ve all got good intentions. We’ve all see seen countless talented writers postpone their way all the way to the alley of failure. Some people never get their ideas on paper; yet others write and rewrite, and then revise again, but never get their submissions in the mail. And those that do sometimes fail to follow the EXACT requirements, so their work goes directly into the slush pile. Those that do, get discouraged by rejection!  Well, welcome to the real world of writers.

Set aside one day of the week for the BUSINESS, not writing —say every Friday you’re going to send out at least one piece.  My mentor, John Dufresne, said, No it’s not creative, nor fun, and yes, it eats your time and day, and is mind-boggling, but if you want to see your work published, guess what? You gotta pay the piper and just DO IT. 

Oh, and a little secret—a dear writer friend, Leonard Nash, author of the short story collection You can’t Get There From Here, (www.leonardnash.com) told me years  ago—if you want something to get picked up, then make sure you have at least twelve to twenty pieces circulating at all times. Got those numbers?

Read the instructions carefully in the GUIDELINES before you submit—5 poems, a short story, a short-short, flash fiction, an essay, a whatever, etc. REMEMBER that it’s 5 poems, not 6, and 2000 words, not 2045! If that’s what they want, give them precisely what they want.

Okay, now for the actual submission.  RESEARCH the review, literary journal or magazine and if you think you have a piece that “fits” then GIVE them what they’re asking for, nothing more and nothing less!

If you’re asked for a cover letter—write one.  Be brief.  Doesn’t have to be fancy--a simple introduction and what you’re enclosing.  If you don’t have the necessary or requisite publications for your author bio, write a different letter—say who you’ve studied with, mention conference, and /or workshops you’ve attended and with whom you've studied.   Mention your degree, if you have one or an interesting job.  If you can’t say anything with regards to the writing world, call yourself an idiot savant! Whatever you do, keep it short and succinct—no one wants to read three pages before they get a look at what you're actually submitting.

Send this material to the editor—if you know the person’s name—use it.  And send it to them the way they want it: by Word attachment to an e-mail, by an e-mail with the work in the body of the mail, or by snail mail with SASE.

Don’t change or invent your own method.  Just stick to what the editor or publication WANTS.

Oh, and, here’a biggie—get over yourself—you’re going to get rejected.  So what?  It’s all subjective anyway—what one person hates, the next reader/editor will adore!  Just pop that rejected piece in another envelope and send it off to some other editor. Of course, if the piece is man-handled and a mess, have the courtesy and good sense to make a fresh copy.  Also make sure to change your cover letter’s heading to the proper person.

Good luck. Don’t wait.  DO IT NOW! 

Dialogue

 Here’s what I know that may be useful for writing dialogue.  Always keep a notebook handy and write down everything you overhear or can remember from dreams!  Note the accent, the patterns of speech, the way people interrupt each other. Write down what they are doing when they speak and where they are when the conversation is taking place. Scribble a few words on their phraseology and the patterns and rhythms they use.

In a diner having breakfast with a friend, we overheard this: “You’re dead meat.  You’re so not worth it.  I pay the friggin’ bills and you drink beer with your buddies, watch the Dolphins lose, and slobber over Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit issue. What? What did you say? What the f---? Take a hike, Harry.  It’s over. Finished.  As in done—like last night’s movie: The End.”

With that the blonde in a navy blue Nike sweat suit, slammed shut her micro-mini cell phone swathed in powder pink faux leather, tossed it in her bag, and proceeded to order breakfast. 

My friend whispered, “Did you get that?”

“Every friggin’ word, Harry.”

Can I use this material?  Probably not.  But I was lucky enough to watch while she was on the phone and maybe her actions while she spoke to Harry could be useful in writing a kiss-off.  The woman had the phone snug to one ear as she spoke into the phone and at the same time pulled out her cosmetic bag from her purse.  It was a small white Fendi.  From it, she extracted her mirror, a lipstick and a small pencil.  The minute she flipped the cell phone back in her purse, she called the waitress over and ordered breakfast for two.  Did I miss something?  Is Harry going to show after all?

She then outlined her lips with the small pencil, smeared lipstick all over her lips and blotted her mouth with a brown, re-cycled paper napkin several times.  She closed the compact, put it back in her purse, and smiled with smug satisfaction.  The next thing that happened was that a very handsome Latino-looking man walked over and kissed her on the mouth she’d just blotted so carefully.  She smiled at him, then licked her lips.

Aha!  So what do I know or did I just learn about dialogue?  It needs action.  There are two people involved in it at least even though not both can be seen. People need people.  Never leave a character alone too long so they have to speak to themselves or a mirror.  The dialogue has to occur in a place, a setting, otherwise, we have “talking heads.”  Someone is speaking and someone’s listening. If the other person is present, there will be body language to record.  There needs to be a reaction—and though we didn’t get Harry’s because the blue-suited Nike woman didn’t give him a chance, we know several things.  She was not really upset or emotionally charged about breaking up with Harry.  How do we know this?  Simple.  She was more interested in taking out her make-up to look good for the Latino guy and ordering breakfast.  No tears for blondie.  

So if I were writing a break-up telephone scene I would describe her actions, using the five senses and steal some of the dialogue.  Let’s approach the action and the senses and analyze what she did.  She touched the phone, spoke into it, listened while she asked, What? looked at herself in the mirror, felt the lipstick go on too thickly, wiped it off, tasted the Latino’s kiss. What’s missing? Smell.  Perhaps I’d write this scene adding something of the odors in the diner, the pervading smell of burnt toast, or perhaps have my blonde character apply some perfume or sniff the guy she kissed, savoring his aftershave.

The important things to remember about dialogue are these: make it sound natural and give us visuals.  When writing dialogue, use contractions so it doesn’t sound stilted, omit superfluous words, such as: Okay, yes, no, perhaps, maybe, hello, well, etc. and get to the meat of what’s necessary to say: dialogue moves the action of the story along and reveals plot.  Other things to do, which will come mostly in revision are these: eliminate “eye” dialect and overuse of jargon, and don’t have all your characters sound alike. Indicate who is speaking with action as well as “he said, she said,” and never assign attributes to how a person says a thing.  Avoid: “she said, sweetly, he said, angrily.” Skip the adverbs and show us instead by actions. Try to keep from using names—even in multi-person scenes.  We don’t usually talk like this: “Jen, do this,” or “Hattie, do that,” rather say: “Do it.” People cut off words, combine words, break off their thoughts; they interject words into others’ sentences and speech. The best way to catch errors or stick-figure dialogue is to read it out loud.

Stuck on Writing

In a lecture at Harvard, e.e. cumings once said: "If poetry is your goal, you've got to forget all about punishments and all about rewards and all about selfstyled obligations and duties and responsibilities etcetera ad infinitum and remember one thing only: that it's you — nobody else — who determine your destiny and decide your fate. Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else. Toms can be Dicks and Dicks can be Harrys, but none of them can ever be you. There's the artist's responsibility; and the most awful responsibility on earth."

This all boils down to one thing. No one can write like you do whether it’s poetry or prose.  Even if you get stuck, or your mind strays, or you feel there isn’t another bloody thing you can bleed onto the page, or if you’re writing is interrupted by thinking about recipes and how you can make the Chilean sea bass for dinner, you are writing. Simply take whatever it is and turn it into a scene, or at the very least, exposition or dialogue. Who cares if it's lousy?  You can always toss it.  but maybe, just maybe there will be a little spark--there will be a kernel of something you can really use.

Easy to say.  Try it.