Making Your Book

Part of my job, as a writing coach, is to help people create the final product for their writings, the book.

Kinky, our old Manx Tom. Our buddy. Photo by Lenee Cobb

There are many ways to achieve this and how a writer goes about it depends upon the particular project their working on.

There are templates available from book designers. The costs vary depending upon use, whether it’s personal, multi-book, or commercial. Do you want a template for a paperback or an eBook? What size will your book be? Are there graphics involved? How many? What kind of paper do you want? What type of binding?

I’m going through Booklocker for one of my projects and I purchased by own equipment (printers, paper, binding supplies,) including ISBNs for some of my other projects. What you do depends on your project.

Before purchasing my equipment, I priced what it would cost me to have Office Depot or some local printer to do my jobs and discovered that what I spent on equipment would cost less than to have someone else print only one of my jobs.

$600 into my own equipment went a long way . . . and I can use it again and again.

Author rights

You have to watch out what rights you sign away when some company prints your book. I still own all my rights using Booklocker. We’ll see how that goes. I worked with them before for one of my clients and that went pretty well.

You really have to watch what you sign anywhere, including CreateSpace. Whatever you do,  be very careful how you go about getting your ISBN. Whoever owns the ISBN (the publisher, including PODs) gets the checks. Most PODs will tell you they will furnish you an ISBN for free or next to nothing. They purchase ISBNs and Barcodes in huge quantities at a discount. To put one of theirs on your book cost them almost nothing. I paid $250 for 10. But  read the contracts.

I know some wonderful, talented writers whose books the public will never get to read because the publishing companies that own the rights to their books (both these writers went with traditional publishers) refuse to market them and will not allow the authors to market their own work. So there their books sit, growing stale. What a shame!

One site I receive newsletters from is Angela at Writersweekly. I have to keep up on what’s going on so I can inform my clients and steer them safely around ripoffs.

I, awritershelper.com, insist my clients retain all the rights to the work I’ve done on their projects. It’s often hard to steer people clear of scam artists. Scam artists are so smooth. It’s a lot less expensive to call me up for an hours consultation before deciding which route to go than end up getting ripped off for thousands of dollars and all your work.

Only one place directly sells ISBNs in the U.S.: Bowker. Everyone gets them from there. Every publishing company. Be Aware.

Also, make a will that includes your writing. Be sure to stipulate who receives your writings and what they can and cannot do with them when that time comes.

Anyway, that’s what I do. (www.awritershelper.com) Besides typing, editing, formatting, ghostwriting, and teaching classes, I coach writers. 🙂 Enjoy your work and have a great day!

P.S.

Should you go to Booklocker and check things out, be sure to mention my name (Lenee, A Writers Helper) to Angela. Thanks. 🙂