Interesting print quality comparisons

Having a self-published book that is printed on demand means you (or rather, your readers) have to tolerate inconsistency in print quality, because different printers have different ways of reproducing your source file.

So, if you are about to order one of my books or have just done so, although the interior of the book - the main content - will remain the same there are some slight exterior difference.

For example, after designing the front cover of Drive to Nowhere, I purchased proof copies from the Lulu site. The printed colours, especially the blacks, did not come out as dark as I would have liked (see version on the right), although the quality was nevertheless acceptable.

The company that printed the books when I ordered them via Lulu was Anthony Rowe, a short to medium run book manufacturer in the UK. When comparing the book to the source file, my design definitely looked darker on screen (and my monitor has been colour calibrated) and the edges of the letters on screen was smooth. But as we know, in the print on demand world this doesn't mean that the actual physical book will turn out the same.

For this reason, I chose not to try and redo the cover because no matter who you use, the cover will always look slightly different.

If you order my book from Amazon UK, then Lightning Source will print it, so it will look different again. I'm still waiting on that copy, but I also ordered a copy of my book from the Amazon US site which I think is also printed by Lightning Source. It was interesting to discover the colours turned out far darker than the Anthony Rowe version -- almost too dark, in fact, but closer to my original intention. In addition, there was less of the blurred, fuzzy edges that had characterised the Anthony Rowe versions. Also of note: they'd added their own version of the barcode to the back of the book and on one of the last pages, and the back cover was EXACTLY as I'd intended. So if the third printer produces a front cover that's in between these two versions and has the Amazon.com style back cover... or is that too much to ask?

Drive to Nowhere and Amazon distribution

You can now 'search inside' Drive to Nowhere - a process that the publisher must initiate. It was all quite easy, though, and took less than three weeks.

The book is currently listed for sale on all Amazon sites including Japan and retail prices remain steady at approximately $19/£9.

When you purchase a Distribution package through Lulu, the book is eventually listed by a number of online retailers. However, physical shops don't tend to automatically stock your book unless you have a reputation because print-on-demand books are not returnable. You're a liability to them if you're an unknown.

One solution is to buy in bulk yourself and sell the books on consignment to the physical bookstores. For most, this is not economical, takes up space and defeats the whole purpose of print-on-demand. You need to buy a lot of books to get a higher margin on them.

The other advantage of an ISBN is that theoretically customers should be able to order a book in from any bookstore, right? It doesn't always work that way, however, due to the deals big chains have with distributors. With a little persistence it should be possible, though

Ugenia Lavender and the Geri hype machine

A year ago, as I was finishing the first draft of Drive to Nowhere, I heard about Spice Girl Geri Haliwell's plans to launch a new children's book series based on a girl called Ugenia Lavender.

Ugenia would be sassy, incredible, energetic and ingenious. "She's flawed and yet she's inspirational, and she challenges the world she lives in," Geri proclaims on the official Ugenia Lavender website. Her dad, Professor Lavender, works in the dinosaur museum and "Ugenia goes to him when she's got a problem, as she does in The Lovely Illness", Geri says.

I groaned. What about sassy and smart Eeare Kindred, daughter of single dad Captain Epic Kindred? Similar 'bizarre' names... bags of attitude... Eeare, a heroine for the Facebook generation with her own imperfections? The one I'd thought up in 1992 and had begun writing faithfully about in November 2006?

Was Eeare (and Drive to Nowhere) going to be sidelined by Ugenia's adventures and the Geri hype machine before her own story had even begun?

Thankfully, I soon realised, these feisty and 'flawed' girls can live side-by-side. For Ugenia is only nine years old; a completely different role model for a completely different 'girl power' market. Eeare is fifteen; an adolescent, who is more like the eccentric outcasts in the movie The Breakfast Club than the small troupe of misfits in the Ugenia adventures (although I've only heard what the video says on the Ugenia website).

Even so, I'm still jealous of the publicity Ugenia has received solely on the back of the Geri/Spice Girls music 'brand'. Already I've seen articles pushing Ugenia in women's magazines, gossip websites and blogs (here's a leak of one of her books). No doubt closer to the release date, around May 2008, we'll see posters, interviews on TV and so on. Oh well. We self-publishers can only dream of that kind of hype!

More characters in Drive to Nowhere

Martina Collingham is a minor character in Drive to Nowhere but she is one of my favourites. She is a public relations manager, or rather, a 'crisis management' consultant. Whenever one of her clients is having a bad day, whether it be because of a scandal or a big event, she's there to smoothen things out. She'll organise a press conference for you, get your voice heard by the right people (and heard in the right way), and she'll act as a shield in case you get too much attention and want some time out.

The trouble is, she's very opportunistic. She preys on everyday people who've been thrust unwittingly into the spotlight and takes their cases on. When someone makes a miraculous escape or becomes a hero, she'll jump at the chance to represent them. Most often she'll do it for free first of all if the person's a no-one, and later on she'll start charging and taking on more paid work.

Captain Epic Kindred chooses the perfectly coiffed, glowing and fashion-conscious Martina as his crisis management contact. She's just one of many people that he employs to keep up his image. He doesn't really need Martina because he's such a lovable rogue that whenever he's reported in the press, it's usually about something so rock star that it's impossible not to forgive him for it.

Another interesting and minor character is Kelly. She's the resident geek. If you've watched the series 24, you might know Chloe O'Brien. If Chloe was fifteen years old again, she'd probably be a lot like Kelly, but Kelly's far less grumpy. Kelly's quite bright and chirpy, and has a knowledge about computers that often surpasses those of the adults she encounters. When trying to outwit the scheming teachers who are trying to take over the world, it's partly up to Kelly to try and explain how they managed to find out so much stuff about them.

More characters to come!

Banned by social networking sites everywhere?

The trouble with promoting a book yourself is that you don't really have a budget. Mine's been stretched to the limit with the postcards, promotional copies and press packs I've sent, or am sending, out.

So, there's always the social networking route, right? Potentially millions of people stumbling over your creation... virtual buzz on forums everywhere...

Well, I've tried hard to use social networking as a promotional tool for Drive to Nowhere, and I'm having little joy after receiving warnings lately from various companies!

First there was Bebo, the social networking site that's popular with my demographic -- the 13 to 24s. Bebo has a section called Authors. It allows you to share your works in progress, add fans and create a special page dedicated to your story/novel/poem/whatever.

I spent three hours creating a customised skin for the page, which basically means the page's theme is all Drive To Nowhere-related stuff. I also posted three free chapters of my novel on the page, and on the blog I mentioned that the book was now ready to purchase on Lulu.com (I saw another profile mentioning their Lulu book, too!). I submitted the page for possible inclusion on the Authors homepage.

I told a few people about the site, but only about six people visited it. Next time I tried to visit, the page was broken. Thinking it was a temporary error, I left it for the day but the problem still persisted. I could log in and see my Author profile, but when I clicked through to the page there was an error message.

Frustrated, I emailed Bebo to ask them what was wrong. I later received the response:

You have been reported due to inappropriate content or conduct. We are unable to enter into detailed discussions regarding this, but we do evaluate each case ourselves before sending a conduct warning or cancelling a membership and regret that we have need to resort to this course of action. You were in violation of our Terms of Use, please read the abstract below. You can access our full Terms of Use by clicking on the following link or copy and pasting it into a browser window: http://www.bebo.com/TermsOfUse.jsp.

Excuse me? I was reported? This reminded me of when I was kicked out of the university library in 1996 for 'chatting' online.

I clicked on the Terms of Use link and was still flummoxed. I still am, although I figure they may have considered my measly link to my Lulu shopfront as 'disseminating unsolicited advertising'. I wouldn't think that was grounds for deletion, and even if it was, I would have appreciated being told what I'd done wrong, and given a chance to delete the links. After I'd conducted a social networking investigation on Bebo and other websites in 2006, the amount of stuff I'd seen on Bebo (bullying, porn, spam, drug use etc) was by far greater grounds for deletion than my piddly little website. And when I reported the pages to Bebo back then, it took them a long time to get rid of them. Even the Google Ads at the time were inappropriate. Bebo has stepped up its game since then but had it now become almost too vigilant?

Undeterred, I boycotted Bebo and moved on to Facebook. As I'd joined the London network, I thought I'd take a look at the Marketplace where you could list items for sale. I had a few books in my possession and an Amazon link now, so I could try and sell books direct or send them to my Amazon site where I might make a sale.

I looked at the other advertisements on the Facebook Marketplace. These included get rich quick schemes, 'work from home' modelling solicitations, £5 Nintendo Wiis and other general detritus. Surely my ad about my book was in no way violating their terms of use?

So, I proceeded to list the item. Then yesterday, I get this:

You posted a Marketplace listing that violated our Terms of Use, and this listing has been removed. We do not allow spam, nudity, drug use, attacks on an individual or group, or other obscene content. Continued misuse of Facebook's features could result in your account being disabled. If you have any questions or concerns, you can contact us at warning@facebook.com from your login email address. The Facebook Team

Hmm. My book is for teenagers. Spam? No. Nudity? No. Drug use? No. Attacks on others? Er, no. Obscene content? No.

I logged in to Facebook and above the News Feed I was greeted the warning message that repeats the content of the email I received. I'm supposed to tick a box and 'acknowledge' that I have read the information. I refuse to tick and acknowledge this unless I get answers from Facebook about why my posting was deleted when, again, there are all these other spammy posts being chucked on there.

So, each time I log into Facebook, I'm going to see that message. And I'm leaving it there.

Update: 24 hours later, I received a response which said:

Your listing was removed because we do not allow users to advertise services or businesses using the Marketplace feature. If you would like to advertise your business in the future, please consider using our Facebook Ads system. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Hmm. I don't think it was a service or business, but the second part of the paragraph proves what I thought. They just want me to buy their ads.

I'm almost thankful for Murdoch and MySpace. Despite the chaos, the site is so crammed with ads and people promoting themselves, it's almost as if they've given up and let us get on with sorting it out ourselves! Don't get me wrong, if something is genuinely violating the Terms, then I'm all for taking it down -- and quickly -- but I just don't see how my tentative attempts at promoting a self-published novel have been greeted with such dismay. I guess they just want to see the money.

Stranger than fiction

One of the main characters in Drive to Nowhere is Captain Epic Kindred, rock star extraordinaire and father of Eeare Kindred, the feisty teen heroine.

Now, I did start a MySpace page about Eeare and mentioned that she is a fictitious character. But I've since received communication from people who are interested in hearing Captain Epic's music "but the only things I found on Google have been references to the book". My friend Sean who's written a music industry satire called University of Death (the name of the rock band) also has MySpace people contacting him thinking the band is real (he has created a music track for them, so at least there is some kind of plausibility, but still).

All this is highly ironic as there are actual real artists out there who would pay to get complete strangers to listen to their music. But I've got a fictitious character with no back catalogue that people are willing to look up on the internet. How postmodern!

Does anyone even look at Google Books?

When you buy a Distribution package through Lulu, which gives you an ISBN and online listings at retailers worldwide, you also have the option to enable Google Book Search. Your book's PDF file is sent to Google where the text goes into its searchable database.

The entire book is scanned but you can only read snippets of copyrighted books and publishers can remove their books if they no longer want them scanned. Books that are out of copyright can be downloaded as PDFs.

I like the idea but whether it will drive sales remains to be seen.

The Google Books 'About' page contains a testimonial about how great it supposedly is. One author writes: "Lack of exposure is the primary reason that a book like mine would fail in the marketplace. Your search engine is the primary way that people find their way to my website, and subsequently, my book." Another says: "If we have hope as authors in the digital age, it's in projects like Google Book Search."

It may take two months for your book to be indexed once submitted, and mine isn't on there yet. But when it is, will I see a jump in sales all of a sudden? I don't think so. Maybe it's not so big in the UK, but I don't hear of people using Google Books Search regularly. Still, it is only in Beta (testing) mode and I do like the idea of books being on there -- it's a nice concept. I managed to discover through the Book Search that I was cited in three publications, which was pretty cool. It also seems to be a useful source for students, historians and other researchers.

Another testimonial said their book's sales rank "jumped 85 per cent" on an online retailer's site. Sounds good in print, but if mine did that, it would jump from 1.2 million on Amazon.com to 200,000 or something -- not a huge achievement by any means!

Marketing Drive to Nowhere

Marketing a book when you have just self-published a novel is hard work.

Two weeks ago, I:

• Wrote a press release using PrLeap which was made available on Google News, Moreover and other outlets to help increase search engine traffic and visibility for key word searches.
• Sent out around 25 press packs to UK and Australian magazines, newspapers and booksellers. This included the press release; some included a colour illustration of the main protagonist. I also included a see-through envelope containing a selection of glow-in-the-dark stars. Some lucky (random) people may have also received glow-in-the-dark planets and even an ammonite or piece of obsidian (volcanic glass)!
• Did some social networking - created a MySpace page for Eeare and linked to my press release on Facebook. Actually, Eeare's picture has been subconsciously seen by dozens of journalists all around the country in a screen shot of her MySpace page this week and by about 150,000 other magazine readers - let's hope subliminal 'advertising' does work!
• Sent my book to the British Library's legal deposit office to make it official.
• Sent a few emails to family and friends to encourage them to buy the book.
• Donated a copy of the book to my local library. They might want to sell it off, but so long as someone reads it, I'll be happy.
• Checked how my Distribution went. Now, my books are available on Amazon, Play.com, Lulu.com, The Book Depository and more, with more to come. Images and meta-info now need updating.

How many books have you sold?

I think it's a myth that 'self-publishing' is something you should be ashamed of. I think the only people who scorn self-publishers are the big-name publishers themselves, and the snobby reviewers in highbrow newspapers and magazines that no one reads anyway.

Yes, it's true -- most self-publishers won't sell that many books, but that's something you accept if you take this route. (Besides, most traditionally published books don't turn out to be blockbusters either as there's no marketing budget for everyone.)

Lulu.com, the company I used to set up and start distributing Drive to Nowhere, says its aim is to have one million authors selling 100 books each rather than 100 authors selling one million books each. Even Amazon has moved into the self-publishing market with CreateSpace which lets anyone sell their own book on Amazon (US).

The self-publishing of today is different to the vanity presses from ten years ago. Back then you'd have to order the stock yourself and pay for absolutely everything involved in the production. This was handy for an elderly family friend who published her memoirs and needed assistance with layout and editing. She didn't mind forking out the cost as she had the money and a story to tell. But these days, you can do it all online for free, so there's minimal risk involved. That is quite liberating!

Cartoon characters

After I finished writing Drive to Nowhere I set about sketching some of the characters for use on my website and on promotional materials.

About two years ago I did a cartooning course at the City of London university, tutored by the talented Steve Marchant. Although I had an interest in cartooning, knowing more about perspective and how to successfully colour in Photoshop was very useful when trying to bring the characters to life. I'm by no means great at it but I enjoy doing it.

This character, Belinda, is a minor presence in Drive to Nowhere. Aged 15; her taste in music very much dates around the time she was born. This grungy girl tries to act cool and calm, but she's more immature than she realises.

Drive to Nowhere is finished!

After more than a year, Drive to Nowhere, my first novel, is out there and available for purchase, warts and all. It's about a girl called Eeare Kindred, her friends and a mysterious and harrowing experience in the Australian wilderness.

Thanks go to Sean and Anne for their help in reading an earlier draft of the manuscript; their comments were extremely helpful.

I thought I'd start up a blog to tell people about the book and also about how the self-publishing process needn't be a chore. I highly recommend using Lulu to publish your books, as there's minimal outlay. By purchasing an ISBN from them you'll also be able to see your books sold at retail outlets worldwide like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Tesco, WH Smith, Waterstone's, BOL and many more.

That's not the only thing you'll need to do, though. A lot of marketing is involved. You can tell your friends and family about the novel, but that's not enough. You will need to create a press release, and send that out, and basically scream about the book at the top of your lungs. You will need to get respected, positive reviews from people, too -- that's the bit I'm up to. Or you could just try and strike it lucky and hope random people come across your creation... so that's what this blog is going to be all about!