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authorkimberlygrey · 4 years

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The things you need to start the self publishing thing

This is a day late, doesn’t even follow the how to do the thing format, and my dyslexia is running rampant today so ther’s probably six billion typos and mispellings but fuck it let’s goooooooo

Shit you’ll need before you can even get to the shit you need:

A complete manuscript

I’m talking multiple drafts here people. Beta readers, self edits, tears, blood sacrifice, the works. Unfortunately, this isn’t 1920, we cannot publish our first drafts.

I mean, you can but its not gonna go well.

Money

Like. Lots of money. This shit is Expensive.

A Plan

Don’t be like me. Don’t just suddenly go “alright let’s publish” one day

Actually lay out a timeline for yourself

Expect delays

So Many Delays

Plan for publishing at least like six months in advance you will thank yourself later I promise

Ingramspark vs. Createspace or whatever they call it now. They changed the name the other day I think

I went for ingramspark

Because

Fuck amazon

Ingramspark is More Professional

Everyone else also thinks “fuck amazon”

You’ll be able to sell your book more places this way.

This one is a p personal decison so look this shit up yourself.

One you’ve got that shit, you can get this other shit

First things first, hire an editor. There are a shit ton of different editors out there, I’m not listing them all, mostly because I don’t remember them all and a lot of them overlap anyway. The majority of places will let you pick an editing ‘package’ that’ll combine several types. Go with that.

Alright I’ll list a couple kinds of editor. Just the ones I can remember tho, I’m not looking them up again.

Content Editor-looks over the big picture, the story itself. Fuck that grammar bullshit, this is about lookign for plot holes and character inconsistencies and shit. Basically a beta on steroids, I love these dudes.

Line Editor-this is what everyone thinks of when they say editor. They do the grammar shit.

Sensitivity reader-make sure you’re not making a dick of yourself, good thing to have.

Learn how to Format the book

This one you actually can do yourself, its not like...unattainably difficult, especially if you can get ahold of Microsoft Word.

The basics are:

Book Size

8.5x5.5 is pretty much the most common

And that’s the interior pages, the cover itself tends to add a lil bit onto that and so if you go measure a bunch of books you’re gonna get 9x6 or something

Font

12 pt. Times New Roman is the standard

Margins.

I think 1 inch is standard?

Listen, this shit gets complicated and its been like nine months since I did it, I’ll link you some things at the end so you can get a better idea.

Header and Footer

Pro tip: Center all of this shit, that way you don’t have to fuck around with aligning it right on the corners of the page.

Author name on one page, book name on the other

You can do evens or odds, I don’t think there’s a standard

Page number on every page

EXCEPT: the first page of a new chapter

Just to make things more difficult, nothing goes on those pages. Because fuck you.

Widows and Orphans

Yeah I know “what the fuck does that mean???”

You know how sometimes you’ll have this one sentence that’s just hogging a whole page? Yeah those

Or those times that a sentence goes onto the next page all on its own

I’m not sure which of those are widows and which ones are orphans tbh. I mean... I could probably guess but nothing is simple you know?

There’s some places that’ll tell you to do this manually by changing the line spacing and/or text size of each page?

Don’t fuckign do that

That’s ludicrous.

There’s literally a button for it on microsoft word

This is one of those things where the easy solution is actually the one you’re supposed to use.

Oh yeah, indents

No you can’t just press tab

That would be too easy.

And nothing can be easy, remember?

0.3/0.5 is the standard I think.

Also make sure everything is left aligned.

And the line spacing is usually double spaced? I think?

I want to say there was a certain number of lines per page that was standard and you’re supposed to fiddle around until you get that. So enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IGkyMhsr28

https://firstmanuscript.com/proper-manuscript-format/

A Cover

Unless you’re like A Professional don’t do this yourself its way more complicated than you’d think

Have a Solid Idea of what you want your cover to look like. Just shrugging and going “idk man” isn’t going to help anyone.

This isn’t just the fun artsy shit either

Figure out where you’re putting the blurb and your author picture and your author bio, which, btw, you gotta write too. I’ll get there.

Author Bio

Jenna Morecci did a whole video on this so def look that up cause that’s pretty much the best info I’ve got for you.

But:

3-5 sentences

Written in third person

Yes its weird to write about yourself this way, just go with it.

Embrace your inner “whatever fictional character talks in third person” and go with it

One sentence on your experience with writing whatever this is

One sentence about yourself/shit you like

And one on something else, I’m not watching the whole video over for this. Just go watch Jenna, you’ll love her.

I don’t think I’ve ever read an author bio and I don’t know anyone else who does either but I guess somebody must so we all have to suffer.

A Copyright thing

Like. Register your book with the copy right office so that if someone tries to steal it you can tell them to stop.

Yes this costs money too. Becasue fuck you I guess.

This sounds really intimidating but honestly you just fill out paperwork and while that stresses me personally out beyond rationality its not really that bad.

Don’t forget to add the copyright page in your book too, there’s a thing on the format for it, lemme look

Here ya go:

https://blog.reedsy.com/copyright-page/

An ISBN

Most people upon reading this immeditaely went “what the fuck is an ISBN?”

If you didn’t then good job you’re more prepared than I was. Good on you.

An ISBN is like an identifying number for your book.

Actually, its an identifying number for specifically this format of your book. If you’re planning on doing a paperback and an ebook or a hardcover or an audiobook or whatever, you need to get an ISBN for Every Format of it

You can buy ISBNs ((in the US at least, I don’t know about other countries sorry)) on Bowker.com

Why did they name it that?

I don’t know

You would think that they’d maybe pick a more...I don’t know, relevant name for their site?

Listen, a fact of publishing a book is that everyone involved has conspired to make is as frustrating as humanly possible. You’re just going to have to accept that.

Why is their whole site mascot a bird?

Also don’t know. They’re having a good time with it I guess.

Maybe something to do with Bowker sounding like bough?

Also a barcode!

Yeah, didn’t think you’d have to buy that did you?

Neither did I but here we are

Actually you don’t have to buy one if you use ingramspark, they’ll give you one when you use their cover template thing apparently.

Know what price you want to sell the book for

Even in self publishing, the place you’re going through is gonna want a piece of the pie. Enjoy that.

Ingramspark has a calculator for that actually, its p cool

You can stick the price in the barcode

Idk if that relevant but that’s a thing you can do?

uhh…..I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting something….

You might want to get an author website set up?

You should probably have that before now but if youre doing this Chaos Style (™) like I did then you probably want it up before you publish so you can put it on the book somewhere.

People you need to hire:

Editor

Cover Designer

Possibly a formatting person if you decide fuck that shit

Which. Understandable

Shit you need to get a handle on

Formatting

If you decide fuck yourself

Which. Understandable

Price

ISBN

OH yeah.

Marketing Junk

You honeslty need to have a handle on this shit Waaaaaaayyyy the fuck in the future. If you’re only thinking about it like...now its probably not great.

The Chaos Method is not generally a good approach

See: Ascendant’s release was essentially a flop and even tho people who read the book love the book I’m still struggling to get people to read the book

Psst read the book its great I promise

Your book release is like. The Biggest Chance for marketing shit

Get on top of that junk

Giveaways

Posts about it

Just

Everything all the time everywhere

You definitely need a schedule for this

Like seriously

Make a plan.

That’s pretty much it I think. I mean...look in other places too because like I said earlier, its been months since I did this and when I did do it it was the Chaos Method of me just going “I’m gonna publish now” and Doing That.

Get a plan, believe in yourself. Get a publishing mentor

Someone who’s done this shit before and can give you some encouragement and direction.

It probably shouldn’t be me but I guess if you need help I’m game to do what I can.

Also be prepared to like. Crash, mentally, So Hard. Its terrible. See my older post for all the shitty shit about publishing this way.

#Publishing #self publishing #Writing help #writing advice #how to do the thing

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heartsawaken · 3 years

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beneath the cut you will find headcanons that have collected in my mind lately of my muse , miles oh , a twenty - three year old social media influencer and youtuber who is a part of sky house . ( tagging @ofblueflames so she can read all about him tomorrow c: )

✶ he does not drink soda . a majority of his caffeine intake is from fruit based black teas . any energy drink he’s ever seen drinking is either because of sponsorship with the company ( and honestly he doesn’t really even drink them . they just are props ) or because he really fucked up and is pulling an all-nighter or two in order to catch up on any film editing he needs to finish . but in general he isn’t the biggest fan of the carbonation .

✶ has a cup of tea every night at around 8pm , a habit he picked up from his grandparents during the short amount of time he lived with them before moving into the sky house . normally makes his tea and curls up on the couch with a book and reads for about half an hour or however long it takes to finish the cup .

✶ prefers working alongside family owned and/or small businesses when it comes to promoting and sponsoring their products . while he has no issue asking for big bucks from big corporations he normally just asks if he can have one or two outfits / a three course meal / etc on the house to advertise and if they don’t see an influx on their customer base from the posts he’s made using those free items offered than he’ll pay them x - amount of times the costs for not only receiving free things but also for not being able to keep his word . ( he’s never had to do that . but he’s given money to them anyways . )

✶ recently bought a cockatiel who he named r2 because he plans on teaching him how to make all the noises that r2d2 does from star wars .

✶ claims that he doesn’t like k - pop groups that much but could probably not only name , but do the dance ( at least the chorus ) of any group . honestly he just has too much time on his hands . . . and by that i mean he hates editing and will find any way to put it off . if you want to hear to his top 25 , you can click [ this link ] and it’ll take you to a spotify playlist for him :]

✶ two main games he plays are animal crossing new horizons and minecraft . he did one time do a pokemon sun nuzlocke video though . his youtube channel is most viewed for his true crime ( much like the crime junkies podcast ) cooking series and conspiracy mukbangs . while of course he would never admit it to anybody outside of sky house , his cooking series is done while he is high and honestly devolves usually into him giving his own theories on what happened and who did it while eating the uncooked or half - finished meals .

✶ the house has a douchebag jar for him because he doesn’t really think about what he says before saying it and whoever has faced the brunt of his words most at the end of the month gets the contents as retribution .

✶ played among us for all of like a day before getting so frustrated he flung his phone across his room and put a hole in the wall , cracking its screen because he kept fat fingering the report button as imposter and outing himself .

✶ his body temperature runs high for the average person so he gets hot very easily .

✶ when he’s driving it is his own personal rule that he must play fergilicious at the highest acceptable volume and sing it word for word . that or my humps .

✶ is one of the oldest in the group but acts like one of the youngest . he can flip older brother / dad mode on really quickly though , just like he can go from being drunk to drunk but seemingly sober need the situation arose .

✶ was involved in a lot of fights at school growing up both on and off campus . he doesn’t like doing it anymore but has no problem throwing punches if someone is actively threatening , swinging at the younger members of sky hose , or because they swung first . he’s pretty calm in those situations when sober but it’s when he’s been drinking that it really comes out .

✶ hates beer and wine , hard liquor only . occasionally will drink wine at any fancy restaurants he goes to or just orders the most expensive whiskey on the rocks .

✶ loves sharks and definitely owns two of the almost two foot long shark plushies from ikea . originally only left with one but went back for another because ‘ he needed a friend . ‘ both are on his bed and he actually sleeps with them .

✶ the wall that his bed is against has a bunch of sharpie drawings and writing on it from nights where he can’t sleep and needs to get his thoughts out so he can go to sleep . it helps him fall asleep and some of his most honest highkey sad admissions and thoughts are on that wall .

✶ talented artist who makes some pretty gorgeous scenery paintings . can draw realistic people , but tends to draw little chibi - esque sketches ( think anelderlymeme on tiktok ? ) and makes little comic skits and pages . he is self - taught and picked painting and drawing up as a hobby when he was seven .

✶ dreads any family visits because it means sitting through a dinner of being constantly berated and spoken poorly about because he’s not as successful or as intelligent ( seemingly ) as his younger sister and for the fact that he “ doesn’t have a real job “ .

✶ attending the university of seoul on a business major in marketing and advertising . his grandparents know , and a few members of sky house but it isn’t something he talks about regularly because he hates school talk and avoids it at all costs .

✶ tough talk for someone who is actually extremely sensitive , though he will never let people see just how much their words actually upset him . he’ll wait until he’s alone and / or the adrenaline has passed to cry over it .

✶ his main causes of crying is homesickness and online hate . he wants to go home so badly , even if it’s just to visit but doesn’t want to deal with his family . it’s just not worth it in the long run . he also takes a lot of online hate to heart even though he knows that its from people who don’t know him and have any right speaking so poorly of him .

✶ avid reader of pretty much everything . the bookshelf in his room is filled completely with books , and there are even books he recently bought and are waiting to be read sitting on top of it .

✶ absolutely loves snow . he will spend hours outside until his nose is red as can be , his fingers and toes are numb and his clothes are soaked through . he loves the cold in general since he’s often so warm .

✶ loves to cuddle and tends to sleep better if he’s hugging something or somebody , the latter will put him to sleep almost immediately .

✶ almost every time he and his brother are together it ends up in a physical altercation . his brother likes to dig his fingers into every single wound that miles has about himself and his family and his parents allow it , but every time miles throws a punch or tackles his brother to the ground are surprised . it takes a lot to get both boys off of each other because if both aren’t restrained they’ll still go after the other .

✶ absolutely adores his sister though . she’s his biggest fan and adores him just as much .

#ｍｉｌｅｓ ▸ ａｌｌ !#ｍｉｌｅｓ ▸ ｍｕｓｉｎｇｓ !

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clefairytea · 5 years

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In general I wish people were more cognizant of the differences between fan-created and professionally created work. Like this applies to many different types of writing, but let’s take fanfic for an example.

A professional published book you pick up at the store:

- Redrafted and edited by MULTIPLE people. Most of them are not simply one writer and one editor. Mulitple editors - trained professionals who work in the industry - will rework and provide notes on a draft, all of them focusing on different things. - Has already went through a ‘screening’ process. Think the writing quality in fanfic is bad? Get out there and read unpublished slush manuscripts, and realise the writing quality is honestly no worse. It’s just with professional work you’re look at the top 10% of the top 10%, at all times. You’re not seeing the unedited, unpolished manuscripts that don’t make it to the publisher’s desk. - And even before it gets to the publisher, work is screened by AGENTS. You cannot get a professionally published book in a big publishing house (i.e., the ones that put paperbacks on shelves) without an agent. Agents get a lot of submissions, and they ALSO provide authors with edits and recommendations to shape the manuscript. - Requires lots of money to change hands (even in books where the author doesn’t end up making a lot.) - Created by industry professionals, who have probably studied creative writing and literature academically, and have worked in the industry for god knows how long. - More frequently now, will hire sensitivity readers from whatever different marginalised groups are part of the story, to ensure accuracy and sensitivity. - Has went through dozens of drafts. - Written for a mass audience, helped along the process by lots and lots of differnet people, marketed professionally, has money and expertise poured into it to make it as good as possible. - On a cynical note, the writers who make it that far are also usually a specific stripe of person: straight, white, affluent, probably studied creative writing/literature professionally, probably have industry contacts, probably did a bunch of expensive/exclusive writing workshops, like Clarion West. This not ALWAYS the case and the publishing industry is getting better at diversity and inclusion, but it is still often a problem. - While obviously a piece of art, a published novel is a product. Its goal is to make money, appeal as widely as possible, as well as advance the careers of multiple people

A fanfic:

- Written by one person - frequently someone who is young, still in school, or who hasn’t studied creative writing/literature professionally or worked in the industry. - Usually isn’t edited by anyone else. If it is, it’s a friend of the writer. Usually also a young person, someone still in school, or someone who hasnt’ studied it or worked in the industry. - Usually only has one draft. Because it’s not being written for money, and who the hell has the time to redraft a fanfic the same way you would an original piece of work. - Often from marginalized groups - this doesn’t impinge on writing quality, but it CAN often impinge on time to write, as well as resources for research, learning about writing, practicing, etc - Not screened at all. Everything you see on Ao3 or fanfic.net or Wattpad or wherever you get your hit, it’s just put directly up there by the author. There are no industry professionals picking out the creme de la creme for you. The whole bell curve is there and it’s your job to pick out what you like. - Written for personal satisfaction of the author, and possibly enjoyment of a niche readership. That’s it.

Like obviously I’m talking about big mainstream publishers here (indie presses have more in common with fanfic - there’s a REASON so many queer romance writers hail from fandom), but like. Whenever I see people talk about fanfic being naturally bad it just makes me think that they don’t understand creative writing as either a craft or an industry. And I think this applies to more-or-less any other creative thing in fandom too.

#clefairy squeaks #fandom #on writing #long post #Seriously try reading random original fiction posted on forums or shown at amateur writing workshops.#And you'll discover the quality you see across fanfic is genuinely no different.

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