Cover Design Basics

Rule 1 for self-published book covers: They shouldn’t look self-published! What are some of the elements of a book’s cover design that could give it away? Take a look at the book covers for two recent books of lifewriting. Both books are listed on print-on-demand service Lulu.com. 920 O’Farrell Street is published through a traditional […]

Editing Tip: 99% Perfect Writing

A guest blog post by editor Sofia Voloch Here’s a mistake I’ve noticed some writers making: using a statistic like “99%” to mean “the overwhelming majority, in my subjective experience.” Statistics like percentages and averages are viewed as facts by most readers because they seem scientific, leading readers to assume that they’re independently verifiable — […]

Visualizing Your Book and Your Readers

There are lots of steps in the process of turning a manuscript into a printed book. As a self-published author, you can opt to keep it simple or you can go all out with a beautifully designed and decorated volume. It really depends on the time and resources you have available, what your vision is […]

Brown Babies, Pink Parents

Today, my delightful client Amy Ford received the proof copy of her self-published book on transracial adoption, Brown Babies, Pink Parents, and it looks fabulous! Amy came by my house this afternoon to show me the sample of the 125-page book that I worked with her to edit during June. Her good friend, graphic designer […]

Permissions 101

We book authors often want to quote from other writers to make a point. How do we know how much we may quote without infringing copyright and breaching what is considered “Fair Use?” The copyright laws’ definition of Fair Use depends upon what portion of a work you are quoting and the significance of the […]

Controlling the Presses

As a young copyeditor working in London in the 1980s, I belonged to the National Union of Journalists (NUJ). Posted on the notice board by my desk was a postcard I had bought at an NUJ event. It showed a middle-aged woman operating an offset printing press. The caption read: “Freedom of the press belongs […]

A Glossary of Self-Publishing Terms

Before you dive into self-publishing, it helps to have a few definitions clear. Traditional publisher: When we talk about a “tradi­tional publisher” or a “publishing company,” we’re referring to a company that issues literary works for sale to the public but, most significantly, we mean that this company assumes the business risk of issuing those […]

Escaping Google’s Clutches

Google is scanning millions of books and plans to post the content on the internet. If you’re a copyright holder especially of a self-published work, there are some good reasons to opt out of Google’s plan and escape Google’s clutches. In 2005, the Author’s Guild of America sued Google to stop them scanning copyrighted books. […]

A Red Letter Day for Lita

December 30th, within days of Lita’s birthday, her family held a book-launch party to celebrate the release of her memoir, La Familia de los Santos. And now, two weeks later the “family edition” of her book is officially published and available to all through print-on-demand company Lulu.com. Austin author Lita de los Santos has been […]

An Enduring Legacy

Perhaps you’ve thought about writing a memoir but wonder, What difference will it make in the grand scheme of things? Just last month, I learned that my grandfather’s memoir, which I edited for him more than twenty years ago, lives on and is still being read. And I learned his book had brought comfort to […]

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