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Your Path to a Successful Book

Our $uccess blog will feature writing, marketing, and publishing tips we continue to learn since writing our 2009 INDIE Finalist workbook $uccess, Your Path to a Successful Book keeping our readers abreast of the everchanging skills required to write, publish and sell a successful book. We will also have guest commentators. Achieving your goals as a writer is what matters. Anything we can do to help you get there is our goal. We welcome your comments and hope you will sign up for our bi-monthly (or whenever we have enough material) newsletter.

Archive for January, 2009

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SLOG-Submissions-POD 2

Saturday, January 24th, 2009

This excerpt is from Success, Your Path to a Successful Book by Maralyn D. Hill and Brenda C. Hill.

With POD publishing, you design the layout of your book–dropped caps if you desire, single or double space between bullets. It’s up to you. In many books, the first paragraph of a chapter is not indented, in many it is. A double space is called for when a time sequence or location is changed. Whatever you choose to do, be consistent.
We would do a disservice if we did not mention stylebooks. Many writers and journalists live by them. A better way of saying it would be: Many publications insist you write as indicated in a particular stylebook. If we were purchasing them, we would get the paperback editions as most are updated frequently. The ones we feel are at the top include:

The Associated Press Stylebook by Associated Press

The Chicago Manual of Style by University of Chicago Press Staff or http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/

The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage: The Official Style Guide Used by the Writers and Editors of the World’s Most Authoritative Newspaper, by Allan M. Siegan and William G. Connolly.

Be sure to sign up for a copy of our new posts as soon as they happen. We do not sell your names and you can remove yourself from list whenever you want.

Maralyn D. Hill and Brenda C. Hill

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SLOG-Submissions, POD 2

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009

This excerpt is from $uccess, Your Path to a Successful Book by Maralyn D. Hill and Brenda C. Hill.

You do not want your regular page numbering to start until the second section. Once you get to the page numbering menu, you will have to go to the formatting part to say from this section forward, or whatever term your software says. You can indicate where you want the page number inserted. If you are doing a POD book, it is better if the page numbering is in the center.

Do not hit enter at the end of a line unless it is the end of a paragraph.

When you indent, use the tab key and not the space bar.

At the end of a sentence, use one space after the period, not two like we used to use on a typewriter, for those of you who remember typewriters.

On one of your tool bars at the top of your screen, you will see a ¶ symbol. When you click on this symbol, all the formatting marks will pop up on your screen. It is somewhat overwhelming. It allows you to see when you have put two spaces at the end of a sentence instead of one, used hard breaks at the end of a line, or spaces for an indent instead of tabs. You’ll also be able to see page breaks and section breaks. There are many other formatting marks that show up. After the initial confusion, you appreciate what they reveal and help you correct your work. Then push the ¶ again and the marks disappear. If you print while formatting marks are showing, they will not show on the printed copy.

Careful formatting is essential for a professional book. Editors do not format unless they say they do.

Be sure to sign up for a copy of our new posts as soon as they happen. We do not sell your names and you can remove yourself from list whenever you want.

Maralyn D. Hill and Brenda C. Hill

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SLOG-Submissions-Small Publishers, POD

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

The following excerpt is from $uccess, Your Path to a Successful Book by Maralyn D. Hill and Brenda C. Hill.

When dealing with a small publisher or print-on-demand (POD) publisher, be sure to request their guidelines. If they are not specific, keep asking questions. Many prefer to handle your formatting and charge you. You will discover many of your own oversights if you can do some of this yourself.

When checking out various PODs, we got many different answers. What you send in is what you get unless you pay for additional services. Most of the companies had guidelines either on line or in the form of a book they send. Some are complete and some left us with many questions. The publisher we picked, Infinity Publishing Company, was complete, easy to follow, and detailed.
Some things you need to know:

  • Know the margins recommended for the size book you are publishing (each company may have a slight variation). You will go to page set-up in the file pull down menu in Word. This page will allow you to set margins, paper size, and layout.
  • Section breaks are important as you want to separate the beginning of the book with the copyright page, introduction, and special thanks from the body of the book. You must put in a section break. In Word you go to insert on your tool bar and indicate the type of break you want.

Be sure to sign up for a copy of our new posts as soon as they happen. We do not sell your names and you can remove yourself from list whenever you want.

Maralyn D. Hill and Brenda C. Hill

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SLOG

GLOG: Global Log

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