Tag Archives | books

Annie get your text.

Regardless of where you got your words, if you spewed them out all over the page or if you stole them from somewhere else, you have to polish them up and add some bells and whistles before you can present them to the public.

The BAD thing is there isn’t ONE set of formatting rules, and there is no grammar or punctuation police to break in your house and take away your keyboard if you make your own decisions.  You will have to make some  decisions. And the only people you have to answer to are your readers.

One of my friends/readers was shocked and appalled at the idea that i would EDIT something I neither wrote nor was asked to edit.

If I am not going to EDIT the book, then why the hell am I publishing the book? Why not just paste in the pages from the PDF or just slap up the unpunctuated stream of consciousness rants of someone who wants to see their name on a book.

We have all held in our hands books that NEEDED editing, they were begging for it at birth and somehow didn’t get it.  And now here it is  a crippled book/child wandering around in the world, and everyone who picks it up to read it gets repulsed,   “ewwww!…you have run on sentences…ugh, you are filled with nasty typos! …. Bad Book, naughty book!”

Take some goddamn responsibility people!!   POLICE your work.

If you are working with your OWN TEXT, text you loving crafted or just got drunk one night and spewed over the keyboard…GET SOMEONE TO PROOF READ IT.  I have said it before and I will keep saying because ya’ll think your words are AS-IS.  Trust me, i’m the queen of AS IS and it sucketh.   You can never have enough proof reading, you aren’t  in any danger of making it worse, you can only make it MORE clear.

LESS IS MORE:….A buddy of mine who was used to writing research papers..you know the kind where YOU tell the audience what you are going to tell them, then you TELL them, and then you tell them what you just told them?  Needed to produce Magazine Articles…so she was handing me 4000 words where the Magazine only gave her 700-1000 words to say what she needed.   So you can imagine out came the pruning shears.

But you say “I’m writing a BOOK!  i have all the room in the world.”  No you freaking don’t – think of each page as segment of time, you have just as much time to make your point as the audience will give you. If they get tired of you trying to make your point, they will leave your book on a subway bench.

Write down everything in your head..don’t pre-edit, just let it drain out of you on to the page.  If  you try to move the words around INSIDE your head, you will lose something vital, and forget what your original inspiration was.  Then put the work aside and come back to it a few days later, and remove all the words that don’t belong there. put it down again and walk away.  Come back later and remove even more words, rearrange them again until you are saying what you mean in the LEAST number of words. When you can’t find a word to cut, that is your final product, no waste.   (no i don’t mean remove all the descriptors…that’s just silly – Go read Mickey Spillaine, very descriptive, and not an extraneous word anywhere. ) What is it Hemingway said?…write drunk, edit sober.

Basically every time you think your book is READY, it probably isn’t.

CLARITY • I use this test when I am editing someone’s words ( i am obviously trying to keep it sounding like THEM, not me,). . . if i have to read the sentence THREE times and i still don’t understand it, or even if i finally DO, that’s too many times. The sentence needs to be recomposed to say what it means the FIRST time through, if it’s complicated, TWICE can be okay.  But the rule should be DON’T ANNOY THE READER.  Their time is valuable, if they have to reread ONE sentence that’s okay, but you are handing them a book full.  If I have to reread three or four sentences in a row, I just stop reading completely.

FREE RANGE WORDS….words that you picked up somewhere when they fell off the copyright train. …BTW a LOT more books are out of print than are in-print. The internet is just filled with all the stuff from before 1923 for which no research is needed…after 1923 and up to 1965 books needed to be RENEWED every 28 years, if they were not renewed when they were supposed to be, then they are fair game.  This is what folks call ‘RE-SEARCH’  it’s the thing you do RIGHT after you have a good idea.

If you are working with an already assembled text, it probably needs to be spruced up for the 21st century reader.  note: Shit Changes over time. You WANT to interest the modern reader….I mean this is WHY we are doing this right?  you want someone ALIVE today or in the future to READ this book and understand its meaning and take away something they didn’t have BEFORE they read the book.  So you MAY have to DO stuff to it to make it better.

What do I mean when I say EDIT?

Editing can be as little as removing the EXTRA spaces before punctuation marks that were commonplace in the 19th century.   They had extra spaces before the semi-colons, question marks and exclamation points.  I can hear some BIBLIO-RELIGIOUSLY-minded people out there saying ‘oh no, you can’t do that, you need to HONOR the original text’ –  screw that.  You can claim as many as TEN entire pages  in your book, by removing all those extra spaces and condensing the text. Things like changes in punctuation piss off computers, if  you had one of those pages open in WORD,  all you are going to see is highlighting where WORD is telling you there is a problem.

Spelling –   If you are editing  your OWN words – use MODERN day American (or English, if you aren’t American) spelling. The further you go back in time, the less important spelling becomes.  You will find that up to the mid -1800s, spelling was a more creative endeavor.  If you are composing this book to just impart INFORMATION, you can probably go straight up with modern spelling.  If you are trying to offer up a sense of TIME and PLACE, you may want to let the original authors’  flavor bleed through.

Example: My town transcribed 150 years of town meeting records and they changed all the spelling to modern day.  In the few published histories of the town, all the quotes from the minutes are using the original spelling.  This SHOULDN’T make your head explode, the TWO documents are created for TWO different purposes. The First is to impart information, the second is to give the reader some taste of the history.  I split the difference, I let direct quotations STAND as is, but the text of the book shouldn’t be confusing.  Footnotes are your friend!!

TRUST BUT VERIFY: Don’t trust the freaking computer, it MAY not understand that you meant to type RUN and typed FUN instead – because they are both words right?  Multiple typos of any sort, are a sign you really didn’t give a shit about your words;  and if you don’t care, then why should they, right?

I know I make tons of them online, but i try my best NOT to let them into PRINTED books.  Someone Amazon reviewed one little book and claimed their were typos and i pulled it  and corrected the typos..but the review will always say they were there. Doesn’t matter no one buys that book anyway.

There are DIFFERENT flavors of editing rules – Pick ONE and stick with it.

Punctuation:   Oxford comma or no Oxford comma; comma inside the quotation mark or outside?  it can be safe to let WORD make some decisions, but it is really better if you understand WHY it is making those suggestions.

Formatting:  Quotations longer than four sentences INSIDE the paragraph or set off and indented?   Book titles quotations or italics?  How much space between paragraphs? how big are your margins?  Page numbers centered or on the side?

Stylebook:  What you are doing is creating a STYLE BOOK for YOUR publication, it is easier if you steal rules already created and in use than make up your own. There are editing conventions people in various disciplines USE – for example: people who write research papers and people who publish books use slightly different rules.   Get a book off the shelf that is LIKE your book, but from a big time publisher, steal their rules.

Notate: And when  you make your decisions, WRITE THEM DOWN. Software like WORD and Pagemaker etc.. will save these things from project to project, and template to template. But what happens when you change the template for ONE book, because the book is 397 pages and you need more room in the gutter and want to steal some space between the paragraphs so you can get the page count down to 379?   and then you use that same template to start your next book and FORGET that you made changes?  Yeah i know..”oh i’ll never make that mistake..i will save a backup copy”….trust paper, not the computer, just make a note someplace of all the formatting decisions so you can FIX things after they get broken and  you can remember which template is the CLEAN copy.

End Fit the Third.

this is all first draft stuff, so i may actually go back and rework earlier topics..

What does a BOOK NEED to be a BOOK?  

For the most part even Ebooks follow the same traditional structure –

• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Table of Contents
• Front matter
• Text
• Backmatter

If you crack open chapter one of The Chicago Manual Of Style you will find there are a variety of  subsections for these parts  none of which are mandatory.  The good and easy thing is that there is no LAWS, just rules that everyone leans towards so that the reader has familiarity with the landscape..if you confuse them by putting the sections in the wrong order, they won’t trust you.

If you are doing BOTH an digital version and a paper version….assemble the paper version FIRST and then take out the stuff you don’t need for the E-version. Basically  you will be taking out the blank pages and condensing things and adding internal links, so you really need a PARENT document with all the bits to start with. If you are ONLY doing a digital book, what the hell is wrong with you?  what are you going to sign at events? What are your parents going to put on the shelf?

Drilling down from the front cover –

• Front Cover – Title, subtitle, author and/or editor.
• Inside front cover – (it’s blank, it will always be blank you have no choice)

• a Blank or Blurb Page– sometimes people call it a fly leaf; you could add a small bit of print here, like ‘blurbs’ from people who have read it, saying how great the books is. I use it for the caption for the cover artist or illustration or perhaps a very short epigraph line.  • Some books SKIP any flyleaf,  you open the cover and there’s the Title page staring back at you. This is not a good sign. This is a sign that the book WAS done on a budget. We want to DO it on the cheap, we don’t want to advertise the fact.  Opening the book straight to the title page is like a woman not wearing underwear – no frills.
• Frontispiece or Blank Page – Frontis is usually an illustration that relates to the entire book – the author’s image or a map or diagram.
• Title Page – don’t fill this page up with minor data. Mandatory: Title, Author(s), Publication Year, Publishing Imprint. Optional: Subtitle,  Editor, Illustrator, Publication location, Source material.
• Copyright Page (or the verso) –  Here is where you can hide all kinds of technical stuff.  This page MUST contain the Publishing year, Publishing Imprint and Location.   If you include the title, author and isbn – that’s even better. This page is specifically for the person doing CATALOGING, help them out.   Other data you SHOULD put here: Information about previous publications and publishers comments or explanations about changes to the text. Don’t forget – Contact data to BUY more copies – email, website, etc.

NOTE: Remember to THINK about how much extra matter you want to pay to include.  You are paying for each and every page, the fewer pages the lower the cost….you love your wife, you don’t need a entire leaf (two sides of the page) to say thank you for all your love and support.  Sell books, give her money.  Multiply that one page by every copy you sell.  If  you only have a couple of names to thank stick them on the copyright page.  If you have more than a short paragraph, sure add another leaf – the copyright page won’t look so cluttered.  

• Table Of Contents –  This is the LAST THING YOU CREATE.  Trust me, ignore it, don’t even think about it now.  You can USE software like MS Word, Google Docs, Pagemaker, Indesign etc… create the data for this page, by tagging the chapter headings. When you are finally, finally, finally finished moving things around, you create this list of chapters with their page number.  FOR EBOOKS, these will be internal document links generally without page numbers.  

• Optional Frontmatter
  • List of Illustrations – normally found where the illustrations are the subjects of the text – people, buildings, places, etc.. it’s not mandatory, but it is helpful if you expect people to use your book for reference.
  • Forwards & Introductions – are used to explain to someone WHY the book or topic is important and how the reader would benefit from reading it, etc..who knows what else it contains….most people skip right past them anyway. If possible get the most famous person you know to write something, then copies will sell to their friends and fans, regardless of your contribution.
  • Preface – This is generally extra conversation from the author about why they wrote the book and why they really, really want you to buy it. But if you want people to read it, ONLY include data the reader should know before  they read the book.

• Text
  • Chapters:Chapter One, Chapter I, I.  are all the same thing, pick one form and stick with it.   Try not to make your Chapter Titles..if your Chapters have titles, very long, it will make you crazy formatting the table of contents.  In Fiction Chapter titles are optional. In Non Fiction, it is not optional.  Non Fiction can have Sections inside of Chapters, for a very technical or instructional book the Sections SHOULD appear on the table of contents, if it’s a prose form non-fiction, the sections aren’t necessary in the Table of Contents.
  • Page Numbers – Using Print on Demand technology, the 1st page in the book is page number one.   Using OTHER methods to publish you can have page one occur on the 1st page of Chapter One, and all the frontmatter is numbered with roman numerals.  NewsFlash – NO ONE CARES! live with the automatically generated page numbers and move on to other problems.  – Chapters should start on the Odd Page, this will probably leave you with blank or mostly blank pages on the Even page opposite, this is normal, if you have a FAT book where you are trying to save money, you CAN start your new Chapter on the Even pages, it looks weird but no one is going to hurt you for doing it, when you are rich you change it back.  –  Sections  generally just follow the previous section. – Blank pages shouldn’t have page numbers on them, it’s a general convention which is sometimes difficult to accomplish. Software adds the pages automatically and you have to go in and try to remove or hide it.
  • Typeface/Fonts – DON’T PICK SOMETHING WEIRD. Don’t do it, don’t even think about it.  Pick something STANDARD. Funny, sexy fonts are for posters, programs and greeting cards.  If you are using a Non Standard Font that’s a sign there is something lacking about your words that you need to dress them up as a distraction. Some fonts are designed for computer screens and don’t look the same in print.   SERIF are the feet on letters as in Times New Roman, Baskerville, etc..and SANS SERIF are without the feet, like Arial or Verdana.  Narrow it down to 3 or 4 COMMON fonts, print two pages of your book with each font and hand them to people on the street and ask them to choose one.  For the most part: Technical books use sans serif, traditional fiction uses serif, modernist fiction sometimes uses sans serif. Conventions again that make the reader feel comfortable.

• Optional Backmatter 
  • Afterward/Endnotes/Appendix – Afterward – Hopefully you said everything you needed to say IN the text.  I reprinted a small memoir by a young girl, and I ended up adding an afterward which gave a thumbnail of the rest of her life, so the reader doesn’t go away wondering what happened to her.  Endnotes – footnotes are what you need to know to put something in context immediately. Endnotes are for further reading; its what we had BEFORE we had HYPERTEXT.  There is a section of endnotes for every chapter, each note is numbered numerically INSIDE each chapter, even if there are only a few.  Try it the other way, try numbering them 1 to 3 in Chapter one,  4 through 6 in Chapter two..you will KILL YOURSELF trying to renumber them all every time you ADD one.
  • Index – This is the SECOND TO THE LAST THING YOU CREATE.  If your book needs one, Indexes are awesome, they are also the biggest pain in the ass.  If you are doing it yourself, KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID.  Learn to use the software to tag things.  A short, basic and CORRECT index is more useful than one that’s complicated and wrong. Start with proper names, locations, businesses, publications, topics. Once you get better at it, you can add a level of cross indexing, but anything else HIRE SOMEONE, and not someone who loves you or hates you, someone objective.
  • Advertisements – If you are selling something, sell it here.  List of other books, stuff available online, etc.. whatever.   THIS page can be on the EVEN side facing the back of the back cover.

• Back cover – (inside back cover is blank) write this absolutely LAST, after the entire contents of the book are collected, formatted and ready for publishing.  Because NOW YOU CAN STEAL WORDS from the forward, the preface and all the other places inside the book.  You have a complete view of what is INSIDE the book and not what you WANTED to be inside the book.  The Back Cover can contain some basic author information, but SHOULD contain a pretty decent description of the contents and WHY the person reading it should buy the book and give you money.

END OF FIT THE SECOND