Novel Creation Process: Preparation Phase
By Cody Leet
Almost there. Add the final touches to your book.
▢ Write front matter
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Front matter typically consists of the following:
Copyright For examples of copyright material, I found this post to be very helpful.
Acknowledgements Here is where you thank everyone that helped you with the book. There are no rules here, but I feel the following people should be mentioned:
Table of Contents If you use Scrivener or Microsoft Word, you should be able to automatically generate a Table of Contents, so I won't detail that here. Call to Action The Call to Action is asking your readers to sign up to your email list. Typically, you give them some kind of incentive, like a free version of another story. I wrote a separate side story to give away. Some writers are of the opinion that putting this at the beginning is preferred, but I feel it should go at the end because I only want people who finished my book. If they didn't make it to the end, changes are they did not enjoy it. |
▢ Format for publication
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I recommend using Scrivener to assist with the fomatting of your book, because it can handle some complex chapter headings and can export to every ebook format as well as PDF, the formats needed to get your book out to the world.
Here is a good article on header formatting: 3 Minutes to Better Scrivener Chapter Headings By the way, I Scrivener has both a Windows and a Mac version. They are not the same. The compiling function on the Mac is way better. The good thing is the file worked with both. So I had my project on Dropbox and wrote on Windows, but did my final compiling on a Mac. If you are not a Mac user, and want to have anything non-standard for formatting, you will want to get access to one. I experimented heavily with exporting my document to Microsoft Word and trying to fix formatting there, but I found this to take a lot of work, and when I had a fix (like a typo) to re-export it was unrealistic to do this every time. So I invested a lot of time in mastering the Scrivener compile settings and finally got it to work perfectly exporting to a PDF. This process took me about 3 full days of work. Coming soon - my Scrivener compile settings |
▢ Copyright Book
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Technically, your work is copyrighted as soon as you write it. However, the copyright office recommends filing an official submission of your work for these reason:
"Many choose to register their works because they wish to have the facts of their copyright on the public record and have a certificate of registration. Registered works may be eligible for statutory damages and attorney's fees in successful litigation. Finally, if registration occurs within five years of publication, it is considered prima facie evidence in a court of law." I'm not quite sure what that all means, but it cannot hurt. Here is the site to submit it: http://www.copyright.gov/ |
▢ Get ISBN Numbers
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ISBN numbers are like the social security number for your book instances. They uniquely identify each book + format. So if you have hardcover, softcover, audio, and ebook, you will have four separate ISBN numbers.
These are sold through Bowker: https://www.myidentifiers.com/get-your-isbn-now Since you probably need four right off the bat, the best deal is to buy their package of 10 for $250. Caution: Some print services, such as CreateSpace, can issue an ISBN from their pool if you do not provide one. You don't want to do this for a couple of reasons. First, it gives them partial ownership of your book. Second, it doesn't let you use the same ISBN number with other printers, and you don't want to have the same format with different numbers. Just get your own so you have control over this. |
▢ Get Barcodes
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Once you have your ISBN numbers, you will need to generate an actual barcode to put on the back book cover. Bowker will try to sell you this service for $25 per barcode. Don't fall for it! There are a bunch of free services to generate these barcodes.
Here is the one I used: http://bookow.com/resources.php#isbn-barcode-generator You just enter an ISBN number, add the price (or 90000 for no price, which is recommended so that stores can change the price) and a barcode will be emailed to you. Send that to your designer to add it to the cover. |
▢ Design Cover
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A picture is worth a thousand words. If the cover isn't cool, people won't bother to read your syopsis. If you are not an artist, then this is not an area to skimp on. A professional cover will run you about $300. Here are two sites to find talent for this:Fiver is also good for interior illustrators.
Don't forget to have your designer add your Barcode to the cover graphic. |
▢ Price Book
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I searched for a formula for this but was unable to find one. The problem seems to be that pricing varies from genre to genre, and is based on length as well.
I do feel the ebook should be a lot less than the printed version. Typical price ranges are:
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▢ Pick Keywords
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You want to be found, right? Keywords help users to find your book in online sellers (i.e. Amazon). Typically, you will be limited to seven keywords, so choose them wisely. Here are some thoughts:
How To Choose the Right Kindle Keywords |
