"Freedom of the press," said A. J. Liebling, "belongs to those who own one." There's a reason that remark is so often quoted -- today almost anyone with a personal computer can be a publisher. But the same technology that has democratized the process of creating books has also brought a new freedom -- the freedom to make them ugly in ways that could formerly not be imagined.

In the days of metal type, designers and typesetters went through a lengthy apprenticeship process to learn traditions of book making that had been transmitted over centuries. But today many people think reading books is all the experience they require in order to design them.

I'm currently judging books for an award -- not a design award but a translation award. Among the eligible books are two by the same author, rendered into English by different translators and published by different publishers. One of the books is a joy to hold. The trim trize is 5½ x 8½ inches. It's a hardcover book with a tastefully designed matte-finish jacket. The type block occupies a traditional placement on the page. The text, set an old style Venetian face, is about 66 characters to the measure. The other book, a 6 x 9 in. paperback, is less pleasing. The type on the cover and spine is too large, and it makes the page look crowded, despite the larger trim size. The title page is in a completely different face that does not echo the cover in any way -- and the copy is set so low on the page it appears to be falling off the bottom of the page. The text features bold sans serif headers centered over highly leaded serif text, which is often set rag right because it is a book of poetry. It's not the worst book ever, but it does not appeal to me as the other book does.

So which is the better translation? That's what I will have to decide, putting aside the physical aesthetics of the book itself. But it's hard to do, when I like holding one so much more than the other. Book design is a powerful force indeed!

You can't judge a book by its cover, but you can judge a publishing company by its covers, and interiors. So what follows is a simplified speed course in making books that readers will want to pick up. Good book design is something that is learned over time, but even a novice can make a pretty good book just by avoiding the most common pitfalls.

Setting trim size and margins

If you're on a budget the most economical trim sizes for text-based books will probably be in the range between 5 x 8 and 6½ x 9½ inches (depending on where and how you print). Avoid square or landscape-orientation trims -- these are difficult even for the most accomplished designers to pull off successfully. Give your books a generous margin. Nothing ruins a book as effectively as text that completely fills the page. That's visual asthma: you can't breathe. And where do you put your fingers when you hold the book?

Make the bottom margin the largest, and the outside margin the next largest. For example, the spine margin might be 2 picas, the top margin 3 picas, the edge margin 4 picas, and the bottom margin 5 picas. Or you could make the edge margin and the bottom margin the same, as long as they are bigger than the spine and top margin (which could also be the same). This approach is shown below in the next section.

Using the golden section

I'm a great believer in the golden section. Anything designed with the golden section will always look decent (try it). The golden section can be elegantly defined in algebraic terms, but for our purposes we will just consider it the ratio 1 to 1.618. For example, say we made both our spine and top margins 4 picas. We could then make the edge and bottom margins 4 times 1.618, or about 6½ picas. Below is an image showing these margins on an ISO-proportioned page (6 x 8½ inches).

Setting the measure

After inadequate margins, unappealing measures are the next most common offenders in ugly books. The measure is the number of characters that fit on a line. In a one-column book this should be in the range of about 50 to 75 characters. For example, using the page text block I show above, with the typeface Amalia it works out that 11 point type gives the proper measure, as shown below.

Adjusting leading

The word leading (rhymes with bedding, not with beading) comes from the days of hot type, but it's still used to refer to the space between lines. The main thing here is to avoid extremes. In the example above 11-pt type is set over 14-pt lead. A face with a large x-height will require more lead than one with a small x-height. Which is logical -- if a face has a small x-height its relatively longer ascenders and descenders will provide more white space, so not as much lead is needed. For most books, 20 to 35 percent leading is a good place to start (11/14 is 27 percent).

Aligning text

No one ever seems to believe this, but if you simply set everything flush left, rag right, your book will look elegant. But just about every memo I've ever gotten features a centered title over left-aligned text. That makes no sense! The centered element and the left element have different axes of symmetry. In general, if you want to center your heads you should justify your type.

Try this at work: next time you write a memo leave your title left aligned instead of centering it. You'll be surprised how much more sophisticated the page will look.

Avoid mixing too many elements with different alignments. Favor small distinctions over gross ones.

Choosing a typeface

Typefaces are an area where modern technology has really given us an amazing array of tools for uglifying a book. We've all seen pages where the designer used a different face for every design element. This aesthetic is called "Junior High Yearbook."

Resist the urge to use lot of cool fonts and instead limit yourself to one or two faces. I recently designed a book of collected poems (East of Pouring by Drew Weinbrenner) where every element was left-aligned and only one face was used (Amalia, the same one shown in the samples above and below).

How do you pick your fonts? It's easy! Just look at type samples and find one that catches your eye. Throw that one out. Repeat, and keep repeating until you get to a font that you didn't notice at first, but which looks well-proportioned when you look at it closely. That one could be a good choice. Make sure it is a good font from a reputable foundery and not a cheap knock-off.

There are historical considerations in font choice, but we won't worry about those now. (Check out Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style.) Amalia, for example, is a neo-Dutch faced designed by Nikola Djurek for FontShop. Did it look ordinary in the fuzzy sample above? It's actually quite interesting. Check it out closer up.

Especially if you are on the PC side, I recommend OpenType fonts, which are cross-platform. This can be important since most output shops and printers favor the Macintosh. If you give them application files there's a good chance they will give the job to a Mac pre-press person who will substitute Mac fonts, ruining your line breaks and spacing. (You can also avoid this by printing from a high-quality pdf with the fonts embedded.)

Colophon

How many of the guidelines I have lain out here can be broken? All of them.

Parsimonious publishers who slavishly lay out all their books in one template, as though the contents weren't different in each case, hold little interest for me. Design should serve content. It should be creative. It should be fun.

You're not likely to get rich publishing books, so you'd better enjoy doing making them. I'm working on a book now that could hardly be more aggravating. But I still love making and reading books.

Just, please, don't make them ugly.

That's my final word here at ForeWord. Many thanks to my hosts, and please visit me over at Right Reading.

Posted by: Tom Christensen

In the seven years since I published my first humor book, Carpool Tunnel Syndrome, I've spent an insane amount of time just trying to market myself. I'm glad I didn't keep track of the time, since I think I'd  cry if I knew how much of my life's energy has gone into the endeavor. The Internet has made it both easier and more difficult to market yourself: there are endless web sites and blogs to contact, endless online zines on which to try to get yourself reviewed or published. And the Internet rat race just gets worse and worse, as marketing "experts" tell you you're nowhere if you aren't active on Facebook, YouTube, and Twittering all day long (but I am on Facebook, and I'm LinkedIn too). I often get tired of asking the world to pay attention to me. As fascinating as I am, even I get tired of myself.

I have spent thousands of dollars on outside PR help but my biggest impressive successes have been through my own efforts or, in the case of getting a quote from my book on the Starbucks cups, through plain luck. Paid PR help has gotten me quoted in the media several times, but nothing has caused any sustained momentum. Things that have helped have been subscribing to several book marketing and PR expert newsletters, keeping up membership in a professional online writers' forum, where I always look for news about potential outlets for my work, and look for reporters doing stories on topics I can comment on, with a funny angle.

Things would have been a lot easier if I were an expert on investing, losing weight, budget travel deals, or something similar. But it's hard to market yourself as an expert when you spend your days trying to write funny stories about the latest rodent infestations, or why bad contractors happen to good people. On the other hand, I'm too far gone to stop now.

I've also learned that you have to keep searching for your audience, the people who will relate to your voice. For years, I avoided marketing my work to Jewish publications, even though I’m Jewish, since I didn’t want to limit my audience, nor did I want to be pegged as solely a “Jewish writer.” But over time, editors of Jewish publications and web sites started coming to me – they had heard my voice and recognized it in the pieces I had sold to them. In the past two years, I’ve become a regular humor columnist for an two Jewish print magazines, the “Jewlarious” section of the web site aish.com, and started podcasting my program, "Just Off My Noodle," on the web site of a national Jewish organization. I no longer shy away from writing about this aspect of my life, as it actually widens my audience, and I can almost always adapt my work written for these outlets into more generic humor, such as for my blog on MommaSaid.net, for my email newsletter subscribers, and other media outlets.

In the past few years, I've also sold pieces to the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, Beliefnet.com, and the Los Angeles Times. Earlier, I sold humor to Woman's Day, Family Circle and Ladies' Home Journal, but these magazines have closed the door on humor, at least for now. I really don't get their reasoning. They insist that they are all about "service" articles, but if you ask me, making people laugh in a troubled world is one of the best services you can offer. If only they saw it my way!

Motivational sales people always say that "no" doesn't really mean "no," it means "not yet." I've used that gambit to follow up repeatedly with editors who have ignored me, because you just never know when something may change. I even plan to contact some of the editors at these women's magazines who have published me before to pitch myself again, adding my shiny new awards to my email sig line. After all, magazines are always retooling, and maybe I'll reach them just at the moment they are scratching their heads, thinking, "Where can we find a terrific writer who can make rodent infestations funny?" And I'll be right there!

If you write for a limited market, you absolutely must love what you do and love your topic. (Keep your day job, too.) If you aren’t getting pleasure from your work, rethink your writing emphasis. Finally, persevere and carry a thick skin. If you’ve been at this for more than 15 minutes you know editors will ignore you more often than they'll pay attention, but if you keep polishing your work and continue hunting for new, like-minded audiences, you can and will break through. It may take a while, though, so stay optimistic, be persistent, and above all, keep your sense of humor.
   

Posted by: Judy Gruen

Seven years ago, in a moment that was either inspired or crazy (or both) I decided to write a humor book called Carpool Tunnel Syndrome: Motherhood as Shuttle Diplomacy. I had already worked as a writer and editor for several years, had a graduate degree in journalism, and had many author friends, so this idea wasn't quite as ludicrous as it might have been if I were, say, an actuary for an insurance company. Since I knew something about book publishing already, it made my idea merely meshugena.

Still, as an unknown writer, I knew my chances of landing an agent and contract with a reputable publishing house were slim. So, trying to save time and aggravation (that was the idea, anyway) I decided to self-publish. Knowing I lacked the skills to handle all the functions of a publisher, I researched publishers that offered self-publishing services. One man at the publishing house I almost (and should have) signed with was saint-like in his patience for my endless questions during numerous phone calls.

This brings me to my favorite line from the movie "Terms of Endearment," when Jack Nicholson, who plays a retired astronaut romantically involved with Shirley MacLaine, keeps trying to make a break from MacLaine, who is clinging to him needfully. Just when he thinks he can bolt, MacLaine latches on again. Nicholson, in classic tone, says, "Just seconds from a clean getaway."

And so there I was, ready to write the publisher a big check and get my book project moving,  when a friend about to self-publish her husband's book invited me to publish my book under her new imprint. She had read John Kremer, she had bought a block of ISBNs, she was applying to B&T and Ingrahm for distro agreements, and she was an outstanding graphic designer who I knew could ably handle the book design.

"Why not?" she said. "I know you could save a lot of money if we do it together."

And so, like Nicholson, just seconds from a clean getaway, I signed an agreement with my friend that we cobbled together as best we could. This was a big mistake. I ignored my misgivings, such as that my friend had a controlling personality that I knew could make her difficult to work with, and that despite my research, which included calling publishing attorneys, no one had ever heard of this kind of publishing partnership and could offer no advice about how to structure the contract. Our agreement spelled out our respective responsibilities as we could foresee them. But of course, certain things were not foreseeable, such as my friend's marriage dissolving, her life becoming so tumultuous that she could no longer keep up her end of the bargain, and the worst: her deciding to yank her (ex)husband's book from circulation, ending her imprint, and therefore forcing me to declare my own, precious first book OOP when it was barely getting its sea legs.

This was devastating. I had devoted more than six months to just marketing the book, networking with every Mom-related web site in the universe, sending out review copies, contacting magazines, a maniacal one-woman marketing machine. And she was the one who convinced me to publish with her! 

Despite this, we had three successes: Radio shrink Dr. Laura Schlessinger, who had more than 20 million listeners back then, plugged the book on her show and offered it as a giveaway to "the first five callers" who called our toll-free number. (No one on her staff told us that our phone would start ringing at 6 a.m. and go through the night, by "first callers" who listened to the show in every time zone imaginable.) I also sold an excerpt to Woman's Day (circulation 6.2 million at that time), and they also put in our toll-free number to order.

Dr. Laura's plug pushed the book sky-high on Amazon . . . for about two days, after which it settled back down to humble territory. I was bewildered that the Woman's Day excerpt did almost nothing for sales that we could see, until I realized that a magazine whose every issue hawks "20 ways to save money" (my excerpt was about saving money, too) was a magazine whose readers waited for their books at the library. 

The third, and most substantial success, was my selling 2,500 copies of Carpool to Scholastic Book Fairs. This was a huge achievement, though a logistical pain (25 copies to this location; 87 to this location, etc), but at least I made a little money.

When I was forced to declare Carpool OOP, we hired a legal mediator to untangle our partnership, simple as it was. While my partner's troubles were far worse, I still felt I had gotten a raw deal. Thinking about what might have been with the other publisher was useless, but I wasn't ready to remainder my book to a small sad blip in publishing history. Tune in next week to find out what happened next!

(By the way, if you'd like to order a copy of Carpool Tunnel Syndrome, please order it from my web site, www.judygruen.com. Remember, it's OOP!)

Posted by: Judy Gruen

For independent publishers, it is the best of times and it is the worst of times. And yes, I know I took that line from Dickens—but it is absolutely true. Today’s breakthrough technologies have allowed more people to print books than ever before in the history of mankind. Years ago, the cost of editing, typesetting, printing, and promoting a book made publishing prohibitive for most. Now, we are able to digitally typeset and print a single copy for peanuts. This remarkable technology has ignited the entrepreneurial spirit in thousands of people here and around the world. Now, we can all be publishers! Every would-be author can see his or her name on books; children can give their grandparents a copy of their latest handy work in a bound edition; and no books need ever go out of print again. Could it be the dawn of a new golden age of independent publishing? I don’t think so.

About sixty years ago, an individual in England would have to work years to become a bonafide publisher. They would first work as a publisher’s apprentice, and then move up the ranks. After years of service, they would hopefully be granted a certificate letting the world know that they have proven themselves worthy of being called a “Publisher.” Publishing was considered a trade, but that was then. Today, it seems all you have to do is get on the right website, download your file, and within a few days your book will arrive at your front door. And yes—according to the website copywriters, you have just become a publisher. The truth—and what the website will not tell you--is that your book has been printed, which is, in fact, not the same as being published. And while it may look, feel, and even smell like a book, it is not a published work.

For the indie publisher today, publishing is a hard-nosed, fight-for-every-sale, better-know-what-you-are-doing business. Financially distressed distributors can bring you down; vendors think nothing of holding onto your money for months at a time; and, even when you think you are ahead of the game, there are those unexpected returns to put a dent in your cash flow. And just like that smell of napalm in the morning, I love it. What I don’t love, however, are all those people who tell anyone with a computer that printing a book makes them a publisher. For every one of those folks who buy into it, there is another person willing to teach them how to create a bestseller, how to get free PR, how to become rich—off of their book. The truth is the only people becoming rich are the people printing the books and selling the seminars.

Now don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely no problem with lots more people becoming publishers. Independent publishers have always been the driving force behind innovations, discovery of new voices, and quality over profits. However, if you are going to be a publisher, you not only need to know how to run a business, you also need the drive and instincts to run it. Take courses on the subject. PMA, the Independent Book Publishers Association, offers great workshops on the subject. Talk to people who are in the business. Read books about the subject. Send some time walking the halls of the BEA. Do all you can to prepare to be brutalized, and then when you think you are ready, ask yourself one question. Do I want to run a business or be a writer? And if you truly want to be a publisher, then go for it.

I answered that question years ago, and have never looked back.

Back to you.
Rudy Shur
Publisher
Square One Publishers

Posted by: Rudy Shur

Maybe you don’t know what a Radiohead is but you can bet your children do and moreover they have probably recently made a rational economic decision on the value to them of the band’s most recent album. Why is this important to book publishers? Well directly perhaps not so much, but the indirect impact of what Radiohead announced last week will be significant to all media including publishing.

As an established band, Radiohead have a large existing fan base and they are taking their music directly to this fan base by releasing their new album via download at whatever price the fan wants to pay. If the fan believes as stated by one of them, that the band is ‘rich enough’ they can pay 99cents for the entire thing (they could get it for free) or they can pay a traditional retail price of $12.95. Whatever. Radiohead receives all the revenue rather than having to split a fee with a recording company. Suddenly, after nurturing and investing in Radiohead over the past 10 years there is no longer a place for the record company. Is this fair you wonder? The question really doesn’t matter because the old model of artist development is dead.  Music companies are going to have to create a new model where reliance is not so much on revenues derived from recordings but shared across the pantheon of revenue opportunities from merchandising to touring to music publishing. The transition will be brutal for both the artists and the recording companies.

Radiohead finished recording their new album only 10 days before they released it via their web site.  Fans have two product choices: They can take a download and pay what they want or they can have a download and preorder a traditional CD and book package. The latter will be release in December. I expect that despite the availability of the download many fans will either buy the CD package initially or return later to buy it. Radiohead are likely to make a pile of money from this model both because of their fan base and due to the publicity that the action has generated. Typically a band would make more money touring than they would from CD sales mainly because their cut of the full retail price is so small. It is because they have so little to lose and that they want to get people to come out and see them that more bands will elect to forgo CD royalties in order to build tour revenues.

Back to publishing. What happens when John Grisham or Stephen King decide to forego a publishing contract and go direct? Well the truth of the matter is that it is already happening. Remember The Long Tail? The book was available for review and comment online long before it was finally published and this not only helped the author fine tune his argument it increased publicity for the printed book. There are other examples and the model will become more prevalent where authors either independently or with a publisher’s collaboration will allow free or discounted access to books both before and after publication.

The economic model may be less different between music and book publishing than is first thought. Related revenues in music come from merchandising and touring and in book publishing they can come from movie, tv, merchandising, and rights. Point is in both cases artists and authors and publishers and producers will increasingly be looking at the totality of revenue opportunities rather than in narrow terms. This could lead to some interesting new collaborations: the screen writer that signs a book deal with a movie producer, the musician who signs a CD deal with a book publisher, or the author that signs a deal with a tour organizer. To some degree these models are starting to become more apparent and as publishers we will need to think more creatively and in collaboration with the authors we publish so that we can remain competitive in an environment where the traditional boundaries are being eroded.

Posted by: Michael Cairns, Information Media Partners

Traveling to a new location for vacation (and sometimes business) can be an exciting event and generally a lot of planning goes into the effort so you make the best use of your time. Often building your ideal itinerary may necessitate the purchase of several travel guides (or in my case diligent note taking in the cafe at BN) and I can only imagine that this situation is even more relevant if you travel as a family. Having had a great time - and probably seeing only half of what you thought you would - you leave the travel guides behind in the hotel room because they don’t fit in the bags.

What if you were able to build a specific guide before you left that you could either print out before or carry with you as an electronic e-book? This is an idea that Penguin publishing unit DK are experimenting with which allows users to select content from their travel guides and build their own guide. I found the site a little clunky but the idea is sound and as an electronic platform DK could be in a position to offer far more content than appears in their DK travel books. If Penguin has other travel related content this could also be integrated with the DK travel content to create a distinct product that perhaps has more breadth than a user could get other than buying multiple books.

Travel (book) related websites are (or have the potential to) generating decent advertising revenues. Since a travel guide is a glorified directory it will not be long until the web is the primary mode of distribution for this content as has been the case with traditional data driven directories (i.e. booksinprint). As e-products, the integration with content from other publishers, map applications, photos, video and Podcasting is not far away. For example, I want to visit Boston and I build a travel book that includes a history and background information on Boston, a walking tour of North Boston, a satellite map, restaurant recommendations in and around the walk and after lunch I want to go to the Museum of Fine Arts where I buy admission tickets, add the highlights of the collection tour and download the MP3 audio tour. Ultimately, I want this 'packaged' so that I can either print it out and/or retain as an e-book or e-collection for future use.

But wait a minute, does the interaction end there? Conceivably, I will be taking pictures and forging my own impressions about the visit. And perhaps I want to include experiential things, like what I had for lunch and whether I liked it. So the publishing platform I use to create my travel book of Boston should be something I can edit outside the confines of the publisher-supplied content. As such the DK application is not so functional but there are options elsewhere that are starting to appear - and in the future there maybe nothing to stop DK from adding this functionality.

One such application has been developed by SharedBook, a software company in lower Manhattan. Sharedbook works with content owners who want to extend their relationship with their customers and enable them to self-select content and build their own book and in the process adding their own content. SharedBook works with customers who may not seem like publishers such as Regent Cruises and Legacy.com, but the functionality is similar to what I describe above. Clients of Regent cruises are able to select some core content to create their book while also adding their own specific content. So they can add pictures, annotations or full length essays on their cruise experience. There are a surprising number of clients who take advantage of this program since it serves as a high quality memento of their journey.

Sharedbook has a relatively easy to implement solution and their model has enabled 'non-publishers' to treat as 'content' assets that otherwise would remain one-dimensional as marketing or promotional material. In the case of traditional publishers, the Sharedbook platform can allow publishers to engage their customers directly and perhaps with a stronger link because the publishers content goes along with the customers positive experience. Obviously, customers pay for the privilege of creating their unique books but the prices are both reasonable and set by the content owner.

Back to my Boston example and using a SharedBook I could have a coffee table book produced with all the elements I selected before I left, those I added during my trip and the those I added after I return home. Once home I could scan the MFA ticket stub, the restaurant menu and add photos with annotations. Then I have my own memento of my trip. Models such as those I have described above will become more prevalent as publishers see the value in opening up their content repositories and allowing consumers to interact with their content. It is a trend worth following.

Posted by: Michael Cairns, Information Media Partners