Small Publisher Organization

I was recently reviewing my 2011 writing output so that I could reformat it to reflect what I’ve learned, and I discovered that I’m an unorganized idiot. I also realize that my fellow small publishers, while not idiots, may also be ridiculously unorganized. Not to mention the aspiring small publishers who, theoretically at least, follow this blog. (There’s a lot of traffic, and I’m pretty sure it’s not all pornography.) So, now that I’ve done the muddle-through, I’ve systemized for your benefit the organization I (under the auspices of H2NH ePub et al) am and have been using in 2012.

GRAPHIC!

Presumably, you’ve already done all the Business of Publishing stuff, so make a folder titled “Example ePub”, then set up all these folders. I hope it’s not too complicated, but here’s a guide:

Top

Ads

Banner ads, book trailers and catalogues.

ARC PDF

Convenient access to all your prepared ARCs, for immediate e-mailing upon request.

Templates

Word and HTML templates, for the busy publisher.

Workflow

Checklists, macros, and miscellaneous time-savers.

Imprint

Your sexy publishing logo, in small and large size.

Author Name

Each pen name, or the names of fellow authors you’re assisting. You can do everything yourself, but what with all the labor-saving templates and macros I’ve made, I’d be happy to format your story up for Amazon, Smashwords and B&N (e.g. MOBI, DOC, and EPUB) for a cool fifty bucks, if you provide me with cover art (or don’t mind me using a generic text-heavy cover), and have already made a publisher account. Books and collections extra because I hate Smashwords formatting. Oh, and you’re not allowed to complain too much, as it’s only $50. (See blog footer for other suggested cover art and formatting services.)

000Current Project

This is the only part of the folder that’s allowed to be disorganized. Toss in all the chapter TXT, draft DOC, versions of documents in editing, up-to-current EPUBs you like - even some preliminary cover art/illustrations. Once the book is done, it’ll all go into a neat little folder and you won’t have to hunt for it. If the book doesn’t get finished and you want a new current project, you get to make an official ‘in-progress’ DOC or RTF file and put it in a Book folder for when you get back to it. Don’t let those pile up, though, or you’ll forget the characters.

Stories

This is where organization really pays off. You’ll probably write a thousand short stories (5,000,000 words!) in your career, so you’d better get organized, or your estate will curse you forever. You can’t expect filial piety if you didn’t do the basic ground-work.

You should probably subdivide your stories by year written, unless you’re writing more than 999 stories a year, in which case you should be making enough to hire a secretary and a minimal staff to organize all that, and you shouldn’t listen to me because I want to learn from you (I’m sure it’s possible, I just want to observe your technique!)

Title

001, 002, 003, 004, 005…c’mon.

Packs, Bundles and Collections

You should be collecting your stories. That’s just basic. There’s two kinds of short story customers: one sees a great short story blurb and says “Wow, that’s pretty neat!” and buys it. The other sees a great short story blurb and clicks on the author name to buy a collection. Cater to both. I use a simple system of “Packs and Bundles” to do the initial collecting, then I get fancy with Collections.

Five Pack

It doesn’t have to be five stories, but it should be at least 15,000 words.

Ten Bundle

Again, exactly ten stories is optional, but it should be at least two five packs, or 30,000 words.

Collection

Get fancy, choose a theme, select the stories for it, and get some great cover art. This is your short story showpiece, and will stand for all time as testament to your greatness. Anywhere from fifteen to thirty stories will do you, but I’d personally shoot for 60,000 words, here.

Price List.txt collects all the word counts and prices of the stories, so you don’t have to check.

Book

Individual books in here, bulking up each folder to The 13 Files. Do not, under any circumstances, add anything else into these. You’ll just get confused, and feel dumb. If the inspiration takes you, clear out Current Project and use that as your brain-dump until you’re ready to organize each book.

Series

Put all the books in the series in here, then put the cover art all in one place for your own convenience. Otherwise, each individual folder is the same as an individual book.

The 13 Files

Every single title folder shall have these (and only these) files, non-negotiable. Of course, if you use Photoshop, replace the GIMP file below with that. I just use GIMP because I'm on a 12" netbook and wouldn't be able to take advantage of Photoshop's many features.

See H2NH ePub Workflow for details.

A FocusWriter

01 “Title.txt” (plain text)

02 “Title.rtf” (edited copy, with italics)

B GIMP 

03 “Title.xcf” (raw)

04 “Title(cover).jpg” (final eBook cover)

C Microsoft Word 2007

05 “Title.doc” (Master, with styles)

06 “TitleDOC.doc” (Meatgrinder-ready)

(Smashwords to Kobo, Diesel, Apple, Sony et al)

07 “TitlePDF.doc” (PDF backup)

08 “Title – Author.pdf” (PDF)

(DriveThruFiction; ARC)

09 “TitleHTML.doc” (with )

D jEdit

10 “Title” (for entities)

11 “Title.html” (clean HTML)

E calibre

12 “Title – Author.epub” (checked EPUB)

(B&N et al)

13 “Title – Author.mobi” (checked MOBI)

(Amazon)

Backup

.zip the folder up, once a week, and store it in four places:

1. In the ‘Example ePub Backup’ folder on your computer’s second hard drive.

2. On an external hard drive.

3. On a thumb drive in a drawer in your house.

4. Somewhere else secure, but that is not your house.

Write more

If all these folders are empty at the end of a year, you’ll feel like a twit.

Good to go, but talk to me later, when I’ve done some Print-on-Demand.

daB

feel free to comment

I'm Not Indie

ot to put too fine a point on it, I’m not an indie writer and I don’t like that adjective. The term ‘indie’ has mindset connotations--whether right or wrong, I don’t care!--that I’m not comfortable with. First is the Malevolent Gatekeeper argument, the thought that a monolithic ‘Traditional’ (or ‘Legacy’ or ‘Old’ or ‘Grandfather’) Publishing is acting as a wall keeping out good writing. Second is the Everybody’s Screwing Writers argument, the thought that ‘Traditional’ Publishing is organized to cheat writers, specifically the self-described indie writer. I reject these two arguments with two simple questions: “What other options were available?” and “Who made you sign the contract?”

Thus, having won the War on Straw and being financially uninterested in further debate, I come to the real questions. “What options are available now?” This question was one of the topics of my 200 Days writing blog, and was fairly answered, as you can see by the many ePublished works I have available. “What am I?” This question has two answers: I’m a writer and a

Bootstrap Publisher

I’m a publisher operating on a start-up budget, and investing any profits back into the business. My only writer is me, and I do all publishing tasks myself. My emphasis is on getting as many stories completed as I can with minimal distraction coming from the publishing side and seeing how sales do with a more robust bookshelf. Projected Endpoint for this phase of business is April 1, 2012.

The third real question, then, is “What will I be?” I’ll be a

Small Publisher

I’ll know I’m a small publisher when I have an actual, sustainable budget to work with, which will allow me to increase the quality of presentation of my bookshelf simultaneously with being able to focus even more on expanding it. As previously indicated in these articles, I’m willing to spend money on specialists if it frees up time for me to make even more money by pursuing my specialty. Here are some specialists that I’d employ.

Transcriptionist

So that I could save tons of time typing in the words I get while I’m wandering around talking into my voice recorder. Whether this ends up being an actual human being or a sufficiently advanced technology, I’m not sure yet. I can set up VLC to transcribe, but it doesn’t work very well. Research is ongoing. It’ll probably turn out to be less time-consuming to just find a human.

Cover Artist

Clearly useful, not too expensive. I want people and/or spaceships and/or dragons and/or romance on my covers, dammit! As a Small Publisher, I’d deploy pro cover art on series first, then work my way through upgrading key individual stories. It’ll pay for itself, and give that extra bonus classy that I like to keep around any of my projects. To justify wearing the business suits with the writer hat.

Copy Editor

Find some non-Creative who loves spelling, descriptivist grammar and chewing on words and let her go for it. I don’t really trust Creatives to find spelling errors anymore. As I’ve become a better writer, I care less and less about text and more and more about ideas. Still, it’s embarrassing to get caught out. 

POD Layout Guy/Interior Artists

Print-On-Demand will be the next big adventure, and I’ll need somebody who knows what the heck she’s doing with print cover art and design. My research thus far suggests that it’ll be affordable, especially considering that an ugly print book blows the bonus classy capital. I’d also like interior art, but that’s just because I love interior art. Presumably my cover artist will know other artists.

Web Page Design Guy

At some point along the non-bootstrapped way, I’ll get a proper website and set up a simple webstore for ePub’d books, just to have that option available. Depending on how complicated that turns out to be, I might get a guy to set it up and show me how to do the maintenance. 

All of those combined would mean I’m churning out stories at the speed of pulp, and presumably making a decent half-living. In all that, though, I’d still be the only writer, until I became a

Medium Publisher

I’d know I’m at this point if other writers were being published under one of my publishing imprints, whatever those evolve to be, churning out material and collaborating on collections. With that much material and complications, I’d need a few more employees.

Graphic Designer

The Cover Artist, POD Layout Guy and Interior Artist Guy, possibly rolling up Web Page Design Guy all in one convenient package. Presumably a company (or several similar companies) with a menu of services, this would reduce the paperwork and e-mail and contract shenanigans I’d have to go through. Whenever I needed something done, I’d shoot them an e-mail with the specifications, and the previous working relationship would keep everything going smoothly. 

Publishing Attorney

Obviously important, so enough said. Paid by the hour when I need to check that nothing stupid is being done.

Editor

A professional, freelance editor or editors. A non-Creative whose focus is on enhancing the voice of the Creatives who employ him. I don’t trust other Creatives with my voice, because they’ve got their own. I trust Creatives to evaluate my ideas. I use the word Editor for brevity, but think of this guy as a dedicated first reader, copy editor, and continuity checker, not as someone with any sort of editorial control over what gets into my bookshelf.

Marketing Guys

Hired by campaign to do whatever the campaign is, whether that be sending it out to review sites, (strictly white-hat) SEO, doing a short-term ad campaign, running a Twitter page or something. I don’t know, I’m making this up as I go. Nothing fancy, just some guys. There’s got to be a use for all those “social media experts” you see hanging around on the street corners. 

At that point I’ll be making a decent full living at writing, which brings us to

The Limit of My Ambition

I suppose next would come Large Publishing and Mega Publishing, my preferred words for ‘Traditional’ Publishing because it emphasizes the only real factors that distinguishes them from ‘Indie’ Publishing: Size and Cash. It will always be with us, so long as bringing together big piles of cash for maximum business efficiency is with us. And so it should. I’m not fighting it, I’m not in competition with it, but I’m also not really interested in that level. Allow me a Grand Vision of my future: 

Decentralized Publishing

All that publisher talk up there has lead me to think that I’m best served forming what is essentially a creative co-op, based around a core group of writers who happen to like the same group of contract creative services employees. Each writer would write what he wanted to write, and the decentralized publisher would contract that team of employees to format it up and then the publisher would put it up online and in print and distribute profits accordingly. Imprints would evolve or die, kept in line and managed by the writers themselves, and the general profit pool would be used to invest in better employees and marketing and the rest of the support staff that Creative pulp writers need to produce a quality product without the necessity of giving up control of their Creativity. I can see this future now, in this Internet Age, it’s just a matter of building the team. I’m not independent, I’m decentralized.

I’m not Indie, I’m Decent.

This version of Professional Edition will last until April 6, 2012, updating every Friday. Site design subject to change as I learn by doing. Like what you see? Spot something unprofessional? Feel free to comment!