I am appalled by the technical instructions for creating book-ready PDFs for BookSurge available on their web site. Come on. They are making millions of dollars and they can't create a step-by-step guide (as Lightning Source has done?) for the most popular layout software? This seems implausible and impossible. I'm going to have to resort to calling them. I would call this unacceptable. More soon.

I saw this list of 25 Things You Should Know About Self-Publishing from CNET.com. All the points are salient and should be taken seriously by anyone who wants to go forward. But I was struck especially by #6:

Creating a "professional" book is really hard.

Barrier to entry may be low, but creating a book that looks professional and is indistinguishable from a book published by a "real" publishing house is very difficult and requires a minimum investment of a few thousand dollars (I'm up at around $5,000 right now). You wonder why "real" books take 9 months to produce--and usually significantly longer. Well, I now know why. It's hard to get everything just right (if you're a novice at book formatting, Microsoft Word will become your worst enemy). And once you've finally received that final proof, you feel it could be slightly better.

A book that looks like it was created in Word will be an immediate turn-off to anyone who might want to purchase your work. Don't do it. Unless you're writing about the Key to all Philosophies that will tie everything in the world together in one tidy package, ensuring happiness to all of mankind and and an end to all unnecessary wars and famine, you will not be taken seriously with a sad, lifeless layout.

Just because you have a Twitter account or Facebook page, you still may not be using social media to its greatest effect. If you aren't reading, following, commenting, and writing your own content consistently, then unfortunately, you are merely a bystander.

Social media requires that you read and comment as much as you post (or don't post) your own content. It's a conversation, and your participation must add value. If it doesn't, you won't be taken seriously.

This is especially true for authors, whether they are being published by a big house or are taking on the task for themselves. Authors need to know what other books are competing with their own, and it would also benefit them to know what other published book and web sites might complement their own impending works.

The weight of the work you'll face promoting your title can be daunting, and it will require many hours of diligent follow-up. Here are a few you can do:

1. Start a blog, then faithfully post. Your posts should be the very best representation of yourself as an intelligent and connected person, of your writing ability, of your sense of humor, and of the authority you possess about your subject matter (and that goes for fiction and poetry too.) Photos always help. And then you must promote your blog by linking like-minded or like-topic blogs to your own. You have to enter the conversation from both sides.

Don't know where to start? Blogger.com and Wordpress.com are free.

Squarespace (hosting this site) costs about $8 a month but will allow you to build a full-fledged site with web pages and blogs, as well as photo galleries, which are customizable and flexible. You can find a low-cost solution that will have small learning curves. Now's the time to embrace new things, even if you’re uncomfortable with the online world. If you can't learn it on your own, recruit help.

2. Make a Facebook page and friend people who might have an interest in your book. Read all the how-tos and weed out the extraneous noise that Facebook brings. This will take some time and patience. Make a concerted effort to be present and optimistic about your work.

3. Get a Twitter account and use your own name. Twitter is a vehicle for informed and close listening to online buzz. Follow people in publishing, reviewing, and others who are active in your subject matter. You do not have to post about mundane events, and if you do, you will be tuned out. Instead, focus on your field of interest, lurk, then begin to respond thougtfully. This is another task that will take time and patience. And some of it will seem to be fluff, and you'll be right. But you will be building relationships.

Serious social media participants are very quick to identify half-hearted or self-aggrandizing online behavior. Tenacity, humility, humor, and quiet authority will take you a long way.

I see this on the web all the time: fonts that don't lend themselves to easy screen reading. Here's an example.

This is plain Helvetica, with no line height or letter spacing added. The letters look like they're bumping into each other. I see content-heavy sites like web news use Helvetica all the time. While it might look great in print, onscreen, it's awful. No one can easily read this. It looks like an uncomfortable grey puddle up there, doesn't it?

Now look at another example.

This is Verdana, which was designed for the screen. I added some line height, and no letter spacing, because Verdana doesn't need letter spacing.

The point is this: know your audience and know how to choose the best tools for the job. Just because you used to work in print and now your life is upended and everything's askew, don't rest on what you once knew. Figure it out.

Update on Monday, July 13, 2009 at 03:59PM by Sonya Unrein

Site that collects Helvetica tweets. Sweet.

Update on Monday, July 13, 2009 at 07:45PM by Sonya Unrein

I am not the only person thinking about web typography. There are new tools on the horizon.

Once again the mayor's office of cultural affairs is promoting a One Book One Denver city-wide book club, this time centered around a reader-chosen title, To Kill a Mockingbird. While I have nothing against the book itself, I think it's unfortunate that a book almost every kid in high school has already read is the lynchpin for municiple-based literature. Will people, en masse, enjoy revisiting this novel, showing up at venues to discuss its value and values? Is there anything new to say about TKAM?

The city received a $20,000 NEA grant for the program (link to Big Read, which lists all the grants to all the cities). More valuable, I believe, would be a city-wide book festival that brings in authors and showcases the entire gamut of Colorado's literary orgs, including big and small presses, innovators in the fields of print and epublishing, and more. We have universities and private writing schools--all could play a big role in showcasing the book in all its forms. I've heard all the arguments against the festival, based on its past success (or non-success), but I think more readers and more citizens would benefit from the festival than from rehashing a novel--no matter how beautiful--it has already read.