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There is no fee to have a book published if you go the traditional publishing route. The publisher pays the author.

You may be thinking of using a subsidy publisher (sometimes called a POD publisher or self-publishing company; both are misnomers) or of self-publishing. A subsidy publisher makes money by getting authors to buy its services. You should not expect any support beyond delivery of the books you purchase.

If you self-publish, you are responsible for purchasing your ISBN and arranging the editing, design, typesetting, and printing. You are also responsible for marketing and distribution.

Here are some resources to help you get started. You might also check out the Independent Book Publishers Association and any publisher associations in your local area.

How a Book Gets Published
Warnings About the Schemes, Scams, and Pitfalls That Threaten Writers
Preditors & Editors

Good luck!

“They” has been used as a singular pronoun for centuries, since 1400 or so according to the Oxford English Dictionary. When I edit, take into account the intended audience. If I think my client will get dinged because readers will insist singular they is wrong, I’ll suggest rewording.

From Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary:
Writers and speakers have supplied this lack by using the plural pronouns: “and every one to rest themselves betake” — Shakespeare; “I would have everybody marry if they can do it properly” — Jane Austen; “it is too hideous for anyone in their senses to buy” — W. H. Auden.

Also see this blog post discussing singular they filed under “Prescriptivist Poppycock” at Language Log.

There are several ways to ensure you can use your preferred fonts on the Web.

First of all, you can use images with headers without hurting SEO. The text is either shoved offscreen or covered with a graphic.

There are also some more complicated (to my mind) text replacement methods using Flash and other techniques.

Most current browsers support @fontface (a CSS method) but you have to upload multiple font versions for the different browsers. The font files can be big (bad for downloading) and when I’ve tested @fontface on pages, the text looked funny. There may also be a problem with font licensing; your desired font might be restricted from being stored on a server.

For body text, here’s a list of fonts you can expect computer users to have.

If you’re not building the pages yourself, just tell your Web production person what you want and let them take care of it.

I was building my husband’s site and thought I would try out some of the newly available browser features: @font-face and text-shadow.

David doesn’t use a business name, and the focus needs to be on his services and not him personally. In case he wants to change the site name, the header needs to be text and not a graphic. For his name I specified Fontin Sans SC (using @font-face), Lucida Grande, Verdana, sans-serif. The tagline is Georgia.

The desired header (Firefox 3.5)

Looks pretty good, doesn’t it? Sigh.

Continue reading “What a difference a browser makes”

The Talk

(Presented at the 2009 NCPA Conference)

Editing: The Invisible Art that Takes Your Book from “Self-Published” to “Professionally Published”

Good afternoon!

My name is Sandra Williams, and I’ve provided writing, editing, and design services since 1996. Before that I ran a marketing and publicity office, and before that I edited a weekly newspaper. My first love has always been books—I still have a few shelves of Nancy Drew books that back in the day cost only 60 cents—and in recent years I’ve been thrilled to work primarily with authors and publishers.

Something else about me—I like to work in t-shirts and sweats, and when the weather’s warm I rarely wear shoes. But today I dressed a little more formally. I put on some nice pants and a buttoned shirt because all of you here, no matter how open-minded you are, are going to get some kind of impression of me, are going to base your opinion of my credibility, on my appearance. Seriously, could you trust my judgment if I walked in here wearing a bathrobe and one shoe?
Continue reading “Editing: The Invisible Art talk and handouts”