This issue of the journal features poetry and artwork by Ramesh Anand, Jonathan Batteas, Carol Berger’s, R. A. Davis, Kim Feltkamp, Tyler Gabrysh, Michael Jones, Rachel Kearney, H. Cyrus Kellogg, kjmunro, Michael Atreides Lair, Caroline Mahony, ie mcgavock, Steven Minchin, Pravat Kumar Padhy, Marguerite María Rivas, Fabio Sassi, Kelly A. Simmons, Marty Smith, Andrew Wenson, Elisabeth Smith Wood, and Sallie Tierney.

A new issue of the journal is released the third Tuesday of each month. The next issue of the journal will be released on Tuesday, June 19.

This issue of the journal features poetry and artwork by S.M. Abeles, Suzanna Anderson, Michael Aspros, K.Balachandran, Jonathan Batteas, Diane Cambern, Tracy Davidson, Tatjana Debeljacki, Ivo Drury, Andy Durrenberger, Zoë Fiander, Grace Freibusch, Gabriel Gadfly, Alex Garens, Howie Good, Kallima Hamilton, Cara Holman, Christie Isler, B.T. Joy, Mark Kaplon, Kip Knott, Rick Livingston, Janet Lyn, ie mcgavock, Jean McLeod, Steven Minchin, Mary Jane Nordgren, Teague O’Keefe, Marilyn Pellecchia, Winston H. Plowes, Garrin Riggin, Michael A. Rodriguez, M.S. Rooney, Joanna Rose, Judith Steele, Karen Stromberg, Jari Thymian, and Brian Zimmer.

A new issue of the journal is released the third Tuesday of each month. The next issue of the journal will be released on Tuesday, May 15.

Flash Grammar: An Anthology of Greatness was created to serve as a guide for students, aspiring writers, and editors looking for good examples of how to use grammar to achieve a rhetorical effect. Its pages contain a mixture of short stories, essays, and poems written in response to challenges like “write a piece with no to be verbs” and “write a grammatically correct, one-hundred word sentence.”

You can read the anthology for free by either downloading the PDF or reading the online version at flashgrammar.wordpress.com. You can purchase print versions of the anthology for $5.95 through Odin Ink at the Portland State University bookstore.

Click here to download the PDF (2.1 MB).

Click here to visit the website.

Visit Odin Ink to purchase print copies.

This issue of the journal features poetry and artwork by David Alpaugh, Jonathan Batteas, Sasidharan Cheruvattath, Andrew Chmielowiec, Martha Christina ,Robert Demaree, Ivo Drury, Lee Evans, Dan Fitzgerald, Janet Lyn, Sarah McLain, Bobby Mehr, Cheryl Menzies, Ayaz Daryl Nielsen, Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory, Dale Patterson, Fabio Sassi, Michael Dwayne Smith, Lucas Stensland, Andrew J. Stone, and Elisabeth Smith Wood.

A new issue of the journal is released the third Tuesday of each month. The next issue of the journal will be released on Tuesday, April 17.

Last night, I spoke on the phone with a woman who is working on her second self-published novel. Her first self-published novel came out last summer. She used a big-name self-publishing company to produce her book, and the process she went through was costly, cumbersome, and impersonal. She spent thousands of dollars on sub par editing and design. Many of the “add-on services” she paid for were worthless. In the end, the royalties she’ll receive from the sale of her book are not much better than the royalties a traditionally published author received. All of this led her to question the model she chose and the thousands of dollars she spent on the process. That, in turn, led her to me.

After just a few minutes listening to me explain the various ways self-publishing can happen,  she perked up. “Had I known all this,” she said, “I would have done things differently. This would have saved me a lot of frustration.” Like many authors, she thought there was just one option. There isn’t. And if you’re seriously considering self-publishing, you need to be educated before you start the process.

The reason I’m offering this class is to help authors avoid costly mistakes like the ones my new friend made. I’m not interested in selling authors a package or forcing them into using a specific model. I simply want to offer them a look at all the options to help them decide how to proceed (or whether to proceed at all). To misquote a popular auto insurance ad: “A forty-five dollar, ninety-minute class could save you thousands.”

Interested? You can register here: http://www.indigoediting.com/workshops.html.

In the early 1980s, Portland Police Sergeant Ray Tercek helped launch one of the nation’s largest drug trafficking conspiracy investigations—something he didn’t initially set out to do. Ray Tercek’s first book in the Pepe series, How Presidential Task Force #NW-OR-001 Challenged Conventional Drug Investigation Methods, details the first phase of the investigation. It is a true-crime story of local cops who pursue a cocaine smuggling enterprise from its roots in Lima, Peru, to distribution around America’s national pro drag racing circuit. The book takes readers through several years of the Chavez cocaine smuggling enterprise, provides an introspective look at the mechanics of a federal historical conspiracy method of investigation, and exposes the behind-the-scenes interagency and internal wrangling.

When Police and Politics Collide, the second of the series, details the second phase of the investigation—a secret federal grand jury investigation of the higher echelons of the criminal organization—which ended in a scandalous internal fallout in the City of Portland. When a Portland Police Officer leaked investigative secrets, bureaucratic obstructions were immediately thrown into the path of the investigation. Why? Because the offending officer is married to the Chief of Police.

The two books combine for a thought-provoking examination of how political ambitions can clash with an investigative mission. Ray Tercek’s series provides readers with a case study of high-profile investigative methods and the behind-the-scenes politics that typically bind these cases.

The Investigation of Pepe Chavez, et al.: How Presidential Task Force #NW-OR-001 Challenged Conventional Drug Investigation Methods an When Police and Politics Collide can both be ordered through www.raytercekbooks.com

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Vinnie Kinsella is a publishing professional living in the Pacific Northwest. He offers an array of publishing-related services, including publication consultation and project management for self-published authors, editing, and document design. More information about Vinnie’s services can be found at vinniekinsella.com.

Connect with Vinnie: Newsletter | Facebook | Twitter | Linkedin

© All blog posts on this website are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License and can be shared unaltered for non-commercial purposes if attributed to Vinnie Kinsella with a link to this website.

• What are the costs of self-publishing?
• How do I choose the best approach for my book?
• How much work is really involved?
• What can I do to make sure my published book is of high quality?

My workshop is part of Indigo’s monthly workshop double feature—the first to coach your craft, the second to boost your writing as a business. The craft portion of the double feature is Susan DeFreitas’ workshop titled “Resuscitating the Novel: Bringing Old Work Back to Life, Kicking.” For those of you holding on to a so-called failed, forgotten, or otherwise seemingly intractable (but complete) draft of a novel, you’ll want to attend Susan’s workshop to learn how you can give it new life.

The Info
Date: Saturday, January 28
Time: 10:00–11:30 a.m. for Susan’s workshop; 11:30 a.m.–1:00 p.m. for mine
Location: The brand-new Indigo office (917 SW Oak, #302, Portland, Oregon)
Cost: $45 to attend one workshop; $70 to attend both workshops

To register for these workshops, please visit http://www.indigoediting.com/workshops.html

I hope to see you there.

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Vinnie Kinsella is a publishing professional living in the Pacific Northwest. He offers an array of publishing-related services, including publication consultation and project management for self-published authors, editing, and document design. More information about Vinnie’s services can be found at vinniekinsella.com.

Connect with Vinnie: Newsletter | Facebook | Twitter | Linkedin

© All blog posts on this website are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License and can be shared unaltered for non-commercial purposes if attributed to Vinnie Kinsella with a link to this website.

Opus Mei Publishers describes itself as a collaborative publishing boutique of writers from the Greater Columbia Region of the Pacific Northwest. Its first book, E Pluribus Undecim, is an anthology of eleven short stories by Gil Tower-Meadow that tackles the ever-present issue of mortality from both the past and the present realms. Most of these stories take place in the city of Vancouver, Washington. The book itself is a beautifully designed hardback (designed by yours truly) containing fourteen illustrations by Portland, Oregon, artist Malcolm McClinton. It was my pleasure to both edit and design this book. For information on ordering E Pluribus Undecim, visit www.opusmeipublishers.com.

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Vinnie Kinsella is a publishing professional living in the Pacific Northwest. He offers an array of publishing-related services, including publication consultation and project management for self-published authors, editing, and document design. More information about Vinnie’s services can be found at vinniekinsella.com.

Connect with Vinnie: Newsletter | Facebook | Twitter | Linkedin

© All blog posts on this website are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License and can be shared unaltered for non-commercial purposes if attributed to Vinnie Kinsella with a link to this website.

Model number one: Do it all by yourself (and lose your sanity in the process).

This model is when you do all the editing, designing, printing, distribution, marketing, selling, webmastering—you get the point. Don’t use this model if you want to have a commercially successful book. Considering the high level of skill it takes to perform each task (there’s a reason there are entire master’s programs in book publishing) and the amount of time it takes to perform each task, it should go without saying that this approach to independent publishing is the fastest way to bring on a mental breakdown. What’s worse, when you do it all by yourself, your chances of producing an awful final product go up exponentially. Any author who hangs around me will hear me say that publishing is a team effort. There’s safety in numbers. Having others to help catch your typos or dissuade you from using an unappealing cover will help you avoid releasing a bad book into the world and will keep you mentally stable.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t perform any tasks on behalf of your manuscript. You certainly can if you have the skills or are patient enough to learn them. It’s just best to limit yourself to a few tasks and get help with the rest. If you are really into the idea of doing as much of the work as you possibly can, I recommend you read Smart Self-Publishing: Becoming an Indie Author, by Zoe Winters. Zoe is a successful independent author who has learned a few things over the course of publishing her own books. Among the most important lessons she’s learned are assessing what she can do by herself and where she needs help. Learn from her.

Model number two: Run your manuscript through an assembly line.

One popular option among independent publishers is to use a self-publishing service like CreateSpace to publish a book. These services might appeal to you because their initial price points seem low, they offer a quick turnaround, and they often promise to make your book available to online retailers and physical bookstores. Truth be told, you can produce a quality product using these services, but usually not at the introductory price you see on their websites. These companies typically sell their services in packages. Although such a package might appeal to you, be aware that you get what you pay for. The cheaper the package, the less flexibility you have. For a few hundred bucks, all you typically get is your choice of a few interior and cover templates that will scream to readers that your book is self-published. If you want to customize the way your book looks (either on the inside or on the cover), you’ll have to pay for a more expensive package. Before long, your good deal might not seem as good as when you started.

When signing on with these companies, read the fine print. If you’re not aware of the terms of your contract, you might do something crazy like turn over your entire copyright to a company that has no real interest in your work. Yikes! Educate yourself about the terms you are agreeing to and learn how to assess what each company offers. I could write several blog posts about this topic. However, for the sake of time and not reinventing the wheel, I’m going to recommend that anyone who is seriously considering a self-publishing service read The Fine Print of Self-Publishing, by Mark Levine. In his book, Levine assesses all the major companies based on nine criteria. Think of it as Consumer Reports for independent publishers.

It’s important to note that although these companies call themselves publishing companies, most of them do not make money the way traditional publishers do. Traditional publishers make money off of book sales. Self-publishing services most often make money first off the sale of their packages, second off of printing, and lastly off of book sales. For this reason, many of these self-publishing services don’t have to care about the literary quality of your final product. Traditional publishers must care about the quality of the books they publish because they won’t make any money if their books don’t sell. Most self-publishing services are just as willing to run a poorly conceived murder mystery through their assembly lines as they are a work of high literary merit if the author is willing to pay for the process. You, the author,  must provide the quality control. Just because you used a publishing service to produce a book doesn’t mean the book is good. If you want your book to sell, you’ll need to do all you can to ensure the quality of the writing. At very least, this means coughing up some money to have the manuscript professionally edited.

Model number three: Run your manuscript through a quality-controlled assembly line.

In response to the lack of quality control that exists through the package-based services, a crop of businesses have sprung up that offer self-publishing services to authors whose manuscripts must first be accepted in the same way they would by a traditional publisher. Once the manuscript is accepted, the author still pays for the production of the book, but they can at least be assured the book has been deemed “good enough to sell” by someone in the industry. These companies often keep a catalog of the books they publish and work to promote the books they accept (they do make some money off sales, too). The nice thing about these companies is that many of them specialize by genre. I won’t go into much detail about these companies here because they are still few and far between. I’ll just say that if you really want to go with an assembly line approach but are concern about issues of quality control, this is an option worth considering.

Model number four: Hire the professionals to do it.

I won’t even attempt to make it sound like I’m not biased here. I am. If your goal is to make it as a successful independent author, your final product needs to be as good or better than what readers will expect from traditional publishers. One way to ensure this is to hire the people the publishers hire. It’s no secret that most editing and design is no longer done in-house. Traditional publishers hire freelancers to do much of the work, and most of those freelancers are happy to work directly with authors. What’s nice about these freelancers is that they care about the quality of the final product because their names are attached to it. Yes, there are some who just want to get paid and will work on anything that comes their way, but most won’t work on a project unless they would be happy to include it in their professional portfolios. Because these professionals do care about the final product, they will offer you what most self-publishing services won’t: criticism. A freelance editor will tell you that your final chapter needs help. A freelance designer will tell you why your cover idea will repel readers. They care enough about the final product to tell you when you are doing something to compromise the quality. However, they also know how to respect your vision and treat you like the authority over your own work. They will find ways to fulfill your vision while maintaining the quality of the work. And, if you decide to ignore their criticism altogether, they will still do the work you ask them to do. Hiring freelancers is typically a winning move for independent authors.

Most authors I work with want to go this route. The biggest roadblock for them is the cost. Professionals charge professional rates. The total cost of hiring freelancers to do all the work can be a sticker shock to those who were looking at the bottom-of-the-line package deals offered by self-publishing services. However, once you start customizing their package deals, your rates start getting closer to the rates you’ll pay for professional freelance work. Why pay a faceless corporation comparable rates for work you could have done by a local professional?

The key to working with freelancers is to prioritize your needs. Make a list of what parts of the process you feel you need the most professional help with. Budget and hire accordingly. Below are the top three priorities I suggest.

Priority number one: editing.

Good content is what sustains book sales. A good cover gets you some attention in the store, but good content gets you word of mouth. If your budget doesn’t allow for a whole lot of freelance work, invest in editing first. You might have to wait until you can save up enough money to proceed with the rest of the project, but you’ll be glad you didn’t skimp here.

Priority number two: interior design.

Covers are marketing tools. Period. Interiors are part of the product. Without keeping this in mind, you might be tempted to spend most of your design budget on the cover and have little left over to spend on the interior. This is not what you want. Readers spend hours looking inside the book and seconds looking at the cover. A layout that isn’t easy to read will make it difficult for readers to enjoy more than a few pages of your book at a time before their eyes are strained. If it’s a particularly bad interior, they could give up reading altogether after a few pages. Interior design does matter for the longevity of your book, and that goes for both print and e-books. When it comes time to budget for your design, keep in mind your need for both a quality cover and a quality interior.

Priority number three: cover design.

Books really are judged by their covers. Since your cover is one of the biggest marketing tools you have, it’s important that your cover present your book in the right light. You don’t have to spend a fortune on the cover, though. If you can’t afford to hire a graphic artist to create a masterful work of art for your cover, you can still hire an experienced document designer to create a simple and tasteful cover that doesn’t look like it was made from a template. A simple yet professional-looking cover on a book with awesome content inside will sustain sales. Once the book’s sales gain momentum, you can use some of the profits to commission the best graphic artist in town to redesign your cover.

Ah, too many options! Help!

There are a lot of options available. And there are plenty of ways to invest in the wrong one. If you find yourself confused about which way to go, ask for help. Your local writers organizations are likely filled with independent authors who have learned a thing or two and would gladly share what they learned if you offer them lunch. There are also some helpful books on the topic of self-publishing (like the two I mentioned above). And in case you haven’t noticed (Shameless plug alert!), you are reading a blog by a guy whose job title is Publication Consultant. Paying for an hour’s worth of consultation about your project (and, no, I’m not the only person who offers such consultations) is worth your while. Whatever you do, don’t settle on a model until you are absolutely sure you know what you are committing to. It’s far better for you to delay gratification for the sake of educating yourself than it is to jump head-first into a process that will suck up your time and money and give you nothing in exchange.

Later this month and into the rest of fall, my blog posts will be devoted to examining the main parts of the publication process (editing, design, production, and marketing and sales). Each post will include advice on working with freelance professionals who offer these services. If you don’t want to miss what I have to say, sign up here to receive my blog post via e-mail.

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Vinnie Kinsella is a publishing professional living in the Pacific Northwest. He offers an array of publishing-related services, including publication consultation and project management for self-published authors, editing, and document design. More information about Vinnie’s services can be found at vinniekinsella.com.

Connect with Vinnie: Newsletter | Facebook | Twitter | Linkedin

© All blog posts on this website are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License and can be shared unaltered for non-commercial purposes if attributed to Vinnie Kinsella with a link to this website.

Common motive #1: You don’t care about making a profit; you just want to get your message out.

If all you want is for people to hear what you have to say, than independent publishing can be a great option for you. Independent publishing frees you from the need to make money for someone else. This allows you to give your book away for free or price it low enough to encourage quick sales. Your main limitation publishing this way is the amount of money you can sink into producing a book you may never financially profit from. If funding is an issue, there are grants available for some book projects, and some freelancers are willing to do discount or pro bono work for legitimate non-profit organizations. You just have to do your research to find out how to take advantage of these grants and deals. You also might want to look into what it takes to set yourself up as a non-profit publisher. Having non-profit status sends the message that you are not in it for the money, which in turn opens you up for more cheap or volunteer labor.

Common motive #2: You don’t want to give up control.

It’s your intellectual property, and you don’t want to share your rights with anyone. You don’t want someone else making decisions about which characters should be excised from your novel, how your cover should look, and what voice talent should record the audio version of your book. You want complete ownership of your book. (Notice a trend here?) If you decide to publish independently, complete ownership of your book belongs to you. You own your successes, and you also own your failures. This motive propels a lot of independent authors, especially those with either strong business skills or a high sense of artistic integrity. I typically like these kind of independent authors because they tend to be passionate go-getters.

If you are motivated by not wanting to surrender control on the business end, the one piece of advice I would offer is to educate yourself on how bookselling is different from all other forms of retail sales. When I explain some of the particulars of bookselling to businesspeople (especially the right of return), I’m often met with confused looks that underscore the peculiarities of the industry. Bookselling is the commodification of art and knowledge. You can’t approach it the same way as you would selling sweaters.

If you are motivated by not wanting to surrender control of your content, I encourage you to keep in mind that you are publishing because you want to share your writing with readers, and your readers will have expectations. If you do everything exactly the way you want to without giving any thought to what your readers expect from a book they are paying to read, you could end up with a final product that only you enjoy. Keep in mind there is a difference between compromising your work to increase sales and making concessions about non-essentials to make your work more appealing to readers. Never compromise your work’s integrity for the sake of more sales, but hold loose to your vision for things that amount to nothing more than packaging. If you discover that your idea for how your cover should look is less appealing to readers than a cover that you’re just okay with, you’re not a sell-out for going with the other cover. If what’s important to you is connecting to readers, do what you are comfortable with to make that connection stronger. Independent authors who walk into the process with clearly defined standards for what they will not change and what they are willing to change for the sake of their readers lose nothing in the end.

Common motive #3: You’re tired of dealing with agents and publishers.

Rejection sucks. No one likes it. Not even the people doing the rejecting. Publishers and agents aren’t in the industry because they want to crush dreams. They are hoping and praying for good books to come across their desks. Unfortunately, there are far more people wanting to be published traditionally than there are companies to publish them. This makes getting accepted a crapshoot for new authors. It also means publishers and agents have to say no to a lot of good books. If you are one of those authors who keeps being told no, the idea of thumbing your nose at the traditional model might seem like a good way to end the pain. However, this motivation can lead to greater pain if you fail to honestly assess why you keep getting rejected. Before you set out on your own, find out why the rejection letters keep coming. Go back and carefully look for trends in your rejection letters. The two biggest things to look for are comments about audience and comments about your content. Let’s examine both of these responses.

If it’s an audience issue, that’s a strong reason to consider publishing on your own. Rejections along these lines mean publishers don’t feel they have the ability to reach the audience for your book, no matter how much they might like what you wrote. It could be that you’re either approaching the wrong publishers or that your audience is so niche that no publisher caters to it. If a book can’t quickly generate a minimum number of sales for a company, it’s likely not going to get published unless you find one of those rare publishing companies that are willing to take a loss on some books just for the sake of the art (this happens often with poetry). If your rejection letters reveal that publishers don’t think they can find an audience for your writing or that they don’t feel the audience is big enough to justify accepting your work, you might as well take it upon yourself to reach that audience. Just because an audience is deemed too small by a traditional publisher doesn’t mean you can’t make a profit from selling to that audience.

If it’s a content issue, those rejecting your work might actually be doing you a favor. If one agent or publisher says your manuscript isn’t ready for publication, that’s no big deal. Tastes are subjective. If numerous agents or publishers tell you this, it’s probably true.  Authors who ignore such criticism and respond by publishing on their own (because no one appreciates their genius) can be in for a rude awakening when readers echo what the agents and publishers said. Having a publisher say your book needs work hurts, but having your readers say the same will hurt worse. If you find yourself being rejected because your book needs work, I suggest two things. First, join a critique group. Let other writers who’ve been around the block read and respond to your writing. Second, hire an editor to write a comprehensive critique of your entire manuscript. A good editor will tell you exactly where your writing is weak and offer suggestions on how to revise what you’ve done. Such a critique usually costs around $500. Spending a few hundred dollars on advice that will help make your book more appealing to readers can save you the hundreds of wasted dollars you will spend on copies of a book that will sit unsold in your spare room.

Common motive #4: You think publishing your own book will help get it discovered by an agent or publisher.

This one is tricky. We’ve all heard the stories of authors who used independent publishing as a means to open the door to traditional publishing. If you dig into these success stories, you’ll find that most of these authors invested a lot of time and money into creating high-quality books that readers couldn’t ignore. Simply throwing another book into the ocean of independent books won’t get you noticed by agents and publishers. Agents and publishers notice you when readers respond positively to your writing. Readers won’t do so if the quality of your book (both the writing and production quality) is poor. When you set out to independently publish with the intent of getting an agent or publisher’s attention, you can lose sight of the people who really matter: readers. If your motive is to get noticed by a traditional publisher, I suggest allowing your priorities to shift. Hold loosely to your dream of being traditionally published and focus on releasing the best book possible for your readers. If they like it, publishers will notice. Just be aware that you might be surprised by what happens when the offers come. You don’t often hear the stories about successful independent authors who passed on offers from traditional publishers after seeing how successful they could be on their own, but there are plenty. If you don’t believe that independent authors can be successful all on their own, I encourage you to check out IndieReader.com, where they love to celebrate the successes of independent authors.

So what’s your motive?

The motives I discussed above cover the most common reasons why authors reject the traditional model. There are other motives, but chances are yours is either one of the above or a mixture of many. Whatever your motive is, own up to it. Think about how your motive will impact the decisions you make. Once you’ve done that, you should be ready to answer the question of whether or not independent publishing is right for you. If the answer to the question is yes, check back here on September 13 for my post on the various ways to independently publish. If you don’t want to miss it, sign up here to receive my blog post via e-mail.

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Vinnie Kinsella is a publishing professional living in the Pacific Northwest. He offers an array of publishing-related services, including publication consultation and project management for self-published authors, editing, and document design. More information about Vinnie’s services can be found at vinniekinsella.com.

Connect with Vinnie: Newsletter | Facebook | Twitter | Linkedin

© All blog posts on this website are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License and can be shared unaltered for non-commercial purposes if attributed to Vinnie Kinsella with a link to this website.