8/2/16:

8/2/16: BNUG notes by Adam Frost -- Publishing

adamfrost@computerCareandLearning.com

Sept 13th is next meeting-- Paessler Network Monitor

Oct 4th

Nov 1st

Dec 6-- Party!!! Subject: what is IT going towards? People from VMUG may come and talk about this

Perhaps Richard Stallman?

Go Anywhere MFT-- file transfer

Group webpage: http://bnug.org Help keep the group going, you can donate on the site.

Join the group on Meetup: http://meetup.com/b-n-u-g

Please bring computer books to the BNUG meetings for raffling.

Adam recommends:

The Future of Work and Power by Shoshanna Zhuboff—how computers have changed working life

The Unthinkable by Amanda Ripley—preparing for disasters

The presentation:

Randall is editor of journal at Lincoln Lab, and will discuss publishing.

Building a Book: From Idea to Shelf

Acton Networkers meet 10-noon on Friday morning to encourage people who are jobhunting.

Randall is editor of Lincoln Laboratory Journal. Has an academic background in math and science. Fun freelance work as theater reviewer. Invent computer graphics visualization.

He is now a publisher.

Traditional model:

Author proposes a book to a publisher-- you had to get over the wall of the publisher. Publisher chooses a small number of manuscripts for book publication-- editor, designer, printer, publicist, then sold through channels to bookstores.

The new publishing model--- anyone an be an author, publisher, and bookseller.

Self publishing used to be called vanity publishing. You would pay the publisher. But some books did well-- joy of cooking, color is parachute, peter rabbit, fifty shades of grey, twilight, in search of excellence, and Spartacus

Three states of every book project:

development

design and production

promotion

The arc of your books:

What do I want to communicate?

Who is my audience?

What is the form of my book? Commercial product? Novel? Picture book? Personal narrative? Graphic novel? EBook?

Who and what do I need to assist me in making my book?

Who is the best printer for my book project?

How should I promote my completed book?

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Build your manuscript: the endless lonely despair of research and writing. Be engaged!

Outline and storyboarding tools such as Evernnote can help you define the content and arc of your book.

If you have a co-author, you can collaborate easily and instantaneously with email, skype, facetime, adobe connect, gotomeeting.

File sharing and cloud storage is easy and cheap with dropbox, google drive, icloud drive, or one drive. But also make multiple backup to your own machines.

Crowd-sourcing can be an excellent resourcing can be an excellent resource for additional services, ideas, contributions, including money and feedback.

In tenure choices, publishing by traditional publisher is preferred.

A manuscript editor: Looks at your work and fix the wholes.

bboston.org and the-efa.org have very good job boards. Find someone you can work with – different editors have different specialties. Discuss graciously. YOU NEED AN EDITOR.

Protect your manuscript ruthlessly, at home, offsite and in the cloud. Share locations and passwords.

Berkeley Hills in 1991 someone was working on book on satire-- was a huge fire that destroyed it, no backups.

This is the highest form of protection of intellectual property.

Don't send unsolicited manuscripts to studios-- they steal all the time.

Mailing manuscript to yourself with postal mark is considered weak protection.

Barton-- distributed among friends-- wikileaks.

Every book must be designed.

Randall kept us on target.

A head of lettuce is not a salad. Manuscript becomes a book when it is combined with other ingredients in an attractive page layout.

Designer: book dimensions, typefaces, type sizes, paper choices, placement of text, figures, photographs, illustrations, line art, headers, footer

Bookmaking by Marshall Lee and Book Design and Production by Pete Masterson

Readable, coherent, and pleasing visual form.

Edward Robinson Tufte-- lots of theories to make the page look compelling.

Tools: a word processor

Adobe Creative Cloud:

inDesign -- page layout

Photoshop for photographs

Illustrator-- line art

Acrobat for book delivery

Dreamweaver or Adobe mUse for web publication

The language of printing and printers

Awesome communication skills

Get to know your printer earlier in the process.

Don't use MS Word for layout-- use Adobe InDesign. Word doesn't hold page layout properly. Tracking is space between characters, leading between lines-- Word doesn't control this well.

InDesign is rental per month-- $30 for teachers. You get a lot for your rental money.

Know where a book will be printed before it is built. Why? So you can build the book to the printer’s requirements. Talk with your printer so you know the requirements.

CreateSpace.com recommends industry-standard sizes. Createspace.com is owned by Amazon, and you can print the books one by one.

Randall always talked with the printer when he ran the Lincoln Lab journal.

Define your book format and add your content. Page size, orientation, margin and column dimensions. Define typefaces and stylesheets. Set up master pages with columns, headers, footers, and page numbers. Set up a background page grid-- Tufte recommends this.

Photographs-- digital photographs usually need to be put in photoshop to correct that.

Good print shop will have color management which makes sure the monitors match the printers.

Photos: (raster art, don’t use) vs. line art (vector art). Vector art can be resized-- it is resolution independent.

Consistency in line art and figures. Use a line art template to guide line weights, type sizes, and color palettes. Gives a nice smooth consistent look.

Pay close attention to every detail. Copyedit and proofread ruthlessly. Chicago manual of style is a resource of style information. Goal of proofreading is to find and correct errors. More eyes the better.

You must license intellectual property, www.copyright.com charges for looking at your work.

Before 1927, public domain.

Fair use says for non-commercial educational purposes, you can use intellectual property. If used to make money, you can’t, that's the line. No more money for happy birthday song.

Music publishers are very stern. This is a huge barrier to publishing.

Even a link might be a violation of intellectual property. The line is if you're making money off it.

Alex Webb got photo contracts

Eifel tower is trademarked!

Export the book to a printer ready file to pdf. Cover file is separate. Some artists specialize in designing book covers.

The world of printing: traditionally, books published on offset presses. Costs were high, and print runs had to be in the thousands in order to bring down the production cost per book.

Books can now be printed as few or as many as needed, and costly print runs are no longer necessary. Xerox igen4 digital printers.

CreateSpace, Lulu, and Blurb. Blurb is better for photographers.

These sites will print any number of copies of your book as needed. Very good tutorials.

Harvard book store has Paig M. Gutenborg. Color covers, black and white tutorials.

Promotion: Seth Godin’s Advice for Authors: http://bit.ly/1ifezLf

Use social media: linkedin, facebook, wtiter, web forums, websites, blogs, videos and speaking engagements to promote

Harvard book store has fine talks. BookTV on CSPAN.

Ebook: An ebook is really a web page-- they often need adjustment-- learn epub, html, xml. Better for text.

Steve Buchanan-- says no one is in making money from publishing.

No longer copy editor at bostonglobe.com

Katy Tynan's Free Agent-- the independent professional's roadmap to self-employment success. She's local, and points out that people are much less tied to corporations. CRC Press

Randall Warniers--

master the tools of publshing

be a strong communicator

be a savvy entrepreneur.

Randall’s slides: http://bit.ly/2ajvLxN

How are ebooks controlled? Libraries must pay for each download of the ebook.

No magic button for converting website to ebook.

Fotoxx -- great photo program.

Scribus--presentation program-- cross platform

GIMP is overload?

Alex Rinehart-- patent attorney with IT experience.

Can't require students to buy textbook.

Nina Paley-- created "copyleft"

Outbound adventure travel

Wayne-- in acton networking group

Randall thinks the economics of publishing are just getting worse.

Percentage of amazon? They take 40%.

Remember the full cost

RFeader con-- a lot of people writing science fiction

Lost bookstores. But people like the physical feel of a book. Harry Potter parties. People love reading.