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Post by Calenture on Jun 10, 2010 13:16:32 GMT
I don't want to send this thread off-course. I'll try to keep comments relevant.
I was asked recently would I be getting bar codes printed for the new FC. Frankly, the idea hadn't crossed my mind. As a small press editor - as a person - I simply don't think that way. I'd just been printing and sending them out for years. But as this latest magazine has grown I've begun to see that I'm not doing anyone any favours with that attitude. Possibly this says more about me than the small press in general. I don't know as I haven't seen many small press magazines. After doing this for about 5 years now, I might finally be taken a more professional attitude; more commercial. One comment that stuck with me for years is that, in future, we won't have such a rich heritage of published work to draw on. This isn't a quote - I simply read it years ago at the Vault (I do remember who made the comment). Anyway, the remark was never forgotten. Promoting fiction on the net isn't too difficult and doesn't have to cost anything. It can be very time consuming if more than one site is involved. Again this is where croneyism has to come in.
Finding decent cover art can be tricky. I see it as a problem if I put out a collection. There are not many Paul Mudies (or Allen Koszowskis, come to that). Tricking up photos in Photoshop is one easy option. (Getting personal, both Sendings and Death Tableau will eventually get illustrations (future episodes, not this issue) - though only black and white, and those illustrations will be available.)
Sorry. Time is always the enemy. I'll have to abort this as I have to go out, but I'll be getting an estimate for printing a larger-than-usual FC at the college.
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Post by Calenture on Jun 10, 2010 15:29:12 GMT
To continue...
Just back from taking someone to a college interview. While they were busy I went into College Print and was quoted £58+ for thirty 90 page magazines, black and white inside with colour cover. From curiosity I asked how much extra it would cost for a thin flat spine, similar to paperback binding.
He got interested then because he'd recently experimented with a thin paper (perfect binding) cover, which had worked, though he reckoned it wouldn't take much rough treatment. No extra cost anyway. The pages are simply trimmed instead of being folded, cover glued instead of stapled.
90 pages he reckoned was about as big as you could get with stapled magazines.
£58 is about twice what I paid for the last FC. Or half what I paid when printing at home on the Epson.
The cover presented me with the latest problem. In a nutshell, I did it, but it looks drab and doesn't provide the best background for text. I think I also need to abandon the print-to-margins option for covers. A generous border could improve appearance and simplify things for the printer.
Now I have evening shift, so another half-finished message.
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jun 11, 2010 7:12:22 GMT
Charles Black could well advise about the isbn code. I think he said it didn't cost much. My own feeling is that the presentation stakes have been raised. In the old days as David has shown on a recent posting in the Vault, you could send out photocopied sheets with typewritten stuff. Now the quality bar has been raised. As far as you are concerned Rog I feel obliged to warn of the dangers. To me you are a writer and while editing and writing are not mutually exclusive you have to be aware that one will steal time from the other. The more effort you put into editing a plush mag the less will go into other creative aspects. On the other hand the magazine is a great vehicle for your art - which is much better than you seem to think. I would give serious thought to the motives behind creating Filthy Creations and then I'd give it my best shot. Boring things like advertising, marketing are now actually a lot easier than they used to be. Lecture over.....
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Post by David A. Riley on Jun 11, 2010 7:37:50 GMT
"To me you are a writer and while editing and writing are not mutually exclusive you have to be aware that one will steal time from the other."
I think the advent of the computer has reduced the workload in producing a magazine - thankfully. For instance, the time I spend editing and laying out Prism for the printers is a lot less nowadays for a 56-page magazine than it was back in the 70's when I last produced the BFS Bulletin at only 20 pages. The reason? Then I had to type everything out from scratch on a manual typewriter. Now it's a case of people sending stuff to me by email and just copying and pasting. The most I have to do after that is reformat it to a uniform style, tweaking it here and there. A lot less work than having to retype everything myself, especially when every typing error was a major disaster!
I am enjoying this discussion, though. It is throwing up issues, problems and, hopefully, solutions to what is, after all, a gritty issue for many of us these days. Back a few decades ago a decent writer could hope, once they had amassed enough good material, to get a collection of short stories brought out by a mainstream publisher, albeit perhaps one of the smaller ones, especially in paperback. Those days have long gone. Writers like Chetwynd-Hayes were luckier than they could have imagined to have been at the height of their careers then. Nowadays you have to be a Stephen King or someone with a glowing list of novels behind you.
On the other hand, self publishing, either in print or online, has never been easier. Printing costs are incredibly cheaper. The means to layout your material in a publishable format using computers is something a writer could have only dreamed about a few decades ago.
Getting credibility for what you publish, though, is the biggest, most difficult task, since there is some more sheer crud out there. And you have to be prepared and seek out criticism of what you write, to make sure that other, more objective views of what you have written influence you and stop you from ruining your reputation. Without a professional editor to go through your stuff, a writer does need to make sure that what they self publish is as good as it can be.
David
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jun 11, 2010 9:50:03 GMT
Getting credibility for what you publish, though, is the biggest, most difficult task, since there is some more sheer crud out there. And you have to be prepared and seek out criticism of what you write, to make sure that other, more objective views of what you have written influence you and stop you from ruining your reputation. Without a professional editor to go through your stuff, a writer does need to make sure that what they self publish is as good as it can be. David Yes, its a very productive discussion. Looking back on my own 'career' I believe I was on the absolute cusp of getting published in the mainstream. There were a number of mitigating reasons for not being published - I was solitary, belonged to no groups, I attended no conventions or workshops and didn't do anything but send stuff off; the market for a British author of SF/Horror/fantasy at the time was awful - it consisted of Interzone (semi-pro) a few one off issues that came to nothing - and Pan Horror. Also my writing was a bit wacky. I wasn't aiming directly at the market. That was deliberate, if foolish, on my part as I wandered around under the delusion that I was saying something new and exciting. I came extremely close to breaking through but if I'm realistic the main reason was simply that I probably wasn't quite good enough. I reckon with all due modesty that I was pretty good. The difference between 'pretty good' and 'very good' may not really be much but its an absolutely crucial difference. A great problem now is the blurring of that distinction: 'pretty good/very good" As you rightly point out David. Having been around for a while, you can probably say that what you're writing is reasonably good. Perhaps the authority for the 'very good' judgment has to come from a pool of fellow authors, critics, readers who you know (Like here on Filthy Creations) who will give you the confidence to put out a personal product. The test will then be who reads it, recommends it and finally whether respected critics give it a thumbs up. Of course, this all belies the fact that someone can write a pile of mince and sell millions
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Post by David A. Riley on Jun 11, 2010 9:57:05 GMT
"Of course, this all belies the fact that someone can write a pile of mince and sell millions" I knew Dan Brown would crop up sooner or later. David
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Post by Calenture on Jun 11, 2010 12:16:33 GMT
I think the advent of the computer has reduced the workload in producing a magazine - thankfully. For instance, the time I spend editing and laying out Prism for the printers is a lot less nowadays for a 56-page magazine than it was back in the 70's when I last produced the BFS Bulletin at only 20 pages. The reason? Then I had to type everything out from scratch on a manual typewriter. Now it's a case of people sending stuff to me by email and just copying and pasting. The most I have to do after that is reformat it to a uniform style, tweaking it here and there. A lot less work than having to retype everything myself, especially when every typing error was a major disaster! This quote provides a good starting point. What I'm no looking at very hard is what I do well, and what I'm rubbish at (this could turn into an interesting confessional thread). I feel guilty of turning an argument about Self Publishing into something personal, but as I haven't been involved with any self-publishing other than FC, no option. I agree that things are technically much easier now. With unlimited resources (ink, money), FC 6 could have been done and dusted months ago. A big mistake has been not setting up a Paypal link to sell the magazine. I can see now that I haven't done the contributors justice, and that has to change. Probably I 'promote' other writers/editors books more than FC. Many of us dislike pushing our own wares. It's easier to spend time promoting other writing that we believe in. When the magazine started, there were quite a few suggestions for promoting it, sending it to the right people mainly. This is where I really fall down. Similar to Craig, I've not gone to conventions. I've made more contacts and learned more about writing in the years that I've had the internet than ever before. But I still haven't really searched for helpful contacts. My interest has gone as far as the writing, sketching and techie stuff, then fallen at the last post because I feel hopelessly inadequate at dealing with people who I don't know, especially on such an alien subject as promoting and selling a magazine. As usual I've spent so long figuring out what I wanted to say that my train of thought has run out of steam. But basically, this issue I've come to realize the mistakes I've been making.
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Post by David A. Riley on Jun 11, 2010 12:40:52 GMT
The promotional side is, I think, the toughest. I agree with you, it's not easy to try and promote your own stuff. Much easier to promote other people's. I hate the idea of being regarded as me, me, me all the time. There's a controversial poster on Shocklines called Nicolaus Paccione who is not only a bit mad in a paranoid kind of way, but virtually the only thing he ever posts his about his own writings, publishing, etc or how other people are attacking him, his writings and publishing. It's all self centred. Even if you do want to use places like Shocklines to promote your stuff - and there's nothing wrong with that - it does look better if you post about other things too. That's where one person went badly wrong on the Vault, of course. I've been told I should promote my stuff on twitter and, though I have opened a twitter account and done about half a dozen tweets I don't think I'm either doing it right or reaching anyone beyond about four or five people. I really don't understand it yet at all. I suppose to promote something properly you need to amass a large list of reviewers, etc., and send out plenty of freebies or free links, etc. I'm not too hot on this kind of stuff either, I'm afraid, so I'm just speculating at the moment. An interesting subject for discussion, though, and vitally important for anyone who does want to self publish, so it's far from being off topic. David
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Post by David A. Riley on Jun 11, 2010 23:12:07 GMT
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Post by Calenture on Jun 13, 2010 11:25:56 GMT
Does a small press, based on POD, add that much more to a collection than an author publishing their own? That's a tricky point, especially when so many small press publishers are friends of the writers they publish. How far removed are some of these from self publishing? I think it's inevitable that Editors build stables of 'favoured' writers. Are we discussing publishing or distribution? The small press has to be a microcosm of the industry its emulating. As I have said before, what matters at the end is the quality of what's published. If what's published is good, then word of mouth and good reviews would - or at least should - give any book, self published ot otherwise, a chance of decent sales. It could be argued that the small press has greater responsibilities than mass market publishers, as the number of writers has not diminished, only outlets available to them. Is writing generally any better or worse than it was? I don't think so. But nostalgia, convenience and economy will focus most readers attentions on second-hand shops rather than new writings. What to do about that? Do readers look for anything particularly 'new'? I think writers need to be more aware of their genre than they once did as ideas become clichés much faster with a film industry (itself becoming decadent with endless remakes) borrowing from it. ( Terminator 2 borrowed a scene for it's shape changing horror from A E Van Vogt's Voyage of the Space Beagle). The only thing a writer can do is develop his skills to a point where his writing carries any reader along, transcending any clichés. And all the editor/publisher can do is recognise that skill when he sees it and present it in the clearest way he's able. Internet browsers are notorious for their short attention span so obviously writing and interesting illustration/cover art has to go hand-in-hand... as it always has (stating the obvious here ). The only extra ability a self publishing writer needs is that of marketing, because no one else is going to do that for you. And this takes time. Whether it really needs to cost anything is debatable. Some writers are under terrible constraints when it comes to self-promotion as they don't even have access to computers when away from places of work. I've been told I should promote my stuff on twitter and, though I have opened a twitter account and done about half a dozen tweets I don't think I'm either doing it right or reaching anyone beyond about four or five people. I really don't understand it yet at all. I also think there's a danger with blogging chains like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, that people get so obsessed with adding contacts that the real business of creating gets lost along the way. We're here, we've got a lot friends, so okay what are we all going to do together? You're not the only person who feels he doesn't really understand it, David. I suppose to promote something properly you need to amass a large list of reviewers, etc., and send out plenty of freebies or free links, etc. I'm not too hot on this kind of stuff either, I'm afraid, so I'm just speculating at the moment. Getting personal again, I think I've sent out a lot of freebies, but I need to focus more clearly on finding willing reviewers, people who will carry on spreading the word. Glancing down the thread I can see a link to Ed Dempster's Cafe Doom forum, which is a good one for various reasons. Think I'd better end here before the day is gone!
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Post by Dr Terror on Jun 14, 2010 12:22:39 GMT
Charles Black could well advise about the isbn code. I think he said it didn't cost much. I'm not sure how much it is now, but when I started it was about £100 to register with the agency and for 10 numbers. That's the minimum you can get. However for FC you probably want to look into getting ISSNs which I think are free. As to an actual barcode, can't help there. Lightning Source create those for the Black Books.
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Post by Calenture on Jun 14, 2010 15:13:41 GMT
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jun 14, 2010 17:02:10 GMT
My own theory is that registering for anything like an issn or isbn might be a pain in the ass but the more you follow official(or officious) channels the more likely you are to embed the product in the official consciousness and for some reason that helps you become an institution however small.
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Post by Dr Terror on Jun 14, 2010 18:27:44 GMT
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Post by Calenture on Jun 14, 2010 21:35:55 GMT
Thanks for the link and comments Charles and Craig. The usual intermittent evening internet here, so I hope I can finish posting this. I've been looking at the ISSN information and as Charles says, it's free. Basically you just make a printout of the application form, then mail it with a sample copy of the magazine to the address provided. I understand that the ISSN number provides part of the information on a bar code. I found a free bar code generator here. Now at this point I mentally circle around and ask why exactly I'm doing this. No, I'm not being flippant (sometimes it looks that way when hurrying). The ISSN number probably establishes ownership of a title (I'm not sure). The sample copy of the magazine goes to the British Library, I think. I see that Cone Zero has an ISSN number (but no bar code). I'm quite happy to go along with this. Just did another Google and learned that public libraries can use it to find an item. I think it takes 30 days to be assigned an ISSN number. I don't really fancy waiting that long. I guess we can just add the number to future issues? Not sure.
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