I don’t really like being addressed by my first name when an email is business related and introductory. First names are fine after we’ve sniffed one another and wagged our tails but, especially if you’re selling me something, don’t get all chummy until I have enough information to know whether or not I want to know you. Of course, I recognize that this is aberrant behavior, so I try not to blink when someone sniffs first and introduces after.

I’ve been signing emails as if they were professional correspondence (which in this day and age they often are) since I started writing them with business in mind. I end with Sincerely, My Name and Company Name. I feel a little silly adding a title since I’ve become President, or Founder, or Publisher, depending on the business, and I see no point in adding the URL since it’s right there in the email address. Funnily enough, I’m backed up on that by Mitch Wagner, the Executive Editor of Information Week, who said, and I’m paraphrasing, that recipients of your email judge your importance in inverse proportion to the length of your email sig.

There’s another trend in email sigs that’s been going on for a while, I guess, but which I’ve only noticed in the last couple of years or so. Many of the emails I receive, if they’re signed, end with “best” or “best regards” and the writer’s name, with or without a lengthy explanation and/or list of urls to visit. The first one I received like that was signed “Best” and I wondered for the rest of the day, “Best..what?” I’ve gotten used to it now, and having read about it as perfectly cromulent on various etiquette guides makes me feel less contrary about it, but it was a bit perplexing at first.

These things, however…

1. Sending an email to “ALL” in one’s address book, thus releasing one’s professional contacts’ email addresses to friends and vice versa, and ensuring that the number of recipients is in inverse proportion to how important they’ll consider your missive. Worse (and there’s always a worse), it releases your “all contacts” to everyone else, some of whom ought not have that much power.

At least once a week, I get an email from someone I don’t know warning me about a virus, or the president, or imminent alien invasion, or sending me hugs, or telling me I’m a phenomenal woman (in addition to the ones I get from family and friends). The hugs are nice. I’m glad they appreciate my phenomenality.  I snopes my family and friends when they send me the rest, and hope that my original, professional contact will remind family and friends of Snopes and that emailing everyone whose email addresses they’ve ever received probably isn’t a good idea.

3. Joining every social networking site around and letting each of them rifle one’s contacts for other people to invite to join too.

I’m already signed up with Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter. Any other social networking invitations go directly to my spam folder. If one slips past the spam filter, everything else the sender directs my way from that point on also goes to the spam filter since that’s the only way I can be sure to catch them all. That might sound like overkill, but I’ve received invitations to join:  hivelive, ning, virb, trig, purevolume, my.9rules, pownce, threadless, shelfari, good reads, beautiful society, humble voice, friendster, bebo, spoke, and more. It’s not that I’m not interested in other networking opportunities, but if someone wants me to join their network, including the information at the bottom of an otherwise innocuous email or as part of a real contact is much the best way to get my attention.

4. Signing the recipient up for one’s newsletter.

If I haven’t asked for it, don’t sign me up for your newsletter. You can tell me that you have one, or include the link to sign up in your signature, but signing me up for it without my permission is spam. I regularly receive 3 newsletters from the same person. She’s an entreprenurial go-getter, and that’s admirable, but I didn’t ask for any of them and they’re not on subjects that interest me. I regularly receive 2 others from someone else. Again, not invited. Spam, it’s not just for Russian mobsters selling pharmaceuticals anymore.

5. Sending an email that says, “see attached” or something similar but usually less formally written, with no explanation and, sometimes, no signature.

Oy! With all those emails going around telling me my computer will be blasted to oblivion if I open an attachment, why do you think I’ll open yours? Admittedly, if it’s in rich text format (RTF) I will, since, so far as I’m aware there are no viruses attachable to an RTF, macros won’t run in RTF, and I scan all my attachments anyway, but I’m not going to think well of you if you can’t even introduce yourself and tell me why you’re sending it.

6. Sending an email to a correspondent a part of which includes “see attachment” but no attachment exists.

I don’t know how many times I’ve done this. I write an email. I explain the attachment. I follow all the rules of etiquette, am a veritable font of wit and erudition, and then the expected reply is returned, but it’s not applause at my brilliance, it’s “Hey Deena, no attachment. Could you send?” Argh.

7.  Sending an email I wish I could take back.

Probably everyone has done this one, but boy am I upset with myself every time thereafter. I try to sit on the ones that are responses to something that’s riled me up until I’m calmer, until I’ve had time to research the issue and get my facts straight, practice an apology in the mirror if necessary, but I’m not always successful, and I regret it every time.

So, what’s like nails on a chalkboard for you in email?

AT&T Wireless is determined to make sure everyone knows that they let you roll over unused minutes and you’d better be grateful for it. Unfortunately, they present this worthy quality in a story where children, through a series of commercials, ask their mother for more minutes. When asked what they did with the minutes they had, they tell her that they threw them away because they were old. “These are rollover minutes! They’re perfectly good! You know some children don’t have rollover minutes!” etc., etc., evoking the childhood memories of those children in China for whom you should clean your own plate. I get the point. Only spoiled children wouldn’t appreciate having a better deal on their wireless service, would effectively throw the deal away by using a different carrier.

I just can’t get past the kids. They’re not normal. Any normal kids, if they absolutely couldn’t bring themselves to use the icky rollover minutes, would listen to the diatribe once, and thereafter lie. They’d used all those rollover minutes on discussing homework with their friends, a really important test coming up, something that would shut the mom up. And of course, if they were real, they’d lie badly and the mom would, if she were real, take the damned telephones away from the spoiled snots and tell them that if they didn’t want to use the minutes provided they could do without.

I can’t get past equating unused rollover minutes with some sort of necessity. The only reason the mother reasonably couldn’t or wouldn’t take the phones is if they are as important, as necessary, as food, shelter, and clothing. Rather obviously more necessary than discipline or affection. There are children going without food. Without adequate medical care. Without access to computers and books. And, according to AT&T, without brand-spankin’-new cell phone minutes.

I was finally so annoyed with the commercial that I actually tried to find an email address or contact form I could use to tell AT&T what I thought. Unfortunately, their website seems to believe that if you’re not a customer wanting specific assistance with your plan, you’re not worth listening to.

As a result of the AT&T commercial, I have chosen Sprint as the sponsor for the cause I chose on Social Vibe (see the sidebar), an amazing site that matches givers to needs and creates opportunities to give for all of us, especially those of us without the funds to give cell phones to our children.

Besides, I like Sprint’s commercials.

To sum up, because it’s much too long, I had some health issues, money woes, a computer crash, another computer mishap, another health issue, and actually did quite a lot of work for clients … leaving my website and blog very much like the house of the professional carpenter. I should know, my father is one (a carpenter, I mean, not a house, blog, or website).

To the update: The Linux operating system plan is a no-go for my primary work computer, since quite a lot of the software I use is available for Windows only. I did a lot of research hoping to find replacements, but that was a bust on some pretty critical applications. At least for now. I am working on moving as many systems as possible over to open source solutions and sharing my software dollars with their developers when I can.

During my inadvertent hiatus, my website was hacked. It was a frustrating, though not terribly difficult, experience fixing the mess, and pretty embarrassing considering how careful I am with other people’s websites, but all security holes are now plugged and all malicious code removed. I’ve also changed the design to something I kind of love. I was unsatisfied with my old design, worked out something colorful but not very functional in between creating this design for a client, and then, you know, mishaps occurred. Upshot, the client went out of business and gave the design back to me (I don’t duplicate designs), and so I tweaked it for my own purposes and here we are! … if by here we mean pretty new design but all the links don’t match and I need to drastically update the content. Working on it.

In the future? Learn more about Linux for my own purposes, find more open source solutions to my work flow, acquire an inexpensive system I can install Linux on for my kids. I think it’s the future and they ought to know how to navigate it at least as well as they know how to search YouTube for train videos and bad gummi bear music (and then, maybe they can explain it to me). Even if it, specifically, isn’t the future, no knowledge is wasted. And if they have their own computer maybe they’ll stop kicking me off of mine to watch Sesame Street’s performance of the Mahna Mahna song…again.

So, what triggered the move now? One of the things I like best about the Open Source community is the high ratio of givers. There are a huge number of people I’m honored to have encountered through my forays into open source.  Today’s person is Ken Starks, the guy behind the Helios Project. See, there’s this guy who builds Linux computers and gives them to kids who can’t afford one. He posted about a recent computer donation, and I commented, and long story short(er) here we are.

He and Larry Cafiero sponsor Lindependence.  Lindependence is a program to turn other OS users into Linux users, one town at a time.  I’ve heard a lot of good things about Linux. I like the idea behind it, the quality, and the community of it in particular, including the high preponderance of users like Ken Stark and Larry Cafiero within that community. (to learn more about Lindepencence, check out the website here.)

I’m posting this so that anyone who wants to join me (Lindependence 2009?), or is curious about how this works (or just wants to see me implode from information overload), can follow along. Over the course of the next little while, I’m going to be posting about the move. First, I plan to learn what I can about it, how to use it, how to solve any problems I might have with software and so forth, in particular making sure that my clients (many of whom will never switch from Windows) will stay happy, and by December 31, I plan to be a reasonably savvy Linux user.

Maybe I’ll run dual OS for a while–there’s enough room on this machine if I clean up some of the draft files I have floating around, but by the end of December, I plan to have switched over to Linux for good.  Or I may discover that I’ll need to keep the Windows OS for some reason, or continue to use both. I guess we’ll see.

I’m giving myself this much time because I’m incredibly swamped right now. The kids just started school, and with Aidan, our youngest, being both autistic and albino (with the complementary poor vision) there are always teacher meetings, IEP tweaking sessions,  follow-ups with his various therapists, and the obligatory doctor visits at the start of every school year.  I’m juggling a million small press obligations, I’m building a couple of websites and a really complex CMS for a client that sometimes has me stumped, and I’m trying to keep learning.

But our oldest needs a new computer for college, our daughter will be needing one when she moves into middle school, and the youngest really responds to educational software. He’s 5 and beginning to read and write, understands rhyming, knows his colors and how to count to 100, and he draws some of the most amazing pictures I’ve ever seen from a 5 year old. I’m thinking all of this means that now is a good time for me to learn how to build a computer economically. Maybe I can even start a Helios Project Cleveland within the next 5 years. Ambitious plans, but I think I can make it work.

It’s time for that deep breath.

Below the cut are some inexpensive (but often time-consuming) ideas you might want to implement if you need to market yourself and don’t want to cheat. Because I work with authors a lot, it’s written with them in mind, but even if you’re not an author, it probably applies to you.

1. Build your website carefully.

A. Make sure it’s easy to navigate, that all your links and images have alt tags, that it’s disabled friendly and cross-browser functional. Check it in Opera, IE, Safari, and Firefox, at minimum. Sure, probably 75% of people use IE. Is that a reason to alienate the other 25? Make sure you can see it well and navigate it easily with Flash and Ajax disabled. If you’re feeling brave, try to navigate it using only the keyboard.

B. Avoid Flash, especially for navigation. If you use Flash, be sure to check that your website works without it. Turn off the flash and take a look. If you can’t stand giving up your Flash, consider creating two sites, one with and one without.

C. Make sure it loads quickly. Go to your public library and access your website on their default browsers with their computers. If it’s not fast enough there, consider the people on dial-up (there still are some!) and make changes.

D. Visual interest is important, but make sure that your focus is on content. Leave “white space” to allow people a place to rest their eyes.

E. If you have ads, consider getting rid of them. Ads are for sites that are selling something. You’re selling yourself. Keep your site visitors focussed on you.

F. Throw out your links page. If you do provide a links page, be sure you actually like the sites you’re linking to, that the sites are live (check them once a week or so) and tag them “rel=no follow”. Don’t accept a reciprocal links agreement unless you really believe in the site that’s linking to you. In that case, drop the no follow and blog about the site you’re linking to, tell people why they should care instead of dropping a link on a links page.

G. Get rid of the splash page. People want content immediately. A splash page puts another hurdle between the content and the reader and may negatively impact your search engine rating.

H. Ask random strangers (or friends and acquaintances) to visit your site and write down everything that even slightly annoyed them about it. I went to an author’s site today and clicked on the menu item “List” thinking, I guess, that it would give me a list of the author’s works. Instead, I got a pop-up form to join the mailing list.  Navigation is for navigating. Put your sign-up and contact links on a page.

I. Read up on SEO and implement as many SEO “white hat” actions you can do yourself or get your web manager to do for you. Be sure they’re not black hat tricks (i.e, keyword stuffing). The line between the two changes, and some things that were perfectly acceptable a year ago are frowned on now. If you use black hat tricks you’ll end up in trouble with the search engines, and worse, with your visitors.

J. ‘Subscribe to my newsletter”, if you have one, should be clearly obvious and on every page, especially the first page. I used to think that newsletters were passe in this day of RSS readers, but I was wrong. People like getting newsletters. If you have one it should be easy to sign up, and it should come at regular intervals, with interesting things included. Use text only, though you may choose to provide a link to an HTML version on your website for easier reading, images of book covers, and to get more traffic coming back to you.

K. Make sure your content about your books is up to date and complete. That means providing excerpts, data about your book, reading group guides, and links to the sites where people can buy your books. Provide clickable thumbnails so they can see the cover well. Provide ISBNs and retail price. You might also consider providing a printable list, either as a pop-up or as a simple black-text-on-white page.

L. Provide viewing options for mobile users, either with a different CSS file or a different site. Be sure your content is designed for mobile viewing. Provide a link on your main page or consider redirecting mobile users. There are pros and cons for both.

M. Consider using cookies to provide a greeting to people who have never visited your site before. There are benefits and drawbacks to this one. The biggest benefit is that people like to be acknowledged and they like their experiences personalized.

The big drawbacks, and for me they’re bigger than the benefits, occur when things don’t go as planned. For example, If you have your site set up to say “Hello! I’m glad you visited” to new users, perhaps pointing out newsletter signup options or RSS feeds, or something similar, people who discard their cookies regularly will get it every time. I had one site use a pop-up to offer me a sign-up to their newsletter every time I visited the front page, with the notation “This is just for your first visit here. We will never ask you again.” –and I didn’t even have my cookies set to dump. I got tired of it and quit visiting. The annoyance wasn’t worth the content being provided. Be sure your content is worth the annoyance if people don’t like something you do.

2. Provide new content regularly.

Yeah, I’m recommending a blog. I know. Everyone blogs. That’s because it’s a good idea. Don’t let it become your life, but blog something every day or every other day if you can. If you can only blog once a month, you’ll stay alive (a site of interest people pick up now and again), but you won’t be the “go-to” for content about your subject.

A. Be sure to blog about the stuff you care about, but if it’s personal, tie it into something that interests the people you want to draw in. I go to one author’s site because she has good information. I go to another’s because I’m already a fan and like knowing what she’s up to. The first blog gets more people all the time. The second, finding her work and falling in love with it comes first.
B. Personal information makes you more approachable, but you want to strive for a balance here. We like buying from people who charm us or befriend us, but we’re still there to buy. Give people solid information they can take away with them.
C. Point out the exploits of other authors who write like you do or in the same genre; blog about news stories that relate to your genre; draw people’s attention to the strange, quirky, or unusual.
D. There’s a budding writer in all of us. If you’re an author, at least some of your posts should be about writing (make it a regular feature if you can). How you do it. “Where do you get your ideas?”, etc.
E. Immediately delete every spam comment and respond to all legitimate comments within 24 hours if at all possible.
F. Consider endorsing products or features available on the web that make your life easier (as a blog post, not as an ad or sidebar link). You can sometimes get some nice cross-network traffic that way.
G. Consider asking an author friend to provide a guest post. The change in scenery will draw his readers to your blog and your readers to his.

3. Be an expert on your subject and share your expertise.

A. send out press releases with a free release site (PR Zoom has been my choice because it’s easy).
i. Be sure your press release is news, not just fuzzy stuff about you.
ii. Write it in the third person.
iii. Make it relevant, i.e., if you’re announcing that an author is signing at X bookstore, tell people why they should care.
iv. Don’t flounce, pout, or start flame wars. Sure, be passionate about your subject, but try to remember that you’re a professional and the person to whom you’re responding is a real person, whatever they may sound like.

B. Consider building a site about you the expert vs. you the author, and link the two.

4. Be Visible

A. Comment on other blogs. Most blogs have the ability to link to your website somewhere in the comments feature. There are two benefits to this. If the blog you’re commenting on doesn’t automatically use “no-follow” tags on their commenters’ websites, you get another hit in the search engines. Whether they do or not, if you comment with insight and intelligence, someone’s going to visit your website. And that someone has friends. And don’t forget, the owner of the blog will be kindly disposed toward you as well, and may actually talk about you to his or her friends.

B. Join social networking sites. Put relevant links up on De.li.ciou.us. Join Myspace, Facebook, LiveJournal, LinkedIn, Ziki, Amazon author blogs, even (ack) AOL. Believe it or not, even Twitter is a good idea. Set it up so that it announces every time you’ve made a blog post and you don’t have to think about it again. Make sure they all link back to your site.  Consider adding your blog to blog directories… there’s a massive list of social networking sites on Wikipedia.

C. Work the social networking sites. Cross-post your blog posts (or just certain ones based on content/topic) to all of them that allow blogs. Consider offering cool stuff specific to the readers of that site for those that allow blog posting.  This can kill you. Try not to let it. Either hire someone to do it, provide cross-posted content, or narrow your focus.

D. Consider adding another blog at one of the blogging sites. Cross-post there or make it personal, it doesn’t really matter, though my preference would be for new content as a way to avoid looking like a cheat. Add a link to your “real” site.

E. Join a group author blog or start one with other authors who will interest your readers. Provide content once a month or so about stuff going on in your genre or your books or things people are thinking about.

F. Watch for opportunities to blog about ongoing issues that matter to you and provide links to your site, i.e., blog against racism week; wretched pixel-stained techno-peasant day, etc.

G. Make sure your publisher provides a link to your website.

H. Make sure all of your giveaways (bookmarks, flyers, etc.,) include your URL.

I. Build a squidoo lens, a winksite, sign up at Topix to be an expert in your field, or join Zimbio (among many others, I’m sure), submit short stories to online ‘zines.

J. Send your book to the ebook reviewers, and/or offer interviews where appropriate. Print authors sometimes overlook the online reviewers, but they can be quite popular. If your book is available as an ebook, send it out for review.

5. Finally, most importantly, don’t forget to write.

People may stop visiting your website if your next book is late.

1. My new favorite plugin is Lighter Menus by corpodibacco. With 2.5.1 the administrative side of things changed. I found it confusing and annoying to get where I wanted to go. The Lighter Menus plugin puts all the admin navigation in a tidy little drop down bar at the top.

2. I’ve always liked Search Everything by Dan Cameron, and it deserves a place on this list just because it’s so handy. When people visit a site where WordPress is used primarily for a CMS with a blog, rather than as a blog alone, being able to search everything is essential. It’s also nice that you can define what “search everything” means to you, excluding tags, for example, if you don’t want them searched as well.

3. WordPress Stats by Andy Skelton is next. You have to have a WordPress.com API key to use it, but it makes things easy if you want to keep an eye on which of your posts are getting the most traffic and where the traffic is coming from. It’s not a full-fledged Google toolbox, but it’s a handy little gadget, especially useful when someone doesn’t want to have to manage a full-fledged Google toolbox. Andy is also the author of the Bad Behavior plugin which my husband loves. I rely on Akismet for now (which he also helped build. Way to go Andy!).

4. Akismet (of course). Akismet is the spam protection plugin that learns. It comes packed with every install of WordPress so the only thing you need to do to use it is give it the API key you’ve already gotten to turn on Stats. Designed by Andy Skelton, Matt (whose website is worth a visit just because it’s so beautiful), and MDA.

5. WP-chgFontSize by Ferran Rodenas I like this plugin because not everyone can read at 10px (or .5 em, or 50%) or wants to look at 24px (or 2em or 150%), font and site visitors often forget that they can do a quick keyboard shortcut or click on their browser controls to change the size of the font they’re viewing. It also shows that you want to accomodate them; that you recognize your OTF size (one true font) isn’t theirs, and that’s okay. It’s always nice to make your visitors feel as important as they are.

6. My husband and I share a love of the WP Ajax Edit Comments plugin by Ronald Huereca. Who hasn’t made a mistake in a comment and wish they could undo it before someone else saw? I know I have. This plugin allows users (and admins) to edit a comment to remove the evidence of foot-in-mouth or inability to choose between they’re/their/there problem the commenter just demonstrated.

7. There’s no list without cforms by Delicious Days. Cforms is a really nice form manager that allows you to create your own questions, add your own styles to the form, and track the responses in a couple of different ways. It’s a little confusing if you’re not familiar with CSS, but they even offer a pretty complete help section. Best thing about this plugin over other form managers is that I’ve never had it crash my site or refuse to run, and it offers a lot of room for my own creativity.

8. Dueced is all over the place (he has some great themes, too), but my favorite of his plugins is Collapsible Elements. Define how you want your elements to display, add a little custom CSS, and you have blocks of text that appear and disappear at a click. It’s especially useful for long FAQ pages or other big blocks of text (I should probably have demonstrated it on this post!).

9. As visual as I am, it’s pretty obvious that I’m going to be using a lightbox plugin of some sort. Frankly, I don’t have a big recommendation. There are new ones and variations of the old ones coming out all the time. I can say that Lightbox2 by Stimuli.ca is the one I use, and I like it because it’s simple, it doesn’t conflict with other plugins, and it does what I want it to do. You can’t ask for much more than that.

10. The Google XML Sitemap Generator by Arne Brachhold is pretty much a must and takes absolutely no time at all to set up. Everyone wants the search engines to find them, right?

Bonus A: Headspace2. This is the plugin my husband talked me into. I haven’t done much with it yet. It allows you to change the name of your post, add tags, and massage your SEO. So far it hasn’t annoyed me, so that’s a win.

Bonus B: Multi-Level Navigation. if you’re a mad lover of pretty glass buttons and smooth drop down menus but don’t know how to make one, this is a nice one for you. It builds a drop down menu for you based on the suckerfish dropdown technique. It takes some tweaking (or did for me) to make it look the way I wanted it to look, but it’s especially nice for a site that I’m not going to be tweaking on a regular basis. Once it’s set up and running, the site owner can change out pages and posts to their hearts’ content and the menu will keep up.

There are a lot of great WordPress plugins. If you want to explore and try them out, I suggest getting them from the WordPress Repository, where comments and ratings from others can help you determine if you want to take the time/go through the bother, and where you can be a little more assured that the cute little widget isn’t doing something you didn’t know about behind your back.

This is the basic progression of events: You send the typesetter your manuscript, describe your trim size, and let the typesetter know if your printer accepts spreads or single pages. If your printer will print spreads, that means the interior margin can be wider than the exterior margin, making it easier to read the book when it’s open without sacrificing too much space on the outside margin. If your printer only accepts singles, the margins must be the same size on both the left and the right.

Your typesetter sets up the master(s) in InDesign (or some other layout software. Layout can be done in Word or Open Office, but the fine-grained controls aren’t there and it’s much harder to get a truly professional look.) The master is the design template. Depending on the type of manuscript, there may be two or many more masters. For an anthology where the authors’ names and titles have to appear on each page of each individual story, there are often twice as many masters as there are authors/stories.

Once the master(s) is/are set up, then the typesetter imports your manuscript into the program and makes sure that it flows from beginning to end without any weirdness. Sometimes the fonts change in size or style, or broad swathes of nothing pop up, so he–or in this case she–normalizes everything, getting rid of extra white space, setting the font face and size, and defining the line height.

Then, starting at the beginning and going through to the end, she will format the titles, make the page breaks where they should occur, place the images with the text to which they apply, and apply the appropriate master to each page. Then (or immediately before or after), she will also make sure that names aren’t hyphenated, that the lines and pages break cleanly, and that there’s good balance on each page, hand-kerning where necessary. If she runs into any oddness in the manuscript (misplaced word, strangly garbled line, some obvious mistake), this is where it will happen, and she’ll likely drop you a note and tell you so that you can tell her to either leave it alone or fix it like this, whatever your preferred this may be.

Professional typesetting is a painstaking process. It’s not particularly hard, but it’s fiddly, and there’s a lot to remember. Since, I just finished a typesetting project, you’re getting the benefit of my recent mistakes experience.

Font size, margins, and line height can dramatically affect the length of your final product. Look at a lot of books. do you like a lot of whitespace? A little? About what font size seems attractive to you, what style? How long do you want your book to be? How long can you afford it to be before you have to raise the price and/or lose money on it? Do you like plain chapter headings or unusual ones? Do you like graphical elements or straightforward text? Do you like drop caps? Raised caps? Lines, graphical elements, asterisks, pound signs, or nothing to mark your scene breaks? Left-aligned titles? Right-aligned titles? Centered? A title font different from the regular text? It’s okay to not know exactly what you want. If you like watermarks or graphical bits and bobs, even if you don’t know exactly what, let the typesetter know. Hopefully he or she will be happy to share his or her expertise with you as well, and together the two of you can come up with something amazing.

Do you have interior images? Make sure they’re at least 600 dpi (dots per inch), CMYK or grayscale TIFFs, and that you have the copyright or permission to use them. Be sure to give credit for their use in the text, in footnotes, or on your copyright page. Determine what text they should appear near. Most books are “poured” into the design software (InDesign is the current favorite, though there are others) and then massaged to fit the space and look good on the page. That’s when the graphics are placed. Some typesetters will charge per image, some will charge more after a certain number of images. Make sure you find that out first.

Speaking of copyright, if you use quotes to enhance your text, make sure you have permission to use those, as well, and include that information on your copyright page.

To make this job easy for everyone, consider the following:

1. What are your printer’s requirements and what are the things you know you want? Be sure to state those clearly so the typesetter is aware there’s no wiggle room. (For example, your printer may say ‘minimum of .5″ margins on all sizes.’ you may find that you prefer .75″ margins instead.) Find out if your printer wants the manuscript laid out on a full 8.5 x 11 page size or if trim size is appropriate, and what their file preference is. Find out if they need the fonts embedded or turned into graphics. Pass on any tips or tricks the printer gives you to the typesetter, as well as the elements you want to see in the manuscript.

2. What do you want your typesetter to watch for? A typesetter is not a copy editor, but if a mistake is noticed, the typesetter should inform you so that you can determine the best way to fix it. Ask your typesetter about his or her policy on that.

3. Ask for a sample page if you’re not sure about title style, margins, line height, font face, or font size. Deciding that the font is too big, too small, just plain wrong, or that you need more or less space on the page after the entire thing is done means that you have to ask your typesetter to do the whole thing all over again. You don’t want to have to pay twice.

4. Determine how much room the typesetter has to implement her own creative bent. In the recent project I mentioned above, I was really excited to do it; absolutely bursting with ideas. I contrived clever little sketches that evoked the theme of the story or the anthology as a whole at the top of each story. I was very proud of myself. I didn’t ask first… The publisher didn’t like them. I took them out. He asked some other people. They did like them. He thought about it and realized there was really only one he hated; it just happened to be the first one. I put them back (with something else for the first one). I also didn’t ask him how he felt about line height, font face, or font size. Thankfully he liked the font face I chose. The rest? …yeah. Then I realized that the margins were too narrow. They were according to the printer’s minimum specs, but killed too much white space.

After three layouts (give or take) and some tweaking, we both ended up very happy with the final product. In fact, it’s a beautiful book with amazing stories and I’m proud to have had a little hand in it, but it would have been ready for the printer a lot faster if I’d asked the questions I should have asked at the very beginning.

5. After the typesetter is finished, set the manuscript aside for a couple of days and then look at it again with fresh eyes. Does it work? Does it need something else? Are the cool graphical bits and bobs interesting or distracting?

Anything you remove from the master should take no time at all and shouldn’t affect the final product. That means, if you decide that the little smiley face you had put at the bottom of every page is silly, it can be removed without making the typesetter start over. Replacing one image with a different one of the exact same size is also a quick fix. Neither of those should cost you anything extra. Changing the font, the line-height, or the margins, however, will dramatically affect the final product and may cost you a bit to fix.

*I can only speak to my experience. Other typesetters may have their own ideas, but considering these issues should help you find a good typesetter and ensure that your final product looks the best possible.

“Brilliant! The next great American Vampire novel!” Famous Author

After you dismiss the rumor about how Famous Author is paid to do that, shed the bad advice you’ve most likely read somewhere. That is, “You should never pay for a blurb.”

How in heaven’s name did the unknown author get the famous author to say that? It would mean the famous author read it! (Absolutely, entirely, right now, dismiss from your mind any rumor you may have heard about how Famous Author really doesn’t read the book; he or she is just paid to say that. That’s unprofessional behavior and unlikely; a rumor probably started by those sour grapes people who can’t get a blurb.)

As everyone knows, getting anyone to read something by an unknown author is an uphill slog, and the hill gets steeper the more impact the reader may have on the author’s career. You finally got a publisher to read your novel, maybe you even have an agent, which means you’ve convinced two people to read your work and they liked it!

You probably don’t absolutely need one of those blurbs, but it’s a hefty piece of artillery when you’re selling your book. So, how do you get one? Ask.

Ask? That’s it? No.

Somewhere in there after you’ve dismissed the rumor that famous author is just paid to do that, shed the bad advice you’ve most likely read somewhere. That is, “You should never pay for a blurb.”

The thing is, that author is in the business to make money. Famous Author may love telling a good story, may love creating fascinating plots and great characterization, but their cats have to eat too. Their time is extremely valuable–as valuable as is yours!–and they’re hard at work tapping out the next Great American Novel. You’re asking them to interrupt their work, which goes to feed their slightly-better-fed-than-yours cats. That doesn’t mean you have to pay them what they’re worth. If you’re just starting out and you’re a normal human being (not a member of any monied class, I mean) you can’t afford what they’re worth. So:

1. Start with an author of your acquaintance, or the acquaintance of a good friend, loving relative, or someone you can blackmail or bribe for a polite introduction. Your editor may know someone who would be perfect. Your agent may too. Ask them first. If they know someone, your work may be done for you. If the introduction is from a friend or family member, you’ll probably have to keep working it. Try not to accept introductions to self-help gurus if you write torrid romances. It will only embarrass you and Famous Author. Your clueless friend or relative will just wonder why you’re both confused and embarrassed. If Famous Author writes potboilers and you write fantasy, a blurb from them will most likely not serve you well. Readers who are drawn to a blurbed book pick it up because they expect it to be “just like” the work of the author who blurbed it. That doesn’t mean they want the exact same thing. It’s easier, for me, to think of it as a food craving. If your Famous Author writes steak and he blurbs your watermelon, readers who wanted steak, even if you provided a very good watermelon, may feel cheated, and readers who feel cheated complain.

2. If you can, find out if the author you want to ask has a no-blurbs policy (many of them do). If they do, Do Not try to get them to change their mind for you. Believe me, the rules always apply to you, even if you think they don’t. Just go find another one.

How do you find out if they have a no-blurb policy? One of the easiest ways is to search the author’s website and/or blog. I’m betting that all mid and top list authors have been asked for at least one blurb and will probably have written about it. Make notes of what they said. Plan to use them later.

3. Now’s the time to ask. A sample letter might go something like:

Dear Author who is my friend:

I don’t know if you remember, but my novel, “Abigail Adams” is going to be published by Brilliant Press this year and will be coming out in December. “Abigail Adams” is an 80,000 word story that is sure to attract your readers, since it contains blah and blah, and has the edge of the seat quality you’re known for. I know you are very busy and that this may be an imposition, but I wondered if you would consider reading my story and providing a blurb for it.

Brilliant Press is a micro indie press, but the publisher appreciates your time as much as I do and has offered to pay an honorarium if you’d be willing to read it, even if you’re not comfortable providing the blurb after you have done so.

Your friend,

New Author

Your publisher may not be willing to provide the honorarium (ask if they’ll at least pitch in). You may have to do it yourself. Ask yourself how hungry your cats can get before they gnaw off your toes in the night, cut that amount of cat food in half so that you don’t lose your toes, and plan to spend that amount. Being a new author, I wouldn’t expect you to offer more than $500.00. I would hope you could offer less.

Your new acquaintance, the friendly author, is either going to ignore your note, tell his or her secretary to ignore the note, have a minion answer that he or she doesn’t do blurbs but please buy his or her next novel, or he or she may come back and say “how much of an honorarium?” or “I remember you! Sure!” or even better, “Oh, I’d love to, no honorarium required!” Any one of those means you’re very likely in (though the second and third are best for that Whoot! feeling you want).

Please note: It helps with the remembering you part if you’ve met him or her more than once, perhaps even talked to him or her about his or her books, or even struck up a casual friendship where you could talk about clothes, children, or those pesky cats. The casual friendship should feel mutual…on both your parts. Don’t assume they’re just like you, or that they’ve been waiting for your call/e-mail/registered letter/actionable offense in a parking lot and will drop everything to get this done for you.

4. If he or she says “how much?” or “I remember you sure!” ask the author what his or her normal honorarium might be, but be prepared to make an offer if they hem and/or haw. If what they normally receive is completely out of your budgetary range and would mean that you’d be eating the cats instead of the other way about, tell him or her so honestly and regretfully decline. Then start over again at the top with a new author. You may find that the author will come back and say, “Naw, that’s okay. Send it anyway,” but please don’t plan on it.

5. If the author says “sure!” or any form thereof, tactfully try to discover how much time they think it might take, while you’re straightforwardly asking if they want an electronic copy, and if so what format they’d like (PDF, Word document, Works document, Open Office Document, some other document from some obscure software!?) or a printed copy and whether they would prefer bound or loose pages (you can get it bound at Kinkos and sent at the same time). Professional reviews from respected publications often take 4 months. Give your author the courtesy of at least that long, and let them know that you’ve done so.

Be sure to send the payment with the book in the type of payment they prefer (check, PayPal, money order, cashier’s check, other). If they want an e-copy of the book but don’t want electronic payment, be sure to inform Famous Author that the check went in the mail on the same day that you e-mailed them your manuscript, and don’t let that be a lie nor the check rubber. You don’t want to add this author to the list of famous authors with a no-blurb-ever policy.

6. Be sure to include a release for the author to sign stating that you can use their words in your marketing campaign.

7. Be prepared to lose the honorarium without losing your professionalism. That’s a tough one to swallow, but remember, you told the author not to provide a blurb if he or she couldn’t in good conscience do so. Then, too, the author may forget, or get behind on deadlines, or be swamped. It’s okay to write and ask the author about the blurb when you’re getting close to when you MUST have it or the publisher will pull your book from the print lineup, but… be prepared for it all to go pear-shaped, just in case.

If the author provides the blurb after the book is published, if an e-book with print occurring later, it can be added. If it’s already a done deal up there on Amazon and available at all fine book outlets, the blurb can be used for marketing purposes. If the author doesn’t provide it at all, just don’t talk about it.

If you talk about it, you run the risk of creating resentment in the famous author, or in the hearts of the famous authors’ friends or fans. You really don’t want to do that. If you talk about it, it will appear on the Internet. If it appears on the Internet, everyone will know. They will wonder why Famous Author hated your book. They will wonder why you’re lying about Famous Author. They will not, most likely, consider that your book is brilliant but that something happened that caused Famous Author to renege on his or her friendly agreement with you.

If you’re gracious, if you forget it, if you get the opportunity to be friendly with Famous Author again, you’re very likely going to improve your chances of becoming Famous Author yourself. Most Famous Authors are also people, really likeable people, and often very professional people. They’ll talk about you, and that, if you’re gracious and polite and write well, is a very good thing.

And that’s pretty much it. Let me know how the blurb went. I’m sure I’d love to read it.