June, 2016 | Cabin Art

Self-publishing Trail of Promises

Looking up to Bishop Pass. Louise A. Jackson photo. This will appear in Trail of Promises in black and white.

It used to be that self-published books were the poor cousin of traditionally published books. They looked and read as if they needed some serious editing and design help. My British friend has a phrase for such projects: “Loving hands at home”.

The quality and success of self-publishing depends on how much work the author wants to put into the process.

Louise A. Jackson and I want Trail of Promises to look completely professional. Completely. Our goal is perfection, or as close to perfection as we can get with our current level of skills and knowledge.

There is self-publishing and then there is assisted self-publishing.

The folks whose story Louise is telling planned to do assisted self-publishing. When I got involved, I suggested real (unassisted?) self-publishing so they would not have to pay for a package deal that cost an arm and a leg in addition to buying the books to sell.

In all this wrangling and deciding, we decided that I am the publisher!

So are they traditionally published by Cabinart Books? Or is it Louise who is getting traditionally published by Cabinart Books? Or are Louise and I self-publishing together?

Who cares? Trail of Promises promises to be a beautiful book that tells an intriguing story of 3 people who packed the John Muir Trail with mules. It didn’t turn out the way they planned.

I’m hoping the book will turn out the way we planned, as we continue awaiting the proof copy.

Coloring books will be available again on July 1, 2016. You may order, but it will involve a wait.

Having a Book Baby Named Trail of Promises

mules in a meadow by water — A good meadow with sufficient water for the animals was not always easy to find at the end of a long day’s ride. Collection Mike McGinnis from upcoming book Trail of Promises

This photo will appear in the book in black and white. It is one of my favorites. The photos are really quite amazing, and all 144 photos and maps are necessary to make the story come alive.

Louise A. Jackson, traditionally published author of 5 books mostly on the history of the Sierra, has a new book coming out soon.

We don’t have the exact release date for Trail of Promises. There are a few more details to hammer out, a proof copy of the book to get made and then to be read through by Louise, the 3 people whose story she told and by me, probably a couple of last minute changes, then more waiting.

Louise likens writing a book to having a baby. She used the words “throes”, “labor” and “delivery” multiple times throughout the process. I haven’t had a baby, but I have published 2 hard cover books and 2 coloring books, so I agree with her choices of words.

I think it is like having a baby and then not being allowed to see it until it is an adult.

Together we chose photos, edited those photos, edited chapters, rewrote paragraphs and sentences, struggled over the right way to phrase things, scooted paragraphs and entire chapters, named the book, examined minutiae of the design, struggled with misbehaving technology, and laughed our heads off.

It was a privilege and a pleasure to spend time with this very dear friend, making this book come to life, working out all sorts of difficulties.

I hope it is a pleasure for all to read this story, Trail of Promises.

More details to follow tomorrow.

Coloring books will be available again on July 1, 2016. You may order, but it will involve a wait.

Salute

FLAG DAY

(Happy Birthday, Lauren!)

Book Cover Revealed

Hours, days, weeks, and months of book design, and at the end I said to myself, “SELF!”, I said. “YOU HAVE NOT FINALIZED THE COVER DESIGN!”

Yes. I was shouting at myself in my mind.

We judge books by covers. How else will we decide whether or not to pick them up and read the words on the cover, the back, the flap or the interior?

Presentation is EVERYTHING.

DRUM ROLL. . . . . . . . . . . *********!!!!!!!!!

Trail of Promises — The border looks a little rough and wonky due to my inept attempt at a screen shot. Please don’t judge this cover by that stuff!

Trail of Promises back cover — Ditto to the disclaimer from above.

Doesn’t this look like a real book?? ISBN, bar code, publisher name. . .

More will be revealed in the fullness of time. . .

Coloring books will be available again on July 1, 2016. You may order, but it will involve a wait.

Mineral King in Early Summer

What do I mean “early summer”? It isn’t summer until June 21!

Oh yeah? It’s been in the high 90s and low 100s for a couple of weeks around here. That qualifies as summer, despite the calendar’s report.

Trail Guy is back out on the trails in Mineral King. I’ll get there, just hang on. Meanwhile, please enjoy his photos with my photo editing and explanations.

These are phlox, an early flower that comes in subtle shades of lavender, pink, white, pinkish white, whitish pink, lavenderish white, whitish lavender, pinkish whitish lavender, etc.

Can you pick out Sawtooth Peak from this angle?

This is the view that the Mather party had 100 years ago. There is a photo, a book and a pencil drawing commemorating that event.

Mather party book cover drawing — Remember this pencil drawing? When the Park wanted to reprint the book on the Mather party (group of people on an excursion, not group of people drinking and dancing–but how would I know? I wasn’t there), they commissioned me for a cover drawing redo. That mule heiny was a challenge, but Cowboy Bert took photos of his mulz (that’s how he spells it on his license plate) to help me get it right.

Mineral King Mineral King photography

Almost Done Designing a Book

“Done” designing a book? Stick a fork in me, I’m done.

When did we start substituting the word “done” for “finished”?

Who cares? I’m almost done!

Here is what remains on my book design project for Louise.

Learn how to design the back cover.
Design the back cover, making sure it is prepared properly for the printer.
Figure out how to get a bar code, and how to place it on the book.
Figure out how to send the book to the printer.

That’s it? Maybe. Louise and I found a chapter with the final paragraph missing, and some weird computer business on the table of contents. Always something more to deal with in this business of book designing.

We, that is Louise, the 3 people who commissioned her to write their story and I, will receive one copy from the printer before we have the whole batch printed. We’ll pass it around, and each one of us will mark it with a different color, if there is anything to mark. Then, we’ll get it printed.

When I have permission, I will tell you the title, a summary of the story, and show you the cover.

Now I need to find a quiet place to contemplate matters of consequence such as being almost done with designing a book.

Willow 11 — Pencil drawing from The Cabins of Wilsonia – a woodshed? an outhouse? a toolshed?

And More Designing a Book

I offered to design a book for an author friend. Let’s call her “Louise”, because that is her name.

Louise discussed it with the 3 people who commissioned her to write their story, and they gratefully accepted my offer.

I read up on book design, learning most of what I needed from The Book Designer‘s website. I had paid him for consultation to be sure I wasn’t messing up The Cabins of Wilsonia. He charged more for one hour than I often earn in a week, but he was worth every dollar. He is a fount of helpful information.

I bought a template from him to use with InDesign, thinking this would be simple and easy and fast and how awesome to just slam this thing out with all my previous experience and knowledge.

Fall down laughing. . .

Look at some of the work:

Learn how to change the template so the chapter titles appear as running heads instead of the author’s name by emailing the Book Designer for help, several times because, well, because it is complicated.
Change the master template page things to have chapter titles in the space where Louise’s name would have appeared.
Find that in normal books, the chapter titles are on the right page, not the left. If you have the author’s name on every spread, the title goes on the right. If you have the chapter titles on each spread, the title goes on the left.
Change the master template page things again to accommodate this new information.
Realize I have the power to eliminate many of the hyphenated words at the end of lines, and go through all 300 pages to fix as many as possible.
See that changing the hyphenation caused some of the photos to land in the middle of paragraphs, so go back through the 300 pages to scoot them.
Louise and I decide that a plain divider line looked too plain, so design a fancier, but not too fancy divider line.
Replace the divider line with the pretty one.
Go back through the 300 pages and see that I missed some.
Find that there is a spell check on InDesign and decide it can’t hurt to run it in spite of the facts that I used spellcheck on Word, Louise and I have proofed it many many times, as have the 3 people
Find a few typos.

Fall down laughing with exhaustion. . .

This pencil drawing of a Wilsonia cabin invites me to sit on the porch and contemplate a life without InDesign.

cabin drawing Wilsonia

More Designing a Book

I thought I knew what was necessary about designing a book, because I designed my book The Cabins of Wilsonia.

That book involved preparing pencil drawings using Photoshop Elements, a few pages of text, all the frontmatter (that’s Book Speak for the pages of a book that are not the main part that normal people read), the backmatter (bet you can figure this one out yourself), the cover, captions and quotations. Oh, and chapter titles, page numbering, and all the little adjustments and details that no one notices in a book unless they are wrong.

A dear friend and author needed help with some photo editing on a book she was writing. I volunteered. It was very fun. Together we improved about 200 photos. This morphed into the actual copyediting of the book. It is pure pleasure to work with my friend.

As we got deeper into the project, I learned that the author and the 3 people who commissioned her to write their story were planning on using an assisted self-publishing company to get the book print-ready.

When I learned how much that would cost them, how many unnecessary extras they had to buy along with the book design, and that price did NOT even include any books, I was appalled.

So, I offered to do it.

Fall down laughing. . .

I’ll carry on tomorrow. For now, I need to take some deep calming breaths, and contemplate matters of peacefulness.

Pencil drawing of cabin door from The Cabins of Wilsonia.

Designing a Book

What is book design? That’s a question I asked back in 1998 when Jane Coughran and I published The Cabins of Mineral King.

The answer was too complex and computerish for me to comprehend. We paid someone to prepare our book for printing, and I had no understanding whatsoever of what was involved.

When I published The Cabins of Wilsonia, I figured I could do that stuff myself, being the owner of a Macbook and having written this blog for 5 years (at that time).

Holy guacamole. I had no pickin’ idea. It involved buying InDesign and learning to use it. This necessitated 2 trips to Seattle for training and many desperate calls for help. It also involved a huge number of uncharitable and unChristian thoughts towards Adobe, the makers of InDesign and Photoshop Elements, the latter of which is supposed to be simple to use.

Fall down laughing. . .

In spite of the difficulties, I got ‘er dun.

This gave me a false sense of confidence in believing I could do the book design for someone else, 2 years of forgetting later.

Oh my. This calls for a calming picture, and I’ll have to continue this little saga tomorrow.

Willow 5 — Pencil drawing of cabin porch from The Cabins of Wilsonia. This is a good place to sit and contemplate the peacefulness of no computers.

cabin drawing pencil drawing Wilsonia

And More Mineral King

During a mostly overcast weekend in Mineral King, we had a few moments of sun. A standard simple walk is to go down the road and back up the Nature Trail (Yes, I know it is a stupid name – “Wildflower Walk” seems more appropriate once summer arrives.)