Aaron Shepard’s Publishing Blog
Self Publishing With Lightning Source, Amazon.com,
and Microsoft Word
Author Central and Editorial Reviews
May 29, 2010
Self publishers who don’t use Amazon Advantage may have noticed that it has become harder and harder in the U.S. to get your info onto Amazon’s book detail pages. Its Books Content Update Form—for years the standard way of submitting such info—has been subject to longer and longer processing times, until it seems to have stopped working at all.
So, it is with great relief I can say that Amazon has stepped up and filled the gap. In early May, it became possible to add and in most cases even edit “Editorial Reviews”—including “Product Description,” “From the Author,” and other such elements—through Amazon’s Author Central. If you’ve already signed up there, simply go to the Books tab and click on a book to find the link to Amazon’s new form. If you haven’t signed up yet—well, what are you waiting for?
Note that Amazon’s form will accept some simple HTML, but you absolutely don’t need it. Plain text works just fine. Watch out, though, for a slight quirk: If you get too close to a section’s length limit, Amazon removes blank lines from between your paragraphs.
Just as when using the Books Content Update Form, there are a number of tricks to submitting Editorial Reviews for maximum effect. You definitely do not want to fill in every section or submit book review excerpts in the way Amazon suggests, or else most of your effort will be wasted. For a thorough discussion of this, see my book Aiming at Amazon. And for an example of what can be done, see Amazon’s book detail page for my book POD for Profit.
Your entries appear on Amazon.com in a day or two. That’s quite an improvement!
The other news from Author Central is that it is now available also in the U.K.! Unfortunately, the U.K. version doesn’t yet allow submission of Editorial Reviews, but I’m sure that will come. Meanwhile, the Books Content Update Form for the U.K. is still working.
By the way, you can always find links to Author Central or the Books Content Update Form in any country at my Sales Rank Express.
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#AuthorCentralreviews.
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New Capabilities at Lightning Source
May 24, 2010
Lightning Source has announced new capabilities that signficantly expand the range of books it can handle. The news is summarized in a one-page flyer on the Lightning site, available after login, while details can be found in new versions of the Publisher Operating Manual and Color Book Addendum for both U.S. and U.K. Here are the highlights.
Hardcover binding is now available for color books in most (but not all) trim sizes.
Color books can now be 6 x 9 inches, and black-and-white books can now be a full 8.5 x 11 (in addition to the older 8.25 x 11).
Page count on black-and-white books can now be anywhere from 18 pages to 1050 for cream paper or 1200 for white.
Multi-volume sets are now accepted under a single ISBN.
I should mention too that there’s an extraordinary error in the U.S. Publisher Operating Manual: The appendix on Digital File Submission Standards has been misplaced! Gone! Disappeared! It’s still in the UK manual, though, so you can read it there, or else download it separately from the File Creation menu on Lightning’s home page (before login).
You’ll also find an odd version of that appendix in the Color Book Addendum, but I suggest you ignore that one! It has several serious errors, including a requirement that all images on the cover of a black-and-white book be at 3,000 dpi. And it still says that the outside bleed on color book interiors should be 1/8 inch, though all other Lightning documentation says 1/4.
By the way, while you’re on the home page (again before login), you might also download the new version of the File Creation Guide.
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#UKdiscount.
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Mar. 29, 2010
The January 2010 revision of the UK Publisher Operating Manual for Lightning Source brought a surprise—made even more surprising by it not being posted till March, after I’d finished work on POD for Profit.
Both the U.S. and U.K. operating manuals have long said that Lightning accepted discounts as low as 20%. The U.S. manual still says that—but the latest U.K. version now says “as low as 25%.”
I discovered this when Lightning UK staff suggested that my 20% discount for POD for Profit might be the reason for trouble I was having getting that book listed at The Book Depository. I was told that the discount might be causing Lightning UK to omit the book from its feed.
On further inquiry, though, I was told by a Lightning UK manager that this was not true. Not only that, but—and here’s where it gets really interesting—there is no minimum discount. Lightning’s computers will accept any discount—yes, all the way down to 0%—and send it out in the feed. What’s more, I was told that the “minimums” given in the operating manuals are nothing more than recommendations based on market practices. Specifically, Lightning recommends
- 20% minimum for the U.S. and Canada channels
- 25% minimum for the U.K. and E.U. channels
Mind you, this is not what the operating manuals say. Instead, they specify one minimum for U.S. publishers for all channels, and a different minimum for U.K. publishers, likewise for all channels. But according to my Lightning UK contact, what Lightning really recommends is different minimums for different channels.
If this wasn’t confusing enough, there’s the question of just what will happen if you go below the minimum. In the U.S., going below 20% will almost certainly cause Ingram to either add a surcharge to your book’s wholesale price or refuse to carry the book at all. But in the U.K.?
My books at 20% are listed at Gardners and Bertrams, the two main U.K. wholesalers carrying Lightning books, as well as on all Amazon sites, the Book Depository (after the trouble mysteriously cleared up), and as far as I know, everywhere else they should be. So, exactly what benefit would come from switching to 25% for any channel?
If there’s an answer to this, I’ve been unable to get it from Lightning or from anywhere else I’ve posed the question. If any reader has a clue about this, I’d love to hear from you.
But at least till then, I’m sticking with 20% in all channels.
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#UKdiscount.
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POD for Profit Is On SaleMar. 17, 2010
POD for Profit, my new book on working with Lightning Source, is now on sale at Amazon.com and elsewhere. And yes, a great deal changed between my earlier draft and the final version. And no, I have no idea why the initial discount at Amazon.com is 28%. The discount set at Lightning is 20%!
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Jan. 4, 2010
I’ve written on this blog in the past about TextStream, the reboot of Baker & Taylor’s Replica Books. TextStream’s plans have sounded promising, but I’ve advised caution and patience in seeing how they play out. But somehow, a number of self publishers haven’t caught on to the caution part of the message.
So, I’d like to make that much stronger now. TextStream’s plans include a virtual stocking system at B&T, similar to Ingram’s for Lightning Source, that would give its books good availability listings at online booksellers. This was supposed to be a high priority for the company, and was scheduled for last September.
The problem is, it didn’t fly. According to my TextStream contact, the idea was for B&T to list TextStream books as “In stock, available in 3 to 5 days.” Apparently, libraries accepted that, but it didn’t convince booksellers. And no wonder! The turnaround time for Lightning is not four days but four hours!
Meanwhile, with this new “availability” scheme, B&T apparently figured it could stop real stocking of TextStream books entirely. The upshot is that TextStream books are showing as completely unavailable on Amazon and BN.com, and Borders lists them as available within four to eight weeks.
My TextStream contact tells me the introduction of virtual stocking has been “pushed back” to February, as part of “Phase 2” of the company’s revival. But whether anything they come up with at that point will work is pure speculation. Meanwhile, TextStream’s documentation is still a contradictory mess, it has no client Web site, and publisher payments are still being processed manually.
As before, my advice is to wait and see. If things work out, TextStream could be useful in a variety of ways. But for now, that looks like ice on the road ahead.
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#TextStream.
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Jan. 1, 2010
A draft copy of POD for Profit 1.0 is now available for comment. Here’s the link.
Download the Draft (Zipped PDF, 2MB)
This, at long last, is my companion volume to Aiming at Amazon 2.0. If you remember, that update grew so large and unwieldy, I decided to split off the portions focusing on Lightning Source and professional publishing and use them in a new book. I had hoped to finish it in Spring 2009—but two moves and an emergency revision of Aiming at Amazon intervened. My apologies to all of you who have waited so long.
Your comments will help make this the most helpful resource possible. The period for commenting is the entire month of January. Please be sure to include the version number, which you’ll find at the bottom of the copyright page (following the title page).
You’re welcome to send your comments directly to me by email or through the contact form of this site. Or you can post them to either of the Yahoo groups pod_publishers or Self-Publishing. The first is where I normally hang out, but this month I’ll be checking both carefully.
I plan to return to full-time work on this book in February and get it on sale sometime in March. Of course, that’s barring any major surprises from Lightning in the next two months.
Please feel free to share this info and link with any of your usual lists, forums, and networks.
By the way, it’s fine with me if you download this draft and never buy the finished book. Really, I don’t mind. I know you may still be helping to spread the word and boost my sales. But I do want to caution you: I’ve never posted a draft that didn’t undergo serious changes before publication. So, if you stick with the download, please be aware that you’re probably missing important corrections and additions, including ones not posted on this blog. And I’m afraid that could cost you more than the price of the book.
Just so you know!
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#PODdraft.
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The Stigma of PODDec. 22, 2009—Updated Jan. 1, 2010
Looking for this post? The darned thing kept growing and changing till I had to make it a full-fledged article. You can read it here.
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Dec. 11, 2009—Updated Dec. 14, 2009
This is a tale about the book wholesaler Baker & Taylor and the online bookseller Borders.com. I meant to write this last spring but got distracted. Anyway, it’s still interesting, if you can follow the convolutions.
1. Baker & Taylor has long had a direct order line into Lightning Source. But it has been selective in the Lightning books it listed in its catalog, and even more selective in the books it actually stocked. And unfortunately, books that B&T listed but did not stock were not sent out in its feed to retailers.
2. Most Lightning books were not originally listed by Borders.com, because when it started out, it ordered only from B&T and listed only books in the B&T feed.
3. Eventually, Borders.com started ordering also from Ingram—but only books that were listed at Baker & Taylor but not in stock there.
4. Among the books it had to order from Ingram, Borders discovered that a fair number were Lightning Source books at a short discount. Borders didn’t like that, so it delisted just those books.
5. What Borders.com did not delist were short-discount books in stock at Baker & Taylor. Some of these were from B&T’s own POD operation, Replica Books. Others were Lightning books that B&T stocked because of demand.
6. At about the same time, though, Baker & Taylor decided to stop stocking Lightning books entirely and instead go to ordering only to fill backorders. So, B&T gradually divested itself of all stock of Lightning books.
Final result: Short-discount Lightning books are completely out at Borders.com—the first online bookseller to reject them! But you can still get such books onto there through Replica—now rebranded as TextStream.
Is it worth signing up with TextStream just for this? Not likely. Borders.com doesn’t sell that many books. But at least you now know why many books are missing!
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#Borders.
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Dec. 3, 2009
It’s almost impossible to believe. Less than two years after Amazon declared “war” on Lightning Source, Amazon’s CreateSpace and Lightning are “partners.” But what this “partnership” really means is that CreateSpace is a client of Lightning!
CreateSpace today announced a new, optional “Expanded Distribution Channel” for Pro Plan customers whose books meet certain physical requirements. This channel includes three “outlets.”
1. CreateSpace Direct. This is through a CreateSpace site that can sell direct to retailers.
2. Bookstores and Online Retailers. This is printing and distribution through Lightning Source and its extensive network, including Ingram.
3. Libraries and Academic Institutions. This is apparently through Baker & Taylor. (I originally thought it might be through a partnership with B&T’s POD service, TextStream, the successor to Replica Books, but that isn’t true. CreateSpace seems to be supplying B&T directly.)
Want to hear the kicker? CreateSpace’s share for books sold through the Expanded Distribution Channel is 60%—three times higher than what Lightning would require if you were working with it directly!
So, CreateSpace has joined the ranks of self publishing companies that rely on Lightning Source at least partly for printing and distribution. And just as with so many of those other companies, it shouldn’t take long before CreateSpace customers start waking to the fact that they can make a whole lot more money by working with Lightning directly and setting a short discount—for sales not only through “expanded distribution” but to Amazon itself.
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#CreateSpaceLightningSource.
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Version 2.1 Now AvailableSept. 8, 2009
Aiming at Amazon 2.1 is now on sale. Ordering a new copy on Amazon in the U.S., Canada, or the U.K. will give you the latest version. (France and Germany may still have a copy or two of the earlier version to sell out.)
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Kindle Formatting with WordSept. 4, 2009
For all you Kindle publishers out there, look at “From Word to Kindle,” my new article on formatting Kindle Books with Microsoft Word.
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The 240% Total Ink LimitAug. 7, 2009
If you’re designing book covers for printing by Lightning Source, be sure to check out “Living Within Limits,” my new article on the 240% total ink limit now being enforced.
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July 22, 2009
A draft copy of Aiming at Amazon 2.1 is now available for comment. Here’s the link.
Download the Draft (Zipped PDF, 6MB)
Why another update so soon? This past year has seen seismic changes in how Amazon deals with customers, publishers, and authors. Important avenues and approaches described in version 2.0 stopped working or were removed entirely, while new ones were introduced. To avoid frustrating my readers and leaving them stranded, it was important to bring the book up to date.
I want to get this update out as soon as possible, so the comment period will be very short—just a few days, ending Monday, July 27. There are minor changes throughout the book, but the chapters revised most heavily are “Accessing Amazon,” “Marketing on Amazon,” and “Updating for Amazon.” There’s also a good deal of new material in the appendix.
In case you’re wondering, one thing has not changed: Lightning Source is still the most profitable way to aim at Amazon. And there has been no sign whatever of that fact changing for independent self publishers.
With this revision out of the way—along with my move across state and my set-up of a new computer system—I should finally be able to get back to POD for Profit, my follow-up book focusing on Lightning Source itself, and get it out by the beginning of the new year. At least, that’s the theory!
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#Aiming21draft.
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July 9, 2009
In my article “Linking to Amazon”—and in the corresponding section of Aiming at Amazon—I discussed the parts of Amazon’s Web page addresses actually needed for linking from outside, and I glossed over the parts for Amazon’s internal use only. But while these other parts may not be immediately useful to the self publisher, they can provide intriguing glimpses into how Amazon operates. The most important of these parts is Amazon’s referrer codes, or “ref codes,” for short.
Every link from any Amazon page to any other includes a ref code to describe the location of that link. And that location includes not only the page that the link is on, but also the feature that displays the link, and the link’s position relative to other links displayed by that feature.
Let’s look at a typical address you might collect from your browser’s address bar while visiting one of Amazon’s book detail pages. This is like one you might see for Aiming at Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Aiming-Amazon-Publishing-Marketing-Amazon-com/
dp/093849743X/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247001137&sr=1-6Can you spot the ref code? Here it is on its own.
ref=sr_1_6
What this code tells you is that you reached this page by performing a search (“sr”) and then, on the first page of results, clicking on the sixth book listed. (Later in the address, a query ID—“qid”—tells Amazon exactly what search produced this positioning for this book, while the ref code is repeated in another format for programming convenience at the end.)
Here’s another ref code, taken from a different link but to the same page.
ref=pd_sim_b_2
This one says that the link is from a feature based on purchase histories (“pd”)—namely an Also Bought listing (“sim,” short for “similar”)—and that this linked item from the Books department (“b”) was #2 on the list.
Amazon’s ref codes, combined with sales history, help Amazon learn how best to design its pages and their features so you are directed to the books you want to see and then buy them. Every time you click on a link on Amazon, you are “voting” for that particular kind of link—and the more votes that kind gets, the more likely it is to be preserved or promoted.
On Amazon, everything is testing. Little is left to guesswork!
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#refcodes.
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July 2, 2009
In an earlier post, I bemoaned the loss of Amazon’s AuthorConnect program and pooh-poohed its successor, Author Central. I’m happy to report I was wrong about the latter. This is a significant gift to all authors, including self publishers. Though it can’t take the place of AmazonConnect allowing us to post content directly onto book detail pages, Author Central has unique benefits of its own.
One of the problems with Amazon recently is that it has made it so hard to reach anyone who could solve problems. Amazon has replaced direct email addresses to various departments with contact forms that send their messages to intermediaries overseas. Some associates of Amazon’s have at least been enrolled in programs with dedicated staff to answer inquiries from those forms—for instance, Vendor Central for large publishers and Amazon Advantage for small publishers selling direct to Amazon. But self publishers working with self publishing companies or directly with Lightning Source have been reduced to using generic forms intended for Amazon customers.
Author Central changes that. Now, self publishers and other authors can receive the same kind of specialized attention that those other groups do, with dedicated contact forms and dedicated staff to answer them. At the same time, Author Central seems to carry over a little-known benefit of AmazonConnect: Enrollees get priority consideration for corrections they make to book data through Amazon’s Catalog Update Form.
Of course, there’s more to Author Central. You get your own Author Page, with a portrait, a brief profile, and a display of all your books. You can also post blog entries to appear there, with display of up to three at a time. For most of us, though, the Author Page—like Your Profile before it—will be minimally useful, and its blog will almost certainly not be worth the trouble, unless you import posts from elsewhere with RSS.
The new contact capability, though, is by itself more than enough to make this program worthwhile. And maybe there will be additional useful features to come, by Amazon’s initiative or in response to our suggestions. (Anyone want to post Author Messages on book detail pages? Let them know!)
Meanwhile, Amazon has made the enrollment process dirt simple—in fact, if you belonged to AmazonConnect, most of the set-up has already been done for you. To get started, go to authorcentral.amazon.com.
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#AuthorCentral.
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June 5, 2009
Last week’s news of the Espresso Book Machine eclipsed some other news that may be of even greater importance to POD publishers, this time from Baker & Taylor.
B&T has been buying up a series of companies lately to bring the wholesaler up to speed in providing digital services to publishers. On Thursday it announced it was extending this to print on demand by contracting major printer R. R. Donnelly to run a POD center at B&T’s largest distribution facility, in Momence, Illinois, starting in September. Also planned (but not announced) is Donnelly’s installation of additional equipment at its Allentown, Pennsylvania, plant, to serve B&T’s facility at Bridgewater, New Jersey.
Baker & Taylor is not a newcomer to print on demand. In fact, it launched its POD service, Replica Books, not long after Ingram launched Lightning Source. But B&T never committed to Replica the way Ingram did to Lightning, and the service gradually dwindled to a mere vestige. It has never even developed a Web site for its customers.
All that is about to change, as B&T moves back into this arena with a vengeance. Clearly, the wholesaler wants a piece of the pie that Ingram and Lightning have been hoarding for themselves.
Besides bringing printing in-house—it was formerly contracted out to Bridgeport National Bindery—B&T will be integrating Replica offerings more tightly into the B&T catalog. A huge weakness of Replica in the past has been that B&T would not commit to carrying or even listing all Replica books. And those they did carry only showed as available when actually in stock. With outsourced printing, that meant that even listed books could be unavailable for a week at a time.
Now, though, with Donnelly’s facility on site, B&T plans to list all Replica titles as “in stock” and available for shipping within three to five days. Though not as aggressive as Ingram’s promise of overnight shipping of Lightning books, it’s a tremendous improvement.
Color book capability is also planned for the “near future”—an area in which Lightning has left much room for competition. And that Web site for Replica? Yes, that’s definitely high on the development list.
Getting Lightning books into Baker & Taylor has always been problematic, and there are parts of the market that B&T reaches that Ingram doesn’t—for instance, Borders.com, Half.com, and the retail customers of Muze, not to mention many libraries. Also, Donnelly has an international reach that may eventually help B&T reach national markets not yet well served by Lightning. So, double-sourcing books with Lightning and Replica may again become a wise strategy for POD publishers, as it once was.
Like Lightning, Replica has always allowed publishers to set their own discounts—so short discounters shouldn’t have to stay away. For small publishers in general, the main question left is whether they’ll be welcome at all. In recent years, Replica has been reluctant to work with beginners. My Replica contact tells me that small publishers will indeed be welcome, but I think we’ll have to wait and see. Certainly I would advise waiting at least till the Web site is up and running.
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#Replica.
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May 29, 2009
On Wednesday, Lightning Source announced that its program for book distribution via the Espresso Book Machine was now open to all Lightning publishers. If you’re working with Lightning, contact your sales rep for the needed documents and contract addendum.
The Espresso has generated a lot of hoopla—from one standpoint, probably more than it deserves. Many small publishers see it as a promising new way to reach into the stores that now ignore them. But it isn’t. All Lightning books are already available to customers of those stores through special order. Ordering a book on the Espresso is not really different in kind from ordering it for printing and delivery in a few days. Yes, it’s quicker, but speed isn’t your main obstacle to sales.
In each case—instant printing or printing in a big distribution center—the problem for the small publisher is how to make your books known. The Espresso won’t help with that at all. Just as before, the best bet for small publishers will be to aim at online booksellers, where your books can be made easy to discover. (This is not even to mention that there are currently only 15 of these machines in the entire world.)
Then where lies the importance of the Espresso for the small publisher? I believe it is in international markets. Clearly, Lightning Source has been slower in expanding overseas than previously hoped. The expense and complexity of building a large POD operation is a huge deterrent, as is the problem of adapting to a foreign language and business culture.
But what if you have a (relatively) small machine available to regional distributors and retailers in a given country, and economical for even a small market? You would then find your books selling competitively in that country through its Internet booksellers, effectively expanding your market with no direct investment or adaptation at all.
So, don’t expect the Espresso Book Machine to do a lot for your books in the U.S., Canada, or the U.K. But look for it to open up Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, France, Germany, and Japan. Yes, Lightning books are already available online in all these countries, with Amazon serving the latter three—but the Espresso will let your books be sold there faster and cheaper, thereby increasing demand. Don’t be surprised by a 5% to 10% boost in sales over time, just from international markets and the Espresso.
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#Espresso.
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May 27, 2009—Updated May 30, 2009
I can’t say I’m surprised. The feature set of AmazonConnect has been dwindling for several months. The first loss was the ability to assign posts to specific books. Then it was inserting graphics and video. After that one, I wrote this to the AmazonConnect people:
Why don’t you just abolish AmazonConnect and get it over with? This continual degradation is driving me nuts. What will you take out next? External links? Formatting? Text entry? There’s not a whole lot left.
Well, on May 26, we found out what was left. AmazonConnect is being phased out entirely in favor of Amazon’s new Author Central, which offers each author their own special page on Amazon. This will feature the author’s biography, bibliography, blog, and so on. In other words, it’s a glorified version of the Amazon Profile—another feature nearly useless for authors because few customers ever see it.
And your blog posts? New ones will no longer appear on your book’s detail pages! That’s right, the last remaining significant value in your AmazonConnect blog has been stripped away. We’re back where we started, with the Books Content Update Form as the primary way to submit content to those pages—a form that has lately been outsourced overseas, to novice workers who get weeks behind and often reduce our input to rubbish.
Thank you, Amazon!
For now, some of you may still be able to reach the old message submission form at www.amazon.com/connect, even if it doesn’t distribute your messages as before. Others, including all new enrollees, are simply redirected to Author Central at authorcentral.amazon.com.
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#AmazonConnect.
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Jan. 9, 2009
You’ve all been waiting very patiently, and it has finally paid off: Aiming at Amazon 2.0 is on sale. But it’s not what you might expect, especially if you read an early draft.
I’d intended to get the book out by September, and I did come close to finishing it then. But there were important questions still to answer, and I had to publish my wife’s new soapmaking book—so I set mine aside for a couple of months.
Meanwhile, I realized I was staring at a 400-page book that would be nearly impossible to keep up to date—if I could finish it at all—and one that was thoroughly dependent on the symbiosis between Amazon and Lightning Source—which made it extremely vulnerable. Even if, as I believe, independent self publishers will never have trouble selling to Amazon through Lightning, I keep hearing from self publishers who already believe the opposite, and who are therefore skeptical of my approach.
It was my wife, Anne, who came up with the final solution: Split the book into two—one book focused on Amazon, the other on Lightning Source, but interrelated. And that’s what I’m doing. At a svelte 200 pages, Aiming at Amazon still recommends publishing through Lightning, but it discusses other possibilities as well, with a special friendly nod toward CreateSpace. Meanwhile, you get about twice the info on Amazon I put into the original book.
And the second book? It will be called POD for Profit: More on the NEW Business of Self Publishing. Besides a detailed treatment of Lightning Source, it will cover other aspects of publishing important to those of us with our own publishing businesses. I plan to get out the book sometime within the next year. To bridge the gap for those who need the info ASAP, I’ll try to get a preliminary draft posted here soon.
By the way, Aiming at Amazon was “updated in place”—meaning the ISBN is the same as before, and you’ll order it from the same Amazon book page. As long as you buy a new copy directly from Amazon, it will be the new version, as you’ll see noted on the copyright page. I guarantee that personally.
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#Aiming2.
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Sept. 7, 2008
Though I’ve already written about Amazon.com’s supposed policy of no longer buying books from Lightning Source—and though nothing has changed—I keep getting asked about it by people who simply cannot believe that self publishing through Lightning is still viable. So, let me say this quite clearly:
Not a single independent self publisher is known to have been affected by Amazon’s new “policy” in any way. Only larger publishers and self publishing companies have been affected—and it doesn’t look as if Amazon ever intended it any other way. If you are self publishing through Lightning Source in the manner described in my book Aiming at Amazon, it is business as usual, for now and the foreseeable future.
I’ll go farther: Amazon is treating self-published books from Lightning Source better than ever. For the first time, many Lightning books at short discount are being discounted on Amazon—by up to 10%!
It’s a great time to be publishing through Lightning Source.
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#AmazonLightning.
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Why No Word on Word 2008?
May 16, 2008
Mac users who follow my advice on using Word in self publishing may wonder why I’ve been so voluble on Word 2007 and so silent on Word 2008—especially since I’m a Mac user myself. Well, frankly, I’ve been waiting to fully test Word 2008 till it’s usable.
But the longer I wait, the less that seems likely to happen. Service Pack 1 has now arrived, and that’s usually the point at which Word becomes trustworthy—but not this time. In fact, reports are that SP1 has introduced a whole new set of problems.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to join the crowd of Microsoft bashers on this one. The Mac developers at Microsoft got handed a near-impossible job—mostly by Apple!
In the last two or three years, Apple has required Microsoft’s Mac developers to make three basic shifts: (1) from one programming language to another, (2) from one computer architecture to another, and (3) to the latest, much changed, and still extremely buggy version of Mac OS X. From the other side, Microsoft has required its Mac team to support an entirely new file format and to redesign the user interface—in other words, to make the biggest changes in Word’s design and operation in a decade. And to top it off, the Mac team itself decided to meet the competition from Apple Pages by adding an entirely new document model not found in WinWord—Publishing Layout View.
All this in a single update! It’s a miracle that Word 2008 came out at all.
But that doesn’t mean you and I have to pretend this is a production-ready tool. Let’s call it what it is: a work in progress. Personally, I’m hoping Mac Word will be ready for serious use by the next version. (If you think I’m exaggerating, read this Microsoft blog post about the necessity of ignoring a crash-causing bug so SP1 could be released on time.)
In the midst of this bad news, though, there’s some good. Unlike their Windows brethren, the Mac developers of Word did not ruin the program’s interface. It’s different, but quite nice. I won’t mind working with it at all.
The other good news is that Office 2008, as premature as it is, is selling really, really well. Microsoft says this will allow them to add more developers to the Mac development staff, which should mean we’ll get better products quicker.
So, if we can just wait for the next version . . . or the one after that . . . .
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#Word2008.
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Feb. 25, 2008—Revised May 9, 2008
It was only in March 2007 that I reported on the new Océ presses at Lightning Source and the radical improvement they provided in grayscale graphics, including photos. In fact, I said the improvement was about 100%. But still, I pointed out, Lightning was screening at a resolution common to newspapers, so you shouldn’t expect offset quality.
Less than a year later, Lightning has upgraded their systems in a way that pretty much delivers just that. Screen resolution on interior grayscale graphics has jumped from 85 to 106 lines per inch. That may not sound like much, but it’s right in the range where a small increase makes a big difference. Where before the screen dots were easy to spot, they’re now small enough that you have to look hard to see them. (Scanned books are not affected, since they’re stored as black-and-white bitmaps, which aren’t screened.)
Lightning had the upgrade in place and began testing on Jan. 22, but it still hasn’t officially been announced—and in fact, it might not be. But even if and when it is, the catch is that not all books will get the advantage of it.
Your older files for interior content were converted by Lightning to a format known as AFP—Advanced Function Presentation—which was designed by IBM for production printing. With Lightning’s new system, though, new files are being printed direct from PDF. But Lightning can’t very well go back to PDF for your older books without your approval of the result—so you need to resubmit your interior files to have them printed via the new system.
A hassle? Yes. Is it worth it? Yes!
Note: I previously reported here that the key to getting the graphics improvement was to produce your PDF files to the specification PDF/X-1a:2001. This turns out to have been my own misinterpretation of confusing information. My new info comes direct from Lightning senior technical staff and is confirmed by my own testing. Submission of files to that spec is recommended by Lightning but is not required for improved graphics. All you need to do is resubmit your files.
In fact, if you’re using Word for the Mac, I suggest you avoid producing PDF files to any PDF/X spec. Without intermediate processing, this will convert your text from black to a medium gray and ruin it for printing!
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#LightningGraphics.
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Dec. 19, 2007—Updated May 9, 2008
Though book covers from Lightning Source look just fine to most people, I haven’t been satisfied. I finally got tired of seeing strange artifacts on type under magnification and decided to figure out what was causing it and how to stop it.
I ran a series of tests, then described the fruits of my experiments on my Publishing Page in an article “Book Covers vs. Lightning Source” (since removed). Basically, it said that Lightning was rasterizing and screening all book covers, including the type, often with antialiasing. So, there was no way to get high-quality type on Lightning covers, and the only way to get clean bar codes was to let Lightning supply them later.
After posting that, though, I was contacted by Lightning Source with a request to talk to a senior technician. The resulting discussion was highly useful and revealing, as I discovered I was both right and wrong. Yes, Lightning often rasterizes covers, even when—as in my case, I was told—there is no apparent problem with them and they meet all documented requirements. But no, not all covers are rasterized.
What makes the difference? You have to follow Lightning’s recommendations as well as its requirements. Lightning Source cover technicians will rasterize an otherwise problem-free cover without notice or warning in these two cases:
1. It’s not built on one of Lighting’s custom templates, as generated on their Web site.
2. It’s not produced with Acrobat Distiller, as shown by Acrobat or Adobe Reader in the file’s Document Properties.
I’ve never liked using Lightning’s templates, so that was one strike against me. The second was that most of my cover files, created in InDesign, have been exported directly to PDF instead of printed to a PostScript file and run through Distiller. The files’ Document Properties, then, gave the producer as “Adobe PDF Library.”
Shouldn’t a direct export from Adobe’s own InDesign be good enough? It’s generally considered so, for any version from 2.0 on, but Lightning’s experience is that using anything but Distiller can cause problems. So, if they see a different producer identified, they automatically rasterize the file just in case.
Of course, I wanted to verify that making these changes would do the trick. So I sent my test cover through again, this time using Lightning’s own template and producing the PDF file with Distiller. Sure enough, the cover came back with perfectly smooth vector type and a squeaky clean bar code. Finally!
The moral? Do what Lightning recommends, whether it’s required or not!
As for those of you using Microsoft Word for book covers as detailed (but not recommended) in Perfect Pages, there’s good and bad news. The bad news is that Lightning will rasterize and screen your cover, because it’s not in a template. (Yes, I imagine there’s some way to work with Lightning’s template in Word, but it would be so convoluted, I’m not going to encourage it or even try it myself. Good luck, if you’re that ambitious.)
The good news is that your type will look decent anyway, as long as you avoid delicate typefaces. In fact, you don’t even have to bother with specially converting Word’s blacks with late versions of Acrobat Pro, which I prescribed as essential in earlier versions of my book. On a screened cover, the “pure black” you get with such conversion doesn’t even work as well as the “rich black” you can get without it!
So, if you want the best possible cover from Lightning, get a copy of InDesign and follow Lightning’s recommendations closely. If all you want is a utilitarian cover, Word will do the job nicely.
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#LightningCovers.
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Mar. 29, 2008—Updated Apr. 13, 2008
By now, you have no doubt read about the campaign launched against Lightning Source by Amazon and its print-on-demand company, BookSurge. Lightning customers are being threatened with Amazon no longer accepting direct orders of their POD books, leaving the books available only from outside sellers on Amazon’s Marketplace.
Since February, a number of author services companies (“self publishing companies”) and some larger POD publishers have been approached by BookSurge, telling them they can move their books to BookSurge to avoid having their “buy buttons” disappear. (Amazon Advantage and Amazon’s new Lulu competitor, CreateSpace, are apparently two other recourses for salvation.) One large author services company, PublishAmerica, has already refused BookSurge’s offer and seen most—not all—of its buttons vanish. (PublishAmerica books with a pub date after March 10 are still on sale, as you can see by a date sort at Sales Rank Express.)
Though it’s generally assumed that Amazon intends to stop direct selling of all incoming POD books, Amazon itself has never explicitly said so. Its language has consistently been vague on this point, never dealing in absolutes. With the alleged April 1 deadline come and gone, and with no new, recent approaches to Lightning customers, it’s quite feasible that Amazon has already gotten what it was after—namely, compliance from most of Lightning’s largest customers.
Yes, it’s more than possible that Amazon never intended to go after and doesn’t care about the many small, independent self publishers who cluster around Lightning Source, not even thinking to mention them in regards to its new policy. Or the public uproar over Amazon’s actions may have convinced it that pursuing results farther down the food chain isn’t worth the negative publicity. Or Amazon may even realize it can’t block all incoming POD books, since it wouldn’t take much for Lightning and Ingram to disguise new ones at least, given an end to Lightning’s direct feed to Amazon.
We don’t know. It’s true, we might wake up tomorrow and find all our buy buttons gone. Still, I advise all independent self publishers to hold tight and not rush to replace your current business plan. It may be good for many years to come. And if you’re just now ready to set up with Lighting Source, don’t let this deter you. Whatever happens with Amazon, Lightning will be a key element of any profit-based POD publishing plan for the foreseeable future.
I also encourage you not to “punish” Amazon by throwing your business to Barnes & Noble. Anyone who is not new to publishing should know that Barnes & Noble is at least as monopolistic a force as Amazon. Please don’t starve one monster by feeding another. In fact, if it hurts your own books—as it will, if you direct traffic away from Amazon, leading to a reduction in its recommendations for your books—then don’t try to starve the monster at all. Believe me, you’ll wind up hurting yourself a lot more than you’ll hurt Amazon.
I’ll update this post if and when things progress. Meanwhile, you can best follow developments by being a member of the pod_publishers group on Yahoo, at finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/pod_publishers. (Before posting on this topic, you should probably read some way back through the message archives.)
As most of you know, my book Aiming at Amazon is all about selling books to Amazon through Lightning Source at short discount—and I’m ready to help any Lightning publisher keep doing that. If and when you are threatened by BookSurge, or if and when Amazon stops selling your books without notice, please contact me privately for possible counteractions.
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#LightningAmazon.
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Feb. 14, 2008—Updated Feb. 17, 2008
Those of you who are using Acrobat and have upgraded your Mac to Leopard (OS X 10.5) are likely to already know this: Leopard broke Acrobat’s print driver, destroying your ability to create PDF files through the Print dialog. This was true of all versions of Acrobat, including the current one.
I’m glad to say that Adobe has now fixed this. Acrobat 8.1.2 restores this capability. The bad news is that this is the only Acrobat version that is fixed. So, if you’re on Leopard with an earlier version of Acrobat, you’re out of luck.
Fortunately, that doesn’t mean you can’t create PDF files at all. You can still produce a PostScript file, then run it through Acrobat Distiller. And how do you create the PostScript file? The method described in earlier versions of Perfect Pages, it turns out, was changed in Tiger (OS X 10.4). The correct answer is to use the command “Save PDF as PostScript” (Tiger, confusingly) or "Save As PostScript" (Leopard, clear as day) on the Print dialog box’s PDF menu.
If you do decide to upgrade to Acrobat 8, there are some tricks to getting it installed and working at all. First, if you have a previous version of Acrobat that came with an uninstaller program, use the uninstaller. (Don’t worry, you won’t lose any custom Distiller profiles.) Then install Acrobat 8 but do not open it yet, because it will likely just crash. Instead, go to the Adobe Web site and download all the updates for Acrobat 8—three at this time, none of them cumulative. Apply each one in turn. During this process, you’ll probably see a message asking if you want to install missing components, like the Adobe PDF Printer. You’ll get another chance later, but at this point click “Cancel,” or you won’t be able to go on.
You’re now free to open the program, but you’re still not finished. From the Help menu, choose “Repair Acrobat Installation.” From your options, make sure “Adobe PDF Printer” is checked. I recommend not checking “PDFMaker Toolbar for Microsoft Office,” since this is not very helpful in the Mac version. When that’s done, I suggest you check for updates (again on the Help menu), click on the Preferences button in that dialog, and turn off automatic updating—which is probably what was causing the crashes in the first place. (It’s not uncommon, by the way, for automatic update checks to cause problems in Adobe apps.)
Also, if you have custom Distiller profiles created in previous versions, open Distiller, go to Library/Application Support/Adobe PDF/Settings, double-click each custom profile to open it, then cancel it. If you don’t open each one, they won’t show up among your choices, and you won’t see the PDF Options menu item in the Print dialog at all!
If you think this is a lot of trouble just to get the program functional, you’re right. Acrobat really blew it on this one.
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#AcrobatLeopard.
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Dec. 21, 2007—Revised Dec. 24, 2007
Last spring, I reported here that I would be experimenting with a 20% wholesale discount at Lightning Source, instead of my longstanding 25%. I had settled on 25% years ago when I found by experiment that Ingram and therefore Amazon.com too were imposing surcharges on books with any lower wholesale discount. So, 25% is what I’ve recommended for years, including in Aiming at Amazon, and loads of Lightning publishers have followed my advice.
Earlier this year, though, I heard of some publishers setting a 20% wholesale discount at Lightning and getting away with it. Had things changed? With a healthy 5% at stake, I decided to find out.
I’ve now had most of my books at 20% discount for several months in both the U.S. and the U.K., and I’m happy to report I have seen absolutely no negative effect. Neither Ingram nor Amazon has imposed a surcharge, and my books are selling on Amazon just as before. The discount change has likewise not affected my books’ Amazon availability status, search results placement, or Also Bought positions. And though I don’t follow BN.com closely, all my books seem to be selling normally there as well, most of them with 24-hour availability.
In other words, the change has not affected my sales in any way I can tell. The only difference is that I’m making more money!
So, start your New Year right and tell Lightning Source to switch your books to 20% wholesale discount. The best way is now through the “Submit Revision” feature, chosen from the My Library menu. Select your book, then on the next page click on “Request Price Change.” (Thanks to Fred Zimmerman and Larry Yudelson for alerting me to this new procedure!)
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#ShorterDiscount2.
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New Article on Word 2007Dec. 12, 2007
I’ve taken all the posts about Word 2007 from my MS Word/Book Design Blog and consolidated them in a new article, “Books, Publishing, and Word 2007.” The rest of the posts from that blog have been merged back here.
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Oct. 1, 2007
In my book Aiming at Amazon, I talk about several steps to setting up your own publishing business so you can bypass the “self publishing companies” that act as middlemen and instead work directly with Lightning Source. But it appears that most of what I recommended to do is no longer needed.
Lightning Source used to flatly state that they worked with publishers only, not directly with authors. But at least in the time since my book came out, they’ve changed their tone. Their Web site still encourages authors to consider an “author services” company—another term for “self publishing company”—but it also says you can work direct with Lightning if you like.
That doesn’t mean that working with Lightning Source has become as easy as working with, say, Lulu.com or iUniverse. Lightning still won’t help you put your book together—you have to supply print-ready files. Lightning also says you’ll need a high-speed Internet connection (presumably for file transfer, though you can instead send files on disk). And one business requirement I cited still holds: You must acquire your own ISBNs (International Standard Book Numbers, the standard identifiers of the publishing industry).
But more formal procedures like registering a business name with your local government and opening a business checking account can be skipped, along with getting a resale license. Of course, these may be helpful or even legally required for some activities, such as selling books direct to customers. But just for publishing through Lightning Source, you can do without.
There’s one procedure, though, that I recommend strongly, even if it’s no longer required: creating a publisher name for your dealings with Lightning Source and others. You’ll avoid confusion and get a lot more credibility than if you use your personal name. And besides, it’s more fun!
By the way, when you fill out Lightning Source’s application online, you’re asked for up to three ISBN prefixes assigned to you. These are not full ISBNs but just the digits that appear in common for all ISBNs in a set. For instance, for a set of 10 ISBNs, the prefix would be the first 11 out of 13 digits. As a new publisher, you will probably have just one set with one prefix, so that’s all you’ll fill in.
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#LightningAuthors.
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May 16, 2007—Updated June 11, 2007
I recently got a copy of Acrobat 8 Professional. Here’s why you might want to upgrade: The Preflight feature has been beefed up and can now actually fix problems in your PDF, instead of just reporting them. You can even convert PDFs to specific standards, like PDF/X-1a, which Lightning Source requires for color books and recommends for all covers. You can also create a custom profile—say, to check your PDF file against all specifications required by your print service.
Here’s something to watch out for: The Facing Pages view, now called Two-Up, does not automatically put odd pages on the right, with the title page standing alone. You have to request this by selecting View > Page Display > Show Cover Page During Two-Up. In Acrobat 8.0, the program reverted to the default with every new document, but this has now been fixed with 8.1
I have a few more notes for Mac users: If you have custom Distiller settings files from previous versions, you’ll have to move them. Previously, Acrobat stashed them in the system’s Library/Application Support/Adobe PDF/Settings. Now you have to transfer them to your user directory, in Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe PDF/Settings. Also, though you’re supposed to be able to run Acrobat 7 and Acrobat 8 side by side, their Adobe PDF printer functions conflict. Finally, be warned that Adobe’s new activation system is wonky. After activating the software, I could not access activation and deactivation commands on the menu.
In the end, this trouble with the activation feature concerned me enough that I uninstalled the program and went back to Acrobat 7. I don’t want to become dependent on any program that I might lose access to because of poor functioning. And Adobe’s record with such schemes is already poor. I’ve already had to deal with a couple of old Adobe programs that refused to start up because they were trying to contact Adobe servers that weren’t responding properly. (That’s why you should turn off automatic updating on older versions of Adobe programs.)
By the way, here’s a small correction for Perfect Pages. In regard to directly creating a PDF by printing to the Adobe PDF driver in Windows, I said it makes no difference whether or not you choose “Do not send fonts to ‘Adobe PDF’” in the driver’s properties—an option that in Acrobat 8 becomes “Rely on system fonts only, do not use document fonts.” Actually, keeping this option checked can speed up the process, because Acrobat doesn’t have to check for fonts in the document. But this works only if the document is formatted entirely with fonts found on your computer. If the document includes embedded fonts from elsewhere, you must uncheck this option so Acrobat can get to them. This could include a font embedded in an EPS graphic.
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#Acrobat8.
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Mar. 13, 2007—Updated Aug. 28, 2007
In my book Aiming at Amazon, I talk a great deal about customizing your book cover image and uploading it directly to Amazon. In fact, I consider it one of the two best tools I discuss in the book.
So, it was with some chagrin that I recently heard from readers that Amazon had stopped offering FTP access info to authors and small publishers. The change was sudden and seems to have affected sites in all countries. Email addresses for obtaining FTP info have simply vanished from Amazon publisher guides.
How does Amazon expect you to supply book cover images now? There are several standard ways still offered.
1. If you’re a publisher, through your Amazon rep. Unfortunately, this applies only to established companies doing significant business with Amazon and bowing to their onerous business terms. Those are the only ones that have reps.
2. With a form available to Amazon Advantage members on that program’s site. The book itself does not have to be part of the program—and in fact, you don’t have to have any books registered at the moment. But you do need to be a member, which means having registered at least one book at some point.
3. As part of the Search Inside program. This allows you access to a special form on Seller Central.
4. Through your publisher or wholesaler or distributor. For instance, if you’re publishing with Lightning Source or an affiliated “self publishing company,” you can send an image there or to Ingram’s ipage. But that also means that any new image coming later from Lightning or Ingram will replace your own. And you may have less leeway in submitting an image that’s a different shape from your book.
For many authors and small publishers, none of these are good solutions. Is there some way to still use FTP, even if Amazon is limiting its use?
Apparently yes. Existing accounts still seem to work. And what I learned while researching this issue was a real shock.
In my book, I chastised anyone who gave out access info from a private FTP account. But my criticism was misplaced. What I’ve discovered is that there are no “private accounts.” For any country Amazon sells in, Amazon has no more than a few standard FTP accounts and has handed out info on them to anyone who wanted it. The Amazon-supplied passwords I’ve so zealously guarded have been used by thousands of others!
No, I’m not going to post any FTP access info on this site. Though I don’t believe I ever agreed not to, I don’t imagine Amazon would like it.
But I will tell you this: Search the Web on “ftp.amazon.com” and “ftp-1.amazon.com” (with or without the quote marks). You’ll find several username/password combinations that will get you to the promised land. And remember that images submitted to the U.S. (or any other country) will migrate to all Amazon sites worldwide.
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#AmazonImages.
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May 4, 2007
If you’ve invested a lot of time and thought in customizing Word and your own templates, you don’t want to lose any of these customizations to file corruption. So, it’s just as important to back up your custom settings files as it is to back up your documents—or more so. Word for Windows doesn’t make it easy, though. These files—including your own templates, by default—are located in invisible folders.
To access these files more easily, you can tell Windows to show invisible files and folders. This is done on the View tab of the Folder Options control panel. In recent versions of Word, you can then find the templates in C:\Documents and Settings\[UserName]\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates. The general Word settings file is in C:\Documents and Settings\[UserName]\Application Data\Microsoft\Office.
In Word 2007, your Quick Access Toolbar settings file, Word.qat, is in C:\Documents and Settings\[UserName]\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Office. Custom Style Set templates are in C:\Documents and Settings\[UserName]\Application Data\Microsoft\QuickStyles.
For your custom templates, you can instead use the File Locations options to place them somewhere more accessible for backup—though, in Word 2007, this will make them less accessible when you’re creating a new document.
On the Mac, you don’t need to deal with invisibility. In recent versions, to find the default location for custom templates, go to the application's folder, then the Templates folder, then My Templates. On the Mac too, this location can be changed in Word preferences, but without penalty. For other Word settings files, go to your user folder, then Library, then Preferences.
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#WordBackup.
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Apr. 27, 2007
Recently, I’ve been getting questions about “hidden fonts” in PDF files created by Acrobat from Word—fonts that were not purposely inserted, cannot be located, don’t embed properly, and cause the files to be rejected. So, if you have a version of Perfect Pages earlier than 1.6 (as shown on the copyright page), here are some expanded notes on font embedding.
To make sure your PDF files appear and print as you expect, choose to embed and subset all fonts, and remove all font names from Acrobat’s “Never Embed” list. If asked for a percentage limit for subsetting, choose 100% (except with Acrobat 3, which should be told 99%). Subsetting prevents your print service’s software from substituting a different version of the font.
If your Word document includes an EPS or PDF vector graphic with type, make sure the font has already been embedded in the graphic. Otherwise, the font might not make it into the PDF file.
It’s important to use either Acrobat or the free Adobe Reader (formerly Acrobat Reader) to check the fonts embedded in your PDF file. From the File menu of either program, choose “Document Properties” and then “Fonts.” If you don’t see all expected fonts in the listing, try first scrolling through the document. What you want to read beside each font name is “Embedded Subset” or similar.
You may sometimes see more fonts listed than you expect—for instance, if you accidentally applied a font somewhere in the text, or copied text with a different font from another document. If so, you can find it in the text with Word’s Find command. Put your cursor in the “Find what” box, but don’t enter anything, not even a space! Instead, use the advanced Format settings at the bottom of that dialog box to choose the font you want to search for. To tell Word to replace that font with another, place your cursor in the “Replace with” box and use the advanced Format settings again.
Stray fonts can also be part of Word’s default formatting of automatic elements, such as bullets or numbering in lists, or reference marks in footnotes or endnotes. Though Word lets you change this font in its dialog boxes for these automatic functions, there’s generally no need if the font is embedding properly. You may remember, though, that I said fonts may not embed properly when used for automatic bullets and list numbers, which is one reason I advise adding such elements manually.
By the way, these fonts for automatic elements can’t be found with the Find command, because they’re not actually in the text! If you can’t figure out where they are and must find them, first make a copy of the document just for testing. Then delete parts of the text, testing for the problem at each step, till you have it pinpointed.
Occasionally, you may find a font that is restricted so that it will not embed. In that case, you’ll have to replace the font. But this problem should not arise with fonts that came with your operating system, Word, or most other programs.
I’ve said that Distiller for Mac OS X generates bloated files, and you’ll see that in this fonts list, with a separate subset of each font for each page on which it appears. That makes a very long list! Also, Acrobat on the Mac may substitute Arial for Helvetica—but don’t worry about that. The two typefaces are pretty much identical.
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#HiddenFonts.
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Apr. 2, 2007—Updated Apr. 6, 2007
Yes, I know that Perfect Pages should have an index. I knew it when I published it without one. So, why hasn’t it had one? Because I thought that revising the index for updates of the book would be too much hassle and would discourage me from updating at all. And why did I think that? Because I didn’t know how easily and how well I could index and re-index the book with Microsoft Word’s automatic indexing!
But now I know that, because I’ve used automatic indexing on a couple of other books. So, I’ve gone back and indexed all six versions of Perfect Pages to date! I’ve also written a whole new chapter on how to index automatically with Word.
I’ve included all these indexes and the new chapter in an Indexing Update, which you can download with the link below. It’s for Perfect Pages versions 1.0 through 1.5. (You can find your version number at the bottom of the copyright page, following the title page.) Later versions won’t need this, because it will already be in the book.
Enjoy!
Update—A revised version of this update, 1.1, was posted on April 6.
Indexing Update (Zip, 1MB)
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#PPIndex.
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Mar. 28, 2007
Several years ago, when I was experimenting with different wholesale discounts at Lightning Source, I discovered that 25% was the lowest practical discount I could offer. The reason was that Ingram added a surcharge to the book’s list price if that discount was any lower, and this surcharge was carried through to Amazon. A 20% wholesale discount at Lightning meant a 5% surcharge at Ingram and Amazon.
For this reason, I recommended 25% in my book Aiming at Amazon, and most Lightning publishers of my acquaintance have come to the same conclusion. Recently, though, I’ve been hearing of Lightning publishers setting a 20% discount—and getting away with it. It seems that at some point, Ingram stopped adding the surcharge for books at that discount—which is also the lowest discount they now accept. And there seems to be no penalty at Amazon either.
It seems time, then, to reevaluate the standard 25% discount that so many Lightning publishers now use, and to decide whether 20% is better. I’m not ready yet to make that recommendation, but I plan to test the lower discount over the next few months to see if it’s really safe. Meanwhile, if you care to experiment yourself, I’d be happy to know the results.
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#ShorterDiscount.
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Mar. 20, 2007
Some of you have been using my Amazon sales rank checker, Sales Rank Express (formerly called Sales Rank MultiChecker). I’d like to announce the next generation of that checker, now available in Beta at the same address.
It’s now several times as powerful, with a lot more information presented, and a lot more convenience in looking for it. Here’s a list of some of the info available for each book (with up to 10 books displayed per page).
Sales rank
Customer rating
Number of reviews
Date of last review
Basic metadata, as it appears on Amazon
List and sale prices
Amazon discount
Copies in stock
Availability
Summary of offers
Top pairing
Other formatsYou can search by author, publisher, title words, ISBN (10-digit or 13-digit), or any combination of the four. Within the results, you can then automatically look up the same info for all formats of a title (paperback, hardcover, etc.), or for the book’s top ten pairings (the competing and complementary titles used for Also Bought lists, exit offers, etc.). Searches for pairings can be chained, so you can check each book on your Also Bought list to see if you’re on that book’s list too!
Sales Rank Express has separate forms for each of Amazon’s countries—U.S., Canada, U.K., France, Germany, and Japan—so it’s easy to check your books on sites even where you don’t know the language. There’s even a “Fix Data” button for each book in each country, to bring you right to Amazon’s correction form.
The site includes full documentation that not only describes how to use Sales Rank Express but also describes much of the significance of the data and how it relates to the inner workings of Amazon. For instance, you’ll learn that the figure Amazon reports for copies in stock can often be used to view sales almost in real time. You’ll also learn that this figure does not always equal the number of copies in Amazon’s own warehouses! (This figure, by the way, is not currently available on Amazon itself or anywhere else but Sales Rank Express.)
And it’s all still free.
Try it and let me know what you think!
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#SRE.
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Mar. 17, 2007—Updated Mar. 19, 2007
In both Aiming at Amazon and Perfect Pages, I talk about the telltale low resolution and general low print quality of the Lightning Source black-and-white presses, which made photos and other grayscale images unattractive and made type look like it came from an old 300-dpi desktop laser printer. All this has changed with Lightning US’s recent replacement of those presses with the state-of-the-art digital press Océ VarioStream 9210. (Lightning UK hasn’t made the switch yet, but is slated to do so.)
All B&W books from Lightning US are now being printed on the new presses, and I’ve had a chance to compare before-and-after printings of several books. There’s been a definite change—some of it good and some bad, with a couple of surprises.
First let me say that the improvement in the quality of photos is dramatic—I’d say about 100%. Contrast and texture are MUCH better. The quality is good enough that I would now for the first time consider doing a B&W book in which photos play a major part. Not as dramatically, the quality is improved for other grayscale graphics as well, and even for Lightning’s B&W scans of screened photos for reprints.
But let’s be clear about one thing: Lightning Source is still screening with a resolution common to newspapers. As much as the photo quality has improved, it is still only about half as good as in average offset book printing. So, you can now confidently use Lightning for instructional or documentary photos, but not for anything demanding high quality.
I’m always bemused that Lightning Source publishers are so concerned about quality of graphics and hardly ever care about type quality. To me, the roughness of type edges in Lightning Source books, noticeable even to the naked eye, has always been a dead giveaway of the book’s POD origin. It has also tended to limit appropriate type choice to robust typefaces in large font sizes. So, I was very anxious to examine type quality from the new presses. (Despite what you might think from my POD books, the Georgia typeface is not really my favorite.)
Here the result is more mixed than with graphics. Type edges are definitely smoother, both to the naked eye and magnified. But they’re also less distinct, with microscopic dots of ink placed beyond the characters’ borders. In large font sizes—say, around 12 pt.—the type does look much improved. You really can’t tell with the naked eye that it’s POD. But at smaller sizes, the type can have a slightly fuzzy look. (I might be sticking to 12-pt. Georgia after all.)
Beyond print quality, there are two surprising side effects of the different toner used in these presses. The first is obvious as soon as you unpack a book sent right from Lightning Source: The book smells. Bad. Like chemicals. Yuck.
This smell dissipates after a few days, but I feel sorry for Lightning Source employees. I hope for their sake that they have a great ventilation system and that this odor is not as toxic as it seems. I also won’t be surprised if I get some customer complaints, since many Amazon purchasers will get my books within two or three days of their being printed. (That’s because of Amazon’s drop shipping arrangement with Ingram.) For anyone like me who normally loves the smell of new books, this odor is definitely a turn-off.
The second side effect is more elusive. I noticed at some point that I was getting a little glare off the white pages of one book. I wondered a little at that, but assumed it was coming off the paper. Then in another book, I noticed I was getting it with the crème paper too. What gives?
On close examination, I found that the paper was as dull as ever. The glare was coming off the print!
That’s right: The toner from the new presses is glossy on the page. On graphics, this isn’t really problem—in fact, it probably helps a bit, just as glossy photos look better than matte. But depending on the angle of your light source, it can actually make the type a bit harder and less pleasant to read. It also provides a new, though different, sign that the book is POD—if the smell doesn’t give it away first. Sigh.
So, there you have it: the new face of print on demand. Two steps forward, and a step or so back. Let’s thank Lightning Source for keeping up with the latest POD technology, while hoping that the next generation of presses comes even closer to what we need.
Update—Just heard from Lightning Source that, in the next few weeks, they’ll be launching a “second phase quality upgrade” for the presses—new software?—that should improve photo quality even more.
To link to this post, use www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#presses.
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