Manuscripts: What to do When Your Backups Fail

I ought to be declared the queen of the tech gremlins given how much time they like to spend around me. If you didn’t catch my Twitter rants, I recently had my server hacked (this site was fine). As soon as that was settled, my laptop hard drive died. The data was not recoverable. Of course, things weren’t backed up as recently as they should have been.

I had two indie publishing projects in the works saved to that machine.

1. A full nonfiction manuscript.
2. The first chapter of a novel, both an original and edited version.

The novel edits were lost. Fortunately it was only one chapter, based on beta reader feedback. I can handle new edits on one chapter. And that beta reader still had a copy of the original, so that was preserved.

I was far more concerned about the nonfiction book manuscript. I did have a backup of this file on a flash drive. That drive worked very recently. But when I went to restore that backup in another computer system, the drive failed. Yes. My backup — the copy that’s supposed to save my ass when (not if) the main system crashes — failed. The drive somehow became corrupted.

There was one copy of this manuscript left — the print copy where I’m making edits. The thought of retyping hundreds of pages of content had me wanting to scream, cry, and let loose some maniacal laugher all at once. But okay. At least all wasn’t lost. And my sister agreed to help me re-type the manuscript if I needed her to (I’d hire her of course).

I decided to make one last ditch effort to restore the flash drive files. I was extremely fortunate. While the file system was f*d, the files themselves still existed on the drive. There are two free tools I sometimes use for situations like this.

1. Recuva
2. Photorec

These darling little applications can help you find and resurrect lost and deleted files. Hell. I recently deleted files from an SD card from a trip and stored them on my now-dead laptop. Recuva helped me find and restore those files from the card, even though they were intentionally deleted. I’m in love with these tools.

So the next time you accidentally delete the latest version of a manuscript or something happens to your drive, don’t give up hope too quickly. Try these tools and see if they can help you recover your data. I’d give you the same old spiel: backup, backup, backup! (Boy do I hate hearing that.) But then what happens when your backups crap out on you? Now you know.

Should You Turn Your Blog Into a Book?

Are you interested in publishing a nonfiction book? Do you already have a blog in that niche? If you answered “yes” to both of those questions, you might be a prime candidate for turning your blog into a book.

This is largely what I’m doing with my own nonfiction book, The Query-Free Freelancer. I used my freelance writing blog to help me organize the book outline, and much of the basic content came from the site (although in an edited and sometimes completely rewritten form). I also added a lot of content to the bits taken from the blog, but that isn’t always necessary.

Let’s look at some of the reasons you might opt to turn a blog into a book, and some questions you should ask yourself before doing so.

Why Turn a Blog Into a Book?

Here are some of the ways turning a blog into a book can be good for you as an author.

1. You already have a basic organizational structure.
2. You already have much of the content required for your first draft.
3. You already have readers (meaning a built-in customer base).
4. You already have somewhere to promote the book when it’s released.

3 Questions to Ask Before Turning Your Blog Into a Book

Before deciding whether you should turn your blog into a book or not, ask yourself these questions:

1. How much content does your blog contain? – If you want to turn your blog into a book, it helps to have a book’s worth of content already there. In my case, I probably had enough content for two or three books in the freelance writing niche, so I narrowed down the subject area, pulled the relevant content, and added to it where necessary. If your blog is still fairly new, you might not have enough content yet to convert it into a book.
2. Would the blog / content structure translate well into a book? – If your blog is mostly a collection of personal ramblings sorted by publication date, you might have a difficult time translating that into book form. On the other hand, if you have a well-organized category structure, your blog might be fairly easy to turn into a book — it’s like having a TOC ready to go.
3. Do you have a large existing audience interested in a book? – Writing a book based on your blog is best when your blog already has a built-in audience. Think of the blog as a market research tool. You get to see what your audience likes by publishing in bite-sized pieces. If you don’t have much of an audience yet, spend some time building one before converting your blog to a book. Not only will that help you decide what to put in and what to keep out, but you’ll have a large group of readers willing and waiting to buy the book when it’s published. That gives you a leg up on many indie authors who don’t have a solid platform before publishing.

Have you turned a blog into a book? Do you plan to? What was the experience like for you, or what do you hope will happen? Why did you make the choice? Leave your stories, thoughts, and tips in the comments below.

Tools and Templates for Indie Publishers

In addition to blogging about indie publishing, I run approximately two dozen websites. Some of those sites target small business owners in general and some were developed for an audience of other writers. Across those sites, I’ve created and accumulated some free resources.

Today I’d like to share a few of those free tools and templates that you might find useful as an independent author.

1. Press Release Template — This is a quick and simple press release template to use as a formatting guide.
2. Book Launch Press Release Template – This template is tailored more specifically to what you’d want to include for a book launch announcement.
3. One Page Business Plan Template – If you plan to start your own indie publishing company (even with a single book), you need a business plan. This short-form template helps you map out some of the basics quickly.
4. One Page Marketing Plan Template – This is similar to the one page business plan, but focuses on marketing. While you might have one general business plan, you could use this to create a simple marketing plan for each of your books or e-books.
5. How to Write an E-book in Just 14 Days – This free download was adapted from a 14 day e-book writing challenge on my freelance writing site a couple of years ago. This is not for those wanting full books in e-book form. This is for quicker information product e-books used more to promote other business interests or to drive traffic to a website.
6. E-book Sales Conversion Calculator – If you plan to sell e-books on your own site, this online tool helps you calculate sales conversions. Calculate past conversion rates when testing sales copy or use it to plan target sales figures to reach future conversion goals.
7. Word Count Tracker – Simple – This is the first of two word count trackers released on the freelance site for NaNoWriMo participants and others interested in tracking word count goals.
8. Word Count Tracker – Advanced – Here is a second word count tracker I contracted a while back. It’s a bit more advanced than the previous one.
9. One Page Project Planner Worksheet – Here’s another simple one-page template for you. This can be used for each project you have in the works to keep you organized pre-launch and post-launch. I use this for site launches, information product e-books, book manuscripts, and pretty much any project I take on through my business.

Indie Publishing Teams: Who to Include

We’ve talked about the fact that indie publishing is a business. And you know that if you’re serious about selling a top notch book you can’t go it alone. That’s where your indie publishing team comes into play. As a true indie publisher (rather than just a small publishing company with in-house staff), you’ll most likely work with independent contractors.

There are benefits to this:

• You don’t have to worry about long-term hiring, withholding income tax, or paying worker’s compensation insurance.
• You can handpick the best contractors for each individual project (the best designer for a children’s book cover might not be the same person as the best designer for a business book cover for example).
• You save money because you only hire people when you need them to complete specific tasks rather than paying a regular salary.

Now who exactly should be a part of your indie publishing team? What kinds of professionals might you want to hire as you bring your book to market? Here are several examples of contractors you might need to work with.

• Book marketing consultants
• PR consultants or publicists (not exactly the same thing)
• Cover designers
• Typesetters
• Developmental editors
• Line editors
• Proofreaders
• Copywriters (for your back cover blurb and marketing materials)

You may hire all of these people. You might be qualified to do some of the work yourself (I work as a freelance business writer, where I handle copywriting on a regular basis so I wouldn’t hire a copywriter, and I used to run a PR firm so I can handle that end for example). And some projects simply don’t need some of these people (a developmental editor would be more for a novel than a nonfiction book).

I’ve yet to meet an author who can honestly do all of these things themselves. And I can tell you from experience that trying to do it all yourself can wear you down and kill your project’s potential over time.

I’m sure I’m missing some other contractors you might consider working with. So who would you add to this list? Are there any here you hadn’t thought of while working on your own book? If you’ve already released one or more books and you could go back and do it over again, would you bring in any of these professionals to help? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Joel Friedlander on Book Cover Design for Indie Publishers

Joel Friedlander

It’s no secret that your book cover design is an important book marketing tool — for indie authors and traditionally published authors alike. Yet many self published authors and indie publishers take the DIY route and the results are often easy to spot in relation to professional cover designs.

Who better to talk about cover design issues like these than one of the industry’s go-to guys (and a fellow independent author), Joel Friedlander? You probably know him from his outstanding blog, The Book Designer. He was kind enough to let me pick his brain a bit about book cover design for indie authors — from common mistakes to budget considerations. Here’s what he had to say.

Jenn: You do much more than cover design work, but what first convinced you to offer that specific service to independent authors?

Joel: When I began Marin Bookworks, my publisher-services company, I was working primarily for medium-size publishers who outsource the design and production of their books.

However, I had also self-published my own book, Body Types (http://www.amazon.com/Body-Types-Joel-Friedlander/dp/0936385405/), back in the 1980s. Every year I received more and more requests from authors who wanted to publish their own books. Now, most of my work is for self-publishers, so that tells you something about the changes in the publishing industry.

Although I used to offer quite a large range of services, over time I’ve pared them down and now I only do book interiors, covers, jackets, endleaves, stamping dies for hardcovers and that’s about it.

I also do more and more consulting with authors who are trying to figure out the best way to get into the indie publishing world.

Covers are a critical part of the development of your book. Authors are smart when they budget for a professional cover design, because it will brand their book and help to establish it in the marketplace.

Jenn: While we know that book cover design prices can vary greatly, if pressed (yes, I’m pressing) what would you recommend as the absolute minimum amount a brand new indie author should budget for to hire a professional cover designer?

Joel: Press on! Although I often hear Mark Coker of Smashwords talk about $35 e-book covers, if you are doing a print book you will need someone who knows how to put a book cover together properly to avoid problems when you get to press.

I would say you could find someone to do a decent cover starting at about $200, and an average price would be around $1000.

Jenn: What three things tend to scream “amateur!” the loudest when it comes to DIY book cover design?

Joel: Hey, that’s an easy one, Jennifer. In no particular order,

1. Using the wrong fonts. Many DIY covers are made using the system fonts that came with your computer. They weren’t meant for that, and it shows.
2. Bad or inappropriate stock photography or illustrations. These frequently have no discernible connection to the content or the market for the book. I guess the author thought they looked cool
3. Visual chaos. Too many images, lots of text, no specific visual focus for the cover. All these things  confuse the message you’re trying to send.

Jenn: When would you suggest that indie authors bring cover designers in on the process? Should they wait until the book is fully edited? Or should they bring in a designer earlier so they have more time to print marketing collateral or incorporate the book branding into their own website?

Joel: Earlier is better, and not just for the excellent reasons you suggest. The cover of your book is the most important piece of advertising and branding you will create. My opinion is that the cover design is an intrinsic part of the marketing plan for the book and, as such, should be under discussion as early in the process as possible. In some cases, this will be before the book is even written.

Jenn: If you could give indie authors just one tip on working with and building an effective professional relationship with a book designer, what would you tell them?

Joel: The biggest problem I run into with indie authors, and one that has a serious negative effect on the work they get from their designer, is confusion about the purpose of the design. Authors who have invested years of work into their book, and who have dreams and aspirations tied up with the publication, are rarely objective about what will actually help to sell their book the best.

If an author sees the design of their book as a personal expression of their values, or an indication of their creativity, they will run into trouble with a designer who is, in essence, attempting to create a consumer product package for the book. These two approaches just don’t blend well.

If you’ve chosen a designer well, looked at her previous work, gotten a good referral from someone else, then relax and let her do her job. Be open to new ways to visualize how your book will look, and you’ll be much happier in the end.

Oh, and make sure the designer works under a contract that spells out responsibilities, payment terms, and termination procedures. A contract protects both of you from misunderstandings and helps to guarantee the project will run more smoothly. And that can lead to success for you and your book.

About Joel Friedlander

Joel Friedlander is the proprietor of Marin Bookworks in San Rafael, California, a publishing services company where he’s helped launch many self-published authors. He blogs about book design, writing and self-publishing at TheBookDesigner.com. Joel is also the author of the newly-published A Self-Publisher’s Companion: Expert Advice for Authors Who Want to Publish.