Diane Farr Interview : From Trad Publishing to Self-Publishing

Diane Farr is a successful ‘trad published ‘paperback novelist. So why did she decide to go it alone and become an independent publisher? Here I try to find out…

When did you start writing? What was your first published book?

It’s difficult to remember that far back. Hmm. Seems to me I began with poetry at about age six, but actually there are recordings of me at nine months’ old, alone in my playpen, babbling and chuckling and clearly telling myself a story. So I acquired my storytelling habit early.

Diane, babbling and chuckling (not a recent photo!)

By the time I started school I read aloud with great expression, and was put on a local television show a time or two to read “news for kids” or some such thing. I desperately wanted to become an actress—a prospect that alarmed my parents, who had rather Victorian views about show business in general and actresses in particular. Nevertheless, I graduated college with a degree in Drama and happily pursued an acting career for quite a long time—not an easy field, but I did have some success—until I met and married a man who was not a theatre person and preferred that I find a different creative outlet…something that did not require me to rehearse five nights a week and perform on weekends. I had never really stopped writing; I was about halfway through my first novel at that time. So I switched gears, got serious about writing, stayed home in the evenings, and finished the novel.
The Nobody was published in 1999.

How did you go about getting a publishing deal? Did you approach the publisher yourself or did you first get an agent?

I wrote The Nobody as a lark. I had read all my Georgette Heyer novels to tatters, and wanted a new one. As she had died some years before, there were no new Heyers to be had. So I started writing one, with no thought of publication. The Nobody is the result of that endeavor. I have since learned that new authors frequently mimic a writer they admire—consciously or unconsciously. I consciously tried to write in Georgette Heyer’s voice, and where I failed, discovered my own. The Nobody is a strange little mashup of her voice and mine. Luckily, people liked it.

I won my agent in a contest. There’s a wonderful organization in the States called Romance Writers of America—a ten thousand member behemoth—that nurtures authors in many ways. For authors in the early stages of their careers, they sponsor writing contests of various sorts. I entered one called the “First Kiss” contest, where you enter ten pages of your unpublished novel containing the scene where the hero and heroine first kiss. The three highest-scoring entries would be judged by Irene Goodman, one of the top agents in New York. The Nobody was one of the three highest-scoring entries, and she ranked it number one of the three. So she offered to represent me.

Needless to say, I was ecstatic. But when I sent her the full manuscript, she informed me that she couldn’t sell it. “It’s not a romance,” she explained. She was very nice about it. The publishing industry—particularly in those days—had rigid definitions of what constitutes a romance novel. The Nobody did not fit the industry parameters. Did I mention it was like a Georgette Heyer novel? Yeah. It contained no love scenes and was largely populated with very nice people. The publishers (said Irene) were not interested in witty banter. They wanted conflict between the hero and heroine.
Basically, they were looking for Beauty and the Beast and I had written Cinderella.

Then one of the judges in the early round of the contest wrote to congratulate me on my win. She was a published author whose editor, lo and behold, was looking for just the sort of book I had written. As it turned out, I was not the only reader suffering from Georgette Heyer withdrawal. There was a market for witty banter after all. Signet Books, an imprint of Penguin Putnam (now Penguin Random House), published what they called “traditional Regencies.” This author generously offered to put in a word for me, I was invited to submit The Nobody to Hilary Ross at Signet, and that was that. My rookie effort was snapped up by a big New York publisher. Heady stuff.

How many books have you published in the ‘traditional’ way?

Eight novels and a novella published as part of an anthology. In industry jargon, the first four novels were “traditional Regencies.” The next four were “Regency historicals.” What’s the difference between a trad and an historical? A trad is a bit shorter (about 75,000 words) and offers the reader a time-travel vacation. Its readers are history buffs and Anglophiles, college-educated and largely female. You will hear from these readers if your hero, in 1816, drives a carriage that was not on the market until 1818. An “historical” is a bigger book (about 100,000 words), and has a much larger audience. These readers have a different set of expectations. Sentences are shorter. The voice can be more modern. Sexual tension looms large. Love scenes are not only permitted, but encouraged. You will hear from these readers only if you bore them.

My “breakout book” was The Fortune Hunter. Distribution was a bit wider than bookstores. It was a huge thrill for me to see my novel in a grocery store! But the main difference between The Fortune Hunter and the books that preceded it was the foil on the cover. Foil is expensive, so you know you have arrived when the publisher springs for foil on the cover…and places your name above the title, instead of below it!

You then decided to publish your books yourself, using Amazon I believe? Why did you make that decision?

There was a bit of a crisis in the publishing world. My editor, after decades in the business, was abruptly canned and I had to find a new home. My agent thought this was a great opportunity for me and suggested I try writing a book about a teenage witch. “Young adult” (known to the industry as YA) was booming, thanks to Harry Potter. She assured me that books about teenage witches were hot. I was pretty sure the trend was already running out of steam, but attempted to oblige. My “teenage witch” became a girl with mysterious powers who is deeply conflicted about them. Then into her life comes a boy who … yada yada yada. We sold Wicked Cool to Sourcebooks, but the contract fell through. I took it back and, in a fit of despair, sold it myself to Cerridwen Press. Cerridwen Press was wonderful and gave me lots of editorial support, but they were…gasp!... an e-publisher. To my mind, at that time, e-publishers were one step up from a vanity press.

I had a lot to learn.

Cerridwen offered Wicked Cool for about six months before announcing that they were going to concentrate on their biggest seller, erotica, and were letting the rest of their catalog go. So the rights reverted to me. Gosh darn it. Hardly anyone had bought the thing, and now it was mine again and I didn’t know what to do with it.

I decided, since my sisters wanted to read it, I'd make it available through Amazon’s CreateSpace, a “print on demand” publisher. It was a free service, and at least my family could order a copy and receive an actual book. So I uploaded it, went through the cover creation process, etc., and was rather pleased with the result when I ordered a proof. Wicked Cool was a slender volume with a glossy cover, printed on bright white, high quality paper. It looked nice enough. So I hit the “publish” button and told my sisters.

When I hit that “publish” button, another option popped up. Did I want to offer Wicked Cool for sale on Amazon as an e-book? The formatting had already been done. The cover was created. There was no charge. Just say yes. So I shrugged and said yes. Why not?

It was at this point, Huw, that I recall you entering the picture. You urged me to offer Wicked Cool for ninety-nine cents, the lowest price Amazon would permit. I was appalled, thinking I would never make any money selling books for that price. I followed your advice, however—since, at this point, I never expected to make any money with this property anyhow. To my surprise, after about a month, Amazon sent twenty bucks (or something like that) to my account. I checked my sales, and was astonished to see that a few people had bought it after all. You could watch your sales in real time. I amused myself by keeping the window up in the background and checking it every so often. The numbers would go: Tick. Tick. (long pause) Tick. Then, suddenly, the ticks took on a life of their own and started to go tick tick tick tick. Then more of a …whoosh. I couldn’t believe it. Wicked Cool sold thousands of copies that summer and spent a long time at Number One on Amazon’s “YA Paranormal” bestseller list.

What, in your experience, are the main advantages of self-publishing?

I am unfailingly polite to myself, even encouraging, and display none of the New York “attitude” so intimidating to us laid-back Californians. I rarely pace the floor, biting my nails, trying to screw up enough nerve to call me. I never fret about whether my calls or emails are an unwelcome interruption, or, worse, that I am being a nuisance, because I know I am my publisher’s number one priority. I hardly ever scoff at my ideas, or make appalling suggestions about what I should write. I don’t change my titles without consulting me. I pay me promptly. And if I don’t like my book cover, I change it—something no other publisher would do.

And the disadvantages?

No art department.

What do you do to promote your books? Do you advertise? Or do you use blogs, Facebook, Twitter and so on?

I am the absolute WORST book marketer on Planet Earth. I used to blog, back when everybody thought authors should blog, but my last entry is a year old. I tried to Tweet, but heavens, I was dull. Now I tweet as my cat. She’s far more interesting on Twitter than I ever was, and has quite a following. I have a Facebook page, but hardly ever post anything. Like Twitter, I find I am more far more comfortable on Facebook as someone else…in this case, the real-life me rather than the Author me.

I haven’t given up, you know. I still have the Twitter account, the Facebook page, and the blog. I just haven’t a clue what to do with them. I hate it when authors email me, or tweet about their books, or trumpet their releases on Facebook. I have yet to purchase a single book I’ve encountered that way. I figure I'd rather sit quietly in the corner, unnoticed, than annoy people. What to do??

Do you employ people to do proofreading, cover design or any of the other things needed to get your books ready to publish?

No, I am far too cheap. I spend nothing whatsoever on publishing my books. I used to work as a copy editor, so my copy is generally pretty clean from the get-go, but I have a friend who also has a past career as a copy editor, and we proof each other’s work. My cover art has gradually improved…my cover for Wicked Cool (or was it Scary Cool? One of them, anyway) actually won an “Indie Cover of the Month” award, an honor I was completely unaware of until I was notified I had won it. But I do miss that art department!

Do your books sell better in paperback or for Kindle (or other eReaders)?

My books sell best on Kindle through Amazon. I do have them available in other e-formats through Smashwords, which is my second-best income source. Smashwords can sell them to readers who have Nooks, or Kobo readers, or buy their books through Apple, or whatever. Most of them are available in print editions as well, but the print editions, naturally, cost more to produce and deliver than the e-books do, and I try to offer them at a low price point—so I don’t make a lot when people buy the print versions. There are still some readers who prefer a “real” book, so I’m glad I can make them available through Amazon for those readers.

If you were starting your writing career all over again, what would you do differently?

I would start sooner.

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Diane Farr is the author of a dozen novels, a few plays, a weekly newspaper column, and a novella, all of which have been published by somebody or other. She is self-publishing lately–an experience she recommends to any writer who dislikes high-stakes phone calls with way-too-powerful people in New York.

Web page: DianeFarrBooks.com
Blog: bestbyfarr.com
Facebook Page http://www.facebook.com/dianefarrpage

Chris Limb Interview : From Self-Publishing to Crowd-Funding

Chris Limb is an independently published author who has written both fiction and factual books. His first self-published book documented the effects of the singer, Toyah, on his life from the 1980s onwards. He latest fiction book Comeback will soon be published by the crowd-funding publisher, Unbound. Here Chris tells me about his experiences in self-publishing and crowd-funded publishing.

Can you tell me a bit about your publishing history? What was the first book you published?

The first book I published was "I Was  Teenage Toyah Fan". I'd been blogging regularly for a while, always finding different subjects to write about. I started writing blog entries about my experiences as a Toyah fan in the early 1980s and quickly discovered that these were proving very popular - and that there was probably enough to say about the subject to fill a book rather than a blog.

Why did you decide to self-publish? Had you tried to publish with a ‘conventional’ publisher or did you know from the outset that you wanted to go it alone?

I did ask around about agents and publishers when I first came up with the idea of expanding these blog entries but it was very difficult to get anyone to even respond or acknowledge my approaches. However, this was at the time when publishing - and in particular Print On Demand - was beginning to take off. So I decided to go down that route.

What has been the best thing about self-publishing?

I think the main advantage is the speed - if you dedicate yourself to a project you can get it out there incredibly quickly rather than having to wait for the sometimes glacial wheels of the publishing industry to turn. Furthermore as I have experience in graphic design for print (one of my main skills when freelancing) so I have been able to design covers and typeset internal layouts to professional standards.

And the worst?

I think the main issues are:

• Getting people to take it seriously (thankfully this is less of an issue now that it is more widespread)
• Getting your books noticed - as self-publishing is an "anybody can do it" medium  now that it is more widespread there's a lot of competition and it's harder to reach an audience.

You recently took a different route to publication. I think that involved some kind of crowd-funding, didn’t it? Why did you decide to do that?

The crowd-funding model wasn't initially my decision. With my fiction I was trying to go down a more traditional route, and so was submitting short stories to anthologies and (online) magazines. I think it's because that way there is some kind of quality control - in order to be published you do need to be read by an editor or the person compiling the anthology. I was quite lucky in that respect;  I had my first short story published in 2013 and a number over the next few years (which I did then collect in a self-published collection "The Demon Face").  I learned a lot from my interaction with editors and I think my writing improved as a result.

With respect to novels, I continually submitted to agents and traditional publishers - a slow process as many specify that you can't submit simultaneously. This meant several years were eaten up waiting to hear back from publishers' open submission periods for instance.

Unbound were one of the publishers I pitched to - and unlike the others they said yes! They have a unique business model - when they accept a manuscript for publication (and I understand that acceptance isn't a foregone conclusion) they then run a crowd-fund to raise the money for their production costs. People can pre-order the book at various "pledge" levels (which means they get certain additional rewards).

What is your business relationship with Unbound? Do they take care of all the marketing and so on? Do you work on a royalties basis? Why is this a more attractive option than just publishing direct (via Amazon KDP or Lulu)?

I suppose basically they are my publisher. If you set the crowd-funding aspect aside (which is them covering their costs of production) they do pretty much everything a regular publishing house would do for me from both structural and copy editing (which I have just completed) to typesetting, cover design, printing, marketing and distribution, and they do work on a royalties basis.

Of course these days all authors need to do a lot of marketing themselves whether trad or self-published; so aside from the production I think it's the distribution that Unbound take care of which is a big plus for me.

I had been trying to get my fiction published in a more traditional way anyway - as I mentioned I preferred it because it meant an editor / compiler would be passing an unbiased eye over my manuscript - so anything which was accepted meant that at least one other person thought it was worth reading! The novel was submitted to a number of publishing houses during their open submission periods. Another advantage Unbound has over other trad publishers is that they don't require you to submit through an agent.

How has this worked out so far? Better or worse than just releasing a print-on-demand book?

Well it worked out in the end as I hit my pledge target in August 2019 after two years. It’s much better than print-on-demand as now that the book is in production it will be distributed the traditional way and appear in bookshops such as Waterstones or WH Smith. I suppose the main disadvantage is that it can take a long time to hit the target whereas with print-on-demand you can go as soon as you are ready.

Also there is still a degree of confusion with regard to the crowd-funding process - there are a couple of questions several people have asked me - "What do you need all that money for?" and "Why not just get a bank loan?" - as I think the concept of the publisher raising production costs beforehand is still quite a new one to people, and they don't realise that the money isn't being raised for me...

Do you do any advertising or marketing? If so, what?

With the self-published books I generally do all my marketing via social media which has varying success. With the Toyah book I was very lucky as there was an audience for it already. It was more difficult with my short story collection as that was an unknown quantity to many people - plus you have to be careful not to bore them with constant tweets! For the eBooks I found having it available free for a short period did boost sales afterwards as it raised the books' profile.

Do you write fiction in a specific genre? Do you think it is easier to find an audience if they are already looking for a “specific types” of novel?

Yes indeed, I think in general it is easier for genre books to find an audience as genre readers can be enthusiastic readers and are often on the lookout for something new to get stuck into. Once upon a time that would have been by looking on particular shelves in bookshops or libraries - now that can also be done by subscribing to book bloggers and reviewers.

I do write in particular genres - (urban) fantasy, horror and science fiction, although there is a bleed between the three and one or two of my ostensibly "horror" tales - including the first short story I had published - have no supernatural elements whatsoever so could actually happen in real life. My forthcoming novel Comeback is Urban Fantasy.

As a writer it is easier to find a home for short stories when writing in genre - calls for anthologies or magazine submissions are usually themed. I would imagine that it is easier to target audiences for novels too although I haven't had to do that yet aside from when submitting my novel to publishers' open submission periods - it did have to be publishers who specialised in SFF!

When self-publishing I think the way to go with genre fiction novels is to send copies to book bloggers and / or reviewers who specialise in certain genres and already have an audience who will be by definition on the lookout for that kind of novel. Plus organisations such as the British Fantasy Society do review independent or self-published books sent to them (and despite the name do cover SF and Horror as well as fantasy). A good review from them is always a plus.

Do you work with any other ‘freelancers’ – say editors, proof-readers or cover designers?

Not when self-publishing, yet. I can see the advantage in doing so though - in particular,  no matter how much you might think you are concentrating, typos will always slip through when you are so familiar with the text. And following on from my comments above I think editors are very important so even though I haven't self-published fiction (aside from my collection of short stories which had all been through the editing process prior to being published elsewhere) I would definitely consider doing so.

What would you do differently if you were publishing your first book all over again today?

Following on from the previous question I might indeed hire an editor and proof-reader to give the text a going over to make it better. Also I think I would have started earlier and fleshed the book out a little as it is quite a slim volume!

What have you got planned next?

The main thing will be plugging my novel "Comeback" when it comes out with Unbound in April 2020 and then seeing if they are interested in the (already written) sequel. If they are, that will mean another crowd-fund, but hopefully not as long a one!

Chris’s Books

I was a Teenage Toyah Fan: http://j.mp/TTFkazUK
The Demon Face: http://j.mp/TheDemonFace 
Comeback (page at Unbound): https://unbound.com/books/comeback/
Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5347555.Chris_Limb

More On Chris

http://chrislimb.com/
http://www.catmachine.com
Twitter: @catmachine | @catmachinedes

Writers and Publishers, Let’s Get Together!

It’s been a while since I last updated this blog. An awful lot has changed in my writing and publishing business lately. The main thing that’s changed is that a business is now what it is. I used to think of myself as a writer. A writer publishes one book, maybe two or three or more and then sits back and looks at the total lack of sales.

A publisher, on the other hand, sells books: markets them, advertises them, publishers not just one or two individual books but one, two, three (or more) series of books. Publishing is not a ‘calling' or a ‘talent’, it’s a business. And to make a success as an independent writer you also need to be an independent publisher.

I’ve been a publisher once before – a magazine publisher in the conventional (that, is old-fashioned) way. I commissioned articles, had the magazine designed, got tens of thousands of copies printed, had them distributed to shops. And then waited to find out how much money I’d lost!

That was back in the 1990s. The idea that you could publish without paying huge sums of money to get all the salable copies printed in advance was not one that had even occurred to me. On-demand publishing didn’t exist back then. Nor did Kindle and iPad devices. Heck, Amazon didn’t even exist back then! Fortunately, the world has changed, and my approach to publishing has changed with it.

Anyway, it’s early days for me but this year I launched my publishing business (Dark Neon Books) with five programming books under the imprint (or ‘brand name’), Bitwise Books. There will be one more programming book published before the year is out. And I also redesigned and republished three novels via Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). They were previously published via Lulu.

Along the way, I’ve had to do all kinds of other stuff such as buy ISBNs so that they are shown to be published by my company (a free Amazon ISBN shows them to be ‘Independently Published’ which is not what I wanted) and I’ve had to start to learn the whole confusing, complicated business of advertising and marketing. To be frank, I am still in the early stages of this and I’m planning to become more professional about marketing during 2020.

If you are an independent publisher, a small publishing company or a self-published writer and you would be interested in sharing your experience, please get in touch. Maybe I can do a short interview (by e-mail is fine). From now on, I want this blog to be by writers and for writers. So let’s share our experiences to help one another!

Bitwise Books - Our new Programming Imprint

Dark Neon has just launched Bitwise Books, our new programming language imprint! We’ve been working away at this for most of the last year. Our aim is to publish a range of tightly-focused programming books that explain just what you really need to know without any padding.

The series is called The Little Book Of… and our first three titles are:

The Little Book Of C Programming
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk

The Little Book Of Pointers
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk

The Little Book Of Recursion
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk

In addition, we have created a series of free programming guides called A Really Simple Guide To… These include A Really Simple Guide To Object Orientation, C IDEs and Pointers. To can get the guides delivered straight to your inbox (no purchase necessary) from the Bitwise Books site.

We’ll be announcing more Really Simple Guides and Little Books Of (various programming topics) soon.

Interview with Downing College Magazine

I was one of three crime authors interviewed for the magazine of my old college (Downing College, Cambridge) recently. We talked about my life in journalism, 1980s pop music and the three 1980s murder mystery novels that I've published. The magazine will eventually go online (it's not available yet) and I'll post a link when it does.

Using Style Sheets

When you are formatting books for either eBook or printed book publication, you should be sure to set up style sheets. A style sheet contains named font and paragraph formatting options that can be selectively applied to your text. Here I am assuming you are using Microsoft Word for writing your documents but style sheets can also be used with other word processors and Desktop Publishing packages. If you are not familiar with Word style sheets, you may want to follow Microsoft’s tutorial.

If you haven’t already got a style sheet, you need to create one – just load a blank document and save it as a Word template. Then set up styles by right-clicking text with the format you want and, from the mouse menu, select Styles, Save as New Quick Style. Make sure the full styles palette is visible. From Word’s Home ribbon page, click the little arrow-box at the bottom right of the style palette (the thing showing all the character styles) to dock it at the side of your screen.

Now, when you want to modify a style, click the arrow to its right in the docked palette and select Modify.

Make changes in the dialog box and click the Format button to select other categories of style attribute that you may want to change. I don’t plan on explaining all the options here so if you aren’t already familiar with styles, you may want to spend some time experimenting with the possibilities.

Important: when you make a change, be sure that the option ‘New documents based on this template’ is selected. If not, the style changes will not be persisted for use in other documents. You want at least one template for use in multiple documents so this is really important.

Once you’ve got a template, you can apply it to new documents by loading it in this way. Select File, Options. Click Add-ins. In the drop-down list at the bottom-left, pick Templates. Then click Go, click Attach, browse to your template and select it. Make sure ‘automatically update documents styles’ is checked. Click Open. The template will now be applied to your document and the text will be reformatted if the template styles match the existing formatting. If not, you will need to select your text, then select the various style names from the palette to apply them.

For basic Kindle formatting, most style options are ignored so you shouldn’t need to spend too long setting them up. The Kindle Formatting web site also has lots of useful information: http://kindleformatting.com/

For a printed book (for example, via CreateSpace or Lulu), you need to devote a lot more care to formatting. Every formatting change you make will be reproduced exactly on the printed page so don’t skip the details. Just to give you some guidance on how to create your body text, you should either make changes to the Normal style or (which is, I think, better), create a new style based on the Normal style. I use a style called BodyCopy. For most books, a Serif font (a ‘curly’ variety) is the best choice and either Palatino and Garamond are two favourites.

The font I’ve used in my novels is Garamond, full justified, with a line spacing of exactly 14 points and a first-line indent of 0.5 inches (set these options from the Modify Styles dialog – you’ll need to click the Format button and the bottom and choose Paragraph). I’ll discuss this more fully in another article.

Formatting a Kindle Book For Lulu or CreateSpace

So you’ve published your book to Kindle. Now you want to release it as a paperback. The two main ‘print-on-demand’ options you might consider are CreateSpace or Lulu. The main advantage of CreateSpace is that it’s affiliated with Amazon so getting your book listed on Amazon will (presumably) be fairly straightforward. Lulu has the benefit that the company prints books internationally – not just in the USA – so if you want make it available to buyers in other countries (and as a UK author, I certainly do!), Lulu is a better choice. Bear in mind that your Lulu books will be listed on Amazon too as long as you given them an ISBN number (this is available free from Lulu).

Whichever service you choose, the next task you face is getting your book formatted for print. I am assuming here that you have written the book in Microsoft Word. If you have used another word processor or a Desktop Publishing program, the tasks you need to undertake will, of course, be rather different, though the principles are the same.

Traditional Kindle books have very simple formatting without fancy layout and named fonts. To make your text look good in print, you need to put some effort into reformatting your text to fit onto a specific page size, use named fonts, apply formatting effects such as indents, page numbering or section numbering and so forth. In this article, I’ll explain the first step – getting your text to fit onto the page.

First, decide on the size of your book. My book is a novel and the standard size (on Lulu anyway) is 6 inches wide by 9 inches tall which is called US Trade. Lulu supplies pre-formatted page ‘templates’ in various sizes and I’d suggest that you begin by downloading one of these from here: http://connect.lulu.com/t5/Cover-Formatting/What-dimensions-should-my-book-cover-images-have/ta-p/33279 The CreateSpace templates are found here: https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/InteriorPDF.jsp

As I am publishing to Lulu, the rest of this article describes what I did using the Lulu template. I would expect the process to be similar for CreateSpace but I have no personal experience of that.

First, bear in mind that, while Lulu and CreateSpace call these documents ‘templates’ they are not what Word calls templates. In Word a template has the extension ‘.dotx’ or (in older versions of Word) ‘.dot’. A Word template is used as a repository for reusable styling information that can be loaded into one or more existing documents. The ‘templates’ supplied by Lulu and CreateSpace are ordinary Word (.doc) documents. If you haven’t yet written your book you could, I suppose, start writing it into one of these empty documents. In my case, my book already existed. I decided to use the downloaded ‘template’ as a reference guide. I examined its page-sizing properties and simply copied these into my existing document (actually I first made a new copy of my novel's document because I didn’t want any changes I made to affect the one that was already formatted for Kindle).

So, without more ado. This is what I did. I loaded Lulu’s US Trade template document and then selected Page Layout, Size, More Paper Sizes.

A dialog appeared showing me the Custom size details. These are the settings that were shown in each of the three tabbed pages.

I made a note of all these settings and just copied them into the same ‘Page Setup’ dialog pages for the document containing my novel. Then I saved it. The end result is that my text was formatted to fit on the pages of a 6” x 9” book. You would, of course, need to copy different settings if you are printing to a different size of book.

That’s just the start, however. I next had to apply a whole range of formatting options to make the text look nice on the printed page. I’ll have more to say about that in another article.