GROWING OLD UNGRACEFULLY: Creating a Book – Lost Coast Outpost

One rule of thumb is to ask
yourself, “Am I having a good time doing this?” If you’re not
enjoying yourself when you’re engaged in what seems important to
you, if you can’t find spontaneous pleasure and joy in it, then
there’s likely something wrong.

–– Haruki
Murakami in Novelist as a Vocation

###

After last week’s column on my love
affair with books, a couple of people have asked me about the actual
process of creating a book, so for anyone interested, here’s a
brief summary.

Way back when (early ‘90s), I
managed to have a couple of book proposals bought by subsidiaries of
the mega book-publishing firm McGraw-Hill … that was easy, kind of.
Book proposals are a whole world unto themselves, but once I had one
accepted (after submitting to 20-odd publishers) and I had a
contract, all (1) I had to do was write it, find illustrations, get
copyright approvals, and (2) send off the whole package. This was not
quite pre-internet (we had “Mosaic” and Compuserve email and
weekly CDs from AOL — remember them?), but this was definitely
pre-“Jimbo” Wales’ Wikipedia and pre-Larry+Sergey’s
Google, pre- online digitized photo collections, pre-
practically everything. Endless hours at the library, many, many
letters requesting photos and permissions, dozens of hours on the
phone interviewing, asking dumb questions. (Kids have it easy now!)

Once all that was done, I sent off a
big package with text in MS Word both on diskettes and physical
print-outs; actual photos; and stick-figure diagrams…and the
publisher would magically do the rest. A couple of months later, I’d
get back galley proofs, correct them, send ‘em back, and next thing
(several more months) my book was on booksellers’ shelves across
the nation. Everyday Wonders, Encounters with the Astonishing
World around Us (which took about 18 months of my life), sold
about 12,000 copies without me lifting a finger. That’s not quite
true — I sent off dozens of copies to talk-radio stations, and
would do interviews over the phone, usually about 4 a.m. for morning
shows on the East Coast. It’s still there on Amazon,
out of print but available used.

That was a halcyon time when a
half-assed writer who knew a bit of physics and astronomy, and
(mainly) had the perseverance to do the legwork, could get a
“science-lite” book published by a big publisher. No longer.
These days you have to be well known, have a Ph.D. at least (I
managed a bachelor’s — just! — in civil engineering) in quantum
physics or relativity theory, probably tenured, with a few dozen
published papers under her or his belt (I have none). And/or a weekly
blog (ditto). Having controversial views always helps: the
multiverse many worlds theory (Sean Carroll) or a universe
from nothing (Lawrence Krauss) or ETs are real (Avi Loeb).
Having “God” in your title is a good selling point, too.

So nowadays, from my very limited
point of view, the way to go is self-publishing. (Not the same
as “vanity press”!) These days, (a) I love writing, so long
as (b) my pieces are less than about 800 words. (Short attention
span, you know. And getting shorter.) So when I’ve got enough
essays written (my mainstays are my biweekly Field Notes
columns in the North Coast Journal), I assemble them out in a
page layout program (I use Serif’s discontinued, but still
available, PagePlus software, which I love), drop in photos and
captions, and when I’ve got something — not a
finished book, but enough of one that I’m ready to see how it will
look and feel and smell — send it off, in PDF format, for a single
draft copy to be printed by Lulu (lulu.com) for—get this—about $10,
including shipping! (Printing-on-demand revolutionized the industry
and my life.) 

There can be a wonderful sense of satisfaction in laying out a book in a page layout program like PagePlus.

This is true: Having an actual,
physical book in hand is the best possible inspiration to finish it.
There’s a huge psychological boost that comes from seeing a
work-in-progress: it just calls out for completion. Once it’s done
(for me, after going through four or five drafts while correcting,
editing, adding), I sell my books locally, through our bookstores and
stores in Eureka and Arcata, and odd places throughout the county.
The Humbook (70 essays about Humboldt lore: history,
geography, fauna and flora) has sold over 500 copies in the past 12
months, and it’s still doing well — look out for Humbook Two
next year!

Yeah, I know, I know. I corrected it after the first printing.

If you’ve written a book with more
than local interest, you can go the Amazon distribution route via
Lulu or Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. Want to know more? Both of
these have excellent DIY guides.

Hope this helps any wannabe authors.
You won’t get rich, probably — keep the day job—but you’ll have
a ton of fun going through the process. If not, see Murakami’s
epigraph, above.

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