Publishing a book

Hello all; In the process of training a couple of apprentices, I
discovered how much of the stuff I do is kind of intuitive and
therefore hard to communicate properly, so I tried writing it down.
Well, the whole thing got out of hand and now I’m stuck with a
somewhat book-like object.

Does anyone have any idea how I would go about getting it into a
publishable form? It needs some heavy-duty editting, (my wife insists
that the cursing must go)as my writing style is often a little
stream-of-conciousness. I think I have some valid ideas that should
be of value to other goldsmiths. Besides, being an author sounds
cool.

Vanity press publishing seems to be what I’m looking for here, but I
don’t know. I’m just a goldsmith. Ken Paulson. Saskatoon,SK.

Go for it. :wink:

You don’t need writing training to be a writer. You just need to be
able to write up something that other people can read. Yes, you
probably want some editing done to make it organized into logical
chapters that somebody can read through, without too many excess
digressions (A few digressions, curses, and other such things will do
much to put the reader at ease and make it a more entertaining read
than a college math textbook)

Whatever you do, follow one simple rule. Unless you are going it
alone and hiring a real book manufacturing plant, money flows one
way… in to your pockets. There exists a large number of companies
that exist solely to seperate inexperienced authors from their money,
going by the name of “Subsidy” publishers or “Vanity” publishers.

And if trying to get your book published by the legitimate presses
that do jewlery books doesn’t work, you can always just put your
writings up online. It’s much better than blowing money on a vanity
publisher. There’s probably somebody out there who wouldn’t mind
hosting your book on their website.

Ken “Wirehead” Wronkiewicz
http://www.wirewd.com/wh/

** Hanuman’s Response **

Ganoksin is a good place to start :slight_smile: Email me offline to
service@ganoksin.com if interested.

Hanuman

I write service manuals for one of the Big Three and I can get very
opinioned when I read technical type books First thing I think you
need to ask yourself is how are you showing what you are instructing
Other words what type of pictures or graphics are you going to use I
find that most books the graphics are not very demonstrating of the
instructions What type of formatting are you using for your book Is
it a Word document Power Point or Word Publisher or some other What
I find really helps is that you take the pictures that you want to
use as you are instructing The pictures should be taken at the same
angle as the person is actually doing the work Then as you take
your pictures you add notes Now format all it together in some
logical sequence I usually use Word because I find it easy to insert
the pictures and add text that is missed Some of my documents have
over 120 pictures What I am trying to say is in your book have a lot
of pictures With digital cameras it makes this so easy Basically one
picture should be for every step that you are doing Use short
sentences Use bullet lists if there are a lot of items or supplies
in one step Don92t make it anything but a bunch of words Then finally
when you get it all put together give it somebody to validate Find
somebody that does not have any experience and see if they can follow
your words and your pictures Then validate it again and again Once
you have gone that far now send what you have to a publisher The
pictures that you have added they can print in a gray scale type
picture or have them turned into line drawings (very expensive) There
are some small publishers that actually take your document as laid
out or provide you with the software that they use and put it in
a binder Have fun Warren Townsend

I’m going with
http://www.trafford.com/4dcgi/trafford.html?152145618-8336aaa for my
book

Reasonable rates, customized, and what the hell… 2K is nothing
these days, and if I can flog it for a couple bux at the flea
markets, well I am GST ahead.

More on my book in a subsequent message… looking for a domain host
wit credit card transactions right now…

Cheers… Tim Randles
Edmonton

You don't need writing training to be a writer.  You just need to
be able to write up something that other people can read.  

Nor do you need to pass a licensing exam to be a writer, any more
than you do to call yourself a “goldsmith.” This assumes, of course,
that you’re a already good writer by virtue of a solid high school
education, a lifelong passion for reading, and/or years of practice.

However, you will still need an editor. No matter how talented a
writer you are, a good editor makes you better. A good editor finds
the holes that you don’t see, because YOU know what you meant. An
editor will be able to spot AND fix the places that will make other
people go “Huh???” An editor will know about style and consistency,
and help you apply those concepts to your work. Not to mention fixing
the grammatical errors we all make sometimes. (Computerized
spell-checkers and grammar checkers help, but they won’t catch
everything.)

You don’t need a special training course to be an editor, either.
But having experience as an editor makes a huge difference in the
results. I’ve trained enough new editors to know firsthand what a
difference experience makes. It’s just like making jewelry. I can
make jewelry, thanks to a couple beginner classes. I cannot make GOOD
jewelry! (Heck, I can’t even make pretty good jewelry. :slight_smile: When it
comes to both writing and editing, experience counts, just as it does
at the jewelers’ bench.

Proofreading is also something you may want to farm out to a pro.
Proofreading ISN’T the same thing as reading it over, or editing it,
for that matter. The basic human tendency is to see what you expect
to see, and it takes skill and experience to spot those little errors
that everyone else has missed. (BTW, they’ll be obvious to everyone
EXCEPT the writer and the editors. I don’t know why that is, but it
does seem to work that way, and has led to no end of egg-on-face
corrections!) To give you an idea, one publication I worked for once
asked the editorial department to proof a directory the business
department had put together. After the editorial department went, “in
what, our spare time?” they hired a secretarial/general office temp
from a temp agency to do the job. The temp was given a glossary of
mineral terms and told to proof the list (which was 12 or 13 pages
long.)

When the list made it back to editorial in the final proof stage, we
were appalled. The temp had, indeed, checked and corrected all the
mineralological terms. She had also missed dozens of simple
misspellings – rubys instead of rubies, cabashon instead of
cabochon, etc. She had paid careful attention to the mineralological
names because she wasn’t familiar with them, but had simply read
right past words that were familiar, seeing what she expected to see,
and missed the errors.

Even experienced proofreaders miss things – Ms. Magazine is famous
for once misspelling “feminism” on their cover, and most magazine
editors have similar tales of woe. But having a good proofreader on
your side does cut down on the embarassing moments!

Oh, and just one word of advice with photos – be aware that what
looks good on your computer screen may look terrible in print.
Computer screens are all low resolution, projecting about 72 ppi.
Print can offer vastly better resolutions, and anything less than 300
ppi will look pixelated and fuzzy. Fuzzy pictures are tough to see
details in, and will compromise the reason for putting the photos
there in the first place. Also, computer monitors are set up to
display pictures in RBG (red blue green), while most printers print
in CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black). Printing a RBG picture
without converting it to CMYK can result in the colors being not
quite right in the printed copy.

Good luck with your book!
Suzanne
Suzanne Wade
Writer/Editor
Phone: (508) 339-7366
Fax: (928) 563-8255
@Suzanne_Wade1
http://www.rswade.net