Learning Curve

Learning Curve

This might be quite a long post, I ramble.  I just wanted to share some of the experiences I’ve had whilst doing what I do.  I’m not trying to sound self-important, I just thought it’d be interesting for you to see how much I really didn’t know when I set out on this journey.

Writing a novel is just one big learning curve, at least for me it has been. You, on the other hand, might find the process all together easier, but for a lesser mortal like me, it’s been a real struggle. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t not do it knowing what I know now ( now there’s a sentence with hairs on its chest). Just producing a finished product has been the hardest enjoyable thing I’ve ever done. Sure I’ve done harder things, just not for enjoyment.

So what are these perilous curves I mentioned? They are truly many and varied. Below I’ve listed some that come to mind to help anyone else who might feels they have a novel inside them, bursting to be released. So here goes.

Writing: Yes writing. How can that be a learning curve? I mean we all learnt that stuff at school. Here I put aside my dyslexia, a curve all of its own, and refer to the nuts and bolts of putting word on page - or should that be pixel on screen. It amazed me how little I knew about the structure, form and syntax of a book. I found myself picking random titles from my bookshelf and scanning them, not for ideas, but to see how to layout the text for my book. Of course an editor will steer you right when you finally submit a chapter or finished work but if you’ve get the basics right from the start you’ll save yourself a lot of bother re-formatting. I was amazed how little I knew. Simple punctuation, page layout, inserts, even things like double spaces (I’m old school, me). I came to realise that school didn’t teach me to write books. They taught me to function in society and pass exams. Writing books really doesn’t come into a two hour English exam.

Ebooks: Well, this is what it’s all about. Typing ‘The End’ and publishing your ebook, then watch the royalties flood in. That was quite a curve to climb, I can tell you. I mean, who knows anything about ebooks?! For instance, did you know that to put your text onto your favourite e-reader your novel needs to be converted to html. I didn’t. The format of most ebooks is .epub or if you’re using Amazon .mobi. I knew nothing about this. I had to start at the beginning and make a perilous climb. Luckily, and before I scare you too much, there are ways to achieve this. Amazon for instance have a bunch of web tools that can really help. Did I use these, of course not. That would be far too sensible and easy.

Layout: The other way to build your epub & mobi files is to use Adobe’s Indesign, a truly powerful piece of software. The downside, it’s one of the most frustrating and, for me, complex pieces of software I’ve ever come across. Every action in creating a clean, concise layout of your ebook takes hours and hours of research to achieve the desired result. I had to rebuild my ebook countless times as I learnt what to do and what not to do.  A piece of advice, if you’re going to go down this path then invest in a training course. Just posting in the forums and hoping someone will fix things for you is not the way to go. Don’t get me wrong, I owe a debt of gratitude to all those faceless avatars who helped me through the dark times but luckily I had access to a couple of courses

Physical copy: Oh dear god! How hard can that be? The learning curve for that was almost vertical. For the publish-on-demand copy of my first novel I once more I delved back into Indesign. Yes I could have made my life easier by using Amazon’s web based system but one thing Indesign has in its favour is that it allows total access to every aspect of the process. Unfortunately, this leads to endless headaches and screaming matches. How difficult can it be to add page numbers? Really, really difficult is the answer. Producing the final .pdf document that’s required by the printers almost broke me.

Cover design: You would be forgiven for thinking, knowing I had a background in computer generated images, that this stage would’ve been simple. Alas, most of the images I had done up to then were landscapes. I’d never designed and built a character in the computer, let-alone five of them. Now, I know this curve is not applicable to most new authors but you should take a moment to consider what you are going to put on the front and back covers, not forgetting the spine. (Obviously, the back cover and spine are only needed for physical books). Have you ever given thought how you calculate the width of a spine image? I hadn’t. Again, I feel I’m scaring the budding author. Do not fret, Amazon have a cover-builder-web-thingy for you to use. I just like making my life impossibly difficult.

Website: I’ve never built a website in my life. Now I have. I have one thing to say: don’t believe the adverts! If you think that you’ll spend half an hour sitting down at you computer and voila you’ll have the perfect site humming on the inter-web, then wake up and smell the ‘cooffay’. What you’ll end up with will be very disappointing. It takes time and practice to build one. I had to watch a lot of training videos and try out a range of ideas before building this rather simple site. I also had to create a lot of content for it, both in the written form and artwork. The more time you invest in getting the site right the better it will be.

Marketing: Here lies a blackhole and its gravitational pull will propel you up that curve for as long as you let it. There is so much to know, I wouldn’t know where to start. It’s daunting and scary and seems to be endless. My belief is that everyone will do this differently. For me I had to learn about various social media platforms, the blogging community, print media, email campaigns. The list goes on and on.  My advice, talk to an expert at the very least. But the one truth that applies to everyone publishing their first novel is - You Have to Market Your Product! You’ve spent so much time and effort scaling these learning curves whist hanging on to your dream, that you’ve got to get out there and tell people about it.

Well, I hope this helps. Or more likely, informs you on how much I really don’t know.  Stu.