Tag: publishing

New Book Pricing

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An Architecture of Encounter will be available in the next few days. I’ll make an announcement when it is, but I want to talk about pricing.

Audio: NotebookLM summary podcast of this topic.

Firstly, books cost money to print. This much is obvious. Hardcovers cost more than paperbacks. The ones with dust jackets cost more still. From a financial/economics perspective, one needs to charge more for hardcovers to compensate for the costs.

Secondly, distributors take a cut. They aren’t in business without a profit interest.

Of course, one might offer directly to the customer to cut out the distribution cost and maybe pocket all or some of the difference, which might be 40-odd per cent of the sale price – 8 from a book priced at 20, where the printer already takes, say, 8. This leaves 4 for the author.

If I were to cut out the middleman to take all of the 8 in this example, I’d likely lose most of it in shipping and handling. (I know because I’ve done this before). Of course, I could pass this expense to the buyer, but this jacks up the price from 20 to 28.

Some sellers offer free shipping, whether by exceeding some minimum order amount or through a programme such as Amazon Prime.

If I am going to eat the 8, I might as well give it to Amazon and let them handle the logistics. Business 101. Barnes and Noble has an even less favourable model as far as publishing is concerned, but they provide different offerings, so I still use them via IngramSpark.

For the record, I’ve used and considered other printers and distribution methods, but they are all more expensive to me from a total cost perspective. Part of this is simply the incremental pricing facility. I don’t want to purchase and manage inventory for 1,000 books at a time. In this case, I’d be out 8K up front. Perhaps I could get a deal and print the books at 6K for committing to a print run, but I’d still have to manage the inventory and logistics, which then takes away from my writing time. I’ve outsourced this before, but I had to pay for warehousing and a handling fee to someone to package the book – and pay for shipping (pass-through or otherwise). Amazon (KDP) is just easier, so it’s my go-to.

As for pricing, I’ve decided that my default prices will be 20 USD for paperback and 30 for hardcover. This is in contrast to a x.99 pricing scheme. I usually set my ex-US prices lower, but honestly, it depends. I try to set prices in each market with no fractional units. If the price had been £14.97, I’ll up it to £15, Sorry. In most cases, it will drop from £15.23 to an even £15. In most markets, I’ll lose margin to provide a clean-looking sales price.

As an economist, I could see that one might arbitrage (in a manner of speaking) and order from Belgium instead of France or vice versa, but I don’t expect the shekels saved would be worth the added effort.

As for bookstores, they can still purchase my titles wholesale from whatever distributor (even Amazon), so you can still support your local bookstore if that’s your ethos.

Anyway, I know I’m just wittering on, but I felt that transparency into the process might be appreciated.

NotebookLM Infographic on this topic. (Ignore the pie chart. lol)

Kindle and other eBook formats

One might think that offering a digital version would be simple, but it’s not as easy as uploading a PDF. A lot of formatting is required to fit the format. An ordinary EPUB is easier than Kindle, which relies on old technology to support its legacy devices. It doesn’t always handle images, charts, and tables nicely, and doesn’t support all fonts, so that creates more work.

Because of this, ebooks are a low priority for me, though I admit they do sell well. It’s up in the air as to whether the increased sales justify the cannibalisation of the physical media.

Audiobooks

I’ve made available a few audiobook versions. I’ve heard that these are a decent portion of many independent authors’ revenue sources, but I haven’t found this to be true. Because of this, offering them is a low priority for me. I’m not anti-digital so much as anti-negative-cost-benefit.

I mentioned recently that I create audio versions for me to review, but these are not necessarily ready for the public. Additional time must be invested in correcting pronunciation, prosody, and odd digital glitches.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Cheers.

Architecture of Encounter – Indexing with Claude AI

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5–7 minutes

Dear diary…

I’m not ashamed to say that AI is a significant part of my publishing workflow. In my latest project, The Architecture of Encounter, I’ve added indexing to the roles it serves. Other roles were prepping the index and footnotes, as I shared recently.

I expect the book to be available by next week. Time will tell.

I’ve included the full index below for reference. I’ve also included the title and copyright pages and other back matter.

Architecture of Encounter – v1.0 – IndexDownload

What will a visitor do with a bookless index? I don’t know, but sharing is caring in my book. For the interested, you can get a sense of the contents. I’ll be sharing more details over the coming weeks – and beyond, I’m sure.

Earlier, I shared that Claude had offered index candidates. I started executing on that list by indexing the first few terms. It took me about an hour to do these, searching for each term and documenting the page number and context – around 250 pages. The book itself is 292 – 6″ x 9″ pages, but more than 50 of these are appendices, and others are front matter. Still.

Audio: NotebookLM summary podcast of this topic. (Another one that misses some points but make others. Fair enough.)

Then it dawned on me to ask Claude to help me with the index. Claude interpreted ‘help’ by spitting out the entire index, formatted and organised. If the book were formatted in 8½” x 11″ Letter size, I could have appended it as-is, but I still had to pour the output into the InDesign template I was composing through and make it look like it was part of the same manuscript, but that took minutes, not days of hours. Appendix E.

Given that I also rely heavily on novel concepts and specifically-defined terms – language insufficiency notwithstanding – I felt that a glossary would be useful. I tasked Claude with this, too. Again, it output a fully-formed list.

I noticed that a couple of terms I wanted defined were absent, so I fed the list into ChatGPT and asked it to consider these and let me know, given the manuscript, what other terms might be absent. It agreed with the two I wanted and suggested three more. It also pointed out an error Claude had made in counting. It also provided the definitions for the glossary entries, so I poured Claude’s output into InDesign. Appendix D.

AI is also a helper. For example, I wanted my index to flow into 2 columns. I’ve done this before. In the old days, I’d have scanned the menus (Adobe products are infamous for convoluted, nested menus), read the manual, and/or Googled for the answer – perhaps queried YouTube, a great resource for such things. Now, I ask AI. In this case, I asked ChatGPT. To be honest, it’s a little verbose, where ‘it’s option X under Y menu’ would suffice, but I ignore the banter.

If you need to know…

If the index is already placed in a text frame

  1. Select the text frame containing the index.
  2. Go to Object → Text Frame Options.
  3. Set the Number of Columns you want, usually 2 for a 6×9 book, sometimes 3 if the type is small and the entries are short.
  4. Adjust the Gutter spacing between columns.
  5. Click OK.

Criticise AI all you want, but having access to in-built assistance 24/7 is a huge time-saving benefit.

Do I still use Google and YouTube? Yes, often.

Speaking of Google, I was searching for a cover image, and I discovered something I need for the fiction title I paused in September to focus on nonfiction. Sidenotes. Perhaps I’ll employ a similar mechanism.

The nonfiction book I am writing is somewhat epistolary, and I want to place internal dialogue as marginalia, employing a scripted font face. I am even considering a ‘deluxe’ version that renders this content in colour, but that’s an extra expense, first for the colour, then the full-page bleed, and perhaps thicker paper stock. Likely hardbound, reserving the paperback for a lower price point.

So, what’s next?

I finished both paperback and hardcover designs today.

I still need to review the index for hallucinated errors. This will still take less time than manually constructing it.

On the copyright page, there are a few classifiers. There are ISBNs for each format and a Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN). These are done, as you can see, but the ISBN system in the United States is antiquated. It looks like it’s a museum piece from the mid-1990s. In fact, I believe I first accessed it around 2000 or 2001, when I published my first book – before AI, before print on demand (POD).

A bit of nostalgia. The WWW, the internet as most people know it, was made public around 1994. Google hit it in 1998. Web 1.0. Facebook blighted the world around 2004, though less invasively at the start. I digress. Technology is a mixed bag.

Returning to ISBNs… These are managed in a system built circa 1997. It seems it is still managed with a host of cron jobs, so not much is processed in real time unless it’s a trivial record entry.

Each ISBN references a title and a format, as well as other odds and ends. In my case, I also use an imprint to separate my fiction from nonfiction. I started Microglyphics – tiny writing– in the mid-90s. When I published other authors, I used this name. I also used it for some of my fiction writing. I decided to create a Philosophics Press imprint for my philosophy and adjacent work.

It turns out that the printer needs to ensure that a book’s title and ISBN match the imprint. The system default is the company name, but I changed it to my imprint. This causes a workflow event on their end. Until it propagates, it doesn’t match, and the printer won’t allow the print run.

I’m writing this blog entry as I wait. I’m not sure if it’s automated – I’d like to assume it is – or if a human has to do something. AI might help. Just saying.

EDIT: The imprint has now been updated to Philosophics Press, but it still doesn’t work at the printer. Evidently, it can take up to 5 days for the data to propagate. I’m not sure who owns the fail on this one? Is the printer waiting for a data push? Can’t they pull the data? They seem to be live from my perspective. Is there an API, or is it truly old-school?

Whilst I’m here wittering on, WordPress have deprecated the little widget below – the one with my (old) thumbnail picture and ‘written by’ tag. I adopted it last year, but it’s been killed off. I’ve been copying the object from old posts, but I’ll probably switch to whatever they’ve replaced it with. I wasn’t keen on the options I’ve seen so far. First-world problems, I suppose.

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Rejection Letter

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Rejected Note
2–3 minutes

Dear Author. [REDACTED] does not accept the submission of personal works produced by students, independent researchers, or professionals who have not yet attained a doctoral level. This is a moderation policy intended to ensure that publications deposited on the platform originate from qualified researchers affiliated with a recognized institution (REDACTED) and acknowledged for their expertise or previous work in the relevant field of research. This rule applies regardless of the quality or scientific value of the work, which is by no means in question here. We therefore regret to inform you that we are unable to accept this submission. If you wish, we invite you to share your work through other open platforms such as Zenodo, which allow all authors to make their research visible. Thank you for your understanding. Kind regards

Allow me to rephrase this:

Dear Author,

We regret to inform you that whilst your work is not in question, you are. Our platform does not accept submissions from students, independent researchers, or professionals who have not yet acquired the correct ceremonial headgear. This policy exists to ensure that ideas originate from bodies already sanctified by a recognised institution. The content may be rigorous, original, and valuable, but that is neither here nor there. Knowledge, like wine, must age in the right cellar.

Please consider sharing your work elsewhere. Zenodo is very accommodating to the uncredentialled.

Kind regards.

Disappointing, though hardly surprising. This is the same logic as age-based thresholds I have recently taken a hammer to: crude proxies elevated into moral and epistemic gatekeepers. Not ‘is this good?’, but ‘are you old enough, stamped enough, letterheaded enough to be taken seriously?’. A bureaucratic horoscope.

Yes, I use Zenodo. I use PhilPapers. I will continue to do so. But let’s not pretend all platforms are socially equivalent. Journals still function as credibility engines, not because they magically improve truth, but because they distribute legitimacy. To be excluded on status grounds alone is not a quality filter. It is a caste system with footnotes.

And journals already make participation unnecessarily hostile. Many refuse work that has been publicly shared at all, even in preprint form. Lead times stretch to a year or more. The result is that anyone attempting to contribute to live debates is instructed to sit quietly whilst the conversation moves on without them. In a so-called knowledge economy, this is an astonishing self-own.

What we have, then, is a system that:

  • equates institutional affiliation with epistemic competence,
  • penalises open dissemination,
  • and delays circulation until relevance decays.

All in the name of rigour.

I will keep submitting elsewhere. There are other journals. There always are. But let’s stop pretending this is about protecting standards. It is about preserving a hierarchy that mistakes accreditation for insight and treats independent thought as a contamination risk.

Knowledge does not become true by passing through the right doorway. It merely becomes approved. I’ll not witter on about the bollocks of peer review.

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Proof: Language Insufficiency Hypothesis

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1–2 minutes

It’s finally arrived, and now I have to review it.

I’ve published books before. In fact, this one is number nine – cue the Beatles’ White Album. I was nervous as I released my first fiction as Ridley Park, and I released three more before I released my first nonfiction as myself. But this one means the most to me.

Audio: NotebookLM summary podcast of this content – sort of.

I am well aware that artists tend to say that about each piece of work as it is born into the world, but this one actually started before any of the other ones. About a year ago, it had twice as many pages, and I’ve been whittling it down to 132 pages. At the same time, I am trying to cut the fat, new meat appears, and I have to decide how to treat it. In this social media world, I can instantiate some of it through this lens. At some point, I may publish a second edition. I may even produce a version that incorporates several of my ideas with connective tissue.

My near-term goal is to review this page-by-page for mistakes – misstatements – and to see how it lays out on the page. Obviously, I produce my work on a computer – a PC. I tend to write in Microsoft Word and format in InDesign. I output to PDF, as required by printers. Although I print pages for review, there is still something different about a physical, bound book. I’ve even printed it in a folded booklet style, which gets mostly there, but it’s still deficient.

This is an announcement, not a promotion. I’m not trying to pad out an entry, but I wanted to share. I’ll end here.

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Editing Is Hard and Propensity

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2–3 minutes

Well, not so much hard as not particularly or inherently enjoyable.

I estimate I’ve got about a day left to complete this manuscript – ‘done’ done. When I open InDesign, it shames me – 3 days ago, I last touched this document. It doesn’t feel like 3 days have passed, but time flies.

On the right is an older version. I began reworking it into this new version over the summer, and here I am come autumn. It’s even worse if I use the Chinese calendar. Evidently, 7th November is the first day of winter. They can’t wait until soltace.

Anyway, just a brief update. This isn’t going to edit itself, and I can’t afford to pay an editor for a passion project. Besides – and let’s be honest – I can’t afford an editor in general – or at least can’t cost-justify it – and all my writing is a passion project.

Of course, editors (and cover artists) insist that one would sell more book if only they were edited or professionally rendered. There is an element of truth to this, but I’ve read some gawdawful books that were professionally edited and published through a traditional publisher, because publishers publish.

Me, I operate on razor-thin margins. Most of my publications haven’t even broken even – even if I ignore opportunity costs, which I can’t because I’m an economist. Accountants get to play that trick.

This said, I do hire reviewers, editors, and artists in small doses – homoeopathic as they might be – and I’ve had mixed results.

I’m rambling

Must really be avoiding the editing process…

Recently, I wanted to redesign the cover of one of my Ridley Park fiction books.

Image Comparison: A Tale of Two Propensities

The cover on the left is the original. It is intentionally a minimal 2-D construction – a representation of the first section of the book, the first 15 chapters.

The cover on the right is the update. It is also minimalist, representing the second section of Propensity. I’m not sure how I would depict the third section. If it comes to me, I may render a third version.

There’s a story to this. I reached out to some cover artists and told them I was unhappy with my original design but had no visual ideas. I’d leave this to the artist. It turns out that some artists don’t want full control over the design process. I can understand the hesitation.

They asked for covers that I might like, so I researched some covers and saved them to a Pinterest board.

As it turned out, after some inspiration, I decided to render this one myself, too. Hey, I tried.

What happened to the rest of the time?

OK, so there’s more. I also created a video book trailer in the evening.

It was fun enough. Give it a watch. It also represents part one of Propensity.

OK, this time for real. Let me know what you think…about anything in particular.

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The Prison of Process

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3–4 minutes

This is the proof copy of The Illusion of Light. I reviewed it, approved it, and signalled ‘good to go’. This is being printed and distributed through KDP. I’ve used them before. They’ve been reliable.

EDIT: On the upside, I’ve been notified that the hardback version is available, but it doesn’t appear to be available in France and Canada, two target regions. Hopefully, it becomes available outside of the U.S. soon.

EDIT : J’ai été informé que la version reliée est désormais disponible. Malheureusement, elle ne semble pas encore l’être en France ni au Canada, les deux régions que je visais en priorité. Espérons qu’elle franchira bientôt les frontières du système et sera distribuée ailleurs qu’aux États-Unis.

International marketplaces. It takes 3-5 business days for your hardcover to show as in stock.

Until now.

My approval triggered a workflow. I know workflows. I used to design them. I also know how dumb they can be.

KDP’s process flagged an error: the text on the spine might not be on the spine. ‘Might’. Theoretically. It could be offset, cut off, or printed on a fold. I understand their reasoning – high-speed printers, mechanical variance, and return risk. I also understand statistics, and a single observation doesn’t make a trend. But anyone with eyes can see at least a couple of millimetres of clearance at the top and bottom. This isn’t a case of ‘maybe’. It’s fine.

What fascinates me here is the ritual of compliance. Once a process is codified, it becomes self-justifying. The rule exists; therefore, it must be obeyed. There is no appeal to reason – only to the flowchart.

In the 1980s, when I was an audio engineer recording to two-inch magnetic tape, some of us liked to record hot, pushing the levels just past the recommended limits. You learned to ride the edge, to court distortion without collapse. That’s how I designed the spine text. Within tolerance. With headroom.

The problem is that modern systems don’t tolerate edges. There’s no “override” button for informed judgment. My remediation path is to shrink the type by half a point, resubmit, and pretend the machine was right.

What’s absurd is the timing. The same system that generated the proof approved this layout days ago. An automated OCR scan could have caught this phantom error earlier. Instead, the machine waits until the human signs off, then throws a flag so the process can justify its existence.

KDP is still faster and saner than IngramSpark. But this is capitalism distilled: survival by being marginally less incompetent than your competitor. Optimisation, not in the sense of best possible, but of barely better than worst acceptable.

The lesson, as always, is that processes begin as aids and end as prisons. The workflow, like the Enlightenment, believes itself rational. But the longer it runs, the less it serves the human at the console and the more it worships its own perfection.

Want to talk about meta? This underscores the contents of the book itself. What the Enlightenment once called Reason, modernity now calls Process. Both pretend to neutral objectivity while enshrining obedience as virtue. The bureaucracy of light has become digital – its catechism written in checkboxes, its priests replaced by automated validators. Every workflow promises fairness; each only codifies submission. The real danger isn’t that machines will replace judgment, but that we will stop noticing when they already have.

The Story Continues: Behind the Scenes

Image: Screenshot of Illustrator layout

I’ve reduced the font size on the spine from 14 points to 13.5. It still technically bleeds over a guideline. I hope I am not forced to reduce it to 13. A reason for text on the spine is to make it visible. Hopefully, the black-and-white vertical separation will help in this regard. Fingers crossed.

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Propensity of the Illusion of Light

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1–2 minutes

I just received two proof copies in the post this afternoon.

Propensity

I created a “Book Club Edition” of Propensity, a Ridley Park book of fiction primarily for the European market – specifically in the UK – though it’s available elsewhere. I altered the cover art. As an author, I also wanted to compare KDP and IngramSpark as printers and distributors.

I find the cover texture on this version interesting, but I don’t have a word to describe it. I like it. There’s a certain je ne sais quoi about it – the texture. I reworked the art to track the second section of the book. The original cover tracks the first section.

Image: Propensity by Ridley Park; original book cover

At least in this proof version, the black ink is not 100% and is streaky. The KDP version is 100% K and solid black. I mightn’t have noticed except that some section division pages were mostly black, and it is quite evident. I don’t discern a difference in the quality of the text itself.

Illusion of Light

The Illusion of Light is a cloth version of a book also available in paperback. I like the cloth-bound. There is a nostalgic elegance about it. It feels durable – more so than a paperback for sure. I’m not sure about versus the case laminate versions. They come off like textbooks to me – not the vibe I am aiming for.

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Understanding Generative AI

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Ok. I admit this is an expansive claim, but I write about the limitations on generative artificial intelligence relative to writers. I wrote this after encountering several Reddit responses by writers who totally misunderstand how AI works. They won’t read this, but you might want to.

The AI Isn’t Coming for Your Manuscript, Karen
Click to visit the Ridley Park Blog for this article and podcast
Video: Cybernetic robot assisting a female writer (or stealing her work)

The Indexing Abyss: A Cautionary Tale in Eight Chapters

Posted in art, fiction, philosophy, podcastTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

There, I said it.

I’m almost finished with A Language Insufficiency Hypothesis, the book I’ve been labouring over for what feels like the gestation period of a particularly reluctant elephant. To be clear: the manuscript is done. Written. Edited. Blessed. But there remains one final circle of publishing hell—the index.

Now, if you’re wondering how motivated I am to return to indexing, consider this: I’m writing this blog post instead. If that doesn’t scream avoidance with an airhorn, nothing will.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.

I began indexing over a month ago. I made it through two chapters of eight, then promptly wandered off to write a couple of novellas. As you do. One started as a short story—famous last words—and evolved into a novella. The muse struck again. Another “short story” appeared, and like an unattended sourdough starter, it fermented into a 15,000-word novelette. Apparently, I write short stories the way Americans pour wine: unintentionally generous.

Apparently, I write short stories the way Americans pour wine: unintentionally generous.

With several unpublished manuscripts loitering on my hard drive like unemployed theatre majors, I figured it was time to release one into the wild. So I did. I published the novelette to Kindle, and just today, the paperback proof landed in my postbox like a smug little trophy.

And then, because I’m an unrepentant completionist (or a masochist—jury’s out), I thought: why not release the novella too? I’ve been told novellas and novelettes are unpopular due to “perceived value.” Apparently, people would rather buy a pound of gristle than 200 grams of sirloin. And yet, in the same breath, they claim no one has time for long books anymore. Perhaps these are different tribes of illiterates. I suppose we’ll find out.

Let’s talk logistics. Writing a book is only the beginning—and frankly, it’s the easy part. Fingers to keyboard, ideas to page. Done. I use Word, like most tragically conventional authors. Planning? Minimal. These were short stories, remember? That was the plan.

Next comes layout. Enter Adobe InDesign—because once you’ve seen what Word does to complex layouts, you never go back. Export to PDF, pray to the typographic gods, and move on.

Then there’s the cover. I lean on Illustrator and Photoshop. Photoshop is familiar, like a worn-in shoe; Illustrator is the smug cousin who turns up late but saves the day with scalable vectors. This time, I used Illustrator for the cover—lesson learnt from past pixelation traumas. Hardback to paperback conversion? A breeze when your artwork isn’t made of crayon scribbles and hope.

Covers, in case you’ve never assembled one, are ridiculous. Front. Back. Spine. Optional dust jacket if you’re feeling fancy (I wasn’t). You need titles, subtitles, your name in a legible font, and let’s not forget the barcode, which you will place correctly on the first attempt exactly never.

Unlike my first novel, where I enlisted someone with a proper design eye to handle the cover text, this time I went full minimalist. Think Scandinavian furniture catalogue meets existential despair. Classy.

Think Scandinavian furniture catalogue meets existential despair.

Once the cover and interior are done, it’s time to wrestle with the publishing platforms. Everything is automated these days—provided you follow their arcane formatting commandments, avoid forbidden fonts, and offer up your soul. Submitting each book takes about an hour, not including the time lost choosing a price that balances “undervalued labour” and “won’t scare away cheapskates.”

Want a Kindle version? That’s another workflow entirely, full of tortured formatting, broken line breaks, and wondering why your chapter headings are now in Wingdings. Audiobooks? That’s a whole other circus, with its own animals and ringmasters. Honestly, it’s no wonder authors hire publishers. Or develop drinking problems.

But I’m stubborn. Which brings us full circle.

I’ve now got two books heading for daylight, a few more waiting in the wings, and one bloody non-fiction beast that won’t see release until I finish the damn index. No pseudonym this time. No hiding. Just me, owning my sins and hoping the final product lands somewhere between “insightful” and “mercifully short.”

So yes, life may well be a journey. But indexing is the bit where the satnav breaks, the road floods, and the boot falls off the car. Give me the destination any day. The journey can fuck right off.