Ronald Florence writes:
> The trade publishing houses that publish my books
> (Random House, HarperCollins, St. Martins, etc.)
> commission custom designs for the layout of each
> title. ... I've argued until I'm blue in the face.
I have self-published, and I recommend it. The trade publishers frequently
do a very nice job of editing and typesetting a book. But if you can hire
a good editor and do the typesetting youself, you probably will do just as
well self-publishing. Big publishing houses expect you to promote your own
book, except in rare circumstances. They'll do some work, but not enough.
That means you probably won't get much help selling it. You'll have to do
that yourself. Read Dan Poynter's _The Self-Publishing Manual_ for more. I
like it, because it's a nuts-and-bolts book and Dan's an evangelist for
self-publishing.
I prepared a book in Word (this was before I knew about LyX and LaTeX) and
formatted it for output to Acrobat. My co-authors and I hired a printer to
produce it and we distribute. It's a giveaway for our clients and
potential clients, but apart from lacking a few pieces of info needed to
stock it on bookshelves it is indistinguishable from a professionally
published book -- indistinguishable, of course, except for the subtle
differences a good typesetter will notice. LyX and LaTeX get you 90% of
the way there on typesetting. One of the guys in our computer department
did the cover art in Photoshop, and it looks great.
Printing ourselves was easy and fun. I'm working on another one now, this
time using LyX.
BTW, if you're not caught up in formalities and want a cheat, I've figured
out a way to do the *** for section breaks. Just hit ENTER and insert ERT
(click on the TeX) button and put the
following command in it:
\makebox[\textwidth][c]{* * *}
Then make sure that paragraph is flush left and adjust the paragraph
spacing as needed. E.g., add a bigskip before --
Layout->Paragraph->Vertical Space->bigskip
That won't create a logical section break, but you don't really need one
for a novel becuase the section divided by a *** is not indexed and not
reflected in the headers. Diehards may tell me I'm wrong, but remember
I'm just an author armed with a little knowledge.
If you're interested in more details or advice on self-publishing (what
little I know from having done this once), you can e-mail me on list or
off ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). Frankly, the thought occurred to me to go into the
business myself.
Todd Flaming
