Tuesday 9 December 2008

Contact from Harper Collins

A couple of weeks ago, along with eleven other Authonomy members received an email from Harper Collins. We were asked for permission to amend the short pitch and the author biography, so that HC could use our books as examples of the type of book on Authonomy. Nine of the twelve members have identified themselves, and we are now awaiting the next steps. I cannot speak for the others but I am curious to see how HC use this - I think it is more an publishing industry 'We're conducting this experimental site called Authonomy, and here are some of the things we found'. The way I see it is that anything that gets The Octogenarian Ski-jumper in front of more people who work in the publishing industry, the better.

Friday 28 November 2008

Making use of feedback

About a week ago I got my one hundredth comment on 'The Book of Ages' on the Authonomy site. It was certainly a milestone and I don't think I ever expected to get that many. Many of the comments have been encouraging; some have been critical. the ones that I have valued the most are of the 'constructive criticism' type - ones where there have been suggestions for improvements.
In fact, one of the reasons for being rather inactive on both the Authonomy site and this blog is that I've been restructuring the chapters (both the ones on Authonomy and all the other ages), inserting section headings. along the way this has prompted rewrites of some of the material. I've had some feedback that this is an improvement, which is also valuable.
The next thing I have to work on is a comment which wanted to see more of the humour. It's nice to know that someone recognised the humour in the book - now all I have to do is to bring more of that to bear.

Saturday 18 October 2008

Psychological boost for writers

Writing a book can be great - but sometimes it can be discouraging. Earlier this week I was feeling a bit down, but then wondered what my book would actually look like. Like most authors, I've printed it out as it is in my computer - that is, a Word document printed on A4 paper. But when was the last time you saw a book whose layout was anything like that? So I spent about an hour playing with formatting. These are the steps I took:

  1. I put in pages for the ‘frontmatter’ of a book: a title page with my name on it, copyright page with a fictitious ISBN and that bit about asserting my moral rights as the author of the work, dedication and acknowledgements sections. You can take almost any book you have and check out the sort of thing they have. Notice which page goes where, and in which order: for example, I found that the copyright page is usually the fourth physical page of the book.
  2. I formatted sample chapters with Drop caps, so that the initial letter of the chapter is larger than the others.
  3. I put in a page footer with the title and page numbers. I started the proper numbering from the first page of my book's introduction - notice that most books don't have page numbers at all for the frontmatter pages.
  4. I indented the first line of paragraphs, and changed line spacing to 1.5 (from 1.0).
  5. I changed the page size to A5.
  6. Then I printed it. Two sheets per page works very well if you print to A4. I recommend printing single-sided, with the title page and first page of chapter on the right, and things like the copyright page on the left.

The result of all of this is a printed document which, as you leaf through it, reminds you of a real book as you open each double-page spread. It makes it so much more real, but it only takes about an hour, it isn't difficult to do, and it's great to see how your book will look.

Saturday 4 October 2008

What is Authonomy?

I've been asked this, so here's a quick explanation. Authonomy is a website run by HarperCollins, the publisher. It is free to register, and aspiring authors, or even published
authors, can upload their work and get comments from other visitors to the site.
there is also a facility to 'vote' for the books that you like best.

What makes this different from other sites, where you can meet other authors and discuss your work is that at the end of each calendar month, HarperCollins take the top five titles, and pass them to their Editors. Authors of these books then get feedback from the editors, and might be offered a publishing contract.

More information can be found on the site itself. See www.authonomy.com.

Friday 26 September 2008

Welcome to the Octogenarian Ski-jumper blog

This is my first post (I suppose everyone starts off like that). I've worked on 'The Octogenarian Ski-jumper' for several years, and now it's time to show it off to as many people as possible.

At present, sample chapters of the book can be found on the website http://www.authonomy.com/. I'd recommend this site for anyone who has written (or is writing) a book. You can check out my book at http://www.authonomy.com/ViewBook.aspx?bookid=2243

You can also leave comments on the book on that site.

More later.