City of Brotherly Death
takes on New Life
Some time
ago, the Blood Moons and Nightscapes book
Tom and I collaborated on had run its contract. So I had in mind to publish my
share of the stories through the Night to Dawn imprint. Steel Rose and its sequel, Blood
Moon Rising, have been my major focus these last several months, and an
editor is reviewing Steel Rose now.
So when I started putting together my anthology, I saw it as a quick stop-off
between my magazine and my works in progress. Then I started going through the
stories that were published by The Masque
Noir, The Vampire’s Crypt, and the Fading
Shadows magazines. I want to take this time to thank Margaret L. Carter, Ginger Johnson, and Rod Marsden for giving these stories a home.
I had fun
playing with these tales, tweaking them, and in some cases, coming up with new spins
on them. Particularly “Garden of Souls” and “One Last Favor.” All of them take
place in Philadelphia, my home town. I spent several months trying out
different titles without success. Then I got to thinking, since we have a lot
of revenants and zombies, William Penn’s beloved Philadelphia has become a city
of brotherly death. Hence my title.
So what
did self-publishing mean for me? It meant I didn’t have to rely on a
publisher’s timetable or their choice for a cover or editor. It also meant
responsibility. I had to handle my own distribution, buy the ISBN’s, and handle
my own formatting, editing, cover, and marketing. If you don’t have the skills
to do those things, then you hire a team to handle the jobs. I was ahead in the
ballgame because I’ve been publishing books for other people.
Dreamstime
and Getty Images have great looking cover images for a reasonable price.
Designing a cover isn’t my strongest suit, though, and those companies couldn’t
help me with that. You have to pick the right size font and color for your title
to stand out and look good. NTD illustrator Teresa Tunaley does just that. She
took over titling the covers that she illustrated for the NTD books. Lulu and
CreateSpace are user-friendly sites for self-publishing, and they have illustrators
who can do covers, too.
If you
format the interior yourself and work with Lulu or CreateSpace, find out their
requirements before you begin. I found this out the hard way with the NTD
books. For a 6 by 9 inch trade paperback, for example, your front and back
cover dimensions should be about 6.125 by 9.25 inches. Not more, and not less. All
print and images should be ½ inch away from the border to avoid getting cut off
during manufacturing of the book. Your chapter headers should be about 1/3 way
down the page. More important, your headers should be at a consistent level in
all chapters. It is best to stick with Garamond or Times New Roman fonts.
I’ve been
doing the formatting for the NTD books, including City of Brotherly Death. What helped me was looking at some of the
trade paperbacks in a bookstore to get ideas on setting up title page and
chapter headers. Each time I begin a new chapter, I count spaces from the top
of the page. If you’re new at formatting, Word software can prove a formidable
foe. If formatting makes you nervous, Lulu and CreateSpace have people who can
format the book for you for a fee.
Your first
page should be the title page – Title, author, and the name of your book
company. To look professional, you should treat your writing like a business
and that means creating your own publishing company. The next page will have your masthead: your
editor, ISBN, illustrator, contact, and copyright information. This is the spot
where you mention “Any resemblance to actual events or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental, etc.”
I would
never self-publish any work without consulting an editor because no writer can
see their own mistakes. So a good editor is a wise investment. Alas, so many
self-published books turn out badly because of multiple typos and lack of
content editing. If money is a constraint, a lot of editors will find a way to
work with you. Belonging to a writer’s group will help. Perhaps someone there can
refer you to a reputable editor.
One thing
does concern me. If William Penn gets a whiff of the tales I’ve been spinning
about his beloved Philadelphia, he might come and haunt me.
