Randall Floyd

Official Author Website

self-publishing

All about blurbs – Part 1

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My grandfather used to say …

Good things come in threes.
I don’t know if it’s true, but I like the sound of it. And, if you think about it, some good things do come in threes.
The triple crown.
A turkey (in bowling).
The deathly hallows.
All kinds of stuff. And, when it comes to writing your blurbs, it’s no different. All you need to do is break it down into three things. And, fair warning here, you may have heard this before.
Your blurbs need to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Don’t roll your eyes just yet. First, let me try and tell you what I mean. When you take a 30,000-foot view of your book blurb, you want to see something that looks like a playground slide. If you don’t see where I’m going with this, don’t worry, I don’t either.
That slide – your blurb – has one purpose.
It needs to take your potential readers from clicking on your book thumbnail to pushing that purchase button. That’s it. I can’t break it down any further than that.
Slides function in a pretty simple way: you climb up the ladder, you sit down, and then you let gravity do the work. It’s not any different when we’re looking at your book blurb. But, in order to get it to work right, you have to build it properly.
You don’t want to put the steps on the slide, or you’re going to be in for a bumpy, painful ride. If you don’t believe me, just ask my 7-year-old. He was sore for a couple of days after that one … Somebody really should fire the guy that designed that slide. Your blurb isn’t any different.
You’re still designing it for somebody to take a ride on.
It’s just a different kind of ride.
But, before I get into that, we need to chat a little bit about why you need to learn how to write a blurb, and what it will do for the rest of your writing.
That is going to be in the next post.
Until then, good luck selling those books!

How to protect your book without filing for a copyright

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A few years ago, an independently published author received a strange letter – from someone she’d never met before. It was strange for a couple of reasons, both of them obvious as soon as she read the letter.

Strange thing number 1: Someone she’d never met sent her the letter.

We all get letters in the mail from people and entities we’ve never met. That’s the nature of the world we live in. However, this letter was different. It was a very personal letter that went over things not very many people could have known.

Things about the books she’d published.

The existence of the letter was creepy enough. But the tone was even worse. Whoever had sent the letter went above-and-beyond to make sure this author felt like trash – felt like she was worth absolutely nothing.

And that is strange thing number 2.

Strange thing number 2: The letter said that this author was in violation of copyright law and that she needed to immediately pull her books from the market, or face legal ramifications.

The author of the letter made some pretty serious claims, but the big takeaway for this unfortunate author was this: somebody was claiming ownership of her stories.

The only issue was, this author was undisputedly the sole-owner of the book series and the sole owner of the idea. She’d penned the idea many years before. So, the idea that somebody else could come in and claim that the books were copied was completely ludicrous. Something had to be done, and fortunately, this author had the pockets to take care of the problem.

How copyright law works … generally

It might help if I break down the word itself – “copy” and “right.” Copy is generally thought of as the written word. Right is someone’s ownership. Keep in mind these are generalizations. We could go on for hours about what the words mean.

Putting them together, copyright literally means ownership of the written word.

More specifically, your written words.

This country was founded on the idea that people are entitled to the fruits of their labor. So, when it comes to copyright, at least in America, it has always been known that whoever writes something owns that thing.

There are obvious exceptions, like when a writer sells her rights to a written work or signs a contract giving rights to someone else.

But, generally, you own the rights to what you’ve written as soon as you write it.

It’s that simple. 

In order to get the rights afforded to you by American copyright law, all you need to do is write something down and it’s yours – by law.

So why would you register your book with the US Copyright Office?

Here’s the deal, and you’d be surprised how often this happens. Your work is only protected from the date you wrote it. So, if someone else can prove that they wrote the same thing you did, only they did it before you, then you’re out of luck.

And this is exactly what the woman at the beginning of this post ran into.

The big claim is that the other person was claiming that this author wrote her stuff later (though like I said, she ended up keeping the rights to her work).

It can be a real big pain in your side.

So, in order to keep everything straight, and you want an extra layer of protection, register your book. What registration does is put your ownership of the book in question out there for EVERYONE to see.

It also acts like a timestamp. Here’s an example.

Let’s say I wrote a book in 1986 and published it myself (not the best way to do things back then, I know). Then, in 1994, I registered the book with the US Copyright Office.

Much to my surprise, I received a cease and desist letter in 1998 from a mysterious author, claiming to have written the same story, only with a slightly different title, way back in 1985. However, he never registered the book with the US Copyright Office.

Since I registered my book in 1994, four years before the nasty letter came in the mail, if this goes to Court, I would win the case.

Phew!

So, while it’s easy to get your work copyright protection, since it happens as soon as you begin writing – it’s even better, and safer, to register it with the copyright office.

If you liked this post, let me know what you liked the most!

Also, if you’re interested in learning about all the legal stuff you need to know when self-publishing your books, sign up for this free email course. It will show you what things you need to know, and even give you instructions on how to do some of them yourself.

How to format your print book for ANY PUBLISHER in less than 10 minutes

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Formatting a book for the first time, especially to the uninitiated, can be a real pain. But, honestly, it's not that hard, once you do it a time or two. Not only that, you can do it in less than an hour. Actually, you can do it in less than 10 minutes - all you need is a little direction. So, here are the steps for formatting your book, so pay close attention!

1. Set the page size

Go to the "layout" tab, then click on "margins". Scroll down to the bottom of the dropdown list and click on "Custom Margins." There are three tabs on the top - Margins, Paper, and Layout. Click on the "Paper" tab.

At the top of the window, you'll see a heading marked "paper size." Where it says width, highlight the number and type in the width of your book (i.e 6). Where it says height, highlight the number and type in the height of your book (i.e. 9). You just need to make sure that you know what our book size it before you can type anything in. The common sizes are 6x9, 5x8, or 5.25x8. I like 5.25x8 the most, as it gives you a slightly thicker book and more room for your book cover.

Now we can move on to the next step

2. Set the margins

While still in the "Page Setup" window, click on the "margins" tab. Under the "margins" header, you should see a bunch of dropdown boxes next to the words top, bottom, left, right, gutter, and gutter position. Right now, just stick with the top bottom, left, right, and input these numbers"

Top: 0.5

Bottom: 0.5

Left: 0.75

Right: 0.5

Leave the gutter and gutter position boxes alone. Now, look down the window a little bit - down to the "Pages" header. The next line says "Multiple Pages" and has a dropdown box. It says normal right now, but you'll want to change it. To do that, click on the box and choose "mirror margins."

When you do this, you'll notice a couple of things: (1) the left and right boxes up above now read "inside" and "outside"; and (2) you can no longer choose the gutter position. Don't worry, this is supposed to happen.

3. Set the gutter

The gutter indicates how far over from the binding of the book you want your words to appear on the inside edge of the page. I'm not 100% sure why Microsoft word has both the inside setting and the gutter setting since it's just easier to account for the gutter with the inside measurement. However, this is the theory behind the gutter:

When you have a print book and you open it, you're going to want to make sure the words and the page are far enough over that they don't slide down towards the book's binding and become impossible to read. To make sure the words are still centered on the page, you generally want to account for a quarter of an inch in the gutter. If you were to do this with Word, you would go to the inside measurement and make it the same as the outside measurement. Then, on the gutter measurement, you would put 0.25. However, this is exactly the same as putting the gutter at 0 and the inside measurement at .75. So, you can do it however you want, but the two methods are EXACTLY the same.

Now it's time to prep your document to add a table of contents.

4. Mark all your headings with h1 tags

You need to do this in order to set up your table of contents later. It's very simple. All you need to do is select your first chapter heading and then click on the "Home" tab at the top of your screen. Go to the right of the header to where you see the styles section. Here you'll see a bunch of text that says AaBbCc....

Select the one that says "Heading 1" beneath it. Do this to all of your chapter headings and then you're ready to build your table of contents.

5. Set up your table of contents

Create a blank page after your dedication page. You can do this by putting the cursor after the last word on your dedication page, and simply hitting "control" + "enter" at the same time. This will create a page break. Now, at the top of the screen, click on the "References" tab

Then click on the Table of Contents button, and follow that up by clicking the first option. Now you're ready to go. Your table of contents is up and you don't have to do much else. Just check the table to make sure all of your chapters appeared there. If you, you are going to have to go back to the chapter headings that are not on the table and mark them as h1 again. If you can't remember how to do that, just go back up to step 4.

6. Set up your page numbers

This can be the most confusing part of formatting your books. The reason is that unless you know exactly what you're doing, you won't be able to have the entire book numbered correctly, but still have some pages that don't show numbers. So, here is what you do.

First, you need to find the first page you want your page numbers to actually appear on. I generally choose the page after the table of contents to by this page. The first thing you need to do is put the cursor at the bottom of the table of contents. To do this, simply click after the last number of the last entry. Then the down button.

This will put the cursor at the bottom of the page. Now, with the cursor there, click the layout tab. In the first section, on the right, you'll see a small dropdown labeled "Breaks." Click on that. Then scroll down to the "section breaks" section and click on "next page."

Once you do that, your cursor will now be at the top of the next page.

Now click on the "Insert" tab. Go to the right of the top section until you see the footer icon. Click on the footer and then scroll down the list until you see "edit footer" and click on it. Go up to the top of the page and click "design". It should be a blue link. Look to the left of the page, near the top. You'll see the words "link to previous." This box is automatically selected. Push the button to unselect it. Now we can add the page numbers.

At the top of the screen, you'll see three icons. Click on the "page number" icon. Then click on "bottom of page" and then choose one of the "plain number" options. I would recommend the one with the number centered. Now, click once more on the page numbers Icon at the top of the page and then choose the "Format Page Numbers" option.

At the bottom of the formatting window, choose the continue from a previous section and then hit "ok." Now, click on the page number on the previous page and delete it. This will delete all of the page numbers in the first section, but leave the page numbers on the rest in the rest of the book.

7. Zoom out and make sure your pages are on the proper side of the paper

There are two ways to zoom out. You can either click on the - button at the bottom right of your page until you can see 4 pages on each line, or you can hit control and then scroll down on the mouse. Then, you want to take a look at your pages. If you look closely - because you clicked the mirrored option when you were setting up your margins - the margins on your document mirror each other. Every other page.

The pages that have the larger margin on the left are the pages on the right side and the opposite is true for the other side.

Now you need to grab a book and take a look at it. Locate the title page, the copyright page, the dedication page, the table of contents, and the page of the first chapter or introduction. Take a look at what page they start on, and then take note of what side of the book these pages are.

Now, line up your document to match the book.

If a section is not on the proper side, simply go to the top of that page and put the cursor in front of the first word and then hit "control" + "enter" at the same time. Do this whenever a specific page is not on the side of the book you want it to be.

The last thing you want to do before you export the document is to go up to the table of contents. Click on the title of the table of contents. When you do this a box will magically appear above where you clicked. On the right side it says "update table." Click this and then choose the "update page numbers only" option. Then hit ok. This will update all of your pages.

Now you can format the look of the chapter headings, table of contents, title page, and even the text body, however you want.

8. Export it as a .pdf

Once you're done formatting the text, click on the file tab at the top of your screen. Then click "save as." On the left side of the screen, you will see a "Browse" button. Click on this and then locate the folder or directory you want to save your book in. Then, on the bottom of the screen, you'll see 2 long, white boxes.

The first box you can name your file. Go ahead and name your file. The second box allows you to choose the type of file you want to save as Click on this box and choose PDF. Then click save. Now, click "save as" one more time. This time, save your document in the same folder, but as a word document.

9. Send it off!

Now you're ready to send it off to your publisher - it could be Amazon, IngramSpark, BookBaby, or even Lulu Press. Hopefully, this helps get rid of any worries you might have.

If not, click here to sign up for my free email course that goes through each of these steps in a series of text and video lessons.