Cover Reveal Time

The back cover gives the blurb of what to expect inside. I’m really excited. It’s the best thing I’ve ever written by far! Available very soon.

Nearly there now…

I’m almost ready with novel #2 now. What began as a lively jaunt through the winter of 1973 and the the summer of 1974 soon became a long and drawn out saga. There was also this worldwide phenomena known as ‘lockdowns’ to contend with. Thanks to the internet and my familiarity with my hometown, this wasn’t too much of an issue. I also found that folk who were confined to their homes were happy to chat on line and fill in anything that was missing in the way of historical fact.

When it comes to writing I’m a big fan of employing the Daniel Day Lewis method. That is, go live it and then write about it. Thus it was, that in the summer of 2020 I found myself listening exclusively to Glam Rock and dressing like a grandad who hadn’t had a wardrobe change for 50 years! It was a lot of fun, done mainly in private thanks to the inability to move around a lot. Let me tell you something about 1970s fashions: the materials are not good. Polyester and crinoline cling to your skin, they don’t breathe well and you get very hot and sweaty. Men didn’t really bathe in the 70s, and they didn’t believe in deodorant either. The end result was a decade or more of smelly blokes who hid the stink with aftershave such as Brut (cat pee) or Old Spice (dog pee). Needless to say, I only took my excursion to the 70s so far.

What I hadn’t realised when I began writing was that Glam Rock came to an end in the winter of ’73. Sure there was the odd hit into 1974 but the movement was over, killed by a rise in inflation, civil unrest and unrelenting strikes. The next big musical scene didn’t come along until Punk got serious, and that was 1976. I found that I’d written a book intending it to be about Glam Rock only to discover that Glam had vanished from normal life. It took me 9 months to reach the decision to split my work in two – I’ll write about the mechanics of splitting a book in a separate blog entry – and a further 9 months to rework what I had into some semblance of a story.

The end result is Catch of the Day: 1973.

I’m very pleased with the result, but I know it won’t be for everyone. If you hanker for the 70s having grown up in this era, or you love Glam Rock, or you want to know what it was really like in the UK 50 years ago, then I’m sure you’ll love it. There’s a lot of YA lit that focuses on girls and heroines, with boys being very much out of fashion. This is a book about boys doing boy stuff. It’s in the mold of Just William or other boys’ tales from this era, except it’s set in a fishing town in the gritty North. If you want to know what northern lads got up to, read on. If you’re a soft southern pansy then you’re gonna have to man-up. Boys were in charge back then and girls were second-class, which for me was something I thought worth exploring further, hence the tagline: You can’t have a girl in the gang.

Everything that occurs stems from this idea. What might happen when a lad tries to introduce a girl he likes into a gang of 10-year old boys? Nothing good is the short answer. Throughout the 70s girls were furniture. The first proper girl-in-a-gang that I’ve found is (Maid) Marion, who appeared in Robin of Sherwood, which is early 80s. I rewatched it recently and it’s landmark TV. This Marion is still a lady of the era, but she can use a bow and arrow and her opinion counts. She’s not a silly wench and this is an important development in the arc of the female hero. The female lead in Catch of the Day has to make her own way and take on the boys using wit and guile. You’ll have to read it to discover if she succeeds.

Reading proof are on their way from Amazon. I’m targeting the first week of December for release.

Catch of the Day (Update)

Editing a manuscript is a lot of hard work. In many ways, it’s harder than writing a novel in the first place. It’s the point where you fix all the things that are wrong with the first draft and produce the story you wanted to tell in the first place. I’m now on iteration #3. The story has improved with each telling. Part One – 1973 is now in a very good place. Part Two – 1974 still requires a bit of work.

I once heard Iain Rankin give an interview, where he claimed he didn’t who the villain of the novel was when he was writing the first draft, and only discovered once he reached the end. I know that feeling. All great heroes need an enemy. For the story to work, the enemy has to want the same thing as the hero. Both must remain steadfast in their pursuit of this thing. I thought I knew who the enemy was at the outset, but as I came to know my characters it was obvious that my initial choice of enemy was wrong. He was annoying lad – an idiot even – but he was a little too divorced from the action to be the real baddie of the piece. The real enemy made himself known as the story unfolded, and he wasn’t who I thought he was. This was both confounding and delightful.

Once I knew who the real enemy was and what he’d done to my main character throughout the story, albeit hidden from view, I was able to build all this into the second draft. Every move that the enemy makes is plotted and in the open, but also invisible. By the time that Pogsy, my young hero, gets his first real slap to the face – the enemy’s plans are well under way. The depth of duplicity is both joyous and sickening. Joyous, in that I love it when a plot comes together, and sickening because I hate giving my favourite characters a hard time. It’s necessary though. A character cannot grow if they have it easy. The one thing that has held Pogsy back throughout his young life is a paralysing fear of public speaking. Ultimately, he discovers that the only way he can overcome his enemy is to overcome his worst fears.

With each act of bravery by the hero comes an act of skullduggery by his enemy. It escalates to a point where something really serious is coming and the reader knows there’s no way it can be avoided. The astute reader will work out from the clues what’s coming well before Pogsy, and this makes it even worse. It was gut-wrenching to write, but also very satisfying.

Overall, I’m happy with what I’ve produced. The last few months have been pretty haphazard as far as progress is concerned. The whole thing has taken far longer than I ever imagined. I thought it would by 9 months at most. It’s taken nearer 15. Whilst I enjoy creative writing, it doesn’t pay the bills. Cyber Security does that.

It’s time to go back to work.

To Plot or to Pants?

It’s the great question of our times. When I’m writing my novel should I plot it out to the Nth degree, or just get on with it (fly by the seat of my pants) and see what happens?

When I wrote my first novel I plotted it out to the Nth degree. The main reason I did so was because I hadn’t done anything quite like it before, so I figured I needed as much help as possible. Think of it as akin to being a kid and riding a bike with stabilisers. Something that’s plotted out in detail gives you a very good framework to write to, and you always know exactly where you are. That is, until a character does something you don’t expect. If you’re working with paper-thin characters, then you can just beat them over the head and tell them to get back in the box and do as they’re told. They play second-fiddle to the action. However, I found that once my characters had developed character, they took on a life of their own and started dictating their own terms. Orders to get back in the box no longer worked. The next problem you encounter is having let a character get away with misbehaving once, they won’t stop. Before long, your carefully plotted story-line has gone by the wayside and you’re in uncharted territory. And that’s exactly where I ended up, two-thirds of the way through novel #1. This time, with novel #2, I decided I didn’t need the stabilisers and instead I was going to pants it a lot more.

Pantsing is great fun, but you have to be able to trust yourself to get to the end at the right time, with the characters and story still intact. This time I only knew the rough story in advance. I knew it involved a 10-year old boy trying to figure out what life was all about, and why was it that grown-ups insisted on making simple things complicated. I knew that he didn’t understand girls, but had fallen for the new girl in class. I knew that he had a gang who were going to get in trouble. I knew that his dad was involved in black-market shenanigans, and that this too was going to cause trouble. I knew the dad was a Tory/Republican and the mother was a Labour/Liberal teacher. I knew that the boy was going to be continually presented with two points of view and he was going to have to decide which parent was right without upsetting the other. Finally, I knew that one of the gang was going to become our hero’s sworn enemy and cause him a lot of trouble in the last third of the book, resulting in him getting thrown out of the gang unjustly. The framework I chose for the story was a school year. This gave me some rigidity whilst also allowing flexibility.

By allowing myself a lot of leeway I was able to develop the characters and go with them. By not being so rigid with the plot, the story developed very organically. At the outset, I thought that the gang of kids was going to encounter bigger gangs of kids and have to fight them, in a sort of computer game ‘big boss’ set of scenarios. After the first gang encounter, I realised I’d put quite a lot of work into developing the character of JJ, the rival gang leader. He really was a chaotic and nasty piece of work. Hence my solution was as follows: in the background, he moves between gangs, taking them over, so that when our hero encounters the different gangs he keeps on running up against his old nemesis. This becomes a much scarier proposition than fighting an unknown. To my mind, this is the ideal mix of plotting and pantsing. I was able to allow my characters to develop their own personalities whist ensuring that all the key events happened at the right time. I also had the added flexibility of being able to change who did what to whom. This allowed me to keep the palette of characters to a minimum, which in turn meant more screen time for my favourites.

The key point is enjoy your writing. If you have to plot in order to do that, then plot. If you have to pants it, then pants it. There’s no one-size-fits-all when it come to art. Be the best writer you can. Go and produce the best work you can, using whatever method works best for you.

Catch of the Day

I’m extremely happy to have finally completed the first draft of my second novel ‘Catch of the Day’. The working title was always Pornofish, but I realised fairly early on that this wasn’t going to fly. The main reason for this: porn was not a recognised term in the early 70s! During my research I discovered that pornography in the film sense was referred to in this period as Stag films or Blue movies. The terms hardcore and softcore porn didn’t come into regular usage until much later. I remember my dad having nuddie books and nuddie calendars, which as kids we often called mucky books. In the early 70s, it was Playboy and Penthouse. Later on, once the Danish publishers got going, all sorts of filth started to appear.

As my novel is set between Sept 1973 and August 1974, which in the UK is a school term, the original title had to go. I’m a little miffed about this, although I can see that it might limit sales. Catch of the Day is much more subtle.

What am I writing about this time? In a nutshell, growing up in a northern fishing town in the UK in hard times. In the novel, Pogsy (the protagonist) is aged 10 going on 11, I remember this age as a sweet-spot, when the world of imagination was beginning to fade and the world of realism was taking over. Timewise, Pogsy’s transition into an adult happens to coincide with massive worldwide upheaval. In the summer/fall of ’73 we had the Second Cod War with Iceland, and war in the Middle East, which initiated an oil crisis, which in turn caused the price of petrol to skyrocket. Edward Heath’s government soon came under pressure from the Miner’s Unions who wanted more money, and caused power shortages / blackouts in order to get it. The government response was to declare a three-day working week and petrol rationing. There was a flour shortage and later a sugar shortage. But people got by and made do. Having a sense of humour helped.

For Pogsy, this is a very exciting time to be alive. The reduced working week means less security misters going about their business. With the help of his gang, he’s able to build the greatest den in the history of dens, hidden away in a secret location – until a new kid in class threatens everything he’s built. With no cameras or mobile phones, and a lot of relative freedoms, we get to take part in all of Pogsy’s adventures and confrontations, sharing in his ups and downs, and one of the great mysteries of life: why are grown-ups so stupid? Pogsy discovers that his dad has a side-business dealing in fish, which is the main currency of the town’s underground black market. He notices that with the end of the Cod War, there is less fish to go around. When Great Britain joins the Common Market on 1st January 1974, and all the UK’s inland fishing grounds are opened up to French and Spanish trawlers, the repercussions for the town are catastrophic. Dad is soon forced to find a new currency, which is acceptable to all the traders he has to deal with. Pogsy sets out on a quest to discover what it is.

First draft completed, let the editing begin…

(https://philliplegard.com/catch-of-the-day)

Head Down, Back to Work

It’s been a while since I last wrote anything Ferrety, mainly because I’ve had my head down in the day job keeping the country secure from foreign interference.

I work in cyber-security and at the moment everyone wants people with my skills. It’s nice to be in high demand, but it doesn’t half soak up the bandwidth – leaving me with little free time to write. Sure, I’ve been banging out reports for the last three years but it doesn’t satisfy in the same way that plotting the ins and outs of a story does. Anyway, I’ve reached the point where I’m a bit frazzled and I need to do something different.

Three months of freedom coming up!

The question is – am I going to write the follow up to Ferret, which involves all my favourite things such as computer games, hacking and a loony conspiracy, or am I going to write the novel that the missus has been badgering me to write for the last 20 years?

At the moment the missus is winning, which means Pornofish is winning. What’s a Pornofish I hear you ask? Well, it’s a made-up word. The novel is a story about fish. Specifically black market fish and the hidden fish economy of the town in which I grew up, until all that nonsense came to an end in the mid-1970s thanks to the second and third Cod Wars. There’s some porn in it, but only in passing – which means in terms of priority it should be called ‘Fishporn’… but somehow that doesn’t really work. I’m sure David Attenborough has a ton of the stuff, but what he does in his spare time is his own business. Hence Pornofish wins. Pogsy is the protagonist of the piece. He’s a ten year old boy whose ambition is to become the leader of the gang rather than always be number two. However, the leader of the gang isn’t going to give up his position that easily. So a story of self-discovery and ambition, set against a backdrop of the Cod Wars, the Three Day week, political turmoil, inequality and power cuts.

I’m going to be blogging at www.philliplegard.com rather than here, so pop on over and give me a follow. You can also find me on Facebook.

Saving the Packhorse Inn

Approximately 18 months ago I became involved with a campaign to buy back and restore the only pub in the village in which I live. The role I carved out for myself was running the social media campaign to keep the Packhorse in the news. Although I work in Cyber Security by day, it seemed to me to be a fairly good fit for what I’d been doing in the publishing world – not only did it give me the opportunity to use and hone the skills I learned when pitching and publishing the Ferret Files, I also had the opportunity to expand my circle of contacts within the media. I should add that the project to bring the village pub back to life was a community effort, with many hundreds of ordinary folk pitching in their time and skills for free. Over the course of a year and a half, thousands of people-hours were put into the garden alone. For the strip-out, we filled 25 skips with rubbish. When the call went out for a local stonemason to assist with the reconstruction of a (c)17th fireplace that was discovered behind plaster, an ex-lecturer from Bath University, now living in France, gave up a week of his time to lead the restoration work. From an insider’s point of view it seemed that the wind had our backs, and whenever we needed a specialist the right person with the right skills and attitude came our way at the right time.

The end result is a testament to what can be achieved by a small group of dedicated individuals who refuse to take ‘no’ for an answer and believe that they are capable of succeeding no matter what the odds. At the outset, the neersayers were many; we simply got on with the task in hand and left them in the dust, raising just over £1m in funds, which allowed us to purchase the pub, complete renovations and open debt free. If you want to read more about the project and the history of the pub, which is 400 years old this year, then have a rummage around the website: www.packhorsebath.co.uk. As resident PR bod I wrote most of the content.

The Packhorse Project Team – I’m far left

On the day we opened, it snowed heavily overnight. By 9am a team of 15 shovellers of all ages and sexes had assembled and together we dug out the village. We’d waited six years to reopen the Packhorse and there was no way a little bit of snow was going to call a halt to proceedings! The BBC covered the event and broadcast footage over two nights. More importantly, the story was soon picked up online by the Daily Mail, followed by the Mirror, the Sun and every other UK national. The feelgood story continued trending at number #1 for the Mail Online and was only knocked off the top spot by news of Putin’s reelection later that evening. The next day we featured in every single national newspaper, and over the following week appeared in publictions in South America, China and Germany. Requests for interviews followed and were duly answered. I did my first ever radio interview for BBC local radio. In retrospect it appears that our feel good story was one that the world wanted to hear, and perhaps due to the situtation we find ourselves in globally right now, was in dire need of.

The message that this story contains is pretty simple when you break it down. What appears impossible on your own becomes much easier once you have the right team in place. If you believe in your project and ask the Universe for help when you need it, help will appear. This is how we accrued our stonemason, our lead gardener and our interior designer. Most of all, by committing to take part in a community minded venture and expecting nothing in return, I ended up with a whole load of media experience and an immense feeling of pride in a job well done. Oh, and I now have a pub that serves great food and an unbeatable range of craft beers and real ales within spitting distance of my front door.

That’s what I call a job well done!

Here are the links to the various publications we’ve been featured in. More are being added all the time.

Bath Echo

https://www.bathecho.co.uk/news/business/history-made-1m-community-owned-packhorse-pub-reopens-doors-77611/

The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/18/pub-saved-by-locals-serves-first-pint-after-reopening

Bath Magazine

https://thebathmagazine.co.uk/the-packhorse-re-opens/

Indy100

https://www.indy100.com/article/packhorse-inn-south-stoke-somerset-15th-century-saved-flats-developors-village-1-million-8263326

Yahoo!

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/villagers-raise-1-million-save-15th-century-pub-developers-121534131.html

BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-43456792

https://www.facebook.com/pointswest/videos/1610185569076580/

Ali Vowles radio story https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05yrlrl#play (starts 20:24)

The Observer

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/18/closing-pub-packhorse-reopens-south-stoke-somerset-campaign

The Sun

https://www.google.es/amp/s/www.thesun.co.uk/news/5841953/somerset-south-stoke-village-pub-packhorse-inn-developers-reopen/amp/

Daily Telegraph

https://www.google.es/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/18/people-power-saves-historic-somerset-pub-villagers-raise-1m/amp/

Daily Mail

https://www.google.es/amp/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5515403/amp/Pub-reopens-locals-raise-1MILLION-save-it.html

Daily Mirror

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/hundreds-villagers-raise-1million-save-12210947

MSN

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/video/other/the-village-that-came-together-to-save-its-15th-century-pub-from-a-developer-470-residents-of-somerset-community-chip-in-and-raise-£1million-to-buy-their-beloved-packhorse-inn/vp-BBKnU75

Metro

http://metro.co.uk/2018/03/19/village-pub-saved-locals-raise-1000000-buy-back-developers-7397728/

And again in the Metro

http://metro.co.uk/2018/03/20/dear-oprah-nice-news-stories-thought-like-read-7402419/

Bath Chronicle

https://www.bathchronicle.co.uk/news/bath-news/packhorse-pub-near-bath-reopens-1351699

Bristol Post

https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/historic-pub-packhorse-near-bath-1349449

Good Housekeeping

http://www.goodhousekeeping.co.uk/news/packhorse-inn-somerset-reopened

Unilad

https://www.unilad.co.uk/news/village-raises-1million-to-save-local-pub-from-being-turned-into-flats/

Gizmodo

http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2018/03/villagers-raise-1-million-to-stop-local-pub-becoming-local-flats/

Somerset Live

https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/9-pictures-show-how-beautiful-1355886

Reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/UpliftingNews/comments/85jqqn/people_power_saves_historic_somerset_pub_as/

360 TV

https://360tv.ru/news/tekst/precious-pub/

 

And the international links:

Russia
http://kurjer.info/2018/03/21/save-pub/

Mexico

http://www.eitmedia.mx/index.php/life-style/vida/item/9592-los-vecinos-de-un-pueblo-ingles-salvan-su-pub-tras-recaudar-un-millon-de-euros

France

https://limportant.fr/?k=18+pubs&page=search

https://www.minutenews.fr/positive/packhorse-inn-pub-anglais-sauve-habitants-floriane-19-00-306241.html

Spanish (it’s actually Russia Today!)

https://actualidad.rt.com/viral/266135-residentes-britanica-recaudan-millon-salvar-pub

Czech Republic
https://www.novinky.cz/koktejl/466763-lide-mezi-sebou-vybrali-desitky-milionu-aby-zachranili-mistni-hospodu.html

Bolivia
https://wp.eldeber.com.bo/extra/Salvan-el-bar-del-pueblo-recaudando-mas-de-us-1-millon-20180321-0008.html

Uruguay
http://www.montevideo.com.uy/Tiempo-libre/Vecinos-de-un-pueblo-ingles-hacen-millonaria-vaquita-para-salvar-su-pub-uc678165

Austria
http://www.heute.at/welt/news/story/Dorf-sammelt-1-1-Millionen-Euro-und-rettet-Pub-48343541

Germany
https://www.maennersache.de/dorf-sammelt-mehr-als-eine-million-euro-um-pub-zu-retten-5787.html

China / Chinese language

http://mel.52hrtt.com/web/news_info.do?id=G1521452588918

https://life.tw/?app=view&no=750235

Hungary
https://www.szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu/pub-nagy-britannia-kozosseg-gyujtes/

 

Ferret the Paperback hits the Airwaves

It’s taken me a lot of page wrangling to get there, but finally Ferret is coming out in paperback!

The release date is set at Friday 15th September, available on Amazon.

Purchase Ferret Here

This is the same version as the e-book, with the exception of a single pesky comma that shouldn’t have been there. As a perfectionist, I saw the opportunity to remove it and did so. The biggest issue I had with the e-book was that the illustrations were not inline with the text as I originally envisaged them. To my (uncultured) mind this spoiled the flow of the story somewhat. That’s now fixed. As a bonus there are 7 x vignettes which aren’t in the e-book. They’re not exactly new as they’ve all been extracted from the full page illustrations. Overall, in my opinion, they add to the Ferret feel.

Personally I’m truly delighted with the finished article. It does justice to Richard’s crazy artwork in a way that the e-book didn’t.

Enjoy the read – it’s an awesome adventure!

Phillip Legard

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The Perils of Print-on-Demand

I’ve always loved reading, be it comics or novels and from a young age I could often be found lying in the corner of the lounge, head in the pages of a book. My mum was an English teacher, so Enid Blyton was strictly verboten – as in her work was not allowed in the house.  Everything on the home bookshelf was game, including my dad’s many volumes of very rude Rugby Songs, some of which my brother and I learned and then recited in public, causing much parental embarrassment. My early leaning was always towards science fiction, thanks mainly to Gerry Anderson; as a teen, I moved into fantasy, powered by the discovery of Michael Moorcock, Tolkien and Dungeons & Dragons. Sometime in the mid 70s, I bought the Lord of the Rings as a three volume set, having begun reading it around a friend’s house. It was the first printed book I’d ever held in my hand that totally blew me away. If you search Google for ‘LOTR book cover’ there are hundreds of images to choose from, covering many reprints in many languages. The set that I had was similar to the illustration here – simple, understated, yet profound in its symbology. When I held the book in my hand, moving my finger around the one ring and the Dark Lord’s incantation, it felt as though the novel was possessed by an arcane power.

The second novel I encountered that had a presence was Terry Pratchett’s ‘The Colour of Magic‘ and shortly afterwards ‘The Light Fantastic‘. In both cases, it was Josh Kirby’s artwork that initially hooked me. Pratchett’s writing was fresh and funny, it blew away the cobwebs of traditional fantasy, which had become trapped within its own framework of stale plots and staid characters. As I read both books, I felt as though I was holding a complete package that oozed magical charm. [As an aside, Harry Potter has never done it for me, but I have a couple of friends who had a similar experience with some of the hardback editions to the point where they couldn’t put the books down!]

When I set out to present The Ferret Files, I did so as an independent author with full control over the internal artwork, the contents and the cover. I was intent on creating something that spoke to the reader before the pages were ever turned. Why then, as a massive consumer of paperback and hardback books for most of my life, with a vision to create something truly awesome, did I opt to publish Ferret as an e-book only? That’s a question that’s not only haunted me for the early part of 2017, but it was also the most asked question by my readers. One of the primary drivers for going digital was a fear that the original artwork wouldn’t scale down for print. Richard’s full page drawings are A3, and they’re very detailed. Astonishing, in fact. Hence I shied away from producing a physical print version because I didn’t want to create an inferior product. What I didn’t know when I set out on my journey is that one of the limitations of digital is that images cannot be embedded in with the text. As a result, the e-book didn’t fully realise my dream.

Print-on-Demand

Having worked in IT for most of my life, keeping up with trends as they emerge, I decided it was time to dip my toe in the water and remedy the situation with a Print-on-Demand (PoD) version of Ferret. I mean, how difficult could it possibly be? The question was posed on a Friday afternoon three weeks ago. I now have the answer…

PoD is exactly what the title suggests. An electronic copy of your work is uploaded to a central location and when a customer presses the button to buy, a copy is printed off within the country of purchase and despatched within a few days. I figured this was likely to be expensive, but as it happens I was wrong. As a printing methodology PoD is cost effective up to around 50 copies of a book. After that, traditional print wins the day. I had a quick look around Amazon to see what other authors are doing, and two options became immediately obvious. There’s Amazon’s own offering called CreateSpace and there’s Ingram Spark. As an Amazon subsidiary, I decided that CreateSpace must be pretty good so they made the cut. Ingram Spark, as an independent author platform also ticked all my boxes – the downside being that it costs $$$ to create a title (unless you happen to be a member of the Alliance of Independent Authors, which I am). I came across a third option, a site called Lulu, which I also wanted to explore. A comparison of the three options suggests that Lulu is the more expensive of the trio in terms of the cost to print a book, with CreateSpace and Ingram Spark costing roughly the same. On the plus side, the Lulu site has a lot of help to offer, as well as some very useful and active forums. Most importantly of all, I found and downloaded a free A5 template with instructions (go here: http://www.lulu.com/create/books and click ‘Download Template’). Once you have this piece of the jigsaw puzzle, everything else becomes so much easier. I wish I’d found this link at the beginning, rather than two weeks in.

Lulu allows you to format the book and cover, do some basic checks and then you’re off to the races. It’s very much down to you, with no human checks performed. Ingram Spark inserts a human check at each of the major stages of production, so is a little bit slower. CreateSpace follows the same format. Both of these services aid in preventing mistakes around the formatting of the interior and the cover, which believe me are easy to make.

I’m not going to go into massive detail about everything PoD related, but here are the basics.

The Interior

• The cost of a printed book is determined by the number of pages it contains and the weight of the paper used. If it’s in colour, then it costs more than black and white. The addition of b/w images takes up page space but doesn’t affect the overall cost.
• A page must have margins top & bottom and left & right. There’s also a gutter margin, which is where the spine is located. The Lulu template shows pages side by side, with mirror margin set. This is very useful when determining what a book will look like. The minimum margins all around are 0.25″ (6.33mm), but it’s usual to use 0.5″ (12.66mm). This is what I settled on. The size of the gutter margin is determined by the total number of pages in the book – the more pages, the thicker the spine overall, the larger the gutter.
• It appears that different countries have different standards for retail book sizes, so your template will be determined by where you live in the world. CreateSpace likes a 6″ by 9″ template, which is standard for the USA but also applies to the UK and Europe. Ingram Spark and Lulu also operate in these countries but want me to print using an A5 template (5.9″ by 8.51″). Fortunately, the Lulu template allows the page size to be changed with ease, and the book insides adjust accordingly.
• As a tip, always use a page break to break between pages, and not hard returns – otherwise changing the page size may catch you out. Page Break Odd / Page Break Even proved very useful with the large illustrations.
• The choice of font is down to you. Times New Roman is a favourite, but anything that’s San Serif will do (Lulu lists the standard options). Ideally, the text should be set to 11 or 12 point. The smaller the text, the less pages you’ll have and the cheaper your book will be to produce. However, going down to 10 point will make the finished article very difficult for seniors to read. As an example, A5 format Ferret with 12 point Times New Roman clocks in at 420 pages. Cutting the text size down to 11 point results in a novel that’s 356 pages. The difference in Lulu production costs between the two is £1, or £6.79 vs £7.80 to me. CreateSpace uses a 6″ by 9″ template, which is slightly larger than A5. Here, 12 point Times New Roman produces a book with 356 pages.
• Images can be added onto a page and embedded in the text, but they must be 300dpi. For Ferret I embedded the 9 x vignettes in with the text and then set each of the 4 x large illustration on a page on their own, with a blank side on the rear. The large illustrations have the margins set to 0.25″, which allowed me to scale them as large as possible. A massive tip if you’re using Word: size your images in the drawing package of your choice at 300dpi then import the image without adjusting its size. Any size alterations made within Word will reduce the image quality down to 72dpi.
• All three services require the interior to be in PDF format. Lulu and CreateSpace accept Microsoft Word and will happily do the conversion for you. Ingram Spark requires a PDF. However, as I soon discovered, not all PDF convertors are created equal. I messed about for a couple of days experimenting with Lulu and finally concluded that the optimum results with embedded images are obtained by using the Word ‘Save As’ function, and selecting PDF. The fonts must be embedded in the document, which is an ISO save option. Allowing Lulu to do the conversion results in the large single page illustrations being rendered unviewable.
• Finally, as part of the distribution data you’ll need an ISBN number. You can obtain one yourself which costs $$$, or allow Lulu / CreateSpace to allocate one for you. The disadvantage of a free ISBN is that it is not transferable between services, so I’d recommend purchasing your own. If you’re also going to create an ebook, you’ll need a separate ISBN, as the number is media specific. In the UK, it’s cheaper to buy a pack of 10 ISBNs than to purchase just 2. Whichever option you choose, the ISBN must appear on the inside cover, on the copyright page.

The Cover

• All three services have the capability to create covers for you. As I already have some rather nifty artwork for the front cover, I opted to upload it. I messed about for a couple of days trying various settings – initially I tried to upload just the front cover and use Lulu’s inbuilt templates for the back cover and spine, but matching the colours proved to be impossible. In the end I had to download an evaluation copy of Adobe PhotoShop and edit together a full wraparound cover. The end result is very pleasing, but if maths makes your brain hurt I suggest you either: a) get someone else to do it for you; or b) use the auto-build templates as provided. The CreateSpace and Ingram Spark editors looks very snazzy, but I didn’t go there on the grounds that I’d already taken the decision to make a full A5 jacket.
• If you’re using your own artwork for the cover, it needs to be slightly larger than the printed page by 3.3mm per side (this is called the bleed and will be cut off in the manufacturing process). The full wraparound cover for Lulu’s A5 (148mm wide by 210mm high) version of Ferret is (151.3mm + spine + 151.3mm) by 216.6mm. The width of the spine is based on the number of pages the completed work contains, so cannot be accurately calculated until the page count is known. For Ferret this works out at 20.4mm. The size for Ingram Spark is identical.
• The spine is intended to bend where the covers meet, so has an area each side of the fold that should not be printed on. A gap of 0.0625″ (0.15875mm) either side of the spine must be left blank. This caught me out with CreateSpace, who flagged up the Ferret logo as being too large. As I was unaware of this potential issue until it was brought up, I’m pretty sure that the proof copy I ordered from Lulu is going to be wrong (update – it’s arrived and it’s out by about 0.5mm, which I can live with – yippee!).
• If you intend your work to be available to resellers, then it requires a barcode on the back cover, which contains the ISBN number. CreateSpace and Ingram Spark will helpfully add this for you when you upload the artwork or use their cover creator. With Lulu and a full wraparound cover, you have to follow the links to create a barcode which must then be cut & pasted onto the back cover.

Once the uploads are completed, all that remains is to order a proof copy of your work and wait for it to arrive. Mine turned up yesterday and there are a couple of small amendments that need to be made (my name is ever-so-slightly wonky on the spine and I discovered a missing ‘“‘ in one of the later chapters), but otherwise we’re good to go. All in all, my experience of PoD has been really good if somewhat drawn out, but then I enjoy learning new things so it’s not a hardship. Plus I have a genuine enthusiasm for creating printed works, so the roadblocks thrown up in front of me were only ever going to be driven over. I’m really pleased with the results and unless an earthquake strikes Ferret will be out as a POD novel by the end of August.

If you have a project that’s underway and you need any encouragement I’m happy to hear from you…

Purchase Ferret here

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Exciting Times…

One of many items on my agenda for this year is to produce a print-on-demand copy of Ferret. I used a third party company to assemble the e-book, mainly because my head was full of other things at the time and I didn’t have the space to learn yet another way to format text. With hindsight, I wish I’d explored all of the options available and done it myself, because one of the things I’ve always found exciting is holding a finished, quality document in my hand, even if it is virtual. We are where we are, as the saying goes.

For the record, I have no issues with the quality of the e-book; I do, however, have a few issues with the format, the biggest of which is the (non) placement of graphics inline with the text.  I’ll cover the whole print-on-demand experience in a follow-up article, as I learned a lot of tricks that I’d like to pass on.

For now, here’s a preview of the finished cover:

I have a proof copy winging its way through the ether. Hopefully everything will be just fine and I’ll be able to make Ferret available in printed form within the next few weeks. I’m really excited to see the finished article as the e-book didn’t do justice to the artwork. Fingers crossed that those big pictures aren’t one messy splodge!

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