Back in the saddle

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I was able to get back to work on the Trang layout today. I've been poking along at a rate of about three chapters a day, but today I managed to get five done (mainly by having fewer interruptions). That means 11 of 19 chapters are down, which gives me hope that this will be ready to be uploaded by the end of the weekend, despite some other busyness scheduled for later this week.

I spent the last two days at jury duty, which is a totally pointless activity if you have ever done any writing on law-enforcement issues, because they will never, ever seat you. I used the time to read about half of Publish This Book! which is a memoir about a guy trying to get that very book published. If you think that is incredibly clever, the author will heartily agree with you; if you think that sounds pretty weak, the author will pretend to agree with you as a means of deflecting criticism. Let's just say that I'm putting it aside for a while to read some sci-fi that I might include on my Listmania! list. (Really, honestly, and for true, if you are 24 years old, you have no business writing a memoir. It's not that you aren't a good writer--you can write about your childhood in quite an affecting manner--it's because you don't really have a strong sense of identity yet, and everything about your current life comes across as "LOVE ME! I'M COOL!")

A much stronger book in the PUBLISHING--AGGGHH!! genre (which, if current trends continue, may soon be the only genre produced by large, commercial houses) is the novel How I Became a Famous Novelist. It is genuinely hysterical. If looking for a publisher is driving you crazy or bumming you out, and you need to figure out a way to laugh at your situation, that's a good one to read.

I'm going to cry now

in

Real life is beginning to rear its ugly head, but today I figured I could finalize the layout of a chapter quick before I went to bed. So, I noodled around with everything to make sure all the bottoms of the page spreads were even, and then I went to combine it with the earlier chapters.

And that's when I realized that I gained a page earlier, and didn't repaginate all the chapters. So everything's lined up with the text on the other side of the page, instead of across the spread.

Ai-yi-yi. It's not only that I have to do the pages again, but I have to undo everything I did. I'm repaginating now.

On a lighter note

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This article pointed out that you can use the Listmania! feature on Amazon to let readers know what other books your book is like. So I made this list.

And clearly, given the kind of book it is, Trang needs wacky people and aliens on the cover. Sigh. This is where my lack of artistic ability and the limits of POD publishing really chafe me. It needs to be a fat little paperback with wacky cover art! Oh well.

Oh, and I figured out how to determine if "invisible" text will remain invisible: I have put little white bullets in a place where they will look purposeful and decorative if they do in fact print. Since I'm going to have to (sob) lay the book out again anyway, and the invisible text does look a tiny bit better, I think it's worth it to see if it works.

This is depressing on many levels

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The Writer Beware page on print-on-demand publishing links to here to a woman's account of trying--and failing--to use POD publishing "to achieve my true goals: getting an agent and getting a real publisher."

It's depressing, yet I suppose instructive, on multiple levels. For starters, it might as well be titled "Ingram Distribution Brutally Crushes Life Out of Promising New Writer." If you're wondering how committed the publishing industry is to fostering the world of letters, well, there's your answer for you. (The instructive bit is, yes, pay attention to distribution.)

The most minor depressing bit is that she thinks shiny paper is high-class. Oh, honey, no.

But the larger picture, which is also depressing, is that she's not understanding what she's doing wrong from a commercial point of view: It's not engaging in POD publishing; it's writing nonfiction books about folklore in the first place. There's often this belief that small presses and academic presses are kind of like farm teams, and that large commercial houses are the major leagues--you start out on the farm team, and then you work your way up. That's not true. Some (actually, most) books simply don't have enough commercial potential to be of interest to a big house--and again, it's mostly about genre, not the quality of the work. If her werewolf book, which sold 1,000 copies, had been picked up by a small or academic press and rescued from Ingram's dedicated efforts to KILL ALL POD BOOKS, it might have sold 5,000 copies, or even 10,000 copies. And she still in all likelihood wouldn't have an agent or a contract with a major publishing house.

If your goal, really and truly, is to break into commercial publishing, you have to write commercial books. Romance. Cookbooks. Mystery thrillers that slavishly copy Dan Brown. Please, I know more freaking romance writers--and many of them have comically little interest in the genre, it's just the easy way to get published. Being POD is irrelevant--one of the big self-publishing success stories is What Color Is Your Parachute? but the important thing to remember about that book is not that it was self-published but that it's a career guide, which is a very, very commercial kind of book. If, like me, you're just not willing to do that--your passion is folklore, or poetry, or cheesy sci-fi novels with a wimpy hero, lots of cussing, building action, and opportunistic homosexuality--then you need to acknowledge that about yourself and stop trying to figure out what you're doing "wrong."

But you can blame Ingram some. Seriously. What assholes.

ETA: I finally got over my depression enough to read the link to Jeremy Robinson's story, which was far less of a bummer. Robinson did eventually get an agent and a traditional publisher, but at the time of the interview, he had only the agent. It's interesting because Robinson's expectations are just so much more realistic (he's got a lot more experience in the industry). Unlike Jamie Hall, he fundamentally understands that his book is a tough sell: He's not expecting to hit the 10K mark in sales, he's shocked that it has sold as well as it has, and even with an agent, he's not taking it for granted that he'll find a U.S. publisher. I think that if his book had sold only 1,000 copies, he wouldn't be pulling it off the market entirely (because THAT will help sales) and deciding that it's all POD publishing's fault.

He's also a lot less whiny about doing layouts than I am.

You just gotta use what you have

in

So, I'm trying to finalize the layout here, and I've run into an interesting little dilemma. I'm using Word and Acrobat, but I don't have a proper page-layout program (Quark XPress, which is what we used to work with at my first publishing job, is $800--yoikes), and at this point I'm running into the limitations of the software I do have.

The main issue is that you can't just force a line of text onto the next page in Word. This was a feature of Quark I am missing right now--with that software, you can just say, "Go down, line!" and the line will dutifully move down. With Word, you can put in a text break, or you can put in a paragraph break, but line breaks are more elusive.

So my first thought was, I'll add in a bunch of nonsense text, and then I'll make it white. Voila! The nonsense text is invisible against the white background of Word and Acrobat, and the line is where I want it.

But then those dim memories of people in the art department weeping and wailing started to come back to me. See, the issue is, something can be invisible when you print it out, but NOT be invisible when the printer prints it out. Our managing editor doled out any number of savage beatings because "invisible" text was read by the printer's software, duly transformed into black text, and printed!

We segue to a quick publishing joke:
Q. How many managing editors does it take to change a light bulb?
A. You were supposed to have that light bulb changed last week!

Segue over! So, obviously, I was hoping for an alternative. I think I've hit on one--I am putting in a paragraph break, and then kerning out the last line before the break so that it spreads all the way across the page. It's not perfect--the line is a fragment of a letter too short--but I think it's close enough that if you're not looking for it, you won't notice it.

I mean, I guess I could risk an "invisible" text fiasco--I plan to see a copy of the finished book before I make it generally available in any case. But I think this fix is good enough, and it doesn't bring back memories of whips cracking and designers cowering in terror in a corner.

(OK, fine--the managing editor did not actually beat people. In boring reality, I liked her and had a tremendous amount of respect for her. But she was pretty tough.)

Oh, and if you're wondering why I'm pushing all these lines of text to the next page, take a book off the shelf and open it. Assuming there's no weird art and you're not at the end of a chapter, the blocks of text on the facing pages should both be the same length. If not, that managing editor has a weak arm!

Hmmm

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You know, the problem with me is that I am inquisitive. That served me well when I was a reporter, but it means that there are times when I don't leave well enough alone.

In other words, I've been doing some research into shrinking the margins of Trang. It turns out that if I did that, it would knock about 100 pages off the length of the book. That might be a good idea from a marketing perspective--if I'm on the fence about a book, I'm more likely to pick it up if it's shorter, because then if it's crap, it at least won't take that long to read. It would also bring down the cost of the book so that I could distribute it through some of the more-expensive channels (like making it available to libraries) without having to price it above $16.

So--argh. I really don't want to lay it out again right now, but I think the logic here is overwhelming. I'll put it up for $16, wait a little bit, and then (whimper) lay it out again and make it available through all the distribution channels.

A good rule for writers

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I'm just about done inputting the layout corrections. But you know that continuity error I thought I found yesterday? Well, it wasn't--I was just confused about how a piece of technology was supposed to work.

A really good rule of thumb to follow as a writer is, If you're feeling a certain way, then your reader is feeling A CERTAIN WAY. So, for example, if you're feeling bored writing about something, then for God's sake, stop and rethink, because your reader is going to die of ennui if they are forced to read another word. And if you're confused about a technology that you invented...well, really, why do you want to put your reader through so much pain?

So I don't look at the above situation and say, Silly me! If only I had read more carefully, I would have realized that this is how the technology works! Instead, I go on in there and add another sentence or two to make clear that, yes, this is how the technology works, don't be surprised when it works this way ten pages later.

It's probably an irrational belief I have, but I do think on a certain level that we all kind of know everything. At least whenever I write or edit, if something nags at me--however vaguely or subtly--and I ignore it, invariably someone else will point that exact thing out as a problem. So I've learned to really tune into that--those are problems to be solved, not the vapors to be ignored.

Getting toward the end here

in

I proofed and inputted changes to five more chapters, and then proofed the rest of the layout. I'll input tomorrow--inputting changes is really tedious. Still, I can see that I got more adept at layout as the book went along, because there are far fewer art issues in the later chapters than in the earlier ones (and I don't think that's just fatigue speaking).

But I did find a continuity error in the last chapter! Oopsie! Well, that will be corrected soon enough. It is, however, an argument in favor of not putting up the e-books until after I finish laying out the print-on-demand version--you do just reach a point where you're so familiar with the material that you glide right over mistakes, but after it's laid out I think it looks different enough that it give you fresh eyes.

Of course, it's never going to be perfect. At my first job in publishing, manuscripts were proofread three times after editing, with a grand total of four people involved in each proofing. Then the layouts were proofread twice, and then after the book went to the printer, we got another set of proofs from them, which were read over. And there were STILL errors in the finished books!

Paper: Not free

in

I proofed five chapters of layout today, and then I just hit the wall--I've been pushing pretty hard lately, I guess. You kind of have to be a wimp about proofreading, because if you get tired of it you either don't notice errors, or you notice them but don't feel like doing anything about it. Both are very bad. In general, I'm not finding big errors in the text, just things like "lead" for "led," and some of the art problems I'm finding just aren't fixable, or the fixes look worse than the problem. That's actually good--that means I managed to fix most of the easy stuff in the first go-round. I'm going to save up all the text fixes and replace the e-book texts and jacket art all in one fell swoop, and then I am putting Trang behind me!

It's a long book! It's 550 pages all laid out. When I saw that, I realized that I could shrink the margins, but then I'd have to lay the whole thing out again, and if I have to do that, I'm going to shoot myself. So, it's just something for me to remember for the next book--go with the 3/4-inch margins, not the 1-inchers. It's going to be a 8 x 5 1/4-inch paperback, which means it's a trade paperback. Amazon's print-on-demand service doesn't let you make dinky pocket paperbacks, which I think is kind of a pity because that's really what I associate with sci-fi--fat little books you can cram into your jacket pocket. Trade paperbacks are more for Serious Literature--Viking Press titles in somber eggplant or olive hues, that kind of thing.

Knowing how long the book is brought me to the exciting quandary of pricing. Expensive paperback annoy me, even though that's pretty much the norm nowadays with trade paperbacks. But it turns out that my notion the book would retail for $12 is way off, so I pulled that estimate off my Web page. The way they set things up, you have to make it fairly expensive unless you want to actually lose money on each book. There's no $2 royalty on a $3 e-book; if I wanted to get a $2 royalty on a physical book selling on Amazon, I'd have to price it between $24 and $25! I think that's ridiculous, really--I'd be embarrassed to ask my friends to pay that much. There's a service you can sign up for that costs $40 but brings down the price of the book considerably, and I think I'm going to do it (even though it is kind of annoying to pay extra) just so the book isn't prohibitively costly.

Agents

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Since I'm writing about traditional publishing paths (and not doing my layout--bad! bad!), I thought I would touch on the subject of agents. I have had three, and obviously, I have not been published, so you might expect me to be all angry and bitter about them. And there have been ups and downs--my brother once offered to beat up one of them for me, which is certainly the first time he's ever done that. But honestly, I really appreciate the agents I've worked with--they gave me a tremendous amount of support and intelligent feedback, they gave me copious quantities of their time and expertise, and they genuinely shaped my nonfiction project.

And none them ever saw a dime for it. I can point you to Writer Beware's section on agents and to Absolute Write's Bewares, Recommendations, and Background Checks thread, and I can tell you to check agents out on Preditors & Editors, but the basic rule of thumb in sorting reputable agents from the other kind is: They don't get paid until you get paid. Up-front fees = SCAM!! SCAM!! SCAM!!

Real agents take a percentage (usually 10-15%) of the money a publisher pays the writer. So, do a little math there, and you'll see that an agent is not going to be interested in a small-press book. A small press might pay a $2,000 advance--that's $200 for an agent taking a 10% fee. A large, commercial house, in contrast, will be paying more like $20,000. That's $2,000 for the same amount of work. Large houses won't consider a writer who doesn't have an agent; small presses avoid dealing with agents like the plague because they're just not on the same page, budget-wise.

So, you notice how those three agents gave me their blood, sweat, and tears, and made a whopping $0 for their trouble? That's the problem with new writers--they are less likely to sell. So if you are a new writer looking for an agent, you need to be prepared to deal with a LOT of rejection (and to spend a hell of a lot on postage sending out either finished manuscripts if it's fiction, or detailed proposals with sample chapters if it's non-fiction).

Many agents simply won't represent new writers--which is fine if they're willing to admit that up front. When I first started looking for an agent, I found lists of agents that allegedly were willing to represent new writers. I would send them my manuscript Priority Mail, with a stamped, self-addressed, Priority Mail return envelope. Priority Mail takes two to three days to go one way. Many times, the manuscript would be back to me with a rejection notice five days after I mailed it.

Now, I know agents all say that they carefully review everything they get, but who are they kidding? I used to screen stories: I'm a fast reader, but there's no way in hell you're getting through that many manuscripts that fast if you're actually reading them. Why waste my time and money? Just say you don't represent new writers and save yourself a truckload of mail every day.

So I was already pretty annoyed when I went to a convention for science-fiction writers, sat in on a panel about finding an agent, and listened to a narcissist tell a room full of writers that we should all pay to send her our stuff for the 0.05% chance she might represent it. That really irritated me, and later in the conference I mentioned that to one of the other panelists. She said, Yeah, what you need to do is to check out Locus, which is basically the Publisher's Weekly of fantasy/sci-fi, and look at the new book deals. If you see an agent who has represented a new writer, that's who you contact.

And that's what I did. It worked great--it got me in contact with that honest agent, who was also an extremely prestigious guy. Obviously, he didn't feel my sci-fi novel was commercial enough (and once he gave me the key to the code, I realized that that was what the other agents who actually read it were saying as well), but he suggested that I try to cook up a non-fiction book.

So I did. And he liked it! He really liked it! He REALLY, REALLY, REALLY liked it!! Except at this point I was noticing something a little worrying about the guy. He was really, REALLY UP!!! one week, and really, REALLY DOWN!!! the next. I honestly don't know if he was a tad bipolar, or if he was just struggling between feeling enthusiasm and going, Oh, fuck, a new writer! but I've tried dating guys like this, so I knew where it was going to go. And sure enough, one day his random mood generator swung very low indeed, and he told me he couldn't represent me.

But he'd coaxed this awesome book idea out of me and helped me develop this awesome proposal for it, so I was really thankful for that, and I felt well-prepared to go find another agent. The only problem was, I wasn't looking for someone to represent a sci-fi novel any more, so Locus wasn't going to help. I poked around and poked around, and I finally found Agent Query, which in my experience is the most up-to-date listing of agents. If AQ says that an agent takes new writers and represents X kind of literature, that's usually in fact the case--not always, but often enough that I didn't feel like I was flushing money down the toilet every time I did a mailing.

And I found another agent! And she was awesome! She was an editing whiz (agents in general have great ideas on how to market books, while writers tend to focus very narrowly on the book itself). By the time she was done with it, that proposal was beyond awesome--it was staggeringly good. Unfortunately, she'd been having family emergencies all along, and she decided to retire. But, being awesome, she passed the proposal along to another agent--this guy was so far up into the stratosphere that I never would have made it onto his desk without her help. And he LOVED it!! And he submitted it to publishers with great enthusiasm!

And it didn't get published. Yeah, there's not a nice, neat happy ending here that you can tie up with a bow. The thing is, getting an agent is like buying a lottery ticket, if buying lottery tickets were really, really hard--if you had to pass a test or something, you couldn't just walk into 7-11 and pay a dollar to get one. Once you have the ticket, there's no guarantee that you'll win.

But frankly, I wouldn't have the confidence to do what I'm doing now if it weren't for these agents--there's nothing like being told you are good by people who work at the very top of the industry to encourage you. At least one of my books-to-be would not exist in the first place if it weren't for these agents. And while I know that "It's about the journey, not the destination" is a cliche, developing yourself as a writer is indeed a quest. Rewards like publication (assuming that even qualifies as a reward) aren't really the point.

This is a public-service announcement

in

I just want to post a link to Writer Beware's page on print-on-demand services. In general, if you are hoping to get published, you should acquaint yourself with Writer Beware and the Absolute Write Water Cooler forum, because there are a LOT of scams out there. (The worst was when I had to explain to some lady that the writing "award" her daughter won was actually a pretty common scam. That was just awful, even though they wisely hadn't paid the scammers any money, because she was so proud of her daughter.*) I mean, yes, I am self-publishing and producing a print-on-demand book, but you'll notice that it's been quite a bit of work. I'm also (and this is key) not expecting to make any money off it. Seriously. I mean, it'll be nice if I do, but I'm not in any sense betting the farm on it. I also don't mind if I alienate traditional publishing houses by producing a POD book--I'm pretty much fed up with that world, and I'm in a position now where I don't have to care.

But while I don't have to make money on my books, I also don't want to lose a lot of money, and I really don't want to get ripped off. So I have done my homework regarding things like rights, and of course a major part of the appeal of Amazon for me is the fact that it includes a distribution channel. I also am willing and (more or less) able to do things like the layout, which has brought my costs down to the price of Adobe Acrobat (and I know there are cheaper PDF converters and editors out there, I'm just not technically adept enough to figure them out). The main costs for me have been 1. my totally optional Web site, and 2. my time.

Another, not-insignificant reason for me to do it myself is because there are a host of people out there looking to take advantage of would-be writers. I've seen enough to not trust the people who say, Hey, gimme a big wad o' cash, and I'll turn YOUR book into a STAR! The pitch may be, I pay you, and you'll do the art. But will it be good art? Or are you relying on me being a rube who doesn't know the first thing about how a book ought to look? Let's just say that I've seen enough crappy expensive professional layouts that I feel OK if mine is crappy but free. (Of course it's worth it to pay for what you know will be good quality--I was more than willing to pay 11th Hour to do my cover art, but alas the talented artists tend to be really busy.)

As much as the scams/bad values are an issue with art, they're an even bigger issue with editorial. Editorial services are basically a rip off--even if the person improves your writing greatly, they cannot possibly guarantee publication, and given the rates they charge.... I mean, for Christ's sake, my super-duper, fanciest-of-the-fancy-pants, his-client-list-would-BLIND-you agent couldn't get my nonfiction book published. Someone who advertises in the back pages of Would-Be Writer's Monthly isn't going to do you any better.

I think it's totally worth it to work on your writing and become a better writer, and that's pretty hard to do if you're not on staff at a publication and constantly getting feedback from editors. But it is possible to do, and to do much more cheaply, by joining writer's groups, submitting your materials to workshops, taking writing classes, learning grammar, and even just reading and watching stories critically, with an eye to their structure and figuring out what works and what doesn't. And, you know, don't be an idiot--check out people's qualifications. If you're being asked to shell out for a workshop, find out who the hell is going to be looking your stuff over, and why the hell you should listen to them--don't just cough up hundreds or even thousands of dollars for editing services by Promises-Promises, Ltd.

*ETA: You know, what's really evil about this kind of thing is that, for all anyone knows, that lady's daughter is indeed a great writer, or could become one. If they aren't working in the industry and aren't surrounded by people who are very frank and know what they're talking about, writers don't get a lot of meaningful feedback or affirmation. So to receive this kind of affirmation, but then to discover that it is a fraud--well, it was pretty brutal for the mother (I knew it was going to be, but I felt like I had to tell her, because the alternative was to have people ripping her off every time she turned around). I'm sure if she passed the news along to her daughter, it was pretty damaging to her confidence as well. It was just an evil thing to do to them.

Whew

in

I totally almost gave myself a heart attack. Earlier I'd looked up the maximum page counts with Amazon's print-on-demand program, and the number 480 had stuck in my head. So, I'm laying out this book, and I've got a few chapters to go, and I'm up above 460 pages...yoikes....

But then I looked it up again, and it's a maximum of 480 for a color book. For black-and-white text, the maximum is 828 pages, and I'm well below that.

The hidden perils of DIY publishing

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In most offices, cats are not allowed. That means that, when people are trying to print out layouts for later proofreading, they do not have to deal with a furry feline who has just decided that it is her mission in life to KILL ALL PAPER. DIE, PAPER, DIE!

Anyway, I was stupidly trying to multitask by printing laid-out chapters while at the same time laying out more chapters. This was a bad idea even after I shut the cat out, and further evidence that successful multitasking is a myth. (No, I don't care that I'm a woman--we can't do it either. And F everyone's I, I worked with teenagers a couple of years ago, and they don't multitask for shit, either--a kid staring at a small electronic device in his or her hand is not paying attention to you.) So I only got to chapter 12--I may push on and do another, or I may not.

Oh, my eyes

in

I have finished laying out chapter 10--there are 19 chapters all told, so I'm a little more than halfway through. Oy. There's a reason they have to pay people to do this; my eyes are feeling decidedly crossed.

Oh, and more evidence that I can't spell: I realized the other day that I spelled lightning "lightening" here, and then I realized today that I spelled it that way in Trang--yoikes, how embarrassing. I've uploaded corrected versions already. That's just aggravating--not only do the two words sound the same, but "lightening" will pass a spell checker with no problem ("Lightening his work load should be our first priority!").

Ghost rules

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Everyone (well, everyone I know--my social circles are admittedly very heavy skewed to the language geeks) is loving this article in Slate about how you shouldn't use two spaces after a period. (I will to add to that article an economic argument, which I would bet is the actual reason typographers adopted the one-space rule: Using two spaces after a period means you use more paper, and paper ain't free.)

What really strikes home in this article (and REALLY bothers the author) is how sure people are that there is a two-space rule when there is none:

What galls me about two-spacers isn't just their numbers. It's their certainty that they're right. Over Thanksgiving dinner last year, I asked people what they considered to be the 'correct' number of spaces between sentences.... Everyone—everyone!—said it was proper to use two spaces. Some people admitted to slipping sometimes and using a single space—but when writing something formal, they were always careful to use two. Others explained they mostly used a single space but felt guilty for violating the two-space 'rule.'

This avid belief in rules that do not, in fact, exist is common (and I would argue more harmful) in grammar as well. Grammar education in this country is horrible: When I was attending my (crappy) secondary schools, most years the English teacher would one day say, "OK, we're going to start the unit on grammar!" And the kids would say, "GRAMMAR!?!?! Oh, NO!!!" and the teacher would say, "You don't want to learn grammar? OK, we'll skip that unit." (Imagine how much fun it was to be an English major at Harvard University and then to break into the field of publishing on that kind of sound educational footing!)

Anyway, given this attention to grammar in our public schools, if you ask the average American to name a rule of grammar, they will likely respond with one of two rules, neither of which actually exist.

Ghost Rule #1: Don't split an infinitive. Um, why not? "To boldly go where no man has gone before" sounds a lot better than "To go boldly where no man has gone before" or "Boldly to go where no man has gone before," and it doesn't affect the meaning one bit.

Grammar rules, believe it or not, tend to make logical sense and clarify meaning: You don't say "John and me went to the store" because you wouldn't say "John went to the store, and me went to the store," and you say "I ate only one slice of pizza" because that's all you ate, and "I only ate one slice of pizza" implies that your interrogator is wondering if you, I don't know, had sex with your food first or something. If a grammar "rule" doesn't makes sense or help with meaning, then it's not actually a rule--it may be a preference, but it's more likely a ghost.

Ghost Rule #2: Don't end a sentence with a preposition. Again, there's no real reason not to if it makes your sentence clearer and more concise. It can be more casual, although the fixes aren't necessarily more formal. Which leads me to an inappropriate joke (told to me by my late father, the source of roughly 90% of the inappropriate jokes I know):

A fellow is touring the Princeton campus when he stops an undergraduate. "Hey, where's the library at?" he asks.

The undergraduate pulls himself up stiffly. "Sir," he replies, with great disdain, "here at Princeton University we do not end our sentences with a preposition!"

The man nods. "OK," he says. "Where's the library at, asshole?" 

To take that fix more seriously, the real problem with "Where's the library at?" is conciseness--that extra "at" at the end is unnecessary. But that's not always the case, and pretzeling a sentence around to avoid violating this "rule" can result in horribly awkward prose that was best mocked by Winston Churchill in his famous comment, "This is the sort of English up with which I will not put."

That link will take you to a whole slew of ghost rules for grammar if you want more. What really bothers me about ghost rules is the underlying assumption that grammar is arcane and arbitrary, a collection of mysterious, upper-class, Victorian-era, etiquette-type rules that ordinary people can't possibly understand and won't have much use for. The truth is: Grammar makes sense. It tracks logically, it helps you say what you mean, and because it is so logical, it's easy to understand. It's worth learning because it helps you to communicate to others--and that's well worth doing.

Oh, right

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It occurred to me that instead of simply telling you that I know all about loose lines, stacks, and widows, I might actually try to (gasp!) serve the reader, specifically the self-publishing writer thinking of doing their own layout, and let people know what these things are.

This is going to be a little weird, because LiveJournal doesn't exactly support reams of formatting options (or maybe it does--I haven't figured them out, though). But bear in mind that typically in a book the text is justified--it all lines up on both the right and the left, unlike here, where they only line up on the left, and LJ disregards all my attempts to get them to line up on the right.

Justification causes problems because sometimes you've got too many words in a line, and sometime you don't have enough. A loose line is caused when there aren't quite enough words in a line so it looks all spread-out and weird. (Oh, I tried making that line loose, but LJ is ignoring me and my extra spaces.) Alternately,youmighthavetoomanywordsinaline,andtheygetallsmushedtogether. Logically enough, that's called a tight line.

A stack happens when you have three or more (two is OK, don't ask me why) lines that end in the same word or, more commonly, in a hyphen. A paragraph with a stack in it looks like this:

He enjoys hik-
ing, bike rid-
ing, and canoe-
ing.

Note that I got stacks on both sides of that paragraph! Bonus hideousness! Tight and loose lines are hard to read; stacks are just ugly and distracting.

The example paragraph above is also bad because it has a widow. A widow is when you have a line that's just a little word fragment, like that "ing" all by itself up there.

Wanna start a fight among book designers? Ask if a small word--not a fragment--counts as a widow, and then stand back and watch the fists fly.

It doesn't affect
readability, but
many designers
think this looks
ugly.

Others think it's not worth the trouble to have to fix every last one of those.

Another thing I didn't mention before are bad breaks. That means that a hyphen has been place in a word in a way that is, well, bad.

It could be bad because it's incorrect (the dictionary is your friend here):

He enjoys bi-
king.

Or it could be bad because there's already a hyphen in the word, and now you have two:

Those worries are not well-found-
ed.

Or it could be bad because the page ends on a word break, and the reader has to turn the page to get to the next syllable.

As much as you can, you want to break compound words where the two words attach: train-spotting instead of trainspot-ting. Also, you typically don't want to break a small word--for example, video--even if it's two syllables, because the resulting fragments are really tiny.

There are lots of ways to fix layout problems. Obviously if it doesn't matter to you, you could always edit the text itself. Designers aren't allowed to do that, and of course altering text to fit space hardly ever results in the best prose choices. Instead they have to noodle with the lines themselves, bringing down a word (usually there's some kind of soft return/text wrap break option in the software) or breaking words with a hyphen to bring a syllable down or up (watch for stacks!). There's also something called kerning, when the software will squish together or spread apart the letters themselves, but you have to be very judicious in your use of kerning, because otherwise it looks like you suddenly changed fonts in the middle of your story.

By the by, if all of this sounds really focused on small details, it is. Cover art and chapter headings can be beautiful, but a good book layout is supposed to make reading easier, so you really only notice if it's not there.