Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Using templates

Being highly intimidated by the formatting requirements for my manuscript, I was delighted to discover cover and interior templates provided by "tinhorn" through the Lulu site. Check them out at the following link: http://www.lulu.com/tinhorn . I was blown away by the ease of using them. I selected the size of book I wanted to publish, went to the interior template, downloaded it for free, then pasted my manuscript in it. Easy. It came out looking great. I changed the justification and the font, but it retained the sizing, as far as I can see, and also allowed me to find out the page count, which I will need to get the ISBN number. Highly recommended, especially for neophyte self publishers. I have not tried the cover templates, because I have a designer looking after the cover, but if they are as easy to use as the interior ones, go for it. Now my head is swirling with questions about the ISBN -- should I create my own or use the CreateSpace ISBN service. Issues seem to be basically -- if I create my own, and remain as the publisher, can I use the same ISBN if the book is picked up by a mainstream publisher (owing to the millions of readers I will have, ha ha ha) or will I need another one, which could screw up pricing, cataloguing, etc. Then there is the question of access to their extended distribution channels. (CreateSpace, that is). If you supply your own, you have less access. Questions questions. More soon....
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  1. Dave MartinFebruary 11, 2011 at 12:50 PM

    Hi Sandra,

    Thanks for the helpful hint about Tinhorn. It sure would have made my job easier in pulishing "Dare to be Average." I plan to publish another humor collection at some point so I'll definitely keep Tinhorn in mind.

    As for the ISBN question, I opted for the free one through Lulu. I doubt it will cause a problem if, by some fluke, my book gets picked up by a mainstream publisher. I didn't know much about this issue so I did a bit of searching and found this site which seems to be helpful: http://www.publetariat.com/publish/truth-about-createspaces-free-isbns

    Just for fun, I checked both versions of Terry Fallis' book "The Best Laid Plans." There's one ISBN for the self-published version (iUniverse) and a different one for the version published by Emblem Editions. At this point, I suspect ISBN issues are not a problem for Mr. Fallis. Lucky stiff.

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