Coming of age

I have just submitted a manuscript which has taken 8 months full-time to write. It’s the longest I have taken to complete a work by two months and an ambitious book in terms of its scope. I should hear in two or three weeks if they accept it. If all goes well it will be in print January 2011. It will be my 18th book in print.

If you asked me yesterday I would not have hesitated to say it’s a good book. Now it’s finished I wonder will it sell? It seems a writer has to be an optimist. All that work up front and never certain anyone will bother to read it or worse buy it.

I have two more commissions and then (aside from new editions) I plan to write something (non fiction but) totally off subject. So off subject I will need to find a different publisher or self publish. It’s a project I have wanted to write for a few years and it just won’t go away. So I will have to find the time and space to get on with it.

Mike -is the ms you just submitted nonfic? If so, I'm surprised that you wrote it before it was accepted.

I know what you mean about wondering if readers will buy it. Writing is so lonely. You sit there tapping away, wondering if you're addressing what the reader needs, if you misssed the mark, if your illustrations are right, etc., etc. I read an interview w/ Vera Wang a long time ago where she was asked if she thought her Kohl's collection (a lower-income type department store) would take off. She said that as a creative, all you can do is put your work out there and see. I totally understood what she meant!

The nonfic proposal was accepted I guess over a year ago and now we will see if the manuscript is. A large part of the advance is made on acceptance.

Book writing really is a bit of a gamble. You write the proposal and some months later start work, months after that you submit a manuscript and eventually a book is in the stores. In the mean while competitors have published stuff and the market has moved on.

I tried to make it the best yet. Fingers crossed

Was it reviewed at any point? All my books went through rounds of reviews at specified dates. This latest one went through three, with 11 different reviewers. The ms changed significantly after each review.

About competitors publishing stuff in the meanwhile, funny you mention that. That's something that keeps me motivated and working, the worry that while I'm writing it, a competitor is writing a similar book and will beat me to market.

LC, the book is trade so the review process is more sensible. In all five readings; the commissioning editor and a mix of book editors, proof readers and readers knowledgeable in the subject.

This will be my first book that needs an index. It will comprise 1,000 references. I have never written one before. Does anyone know some good tips? Obviously I don’t write the index until the proof stage.

The only time I had an index anywhere close to the size of yours, the software pretty much did all the work as I was writing. I just had to add and edit at the end and correct for some technical glitches.

The first thing I learned about indexes is that professional index writers often don't know what the reader is likely to be looking for. If they are unfamiliar with the subject matter they don't know what the typical reader already knows, so they fail to make index entries where they are needed, and they make many unnecessary index entries.

The second thing I learned is that publishers can subtract the pros' fees from my royalties.

So I wound up doing all my own indexes. I wrote my own computer program on the PC to build them. This was in the old days. It worked well enough that I used it even when professional tools became available.

An index often iincludes terms and expressions that are not themselves direct quotes from the manuscript. You don't just highlight text and click to add the text to the index.

Some word processors let you embed index entries in manuscript files. But unless your manuscript is one big file, the word processor might not know the page numbers.

Without page numbers you cannot complete an undex until you have page proofs.

Some indexed entries appear in several places in the index, perhaps as a sub-heading. Others are best represented by a "See..." entry rather than a list of page numbers.

Keep an eye on indexes in subsequent editions. I can't count the nth-edition books I've read in which index entries point to wrong pages.

DK Al, I wrote in Word without a thought of the need for an index. Only at the end did I realised the book would benefit from/need one. It’s months away but I will need to find some way to generate an alphabetical listing with page references. The proofs are usually pdf files. Can anyone recommend software?

Like Al, my indexing was a while ago and I'm certain more sophisticated software exists now. My techo son always looks for freeware because he can mess with it and change it to his needs. You might want to check some freeware sites through Google. He makes me use abiword instead of Microsoft; but when he's not around, I switch back....

I tried to add an index to a grant proposal (one of those humungous government proposals before they all went online) after it was finished. I gave it up (it wasn't a requirement, just a nice addition). I was able to add a glossary without too much trouble, so I let that suffice.

I always let the pub do the index. Two did it at their own expense; PH is charging me. I think they're only charging $200 or something like that, though, well worth me not having to bother with it. They hire a freelancer to do it.

I understand that the author has a better grasp of what needs to go in it, but I'm still not going to bother. I did do the glossary, and did a much better job than the pub would have done, for that exact reason.