"The first transport is away. The first transport is away!"
Except in my case it is the first Volume. And there are no rebel pilots to cheer me on and also try to draw AT-AT fire heroically upon themselves. But that's ok, Ahsoka is snorting in her sleep so that is all the applause I need...
I have sent the files for The Ursus Verses Volume 1 away to the printer. If all goes well- and I've already had to do a second try for the text pdf- I should have the shipment in late January. Which gives me just over a month to learn how to make an online store! This whole "making a chapbook" thing has been one steep learning curve after another. Learning mountain, more like. And this post today will be a design diary, sort of like boardgame designers do on boardgamegeek.com all the time. Those are really cool, I think. Hopefully it will be helpful to anyone embarking on a similar project.
In the beginning, there was ignorance. No light whatsoever. I didn't even know what a chapbook was! I was freshly laid off from my coal-mining job I'd had my entire adult life, basically. Because of the pandemic, Michelle and I decided I would not look for another job for a while, so I would be able to stay home in case of school shutdowns and so forth. As a bonus, I was going to do a bit more writing and submit to some lit mags and anthologies if I came across any. Pretty low-key, really.
One of the email writing newsletters I subscribe to has quarterly contests- flash fiction, poetry, short stories, you know, writerly bread and butter. Back in late September I think they had a contest for chapbooks. I'd heard of them, but didn't really know what they were. Essentially- short, usually self-published collections of poetry or fiction, maybe 25-40 pages. I may not be a novelist, but I definitely have 25-40 pages of poetry and short fiction laying around! Several 25-40 pages worth, in fact.
I decided to do it! Not the contest, since you needed to actually send a finished product. But I decided to make a chapbook. Several, eventually, but one to start with. The Ursus Verses Volume 1 would focus on the early years of this very blog. Poems and flash fiction and some short stories. I compiled the contents together, a nice mixture I felt of fun stuff. Other than the focus on earlier works (though I did wind up including more recent stuff too), if there was any unifying theme it would be monsters. Lots of monsters. Fun monsters, to be sure. Bears and monsters. They always say to write the book you want to read! I definitely did that.
What order should it all go in, though? That was kind of fun, I did more of a board game designer thing and wrote each title on a scrap of paper. Then I colour-coded them. A pink line along the top if it was a poem. Brown stripe on the left if it was about bears, purple on the right if it was monsters. Etc etc, then I ordered them in a way so that there was a good progression and variety. I think it turned out ok!
So I opened up Word, the one piece of software I know how to use! Or, wait, why is it all different. I don't understand... why is this not the same as Word 97?? Arghhh!!!!! I literally couldn't even insert a new page at the end of my document, that's how clueless I was. It has been years since I'd even used a computer, my iMac died in 2016 and I just used my iPad and iPhone ever since. Borrowed Michelle's MacBook Air and yeah. I had to relearn how to use frickin' Word. See? You're almost certainly ahead of me in the process if you can insert a blank page in a document. You got this!
Eventually I figured that out, and I wrote an introduction as well as back matter that talked about the genesis of each piece. And that was all it took to make the inside of the chapbook! Took me a while, because I did a lot of editing and even some major rewriting for Swampy Joe and the Plasma Dragon. I'll say... a month? Maybe not quite? In the meantime I had asked on Twitter how to make a chapbook, and River Selkie!! Yes, that River Selkie, aka Denise Ganley, now host of the Heart-Shaped Books podcast, and old- old-school friend of the blog, told me about Vellum.
Listen, friends, Vellum isn't cheap. And it's Mac-only. I thought long and hard but I did finally pull the trigger. Super easy for generating ebooks, which I did in no time after doing the included tutorial. Here is the result of that, a great first step. But my main goal was always a print version.
I only got the ebook version of Vellum, though for a bit more money you can also get the version that generates print editions. I was going to get that version, but this whole time I had also been asking questions and making phone calls and doing my homework. This is what I found- if you want to do print on demand, from a company like Ingram Spark, then the print book version of Vellum should be more than adequate. But I got a referral for a printing company from a local literary magazine, and I called them, and they had never heard of Vellum. Not a good sign. Maybe it still could have done the job, but I didn't want to risk it. They recommended Adobe InDesign, the industry standard, to create a single-page pdf.
The easiest thing at that point would have been to sign up for Adobe Creative Suite or whatever it's called, but the monthly subscription fee is a little more than this unemployed coal miner was ready to pay. If you can afford it, however, I would say do it. But I chose the Open Source route, and it worked out ok. In fact, as I was writing this post I got the email from the printing company that my pdf was usable so yay! I made it with Scribus.
In the meantime there are all these little details you need to do as you go along, for example you probably need an ISBN, which for Canadians is super easy. I don't know about anyone else, though, but I suspect it is universally easy. Canadians, go here to sign up and apply for your numbers. It's free! But getting a barcode is not free, and you will have to decide if you want one or not.
Also, for the ebook version I just Worded up a logo with one of the included fonts, and well, you can definitely tell that's what I did. Since I intend to make multiple volumes, I decided to commission a logo from a professional. In fact at first I reached out to an Indigenous maker, since that sort of representation is important to me, but I don't know if there was a communication breakdown or what but they ghosted me. So I got a Twitter mutual to make one for me. I love it! And since it's a vector file I can change the colour for each volume, or use it on promotional materials, maybe even make an enamel pin from it at some point. Up to you if you want to make that investment, it will likely be one of your more significant costs, though.
Yeah, so, Scribus. Free. Powerful. Not user friendly. I googled a YouTube tutorial and I was off to the races. I recommend this one, by M.K. Williams. Though I think I will use automatic text boxes next time! I watched it once through, took notes, then opened Scribus and watched it again and just did everything she did. But always I have these little ideas I want to do that aren't covered by the tutorials, but I figured it out, because the tutorial gives you enough knowledge to explore. Prior to watching it I didn't even know how to open a document.
In the meantime my logo file had come, and I had to design my book cover! I'm really lucky in that, years and years ago I had commissioned several artists to make me art for this blog, and so I just secured permission to use those assets for a for-profit chapbook. You will have to decide how you want to go about it for your cover, maybe you make your own, or use stock photos, or commission an artist. Again, that will be a significant expense, but very worth it.
Industry standard is Adobe Illustrator, but I used InkScape and I really like it. Same thing, couldn't even open the file until I sat down and watched some tutorials. Basically this channel, Logos By Nick, taught me everything I need to know just from watching a bunch of his videos. So good! Fun even. I had no idea, I always thought you had to be a good artist to do this stuff.
Took some experimenting and getting feedback from friends, but I got my cover. You need to know your page count, and paper weight to determine how thick your spine is, and add that to double the page size to make your wraparound cover image. For me, I needed seven elements: title logo, cover art, my name on the front. Title and name and little Volume number indicator on the spine, and then some back cover art and a blurb. You don't even need that if you don't want!
I think that's it! Took two solid months and a little bit, and if all goes well I should get the books late January. In the meantime I've been making great progress on Volume 2!
My next step is to set up an online store. Again, I'll be starting from scratch.... I think I'll take a moment to rest first though. We got a puppy and Naia had to do two weeks of homeschooling when her classmate had a positive covid test during all this, and so yeah, I'm tired!
Any questions just ask in the comments or find me on Twitter @NathanWaddell1
For that matter, if, after reading this post, you decide it all sounds like too much work, well, I am for hire, depending on your needs. Get in touch.
And if you want to preorder a copy of The Ursus Verses Volume 1 let me know as well. I'll put you on a list or something.
I guess we didn't destroy the universe after all. Sorry! Next time. Making the store will probably destroy my universe anyway.
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