Craig Shemilt delivers the scoop on publishing at WORD
Cheering news is that "the book in alive and well today," with print books accounting for 79% of sales, up from 70% a couple of years ago. Sales of ebooks, once considered a threat to print books, are dropping fast, except in China where this trend is reversed.
The talk encompassed the nuts and bolts of book production: digital versus offset printing, spine readability, paper choices, colour and inks, back cover blurb with a focus on the opening sentence, free versus commercial fonts, bleed margins, ISBN and CIP codes, and the high cost of books printed in landscape orientation.
Craig also spoke about the essential marketing tasks faced by authors, especially those who choose to self-publish. He emphasized the need for business plans, editing, design and distribution.
President of a company with a century of publishing history, Craig has long-term working history with book publishers and also produces books for individuals. He enjoys tracking statistics and calculates that the 12,000 books printed by his company to date would take about 66 years to read.
Canadian Authors Vancouver was pleased to sponsor this packed workshop at VPL yesterday. We appreciate Craig's sacrificing a dragon boating event to share his knowledge with us.