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May
6
A journey to a book ~ Part 22
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Back on March 9, when I brought this article series up to the time that
Easy Appliqué Blocks went to press last November, I promised I would write a little more about stuff that happens after that.
A lot happens. An author’s work is never done. Fortunately, this is happy work!
Since the book went to press, I’ve:
Downloaded cover images and back-cover copy from the Martingale website.
Designed and ordered postcards.
Sent postcards to contacts at distributors, catalogs, magazines, and quilt shops, plus friends, family, and the Martingale staff.
Studied Martingale’s Author Promotional Handbook.
Created a list of my Favorite Tools & Notions, available for download at Quilt Puppy or Martingale.
Created a separate list of my Favorite Tools & Notions just for quilt shops, with distributor stock numbers included… available for download at Quilt Puppy.
Updated my website.
Pitched to Martingale that we could make the Table of Contents, Introduction, and How to Use the CD available as a download — they thought it was a good idea too, and it’s available at Quilt Puppy or Martingale.
Organized and conducted a blog book tour.
Written interview answers for a couple stops on the tour.
Signed a bunch of Martingale bookplates and sent them out to friend quilt shops.
Purchased a MacBook laptop so I can demo the book’s CD.
Made travel plans for Spring Quilt Market in Pittsburgh, May 15-17, 2009. (More info below)*
Been given the green light to do a Schoolhouse presentation at Market.
Written a short blurb for the Schoolhouse brochure.
Written copy for the Schoolhouse flier that’s handed out to attendees.
Put together packaging for the Schoolhouse handouts… Kay’s Favorite Tools & Notions, flier, postcard, and chocolate (that never hurts) in a white paper bag with a cute sticker.
Worked on my Schoolhouse presentation.
Gotten the green light for a book signing at the Checker Distributors booth.
Edited copy for the Checker handout.
Started an Amazon Connect blog… you can see it on the book’s detail page.
Stitched up another Scottie quilt (Martingale is borrowing the original for awhile).
And that’s not even everything! It’s just the major identifiable things. So, as you can see, a book needs a lot of support even after the production phase is done. Is this interesting to read about? Had you thought of this type of thing?
*Now here’s a little explanation here if you’re not familiar with the model of International Quilt Market.
This huge quilting-industry trade show happens twice a year. In the fall it’s always in Houston, and in the spring it travels. The attendees are largely shop owners, and the exhibitors are companies that create books, patterns, tools, notions, fabrics, etc. for quilt shops. The day before the show opens on the floor, there’s a day of breakout sessions for shop owners called “Schoolhouse.” These sessions are short presentations intended to introduce shop owners to new and interesting books and products.
Spring Market 2008 was in Portland, and I attended. At that time I already had the book contract and was working on the editing process with Robin. I attended a bunch of Schoolhouse sessions to find out what they were all about, and by the time I was ready to go home my head was brimming with ideas of what I would say to shop owners about Easy Appliqué Blocks if I had the chance. All the way home on the plane I wrote notes, and when I was done I had the whole outline for a Spring 2009 Schoolhouse presentation! Now, a year later, it’s almost time… wish me luck!
Until next time,
Kay
Quilt Puppy Publications & Designs
Mar
9
A journey to a book ~ Part 21
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Easy Appliqué Blocks: 50 Designs in 5 Sizes officially comes out tomorrow!!!
This is the twenty-first in a series of posts about a book proposal, from concept to print. We’re almost there!
Click on the category ‘A journey to a book’ in the left sidebar to bring up all of the posts in the series.
10-21-8. Nope… not quite the last round of edits yet. I had lobbied to be able to test the CD, so I was glad to have the opportunity to try out the CD, edit the text on it, and cross-reference the text on the CD with the text in the book.
And OMG, may I just say that the CD is equally as gorgeous as the book. Even though you’re running off the CD and not connected to the internet (unless you hit one of the links that takes you there) you’d swear you were on a lovely website! All of the pages are colorful and beautifully decorated, and it’s easy-peasy to navigate. Adrienne, the book’s illustrator and CD developer, did a fantastic job. The CD works on either PC or Mac.
There began a series of emails back and forth and back and forth on CD operation, CD text, book text, and book illustrations. I had to stay organized… where was I looking to answer this question/evaluate that revised illustration/ consider a final text edit? It might have been the first pages or an earlier email. Personally I have curse of the detail-oriented. Your mileage may vary, and your publisher/editor may not work this way. Lucky for me I enjoy the small stuff, and I managed to stay on top of it. This workflow suits me.
My advice to all you fellow book authors-to-be: Stay organized, keep everything, and have a solid backup system in place. You do not want to lose any emails or files during this process. If you don’t have an external hard drive and an automated backup in place, get it before you start a book!!
Nov 20, 2008. Got an email from Robin crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s… last-minute checks are all done!
November 21, 2008. I heard the book went to press… today!!! OMG. Gulp, gulp. And so the concept that came to me two and a half years ago is now being set in ink and on its way to becoming something real that you can hold in your hand, and use. It’s a monumental thought.
Until tomorrow,
Kay
Quilt Puppy Publications & Designs
Easy Appliqué Blocks available for order now!
P.S. if you’ve been following this series, you may be interested in a little more information… stuff that happens after a book has gone to press and before it comes out. I’ll put up a few more posts for those who are curious about that.
Mar
7
A journey to a book ~ Part 20
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Being the twentieth in a series of posts about a book proposal, from concept to print.
Click on the category ‘A journey to a book’ in the left sidebar to bring up all of the posts in the series.
After my tech editor Robin had a chance to go through my marked-up ‘first pages’ in depth, she emailed me with a list of questions. I had photographed all of the spreads before I sent them back (cheaper than making color copies, eh what) so I was able to pull up the pages and zoom in to the particular areas she had questions about, and give her my answers and suggestions. She assured me that everything was in great shape.
Here’s a funny thing that emerged at that point. What do you call the part of a cut-out appliqué motif that is going to be turned under? You see it called ’seam allowance’ a lot. I don’t care for that, because it’s not a seam like in patchwork, and I feel like quilters just call it that for lack of a better term. I’d been using the word ‘margin.’ One of the editors felt that ‘margin’ may be confusing, so I was given the task of choosing another term.
A couple of suggestions that came back were ‘turning allowance’ or ‘turned-under edge.’ I mulled this over, and decided on ‘turning allowance.’ After all… it makes perfect sense! It calls it what it is, and it falls in with ’seam allowance’ in quilting parlance.
I then commenced a ‘margin hunt’ in the manuscript to find all of the instances of margin in this context, and changed them to turning allowance. Can we coin this as a new convention in quilting terminology please???
A couple days after that, I sent back the text for the CD and the answers to another round of editing questions (that’s right, another round, polishing the fruit at this point). Was this the last round of edits for me?? The book was getting close to going to print! I heard that everyone at Martingale was very excited about the CD.
Karen, the acquisitions editor, had indicated a long time ago that my acknowledgments should have my signature at the bottom. I took a blank piece of paper, signed my first name a bunch of times, picked my favorite one, scanned it, and sent it to Robin to forward to the book designer. How fun! [It came out perfect, looking for all the world as if I had signed that page.]
Here it is. Until next time,
Quilt Puppy Publications & Designs
Mar
1
A journey to a book ~ Part 19
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Being the nineteenth in a series of posts about a book proposal, from concept to print.
Click on the category ‘A journey to a book’ in the left sidebar to bring up all of the posts in the series.
August 29, 2008, 7:53 a.m. The DH is out of town. I’m in bed asleep and wake up to the vague notion that a doorbell has been rung. Groggily I get up, grope my way downstairs, and open the door in my pajamas to find the package lying on the doorstep. I climb back into bed with it. Did you know that UPS tyvek envelopes are sealed with some kind of super-gum-glue that cannot be torn asunder by the human hand?
I’m almooost into the package when the dog needs to go out. That taken care of, and now armed with a pair of scissors, I open the package, take out the pages, unfold, them, and take my first look at the cover.
Hallelujah! I can just about hear the heavenly choir. All is right with the world… I love it! As I turn page after page, I marvel at what the book designer has done. All of my hard work has been stylishly elevated into a thing of colorful beauty. These are mighty exciting times.
When I turned in the manuscript, one of the additional things that I was invited to send were some suggestions for how I envisioned the book, including likes and dislikes regarding book design. I really appreciated this opportunity for personal input, while keeping in mind that final design approval would rest with the publishing company. This is what I wrote:
“Some words that depict how I would love to see the book turn out: friendly, warm, cute (or beautiful), colorful, appealing, a feast for the eyes. In general, my style is sort-of curvy and organic.
I’m a fan of decorative typefaces for headings, and white space is my friend. I love floral colors, and a decorated page.
Regarding the text typeface, something elegant and refined… Garamond is nice!”
I could hardly believe my good fortune when I laid eyes upon the cover. A very cool art-deco typeface, my blocks dancing about, and one of my very favorite colors in the background… orangey-red! (Witness my Pat Sloan Orange Pile post 
.
And look at this darling Table of Contents!
I’m composing an excited email to Robin when I get one from her entitled
“I can’t stand the suspense!”
Did I get it? What did I think? I relate to her the story of how I was left bereft on Thursday afternoon, hollering across the parking lot “Where’s my manuscriiiiiiipt!??” My gentle, mild-mannered tech editor replies, “I would have strangled the driver and then tore apart his truck.” Fortunately the driver has earned his reprieve.
Now for more of the nuts and bolts…. back to the editing work.
These are only the first pages… there will be more rounds of pages and editing in-house, but this is my last chance to see the whole thing before it goes to press. Fortunately they’ve given me a couple weeks so that I can take the processing time that I need to work through it all.
I’m spread across three counties as I work off the marked-up copy-edited manuscript, the illustration plan, the photo plan, and various emails I’ve exchanged with Robin, to check and double-check absolutely everything.
I gave those first pages my best shot. I used those really cool official proofreading marks, I wrote notes in the margins, I struck things out, I drew arrows hither and thither. I also composed a side note to the designer and a side note to Robin. These side notes were like “punch lists,” pointing out this, that, and the other. My angel editor Robin is going to coordinate everything for me. I’m feeling really good about the shape that things are in at this point. Robin tells me that it’s normal for us all to see things that we didn’t see before, once it looks like a book. It’s all part of the process.
Robin emailed me the day the pages arrived back on her desk to reassure me that she did not consider this a heavily marked manuscript. Whew! Also wow, is this ever a learning experience. If I ever get to do this again (and I sure hope I do), I will know so much more what to expect.
Now waiting to hear back from Robin after she has a chance to go through the pages in depth.
Stay tuned,
Kay
Quilt Pppy Publications & Designs
Feb
24
A journey to a book ~ Part 18
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Being the eighteenth in a series of posts about a book proposal, from concept to print.
Click on the category ‘A journey to a book’ in the left sidebar to bring up all of the posts in the series.
August 28, 2008. According to the schedule, today’s the day that the first pages are supposed to arrive. It’s early afternoon and I just got an email from Robin, my tech editor at Martingale, saying that she looked them over and was surprised to see how colorful the design was, after imagining the blocks floating on a ground of white. Me too! I emailed her back… “but do you LIKE it.”
To my relief she replies that yes, she does. Brown has the package as “out for delivery” so I’m sure that I hear the truck every few seconds. I’m on at least pins if not needles too.
4:55 p.m. Brown came, and Brown went. The driver said he knew he was supposed to have something for me, but he couldn’t find it in the truck. “We’ll probably deliver it tomorrow,” he said, and drove away.
Sigh.
Stay tuned,
Kay
Quilt Puppy Publications & Designs
Feb
17
A journey to a book ~ Part 17
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Being the seventeenth in a series of posts about a book proposal, from concept to print.
Click on the category ‘A journey to a book’ in the left sidebar to bring up all of the posts in the series.
When I sent in my proposal for Easy Appliqué Blocks I made sure they knew I didn’t know HOW to make the CD, just that there should be one. All along I had been envisioning a CD that would open up and show a bunch of folders that you would navigate through to find the pattern you wanted. Despite the fact that I write my own website in HTML and got under the hood in WordPress to change the look of my blog, I am soooo not a techie. ‘Folders’ was the extent of my imagination when it came to the organization of the CD.
Imagine my bewilderment when the preliminary CD site map came to me and it was talking about browsers and links. I didn’t quite get it at first. Robin took the time to walk me through it, and then, all of a sudden, the ol’ synapses fired up. This was suddenly so very cool! This CD is going to be incredible! It’s going to act very much like a website when you get into it, and it’s very easy to navigate to the pattern you want to print.
I did have some comments about the site map (aka flow chart) and over-achiever that I am, I recreated the whole thing, with boxes and arrows. This helped me get my mind around it. I sent my version back to Robin. After looking at it, she could tell that Adrienne (the book’s illustrator and the person developing the CD) and I were on the same page. Robin liked my added suggestions on how to organize the blocks. Some of my arrows were not needed, thankfully, as some pages can just be closed and you’ll be back where you were, instead of clicking back.
The next step (gulp) is to see the book one more time before it goes to press. Right now, during August 2008, the book designer is hard at work turning the Word document into a beautiful colorful book all laid out with the photos and illustrations where they’re supposed to be. When next I see it, it will be what they call “first pages” (sometimes called “galley proofs.”) Can’t wait! Stay tuned.
Kay
Quilt Puppy Publications & Designs
P.S. Mark your calendars for the Easy Appliqué Blocks blog Book-A-Round, March 27 through April 5! For more information, click the logo in the right-hand sidebar.
Feb
13
A journey to a book ~ Part 16
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Being the sixteenth in a series of posts about a book proposal, from concept to print.
Click on the category ‘A journey to a book’ in the left sidebar to bring up all of the posts in the series.
About a week after I sent the me-edited copy-edited manuscript back, there was one more round of edits by email. Not the whole manuscript… remember, we’re only circulating one copy on paper from now on… but Robin had a few more finishing touches to chew over with me and she just wrote them out in an email.
Here’s how she started out… “Kay, I have to say that you are an excellent writer. It is a joy to see how you craft your words.” Nice! By this time Robin and I have both discovered the same trait in each other… the attention to detail and the thought behind every word. She has told me how she appreciates that I look carefully at everything she sends. How could an author not?
The next step is to work on the CD site map. What does that mean you may ask. As did I. Stay tuned!
Until next time,
Kay
Quilt Puppy Publications & Designs
Feb
5
A journey to a book ~ Part 15
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Being the fifteenth in a series of posts about a book proposal, from concept to print.
Click on the category ‘A journey to a book’ in the left sidebar to bring up all of the posts in the series.
It’s June 2008. The manuscript for Easy Appliqué Blocks now leaves tech editor Robin’s hands and goes to the copy editor. The copy editor’s job is to look at everything in terms of grammar, spelling, consistency, logic, and the Martingale style guide. There will be no more editing by email. From this point on it’s all done on paper. (This avoids having too many versions floating around, and it sounds like they learned this the hard way .
I received the copy-edited version by snail mail, settled in with a cup of tea, and gave it a thorough read. In a few places I stumbled over rough patches where added detail plus removal of commas made things seem to rush headlong. Some sentences weren’t what I’d like, and there were still some not-quite-right things about the illustrations. All normal at this point. I rolled up my sleeves and got to polishing!
There’s actually a lot of humorous stuff going on by now. For example, there’s the word “fine.” I started out talking about fine thread for appliqué. The question comes back, what is meant by fine thread? Thin? High quality? I change it to skinny. Skinny is not going to fly so it’s changed to fine, thin thread. Needles can’t be skinny either so the copy editor changes it to thin. I don’t like thin so I change it to slender. We’ll see what it ends up being!
The copy editor capitalizes sharps but I put that really cool slash through the S and make a note that it’s a type of needle, not a brand name. And then there’s the West Highland white terrier, which I give the ol’ triple underline treatment and explain that the West Highland White Terrier is a breed name. [Note: I lost on both counts, the first to the Martingale style manual and the second to the dictionary LOL. You'll see the canine workaround in the book.]
The copy editor says that appliquér needs to be spelled appliquer, but that bothers me totally. That just looks like applikwer. Why is it that you can write appliquéing but not appliquér? I write a long impassioned plea on the manuscript to keep the accent. We’ll see.
I dug out my guidelines for proofreading marks and had a high old time of it marking up the paper manuscript. It took me back to my high-school journalism days, when I used to LOVE working on the Chapel Hill High newspaper. I even get to use ’stet’ a few times.
That reminds me… Robin sent me a link to the Yarn Harlot’s blog where this very well-known knitting author wrote about the publishing process. Hilarious! For a good laugh about stetting, read her posts of January 24 and 25, 2008.
I put it off as long as I could. I had to take care of my author photo, as I’d received a nudge from the author liaison. I begged Gregory Case to take me in, and he gave me an appointment for a sitting. I drove “over the hill” to San Jose and emerged unscathed from the photo session, and with a pretty decent photo. See the first in this series if you haven’t already done so.
I sent the marked-up post-copy-edit paper manuscript back to Robin on July 2, 2008, a couple days before my deadline. Stay tuned!
Kay
Quilt Puppy Publications & Designs
Jan
25
A journey to a book ~ Part 14
Filed Under A journey to a book, Fusible web, Needles, Threads | 2 Comments
Being the fourteenth in a series of posts about a book proposal, from concept to print.
Click on the category ‘A journey to a book’ in the left sidebar to bring up all of the posts in the series.
My tech editor Robin had suggested a few photos to go with the introductory material about fabrics, tools, and notions. Great! She asked me what I would include and I send her my preferred list. They didn’t have everything in-house so I promised to send some spools of my favorite thread and a pair of my favorite scissors.
Hmmm… my scissors have puppy teeth marks in them and the only unstarted spools of thread I had were in dull uninteresting colors. I ordered a few pretty colors of thread on-line and had them sent directly to Robin to organize for the photographer. And, whilst at the E.E. Schenck warehouse party during Spring Market in Portland, I had thrown a new pair of scissors into my cart ‘just in case,’ so I dispatched those to Robin as well.
Stay tuned!
Kay
Quilt Puppy Publications & Designs
P.S. My favorite tools and notions for hand and machine appliqué aren’t mentioned in the book, so I’ve created an information sheet.
Click to download a pdf copy.
Until next time,
Kay
Quilt Puppy Publications & Designs
Jan
19
A journey to a book ~ Part 13
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Being the thirteenth in a series of posts about a book proposal, from concept to print.
Click on the category ‘A journey to a book’ in the left sidebar to bring up all of the posts in the series.
It’s still May 2008. Numbered steps are appearing everywhere! The second edit has arrived by email, somewhat cleaned up from the last time I saw it but with a few more suggestions and questions. A good number of the bright aqua and shaded gray notes are thankfully not for me, but for the graphic designer down the road. Whew! But those numbered steps! And detail, detail, detail! So many specifics! And side-mentions turning into whole topics! The manuscript is not only being fleshed out, it’s gaining weight.
Again my “tips” mentality rears its head. I thump it back down. After all, they’re the experts with all of the experience, and I knew from the beginning that I would need to remain flexible, so I worked with Robin to compromise on things to our mutual satisfaction. And truly, this is what an editor does… clarify, clarify, break down, polish, clarify. The numbered steps are fine most places, and she resists the urge to number a certain section that’s really IMO too conversational for numbers.
This appliqué information is really going to be quite a good and detailed resource! Freezer-paper-on-top, back-basting, and an overview of raw-edge fusible machine appliqué. Something for everyone.
Round 2 hot pink revisions back to Robin. Stay tuned!
Until next time,
Kay
Quilt Puppy Publications & Designs
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