Putting Together a Book
Several people have asked me lately what the process is like to put together a book like “Historic Churches of Ashtabula County”. Well, the thing about working with Arcadia Publishing is that they have a rigid formula for their titles. That’s both the good news and the sometimes-frustrating news.
It’s all about the pictures
Since Arcadia’s books are image-driven, you can’t write about anything if you don’t have a picture that relates to what you are writing. That can take you down some crazy wormholes looking for that one image to support the fun fact you found in the back corner of an archives. For a complete book, you need to find between 180 and 240 images on your topic. As if that’s not challenging enough, these need to be original or professional copies, not most digital images, and they have to be at least 3” on a side. They also discount images from books and pictures of pictures. You can’t take more than 20% of the images yourself, so that’s not a “quick fix”. On the plus side, postcards are okay…although they aren’t usually the most riveting of images.
Let’s talk copyright
Just because you find enough images doesn’t necessarily mean you can use them. You need to get permission from the copyright owner. If you are using images from a private collection (e.g. that hatbox in your neighbor’s grandmother’s attic), you just need the owner’s okay (ideally, in writing). However, if the images are in a library, a museum or other type of institution, you need the institution’s permission and, sometimes, the photographer’s permission to use them.
Still with me?
Time to start writing
If you make through all of those hurdles, it’s time to start writing. Arcadia books have an introduction plus between three and ten chapters. Plus, each image needs to have a caption of between 50 and 100 words, depending on its placement. However, you can’t get too wordy. The books have to be between 10,000 and 18,000 words.
Formatting
Formatting the book means something slightly different with Arcadia books than it does to those who self-publish books. With the Arcadia books, you have to tell the editor where each image is going to go on each page. You can have one or two on a page plus no more than two double page spreads for the entire book. Chapters must start on even-numbered pages, which can make you crazy if you have a lot of chapters.
My method
To avoid having a ton of work to do in the weeks and days prior to the book deadline, I try to visit at least one image source a week and write 4-5 captions a day. (This is something I didn’t do with my earlier books and made a ton of work for myself at the last minute.) Some weeks, that plan works better than others.
Arcadia is great to work with for first-time book authors. They offer professional editing, marketing assistance and sales via their website and traditional booksellers. In my experience, their editors are as hands-on or as hands-off as you need them to be. (I’m more of a hands-off type of writer.)