Step 6 - Make Your Catalog Title Work

Step 6 - Brainstorm a quilt or art catalog title that will market your book 24/7.

How do you go about buying a book? No, really. Take a moment to think about the different ways you buy a book today:

Traditional Bookstore

• Seeing a stack of books on a table or end of aisle display
• Roaming book stack isles and picking up a book with an interesting title or book cover
• Hearing recommendation from book store employee
• Reading a "top pick" card by the store's staff

Online Bookstore

• Typing in specific title for a book
• Typing in keywords for the type of book you're looking for
• Seeing "featured book" or "also bought" book recommendation
• Taking a moment to view the "Look Inside" or preview feature of a book

Online Search Engine

• Typing in keywords for the type of book you're looking for
• Clicking on a search engine ad or nature search result
• Clicking on a link to a book review

And, if you have a smartphone, have you looked for a book using it?

There is little to no real chance that your quilt or art catalog will be stocked by a traditional bookstore. As a result, your title will have to work hard to attract potential buyers and readers online. What kind of keywords would you use to create your own book title? Actually, consider creating a title and subtitle to attract the widest potential audience.

What keywords would someone type to get to your art catalog? What is the theme you're trying to communicate in your book? What "target audience" are you trying to attract to your book?

May I share an example? Consider my book "This I Accomplish: Harriet Powers' Bible Quilt and Other Pieces." How many potential readers would have located the book if I only had the title "This I Accomplish"? Would anyone even know what the book was about? Now, think about all the folks who might go to Google and put in "Harriet Powers" or "Bible Quilt" in the search engine. By adding these two phrases, this title works 24/7 to attract potential readers.

What are potentially popular keywords for a quilt catalog? Quilt, quilts, quilter, artist, art quilt, patchwork, and applique.

You can also visit two websites for help in locating just the right keyword for your catalog:

1. www.google.com/insights/search
2. www.wordtracker.com

Take some time to brainstorm on your quilt catalog title and subtitle!

Step 5 - Create the Framework for your Quilt Catalog

Today you get to create the framework for your own quilt or art catalog! Earlier you had an opportunity to consider the theme for your catalog. Will it be a broad overview of your quilt making or a focus on a series of specific quilts?

Let's create a 24 page catalog! A simple model to consider for your quilt catalog is to have 6 pages of text about your quilt making and at least 13 photos, assuming one photo per page. Here is a framework for you to consider.

Page 1 - Title page
Page 2 - Copyright page
Page 3 - Dedication page
Page 4 - leave this page blank so that it forces the text on page 5 to be on the right-hand side of the book.
Pages 5 - 10 - Create an essay about your quilt making and or inspiration for your art work. In a later post, we'll talk about ideas for such an essay.
Pages 11 - 23 - Feature photographs of your quilts or artwork.
Page 24 - Your artist resume

See - when you sketch the framework for your art catalog, it is not that intimidating!

Why is the framework exercise important? I think it will help you to gather the needed photographs for your catalog. Equally as important, this exercise will eventually help you decide on a retail price for your book.

The catalog we'll create is a full-color one. Color printing is more expensive than black and white printing. As a result, you have to be mindful of page count. The more pages, the higher the cost to print the book and the higher the retail price. We'll cover things to consider when selecting a retail price later.

For now, spend some time creating the framework for your 24 page art catalog! [For those who have the workbook, there is a framework for a 36 page catalog.] Enjoy!

Step 4: Consider the components of a book - Pick your catalog size

When you were a kid, did you ever get some blank paper, fold it and staple the paper in the center fold to make a "book."? At its most basic, a book is a collection of folded pieces of pages. Mathematically, the book pages are divided by 4.

When I was researching my first book, Black Threads, I had no idea, thankfully, that it would actually become a published book. I was just having fun collecting the data, answering historical questions. When eventually I submitted a book query to McFarland Publishing to see if they would be interested in publishing the manuscript, I was shocked to get a positive letter in response the very next week! I was even more shocked to read that my 58,096 word manuscript was too short! I needed at least 90,000 words! Yikes! I'm glad that I did not initially know what I didn't know. I might have been too intimidated to "write a book."

Take a moment to look at your favorite books and really consider the book components. What other components would you add to this list?

• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Table of Contents
• Body of the book: Introduction, chapters, page numbers, photos. Notice how a new chapter usually starts on the right-hand side of the page!
  
• Appendix
• Bibliography or recommended reading list
• About the author page

Without even putting pen to paper - you likely already have three pages of your book in your mind! The Title page, the copyright page and the dedication page (smile)!

A common book size or trim size for a catalog is 7 x 10 inches or 8.5 x 8.5 inches. Today we start to create your quilt or art catalog. Consider what size you want your catalog to be. You can see the different trim sizes that CreateSpace offers by clicking here - and selecting the Printing Options tab. Enjoy!

Step 3 - Which elements of the publishing experience are important to you?

The process for publishing any book involves many steps and costs considerations. The art quilt catalog that we'll talk about can be done inexpensively. We'll cover potential costs in a different post, but here let's review the major elements to consider when selecting a print-on-demand vendor. You'll have to decide which elements are most important to you and how to approach each:

• Who owns your manuscript?
• Who owns the ISBN? ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number and is a unique identifier for the book. Look on the back cover of any book - the ISBN is above the bar code. It is essential to have an ISBN for online or traditional bookstores to sell your catalog.
• Who secures (and pays for) any permissions, such as permissions to publish a photo?
• Who edits the manuscript?
• Who designs the interior book layout?
• Who creates the book cover?
• Who prints the physical book?
• Who distributes the book or makes it available for potential book sellers? It is not enough to have printed copies of your quilt catalog. You need it available for bookstores and others to buy it. How does the print-on-demand service you are considering make the printed book available? Who is it available to: just their website? to major online sites? to physical bookstores? to libraries? just in the US or also Canada, UK, Japan and other countries?
• Who markets the book?

Don’t be discouraged – anyone who has ever published has to touch each of these steps! You should read the Terms and Conditions for any print-on-demand company you are interested in.
As a self-published author, I have found it critical to have my work on Amazon.com to reach the widest potential audience. Additionally, most folks have a credit card of file with the major online bookstores, so it convenient to purchase there. So, if the print-on-demand company does not make my book available to Amazon and other online bookstores, then they are off my list.
What are the important elements for you? Take a moment to post your comment. Enjoy!

Step 2 - Publish Your Quilt or Art Catalog Using Print-on-Demand

Today, we're going to talk about how to publish your quilt catalog. Let's face it, a traditional publishing company is not likely to publish our quilts unless we're as well known as a Nancy Crow, a Ruth B. McDowell, or an Eleanor Burns.

Documenting our quilts and our lives as quilters is important. I'd like for my family generations in the future to know that I stitched a quilt such as Black Barbie. If the actual quilt is no longer available, then having a photograph of it or catalog with the quilt may just be how family in the future knows about the quilt.

Technology, the Internet and online buying have come together in such as way that you can create a book in an affordable way and offer it, if you'd like, online for folks across America and in other countries to purchase.

The technique called "print-on-demand" allows for as few as one copy of a book to be printed once it is purchased online. There are several companies that other quilters have used to publish work using print-on-demand: CreateSpace, Lulu, Blurb are just a few. [I am not employed by these.]

Blurb - Great for photo books (fabulous paper quality), expensive because of the quality, but limited sales distribution as books printed by Blurb are available to purchase only from the Blurb website.

• Create your book interior using Blurb software and templates
• Offers both softcover and hardcover books
• 7 different book sizes for color books
• You set the retail price of your book over the minimum cost Blurb sets given the number of pages in our book.
• Click here to see the quilting books and catalogs others have published on Blurb. Many of the books offer a Preview feature for sampling.

Lulu - founded in 2002, easy to publish for novices.

• Offers Microsoft WORD templates by book size - just start typing!
• Offers both soft covers (perfect bound, saddle stitch, coil bound) and hardcover books (with and without dust jackets)
• 10 different book sizes for color interiors, but just 7 allow for as few as 32 page books
• 2 different paper grades for color: Lulu Standard and Premium
• Covers can be designed using an online "wizard" so you can select from various cover themes, layouts, colors and fonts
• Offers two different distribution options - a free one that gets your book on Amazon and a "global" reach one that makes your book available to online and traditional bookstore worldwide.
• Click here to see some of the quilting books available on Lulu.

CreateSpace - owned by Amazon, easy to publish for novices

• Offers Microsoft WORD templates by book size
• Only paperbacks books are available
• 15 full color book sizes, each allows for as few as 24 pages
• Just one paper option for color books - white paper
• An online Cover Generator allows you to select from various cover themes, layouts, colors and fonts
• Offers two different distribution options - a free one that gets your book on Amazon and an Expanded Distribution Channel choice that makes your book available to online and in traditional bookstores.
• Here's a link to quilting books published via CreateSpace.

I have personally used Lulu and CreateSpace. For this series, I will focus on CreateSpace as they offer full-color paperback book interiors for as few as 24 pages. Additionally, one has access to have your book sold on major online websites.
Were you aware of these print-on-demand sites? Have you used one before? What was your experience like? Enjoy!

Follow your dream - publish a catalog of your art quilts!

Hello!

For the last couple of years I've had a ball working on my quilt history research and then self-publishing the results using a method called "print on demand." Print on demand is a technique where a single book is printed affordably once the book is purchased.

As some of you know, I love researching quilters' past. Mostly, I've been hanging out in the 19th century ... reading newspaper microfilm and long out-of-print tomes.... looking up U.S. census, birth records, and other official data.

I wonder, though, what happens to all the great insights on today's quilters? How will researchers or family members 50 or 100 years from now learn about our quilts and motivations? So many fabulous quilts are pictured on Facebook - but what happens 25 years from now? Will those quilts be accessible to see? I'm being a bit selfish. The historian in me would like to do my bit to help preserve more quilt history.

How would you like to publish a catalog of your own quilts ... or artwork .... or quilt history research? How would you like to see your own catalog on a popular website such as Amazon.com - imagine having others potentially made aware of your quilts in ways that a local quilt exhibit can not. Really!

I'd like to share with you how you can publish your own quilt catalog in an affordable, accessible way. Disclaimer - I'm not an expert. I'll share what I've learned from self-publishing. In the next several posts, we'll walk through different steps to publish your quilt catalog using print on demand.

Really! We'll walk through the steps to publish a 24-page art catalog ... you'll need:

• Microsoft Word
• photos of your quilts or yourself in your quilt studio (or sewing on the dining room table, like I do!)
• Internet access
  
• and, your excitement!
  

That's it - for the most part. You are free to follow the posts here. If you'd like, you can purchase the workbook I've developed to provide an affordable way for you to take notes and see the paper and printing quality. In the workbook, I've also added a few bonuses.

Feel free to follow these posts with a quilting friend or your guild. On the right column here, you'll see where you can sign up for free emails to notify you when there is a new blog posts. Enjoy!