Book Sizes

What is the difference between a regular paperback and a mass market paperback?

Generally I call all regular paperbacks trade paperbacks, but I'm likely mistaken. Anyway, there are several differences: spaces between lines in the book, paper quality, how the pages are glued to the cover, price, and size. I'm going to talk about size of both paperbacks and hardbacks.

I'm more than a bit obsessive-compulsive about my books and how they're arranged on the shelves. Nothing makes me squirm more than seeing a series arranged right to left (3, 2, 1). After that is the series's book size and format (they have to all be hardback or all paperback, and heaven help me if the paperbacks are differently-sized) then where they are arranged in coordination with other books. I don't generally arrange by author or even genre, but rather what feels right to me, and sometimes that often changes on a whim (or a new book added to a series) and I spend a while rearranging my books.

It's like asking a crazy person how to fold a tinfoil hat: I know what I'm doing.

I've also had several problems with shelves. I had my entire Science Fiction Book Club editions of The Dresden Files sitting pretty on a small shelf until we dropped it in favor of buying from brick and mortar stores. This included a size change that caused my shelf to be too short for the latest Dresden Files book and I'd been forced to move the entire collection because of 1 inch of height.

I will be measuring the most standard book sizes by height and depth. Height is the obvious height of the book, whereas depth is how "deep" the book is resting on the shelf (it would be width if you were looking at the cover). I will not be measuring width as it sits on the shelf because that, of course, varies depending on the length of the book. Note that I am rounding to the nearest 4th of a percent, so I'm not saying things like 3/8ths of an inch. Measurements may also be inaccurate from some used paperback books I used to measure, as they were a little warped in the spine.

(I also apologize in advance for some of the books I have selected at random. I have made some poor choices in my life.)

I'm going to start with hardbacks.


Ranger's Apprentice and Hunger Games are your two standard hardbacks. There are going to be all kinds of variations, and that's why I have several here for comparison. Young Wizards isn't too unusual of a hardback, as I've seen a couple that large. Maximum Ride is somewhere in between, and Skinned is a format I've heard referred to as a "Baby Hardback." I would have included these as a standard hardback but these were more common about 5 years ago (their paperback versions being the same exact size ratio) and have since then faded into obscurity, their paperback forms often being changed to a standard paperback. It likely had something to do with market appeal (the Uglies series by Scott Westerfield and the Gripping trilogy by Robin Wasserman both being good examples of this conversion.)

The size of Hunger Games I generally call Hardback Size #1 because it is the most common. It is the most likely size a book comes in these days and the size you will see on the shelves in bookstores. Hardback #1 measures 8 1/2 tall by 6 1/2 inches deep. It is also the size most book clubs use for their books.

The Ranger's Apprentice book size I call Hardback Size #2. HB #2 used to be more common in brick and mortar stores, though I've noticed it's been fading out in favor of HB #1. If a book is not HB #1, chances are it will be HB #2. Hardback #2 measures 8 1/2 tall by 6 deep.

As I mentioned, some hardbacks will be more random. Maximum Ride, I believe, has the height of HB #2 and the depth of HB #1

Here is an example of the three book sizes: Hardback #2, Hardback #1, and then Baby Hardbacks (note some Science Fiction Book Club omnibuses mixed in with HB #1 books from brick and mortar stores.)



"I've never heard of any of these authors," you say.

Stay tuned next week for paperbacks.



Introducing Ian Daniels

Maybe it's the long hours of being confused as I learn an entire new circle of people at my new job, or maybe it's the sleep deprived state I'm in as I flip a complete 180 degrees in my schedule from full dayshift to full nightshift in only three days (welcome to Day 2), but today I've decided I'm going to take a week off of my narcissism to tell you about someone else and his book.


No me? But I love me!

The guy I'm talking about is Ian Daniels. One day the Writing Gods cracked open the sky and threw the lightning of literary creation to strike Ian, and awesome is what happened.

Boom.

When the world, your world, gets turned upside down, there are leaders, there are followers, there are those that sit back, and those that take advantage… and then there’s you.

The following story chronicles the events of a reluctant and unapologetic man on his path through a world compromised by a collapsed economy, society, and way of life. His ability to survive fosters an internal struggle that intertwines within the few friends he has left. Unsure of how to guide them through the reality of this changed existence without crushing their hope, sometimes it is all he can do to just to keep himself alive without becoming what he fights against.               

I had an advanced copy to help with some edits, but an editor I am not (thanks Stephanie for keeping me sane during my own editing process!)

Ian has his own blog (found Here).You can get Against the Grain on both Amazon (Here) or Smashwords (Here). Get it. Read it. Review it. Tell your friends, neighbors, enemies, random strangers, anyone you think might be interested.

And now, I plan to get reacquainted with my new best friend: caffine.

I Suck at Drawing

I forgot to mention in my last post another primary reason I became a writer:

I suck at drawing.

Like any kid, I drew a lot (I still have many of those today) and did a lot of drawing up until only a few years ago.

Like a lot of girls 12 to 18 I decided I wanted to really draw. Maybe I could become an artist! My dad's pretty good at drawing. He draws with good perspective and shading. I've known from the start that I'm terrible at that, which is why I my medium gravitated toward the anime/manga style. It was cartoony enough that I didn't have to worry about too much realism, but was still realistic enough that I could produce the results I wanted.

This was one of the last drawings I made, back in 2009:

Noodle arms!

I was 22.

No, seriously.

Here's a second, from a year later:

Tell me that's not an awesome sock in your face right there.

Compare with this:

A drawing by MPsai of Deviant Art (her page found Here) when she was 20 years old.

I've always been frustrated with my drawing skills. No matter how much I drew I never got any better. It reached a point where I would just stare at a blank piece of paper (or, sometimes, have a couple of lines) and just start crying. I wasn't good at anything, I had no skills, I would never be good at it.

I wasn't having fun anymore.

Still, I had these ideas. these awesome ideas. I wanted them to pop out of my head and onto the paper. People would look at them and go "Whoa." I have Stupid Hands though, and never managed to fully create them with a pencil.

I was, however, creating them with a keyboard.

It took me a long time to realize it, and it was a slow transition from drawing to writing (most of which I tried to blend by making comics) but I started to notice that I could make those pictures in my head into stories, and it wasn't hard at all. In fact, it was one of the easiest things I have ever done and, after working on it, I've been incredibly happy.

That was it, that was that special something I was missing the whole time.

I think the wolf girl was the last drawing I ever actually tried to do well on. I've since made some others, but I've been much happier after shrugging my shoulders and admitting I'll never surpass the skill of a 14 year old girl.

So, can't draw? Try writing. You might find yourself in a similar situation.

How I Became a Writer

Nobody just sat down one day and decided "I think I'll slam my face on the keyboard for months at a time until Microsoft Word tells me I have 50,000 words." Although I've heard of people (mostly girls aged 13-16) suddenly deciding they want to write, most usually give it up after about the first page or two once they realize writing is hard and it's too much like homework.

However, most dedicated authors you hear about had really bad lives (don't quote me on them, these are just what I heard) like JK Rowling was buying Christmas presents for her daughter from thrift stores, A.A. Milne (author of Winnie the Pooh) had an abusive father, Lewis Carroll had a bad stutter, J.M. Barrie (author of Peter Pan) was rumored to be psychologically stunted.

It's like you have to have a dark past in order to write.

"Mom, give me a black eye. It'll make me a famous writer someday."

But nah, that's not the case. One of my favorite authors, John Flanagan, started his career by writing stories for his son.

A good way to help keep you writing is stop and think about what got you writing in the first place.

When I used to tell people how I became a writer I would start it when I actually began writing a novel at around 14, but a couple of years ago I realized it actually goes further back than that. I must have been anywhere from 6 to 8 years old and I started writing these little stories called Hearts and Stars. It was about a girl who was friends with a talking dog and cat and other stuff. The sun and moon also talked, and were in love with each other, but were never allowed to see each other. Throughout the whole little pages I glued on shiney metallic hearts and stars, hence the name.



Have you considered killing off a character?

I've mentioned being homeschooled before. A big part of teaching kids is trying to grab their interest. My brother and I have always been really into videogames, and around the point where our dad decided we were going to be writing some papers we were playing Diablo 2 (I was 12, though I could have sworn I was younger) Our homework was to write letters to Charsi (the blacksmith in Act I) in-character about our adventures.


She was awesome.

I don't remember an awful lot about them, but I do remember having an absolute blast.

I've always been quick with my wit, though my source needed some work. Usually I quoted something from one source or another and it was rather applicable, but never original. As I got older I was able to from a good sense of humor and managed to come up with a lot of my own comebacks and additions to a conversation. Problem was, people would laugh and then ask "Where did that come from?" Not so much a rhetorical question (to the effect of "Oh you're such a card!") as much as it was Wikipedia asking "Source?"

They'd always asked it, but it was only when I'd started coming up with my own material that it began to bother me. I didn't want to be thought of as a parrot of television shows. I wanted to prove that I could come up with something entirely original.

I found this in writing.

I was in the range of 13 or 14 when I started writing my first novel, Carda's Cloak. I wrote it entirely by hand, so often that I started to cramp. I'd managed to make about 100 hand-written pages over the course of what felt like a year or two, but was probably closer to six months. Edits were hard, since I had to erase large chunks and hope the edits filled the same amount of space. I'd even changed the main character's name at least twice, going through all of the pages, erasing, and rewriting it by hand.

I later realized that writing would work much faster if I used the computer. I could add or remove whatever I wanted much faster. So I began transcribing Carda's Cloak all into Microsoft Word. Problem was, there were too many things I wanted to change. It was like writing a whole new story. Even as I rewrote it I began to realize something that Stephanie Meyer couldn't: Writing an entire novel based on a ten second dream I had was a mistake. I scrapped it, though I still have the original hand-written version sitting somewhere today and, more surprisingly, the Microsoft Word version that, apparently, hasn't been touched since 2005.

I was 15 when Metroid Prime was released, and I got way into Metroid (before that I still loved the original Metroid and Super Metroid, but fandom was a whole different thing before the Internet as we know it today). Trying to find more Metroid, I stumbled across a website called Metroid Galaxy (now defunct) and, at the time, they were recruiting for the Metroid Role Playing Forum. I thought to myself "Metroid and writing at the same time? Awesome!"



And that's why all women today wear space helmets to feel sexy.

So I joined and, with everyone's help and encouragement there, they molded me into the writer that I am today. There's no possible way I could even begin to show my appreciation, and all the times I've attempted to sound a lot like the written equivalent of a drunk-dialing at 2 AM, slurring "I love you man..." into the receiver.

Somewhere between Carda's Cloak and the start of joining the Metroid Role Playing Forum I started a novel called Langoria. I was about 16 to 17.


Not to be confused with Eva Longoria.

It was later renamed to Angel Queen. Angel Queen is probably the point where I could actually call myself a writer. This was the one I really dedicated myself to. It was the first time I actually considered publishing. I worked on that one until I finished it, 50,000 words, and then edited it several times and called it finished in 2008. After that I was really excited to start on Book 2, Angel Grey. Though rather thin at 32,000 words, I finished it in a year and hopped right into Book 3, Angel Fall, in late 2009. I only got about 3,000 words in when a certain group of kids took up residence in my brain: A werewolf, a witch, and a vampire.

I tried to finish Angel Fall, but Crystal, if you've read the book, is a rather insistent character. After some back and forth I finally caved, slapped Dusted together in roughly 6 months, and went back to Angel Fall.

But I couldn't leave Dusted alone.

Although my records say I last worked on Angel Fall in January 2010, and I started Dusted February 2009, Dusted was here to stay. The Langoria Trilogy was, officially, dead.

Although Angel Queen was the first novel that made me say "I want to publish this" Dusted was the first anything I had ever written that made me think "I can publish this." Dusted had some kind of magic, a spark, that made me realize this was a great story and that people would not only read it, but would enjoy it.

So I wrote it, beginning to end, and it was an amazing trip. I made some edits, and, over the course of a year or two, built up the courage to share it with people who could help me polish it. It would be a little while longer before I managed to gain courage to start sending it to an agent (with a big push from Cynthia Hand, of which I mention the story Here)

 

 

Here's the rejection letter I got (with the name removed):

 

Thank you for sending me a query letter describing your work. After careful evaluation, I have decided that I am not the right agent to represent your work. Please do not take this rejection as a comment on your writing ability. Given the large amount of submission I receive, I can only properly represent material that greatly excites or interests me. Since this is such a subjective business, I am sure another agent will feel quite differently about your work.

I wish you the best of luck finding representation with the right agent and good fortune with your writing career.

 

Nice of her to send a response, even if was generic.

 

Anyway, I was reading some articles about getting published, and self publishing, and one in particular that my dad sent me gave me enough motivation to say "Stuff that!" to the publishing business, get Dusted published for Kindle a week later, and here I am today.

 

I've got a new novel in the works. It's nearing completion and will need some revision, so it's still a way off. The roleplaying forum (I prefer the term "Collaborative writing forum") is still alive and well today, though they've since moved away from being specifically Metroid-oriented and have renamed themselves Reality's Exile. I even still participate. If you're interested, or at least curious, you can find them Here where they are currently trying to recruit some new members.

 

So, there I am.