From Gutenberg’s printing press to the linotype machine …

In Thief’s Coin, the second book of my fantasy trilogy, an inventive chronicler hires a mage to conjure magical copyists to prepare his broadsheet newsletter pages. The chronicler prepared one “template,” and then dozens of disembodied hands holding inked quills would copy the chronicler’s sentences to newsletter pages.

In a way, it was a non-mechanical version of a linotype machine except a printing press wasn’t required for the final step in the process. A Folded broadsheet produced four pages of copy. The disembodied hands could produce hundreds of newsletters and were fast enough that the chronicler could print on a daily basis. Of course, magic doesn’t exist in our world. We rely on machines.

 When people think of a revolution in printing, they think of German Johannes Gutenberg’s 15th century printing press. Gutenberg, a goldsmith by profession, based his machine on existing screw presses. When combined with Gutenberg’s newly devised hand mould for movable metal type, it made possible the first mass production of books in assembly-line style. A single Renaissance printing press could produce 3,600 pages per workday compared to 40 by typographical hand-printing and a few by hand-copy.

But it still took time to build books by the hand mold. Thankfully, a 300-page page book didn’t need to be prepared for the printing press in a week or less. That wasn’t the case for broadsheets and newspapers.

Before 1884, no newspaper in the world had more than eight pages. That’s more than 400 years between Gutenberg’s printing press and German-born Ottmar Mergenthaler’s invention of the linotype machine. The linotype was the first mechanical device that could quickly set complete lines of type for use in printing presses. Mergenthaler has been called the second Gutenberg for initiating a second revolution in the art of printing.

The linotype is a line-casting machine used in printing. Along with letterpress printing, linotype was the industry standard for newspapers and magazines from the late 1800s to the 1960s and ‘70s when it was replaced by offset lithography printing and computer typesetting.

The linotype gets its name from the fact that it produces an entire line of metal type at once. That’s a revolutionary improvement over what came before it – letter-by-letter typesetting using a composing stick and drawers of letters. I know how laborious this can be; in a journalism class at Ohio University, I had to set type this way.  It was an enlightening history lesson.

So how does a linotype work? The machine operator enters text on a 90-character keyboard. The linotype assembles matrices – molds for the letter forms – in a line. The assembled line is then cast as a single piece of metal – called a slug – in a process known as hot-metal typesetting. The matrices are then returned to the type magazine for reuse.

The machine transformed newspaper publishing, making it possible for a relatively small number of operators to set type for many pages on a daily basis.

I’ve actually seen linotypes in operation. At my first newspaper reporting job in the mid-1970s, linotypes were still in use. Sometimes I’d walk back into the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette’s Composing Department and watch the machines in action.

Today there’s another revolution afoot. One of the nation’s oldest newspapers is joining a growing movement away from seven-days-a-week print publishing. Starting in the fall the New Orleans Times-Picayune will only distribute print editions three days a week. Of course, all seven editions will be available online. That’s the crux of the matter – in tough economic times newspapers are painfully beginning the move toward only online editions.

The digital age also has ushered in a watershed change in the way some books are printed. Print-on-demand or POD books are not printed until an order has been received. It means books can be printed one at a time. Digital printing made POD economical. Before ultraviolet curable inks and large format inkjet printers, it was cost-prohibitive to print small runs using letterpress or offset printing.

POD has fueled the large increase in self-publishing authors who can use a POD publishing or printing company that offers services directly to authors for a fee. These services generally including printing and shipping a book each time one is ordered and getting listings in online bookstores.

As Bob Dylan sang back in the ‘60s, “The times they are a-changin’.”

Straight from me to you: A few Journey Stories

The Smithsonian has a traveling exhibit known as “Journey Stories.” It showcases journeys Americans have made to make a better life for themselves and their children – everything from ocean journeys from the Old Country to the New World to highway journeys from the East Coast to the West Coast.

All American families have journey stories but some are easier to chronicle than others. That’s because family history can easily get lost if the memories of older generations were not passed on through the written word.

I’m thankful that a couple of family members completed the necessary research to uncover the journey stories of several branches of my family tree.

Let me relate some journey stories of my family. Here’s a story of sailing ships and a father and his sons from Alsace who booked passage to the American colonies in the late 1740s. In the mid 18^th century, Alsace was a French province even though the people spoke German. French and German armies had laid waste to the Alsace countryside during the 17^th century religious wars. With the population decimated, many Anabaptist refugees came from Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Lorraine and Savoy to Alsace between the 1670s and the early 18^th century. I figure the father and his sons, including Jacob Franks, my maternal great-great-great-great-great grandfather, were Anabaptists, probably Mennonites.

In 1749, six-year-old Jacob, along with his brothers and father, boarded a sailing ship that voyaged to Philadelphia. Jacob grew up in German Township, Pa., and married Barbara Brandenbiger. He served in the American militia during the Revolutionary War. His great-grandson Jesse Franks, Jr. married Mary Ann Fox and moved the family by wagon to Apple Creek in Wayne County, Ohio. My mother was born in Wayne County and I was born in neighboring Medina County.

Here’s another journey story, this time a branch of the family tree from my dad’s side of the family. Great-Grandmother Lena (Russell) Iuppenlatz no doubt told stories of the Traveling Church to her children. That’s because her mother Sarah was a Craig who could trace her family history back to Benjamin Craig, a Baptist preacher from Spotsylvania, Va., who along with his brother Lewis angered the Anglican establishment for preaching without a license.

In 1781, Lewis led a wagon train of about six hundred souls – including his 30-year-old brother Benjamin, Benjamin’s wife Nancy and their children – into the western portion of Virginia that would in time become known as Kentucky. Benjamin was one of the founders of Carrollton, Ky., and he built the first brick house in Carroll County in 1792.

Sometimes a journey story includes tragedy. In the case of the Craig family, it happened in January 1847 when Benjamin Craig, Jr. and his son Silas, along with four other men, drowned in the Ohio River when their skiff capsized in a storm.

Sometimes a journey story can even include murder. My Great-Grandfather Louis Iuppenlatz, a railroad man for 60 years, had a younger brother, William, who married Anna Young, a woman with a wandering eye. After 22 years of marriage, Anna ran off to Indianapolis in 1914 to be with her lover, John Lee, a barber. A jealous, possessive man, Lee shot her in June of that year and then killed himself. Anna was taken to the city hospital, but when it became certain she had no hope for recovery, she asked to be taken to her sister’s house in Indianapolis to die. She took her last breath on June 24 and her body was returned to her home in St. Paul with burial in Paul Hill Cemetery.

I have my own personal journey story, and it’s very much a story anchored in the mid-20^th century. In the midst of the Cold War, my dad moved the family west to Rialto, Calif., in the summer of 1957. The aerospace company my dad worked for in Brecksville, Ohio, had purchased a plant outside of Rialto and intended to manufacture rocket engines for the Minuteman I missile. So dad packed my mom, my sister and me into the 1955 red-and-white Ford station wagon and we followed the yellow brick road – U.S. Highway 66 – to California.

For a few days before we moved into a rental house, we stayed in the Wigwam Hotel in Rialto. For a five-year-old kid on the verge of kindergarten who loved wearing cowboy outfits and watching TV shows like Wagon Train, staying at the Wigwam was like visiting Heaven.

So all you folks reading this…you must have journey stories of your own eager to escape your mind and find life on the written page or on the kindle or nook. Listen up…flex those fingers and start typing.

Ebooks to ailing economy: ‘Nuts!’

Now we’re hearing that the U.S. economy is running out of steam.

Well, stoke the boiler, right?

No. At least not with government “coal.” That will add to the prodigious deficit.

The Commerce Department says gross domestic product grew at a 2.2 percent annual rate in the first three months of this year, much below economists’ expectations. Analysts said government spending cuts offset a pickup in consumer spending.

Apparently we can thank shoppers for keeping the economy afloat. So keep your billfolds and purses open, ladies and gentlemen, and keep buying.

For the last few days there’s been an interesting online discussion on my publisher’s Yahoo author loop. Royalty checks for the novels have been on the disappointing side.

Some authors have been contemplating going it alone as independents. They got a shock of sorts from the publisher. The authors who bail out on the publisher at the end of their contract period lose the cover and the version of the manuscript that includes publisher edits.

Borders closed its doors last year. Bookstore chains haven’t been doing all that well as customers buy Kindles and Nooks and download ebooks from websites like Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Smashwords. Ebook publishing has been one of the industries posting good numbers during these sullen economic times.

Ebook sales rose 72 percent in December 2011 over the same period in 2010. But that’s a slower rate than the triple-digit gains earlier in 2011.

So if ebooks are garnering double-digit sales, I’m left wondering why my ebook publisher is struggling with sales.

My best guess: A glut of small ebook publishers are fighting over market share. That’s the case with my publisher. My publisher, who has placed around 800 novels on Amazon and Barnes and Noble websites, is 10 years old. It was a pioneer in ebook publishing, but is now having to contend not only with many new ebook publishers, but with a growing number of authors who are self-published.

The ebook world is constantly changing. In the early days, the small ebook publishers ruled. Now the major publishing houses have ebooks. And more and more authors are going the route of self-publishing. They list their books on Amazon for between 99 cents and $2.99 and love to have one-day free giveaways.

For marketing nowadays, both authors who are self-published or under the wings of an ebook publisher market their novels by trying to get online reviews, going on blog tours, attending various conventions and doing book signings.

The ebook world is driven by genre fiction, categories such as horror or romance. I recently joined a Facebook site called Books Gone Viral and it’s almost entirely made up of romance authors. Many are self-published authors who use the site to announce giveaways and new blog posts. They are changing the face of the ebook world.

Publishers watched the slide of the music and newspaper industries. Should they keep prices high and differentiate their wares from the sometimes unedited efforts of the self-published? Should they cut prices for ebooks and risk accelerating the decline of print? And for the small ebook publishers like mine…should they spend more money marketing their websites and their stables of authors and their novels to set themselves apart from their competitors? Their decisions will ultimately decide their fates.

Memories are fleeting...

I treasure the memories of the Great Depression.

That’s remarkable considering I was born in 1951.

But my grandparents, aunts and uncles all lived as young adults in the grim 1930s when banks failed and the unemployment lines grew longer and longer – and no one had heard of safety nets.

They shared their memories with me, and though all are now ensconced in heaven their memories are snug and comfortable inside my head.

What got me thinking about my loved ones and some very bad times they struggled through was a news release about Homestead Day on April 28, the commemoration that honors Penderlea Homestead Project’s Depression-era settlers. Penderlea Homestead Farms was the first of 152 homestead projects developed in 1934 under President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. They provided penniless tenant farmers, bankrupt farm owners and unemployed ex-farmers with a means of making a living.

The stories told to me came from my mother’s side of the family. I presume my father’s side persevered better. My Great-Grandfather Louis Iuppenlatz and Grandpa Bud Staton were depot masters in Indiana and Ohio and trains continued to run during the Depression years.

On my mother’s side of the family, a great-uncle lost an arm in the 1930s in a train accident. We’ve all heard stories of hobos hitching rides aboard freight trains and the company bulls who tried to catch them in the act. Well, Uncle Georgie Kurtz tried to board a train; he slipped and a wheel ran over his arm.

I’ve a photograph on my hard drive of Georgie standing in a martial pose … he’s wearing his World War I uniform. He looks quite handsome. I remember a much older Georgie sitting in a chair in his sister Ethel’s front room, his shirtsleeve tucked in where an arm should have been. Georgie liked to look out the front window at the doings on Rittman’s Main Street.

As the 1930s began, the small Ohio town of Rittman depended on two factories, a plant that made salt and a plant that manufactured cardboard boxes. When the Depression forced them to close, it left the town’s breadwinners without a livelihood. Back in those dark days, 25 percent of the work force were without jobs.

Grandma Mid told me hobos would come up to the back porch and ask for handouts. Just before the stock market crash in ’29 grandma had bought some stuff on credit and Grandpa Frog spent years working odd jobs to pay off the debt. It left a lasting impression…he never used credit cards. He even paid cash for new cars.

Grandpa Frog gained a lifelong respect for the union movement thanks to the Great Depression. He knew workers had to look out for themselves and not depend on the largess of factory owners. He was a union leader at the local salt company and even served as union president at the state level. When Grandma Mid died in 1995, I went through their walk-in closet and found the textbooks grandpa studied to become a boiler man at the salt company.

Grandpa Frog knew that only through hard work and perseverance could a man improve his lot in life. That’s what he taught me and that’s where I got my memories of the Great Depression.

Authoring the Superbowl ...

Watching a Superbowl is like reading a book.

Like most fans of fantasy novels, I love a slam-bam opening scene with something shocking transpiring. In my novel, The Emperor’s Mistress, it’s a brutal battle where an emperor is struck down and his magical sword captured by the enemy. It’s the same with the Superbowl. I want the first quarter to explode with action – or at least have something happen to draw me into the game.

In Sunday’s game, the Giants’ punter backed the Patriots deep into their own territory after Eli Manning could do nothing on New York’s opening possession. On the Patriots’ first play of the game, Tom Brady dropped back into his own end zone and had to throw the ball away to evade a tackle. Out came a ref’s flag. Brady had been penalized for intentional grounding when he threw the ball deep down the middle. He’d tried to avoid a safety. Guess what? The Patriots were slapped with a safety and trailed the Giants 2-0 with the game barely begun.

The safety proved controversial for some sports pundits. They thought the ref had been unfair in throwing the flag. After all, a speedy Patriot receiver might have been able to sprint under the ball.

Add in a bit of controversy in a novel’s opening scene and the stage is set for followup chapters that build suspense and tension, laying the ground work for a climatic final action scene. In The Emperor’s Mistress, it’s our heroes fighting a swarm of horse-size dragons. In the Superbowl, it’s Brady and rest of the Patriots clinging to a 17-15 lead, setting up what would prove to be a hum-dinger of an ending.

With time down to about 3:50 left in the game, Manning completed a deep, sideline pass to Mario Manningham. Somehow, the Giants receiver kept both feet inbounds. Remember that safety? Without it, the Giants would have been trailing 17-13 on their final drive, not 17-15 as the scoreboard showed. When the Giants drove to inside the Patriots’ five-yard line with about a minute left, the patriots’ defense would not have let running back Ahmad Bradshaw score his clumsy touchdown. Perhaps the Patriots could have mounted a goal-line stand and won the game.

But that’s not how it ended. The Patriots got the ball back with 57 seconds left and New England fans hoping for a “Brady” miracle. It almost happened. On the last play of the game, a desperate heave by Brady into the end zone was almost caught by tight end Rob Gronkowski, but the ball fell harmlessly to the turf. The Giants and their fans went crazy; Brady looked emotionally drained.

For a novel, a humdinger of an ending leaves the reader eager to read book 2 if it’s a trilogy. If it’s the Superbowl, the happy Giants fan buys a round for his buddies and then everybody watches the post-game show on  sports bar’s wide-screen TV.

Chasing after higher sales…

I envy fellow ebook authors who manage to do a boatload of marketing. They have my respect.

So far most of my efforts have centered on Facebook posts. I do character teasers to try to pique the interest of potential readers. Some “friends” will share my novel-related posts and that helps spread my marketing efforts far beyond my 213 Facebook friends. Some of the folks I’ve “friended” have hundreds, even thousands, of Facebook friends.

At this point I need to give a thank you to indie author Lindsay Buroker who has done a remarkable job promoting her novels. On her blog site Lindsay has linked to my blog.

In a recent blog, Lindsay wrote, “The last month I made less than $1,000 was in May. In August, I broke $3,000. Alas, earnings have dropped off a lot since then with October barely hitting $1,500. Nothing to scoff about, but I’m glad I still have income from other sources!”

How does Lindsay do it? Here’s what she says: “Some of you guys have seen my free podiobook, my free short stories (Ice Cracker II and Flash Gold are currently free), my goofy videos on YouTube, my various interviews and guest blog posts, and of course my daily chatter on Twitter (yes, some people have told me they actually found my work that way). Oh, and don’t forget my Facebook fan page (if nothing else, I have some fun steampunk pictures up there).”

Lindsay has tapped into the Internet Age and is making the technology work for her.

I met Lindsay online several years. Both of us were using the Online Writers Workshop (OWW) of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror to get some helpful critiques of chapters. I found her reviews insightful.

Beyond Facebook and sending out news releases, I struggle to find the time to promote my two published fantasy novels, The Emperor’s Mistress and Thief’s Coin. I’m a weekly newspaper reporter who covers an entire county, both news and sports. I work harder now than I ever did back in the ‘70s and ’80 when I was a reporter for Ohio and Florida dailies. But my news release sent to the local newspaper, the Wilmington Star-News, did translate into a news story about the release of Thief’s Coin. I figure it may have led to some sales on Amazon.

A week ago I went to the Fictionwise to see how Thief’s Coin’s sales are doing on the Barnes & Nobles’ ebook site. What I found was a pleasant surprise. Thief’s Coin was ranked 16th on the site’s best-seller list. Not in Fictionwise’s fantasy category but all the books listed on the website. The novel has since fallen to 20th place, but that’s still a healthy number.

In Fictionwise’s fantasy category, Thief’s Coin is ranked fourth on the best-seller list. The Emperor’s Mistress is fifth. The Emperor’s Mistress is the first book in a trilogy; Thief’s Coin, the second. The Emperor’s Mistress has been out for 15 months, Thief’s Coin for just two months. The first novel has obviously gotten a spike in sales because many buyers want to read a trilogy in sequence.

Again, I need to return my focus to Lindsay Buroker. Lindsay has a growing fan base, and some have no doubt used her link to check me out and buy my novels. She’s sailing to Tahiti right now, but if she sees this blog, I want her to know I appreciate her helpful link. My website – http://lareniashadow.com – has a link to her blog, but I think she’s been more help to me than vice-versa.

Lindsay’s novels are fun to read. I helped review The Emperor’s Edge and I can say definitively that her heroine, imperial law enforcer Amaranthe Lokdon, is a memorable character. The novel takes place in an era of steam, which makes it different from typical fantasy novels with their medieval or renaissance settings. Check her out at www.lindsayburoker.com.

Well, I did write that I have a trilogy. That means I need to get back to working on book three, Assassins’ Lair. I started workshopping it on the OWW over a year ago, but put it aside to concentrate on my newspaper job and getting Thief’s Coin ready for publication. No more excuses. Time to start cranking out pages.

Discover the World of Stealth and Derrius...

A novelist can’t help but wonder if readers will feel about his book the same as he does.

He knows the publisher liked it enough to take a chance and publish it.

The staff at Wings, my publisher, uses test readers to initially assess a novel for readability and quality.

Two test readers get the first look at a novel. You want both readers to enjoy the read. That makes it more likely the book will eventually get the publisher’s nod of approval. That’s the way my first novel, The Emperor’s Mistress, got to be one of Wing’s General Fiction/Fantasy offerings.

My second novel, Thief’s Coin, had an easier route to publication. It didn’t have to go through screening writers. It went straight to the copywriter. Thief’s Coin is the second book of a fantasy trilogy called Larenia’s Shadow. I figure the staff felt the writing of The Emperor’s Mistress was high quality, and Thief’s Coin wouldn’t suddenly become blubbering awful.

I workshopped Thief’s Coin through two drafts on the Online Writers Workshop of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror. Everyone seemed to like the main subplots – the ongoing love story of a prince and a thief, and the struggle of two fractured personalities sharing the mind of a sorceress.

A published author read my final draft and disliked the personality of my prince in the second book compared to how I left him at the end of the first book. She felt Derrius was far too wimpy and nonassertive and let Stealth make the decisions. She also felt I had made the sorceress into a character who no longer had overarching evil goals but wanted to torture people for meaningless reasons.

So I took the book through another draft, tweaking Derrius’s personality to make him a more forceful character once more and making clear that the sorceress’s off-the-wall behavior is due to her multiple personality disorder.

I like complex characters with personality shortcomings they must overcome if they are to succeed at their endeavors. All my main characters have flaws.

At the end of The Emperor’s Mistress, Derrius’s party has barely survived an attack of horse-size dragons called amphipteres. Half the party is dead. One of the main characters, an elf maiden named Arlienn, has been poisoned by amphiptere blood. The cure requires a potion with one unusual ingredient – the grounded up finger bone of the sorceress. One of the subplots of Thief’s Coin is how Arlienn and mage Teverus make plans to pilfer that finger.

In the first book Derrius pretends to lead a coming-of-age trade party while actually questing for a magical sword – Larenia’s Shadow – that dispels magic and if put in the hand of his uncle the Emperor would free him from the sorceress’s charms and love potions.

Early in Thief’s Coin, Derrius and his lover, the thief Stealth, must separate from the rest of the “trade party” and by themselves make their way to where the sword is hidden. They masquerade as runaway peasant lovers on the way to a nearby city to get married. Will the sorceress find them before the warring personalities in her head drive her mad? Will Stealth and Derrius use their new-found love to bond even closer and convince everyone that they are peasants on the run or will their old class differences lead to disaster?

Buy Thief’s Coin and find out.