Don't annoy your readers - self-editing for dummies

Readers are picky beasts, and just because they couldn't necessarily correct your writing, it doesn't mean that they can't recognise and be annoyed by constant technical issues. Leave enough editorial screw-ups in your manuscript, and not only will you lose readers, but arsehole book reviewers, like me, will call you on it in public. Actually, so will Amazon.

Yes, editing is expensive - or time-consuming. And boring, for the most part. But no, people won't cut you slack just because you're indie - and nor should they have to.

When you publish a book, you're producing something you've spent months or years on. You owe it to yourself, not to mention your readers, the respect of doing it properly.

You may not be able to afford to have your 350-page manuscript professionally edited at $45/hour.

However, there are a number of things you can do yourself.

Will this self-editing be as good as having it done professionally? No, probably not. But at least you can minimise the chance that someone's going to use your precious manuscript for toilet paper because the typos, homophones, and other easily-avoidable technical eff-ups are making their brains hurt.

Step 1: Eliminate the obvious

I use MS Word, but whatever word-processing tool you use, either find the native spellcheck option or mug someone for their computer and load your MS up into software that has one.

1.  Highlight your entire MS. (In Word, Ctrl+A.)
2. Select the dialect of English (or whatever language you're in) that you want your MS to use. I use UK English.
3. Go through your entire MS and check out all the errors. 
• If a word, phrase or sentence has a coloured line under it, that means you either have a spelling error or a grammar error - or the spellcheck thinks that you do.
• If you write fantasy / sci-fi, or some other genre that you've made up words for, I recommend adding them to your dictionary. It saves you having to 'ignore' them several times a page.
• Spellchecks can be wrong. If you aren't certain that your red, blue or green wavy underline is actually right, go online and do your research.
• Spellcheck, for the most part, will not catch homophones (words that sound identical but mean different things). You're going to need to figure out that a horse doesn't have reigns yourself.

Step 2:  Use your brain

Go back up to the very first sentence in your MS. You know, the one you hoped never to see again, because you agonised over it for weeks.

1. Re-read your entire MS. Don't skim. Read it as a reader.
• If a sentence makes you pause, highlight it. 
• If you see an error you missed and the spellcheck missed, either fix it or highlight it. 
• If something doesn't seem logical, highlight it (possible plothole).
• If you find yourself starting to skim, ask yourself if it's because you've inserted four words, four paragraphs, or four pages of unnecessary yak. Highlight it.
• Does your scene suddenly change view-points? Highlight it. 
• Got sections where the hero's rugged face took on a look of surprised dismay before he began to reach out to gently touch the heroine's velvety, petal-like cheek? Highlight 'em.
• Be consistent. If you hyphenated 'cloud-filled' in chapter 1, hyphenate it in chapter 20. If you spelt it 'adrenalin' in chapter 3, don't use 'adrenaline' in chapter 4. 
• If you find yourself wondering about a word or words each time, make a list of the things you keep having to back-check on and use the list to stay consistent.
2. Go back over all the sections you higlighted.  
• Could you rephrase the sentence / paragraph / section to get rid of whatever made you uneasy when you read it? For example, have you used the same sentence structure multiple times in a row? Is there a pet word that you've just used too often? Is the sentence structure just clunky?
• Get all the weird and wonderful things that spellcheck missed and you highlighted. Spellchecks are tools, not a substitute for your brain.
• Check the places where something struck you as not logical or missing something. Maybe you need to add an explanation or tie up a loose thread. 
• Check the spots were your eyes started to unfocus. Do you really need them in the book? Or are they pacing disasters that are going to put your reader to sleep?
• Check your point of view. If you needed and planned to head hop, fine. If you're just slipping from one character to another at random, or sliding into the omniscient view-point, re-write.
• If you think that a lot of adjectives and adverbs enrich your writing, please think again. They're like spice. Add none, and you're bland. Add a bit, and you're great. Add too much and you need to start freezing toilet rolls.

Step 3: Use someone else's brain

 

Yep. Really. Even if you can't afford a full edit (we get it: they're expensive), there are a number of options that won't cost you $3,000-plus.

1. Beta readers. Get some. Beta readers are free, if occasionally difficult to come by. Ideally they should be people who read your genre, but who don't know you, don't care about you, have never seen your manuscript before, and will tell you the absolute truth. Try Goodreads as well as the options in the other links.
• Give them some guidance (The Killzone Blog questionnaire is a good start)
• Give them a timeline
• Give them a free copy of your spell-checked, re-read, re-edited manuscript
2. Get a manuscript critique, or partial manuscript critique. This may probably will cost money, but it'll be double digits to low hundreds money, not thousands. 
3. Friends / family. Not ideal because they will for the most part want avoid hurting your feelings, but they're usually easy to come by. Again, if you choose to go this route, give them some guidance (like the Killzone Blog questionnaire). Tell them when you need the feedback by. 
4. Join a writers' group. Again, the standard on these varies wildly, but they're another free option to get some feedback.
5. Read some bloggers who publish editorial hints and tips. Here are a few to get you started:
• Erindor Press
• Killzone
• Live Write Thrive

Most important: while the manuscript is out with your critiquers / beta readers / Aunty Mae ... don't open it, don't edit it, don't read it, don't think about it. 

Step 4: Use your brain some more

 

First off: Thank your betas / friends / family. You're not obliged to agree with what they had to say, but all these people did donate their time to try and help you.

And now ... oh yes. Now that you've got your beta read feedback, your manuscript critique, your Aunty Mae's 4,000 word essay on why she never reads science-fiction except when it's yours ... grab a beer / cup of tea / relaxing beverage of choice and open up all the emails / documents / spreadsheets where people have taken their best shots.

Throw a pity-party, get over it, and spend a few profitable and possibly pleasurable minutes duct-taping your ego to the bedframe. I'm not judging.

Then, go through all the feedback. I recommend sorting it into at least two categories (1) things everyone, or more than one, of your sources is saying; and (2) the things only one person has noted.

If more than one person has highlighted something, put a big red circle around it for serious consideration. If only one person has it as a pain-point, well, it's worth considering, but not agonising over.

Now ... 

Yup! You're going to read your manuscript again!

The good news is, the time while your readers were doing their thing means you haven't seen it in a while. That means you will have got a bit of distance from it and you'll probably be much more efficient (and ruthless) with the remaining errors.

Re-read it with the feedback, especially with the feedback where multiple people had the same thing to say. Implement what you feel needs implementing.

Keep in mind, however, the beauty of being indie: if you truly feel, after reviewing a bit of feedback and your book that you prefer your original set-up ... well, you're indie. Your call.

Now that you've added, deleted, struck scenes out altogether, spell-check it again. (You remember how that works, we did this already.)

Then, if you're using Track Changes, get the final view, or print out a clean copy, or copy the whole thing into a 5x8 print template - make it look totally new and different - and repeat Step 2.

Step 5: Publish your masterpiece

This is the easy bit, right? You've got your cover, you've decided if you're going Kindle Select, or Kindle and everywhere else you can get your book formatted for, you know if you want to do print-on-demand or not ...

Good luck and thank you from all your prospective, un-pissed-off readers.

What makes a good book?

Don't look at me, I don't have the definitive answer. I like sci-fi anti-heroes that swear like sailors and definitely will stab you in the back, so my taste in literature is idiosyncratic to say the least.

But I do know what a lot of people think we, indie authors, don't have - a properly finished product. We get bashed (a lot) for stick-figure covers, editing where it looks as if we've treated punctuation like a game of 'pin the comma on the sentence', formats that make your eyes cross ... you name it, we've probably been bashed for it. Sometimes, because professional editing / critiques are just so damn' expensive, we don't even know what needs fixing because we've never been told it's an issue. I've had a lot of people respond to a review with something along the lines of: "Thanks, man, I didn't even know about that one."

So I was excited, relieved, and enthusiastic when I came across the blokes over at Indie Book Screener (http://www.bookscreener.com/).

Why all the noise, you ask? Fair enough. I got all excited because they're a one-stop-shop for a response to indie-bashing (at least on the technical side of things).

Indie Book Screener evaluates the sample of your book on Amazon (no cost, at least right now) and gives a rating for the cover, the formatting, and the quality of the editing, which they then publish on their website with the cover and a buy link (yup, free publicity, ain't life grand?).

Here's what they had to say about Through the Hostage as a sample. Given that I do everything except my covers myself, I was a very happy author that morning. If you ask nicely, they'll even give you a few extra details on what they based your rating on, which is really, really valuable.

I'm hoping they stay around. Let's help them help us.

Myers-Briggs and the INTJ author

Since I'm an author, Q.E.D. I have a day job that provides the money to keep me sheltered and fed while I write. Since said day job is in an office, I've been exposed to various personality tests etc. that are supposed to improve my interaction with my co-workers and supposedly let me know how best to manage myself.

One of these tests was, of course, the Myers-Briggs test, based on the work of Charles Jung. According to Wikipedia, this is 'designed to indicate psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions.'

Turns out I'm INTJ. I also write quite a lot of INTJ-type characters. My principal in my sci-fi series is an INTJ woman. As per Elizabeth Craig's rather awesome post, these are the character that most authors get wrong ... mostly because they're so damn rare. About 2% of the population are INTJ, and it is the rarest type, end of story, for females. (Yes, there are a lot of links. Suck it up, it's all educational.)

In the shortest form possible, INTJs are highly dominant types who have no desire to lead. The INTJ is also, on average, the personality type correlating to the highest IQ segment. Think dominant, intelligent, arrogant arseholes who really don't like having to deal with people and you're pretty close. This meme pretty neatly encapsulates the INTJ outlook. They may make great villains, but in my view, they make even better anti-heroes.

So, for me, being an author is pretty awesome. An author, by definition, is not a social creature. An author's ideal world includes a screen and keyboard, a massive amount of books, tea (or caffeinated beverage of choice), and food. It doesn't include, as a general rule, other people. An author also isn't, generally, required to explain how their head works to other people (whose intellect, in the viewpoint of an INTJ, may not be able to keep up anyway) - they can simply point to the book and say: "Read, and ye may be enlightened."

Being an INTJ author is also pretty awesome because it gives me a leg up on the twisted inner workings of the INTJ character type.

Again referring to Elizabeth Craig's awesome post (see above), they are voted best villain every time. For most people, they're also really, really tough to write. Fair enough. I mean, a strongly dominant personality who really, really, doesn't want to lead? A character who evaluates and correlates input, making almost instantaneous judgement calls based on those evaluations - and, this is the kicker, does it more or less automatically, so the data that led to those decisions is never going to be 100% clear to the supporting characters? I absolutely do understand why these people are difficult to write - and how it could be almost worse trying to integrate them and the reactions they elicit with the other characters in the storyline. 

These types generate confusion. They arouse resentment, even anger. They frequently elicit avoidance tactics. As my sci-fi series is set in a  mercenary cult, my principal not infrequently attracts gunfire. Even the side they're theoretically on will almost certainly suffer the urge to murder these characters on a daily basis.

However, due to the flip side of an INTJ, these homicidal urges are going to be tempered, for the most part, by the fact that these people are really useful. They're (mostly) unpleasantly intelligent, they're capable of absorbing complex concepts in the blink of an eye, and they're decisive. These traits also mean you need to get up very early if you expect your assassination attempts to be successful. Since INTJs also have issues with forgiving, and they're more or less incapable of forgetting, if your plot includes an attempt to take out an INTJ, make sure it succeeds first time, because otherwise that INTJ is going to make you a personal project.

All in all, I find this personality type a lot of fun. They can throw fantastically rich wrinkles into any part of the plot from the personal to the galactic levels. Here are some very brief pointers that may be useful if you're planning an INTJ character:

Do:

• drop them in strife. INTJ characters have all the personality traits to deal with life-threatening situations. Think war, disaster, apocalypse. These people are human cockroaches.
• use them as villains. Oh yes. Machiavelli was an amateur.
• use them as anti-hero types. They're not nice people, but they will do the right thing - under the right circumstances, well past the point of ruthlessness.
• use them as lone-wolf characters. INTJs really don't like other people much.
• use them as hermits. The 'I' part of INTJ makes that quite effective.
• match them either with laid-back types who are fast on the uptake, or against loud-mouth boasters. (Trophy tip if you're planning a female INTJ, that last.)
• capitalise intelligence / earned respect /  loyalty. These are traits an INTJ will get.

Don't:

• try and write them as social butterflies. Really. Doesn't work.
• write them good little settled family types. Apocalyptic, suicidal levels of boredom will ensue.
• try and make them understanding of others. They're not. INTJs are like Sherlock Holmes on crack.
• make them seek the approval of others. Mostly, they could care less provided they're left alone.
• try and make them value empty words, sparkles and rainbows, or faulty logic. Nothing will get an INTJ disinterested quicker.

Writer's block? - Rarely. Editor's block? - Frequently.

So writer's block is pretty much like erectile dysfunction - there's a lot of remedies out there, from the snake oils to positive mental attitude.

For me, this is a good news / bad news thing. The good news is, I very rarely (long may that last) suffer from writer's block. The bad news: the thing I do find myself suffering from, which could probably be described as editor's block, has no listed remedies.

Symptoms of editor's block (correctus petrificus) include: staring blankly at a draft; spending inordinate amounts of time on social media; writing copious amounts of another first draft(s); baking; doing housework.

It's not pretty. Especially those last two. Partly because editor's block side-effects include the attention span of a fruit fly on crack (I mentioned social media already, yes?).

Solutions range from the 'nuke the ground and salt the earth' options right through to sitting down and trying to adult my way through it (see my post on 'Scene it here?'), and vary in successfulness depending, really, on which way the wind is blowing.

Topical application of ginger beer also helps.

Option 1: Nuke'em!

At this point, I take a fresh document, run it side by side with the draft that I can't edit any more, and start re-typing the draft into a fresh manuscript. This is a drastic and very long-winded approach, and not one I use often. Downsides: you're re-writing an entire manuscript. Not for the faint of heart or those on a hard deadline. Upside: occasionally my fingers have wandered off in fruitful new directions using this approach and spawned entire new (and much better) storylines.

Option 2: Call the external contractor!

Persuade, bribe, or threaten someone else into reading it. Upside: A fresh set of eyes (a) means you aren't looking at it for a week or so, and (b) a fresh set of eyes will see things you've missed - no matter how good an author / editor you are. Even if your reader isn't an editor, they'll ask questions that require fresh pieces added / deleted / clarified, which may shift your block. Downside: you need a willing victim.

Option 3: Put your big-editor pants on!

Take a scene. Edit the hell out of it. Reward yourself with ginger beer. Repeat. Downside: requires dedication and ginger beer. Upside: the edit gets done and you get ginger beer.

Option 4: Sod this!

Go and write something else for a while. Upside: you get some writing done. Downside: your edit is still waiting for you.

Scene it here?

So, yeah, right, scenes. Loosely defined as the smallest unit of book building, built of many of the sub-units of book building known as mugs of coffee.

Essentially, I see a scene is the smallest piece of your book that can be self-contained. It can be a paragraph or even a sentence, but if you lift it out of context and hang it on your wall, it can be read as a piece. Most of my scenes are a few paragraphs to a few pages.

They're also something I tend to focus on when I'm editing, because they're, in a word, achievable. If I look at 100,000 words and tell myself that all that has to be coherent, de-adjectived, copy-edited, proof-read and thrilling in a few months' time, well, that way leads to 'Author Not At Work' syndrome, not to mention 'Drunk Author Tweeting'. A few paragraphs to a few pages, though? Easy. Get 'er done before dinner. Do that for a couple of months, and *BAM* edit done.

Right, but why focus on scenes again, aside from my motivation issues?

Well, basically, because we've all read those books. They can be great books (I'm going to cite the Wheel of Time series here), but you find yourself at about page 423 thinking 'Why the hell didn't an editor come through here with a flamethrower?' or 'These eight books could have been a trilogy'. Sure, those 423 pages may have been full of well-structured, well-developed stuff. But was it all actually stuff necessary to the story, or did the author, in the process of writing, bolt a jacuzzi, a sunbed, and a whole ten-room mansion on the top of the Ferrari?

Please note, I'm not knocking jacuzzis. Or ten-bedroom mansions, come to that. They're great. But are they what the Ferrari needs to be, well, as Ferrari-like as possible?

Scenes are good to look at because you can read them easily as a piece, and ask yourself some basic questions to determine if they're vital, fascinating, or a jacuzzi.

Question #1 I ask myself a lot as part of my edit process is: does that scene need to be there?

If not, can I put a big red line through it without leaving a plothole, a continuity hole, or missing a vital bit of character development? Is it, in fact, the kitchen sink on the Ferrari of my storyline?

Question #2 is if that scene, if it's really bothering me but does appear to be vital, needs to be there in the story.

Would it stop sending me Code Yellow alerts at the other end of the book? Sometimes you write something, and it is actually great and a vital bit, but your subconscious had a hiccup and spewed it up on a page about fifty pages too early. Or too late.

Alternatively, would that scene make more sense if I (yes, sometimes, really) add some set up so it makes sense? Because sometimes, when I'm writing, something that's absolutely crystal clear to me, the author, is absolutely not crystal clear to a reader. Why is that damn planet so important that they'd send an entire fleet there? ... well, it's rich, it's central, it's famous ... did you tell your reader that?


If you're looking at your scene, and it's not, technically, vital storyline advancement, you can't think of anywhere better to put it, but you still feel it's doing something useful, you're on to the last item on the checklist:

Question #3 Is the scene serving as character development (or general society / atmosphere development)?

Because while dumping 400 pages of nothing but backstory, society dev and character dev on your reader is likely going to get your book used as a doorstop, yes, you do need some of that good stuff in there. Otherwise, why is the reader going to give a damn if your protagonist saved the unicorns / galaxy / right to personal freedom?

In short, if you're staring at a scene in your book and you can't make an argument for its survival under any of these three reasons ... most likely you can pull the plug on it. 'I thought it was hilarious' is not, necessarily, a good reason to include it.

Look on the bright side. If you delete it, you don't have to edit it. And your readers will thank you for it.

Themes in Through the Hostage

Hey, well, that's a title with a lot of heavy lifting entailed.

Having committed an English Literature A-Level, I grew to really hate the incredible level of over-analysis that ruins pretty much every piece of literature that you study.

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom. 

~John Kenneth Galbraith

...ouch. But, pretty much.

My personal feeling is that books read best when there's a whole lot of stuff going on just under the obvious that your subconscious can gnosh on, and another feeling I have is that when you pull all that good stuffing out into the light of day, a lot of the magic of reading is gone. Because, O Reader, you know what? 95% of brain activity takes place below the level of conscious awareness. Yes, you read that right; 95% of what your brain does, you know eff-all about, and the leading scientists don't really know much more than eff-all - but I admit their guesses sound a lot fancier.

So my feeling on reading is that for every 5% you take in and consciously think about, the other 95% should be sneaking in the back doors and settling in your subconscious to send you on awesome dreams. Let your eyes skim over the words and the story sock you in the gut. If you don't have to reorient yourself in the real when you emerge from a book, you're either reading a lousy book or you're doing it wrong.

So how the hell does all this opinionated crap tie into Through the Hostage?

Well, first of all, I hope the book took you to strange new worlds and dropped you in them hard enough that you could smell the jungle. Second, because a lot of Cortiian interaction is deliberately designed to be show. Watch Khyria in public. Whatever she's actually saying is the cute, glittery bit of the iceberg on the National Geographic cover. Underneath that there's the history, the public image, the private agenda, and let's not forget the Cortiian staple - power politics.

War, therefore, is an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfill our will. 

~Carl von Clausewitz

In case a reminder is needed, the Cortii are professional mercenaries. Everyone goes armed, and the most common method of advancement in the ranks is assassinating the person whose position you want. A lot of time on a Cortiian Base is therefore spent making certain that your position is unassailable. Everyone has a different take on how best to do that. Senja Ventiva opts to make certain that there are always more powerful people with a vested interest in keeping her alive than seeing her dead. Anst an Nabat ensures that he mostly knows well in advance who's gunning for him and why. Khyria Ilan uses the rumour mill to her advantage, and makes sure that most people are certain she'd sooner shoot them than give them the time of day.

One need not destroy one's enemy. One need only destroy his willingness to engage.
~Sun Tzu

And let's not forget, in Through the Hostage, Wildcat is still in Basic training. Cortiian Basic training lasts between seven and ten years, and along with all the things you'd expect to feature, like physical training, combat training, game theory, military strategy, psychology, politics, etc., Cortiian Basic training is designed, bluntly, to break people. Recruit casualties run very high, and ensure that the stupid, the inept, and those who simply don't have the resilience and flexibility to be able to do damn near anything on command don't survive their first year. 

The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do.

~Jack Sparrow, 'Pirates of the Caribbean'

That's the backdrop to Cortiian society. It forms the undertow to a lot of Through the Hostage. Taiva Zarlan forms a good case in point: she's intelligent, competent, and she's survived seven years of Cortiian Basic training. Despite that, she has lines she still won't cross.

“I can’t murder you and I may not be able to murder anyone else, but for the sake of completeness you should find out whether or not I am capable of murdering myself.”

~Taiva Zarlan, Through the Hostage

On a Cortiian Base, that makes her, to some extent, a target. Not only does Taiva have limits, which can be discovered fairly easily if she's pushed, but she doesn't have any influential allies apart from Khyria, and she's not, as Khyria is, widely known for being much more trouble to try and kill than she's worth.

So, to go with the Dumbledore method of announcement, the themes in Through the Hostage are: 'Survival! Independence! Trust! Dominance! Fancy fight stunts!'

Self-publishing 101 - Part 1, print-on demand

Hello authors.

Well, it's finally That Time - after months or years, you've written, revised, gathered your alpha and beta readers' input together, revised a bit more, run a spellcheck, discovered just how awful MS Word spell check is, got a human editor to read it, found a cover designer ... and you're sitting in front of your computer with your heart pounding and your palms going sweaty, about to actually upload your work of genius for the worldwide audience.

How many copies will I sell? 

Will there be trolls? 

Will anyone pirate my stuff? 

When will I be able to live off the money my books make for me? 

Will the world know my name?

Before you can become an international bestseller of E L James-style fame (oh, God), you need to find a self-publishing platform. I'm going to provide a non-exclusive, non-endorsing list below of a few of the better-known options to give you an idea.

Self-publishing platforms come in two basic flavours: ebook only, or print-on-demand. In this post, I'm going to focus on the print-on-demand platforms - or this post will attain novella-length in short order. Catch up with me later for the ebook 101 post.

**ALWAYS read the terms and conditions / conditions of service / terms of use or whatever else they call it and make certain that there's a clause in there guaranteeing that you retain copyright to your work. Whatever other paragraphs your eye chooses to blur over, make sure you've read and understand what your rights are if you choose to publish with a given platform.**

Print on demand: 

CreateSpace (Amazon), and Lulu are two of the best-known self-pub options if you want to provide physical copies of your book as well as (or instead of) an ebook. They both allow you to set up print-on-demand for nothing and take a cut of the book price every time you sell a book as their payment.

I'm also going to touch on Bookbaby, which doesn't offer a completely free option, but does offer a lot more support options if you happen to have the funds to pay someone else to tear their hair out to get your book printed.

Other places you can look include IngramSpark and Blurb.

I also recommend that you check out Writehacked 'Where should you self-publish your book' from 2014 for a second opinion - I don't necessarily agree with that opinion, but there are photos provided of the results from several of the major POD companies.

CreateSpace 

Pros: They're flexible, efficient, have great customer service and, provided you use one of their formatted templates (really. This part is important unless you're a masochist) very easy to use. They provide a great quality of product. They're also an Amazon company, so your print offering shows up, hassle-free, on the majority of Amazon country sites almost as soon as you approve your proof. You can opt for expanded distribution, which makes your work available to bookstores, libraries, and academia as well as Amazon. You can also opt for a number of helpful extras if you have the need and money, such as professional formatting, cover design, editing, etc. For the record, I print with CreateSpace.

Cons: Getting paid. CreateSpace only offers Direct Deposit (as of today) to authors with bank accounts in the USA, UK, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Belguim, or the Netherlands. If you happen to not have access to a bank account in one of those countries, CreateSpace will accumulate the royalties from the sales of your book in each region, and send you a cheque when the total for that region hits about $100 USD. To be clear, this doesn't mean you can sell $33.33 worth of product in Asia, Europe, and South America (or wherever else) and get a cheque: it means you have to sell $100 worth of product in Asia, or Europe, or South America to get a cheque, which you then have to convert into your local currency. So be prepared for the fact that for a lot of indie authors, this means you're going to be effectively providing your print books for free for the foreseeable future when it comes to money in hand. Another con: should you choose not to copy your text into one of their pre-formatted templates, be prepared for a lot of hell when you come to upload into their online proofing portal. Their main outlet is Amazon.

Lulu

Pros: They offer payment via PayPal, which basically means you can be paid anywhere you can have a PayPal account that you can receive payment from. This may, of course, incur PayPal fees, but you aren't left hunting a bank that will cash a USD cheque for you. They offer optional professional publishing services, but you can also go full-DIY if you choose. They will allow you to distribute your print on Lulu, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Ingram, and they offer a wide variety of sizes and binding options, including stitched if you happen to be a fan of the traditional.

Cons: You have to have the software to put the ISBN and bar code, wherever you choose to get that from, on your own print cover for a certain set of print formats. The up-front expertise needed to prep your files for printing from you, the author, is a bit higher than for CreateSpace.

Bookbaby

Pros: They give you a webpage space with the publishing package. They distribute to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell's, Baker & Taylor, and Ingram, among others, as well as several niche options. You can choose to be paid via PayPal (there is a $1.50 processing fee per PayPal payment). They offer promo services with their packages, and a 100% satisfaction guarantee.

Cons: You have to go with one of their publishing packages. There is no full-DIY option with Bookbaby. You can only opt for Direct deposit if you have a US bank account; if not you're stuck with cheque in the mail (or PayPal).

Conclusion:

So, you've now followed a bunch of links, checked out arcane FAQs that talk about metadata, ISBNs, ASINs, the non-transferability of your platform-assigned ISBNs, and tax-witholding, and your head's spinning.

Is it really worth all this effort and research, just to get a print copy of my book? I mean, I'm indie. Is anyone really going to buy the d*mn thing anyway?

For me, I wasn't going to bother. Not right away. Not after having figured out that I couldn't get paid for it in any reasonable amount of time, and given indie sales generally.

Then, I actually had people - family, friends, colleagues - start asking me if they could get a print copy, and I sat down and thought a bit more. After a bit of that, I actually did set up POD - and I'm really glad I did. Not because it's making me a fortune - hell no, far from it. But it's not costing me anything extra, as I'd opted to get a print and an e-cover from my cover designer anyway.

But the real pay-off, from my point of view, was the moment my actual book proof showed up on my doorstep, and I got my book, after all the blood and sweat and tears, in my hands looking like a real book.