Just like all the other aspects of publishing, the book printing process has its fair share of esoteric terms too. Here are just some you may encounter.

Acid-free paper

When paper manufacturers started mixing bleach into wood pulp and water to create white paper, they were dooming the materials that would use that paper. Lignin, a chemical compound within wood, interacted with the bleach to create hydrochloric acid, which slowly but surely turned the paper yellow and brittle as it aged. But thanks to a 1930 report by American chemist and librarian William Barrow, and the calls for standardization by some publishers and authors, much of today’s commercially produced paper is acid-free and can weather 200 to 300 years—seven to ten times more than the lifespan of acidic paper.

Case binding

Considered to be the most expensive and most durable type of binding, case binding allows a book to lay flat and involves several steps to protect against heavy usage:

• A cover is made out of durable cardboard or lightweight wood and covered with cloth, leather, or vinyl, then set aside;
• The book pages are arranged in order, and the signatures are sewn or stitched together to form one block;
• The book block is trimmed down to the desired dimensions; and
• Glue is applied to the book block’s spine, followed by a strip of fabric, and the hardcover case is finally wrapped around the book block.

Digital printing

Digital printing works by electronically transferring the digital files to be printed to the press, which then applies ink directly to the paper in a single go. It has been synonymous with print-on-demand because of its low setup expenses, speed (no printing plates needed), and convenience of not having to print a huge number of copies at once for you to recoup your investment. However, each book would cost more and have lower quality than if it were made using offset printing.

Offset printing

Majority of the cost of offset printing is owed to the creation of new printing plates for each print job. These metal plates are used to transfer ink onto a rubber sheet, which is then rolled onto paper. But after the costly setup, offset costs you less as you print more books. It also produces high-quality prints and allows for bigger trim sizes.

Paper weight

Paper weight refers to the thickness, or “caliper,” of paper stock, and can be measured with three units:

• Grams per square meter (GSM): an exact measure of the thickness or weight of paper; used across all paper types
• Point (pt.): typically used to measure cardstock paper; one point is equal to 0.001 inches 
• Pound (lb.): the weight of 500 “parent sheets” of a particular paper type

Perfect binding

Perfect binding covers are made from heavy cardstock paper which is often laminated or coated to provide more durability. The cover and pages are then glued together with super strong glue.

Trim size

Trim size refers to the dimensions of a book’s pages (in width × height) after a very large sheet of paper has been folded and trimmed. In the US, industry standards are usually based on the book type:

• Hardcover books range from 6” × 9” to 8.5” × 11”
• Trade paperback books range from 5.5” × 8.5” to 6” × 9”
• Mass-market paperback books tend to be around 4.25” × 6.87”

By genre, these are the common sizes:

Be sure to check out how we format our print books and handle offset printing. You can also explore our paper, trim size, and binding options.

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There aren’t many facts about limericks,

Those brief rhymes we make up for brief kicks.

But to my dismay,

It’s Limerick Day

So here are some facts about limericks.

Nobody knows why it’s called a limerick.

The form arose in England in the 18th century and was popularized by English poet Edward Lear in the 19th century, but not even Lear used the term “limerick.” Some time after his death, Irish poet W.B. Yeats and other figures of the Irish Literary Revival applied the term to the genre, supposedly as a reference to the Maigue Poets, a circle of 18th century Gaelic poets based in County Limerick, Ireland who would frequently meet to discuss poetry and read aloud freshly composed poems. But it’s all speculation.

You can use a limerick to poke fun at anything.

You simply need to write it within the following structure:

1. Five lines arranged in one stanza.
2. Follow an anapestic rhythm, or two unstressed syllables followed by a third stressed syllable.
3. 1st, 2nd, and 5th lines must rhyme and each have three anapests.
4. 3rd and 4th lines must rhyme and each have two anapests.

Whether you’re making it clean or bawdy, just make sure it’s absurd.

Even Shakespeare wrote one.

It’s that drinking song Iago sings in Othello: “And let me the canakin clink, clink; And let me the canakin clink: A soldier’s a man; A life’s but a span; Why then let a soldier drink.”

The oldest limerick is thought to have been written by St. Thomas Aquinas.

That is, if a limerick is simply a five-line poem with an A-A-B-B-A rhyme scheme. The “limerick” in question goes like this:

Sit vitiorum meorum evacuatio

Concupiscentae et libidinis exterminatio,

Caritatis et patientiae,

Humilitatis et obedientiae,

Omniumque virtutum augmentatio.

St. Aquinas’s 13th century religious poem may not have been the very first to use A-A-B-B-A, but it’s apparently the oldest example that exists in writing.

You can use math to write a limerick.

Or at least, you can try to do what noted British wordplay and recreational mathematics expert Leigh Mercer did. Mercer supposedly wrote the following mathematical limerick:

Decoded, it reads:

    A dozen, a gross, and a score

    Plus three times the square root of four

    Divided by seven

    Plus five times eleven

    Is nine squared and not a bit more.

Our authors have written whole books on limericks, so be sure to check those out. 

Will you be writing a limerick today?

The post Fun Facts about Limericks appeared first on AuthorHouse.

In these days of confinement and limited socialization, we’ve had books to turn to for inspiration. That’s all thanks to the authors who continue to create worlds out of words.

This World Book Day, we wanted to take the time to think about the struggles that authors go through in producing their work. Here are some famous authors who were pitted against all manner of obstacles—and overcame them.

Victor Hugo vs. procrastination

Distracted by other writing projects and his social calendar, Hugo couldn’t quite concentrate on his French Gothic novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame. After missing the deadline by more than a year, he was ordered by his publishers to deliver the manuscript within six months or pay a fine. Miserable times called for miserable measures: Hugo locked away his formal clothes so as not to be tempted to socialize when he should be writing. If he went out, he’d have to wear nothing but a knitted shawl. His self-imposed quarantine actually worked in the end, when he finally managed to finish the book.

Agatha Christie vs. dyslexia

With her novels having sold 4 billion copies and having been translated into over a hundred languages, you probably wouldn’t have guessed that the so-called Queen of Crime was considered “the slow one” in her family. As a child, Christie often had difficulty reading and writing, although that didn’t stop her from daydreaming and making up stories. She persevered well into early adulthood, writing short stories and a novel, and at the age of 21 she finished the first book she would eventually publish.

Charles Dickens vs. his childhood

Much like his stories, Dickens’ childhood was… Dickensian. Most of his family was thrown in jail for excessive debt, so he was forced to leave school at 12 years old to work ten-hour days in a factory. His meager income of six shillings a week went into paying for his board as well as helping his family. But despite his lack of formal education, Dickens pulled himself up by his bootstraps, working as a clerk, political journalist, editor, and eventually a novelist who helped change the Victorian public’s opinion on class inequalities.

Ray Bradbury vs. the lack of an office

In the early 1950s, Bradbury was father to two screaming children. Needing a quiet place to write but lacking the funds to rent an office, Bradbury settled on renting a typewriter for 10 cents every half-hour in the UCLA library. After nine days and an investment of just $9.80, he finished his 25,000-word short story “The Fireman,” which he would later refer to as an early version of Fahrenheit 451.

Gabriel García Márquez vs. his finances

Cien Años de Soledad catapulted García Márquez into international renown—but not without first impoverishing the master of magic realism. While he spent eighteen grueling months on his novel, his wife, Mercedes, cared for the children, house, and finances. García Márquez had to sell their car to be able to sustain everyone while he wrote. When he took longer than expected, they pawned off almost all their appliances as well as obtained several lines of credit. Finally, with manuscript in hand and a debt of more than $10,000, García Márquez pawned off a few more possessions to be able to buy postage and submit the book to his publisher. The first 8,000 copies were snatched up within a week, half a million copies sold within three years, and Gregory Rabassa’s English translation was named one of 1970’s twelve best books by the New York Times Book Review.

Octavia E. Butler vs. prejudice

As a young avid reader of sci-fi magazines, Butler begged her mother to purchase a typewriter so she could try her hand at her own stories, but was told by an aunt that people of her color couldn’t be writers. She ignored this well-meaning yet defeatist advice and found other ways to express herself. She worked menial jobs and woke up at three in the morning to write, scribbled mantras of success for herself, refused to let dyslexia and rejection slips bring her down, joined a writers workshop, got a story acquired for inclusion in an anthology, produced several novels and short stories, won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards, and became the first sci-fi writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.

Maya Angelou vs. trauma

Maya Angelou worked as a fry cook, sex worker, nightclub performer, opera actor, civil rights organization coordinator, and war correspondent before becoming a poet and writer. She was friends with the likes of Malcolm X and James Baldwin, and when she published I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the first of a series of seven autobiographies, she opened up about her personal life and early childhood trauma in a way that uplifted Black people, especially Black women.

What are you reading for World Book Day? Do you know the story behind that book?

The post 7 famous authors who struggled for their art appeared first on AuthorHouse.

Last year, the Women’s Prize for Fiction launched a campaign to republish 25 books released under male pseudonyms with the female writers’ original names on the covers. Yet despite its good intentions, the literary award drew flak for reducing the complex history behind women’s use of male pen names.

Using a pseudonym of the opposite gender isn’t just about bypassing gendered expectations but also finding freedom in anonymity, constructing a persona or alter ego, expressing queerness, and coming to terms with racial heritage. And when you flip the coin, you’ll find that men have experienced just as much power in feminine nom de plumes.

Here are just a few male authors who wrote under female pen names.

L. Frank Baum | Edith Van Dyne

The “Royal Historian of Oz” was the star writer of publishing house Reilly & Britton. On top of publishing 13 of his 14 Oz books with them, Baum created the Aunt Jane’s Nieces series of novels.

The first book targeted the same audience as Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and, in keeping with the female demographic, Baum was told to ascribe it to “‘Ida May McFarland,’ or to ‘Ethel Lynne’ or some other mythological female.” He chose Edith Van Dyne, and the book’s success went on to inspire nine more novels.

Charles Leslie McFarlane | Carolyn Keene

For many fans of the Nancy Drew series, it’s a revelation akin to finding out that Santa Claus isn’t real: the author Carolyn Keene is actually a pseudonym. Children’s book mogul Edward Stratemeyer founded the Stratemeyer Syndicate, a publishing company that hired ghost writers (usually newspaper reporters looking for side hustles) to flesh out Stratemeyer’s ideas and published books under continuous pseudonyms.

Canadian journalist Charles Leslie McFarlane was one such ghost writer, famed for producing not just a number of the early Hardy Boys books under Franklin W. Dixon (also a Stratemeyer pseudonym) but also the first four volumes of the Dana Girls series under Carolyn Keene.

Dean Koontz | Deanna Dwyer | Leigh Nichols

The prolific Dean Koontz has published over a hundred novels in a variety of genres. Early in his career, he was advised by his editors to use a different name for each genre he wrote in so as not to alienate established fans. Out of his ten known pseudonyms, two are female: Deanna Dwyer for gothic horror and Leigh Nichols—the most successful of all his guises—for romantic suspense.

Domenico Starnone | Elena Ferrante

Italian novelist Elena Ferrante is the internationally acclaimed author of the Neapolitan Novels and one of TIME’s 100 most influential people of 2016—and no one knows who she is. Many have conducted investigations and studies, and the current theory is that she’s actually a partnership between Italian journalist and novelist Domenico Starnone and his wife Anita Raja.

In her April 2018 column for the Guardian, Ferrante states that she relishes in being able to “devote [herself] to the pure result of a creative gesture, without worrying about a big or small name.”

Dav Pilkey | Sue Denim

Cartoonist and author Dav Pilkey is best known for the children’s book series Captain Underpants, but he has also created a series called The Dumb Bunnies under the pseudonym “Sue Denim.” Yup, no mystery here. Guy just wants to have fun.

What would your pseudonym be?

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Once upon a time, adults around the world would make up stories about magic, princesses, strange beasts, and other fantastic elements to teach children a lesson, or to make them behave or fall asleep. Most are passed down generation after generation in oral form, but hundreds of them have been preserved in the literary form that we now call the “fairy tale.”

While you may have had your fair share of tales from Aesop of Greece, the Brothers Grimm of Germany, and Hans Christian Andersen of Denmark, we thought you might want to explore stories from other parts of the globe.

Fairy Couple

Origin: China

When the youngest daughter of the celestial Jade Emperor and a lowly cowherd meet, they fall in love. The pair must overcome the unlikelihood of their romance.

The One-Handed Girl

Origin: East Africa

A girl overcomes the hardships that her brother puts her through.

The Child Who Came from an Egg

Origin: Estonia

A barren queen receives an egg that hatches into a baby girl. The princess grows up and survives a siege with the help of her godmother.

Aurore and Aimée

Origin: France

Siblings Aurore and Aimée are both beautiful, but Aurore is kind while Aimée is malevolent. Aurore is sent away and learns that misfortunes can actually benefit the unfortunate person.

The Boy Who Drew Cats

Origin: Japan

The youngest son of a farmer has an irresistible habit of drawing cats, but this turns out to be a blessing.

The Cunning Servant

Origin: Korea

The young servant of a nobleman finds ways to outsmart his master and eventually switch their lots in life.

The Master Thief

Origin: Norway

The youngest son of a poor cottager amasses wealth and finds happiness by pulling off increasingly masterful deceptions.

The Boys with the Golden Stars

Origin: Romania

The youngest and most beautiful daughter of a herdsman marries an emperor and gives birth to twin sons with stars on their foreheads.

The Light Princess

Origin: Scotland

A princess cursed with a lack of gravity meets a prince who is willing to help her overcome her weightlessness.

Laughing Eye and Weeping Eye

Origin: Serbia

A son sets out to retrieve a marvelous vine that his father once cherished.

The Twelve Months

Origin: Slovakia

Sent on a difficult errand, a girl braves a blizzard and meets the twelve months of the year huddling around a warm fire in the woods.

The Knights of the Fish

Origin: Spain

Twin brothers encounter the mystery of the castle of black marble.

Have you ever encountered these fairy tales before? What other fairy tales have taken your fancy?

The post 12 fairy tales from around the world that you might not have heard of appeared first on AuthorHouse.

Love stories can usually be spotted a mile away, and yet they constitute a billion-dollar industry.

Readers keep picking up romance novels because of the irresistible tropes—or conventional plot devices, themes, and the like—that romance authors commonly use. Simply making your own iteration of a well-worn trope doesn’t guarantee success, though. Audiences applaud love stories that draw them in with the familiar and then take them to new, exciting, unfamiliar territory.

Make a good love story by using one (or more!) of the following tropes and making it your own.

When they’re Destined to be Together

The universe is sending all the signs that they’re meant to be, but things are never that simple.

When they’re in a Love Triangle

You know what they say: three’s a crowd. Usually one of them ends up getting hurt, but sometimes everybody loses.

When it’s Forbidden Love

Family, culture, geography—something—dictates that they can never be together, but they’ll be damned if they won’t try.

When they get a Second Chance

Maybe their exes made them swear off love, maybe they’re each other’s exes. But it’s never too late to try again…

When they say “You’ve Changed”

They’ve been together for a while now, but something happens to make one or both of them realize that they’ve fallen out of love.

When they’re Stuck Together

They barely know each other—or worse, they hate each other—and now they have to get through an experience together.

When Friends Become Lovers

They’ve known each other since childhood, and now something’s different…

When Enemies Become Lovers

They’re complete opposites and/or they hate each other’s guts, but then a pivotal moment starts making all the ice melt away.

When they’re in a Fake Relationship

For convenience, they pretend to be in love. But the acting soon becomes too real to ignore.

When one of them’s a Secret VIP

One of them’s a bored royal or billionaire who descends to the realm of ordinary people in disguise, and the other—not knowing who they’re talking to—treats the VIP like anyone else, which makes the VIP fall head over heels in love.

Which one of these tropes will you be trying on for size?

The post What makes a good love story appeared first on AuthorHouse.

The unique challenges of the pandemic will not stop us from bringing authors like you, closer to readers. We’ve been working nonstop to get some of our own AuthorHouse books and authors featured in our parent company, Author Solutions’ booth on the first ever virtual Tucson Festival of Books. That’s right— it’s all virtual. This means no road trips to Arizona for a lot of our authors; instead, they’re promoting their books from the comfort of their own homes. The exciting part, readers, wherever they are on the globe, can browse and discover books at their leisure, enjoy the same great festival discounts, and meet new authors with just a few clicks, at any time of the day!

Visit the Author Solutions’ virtual booth at the Tucson Festival of Books 2021 to find great reads from AuthorHouse. The online store has over 800 books to choose from, all at a special discount and free shipping for paperbacks. Catch the livestream event on March 6-7, 2021 for author interviews, book releases and surprise giveaways! If you’re from The Grand Canyon State, you might find familiar faces as we’re featuring Arizona-local authors, too.

Visit the Tucson Festival of Books >

This year’s virtual Tucson Festival of Books may set the tone for other book fairs and events to come for 2021, and I’m proud to announce our own AuthorHouse-published books & authors at the forefront of it all.

All the best,

Derrick Purvis

Vice President of AuthorHouse

The post AuthorHouse in the First Ever Virtual Tucson Festival of Books! appeared first on AuthorHouse.

Whatever your genre, you’re sure to benefit from writing apps. The trick to supercharging your daily writing is to find a mix of apps that works for you. We recommend the following:

For enhanced typing

Grammarly

Compatible with: Android & iOS

“Better emails, clearer texts, mistake-free tweets. Write confidently in every app.”

Grammarly is a writing assistant that suggests corrections and detects your tone. The developers also allow integration with your phone’s keyboard for polished writing on the go.

Gboard

Compatible with: Android & iOS

“Gboard has everything you love about Google Keyboard—speed and reliability, Glide Typing, voice typing, and more.”

This keyboard app lets you multitask with its voice typing feature. No need to put off that idea that came to you while you were washing the dishes.

For planning and focusing

Todoist

Compatible with: iPhone, Android, Mac, Windows, & more

“Ranked as ‘the best to-do list right now’ by The Verge, Todoist is used by 20 million people to organize, plan and collaborate on projects, both big and small.”

Todoist is a task manager that can contain all your outlines and daily writing reminders.

Bear

Compatible with: iOS & Mac

“Bear is a focused, flexible notes app used by writers, lawyers, chefs, teachers, engineers, students, parents and more! Bear has quick organisation, editing tools, and export options to help you write quickly and share anywhere and preserve your privacy with encryption.”

This app has such an uncluttered design that writing on it feels like inscribing your story on premium paper with a fountain pen.

Journey

Compatible with: Android & iOS

“The #1 Motivational Journal App”

More than a journal, this app gives you an inspirational writing prompt every day to keep you centered as well as creative.

Forest

Compatible with: Android & iOS

“Forest is an app that helps you stay focused on the important things in life.”

This app asks you to plant and nurture a virtual tree. As long as you keep working on your manuscript, you keep your tree alive. The developers also partnered with a tree-planting organization to plant trees whenever users spend virtual coins in the app.

For mixing things up

The Brainstormer

Compatible with: Android & iOS

“The Brainstormer is kindling for creative minds. A tactile tool to randomly combine a plot, a subject and a setting or style, the Brainstormer provides a moment of inspiration for writers, painters, or any creative mind. Combat creative block, spark new ideas and summon up quick subjects for doodling, sketching or journaling.”

This app lets you generate writing prompts when you spin three wheels for plot/conflict, theme/setting, and subject/location.

Character Story Planner 2

Compatible with: Android

“Every character has stories and every world has histories.”

Geared towards players of table-top role-playing games, this app can also be used by writers like you to plan out characters, scenes, locations, and more.

For fine-tuning

Ludwig

Compatible with: Mac & Windows (mobile version coming soon)

“Ludwig is the first sentence search engine that helps you write better English by giving you contextualized examples taken from reliable sources.”

If you think your sentences sound awkward or you’re not sure how to use a certain verb, you can take your cue from established media sites, scientific journals, and official documents through Ludwig.

Hemingway

Compatible with: Mac & Windows

“Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear. It’s like a spellchecker, but for style. It makes sure that your reader will focus on your message, not your prose.”

Despite his adult audience, Ernest Hemingway wrote stories that are actually readable to fifth graders. The Hemingway app judges which U.S. grade level is required to understand your text. The lower the level, the clearer—and more effective—your text.

We hope you can find the time to explore our recommended apps. A good combination of these will surely optimize your daily output and help you reach your goals.

The post Apps that can supercharge your daily writing appeared first on AuthorHouse.

Yes, the Zoom hangouts and daily commute from our bed to our desks might still be the norm. But, it could still be a fresh start for us all and you have the chance to turn things around this year. You have 300-something, new and exciting days, to be specific.

Now that you have clean slate, we hope you’ve begun to fill the planner we gave you with your literary goals for this year too. We know it won’t magically turn everything back to normal. But it should help keep you on track with your goals—no matter what they are.

Whether you’re dying to publish or have your book discovered, know that you can always count on us. At AuthorHouse, we’ve helped people like you publish 100,000 books in more than two decades. We want you to reach others around the world, earn accolades, get discovered, open up countless possibilities—or simply hold a copy of your book in your hands.

For now, don’t think about how this year is going to pan out. You have the chance to start fresh. You get to decide how your year goes.

All the best,

Derrick Purvis

Vice President of AuthorHouse

The post So long, 2020! appeared first on AuthorHouse.

This year was difficult, to say the least, and yet you’ve stayed with us and continued to reach for your publishing goals.

As a token of our gratitude, we’ve prepared a 2021 planner.

This basic planner is meant to help you keep track of books to read, goals, and projects on a quarterly basis. You’ll also have a little space to set your daily word count goals and whatnot. Use it to supplement your planning and keep your motivation up as you move towards your objectives in 2021.

May you fill your pages with possibilities, and may you always strive to tell your story your way.

The post Use this simple planner to prepare for your 2021 publishing goals appeared first on AuthorHouse.