Re: Visual & Verbal are not as disparate as language suggests

Thanks for writing back! You're totally right here... I'm responding
to this b/c most people bring up similar concerns... clarifications
below...


People have had the capability to decide all of those things since the very
beginning of publishing. It has always, and only, required that one
self-publish. And there have been vanity presses around *forever* that
allow that, if the author didn't want to hunt up his own printer, binder,
etc. (which wasn't that hard, either, once the Yellow Pages were
invented...in the late 1800s, was it?). So for over 100 years, people HAVE
been able to do all this. I can't see why I should get excited about old
news.

What's different now is the transmission of the information... it is
now being converted to digits. Those digits don't always reflect the
author's intentions.

But if you are only interested in text, this is not a problem...
except that the overall popularity for books is directly related to
the size of etext files - which is exponentially related to visual
data associated with it: more visual info = fewer books sold.


Also, I really don't see the point. It's not an issue. Making all those
decisions is something you can and must do, if you self-publish; it's
something you don't normally get much input on, if you license your work to
somebody else. Twenty-five-plus years ago, I ran across an author who chose
to self-publish in order to get exactly the paper, photo quality, cover
design, and layout she wanted for her book. Having the perfect product was,
to her, far more important than actually selling it. I personally place my
emphasis on the other side of the scale -- I'd rather the book sold than
that it looked like some ideal image in my head. But the point is, anybody
CAN make all these decisions, if they want to.


Right. It is an issue for people interested in the authoring
industry, but not directly for writing. I personally believe there is
a thin line between these as I write to feed myself as well (no cats
at present but I, too, am pretty pesky when I have an empty belly).



(Personally, I'm convinced book designing is an art form, and I have
seen designers at work: I could not duplicate their work any more than I
can produce a good cover.)

I'll bet you can learn. :) Artists used to make their own frames.

One of my sisters painted book covers professionally for about eight years.
She even won some awards for her work. Cover design isn't as easy as it
sounds, if you aren't an artist with training in layout and design. Which
is one reason why traditional publishers are incredibly disinclined to give
authors cover control, or even let them provide feedback beyond "You have my
name spelled wrong, dammit."

Computers and the Internet have made it easy to do layout-and-design stuff
without a lot of special tools and hours of fiddling around with Exacto
knives and light boards and various other implements. They haven't made it
easy to do this stuff *well*. The difference between an amateur job and a
professional one is usually not that difficult to spot, even for an
untrained eye (though IME the untrained reaction is normally "Gosh, that's
ugly!" or "I can't read that," rather than "Oh, geez, she's using a display
font for the body text and pale yellow type on a lavender background --
doesn't she have *any* sense?")

I learned InDesign in three months, in my spare time. It's (again, my
humble opinion and I completely understand that 99% of the world
thinks I'm mad but I'm going to write it here anyway) better to have a
complete vision of the book and design everything with the same
DIRECTION and inferior SKILLS than have someone do the opposite.
Great designers are great but I could simply never explain to them the
true vision of my book... what I want is not _good design_ but design
that supports the text best. That is, a poet could come up with a
very beautiful title for one of Picasso's paintings but I would rather
have a crude, unpoetic title that was written by Picasso himself.
Does that make sense?

It's a bit of an odd point but I would rather see crude drawings by
the author than pretty drawings by a stranger.


I think you misunderstood this as an argument. It is not. I am
bringing to light a current, divisive issue and asking others for an
argument.

Um, *where* is it a current, divisive issue? Because I'm not aware of
packaging and layout being particularly current -- or divisive -- in the
publishing circles where I move. Authors have been complaining about cover
control since forever, but there are very, very few, IME, who are interested
in micro-controlling every decision in the production process, even if their
publishers would let them.

I totally agree. I guess I was more curious to see if anyone did in
fact agree with my renaissance view on this... is there anyone else
who would rather make a great _book_ instead of just writing great
_text_? (regardless of the genre one may classify it as).

And, again, the divisive issue is not the adding of illustrations but
the standards that are growing around this... which will soon benefit
and hamper artists on a magnitudinally larger scale than any time in
history. And the hamper/benefit ratio is being decided presently.



This is an issue which is changing the landscape of
literature for readers; writers therefore have a huge opportunity to
capitalize on this: not in terms of money but in terms of
communication.

Money is rather important to me at the moment. I make my living writing; if
I don't get money for it, I can't buy cat food. Since I currently have two
cats, this would be an extremely serious problem.

And the kind of thing you're talking about -- playing with layout and design
and covers and so on -- still seems more than a little gimmicky to me, when
you're talking about books. If the visual elements were that important to
me, I'd be writing for the movies, or better yet, writing-and-directing.

I (and a few others) have forged beautiful new ways of sharing human
emotion across the world and expressing my deepest inner feelings to
complete strangers. It is _not_ a gimmick.


I've had good covers and I've had lousy ones, and they haven't made much
difference that I can see in how much people like the book. And I've had
covers that *I* thought were lousy, but which sold considerably more copies
of the book than the ones I thought were nice. So I'm content, for the most
part, to leave those decisions to the people who're paying me to let them
make them. As long as they spell my name correctly.

Which is great! Completely support you in this!!!!!!!!


Technology now exists which affords writers
unprecedented ability to communicate with their readers. The medium
for this communication, however (the language, if you will) is
presently being formed. I know because I'm forming it. It is being
formed largely without a strong voice representing the authors of the
world.

Language is useful only if somebody else speaks it. You come up with your
language; if and when it spreads widely enough, I'll learn it and use it. I
didn't have any input into the syntax, vocabulary, or structure of English,
and I've been managing fine with it for quite some time now.

YES YES YES!!!! This is exactly what I mean. We are so much alike
here I want to kiss you. The only difference is that I like inventing
new languages. :) So perfectly put here, though. Perfect.


Perhaps a large reason for this is the misconception that this does
not affect you.

*What* does not affect me? I have the ability to choose any and every
aspect of the design of my books, should I wish to; all I have to do is do
the publication work myself. I am not in the least interested in taking on
all that extra work, so I sell my books to people who pay *me* for the
privilege of making all those decisions for me, *and* then selling my books
to thousands of people I'd never reach at all if I were doing it myself.
Communicating imperfectly with 100,000+ people, and getting paid enough to
buy cat food for it, seems to me to be preferable to communicating perfectly
with 50-500 people, which is about what I'd expect if I self-published. I
don't have a problem with people who set their priorities differently, as
long as they don't start trying to tell me how I should run *my* life. If
having a product that fits your ideal image, one in which you have
personally chosen every aspect to communicate exactly what you want
communicated, well, go for it. It's your choice, and I wish you happy with
it. I'm happy with my choices, thanks all the same.

Patricia C. Wrede

Excellent. Again I feel exactly the same. I hope everyone
understands I'm not trying to tell anyone how to run their lives
either.... just presenting mine for consideration.

Really, thanks Patricia for the post (and others whom I have
secondarily responded to here). :)

The one further thing that I notice in all these threads is the
thought that design is difficult to learn. This is true. However, as
someone who has completed the process I would just mention that if you
read The Elements of Typographic Style (Bringhurst) and InDesign for
Dummies and buy Adobe InDesign you would see an entire new world of
shapes and colors at your disposal - and only be restrained by your
ability to think in visual/spatial terms.

If you would like to think in stronger visual/spatial terms, it is a
simple matter of strengthening the right prefrontal lobes of your
cerebral cortex and the neurons that connect that with your occipital
lobes. 20 minutes a day for two weeks and you'll never let another
human being create your book for you.

Crazy? I know. But I have had great success with it and I really
wish I could show more people how much it has helped my life and my
writing.

I've got a great list of visual learning books, too, if anyone is
interested. Nothing helps thinking verbally like relaxing that part
of your brain and adding a new perspective such as visualization can
offer.

.

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