• Guest please check The Index before starting a thread.

AuthorHouse / WordClay / Words of Belief / Author Solutions, Inc.

Lauri B

I Heart Mac
Absolute Sage
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 14, 2005
Messages
2,038
Reaction score
400
Hi again,
I really don't know what the rules are for fiction subs, but I don't really care if the submission is single or double or triple or whatever spaced. To be honest, I don't think I've ever even noticed. I guess if I had my choice, doube space would be best, but I wouldn't turn someone down over something like that.
Good luck!
 

Vipersniper

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 5, 2005
Messages
380
Reaction score
23
They Contacted Me

:crazy: You would be crazy to sign with these people. They are still after a book that I wrote in 2003. They were in fact 1stBooks and while they talk a good game here is the bottom line. If you publish with them expect to pay about $15,000.00 to do that. I flat out refused but then they came back with the AuthorHouse thingy like EricaHouse is PublishAmerica. Much to my regret I went with PA and I would not recommend someone that wants that much money to publish and you only get what 25 books. That I believe comes out to not even breaking the surface water while drowning. So I would just delete them from your favorites file.
 

priceless1

Banned
Joined
Feb 15, 2005
Messages
1,622
Reaction score
446
Location
Somewhere between sanity and barking mad
Website
www.behlerpublications.com
Mark Anderson said:
Ignoring the submission guidelines is not the best foot to put forward.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. You have no idea how many submissions come across my desk where it's very obvious the individual hasn't bothered to read the submission guidelines. It's irritating. It also sends the implication that the author didn't care enough to fully investigate our guidelines, so why should I care about reading it?
 

Lauri B

I Heart Mac
Absolute Sage
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 14, 2005
Messages
2,038
Reaction score
400
I agree with you, priceless--it's incredibly annoying to receive submissions that don't comply with our guidelines, although for us it's primarily a matter of completely inappropriate topics or genres as opposed to formatting. Do you think it's more of an issue for fiction vs nonfiction publishers?
 

priceless1

Banned
Joined
Feb 15, 2005
Messages
1,622
Reaction score
446
Location
Somewhere between sanity and barking mad
Website
www.behlerpublications.com
Nomad said:
I agree with you, priceless--it's incredibly annoying to receive submissions that don't comply with our guidelines, although for us it's primarily a matter of completely inappropriate topics or genres as opposed to formatting. Do you think it's more of an issue for fiction vs nonfiction publishers?
I"m not sure, Nomad. Ours is almost exclusively fiction, but I do receive a fair amount of nonfiction chapters that come to me unsolicited. It's obvious that the author has picked our name out of a publishers database and sallied forth. It's a time waster for all involved.

If a publisher says query first, that isn't a guideline strictly for the tourists. It means query first. Yet I receive unsolicited chapters and full manuscripts all the time. All are deep-sixed with an accompanying email informing them of their rejection and why.
 

maestrowork

Fear the Death Ray
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
43,746
Reaction score
8,652
Location
Los Angeles
Website
www.amazon.com
I think the disconnect here is the typical "writer" vs. "everyone else" syndrome. We are writers, and we think that no matter how we format our ms. ("so what's wrong with Times Roman 10pt single-spaced? It looks fine on my computer."), we deserve to be read. We have a wonderful story and it's your loss if you don't read it. Why throw away the model because she's not wearing the right clothes?

The flip side/reality: this is a business. There are business protocols, procedures, processes, things that publishers (a business) do to make things easier for them. Thus the guidelines. When a writer ignores these guidelines, it means they're not very professional to begin with. Now, even if you're Stephen King, you still should be professional. I bet he formats his ms. according to standards.

There are always exceptions, but why risk it.
 

priceless1

Banned
Joined
Feb 15, 2005
Messages
1,622
Reaction score
446
Location
Somewhere between sanity and barking mad
Website
www.behlerpublications.com
maestrowork said:
I think the disconnect here is the typical "writer" vs. "everyone else" syndrome. We are writers, and we think that no matter how we format our ms. ("so what's wrong with Times Roman 10pt single-spaced? It looks fine on my computer."), we deserve to be read. We have a wonderful story and it's your loss if you don't read it. Why throw away the model because she's not wearing the right clothes?

The flip side/reality: this is a business. There are business protocols, procedures, processes, things that publishers (a business) do to make things easier for them. Thus the guidelines. When a writer ignores these guidelines, it means they're not very professional to begin with. Now, even if you're Stephen King, you still should be professional. I bet he formats his ms. according to standards.

There are always exceptions, but why risk it.

Oh, don't get me wrong. If someone sends me something I requested and the font is smaller, or single-spaced, I don't mind. I simply change it so it's easier for me to read. No, what I'm talking about is receiving unsolicited chapters and manuscripts. Our site specifically states that people must query first. I receive over 35 queries a week and I read every one of them.

If someone sends me chapters or manuscripts that I haven't requested, yes, I do reject them because there have to be some standards, and as you state, it isn't professional. If they don't care enough to read our guidelines, then how serious are they about our company in the first place?
 

James D. Macdonald

Your Genial Uncle
Absolute Sage
VPX
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
25,582
Reaction score
3,785
Location
New Hampshire
Website
madhousemanor.wordpress.com
maestrowork said:
Now, even if you're Stephen King, you still should be professional. I bet he formats his ms. according to standards.

Mr. King formats his manuscripts in 10 CPI Courier with one-inch margins, double spaced, with a running head, black ink on white paper.
 

Jaws

Apex Predator
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
582
Reaction score
221
Location
Loitering just offshore on the Silicon Prairie
Website
scrivenerserror.blogspot.com
A Somewhat Alternate View

I have a slightly different take on manuscript format, but that's partly because so much of my work concerns serious (academic and almost-academic) nonfiction. In other words, this may not work for fiction.

If you have any footnotes or endnotes in your manuscript; or any tables; or any illustrations with captions, use a clear, readable, proportionally spaced serif type for your manuscript, 12 points on 24 for the body, 11 points on 13 for the notes, tables, and captions. (In fact, book-length nonfiction should virtually always be submitted in a proportionally spaced font.) Book-length fiction seems to be equally acceptable in that format; from what I have seen, only short fiction and some trade short nonfiction remain fixated on monospaced type (like Courier or, for those of us old enough to remember, Pica). In nonfiction, you should always use true italics, not underlining; the reverse still appears to be true in fiction.

Margins should be one inch all around (not Word's default 1.25" L/R), you should not use justification, and you should use only a header in the upper right corner for identifying and paginating your manuscript. The preferred style these days looks like this:

Short Title | Page XXX​

Note that the author's name is not in that header in nonfiction, to facilitate blind and semiblind review (which is assumed in academic nonfiction, and becoming more common in certain areas of serious trade nonfiction). For fiction, most editors I speak to still prefer the author's last name right before that short title. In any event, the entire header shouldn't extend more than 2.5" or so into the page from the right margin.

Use numbered footnotes where possible instead of endnotes, but jump references to illustrations and tables, which should be placed at the end of each chapter or the end of the manuscript. (As a dirty trick, that's how I manage exhibit references in legal documents that get built part by part—I've reformatted the endnote function so that it keeps my exhibits nicely in order.) Interior headings, such as chapter and section names, should be centered and in the same font (typeface and size) as the main text, although boldface seems acceptable.

Personally, I think the continued insistance of some markets on Courier is goofy and ill-considered, as Courier is a particularly difficult-to-read font and doesn't photocopy well. But then, almost all of my typesetting experience has come on electronic compositors and modern page layout systems, so I haven't developed an "Editor's Eye" for estimating actual printed length by eyeballing a manuscript. And don't get too married to 12-point type, either; the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure now require use of 14-point type, even in footnotes.

Of course, these are all "default" rules. Some markets will have different requirements (for example, the Y[SIZE=-2]ALE[/SIZE] L[SIZE=-2]AW[/SIZE] J[SIZE=-2]OURNAL[/SIZE], until a couple of years ago, required triple-spaced body text and double-spaced endnotes!). Always follow the rules for the particular market to which you are submitting. This is vastly easier to manage if you use styles instead of hard coding for your work.
 

priceless1

Banned
Joined
Feb 15, 2005
Messages
1,622
Reaction score
446
Location
Somewhere between sanity and barking mad
Website
www.behlerpublications.com
Jaws said:
Personally, I think the continued insistance of some markets on Courier is goofy and ill-considered, as Courier is a particularly difficult-to-read font and doesn't photocopy well.
Jaws, you the man. I personally detest Courier and wish we could ban it from existence. It is very difficult to read, especially if you're reading an entire ms. I just laugh when I see someone send something in Courier. If it's an e-file of three chapters, I go in and change the font before printing it out. Be still my blinding eyes.
 

Roger J Carlson

Moderator In Name Only
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 19, 2005
Messages
12,799
Reaction score
2,499
Location
West Michigan
DaveKuzminski said:
Third, if you registered the copyright, you've slapped agents and publishers across the face because you're stating that you don't trust them. This is even more insulting since copyright status is automatically given to most writings upon creation. Real agents and publishers aren't going to steal your work.

I was advised by an attorney familiar with publishing law that I should always register a copyright. While it is true that the copyright exists the minute you create the work, proving it is another. Certainly, the "poor-man's copyright" (mailing yourself a copy and leaving unopened) will do that, but there are other advantages to registering the copyright. Most notably if you DO end up suing, with a registered copyright you can sue for statutory damages and attorney's fees. Without it you must prove ACTUAL damages. If you are an unknown writer, this can be difficult. Check out this link: http://www.ivanhoffman.com/reg.html.

That said, I am also mindful of the implied insult, so I never put the copyright notice on submitted material, nor do I make a point of telling the agent/publisher it is copyrighted.

One exception to this is Hollywood. I have an agent there who is trying to sell my novel to a production company and he advised me to get it copyrighted. He was pleased that is was already copyrighted and told me to put the copyright notice on all copies. Different rules out there apparently.

--Roger J. Carlson
www.rogerjcarlson.com
 

victoriastrauss

Writer Beware Goddess
Kind Benefactor
Absolute Sage
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
6,704
Reaction score
1,314
Location
Far from the madding crowd
Website
www.victoriastrauss.com
Roger J Carlson said:
I was advised by an attorney familiar with publishing law that I should always register a copyright. While it is true that the copyright exists the minute you create the work, proving it is another. Certainly, the "poor-man's copyright" (mailing yourself a copy and leaving unopened) will do that, but there are other advantages to registering the copyright. Most notably if you DO end up suing, with a registered copyright you can sue for statutory damages and attorney's fees. Without it you must prove ACTUAL damages.
But until your work is exposed to a wide audience (i.e., published), the chances of infringement are truly minimal. In the book world, theft of unpublished work is vanishingly rare. Since all registration does is give you legal status to sue in court, there's really no need to register an unpublished manuscript. (You can register for up to three months after publication and still be eligible to sue for the full range of damages, as long as the registration predates any infringement.)

"Poor man's copyright" is useless, because it's so easy to fake. You could have mailed the envelope to yourself empty, and filled and sealed it later. Drafts, notes, computer files, and e-mails will do fine to prove ownership.

- Victoria
 

Jaws

Apex Predator
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
582
Reaction score
221
Location
Loitering just offshore on the Silicon Prairie
Website
scrivenerserror.blogspot.com
Roger J Carlson said:
I was advised by an attorney familiar with publishing law that I should always register a copyright. While it is true that the copyright exists the minute you create the work, proving it is another. Certainly, the "poor-man's copyright" (mailing yourself a copy and leaving unopened) will do that, but there are other advantages to registering the copyright. [snip]
One exception to this is Hollywood. I have an agent there who is trying to sell my novel to a production company and he advised me to get it copyrighted. He was pleased that is was already copyrighted and told me to put the copyright notice on all copies. Different rules out there apparently.

Well, I have to disagree with just about all of this.
  • You should always ensure that a copyright is registered in published work. Only rarely should unpublished work be registered. (As I'll note below, screenplays are almost never one of those instances.) That's because if the work later is published, and it's registered within 90 days of publication, it will be treated as if registration occurred before any infringement—even if the infringement occurs before publication.
  • :mad::mad::Headbang: If I ever see anyone recommend the "poor man's copyright" again for any purpose, he/she'd better not ever go swimming again, because I (or one of my cousins) will [insert unbelievably foul and offensive expletive] eat him/her. [SIZE=+2]The poor man's copyright is worthless and has been worthless since 1909.[/SIZE] It's got nothing whatsoever to do with copyright; it instead results from gross misunderstandings of now-outmoded evidence law. If an author keeps a system of records in the ordinary course of business, such as record copies of submissions and a corresponding submission log, that is just as good (if not better) for admitting in a court of law to prove priority in a "who wrote it first" dispute.
  • The WGA system applicable to scripts—which is a registration with the WGA, and not a substitute for copyright registration—is recommended for submitting unsolicited screenplays (for film or TV). Most reputable agents and production companies won't look at an non-WGA-registered script, for fear of a Desny action. Note, however, that with very rare exceptions, a production script is copyrighted by the production company by force of law. That is, if you can't manage to get it into your contract—if your name isn't "Lawrence Kasdan" or "William Goldman," you probably can't—the script's copyright belongs to the production company that produces it (presuming, of course, that production was in fact authorized by the scriptwriter). The WGA registration system is also used to divide screen credits—and, again, that has nothing to do with copyright ownership.
  • The agent who advised getting an unpublished novel manuscript copyright might, in certain rare circumstances, have a point. However, the proper submission technique and cover letter will actually provide more protection under Desny if someone "steals the idea," because the standard of proof for similarity is a lot lower than in a copyright action.
 

Roger J Carlson

Moderator In Name Only
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 19, 2005
Messages
12,799
Reaction score
2,499
Location
West Michigan
My apologies. I was only relating what was recommended to me.

However, let me respond:
  • I believe the laywer's reasoning for recommending a copyright was: 1) it's relatively cheap, 2) it's easy, 3) it offers the best protection. As long as I don't wave it under the nose of an agent or publisher and proclaim: "Ha ha! Try to steal that, you thieving agent/publisher!", I don't see the harm.
  • I never recommended the "poor-man's copyright". I said it would establish when it was written. Victoria's response that it could be faked surprised me (that never occurred to me), but then again, submission logs, emails, and printed draft copies can be faked too. And as I keep all records of my submissions in a database, this is problematic as well.

    But then I don't need these things OR the poor-man's copyright to establish when the novel was written. I've got a registerd copyright.
  • I didn't say anything about a screenplay and have no knowledge about this. My novel is being represented for adaptation into a screenplay.
  • My agent in Hollywood will probably be pleased to know he might be right about his area of expertise.
Perhaps I have misunderstood the purpose of this forum. I thought it was a place for writers and aspiring writers to share experiences in a mutually supportive environment. Had I known it was a place to destroy any and all opposing viewpoints, I would probably not have spoken up.

--Roger J. Carlson
www.rogerjcarlson.com
 

Roger J Carlson

Moderator In Name Only
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 19, 2005
Messages
12,799
Reaction score
2,499
Location
West Michigan
NicoleJLeBoeuf said:
Odd. Where do you see that happening?

Actually, I've seen it on several threads. This forum has a definite "in-crowd" and anyone offering a dissenting opinion better be prepared to be quashed pretty thoroughly. Friendly, this forum is not.

Still the information here is good. I'll probably stick around and lurk, but participate? I don't think so. I don't enjoy arguing and I won't suck up.

--Roger J. Carlson
www.rogerjcarlson.com
 

Julie Worth

What? I have a title?
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 16, 2005
Messages
5,198
Reaction score
915
Location
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
edfrzr said:
Please, some of you more expeienced writers, Recommendations--I need recommendations. I have put off the Self-publishing aspect simply due to the stigma. However, should I choose to go that route, where should I go and why?

I agree with Richard: Lulu is the place to go. Publishing is free and you have total control of text and images. If you make a mistake, hey, just put out a new version—it’s free. (On one novel I’ve gone through 17 editions!) Once you’ve perfected the book and you’re ready to cast it in stone, a measly $150 gets you an ISBN and a listing in Ingram's database, which generally also gets you into Amazon, B&N, etc., where you might actually be able to sell something, assuming you have some marketing skills. I haven’t gone the ISBN route myself, but I’ve had quite a few books printed up for special purposes: for beta readers, for submissions to agents and publishers, for gifts, etc.
 

Literary Lola

Sockpuppet
Banned
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
244
Reaction score
163
Yeah, but...

Jaws said:
If an author keeps a system of records in the ordinary course of business, such as record copies of submissions and a corresponding submission log, that is just as good (if not better) for admitting in a court of law to prove priority in a "who wrote it first" dispute.
What about the cases where the author hasn't kept a submissions log? I have a friend who lost a case in court against her publisher. She had published a book with these guys and looked no further when she submitted her new work. They turned her down. A number of months later she happened to see the same title, characters and synopsis as her submission sitting on a bookshelf.

She took them to court and lost. Obviously I don't have all the details, but I would have thought that her correspondence with them would have been admissable in court to establish a timeline.

What happens if no log is kept? I hear horror stories all the time about work getting ripped off because the work wasn't protected. I be confused.
 

Jaws

Apex Predator
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
582
Reaction score
221
Location
Loitering just offshore on the Silicon Prairie
Website
scrivenerserror.blogspot.com
Roger--
(1) You said "The poor man's copyright will do that." No, it won't. I'm irritated with the concept, not with you. This is a major sore point with me. And with judges, too. Don't even say the words around any experienced attorney who practices entertainment law, copyright law, intellectual property law, or anything like that. Every time I see that phrase, I go into attack mode.
(2) If you read my last two points together, you'll see that the proper course of action is going to involve registration with the WGA if there is a screenplay, and use of proper submission procedures for ideas if there is not. The copyright registration will not protect your ideas. And that is what you need to "fear" when an unpublished novel is being shopped around. I'm pretty sure that your agent knows this, presuming the he/she is properly licensed and has even a modicum of experience.

Lola--
You're stretching to find an exception or worst case scenario. For one thing, it's at least as easy to lose a mailed-to-self manuscript—or more likely, not be able to find it when needed!—as it is to lose business records. Further, there are appropriate ways to reconstruct business records. Relax a little—my point is that an author who acting in a businesslike fashion can protect his/her business interests in copyright. Then, too, keep in mind that priority isn't the only issue here; you have to prove access. And what's the best way to prove that a publisher/editor had access? Your submission log, which includes copies of the rejection letters when they're sent!
 

Jaws

Apex Predator
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
582
Reaction score
221
Location
Loitering just offshore on the Silicon Prairie
Website
scrivenerserror.blogspot.com
Getting Ripped Off

:Lecture: I'm answering this particular concern in a separate message, because it gets repeated so many times and I don't want it to get buried in the middle of a specific response to Lola.

There is a lot less "ripping off" of copyrighted material going on than most authors (and songwriters) believe. This is true whether it's publishers, or editors, or agents, or just other authors "involved." There are really three reasons for this, and they're sort of intertwined.
  • To begin with, a lot of things that authors think of as original to them are either not original to them or are expressed independently by others. Consider, for example, somebody who writes a stage play about an ill-fated love affair in East LA, where the girl comes from one gang and the boy from another. Leonard Bernstein's estate will have a very difficult time claiming copyright infringement absent purposeful copying, because there are both specific (Romeo and Juliet) and general public-domain sources. Then, too, independent conception is a complete defense to a claim of copyright infringement (or, for that matter, idea theft). If author A, whose career counting penguins on some Antarctic shore is interrupted only by one newspaper a year, gets an inspiration for a novel from a story in that paper, and writes it, and comes back to civilization with it six years later, he/she won't have a claim for copyright infringement against the author of a just-published novel that is virtually (or even exactly) identical. Infringement requires similarity and access.
  • Second, an awful lot of what authors think of as "being ripped off" just doesn't rise to the level of something that could be complained about in the first place. Outside of some very tightly defined circumstances in the TV and film industries, ideas are not themselves protected (well, patent law is an exception, but that's not what we're dealing with here either!). Just because a particular hero, or secondary character, or plot complication, in something from another author resembles something that—maybe, but probably not—that other author might have run across once from your work doesn't mean much, if anything. Only if there was a Desney submission, and only in California, and only when a few other requirements are met too, can one claim "idea protection"—and even then, if they're not "big enough" they won't get anywhere.
  • Third, and perhaps most important, there's actually very little incentive to "steal" material from an unpublished author. It's almost always easier, and cheaper, to get the rights in the first place if the material is worth taking.
Most of the horror stories are urban legends, overstatements and misunderstandings, or such outrageous exceptions that one couldn't put the actual circumstances into a work of fiction because nobody would believe them. A few are not; but even some of those, when you dig deeply into the facts, involve only partial copying at most (and often only arguably, with some evidence supporting both sides). Authors do need to take appropriate care with their materials; even more, though, they need to just make their materials.
Authors need to pay a lot more attention to getting ripped off by their publishing contracts than they do to getting their materials "stolen." If you lock your door at night—that is, keep appropriate business records, which is actually a lot easier than keeping the records necessary to do your taxes—then you shouldn't be worrying about the neighbors coming by with a satchel charge and blowing your door in.
 

Lauri B

I Heart Mac
Absolute Sage
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 14, 2005
Messages
2,038
Reaction score
400
priceless1 said:
Jaws, you the man. I personally detest Courier and wish we could ban it from existence. It is very difficult to read, especially if you're reading an entire ms. I just laugh when I see someone send something in Courier. If it's an e-file of three chapters, I go in and change the font before printing it out. Be still my blinding eyes.

I dislike Courier, but what I REALLY hate is when people submit manuscripts in really weird fonts that look like they've spent more time playing with the font feature in Word than they have on writing the manuscript--so hey, I guess I do pay attention to the formatting more than I thought. Just today I received a manuscript typed in that font that tries to look like handwriting, and one typed to look like cursive. What's the point of that?
 

maestrowork

Fear the Death Ray
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
43,746
Reaction score
8,652
Location
Los Angeles
Website
www.amazon.com
I personally don't like reading courier either, but that's the industry standard font to use, so I use it. A lot of submission guidelines won't tell you what formats they prefer, so it's easier to follow the industry standard. However, for electronic submission, a lot of publishers or agents do ask for Times Roman, which is a much easier font to read.
 

priceless1

Banned
Joined
Feb 15, 2005
Messages
1,622
Reaction score
446
Location
Somewhere between sanity and barking mad
Website
www.behlerpublications.com
Nomad said:
I dislike Courier, but what I REALLY hate is when people submit manuscripts in really weird fonts that look like they've spent more time playing with the font feature in Word than they have on writing the manuscript--so hey, I guess I do pay attention to the formatting more than I thought. Just today I received a manuscript typed in that font that tries to look like handwriting, and one typed to look like cursive. What's the point of that?
Hey, I recieved one like that, too. Hmm. Actually, that doesn't bother me all that much if it's an e-submission. I simply change it to Times New Roman and go from there. If it comes through as a hard copy, I let the author know I've rejected it. There has to be some logic enlisted with submissions. Sending something in cursive tells me this person hasn't done their homework.

I prefer Times, too, maestro.
 

Jaws

Apex Predator
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
582
Reaction score
221
Location
Loitering just offshore on the Silicon Prairie
Website
scrivenerserror.blogspot.com
priceless1 said:
I prefer Times, too, maestro.
:Soapbox: Actually, I hate Times nearly as much as I hate Courier. Times was developed to minimize the wear and tear on the types, and really sucks for line-lengths much over 40 characters (after all, it's intended for narrow newspaper columns). It's simply not intended for longer pieces, like magazine articles and books. The Century family, the Garamond family, the Bookman family (including its offshoot Book Antiqua), and even the Palatino family (although it's a bit light) are much better choices for material that may have to be read in varying light conditions, or under coffee-cup rings. And, if your text includes mathematical symbols, you're silly to use any Dutch-style font; then, you really, really should use a Century-family base.

Over at the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, you'll find two valuable resources on formatting of legal briefs, which must meet many of the "rules" that apply to "standard manuscript format." If you want to know more about the "whys" behind these things, there's a PDF reprint from a law journal on the technical details called "Painting With Print" that might be of interest. If, however, you just want to cut to the chase, a much-shorter set of "Guidelines for Briefs and Other Papers" (also PDF) is a lot more "practical" in focus.
Use typefaces that were designed for books. Both the Supreme Court and the Solicitor General use Century. Professional typographers set books in New Baskerville, Book Antiqua, Calisto, Century, Century Schoolbook, Bookman Old Style and many other proportionally spaced serif faces. Any face with the word “book” in its name is likely to be good for legal work. Baskerville, Bembo, Caslon, Deepdene, Galliard, Jenson, Minion, Palatino, Pontifex, Stone Serif, Trump Mediäval, and Utopia are among other faces designed for use in books and thus suitable for brief-length presentations.

Use the most legible face available to you. Experiment with several, then choose the one you find easiest to read. Type with a larger “x-height” (that is, in which the letter x is taller in relation to a capital letter) tends to be more legible. For this reason faces in the Bookman and Century families are preferable to faces in the Garamond and Times families. You also should shun type designed for display. Bodoni and other faces with exaggerated stroke widths are effective in headlines but hard to read in long passages.

Professional typographers avoid using Times New Roman for book-length (or brief-length) documents. This face was designed for newspapers, which are printed in narrow columns, and has a small x-height in order to squeeze extra characters into the narrow space. Type with a small x-height functions well in columns that contain just a few words, but not when columns are wide (as in briefs and other legal papers). In the days before Rule 32, when briefs had page limits rather than word limits, a typeface such as Times New Roman enabled lawyers to shoehorn more argument into a brief. Now that only words count, however, everyone gains from a more legible typeface, even if that means extra pages. Experiment with your own briefs to see the difference between Times and one of the other faces we have nentioned.
 

AnneMarble

Nefarious Ghost Fan
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
2,922
Reaction score
3,044
Location
MD
Website
gorokandwulf.blogspot.com
AuthorHouse Partners with Waterstone's

According to this press release, the UK subsidiary of AuthorHouse has formed a "strategic partnership" with major UK bookseller Waterstone's.

Now Waterstone's will have a special section of "self-published" titles published through this partnership, with titles stocked at least 8 weeks.

Ironically, the article includes a quote from AuthorHouse's president & CEO, where he says "Traditionally published authors are coming to AuthorHouse to regain control over their work. These authors understand the importance of owning their copyrights and maintaining editorial control. Consequently, they also reap the financial benefits of higher royalty payments on books sold."

I thought that according to some definitions, if the author shared the royalties with the publisher, it was no longer considered self-publishing...