In conversations with aspiring writers and also with people who are just generally interested in the technical details of the self-publishing process, sometimes I hear comments such as, “Gee, you must have had an awfully good computer, with which to write a series as lengthy and involved as The Angel Brings Fire“.

It’s an understandable assumption but in fact it’s very far from the truth; consider that most of the great works of fiction in the last century, from Joyce to Orwell to Hemingway to J.R.R. Tolkien to countless others, were done either in handwriting or on primitive, manual typewriters. In my own case, I learned how to type on my late father’s old Underwood, which — though built like the proverbial tank and though “state-of-the-art” for its time — was nothing like a PC word processor.

In reality, almost any halfway modern PC would “do” as a platform upon which to launch a self-publishing project (or projects). The real issue isn’t so much what you have to work with (in terms of software and hardware), as it is (a) understanding how to set up and organize in the first place and (b) how you use, whatever you do have.

Let me explain…

When I set about to write The Angel Brings Fire, I knew that I’d need my computer environment to meet at least the following key requirements :

(1.) Flexibility – The system would have to be adaptable to a wide variety of functions, some of which might only become known well after I had started the project.

A very important side-consideration, here, is the need for the system not to be encumbered by artificial “anti-features” (for example, software copy protection) that could limit my ability to transition to more sophisticated PC hardware, without abandoning my existing investment in whatever software I had selected.

(2.) Standards compliance – The system would have to work with third-party service providers (for example on-line POD publishers) over whom I would have zero influence. Therefore it would be critical for it to maintain “standards compliance”, which is perhaps most easily explained as, “speaking a language that the rest of the computer world expects to hear”.

A good example of this would be the ability to output in familiar file formats like Microsoft’s MS-Word (.doc) document format or Adobe’s Acrobat (.pdf) format. (Note : As I discovered, a lot of computer programs are “99.9% compatible” with standard output formats. Unfortunately, many of the POD publishers require “100% compatibility”… that last one per cent will drive you stark, raving, mad!)

(3.) Reasonable learning curve – When one is writing a novel, the task-at-hand is doing just that… not in spending days or weeks trying to figure out how the word processing or presentation graphics program, works.

This is an especially important factor, given that (as studies have repeatedly shown), most PC users only ever actually experiment with about 1/10th of the long list of complex “features” that come pre-loaded into applications like Microsoft Word and Adobe Photoshop. (Is it, for example, necessary to learn how to do macro programming, in order just to write a novel?)

So even if whatever that I decided to use, was in fact larded with all sorts of “features” irrelevant to fiction-writing, it was important that I be easily able to ignore all the “chrome” and drill down to only the subset of the functions that I needed to employ.

What you really need in a word processor — at least for purposes of writing a POD novel — is a half-decent spell checker, the ability to precisely set page size dimensions and enough understanding of the program to be able to do add simple types of fields such as an auto-generated Table of Contents. (Incidentally — don’t worry too much about fonts and typefaces, presupposing of course that you can use standard ones like Times New Roman and Arial. Very few POD publishers give you any real “say” in what fonts are used, in any event, so you’ll just have to live with whatever serif and non-serif fonts that they happen to impose upon you.)

(4.) Cost-effectiveness – A favorite joke of mine goes, “What’s the difference between the used car salesman and the computer salesman? Easy. At least the used car salesman knows when he’s lying to you.”

The unfortunate fact is, most computer salespeople in the “big box” stores (e.g. Best Buy, Future Shop, department stores, etc.) have, at best, a superficial understanding of how computers really work; for example, 99.9% of them would be completely at a loss, if they were to be asked to install an alternate operating system (see below) on a Windows-based PC. This causes a “blind leading the blind” scenario in which salespeople overcompensate, suggesting that shoppers purchase equipment that is unnecessarily complex and expensive.

Furthermore, computer software and hardware is a big business, in which salespeople have a vested interest in “upselling” — that is, inducing one to buy all sorts of things that have best a marginal incremental effect on the system’s responsiveness and usefulness.

One classic example of this is the tendency of the “big box” stores to hard-sell shoppers on point-of-sale warranties that are highly profitable for the store, but that are almost worthless to the purchaser. Don’t fall for this one; if your PC is going to fail, it will likely do so in the first 60 or so days, and in most jurisdictions, by consumer protection laws, the dealer has to fix it or refund your money, warranty or no warranty.

I didn’t need a PC powerful enough to run the latest 3-D, first person shooter games; I just needed one good enough to run a word processor at acceptable speeds. (The cheaper the better, as it were.) You should be able to get a decent laptop PC, appropriate for writing with, these days, for no more than about $500 U.S. (tax out). A desktop computer will cost you about $150-$200 more, simply because of the cost of the separate monitor, but on the other hand with a desktop you will get a larger editable area (a function of the larger screen size) and a generally more powerful PC.

The choice is yours, and don’t forget that a good used PC (if reinstalled with the Ubuntu Linux operating system, see below) in the $200-$300 range would be perfectly acceptable.

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So with all of the above in mind, what, exactly, did I settle upon?

I wrote The Angel Brings Fire on a number of different computers (several of which have been significantly less powerful than what I am now using), but for the past year or so, my platform has been :

Hardware : ASUS laptop with 3 Gb (gigabytes, or billion bytes) of RAM memory and a dual-core 2.1 GHz (gigahertz, or billion processor cycles per second) CPU. The PC has a 375 Gb hard drive and a 17 inch LCD display (note : the size of the screen is actually the most important of these attributes… get the biggest monitor that you can afford!).

The truth is that, up to a certain point, the raw hardware stats (e.g. CPU, RAM, hard drive, etc.) of your computer, are almost the least important factors. Unless you are really strapped for cash (in which case almost anything post-2000 or so, will do), I would suggest acquiring a PC with at least 1 Gb of RAM, a 100 Gb or larger hard drive and (this is important, if you want to attach modern peripherals like printers or external hard drives for file backup), USB 2.0 or 3.0 ports (the more the better… since many external keyboards and mice now only come in USB form factor).

I use an external mouse and keyboard, as trying to write prose quickly on the cramped, built-in keyboards and track-pads that are typically supplied with laptop computers (especially “netbooks”, or, even worse, the on-screen pseudo-keyboards found with “tablet” PCs), is a sure-fire recipe for utter frustration.

Pay attention to your keyboard and test it out thoroughly, before you set out to write a novel with it. I seriously mean this. The keyboard is the main conduit through which you will transfer the ideas in your head — in other words, the content of your novel — into semi-permanent form, on the computer. It may sound strange to assign such a “low-tech” device, such a high priority in your technology-sourcing project, but trust me… time spent in picking the keyboard that’s right for you, will not be wasted time.

One other thing : my laptop has a cooling pad (a thin device with a couple of fans blowing upward) located underneath the PC. This is highly recommended for all laptop users as it will help reduce the heat load on the computer’s internal circuitry and will prolong its life. It is absolutely a “must-have” for anyone who intends to use a laptop for prolonged periods, in an environment with consistently high (21 Celsius / 70 Fahrenheit) ambient temperatures. (Don’t forget : it’s in the interests of the computer industry, to sell you a laptop that overheats due to inadequate internal cooling, then slowly degrades in performance and reliability, until it dies altogether… at which point, you have to shell out for a new portable computer. I am 100% sure that this cynical strategy is in widespread use today, so don’t fall for it… use a cooling pad.)

Software : I do not use either Microsoft’s Windows operating system or its MS-Office suite of software applications (the best-known of which is the Word, word processing program).

Apart from the many well-known security vulnerabilities (e.g. susceptibility to viruses) of this software, it is obtusely copy-protected in a manner that makes it extremely fragile, should anything happen to the PC hardware that you installed it on; I have seen far too many fellow writers left impotently fuming, when they’re told that “sorry, your copies of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office are ‘locked’ to the specific hardware of your now-dead computer, so if you want to keep writing, you’ll have to go out and pay Microsoft all over again, for the operating system and word processor that you thought you had already paid them for”. (As I write these words, this precise set of events has just been imposed on neighbors, in the house 2 doors down from where I live…)

From my POV, copy protection of the sort that Microsoft uses with its software is little short of outright fraud. It is completely ineffective against true software pirates, who are always two steps ahead of the game; so the only reasonable conclusion is, it’s really just a form of “planned obsolescence” designed to extort more money out of honest, existing users.

Some time ago, I made a conscious decision to move away from proprietary, (and, frequently, very expensive) commercial computer software, in favor of “Open Source” (freeware) software, and I can honestly say that I have never regretted having done so. Only slightly to my surprise did I discover that the quality of Open Source software is arguably even better than that of commercial software, largely because, if a serious problem is discovered in a user-created and user-supported Open Source program, it is usually “patched” (fixed) very quickly by developers (programmers) within the user community.

This is absolutely not the case with a great deal of commercial software, since all too often, the manufacturer views fixing serious bugs in “version 1.0” of a product, as an “upsell” opportunity, so as to induce the hapless users of “version 1.0” to “upgrade” (at their own cost) to “version 2.0″… of course, then the bugs in “version 2.0” are discovered, and around and around we go again. Computer users have had to put up with this kind of self-serving manipulation on the part of the software industry, for far too long, unfortunately.

The only significant downside to using Open Source products is, because they are “free”, they are sometimes deliberately ignored or denigrated by the conventional software industry, which after all has an interest in pretending that there is no alternative to their own very costly, frequently unstable offerings. For a writer, where this most often manifests, is when one goes on a POD publisher site and is instructed to use a commercial program such as Microsoft Word or Adobe Photoshop to complete some necessary function, since it’s up to oneself to figure out which Open Source alternative would be the best “fit” to perform the same task.

So my software setup consists of the following :

(5.) Computer operating system – Ubuntu Linux v. 10.10 (“Maverick Meerkat”), released October 2010 (note : I have used a number of previous versions of Ubuntu, going back to the 7.x days, as well).

This non-Windows, Open Source operating system is probably the easiest of all the versions of Linux for an average user to install, and it is much, much faster, with far lower RAM memory overhead, compared to Microsoft’s Windows 7 or Vista. It’s at least as easy to use as any other computer operating system, including Apple’s excellent (but highly proprietary and expensive) Macintosh series of computers. Furthermore, Ubuntu is completely immune from Windows-environment “malware” (viruses, “worms” and so on) that constantly plague users of Microsoft’s software; you don’t even need an anti-virus program.

There is also an offshoot of Ubuntu called “Lubuntu” that (although somewhat more difficult to get up and running), has truly amazingly low memory and CPU requirements, making it the ideal solution for users who have older computers that they don’t want to, or can’t, easily upgrade.

Having used Ubuntu for a few years, I can’t imagine going back to anything else. It’s the single best piece of computer software that I have ever encountered in my many years in the industry, and best of all, it’s completely free! (One caveat : for some reason, the more recent versions of Ubuntu have decided to experiment with a user interface called “Unity”, that makes the PC look and behave more like a cell phone. If this isn’t what you had been expecting, it is quite easy to make it revert to the older, more familiar “windows and icons” interface, though explaining how to do this is beyond the scope of this posting.)

You can download Ubuntu Linux, for free, from http://www.ubuntu.com. When you burn the “ISO image” that you so get, to a CD, you can boot your existing Windows PC with the resulting “live CD” and experiment with Ubuntu with absolutely no risk to your incumbent Windows operating system; if you don’t like the free Open Source alternative, simply shut down the PC, remove the live CD and start up Windows again.

What have you got to lose, by trying it out?

(6.) Word processor – I use OpenOffice (version 3.2) and LibreOffice (3.x), which are free, Open Source office software suites comparable to Microsoft Office 2010. (Note : OpenOffice and LibreOffice are basically the same product; the differences are highly technical and revolve around changes in the software’s Open Source license, after Sun Microsystems, the originator of OpenOffice, was sold to the Oracle Corporation.)

Incidentally, there are fully-functional versions of both OpenOffice and LibreOffice for the Windows operating system, so even if you don’t want to throw out Windows itself, you can still save quite a bit of money by using OpenOffice or LibreOffice under Windows as opposed to shelling out the hundreds of dollars needed to purchase “real” Microsoft Office.

Both of the Open and Libre office suites have a very important feature that is completely absent from Microsoft Office, namely, the ability to output to the .pdf or Adobe Acrobat, final document format (this is because Adobe is a bitter competitor to Microsoft in the world of commercial software, so Microsoft is trying to pretend that the .pdf format is not worth supporting… there are also legal issues).

One important note here : When using (say) OpenOffice to output to .pdf format, make sure to choose, “PDF/A-1a” format, since this sub-format embeds fonts and incorporates other features that on-line POD publishers almost universally require.

I also use the OpenOffice Draw vector graphics program, along with GIMP (see below), to do the covers for The Angel Brings Fire. Here again, the rule is, “select PDF/A-1a”, when exporting to Acrobat format.

(7.) Graphics and cover art program -For this I use the Open Source GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) application, which is roughly comparable to Adobe’s Photoshop (although, GIMP does not support Pantone, TruMatch or other print industry precise color matching standards, which is a rather significant disadvantage; however, there is a “dirty trick” that you can use to get sort of the same effect, namely, import a GIMP bitmap color image into OpenOffice Draw, then export it as an Acrobat PDF/A-1a, which will preserve the color properties so that these will look almost the same when printed, as they do on your computer screen).

I should note that while it is no more difficult than any comparable “professional-level” computer graphics program, do not be misled into thinking that GIMP (or Photoshop, for that matter), is easy to learn. If you don’t believe me on this, try experimenting with “Layers” or “Alpha Channels”, in either application.

There is an old saying that comes to mind here : “just as giving someone with no accounting experience, a computer accounting program, does not make that person an accountant… giving someone with no artistic ability, a program like GIMP, does not make that person an artist; it makes him or her, a non-artist with a graphics program”.

(8.) Internet browser – I use a combination of Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, primarily because (as I have found out “the hard way”), some POD publishers (whose names sound suspiciously like “C_e_t_s_a_e”) will mysteriously fail to work with one type of browser but will work perfectly well with another… even though there is no valid reason for the one over the other.

(9.) E-book distiller – For this task I use a variety of different programs, since, as I have discovered, no single application is perfect for all formats.

The most important one is the Open Source Calibre combination distiller and e-Book converter / reader (versions are available for almost every major computer operating system from Windows to Linux to the MacOS), but — unfortunately — while Calibre does an excellent job in most respects, its output of some of the most important formats (for example .mobi for the Amazon Kindle series and, especially, .epub for the Apple iPad  / iPhone series), is noticeably inferior to what is created by the on-line conversion tools offered by POD publishers like Amazon and Lulu.

The other thing about Calibre is that the quality of its output can vary dramatically, depending on how you set up some very obscure settings that are specific to each format.

It’s also worthwhile to download and install every “free” e-Book reader program (Kindle Reader for the PC, Mobipocket Reader, etc.) that you can find, so you can preview what the purely digital versions of your novel will look like. You will quickly see that the rendering of the work differs hugely, depending on the software. This is one of the “rough edges” of e-Book publishing that I would expect to see fixed in the next two to three years.

Other comments and tips (in no particular order)

The most important single comment that I can give to technologically unsophisticated authors is, “backup, backup, backup — and never have all your backups on the same physical hard drive”.

I cannot stress this factor strongly enough. Physical media — that is, hard drives, USB flash memory keys, CDs, DVDs and so on — will all fail exactly when it’s most inconvenient (say, when you just finished that last, 8-hour editing session). But these days (unlike in the early days of the microcomputer revolution, which I’m <ahem> old enough to remember), storage media, as expressed in “billions of bytes”, is now incredibly cheap; there’s no excuse not to make multiple replicated images of your creative work (e.g. document files, graphics, layouts, etc.).

To give you an idea of the relative space requirements, the manuscripts of every major book to make all the world’s best-seller lists in a single year, could easily fit in the same number of megabytes as needed to accommodate a single digital movie. You probably have several such movies on anything like a new PC. So… Q.E.D..

Be aware that you will probably need to create multiple versions of your manuscripts, just to comply with the idiosyncrasies of the major POD publishers; Lulu wants to see it in “this” format, while Createspace requires “that” format and someone else, wants it in yet another guise. To avoid completely losing track of which version or copy is which, think ahead and devise an filing protocol (that is, “which files go in which folders on the hard drive, based on what criteria”), ahead of time. This might not be a major issue if you are only dealing with a single publisher, but even there, it’s still a good idea.

Finally, a word about computer security (obligatory since I do that for a living in my “day job”). This is a huge subject that could easily justify a blog all of its own; however, just a few very high-level tips :

Don’t use Microsoft Windows, since it’s by far the most vulnerable consumer-level operating system; either shell out the substantial extra dollars that an Apple MacOS-based PC costs, or install Ubuntu Linux. If you must use Windows, then don’t bother with anything other than Windows 7, which — though it still has many security shortcomings — is far better than anything that Microsoft has previously brought to the market.

If you use Windows, don’t bother with a commercial anti-virus program like McAfee or Symantec; instead, install Microsoft’s own, semi-free Microsoft Security Essentials, which is, within its limits, an excellent, low-overhead AV program. (Note that if you use Ubuntu, you don’t need an anti-virus program. This is pretty much true for the MacOS as well, although less so.)

In dealing with various entities on the Web (everyone to POD publishers to those in charge of blogs such as this one), you will need to establish “credentials” that prove your identity when “authenticating” (logging in to), the corresponding Websites and Web portals. Just remembering which set of user names and passwords correspond to which sites, is a job beyond most of us (including the author), so either write your credentials down on a piece of paper (keep a copy of it off-site, like maybe at work), or, alternatively, use a “pasword vault” application like KePass or Password Safe or Roboform. Do not use the same user name and password for all of the Websites with which you communicate; use a different one for each site, so that in the unfortunate event that someone compromises (steals) your credentials for one site, at least they won’t be able to automatically do so for all the other sites. If you do use one of the “password vault” applications, make sure to back up its database frequently, since if you don’t, if your hard drive dies… need I say more?

Remember that you cannot assume that anyone who you encounter on the Web, is really who he or she says that he or she is. Today’s cyber-criminals are absolutely ingenious in their ability to “impersonate” identities to gain a false sense of trust with their victims, who usually find their bank accounts (and credit ratings), quickly depleted thereafter. Use common sense — if something’s “too good to be true”, it almost certainly is. (Here’s an example : You receive an unsolicited e-mail message saying, “we think your self-published novel is a ‘hit’, and we’d like to submit it immediately to {name of big New York publishing company here}… all we need is your credit card number and DOB, so we can print a few hardcopies to take and present to the review team”. However much you and I might dream of such an outcome, ask yourself… how likely is it? And what are the consequences to me, if it turns out to be a fraud?)

Moral of the story : Think with your head, not your heart… as difficult as that is to do, when using your computer on the Internet.

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Anyway, that’s what I used to write The Angel Brings Fire. I hope that you’ve gleaned some new information in reading what’s above, because had I known all of it when I started out, all four (and a half) volumes of the novel would probably have been written, by now!

The Author