A bit on self-publishing

Yesterday I reviewed a book that was self-published.  I currently have on my Nook several self-published authors.  I have nothing against self-publishing and there are a few of my books that I have toyed with self-publishing.  In today's world there are some great resources for self-publishing that make it truly affordable.  Create Space is one of many print-on-demand services that has very little initial outlay of money to publish your book.  They have paid services as well such as cover and interior design options, editing (from copy editing to full-blown editorial editing) and even marketing tools. There are also several e-publishers including Barnes and Noble's new Pubit! (their exclamation point, not mine) where you can create an account, upload your book and have your book available to Nook owners around the world.

I have wishy-washy feelings about self-publishing.  On one hand self-publishing allows the average person the ability to put their toils and tribulations into a book format.  I actually have a paperback copy of my last NaNoWriMo book (courtesy of being a winner and getting a "free" ARC of my book - It wasn't truly free as I did pay for the expedited shipping.)  It's really cool to hold your own book in your hand.  To see your name printed on the title.  To flip through the pages and smell your words.  It's really really cool.  As a former librarian and current bookseller I get such a giggle out of seeing "my" ISBN  on the back. (Although if I decide to have this traditionally published I know that the number will change, but I have an ISBN!) I have pet my book, stroked its lovely cover and carried it around with me.  It's my first book baby and it makes me feel like one of the Big Kids in the writing world.

On the other hand though, even though I have done copy-editing in the past, I still find my work littered with errors.  I find grammar blunders, misused words and spelling blunders.  You know what those are.  Those are the words that are spelled correctly but aren't the ones you mean.  In one of my books I have a character whose name constantly comes up as Any rather than Andy.  Spell-check doesn't catch those worse because Any is a real word spelled correctly.  It's just not Andy's name.  It won't catch the stupid mistakes like "They're" and "Their" or "moot" and "mute" or "could have cared less" instead of the correct "couldn't have cared less." 

On the other hand (now do you see why I chose Kali for the picture today?), self-publishing can boost your self-esteem, especially if you have been toiling for years trying to get your work published.  You know it is a good story.  You know people will love it.  You are confidant that your work is solid.  You can't find someone who will take a chance on it though.  So you do it yourself.  Market it yourself.  And you love what you have created.  You have a tangible (or digital) book that belongs to you.  It is your book forever.  And people can (and probably do) read it.  You are an Author now because you have a book to prove it.  Ha! Take that publishing world!

Yet on that other hand, there is something about needing the strokes from a Real Publisher to make one feel that they have triumphed.  It's really cool to have Harper Collins or Scholastic or Random House or Penguin or Little Brown (or one of their many smaller houses) printed under your name on the spine.  How fantastic to have that little Penguin flapping its little wings on the spine.  Traditional publishers will generally help you market your book and they can get your book into a lot more hands than you can on your own.  They can send to the mass market book sellers and go to ALA and Book Week and RWA and Comicon and all those really cool book venues.  They make your book look not just like a book but like a Real Book.  It will look very polished and professional.  They will use unique photography that will get people's attention (and hopefully they won't use a similar photo the same year as a different publisher used for a CS Lewis book).

On that (what are we up to now?) fifth hand having a self-published book that does well can help you get your foot in the door to a Traditional Publisher. (We really shouldn't think of self-publishers as not being real.  They are real.  They are really publishing books, but they aren't what we have come to think of as traditional publishers.)  If you show that you have done your market, taken your licks, worked your way through the publishing world on your own and have a book that has done moderately well, that can all make an impression on an agent or editor.  I've even talked to self-published authors who have had an agent or editor contact them after reading one of their books.  That's pretty darn cool. 

Yet (and you knew there was going to be another hand in all this) there are still traditionalist Traditional Publishers who scoff and dismiss those who haven't written the prerequisite nine thousand eight hundred fifty-seven query letters and received six thousand five hundred one rejections (because the other three thousand three hundred fifty-six query letters went unanswered).  They don't care how witty or charming or influential your writing may be.  You didn't go about it the Real Way so therefore you aren't worthy of their time.  OK, so the majority of agents and publishers aren't really that bad, but there is a bit of prejudice in the publishing world against self-published authors.  Go to a writer's workshop and raise your hand when they ask if anyone is published.  When they ask you who your imprint is and you say, "Create Space" eyes will roll.  "Oh, you are one of those writers." They won't even use the word Author associated with you.  It's as if you haven't earned the title. 

Now I'm going to say the part that makes almost everyone groan.  Do your homework.  Whether you are self-publishing or writing your next query letter, do your homework.  Find out who your audience will be.  Find out more about the publisher or agent or editor.  Make sure there aren't any hidden fees or clauses.  Know everything ahead of time.  Don't go blindly blundering into your mistakes.  Take time to really know your craft no matter how you choose to publish.  Make sure your manuscript is as polished and flowing as possible.  Just because you threw up words on a page does not mean you have written a book.  A book tells a story or gives us information in a clear and concise manner.  Make sure you actually have a book before you publish it.  Even if you do it yourself.



What I found in the library

Yesterday I finally made it back to the library after several weeks of not being able to go because of one thing or another. I love libraries. I used to be a librarian. Most of my adult work has been in one form or another with books (either lending them, ordering them, processing them, cataloging them or selling them and now writing them). The more time I spend writing and increasing my circle of wordy friends the smaller my "degrees of separation" become.

My friend Rachael Herron who wrote the book How to Write Love Song has been so cute (sorry Rachael, but cute is the best word to describe you) in her first book's publication. I've enjoyed watching her from the time she announced she had a contract until the book came out. I got to meet her at Stitches South in April and congratulate her and watch her being "goshed over" by her new following (which was where the word cute came from because it was just so gosh darn cute to watch her interact with all her readers). She squealed with delight when she found her book at Target stores (she's an up and coming author you know).

So I knew she would be thrilled to pieces to know that her book is available at the West Florida Regional Library and it looks like it has been checked out a few times to boot. Sorry the picture is a little blurry, there was a librarian scowling at me because I brought my cell phone out to take a picture. Those librarians.

I hate when rejections are correct

I received a very kind rejection yesterday to my witch trilogy. But by golly I can't argue with anything she said. She was also kind enough to offer some helpful criticism, which I have not received in the past. I'm so used to the standard, "Thank you for your submission. You ain't got what we want right now. Quit calling yourself an author. Sincerely, Very Rude Form Letter" In fact it almost caught me off guard to actually have some constructive criticism on how to make the book more readable.

The biggest comment was giving my character more of a voice that people can relate to. I think that the second and third books are much more like that as I learned more about my characters. So far I've eliminated nearly 12,000 words from the book by ditching the prologue and finding ways of incorporating that information into the body of the story. I may write a prologue after the fact later if I feel something is missing, but I'm not going to start with a prologue. I have also combined the first two chapters into one and made what was two days into one to get to the real action of the story quicker.

I've been reading through some of my more favorite YA books over the past two days and realizing how much action does take place in the first 50 pages. Hell, Bella moves to Forks, gets a truck, starts school, goes to classes, is introduced to the Cullens, has her first encounter with Edward, he leaves and then comes back all in the first fifty pages. Whew! I compared that (and other books) to my first 50 pages wherein you meet the twins and their family and they start school and you are introduced to the surly boy with a chip on his shoulder. But really nothing happens until the next fifty pages.

I'm not feeling defeated like I have been in the past. I know it is a good story, I just need to tell it better.

I'm alive ... but just barely

I'm crawling out of the NaNoWriMo trenches to say: I WON! I made my 50K with an end (thank you very much) Friday night at 50, 806 words. Of course I do need to go back and fix a dangling subplot that was just dumped when more exciting things to write about came along. It was tough this year. Not because I had no clue what I was going to write about, but because I had a planned Disney vacation that started on the fifth. We came home a day early because of Hurricane/Tropical Storm/Wake Me When It's Over Ida. Then three people decided to get the flu and the room with the computer was contaminated. I refused to step foot in there and people say I'm mean because I shoved grilled ham and cheese sandwiches under the door. Hey, I could have stolen Dan's laptop and just gone to a hotel and left them to make their own grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. Thanks to a few five thousand word days, though, I quickly caught up.

I like this story. In fact I like it better than the first in this series. Maybe it is because I'm understanding my characters better and finding them more developed the more I write about them. The really nice thing is that I know what is going to happen in the next book. I love these guys.

In knitting news (yes, I actually got a bit of knitting done amidst all the NoWri-ing) I managed to make a scarf and hat to go up to Sylvia's place and made Dan a fair isle ear flap hat since he is about to leave to Someplace Cold later this week for a month or two. I finished his third pair of socks at Disney and am almost finished with Keon's socks that I started there. It's nice mindless endless rounds of stockinette and I found I can do it easily while standing in line, riding in the car, or waiting for movies to start. I really need to get on the ball and knit up the lace scarf sampler for the January/February JoAnn classes and I have another (super secret) project that I want to work on as well. I just can't decide which to do first. (Especially since I really want to just write some more seeing as I lost eleven days.)

And I'll catch up on cooking before I get back to more writing stuff. Everyone will be happy to know that I have finally successfully had a complete Thanksgiving dinner. Yep. I set the oven on fire and didn't get to bake the rolls. The good news is that the oven was easily cleaned out (the next day) and the rolls were baked on Friday to go with the leftover turkey and rice. (For those of you who don't know, you can stuff risen bread in the refrigerator overnight. In fact you can even do a cold rising if you are patient enough. I'm rarely patient enough.) They were delightful and now I'm craving another batch. I wonder if anyone would mind another batch of turkey and rice tonight. Or rolls. Oh the funny part of all this: the firefighter in the house thought it would be OK to spray "mostly water" sanitizer on the blazing fire. Do not do this. It will not put out the fire. Your best friend for kitchen fires: baking soda. It's cheap too and won't cause your oven to burst into huge tongues of flames and billow out (most likely toxic) smoke.

Now back to writing because that is what interests me at the moment. I bought a magnet a while back that reads: What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? Then Saturday evening I received a fortune in my cookie that read: No man is a failure who is enjoying life. It got me to really start thinking about my books and what I want to do with them. I really want to publish them. I go to the bookstores and I look for the place where my books would sit on the shelves. I touch the books on either side. Is it too presumptuous of me to want to rest between Ursula Le Guin and Madeleine L'Engle? And what happens if I fail? I'm really no worse off than I am, but perhaps with a broken heart. I have an advantage of not needing to be financially dependent on my writing. I don't have to publish. I just want to publish. So I'm going to pursue that earnestly in the coming year. I'll keep you all posted on how it goes.