I am juggling four books at once, all in various stages of
publishing.
Consenting Adults Only. I am done with proofing and editing, and the
cover is completed. I started the book
in my head last year, but began the actual writing March 15, 2015. I had a first draft finished April 15, and a
second draft by May 15. Since then I’ve
made several alterations, the most significant being the
Prologue. I had a great Prologue, but one
beta-reviewer rightly thought it did not serve the novel well. I folded it into story, and the book and
story now begin on page 1.
This is all remindful of Stephen King's admonition in his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft: "Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.” By this he meant, of course, to get rid of things you love if they don't advance the story. Getting rid of my "darling" Prologue was painful, but in the end the novel is better for it.
I paid $200 to have CAO proofread (after multiple beta-reads), and that final step
was completed last week. I made some
necessary changes and "finished" the novel yesterday. So almost 5 months since I began the writing. As planned, I have submitted the novel to Kindle Scout,
one of Amazon’s publishing arms. https://kindlescout.amazon.com/about
Kindle Scout will let me know within 2-3 days if the book is
accepted for their program; this phase is called the Eligibility and content
Review. From the Scout website:
· Eligibility &
content review
You'll hear from us in
1-2 business days (longer if we have a ton of submissions). Once your
submission is approved for launch we'll send you an email with a preview link
so you can see exactly what your readers will see. We'll also tell you the
exact launch date of your Kindle Scout campaign. What are we reviewing for? If
you haven't already, check out the Kindle Scout Eligibility & Content Guidelines.
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Out of Time: An alternative outcome to the Civil War,
has been published in paperback via CreateSpace, and in e-book format via both
Kindle and Smashwords.
Recently, one reader of the Kindle edition noted a few
typos, which I feel important to correct; all are minor but still, if you mean
the Arizona desert, don’t spell it dessert.
That type of thing. I will have
to pay Create space to update the print-on-demand file, and also pay my e-book
formatter a small amount to update both e-books formats (Mobi for Kindle and Epub
for Smashwords).
One could argue that a couple of thousand dollars spent on a
top-flight editor would have caught these minor typos (and at 97,000 words, we
are talking 2K for line editing).
Perhaps, but is it worth it to the Indie author? At least half a dozen people read this
manuscript before publication, and not one caught the typos now brought to
light. It will cost me <$100 to make
the corrections in all formats. I am not
defending this as a self-publication option, just pointing out the economics of
the situation. It’s one every
self-published author makes. There is a
difference between sloppy editing and a few typos. The former is worth any price to correct; the
latter, less so.
As an aside, it would be much better if the author could do minor
post-publication editing himself/herself, but that’s not possible. While some authors (very few, no doubt) might
have this skill for e-book formats, they still
must upload a new file after each change or series of changes. And even then, they can’t change the print-on-demand
file without going through an intermediary.
My ideal would be for any author to have access to the ACTUAL,
WHAT-YOU-SEE-IS-WHAT-YOU-GET file, and be able to edit that, then save it. NO INTERMEDIARY. We do this now for our web sites, of
course. Why not for self-published
books? The time will come; we’re just
not there yet.
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The Wall: Chronicle of
a Scuba Trial is complete and has been submitted for conversion
to e-book format. My cost (for both
Smashwords and Kindle formats) is $100, and it is done expertly by Maureen Cutajar (www.gopublished.com). In addition, I spent $100 on the cover design. The cover is by Judy Bullard (www.customebookcovers.com), who
has done all my covers, starting with Sherman’s
Mistress in Savannah.
At this time I have no intention to publish The Wall in
paperback. It is a short work (46,000
words) and aimed at a niche market, so e-book seems to be an ideal format.
I have finished a draft of a children’s book on
gravity. My schematic of a possible
cover design is above. The next step is
to look for illustrators. This is a
brand new area for me, and at this point I am not sure if the work is feasible. It may be that the cost of illustrations is
going to be prohibitive. A better option
would be a collaboration with an illustrator, if that is possible (i.e., co-authorship,
share any royalties). I have some
contacts and will begin pursuing those.
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