Tag Archives: self-publishing

The joys of working with a small press


I’ve been having so much fun! Four years ago, when I published Recycled Virgin, I created Somewhat Grumpy Press, and decided I wanted a Pallas cat to represent it – but then I was coping with the pandemic, a pending move, and my MS, and I realized it was getting beyond me to manage.

So I gave the press to the current very capable publisher, Tim Covell, and he is racing away. He’s taken it into a more professional status, created the official logo, organized all the business bits of the press. The press has a stable of seven authors (so far) and has published eleven books! He’s worked hard to get them into bookstores of the brick and mortar kind as well as the online sources. It takes a lot of legwork.

I don’t know about you, but I find this impressive, given the pandemic, Tim’s other projects, and his full-time job.

In my travels as an author, I’ve also had the chance to meet Anne O’Connell of OC Publishing, and Cathy Mackenzie, of Writing Wicket. They also all run small presses and they all really work hard for their authors. It makes me want to support them.

And it makes it fun to do promotion for me and our books. I hate doing promotional things, but there’s something much more pleasant when you feel well-looked after by your publisher. I know my books are important to SGP, and that’s a feeling it’s hard to get from larger publishers, if you can even get them to publish your books. (He’s trying to get me to do TikTok, though, and I am not persuaded…but at least I can argue…and he’s done good promotion for Spit & Polish to date.)

There are lots of fraudsters out there – do check Predators and Editors and Writer Beware to be sure you are with a good publisher – but I highly recommend the small press experience. You may have to pay for some services (fair enough, given the time these things take), but as long as you take care, it’s well worth it. Do be careful of the presses who demand lots of money upfront, or people who offer services with an additional cost (like offering to film YouTube things for you as a high cost). You need to do your homework.

It’s important, too, to do your work beforehand – write your very best, get it edited a few times, get it in good shape, then contact the publisher. They don’t take every offering – their time is limited, too – but it’s likely you will get a friendlier response than the depths of silence often received from the larger presses.

I’ve recently taken training from the Editorial Freelancers Association and Queen’s University in developmental and structural editing. I’ve edited 5 books to date and so far they’ve been well-accepted. I’ve got two more pending and one in its final stages, but I might have room for editing your writing – if you need a developmental editor, please contact me, and we can talk. I’d love to help you turn your project into a successful book. You can reach me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and through here.

Have you had experiences with small publishers? Editors? Was it good? Bad? Indifferent?

Faking it til you make it, or Hey! My book is out!!


Image result for fake it til you make it meme

So, how many of you leap into things, smiling through faces while hiding a certain amount of quavering within?

I’ve done it all my life, think I’ve come from a family who taught me about this, created another family who can do it. It’s a useful skill. Got me through university, job interviews, marriage, parenting. (Though those last two are debatable – not sure if I succeeded there.) (Probably ex-husband and kids would have something to add here – hope they don’t. Some illusions are necessary for me to keep my aging smile properly polished.)

The only problem is, the inner quavering is still there. Tapping on the insides, making your brain make bad decisions, sending you into wee tailspins of anxiety. It used to appear before I taught a class or did public speaking, only to slip away at the actual time of delivery. The only reminder was a feeling of unreality during the engagement and a curious fatigue after it, like I’d run a race. Stage fright, as they call it.

Now that I’m older and more uncertain of my cognitive abilities, that fright is stronger, lasts longer.

I haven’t slept well for weeks, and it’s all about the book, trying to get the book out, worrying about the book. Thought I had it all happily created, only to realize with a gasp the file I used wasn’t the one I wanted and besides, there were formatting things (like dual chapter headings) that loomed in my sub- and conscious mind. Eeeks! It wasn’t perfect, that I knew, but stupid mistakes are just that. They needed to be purged. Fixed. Redressed.

Currently, the revised files are being evaluated by Kindle Direct Publishing before they get finally uploaded. Thank heavens I had yet another look at things. Formatting computer documents isn’t my strong point and if I’d been smarter, I would have hired someone to do it for me, but there I went, leaping in as if I knew what I was doing, grinning madly all the while.

Not that I MIND waking up at 4 AM, really. It’s lovely and quiet out and the apartment is warm and cozy and I can schlep about in jammies without worrying about delivery men coming to the door. Even the radio is sotto voce. It’s pleasant.

The gnawing anxiety isn’t so good. It makes me nervous eat, sucking back carbs and needing things to chew on – popcorn, random pieces of string. Image result for anxious eating

So, I squash it, ignore it, put my mind in other places and pretend things aren’t happening, at least until someone mentions they have ordered my book and then the circle spins again. What will they THINK?

Truth is, I can’t make anyone LIKE what I’ve written. I am so grateful if they are willing to support my wee venture. I’ve learned a lot about publishing and have ever so much more to learn. I just hope not to embarrass myself into dust.

And my story seems small, given that it is, in fact, small. It’s not going to change the world. But then, I never really thought I could – no, that’s not true. I was brought up to believe I would.

I blame my mother for that. She KNEW we would all be mavericks, leaders, changers. (She was wrong, incidentally, but we’ve all been imploding trying to meet that expectation)

As I toddle into my 60’s, I realize that my changing the world probably isn’t going to happen. Except in the small ways that we all change a teeny part of our world as we go along. And of course, changing ourselves to make the world better. I can only hope my little changes are good ones.

Unlike in online publishing, I can’t resubmit and erase the errors.

Want to see the book I’ve been toiling over? Here’s the blurb for Recycled Virgin and a link:

Recycled Virgin (Scleratis Series Book 1) by [Brown, DA, Brown, Dorothyanne]What if the Virgin Mary never ascended? What if she’s been hard at work on earth for generations? What if she finds out that the real story of her religion’s founding has been lost in a melee of male privilege?

The former Blessed Virgin Mary has had enough. She’s spent the past 2000 years looking after others, only to find that her true story has been erased. No one knows the real Miryam, the flesh and blood mother, the woman who taught the foundations of a world-wide religion to her often disobedient son.

As she lives through her latest reincarnation, she struggles to understand why she keeps returning. Will her study at a Theological College finally allow her to free herself? Will she be able to retell her story, make herself real? Will she find the other half to her soul?

Recycled Virgin is the first book in the Scleratis Series.

Note: it’s the FIRST book, which implies there will be more, and there are. So it’s back to chewing string for the next while…

 

Jane Friedman…


Has an excellent blog. In today’s, she posts a checklist and a time-estimate for self-publishing your book. Go check her out. You won’t regret it. LOTS of good info here.

https://janefriedman.com/self-publishing-checklist/

 

Smashwords: Amazon’s Hachette Dispute Foreshadows What’s Next for Indie Authors


Interesting posting, well worth a read.

Smashwords: Amazon’s Hachette Dispute Foreshadows What’s Next for Indie Authors.

Indie publishing from the owner of Smashwords


http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content-and-e-books/article/61116-hugh-howey-and-the-indie-author-revolt.html

Interesting article in Publisher’s Weekly about the ongoing increase in indie publishing.

Key points:

– professional editor

– professional cover design

and key to all:

– great story!

The Writer’s Union and the art of gentle discouragement


writers union blue cropI was lucky enough to be able to attend a Writer’s Union workshop yesterday. I say lucky, because, as a writer without a book published by a “real” publishing house, I can’t be a member, so it was a bit like being invited to a frat house but not allowed to drink.

It was an interesting workshop on the new face of publishing, on the glories and challenges of self-publishing, the thrills of being offered an impenetrable contract from a “real” publisher, the shame of self-publishing that remains, since oh so much self-publishing is garbage.

I learned a few things I couldn’t have picked up hanging about on web street corners, but the prevailing thing I learned was to keep a sense of humour about writing and publishing and BY NO MEANS expect to make money at it.

Well, I knew that.

But it hits a little harder when a prize-winning author in adult and child books (from REAL publishers) still struggles with contracts that give her less than the Writer’s Union suggest. Or when the originally REAL published author who has turned to self-publication tells you that she still hasn’t made back the relatively small investment she made. And still mentions self-publication with a wisp of shame.

They laughed, both of them, whenever money or joy was mentioned. They mentioned they had their books with them for sale. No one bought any. It was fairly discouraging.

On the other hand, they emphasized the work that goes into writing a good book, and in a way that was reassuring. I keep getting people asking me about why I don’t send in my things to publishers and such, but these authors emphasized the need for many many many many revisions, at least 4 years of production, and then more revisions, preferably by a professional editor. So I am off the hook a bit for the manuscripts that languish unloved (but, I hasten to say, still percolating in my head) on my computer.

When is your stuff ready to send out? “When you feel like you are going to throw up if you have to read it again,” was the jist of things.

I’m only a bit nauseated. I think I need some more revision time. And now, yes now, I feel like I want to do it. Despite the discouragement.

Why? Well, if my mum were still around, she’d tell you why. I’ve always been a bit bloody minded. If someone tells me I can’t do something, that simply means (to me) that they don’t know me. My mum, for all her faults and our arguments and her preference for my brothers, told me that I could do anything I put my mind to. She told me this every day of my life and hers.

It’s in my genes.

250px-Alice_05a-1116x1492

So when someone says, oh, this is horrible and you will hate it and you won’t ever ever ever succeed, well… my mum inside me rises up, with fire in her eyes, and says, “WHO are YOU?”

She really shoulda been a hookah-smoking caterpillar.

Check out the Writer’s Union website for all sorts of helpful information, including sample contracts and a list of editors and agents. Plus a contest or two. Well worth a visit!

And maybe, maybe, one day I can become a member. For now I’m hoping to join the Whiskey Association of Halifax. Membership is easier there, and it might help with the other.

Infographic: 4 Key Book Publishing Paths


Infographic: 4 Key Book Publishing Paths.

Excellent post by Jane Friedman. Writers should subscribe.

Word on the Street Festival Doesn’t Care About Author Scam


Word on the Street Festival Doesn’t Care About Author Scam.

Reblogged from David Gaughran’s excellent blog. While I am not aware of Author Solutions position with the Halifax Word on the Street Festival, I thought I would repost in the interest of writers beware.

 

Connecting to the criminal element


Whew. It’s like the wild west out there. 

I’m talking about self-publishing, small publishing companies, vanity presses, etc. With the endless diversity there is now available in the publishing universe, it is becoming harder and harder to pick out the black hats from the white hats. 

We writers are a needy lot, and want so desperately to have a book out there (I should know as I don’t have one yet and I am gradually getting that glint of terror in my eyes that says I’d better get published or I will have to resort to playing Bingo for entertainment and thereby crush my creative soul into a small box of letters and numbers…). We want that validation. We want to have something to give to people who say, “So, have you got anything published yet? Anything I can READ?”

Mind you, that’s just galling. But maybe I’m over sensitive (see parentheses above).

And out there in the publishing world swim the sharks, the ones who promise publishing contracts, who sing you songs of “supporting you through this wonderful experience” for only a smallish fee such as one could use to buy a small car…

They go about, they take advantage, they hurt and bankrupt authors. Diane Tilbert has been fighting the good fight, trying to identify and check one of the companies that is being less than helpful. She’s running a risk; the person involved is lawsuit-positive, as they say in politically correct speak, but I applaud her efforts to cast some light on the murky side of things.

That said, she’ll squash this one (with any luck) and it will spring up again, under a different name, Like mushrooms, these little companies spring up in the dark dank undergrowth, and fade away whenever the sun is shone on them…

So be careful out there, writers! Choose pblishers carefully, Read the contracts carefully. Don’t be too desperate to get something out there (advice to me…). Make your book the best it can be and someone NICE will want to publish it, presumably.

Or not. 

But at least you won’t be bankrupted…

Start Here: How to Get Your Book Published


Start Here: How to Get Your Book Published.

Wonderful blog post with all sorts of good info and links. Fantastic job!