Publishing is an Educational Experience
Back in the olden days in college, in addition to my majors in English
and theater and education, I acquired what I like to refer to as my “secular
education.” I had been a fairly solitary child before I left home and was
extremely naïve when I got to college. My secular education overflowed
with Educational Experiences. Dorm life. (I describe a real dorm party
in Ch. 15 of
Secret Lives. Some of the characters went to the same college I did.)
College theater. (I was a member of the Black Mask student group and worked
on all the plays for four years.) Cutting classes while sitting with ten
or twenty friends in around a table in the student union. (On reflection,
not a good idea.) Boyfriends. (Don’t ask.)
Educational Experiences, of course, teach us those famous Life Lessons.
Like don’t come back to the dorm at midnight after a cast party because
when I was in college the housemother locked the dorm and you have to crawl
in through a basement window. Which I did a couple months into my freshman
year. I was grounded for a week. Like don’t believe everything an actor
tells you. Like don’t cut class. It took me until graduate school to learn
that lesson.
Today, forty-odd years later, I am still having Educational Experiences.
The big one? Publishing
Secret Lives, of course. As of September 8, I have released my beloved
crones and their friends to the world. The novel is now for sale on
Amazon.com and the Kindle conversion is in the works. I’ll investigate
B&N pretty soon and start a Nook conversion, too.
Getting on Amazon has been majorly educational. If you go to the page
that sells
Secret Lives, you’ll see vendor listings. Used copies?? There are
no used copies! As I’m writing this, I know who’s ordered copies of the
book. Friends of mine. What are these vendors selling? I don’t have a clue.
I’ve sent emails to them. No reply. The customer service rep from Amazon
who phoned me a couple days ago to help solve this mystery has begun an
investigation of the vendors for me.
The folks at CreateSpace are courteous and helpful. Thanks to them—and
to Sherry, who designed and typeset the book and knows how CreateSpace
works—I have a real book. I also have my very own Member Dashboard, and
the nice people there have helped me order review copies and carry out
other important authorial tasks. Things that are “intuitive” to some computer
users just leave me shaking my head. So I ask for help. And receive it.
I can still hear my father saying, “If it’s worth having, it’s worth asking
for.” I’ve remembered that good advice all my life. And I also know the
value of “please” and “thank you.” There are a couple folks at CreateSpace
that I’d adopt if I could.
As I keep telling the authors whose books I edit, the author is ultimately
responsible for the accuracy of her book. That’s why publishers send us
galleys. We need to read them Very, Very Carefully.. My son, who holds
an M.A. in English, proofread the manuscript before I sent it to Sherry
and found errors I’d overlooked. Two or three trusted friends also read
it and found errors. The funniest one was “Ralph Loren.” We fixed that
right away. Then I read the pdf of the text. And found more errors and
typos. Typos are, of course, examples of spontaneous generation. They grow
by themselves and like termites infest and chew up a manuscript.
But you know what? When an author is reading her book, she tends to read
what she knows is on the page. Which is not necessarily what is really
there. And there’s a big difference between reading (a) a Word document
on a computer screen, (b) a pdf of the text on the computer screen, (c)
a printed copy of the pdf, and (d) the actual page in the actual bound
book. It looks different every time. That’s why I found thirty-eight errors
in the first proof copy.
Thirty-eight errors! How could that happen? Well, for one thing,
I’d been reading what was in my head, not what was actually on the page.
Sherry fixed ’em all. I hope there are no more errors in the book …………
but those dratted termity typos might be crawling around in there again.
I also (with help) set up a Facebook page for
Secret Lives to which I post comments and little snippets of
the text and the reader’s guide. That 500-character limit is making me
crazy, but people are Liking the book and responding and writing comments.
If you’re reading this, please go to the Facebook page and Like the book
and speak up. Write me a note.
Now I’m doing a bunch of other things to publicize the book. I went to
Pagan Pride L.A. on September 18 to give a workshop on writing pagan fiction
and sell books and I came home with nearly $300. I’ve put the book on
Witchvox. I’m working with a blog tour organizer. I’m going to try
to get interviewed in October (for Halloween) by the local Long Beach papers.
I’ll be reviewed and interviewed in magazines and on websites. You know
what I’d love? For
Secret Lives to become a cult favorite. What can you do to help my
wish come true? Please do whatever you can.
Finally, I have more or less completed the
FREE READER’S GUIDE, which is on my website. The reader’s guide is
like the commentary track on a DVD—I explain the literary allusions, add
references, make comments. It’s the book’s annotation. I had almost as
much fun writing the reader’s guide as I did writing the stories that make
up
Secret Lives. Go there now and read some of the secrets of
Secret Lives.
Posted by Barbara on Friday, September 23, 2011 | Read Comments
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