A Blog from the Sanatorium (Or may as well have been)

Some years back now, I was asked to be a guest blogger by a lady who was both my immediate boss at Lulu.com, and the joint MD of an editing company which (mainly) provided editing services for budding authors who may like to go down the (then new-ish) self-publishing POD route. I was to supply a one-off blog entry which had something (no matter how tenuous the link) to do with self-publishing. Whenever I am asked to do these things, I always think 'Why do the usual? Why do the expected? Why not go off at a tangent?' And so I did: the end result as you'll see, would have the men in white coats reaching for their needles and their big jangly rusty key rings replete with big rusty keys, and perhaps rolled out the ECT machine, if they had have read it themselves of course; lucky for me, I think they were busy elsewhere that day. Now, apologies for using names which the world at large won't recognise, but they were well-known within our then community at that time (2005-2009), and to remove them / edit them out now would I think spoil the flow. If any of those mentioned within read this now, hope you don't mind. Let me know if there's a prob. So, read on, and scratch your head. Feel free to contact the men in white (they can do with a laugh too, you know).

DO YOU WANT TO BE PUBLISHED? DO YOU WANT TO BE SELF PUBLISHED? DO YOU WANT TO MAKE A MILLION OVERNIGHT? THEN ONE MAN HELP YOU! ONE MAN CAN PAVE THE WAY, YOUR WAY, TO A LIFE OF LUXURY! ONE MAN CAN DO ALL THIS, JUST FOR YOU! AND MORE!

Erm, well now, until that man bothers to get his backside out of his kip, will you settle for a few tips and pointers from me on self publishing instead? You will? God help you.

At this point I should really stop and say a big thank you to Mark and Angela for kindly inviting me to be a guest blogger on their marvellous Angel Editing website. 

Where was I? Oh yes, my intro letter to the leader of the local AA group.

“ . . . I first started drinking when I was seven. By the age of nine I was on a good two bottles of Glenfiddich a day, nay, not just good, damn well superb. I kid ye not, oh no, sorry, it’s afore ye go, sorry again, just reading the label from a bottle of Bells, at least I think its Bells, hell of a lot of ringing in my ears, and … Eh? A blog? Blimey, you’re right, and now everyone knows we, er, I have a drink problem. Oh well, see you at the meet, Deanna, oops, sorry. Hic!”

Ok, let’s get a grip here. Hello to all, thank you for visiting today and for, hopefully intentionally clicking on the link to the Guest Blog . . . What? You wanted Amazon? How the hell can you confuse Angel Editing with Amazon? . . . ‘There’s some good stuff but also a pile of crap that no-one actually wants?’ My God, Stef, don’t let your Mum hear you talk like that, no more strange Japanese DVDs for you, m’laddo.

Some grip eh? Mind you, that Glenfiddich . . .

Serious now, relatively speaking. My brother is a very serious person, and . . . eh? Oh yeah, the ******* blog.

My name is Haines, John Haines. ( Da da – daa, da da - daa, doo doo doo doo! . . . Ow! I’ve shot meself! Me gun backfired! Q?! You useless lump of . . ..

I am fifty years old, and I live in Crosby, a suburb of the great city of Liverpool, and I am married with two grown up children. By day I am a mild mannered civil servant, by night I rush into the nearest phone box (which is odd, as we have a perfectly serviceable phone, and various rooms to choose from in which I can change). I then become Josh Rogan – S.P  The S.P stand for self publisher, but Josh Rogan S.P has that little bit more bazzazz, at least I think it does, I am not entirely sure what bazzazz means, or if I’ve spelt it correctly.

Where was I, oh yes, in the phone box. Well, it’s a bit tight but I eventually make it and off I go, usually with an especially made theme tune as I career through the air.

“HA HA HA!! HEE HEE HEE ELEPHANT EGGS IN A RHUBARB TREE!!
IS HE STRONG? LISTEN BUD, HE’S GOT RADIOACTIVE BLOOD!!
IN THE CHILL OF ….”

“Hold it, hold it, hold it! That’s nowt to do with you, Rogan, or Haines or whoever the hell you are. That’s the famed Stan Lee / Lewis Caroll Fusion cartoon!”

“Fusion cartoo . . .”

“—Yes, Fusion cartoon. Spidey goes after the Jimmy Wocky, Jabber is in court suing George Lucas so we couldn’t nab him. Spidey was going to put a cease and desist order on his tail, to stop him and his his brother Jabber, from Giring and Gimbling. Wabe Town has had enough terror.”

“Did it work?”

“Well, Spidey slipped right down in the middle of a swing across two high rises and smashed into the glass doors of the Daily Planet and then right into Superman, who was not best pleased. He then went off on three days uncertificated sick leave, silk poisoning or something, as well as being dead, but we all reckoned he had really sloped off with Catwoman to Bermuda; anyway, so instead we decided to fight fire with fire.”

“And . . . .?”

“We burnt the forest down . . . “

“I’m off, got a blog to do here, you know.”

“Well don’t you want to hear what Batman and Alfred were up to in the basement?

“Batman spoke softly and then a bit louder and said words like ‘dastardly fiend’ and clenched his fists?”

“Ah, you’ve heard it before, ok then, bye.”

Ok, let’s get a grip on top of the previous grip which has failed miserably.

So – you are self published? Or you want to be self published? Or you really wanted Amazon?

Assuming you have not made a rush for the exits . . . .

In the short time I have here, I am not going to go through what is good, bad and indifferent re genres / plots, or even make suggestions on what to write about. That is the part that is totally down to you, and is something you should either be at the finish line with, or well along the road of. I am simply going to go through a few pitfalls which can and frequently do occur when the wannabe writer suddenly realises the wannabe part of the equation has now gone straight out of the window, due to the revolution in the publishing industry . . .

“Zo, zeenor President Puffin, and you, zeenor Prime Minister Penguin, your time eez up. Ze people have spoken! You eez no more! Long leev zee Revolution in ze publishing industry! Vive La Bob! Oh, heaa heaa heaa, I zpoke a zee Frenchy, hee hee hee, ven zee jokenz eez supposenz to be veez a Latin ventenz. Oh, mie eez reallenz dumbkofz!

Meanwhile . . .

. . .  which has seen the rise and, ahem, rise of such ‘out there on the edge’ web companies which let you upload, sell and pay the company only when you sell, and with the payments taken directly from the book buyer’s payment, These are companies such as Lulu.com and more recently Createspace, but there’s loads more, and loads more coming, despite the recession, maybe even due to it due to the silver lining of ‘buying low’. This then means that without the need to bow and scrape to the big publishing houses to get one’s work ‘out there’ as Henry Hutton used to say every 12 minutes, one is free to make available from anywhere in the world at any time, to the entire globe, anything you wish to publish. At times I will use the one word – ‘publish’ rather than ‘self publish’, not out of laziness, but because self publishing, is still publishing. It is only convention and the persistence of ivory towered idiomatocratics who insist and persist with the distinction, which then, rather frustratingly, makes us do the same, but, there really is no need, from one side of the equation at least. 

So, you have your work, and you want it ‘out there’. Great. Or is it?

I would hazard this guess: unless you persisted with your English, both Lit and Lang to use the abbrevs’, right through short trousers, long trousers and finally reefers, cheap beer and wearing rugby shirts when you actually thought the Harlequins were a West End road circus for the Yanks, then, unless you are ‘up with it still’ due to other reasons, eg, avid reader, avid writer from early on etc, then what you think of as being ok, is most probably – not. 

Now, pardon me if you are indeed an accomplished writer, but almost by definition this little offering in this blog is not then for you, but purely for those of us who need the leg up. Yes, me included; if you like, just think I am in an English class as a pupil and passing on the best bits to you through the window, no illusions here you see.

Here are a precious few things to dwell on, but there are many more. There are many tense considerations to consider, the word had figures greatly, and on most occasions should only be used when the story swaps to a time frame before the predominant time frame of the main storyline. You will need to use far more ellipses than you would ever have thought necessary. If there is some sort of ‘offering for consideration’ to those being addressed by the speaker, then add an ellipse at the end. A pause in mid flow? Ellipse. And so on. The good old semi-colon; although there is a huge movement to get rid of these and just use commas, I don’t think it will go just yet, so do get used to breaking up longer sentences with these. Ems and Ens – also earmarked for the bin, but again, I hazard not just yet, so, do use them, All these are part of the demanded and accepted standards in book publishing (it is here that we have to let the mainstream back in, albeit through the back door, we may moan, but there is nowt wrong with the standards they set). How do I know this? I was (and still am) that soldier, to paraphrase Wink Martindale and Max Bygraves even.

My first efforts, and this is grammar, punctuation and formatting wise, not the quality of the story as such, (some people like my stuff, others think its so-so, others hate it, such is life) were bloody awful. My own reasons for this / its cause, was, oddly enough, the Internet. The ‘Net has a huge community of enthusiastic, amateur writers; they do not have the slightest interest in going up the ladder so to speak; their work is for their online friends, their real friends and fams’ perhaps, and themselves. Because of this, errors are rife, and are not even mentioned even if noticed, as all the readers want in the main, and the writers as well of course, is a spirit of a good story. Does it start? Does it have some sort of gettable middle? Does it end? Yes, they do, but peppered with all sorts of spelling, tense and other grammatical errors, but, no one cares. But, that is the likes of Fanfiction and loads of other writing communities; actually there’s nowt wrong with this, nothing, not unless of course you want more discerning readers (sorry, ‘Net bods), or even the man at Puffin to take you seriously – that is of course, if you can find him . . . .

“Have you seen the Puffin man, the Puffin man, the . . . eh? Oh shove off. I’m sick of your damn corrections! Yeah? . . . Oh Yeah? Right, that’s it, hold me pen, Bill. Go on then! Go on!! . . . .”

THERE WILL BE A SHORT INTERMISSION

I am now typing with a huge steak over my right eye. The trouble is, it’s frozen, and is what I was hit with by the heckler. It was the man from Puffin, actually. I followed him one night, I was sure he lived down Drury Lane, nope, Leeds.

Where were we?

“ . . . Leeds.”

I am back from there now, gormless. 

So, I still am that soldier, but, I knew there was a problem, I know there are residual problems, but, I am trying my utmost to improve this. I have no problem with the stories themselves, but I had a massive problem and still have on occasions, with the flow of things grammar and punctuation wise. At one point I went and did what should have been so obvious much earlier on. I retired. But then I came out of retirement, and, picked up any old best seller from the shelf, and looked to see how they, ie, JK, Dickens, Pullman, Reeve etc, did it. I really have learned a lot from doing this, but there is still loads to learn and my guess is, the learning curve will be life long. And just to add to this, there’s no shame in having to check and recheck dictionaries, peruse grammar books (do not use ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves’ for this purpose, funny, interesting, but, not as specific as it seems), ask someone who knows more than you, and if needs must, pay someone who knows more than you, and no better than Angel Editing if that’s not a shameless plug. I had a shameless plug once, I tried to fill the bath, and the plug jumped up out of the bath onto the ledge, went, ‘naa naa na na naah’, then turned round and mooned at me. I had a shower instead and went, ‘naa naa na na naah’ right back at the plug.

Ok, that’s the writey bit, what about the formatty bit? This is so, so difficult, and one does not realise this, until one is committed to finishing the pesky thing. The advice you get from the major sites, even my spiritual home, Lulu.com, is so Joe Average it’s damn near useless. Why? Because every book is different: book sizes, file sizes, fonts, page counts, margins, headers and footers, the line settings for space above and below lines, image inserts etc etc. There needs to be a high level of customization for each book to be published, so much so, I would even suggest saving up a small amount of cash to literally waste, in a way but not really in the long term, it all on checking the final product, and then tweaking it all, then getting another copy, until it is as you want it. Many do do this of course, and good for them, but guess what? Thousands upon thousands do not do this, and the reasons for this range from the author / self publisher being too arrogant for his or her own good, down to the more understandable budget concerns, but it’s a tough world, one must do what one must do (note the PC element there, not bad eh?).  Further on this, sometimes we must mimic our mainstream friends. In an offset printers, the end result is perfect, not because they close their eyes, press the on switch and hope for the best, but because they set and reset the machines, printing single copy after single copy until it is all set up as the book needs to be. Now, Lulu / its partners etc, cannot do this / offer this, but, in the way just suggested, you can – to a degree anyway. Your single proof purchase, maybe followed by several more single proof purchases, is something akin to the old printer named Eric, in a brown dust coat with black NHS glasses, cracked, with a gimpy leg and who goes for his daily bowel motion in between the start up cup of tea and morning break, wasting anything up to, I don’t know, twenty copies, just so it is all as it should be. In other words, and it’s quite true as we all know anyway – practice makes perfect.

And . . .

My short tenure as guest blogger is over.

“Phew!”

“Watch it! Or I’ll come back!”

The plug is playing up again. Aha, I know what will sort him, I’ll moon at him!

 

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