My Apologies

I want to let my Crusader pals know I haven’t forgotten about them. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just been a rough couple of weeks. Too much work, too much drama, and then Wonder Babe was here. Right now, as we get ready for our first book launch, the Puddletowners are still working day jobs and publishing nights and weekends. I don’t take a break until about now, 2 am.

So I’ve read a few blogs, made a couple of comments, and now I’m going to do a quick post and follow it with bed.

To make it worse, we had snow. I love snow. But I have fibromyalgia and fibro hates cold. Add in stress and overwork, and most of my “free” time goes to naps.

Fibromyalgia, contrary to old theories that said it was musculo-skeletal, is actually a malfunction of the central nervous system. In layperson’s terms, the only way I can explain it, it’s like having your nerves gossiping with one another, sort of a brain game of telephone. The message gets sent, gets changed, and ends up in the wrong place. So over-stimulation, for example, travels to, say, your hip, and suddenly you have severe pain. The next day, or even the next hour, it’s in your shoulder, your back, your neck, your other hip. I had one day last week when it was my whole left side. Your sleep center also gets messed up and many people with FMS, myself included, have numerous sleep disorders. In my case, it means several psychotropic drugs and other things are required to help me fall asleep, stay asleep, breathe while I sleep, not kick other people out of bed, and to keep me from acting out my dreams. Seven, count them, seven sleep disorders afflict me. So many I can’t even remember the names of a couple of them.

Barometric pressure affects the CNS, although I don’t understand how. So people with FMS feel horrible, and flare, anytime the barometer swings. Good or bad, weather changes make us hurt. I live for summer, when I have a couple of good months (I live in Oregon. Summer is not a full season.) I’ve threatened to move south for the winter.

Because FMS folks are always in pain, we take heavy doses of nasty painkillers. I really should be taking narcotics, but so far I’ve been resisting since I seem to be quite susceptible to them. They turn me into a moron. However, a friend and fellow FMS person is trying to convince me that the time has come. She assures me that I will get used to them and the cognitive fog will lift. Since FMS has its own cognitive problems, called fibro fog, taking drugs that cause further cognitive issues frightens me.

Anyway, this may be TMI, but I’m trying to educate the world on how FMS really affects its sufferers. As I often tell people, FMS won’t kill you, but some days you wish it would.

 

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How I Spent My Sunday – Wonder Babe Edition

The Amazing Wonder Babe Waves at You

This is the Amazing Wonder Babe saying hi. Okay, maybe she’s just waving at her mother. This little girl is very attached to her mommy and, after a combined total of over 30 years in child welfare, I have to say her grandmas are thrilled. My partner is a child attachment expert and she is absolutely enchanted with the way this baby and both her parents are bonded. So am I.

Wonder Babe Meets Good Dog Gwyneth

This was Wonder Babe’s first visit to Oregon. She lives in Seattle and she and her mom came down for a couple days with  the grandparents.  Poppy Face, her grandpa, lives just across the river.

The last time we saw Wonder Babe, we introduced her to our friend Kay’s dog and WB was not impressed. In fact, she was a bit afraid. But today she met Good Dog Gwyneth. (Well, they sort of met once before but it was raining and Gwynnie was outside).  And, yes, Gwyn is on the back of the couch. Gwyn is our funny-looking kid, part Jack Russell, part Springer Spaniel. She looks like someone took a giant Jack Russell head and put it on a Springer body. Yes, she does jump like a maniac at times. Then we pretend she’s a yo-yo. The woman mediating this introduction is my partner of 20 years, Jenny.  Yes, we are old. We’re grandmothers. One of the grandkids, the GrandGirl, is almost a teenager. What did you expect? Spring chickens?

Wonder Babe Reads Her First E-book

Wonder Babe was more interested in my NOOKcolor than the actual book, and more interested in Jenny and the dog than she was in the e-reader. But she quickly figured out how to enlarge the pictures and chew on the NOOK. Clearly, her mother is enjoying the story of colors more than she is.

Puddletown is going to be publishing several children’s picture books in the months to come and I can’t wait to announce them. But not quite yet. WB was our trial run. We have decided she is too young and maybe a two-year-old would be a better target audience. Really, WB just wants a dog.

WB is cutting her first tooth so everything went in her mouth. Including my finger, numerous times, to feel the little tooth starting to poke through. I’d forgotten about their jagged little edges. And to think, our oldest daughter, The Entrepreneur, and her husband, Army Pilot, are giving us another little girl on April 8th. GrandGirl, age 12, and GrandBoy, age 10, are excited, too. What a year!

She’s five-and-a-half months old. We love her. Don’t you?

Saving My Sanity

Okay, Crusaders, I had to do it. I apologize profusely. But when I looked at Google reader and saw several hundred posts from all you fabulous writers, I just had to do it.  Yep, I marked all as read.

Later today, I’ll start going through the posts that show up as new. But there was no way I could deal with several hundred posts. We are a prolific bunch.

In other news:

• My upcoming book “Blind Leading the Blind,” a lesbian mystery, went to formatting yesterday. It will be released on March 20th by Puddletown Publishing Group. Yes, I know, I am a co-founder of the press. But my book had to go through the same process as all the others, and this one made the cut. Another one of my books did not. Well, it sort of didn’t. I have to do some serious rewriting on it then try again. That’s what happens when you have a blind acquisitions process. Even the owner can be rejected.
• Building a social networking platform is fun. Too much fun in some cases. If any of you have ideas on how to reign in Twitter, let me know. I’m enjoying all the blogs and Tweets, and Facebook has been a big time suck for me for a couple of years now, but it’s overwhelming. My mother was a total Luddite and right now I’m sort of envying that.
• Today, I have two things on my plate: Paying the bills and having some fun
• Paying the bills means I have to do some writing for various clients. Yep. Non-fiction. Articles. Money. That sort of thing. With the new publishing company, we’re not yet drawing salaries, and I’ve had to put my indexing business on hiatus so I have time to do publishing. Things are tight. Thank God, I’ve got a big check coming soon and my partner’s tax refunds should be here any day.
• Having fun: My favorite kind of fun! My middle daughter and the amazing 5-month-old Wonder Babe will be here this afternoon. There is nothing like a happy, well-attached, silly-face baby to make it all worthwhile. And, really, I find that the older I get and the more grandchildren I get (four in April), the more I find that I’m really doing everything for them. Whether it be writing a book, preaching a sermon, making the decision to live lightly on the earth, or starting a publishing company, it’s all becoming about what legacy I leave for my grandchildren. (To see some of my sermons, go here and here)
• I’m skipping church. I love church. I love my church. But I also have fibromyalgia, a genuine pain-in-the-butt-and-everywhere-else condition. I have to set limits on what I do or I end up not being able to do anything. So years ago I instituted the one-thing rule. Basically, I allow myself one energetic activity per day (not counting work). And today it’s Wonder Babe.
• This is especially important today as I did spend all of Friday night (until 9 am Saturday morning) doing final edits on my book. When I get to the end of a project, I can no longer work on it in small chunks. The last three passes have all been marathons, going through the entire book from start to finish. Unfortunately, Friday night was date night (that’s not the bad part) so I didn’t start editing until around 10 pm. (That’s the bad part.) Oh, well. It’s out the door and now I’m taking a few days to recharge before I start clean-up on the second book in the series.
• Okay, in my final sanity saving move, it’s back to bed for this woman. Gotta get some energy before the Wonder Babe gets here.

Some Facts About Book Distribution

Here’s a great link with some info by an industry insider. More reasons to think ebook:

http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2011/02/indie-publishing-the-problem-with-book-distribution/

FYI: Another Bad Sign for Traditional Publishing

Check this link out. Now, apparently, at least one major publisher, Macmillan, is trying to get authors to sign over their copyright. Not just for the current work, but for any derivative works. If I understand correctly, derivative includes sequels, recordings, whatever. In perpetuity.

http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2011/02/by-far-biggest-issue.html

So, what does Puddletown do? First, you have to buy your own copyright, for $37 (paid to the government, not us), and we make sure YOU own your work. We don’t want it. Sure, if you write a sequel and want to publish it with us, we’ll talk. But all we want is your e-rights. For two years. As I said before, you can re-up with us, or we can part friends if you want to try something else when the two years are up.

This bit about Macmillan’s contract tells me that they are at the front of the pack, running scared. And just another word about Macmillan: I’ve been working for Macmillan as a freelancer in another capacity for many years. I like the people I work with. But Macmillan has outsourced most of its production to India and dropped the rates they pay freelancers into the realm of the ridiculous. This I don’t like.

Remember, in the last post, I told you that with our model, your royalties go UP over time? Just saying.

E-books? So What’s In Them for the Author?

Well, lots. Now, remember from last post, I’m not talking about self-publishing. I’m not dissing it, I just think that the writing community has to build credibility for e-books by making sure that only quality e-books get published. If you can do that yourself, great. If not, maybe you should look for some help. But first, why would you want to e-publish your book?

Let me give you numerous reasons why you may want to rethink traditional publishing:

1. Traditional publishing has controlled the gate for too long. Very few new authors get published, and if they do, very few earn out their advances.
2. Even if you get an advance, chances are it will be miniscule. And it can be years before you see the first royalty check. If your book doesn’t get remaindered first.
3. It takes a long time to find an agent, more time to make the rounds. If you’re lucky enough to get a contract, you’ve got a long wait until your book gets published.
4. Then you may get 5 or 6 percent as your royalty.
5. Unless you are the next J.K. Rowling, you’ll still have to do most if not all of your own marketing.
6. Publishers used to be in the business of selling books to readers. Now they are in the business of selling books to bookstores. And even the mighty Powell’s, with numerous floors covering a full city block, admits that they’re making their money on tchotchkes rather than books. With fewer bookstores, and more space going to cards, journals, games, toys, and other non-book items in the ones that remain, your chances of getting on the shelves, or staying there for any length of time, are getting slimmer and slimmer.

Now, a new model of e-publishing: (Disclaimer: I am co-founder of a company that works on this model. However, we’re not taking submissions right now so I’m not soliciting books. You can follow us on Facebook at Puddletown Publishing Group if you want to know when we open the doors to submissions again. But we’re pretty busy right now so it may be awhile.)

1. E-books are the wave of the future. Even kids are getting in on the ride, and parents and teachers support this. Kids love gadgets. If it takes a gadget to get them to read, why not?
2. Indie e-books are inexpensive. Since our overhead is low, we pass that on to the reader. While the Big Six have set roughly $9.99 as their low price, so as not to compete too much with the much more expensive trade paper version, indie e-book publishers can set their prices much lower and still make money. When we launch in March, our books in our initial catalog will all cost around $4.99 or less. That’s one grande latte. People are more likely to buy a book for $5 than one at $10. And more likely to take a chance on a new author.
3. Indie publishing royalties are higher. If you grant e-book rights to the Big Six, you’ll get 17.5 percent and your agent gets a cut. If you grant them to us, or folks like us, you’ll get a lot more. And here at Puddletown, our royalties go up with sales.
4. You’ll never get remaindered. If your book doesn’t sell a kazillion copies the first month, nobody’s going to ship it back to be recycled. It will stay for sale as long as you want.
5. E-books have an indefinite shelf life. Once it’s out there, it stays out there.
6. Authors start making money sooner.  It takes us about two months to get a book to market. Compare that to the year or more it takes traditional dead-tree publishing.
7. If you don’t want to give up the dream, you don’t have to. Puddletown, at least, buys e-rights and POD rights only. One of our authors is going to have her book in our March launch AND is also negotiating with a traditional publisher for the trade book rights. We’ll even give up POD rights if an author wants. But, while she’s waiting for that trade book to come out, she’ll be making money with us.
8. We don’t lock you into an exclusive contract. Our contract is for one book, for two years. If you want to try your luck elsewhere, we’ll part friends.
9. We know the importance of social networking to book sales, and we’ll not only help you set up your own campaign, we’ll do one for you off our platform. We have no front-, mid-, or back-list. Every book gets the same treatment. We realize that if you aren’t making sales, we’re not making money.
10. E-book publishing is author-centric. We are in the business of making sure we all make money. Since our overhead is small and our time-frame is fast, we don’t have to wonder what’s going to be hot two years from now. Vampires hot right now? We can have that book out in a couple of months.  Alien swamp monsters the next big thing? We have an app for that.
11. One of our authors has written a great YA book about stock car racing. The Big Six tell her it’s a great book, but they don’t see an audience. Excuse me? Ever heard of NASCAR? We’re able to target market to speedways, NASCAR fans, and others. And she’ll sell a lot of books. But the Big Six can only see the BIG books, the ones with generic appeal. So if you’re quirky, or a bit odd, your book will probably never get sold traditionally.
12. I write lesbian mysteries with a blind protagonist. My books will be marketed to the LGBT community and the blind community. The cool thing? For only a very small investment, we’ll be able to produce books that can easily be converted for use on Braille readers and computers. And we’ll also produce a recording. How many new authors get an audiobook right out of the box?
13. I could go on and on. But the real hurdle we have to jump is the idea that an e-book is somehow not a real book and that being e-published is just not the same. Let me disabuse you of this right now.
14. Yes, there are vanity presses posing as e-publishers. They want your money up front. Avoid these like the gimmick they are. Puddletown, and others like us, use the same system traditional publishers use. Even my book was sent anonymously to a reader who has never met me and never heard of me. She had to approve before I went any further. (She doesn’t like one of my books…I’m going to have to do some serious rewriting if I want that one published.)
15. Once we accept a book, we do substantive edits, copy edits, send it back for rewrites, and edit some more. Our reputation is on the line as well as our authors’. We won’t publish dreck.  And, did you notice, we still didn’t ask for any money?
16. We also pay for your cover  and all the other aspects of design, including POD formatting if you want some print copies for your mother and the other Luddites in your life. The only cost you have to pay is for your copyright. $37. Because you want to own your own book, don’t you? And you don’t pay that to us. It goes to the government. BTW, did you notice this? Some publishers are trying to buy all your rights, including  your copyright, for exclusive rights to your sequels. That means they own your book.
17. All we ask of our authors is that they participate in their own self-marketing, which we help them set up. They don’t have to, but that’s their loss. We don’t know their social networks and connections. If they choose not to use them, then they don’t make as many sales.
18. Oh, and once we earn back our expenses, the royalties we pay start going up.

So do you want to spend years querying the Big Six, searching for an agent who may or may not do much to sell your book (and then takes 15 percent if it does sell), all for a measly 5 percent for a paperback or 17.5 percent for an e-book? Or do you want to publish within a short period of time and earn a whole lot more?

Your choice. And the choice of the future.

PS  We love bookstores and will be partnering with them to make sure they don’t fail. We are under no illusion that everyone will want to read books electronically. Which is why all our books have the POD option.

Why You Should Consider E-books

The dream of every writer has been to get published, and when we think publishing, we think traditional publishing with hardcover and trade paper, finally ending up in pocketbook at Safeway. But are you sure this is what you want?

Last year, Barnes&Noble and Amazon both saw the sale of e-books and e-readers overtake and surpass the sale of paper books. The mighty Powell’s, the largest indie bookstore in the country and possibly the world, just laid off 10 percent of its workforce and froze salaries and canceled 401k contributions for their remaining staff. They blame  e-books. Borders has fallen, or at least is struggling to get up.

I am fortunate to live near Powell’s and it is my favorite place on earth. I’ve been going there since it opened. Which may give you some idea how old I am. I was one who was never going to switch to e-books. I love the feel, smell, sound, sight of a book more than anything else. About the only thing I don’t like is that weird thing they do when dropped in the bathtub. But as I approach 60, my body no longer likes books. In order for me to read, I have to take off my glasses, close one eye, squinch up the other, and hold the book about three inches from my face. I can only do this for about five minutes before it becomes tiring. I’ve tried all sorts of solutions, most involving my eye doctor, and finally had to admit that I couldn’t read anymore.

So I bought a NOOKcolor. I can now read anything available, and most of it is available. After several years of only reading on my computer (bumped up to 200 percent), I’ve read roughly four to five books a week since I got my NOOK. The NOOK is my first piece of adaptive technology and I suspect a hearing aid is not far behind.

But why should authors consider e-books? Well, there are several reasons, and I’ll put them in the next post. But first a disclaimer. I am not talking about self-publishing here. Not that I have anything against self-publishing, but most of the self-published books I’ve seen have serious flaws in writing, editing, structure, and just about everything else. Self-publishing, as it stands now, gives e-books a bad name. Yes, some people, like Amy Rose Davis, produce beautifully written, well-edited, engaging self-published e-books. But the vast majority are, IMHO, garbage. If people want to self-publish, go for it. But for Pete’s sake, hire an editor. A real one. Not your best friend. Do it for yourself and for your craft. Because, folks, I have to tell you: e-books are where it’s at.

More at 11.

Faking Myself Out

As you may or may not know, I am an editor. I’ve been at this for nigh on 30 years, so I pretty much edit automatically. (Like menus, grocery store signs, reader boards outside porn shops. If someone can write it, I *will* edit it, at least in my mind. If I find it funny, I’ll even take a picture with my mighty phone.)

Except when it comes to my own work. I can’t just read and edit my own work. I’m way too involved and have a love/hate relationship with it. So I’ve had to figure out some ways to approach it that make me detach from it.

I used to edit from the beginning. The first two chapters of my upcoming book have been edited to the point I don’t even know what they say anymore. (Sort of like saying your own name over and over until it starts sounding funny.) The end result? I couldn’t remember how the book ended because I never got there.

Then I tried editing a few chapters at a time. While this seems obvious, again I found myself forgetting about the rest of the book in my quest to polish chapters 11 and 12.

Finally, I sat down and read the whole book in one sitting. Three times. Found lots of plot holes, some copyediting problems, and a few unclassifiable oddities. But I got too involved in the story and missed a lot of stuff. (I know, I wrote it. I should know how it turns out. But I must have some sort of filter that makes me forget. I have this same problem with my editorial work. I can read the same book several times, during several phases of production, and still find new things.) (I prefer to think of it as a filter rather than the natural progression of aging.)

So now I’m editing my book backwards. I’ve used this trick before on short stuff, and on other people’s short work, but I’ve never read a whole book from back to front. It’s an odd experience. But, so far, it seems to be working. Maybe it wouldn’t work if I didn’t know the whole story. And I don’t read it backwards word-by-word. I’m going scene-by-scene. This forces me to look at each scene as a discrete piece of writing. It’s interesting. Sometimes I find myself wondering what comes before!

Anyway, if reading your own book is wearing you down, turn it on its head. You might find it helpful.