If you want to self publish your ebook in as many electronic formats as possible, then Smashwords is probably the best bet.
In a nutshell they take your .doc document and turn it into up to seven formats for you. They call it the meatgrinder conversion process. And that's pretty much all they do. You can get an author's page and book pages, and you can embed your youtube book trailer, but when it comes to self publishing Smashwords is the least option rich offering.
Which is great if you already have your whole package together. If you don't need editing, a cover, book reviews, a physical book, etc... Smashwords is perfect. And since you can do Smashwords as well as other self publishers, there's no reason not to put your book on Smashwords.
So, how to get on Smashwords? First off start downloading. Get yourself a copy of Smashwords Style Guide. It's free and goes through every single step you need to do to get your book ready for Smashwords. Following this guide is important because Smashwords is going to take your document and make it readable by virtually everyone. So, if you want something that looks just as good on a computer screen, as a Kindle, as a Nook, as an iPod, you need to follow the guide.
I thought the Smashwords website was a tad clunky when it came to finding the information I was looking for. (Example: how do I get an ISBN? Hmmm... it's not in the publishing section. Typing ISBN in the search function brings up every book that has one, so that's not helpful. Finally I checked Dashboard, and it was there under ISBN manager.) But it is very easy for getting your book in online. Fill out the forms, download the document, download your cover, (You only need a front cover image on Smashwords because they don't sell physical books.) pick your category, write up your description and tags, and hit publish. Then wait while Smashwords does it's magic formatting, and eventually you've got an ebook.
Now to the part you really want to know about, royalties. Smashwords does a very easy royalty calculation, take the price of your book, subtract the paypal processing fee, multiply that number by .85, and you've got your royalty. Or, more plainly, your royalty is 85% of whatever is left after the processing fee has been removed. You can chose to be paid by Paypal or paper checks mailed to you. Payments are one month after any quarter where you've got more than $10.00 accrued, if you go with Paypal, or $25.00, if you go with paper checks. Quarters end in March, June, September, and December, so payments happen in April, July, October, and January.
Royalties get a bit more complicated if you go with the Smashword Premium Catalog. The Premium Catalog lists you with Barnes and Noble, Apple, Sony, and Kobo. Each of these retailers has their own royalty set up: for example, Apple does a 60% royalty. You control where your book sells, so you can opt in or out of any distributor you like. Unlike CreateSpace, you don't pay for the Premium Catalog for Smashwords, but you do have to have a properly formatted book with an ISBN, (A new ISBN, the one you used for your print book won't work, but they can hook you up with a new one.) a proper copyright statement, and a good cover image. But, I would hope if you are going to publish, you'd have all of those things already.
Unless you don't have a way to turn your manuscript into a .doc document, there's no reason to skip Smashwords. It's free. The royalty rates are the best I've run into yet. Formatting your book properly may take a while, but having it available for pretty much anyone, everywhere is worth your time.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Interview with John Hartness
John Hartness was willing to answer some of my questions about his adventures in self publishing.
KR: Why did you chose to self publish? Did you try to get The Chosen traditionally published? Why did you pick CreateSpace, and did you self publish anywhere else?
JH: I chose to self-publish because I'm largely an impatient person. I don't have the patience to query agents for months and months, then if I'm lucky enough to get picked up by an agent, to have them query publishers for months and months, then if someone wanted to publish the book, to wait a year or more to hold a copy in my hands. Self-publishing is much better for someone with a miniscule attention span :).
I queried a few agents, got some polite and some very encouraging rejection letters, and then moved along.
I published a couple of collections of poetry last year using Lulu, and moved to CreateSpace because of the ease of getting listed on Amazon (since Amazon owns CS) and the lower price on author's copies. I figure at least for a while, most of the books I sell will be face to face at book fairs, so if I can get my price per copy down, my profitability goes up. I did use Lulu for the hardcover and to get the book on the iBookstore.
KR: How many copies have you sold? What marketing has worked best for you?
JH: I've sold about 50 copies, ebook and hard copies. So far my biggest marketing successes have been through Facebook pages and book fairs. But the book just came out in August, so I feel like I'm just getting started.
KR: Who did your cover? Did you come up with the idea or did he/she?
JH: I have a great friend, Lindsay Birmingham, who did the cover to The Chosen and my new novel, Hard Day's Knight. She's a photographer and Photoshop whiz, and I gave her a rough idea and she came back to me with the cover. We tweaked font colors, and then we were good to go to print. She's been great to work with and I highly recommend her.
KR: Why did you call it The Chosen? (as opposed to The Choice, say.) There's already a very famous book with the same title, and it's not precisely similar to yours.
JH: I'm not terribly bright, and didn't Google the name before I titled the book. I was not familiar with Potok's novel, and I thought The Choice (which was the original name) sounded too much like a romance novel. I thought The Chosen felt a little like Dean Koontz's book The Taken, so I went with it.
If you'd like to know more about John and his works, go check him out at www.johnhartness.com.
KR: Why did you chose to self publish? Did you try to get The Chosen traditionally published? Why did you pick CreateSpace, and did you self publish anywhere else?
JH: I chose to self-publish because I'm largely an impatient person. I don't have the patience to query agents for months and months, then if I'm lucky enough to get picked up by an agent, to have them query publishers for months and months, then if someone wanted to publish the book, to wait a year or more to hold a copy in my hands. Self-publishing is much better for someone with a miniscule attention span :).
I queried a few agents, got some polite and some very encouraging rejection letters, and then moved along.
I published a couple of collections of poetry last year using Lulu, and moved to CreateSpace because of the ease of getting listed on Amazon (since Amazon owns CS) and the lower price on author's copies. I figure at least for a while, most of the books I sell will be face to face at book fairs, so if I can get my price per copy down, my profitability goes up. I did use Lulu for the hardcover and to get the book on the iBookstore.
KR: How many copies have you sold? What marketing has worked best for you?
JH: I've sold about 50 copies, ebook and hard copies. So far my biggest marketing successes have been through Facebook pages and book fairs. But the book just came out in August, so I feel like I'm just getting started.
KR: Who did your cover? Did you come up with the idea or did he/she?
JH: I have a great friend, Lindsay Birmingham, who did the cover to The Chosen and my new novel, Hard Day's Knight. She's a photographer and Photoshop whiz, and I gave her a rough idea and she came back to me with the cover. We tweaked font colors, and then we were good to go to print. She's been great to work with and I highly recommend her.
KR: Why did you call it The Chosen? (as opposed to The Choice, say.) There's already a very famous book with the same title, and it's not precisely similar to yours.
JH: I'm not terribly bright, and didn't Google the name before I titled the book. I was not familiar with Potok's novel, and I thought The Choice (which was the original name) sounded too much like a romance novel. I thought The Chosen felt a little like Dean Koontz's book The Taken, so I went with it.
If you'd like to know more about John and his works, go check him out at www.johnhartness.com.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Indie Book Review: The Chosen
There is a tiny subgenre of fiction that will make me squee with delight like a Twilight Fan discovering Robert Pattinson is coming to her high school and she will be showing him around. It probably doesn't have a specific name, but I'd call it Theology for the Well Versed and Irreverent. Up until now it was such a small subgenre that I had only found three examples, Good Omens, The Life of Brian, and Dogma.
Make that four now.
The Chosen by John Hartness is an example of all that is good and joyful in fiction. I love this book. It's fast paced, very well voiced, and genuinely funny.
In a nutshell, Adam, as in Adam and Eve, Father of Humanity, has to gather up his family, and head off with the Archangel Michael (described as a skinnier version of James Marsters) to find the human who will make another Eve level choice.
What's an Eve level choice? Well, there's where some of the irreverent theology comes in. Every so often one human is picked to make a choice that will effect them all. Eve made the first one, and others have followed, and now it's time for the final massive, humanity altering choice, and everyone who was there for the first choice has to show up for this one.
So, Adam, Eve (his very ex-wife), Cain (can't you already feel the how much fun this family reunion is going to be?), Myra (Adam's latest girlfriend), and Emily (their 23 year old daughter and stand in for Able, who, for obvious reasons, can't make it) need to find the man who will make the choice and get him to the place of choosing. Along the way Michael and Lucypher (This is my only quibble with this book, Lucypher? Really? There's no need to muck with the spelling on that one.) lend a hand (or fiery sword).
Along the way expect fist fights, lots of booze, guns, and the ever present voice of Adam, done with perfect pitch and tone. It's easy to believe this character has been around since literally the beginning of time and has seen it all.
The plot is fairly simple, find all of the main characters, get them all into the same place, and then make the choice. If it was a role playing game, it'd be called linear. It's the characterization and voice of these characters that make this book so much fun.
The theology is light-hearted and likely to annoy the true believers. Call it Eve was set up, rather than Eve was framed. If you liked the theological precepts of Good Omens, you will like this book. Actually, let me go further here, if you liked Good Omens for any reason, you will like this book.
The first link goes to the book form of The Chosen. The second link takes you to the Kindle edition. At $9.99 for the book and $3.99 for the Kindle edition, both versions are priced well for the content. It's two hundred pages long, so in addition to being fast paced, it's also a fast read. I easily finished it in two evenings, and wished it was longer.
So, here is is, my first five star review. Please, go buy this book and then review this book. Link to it on Facebook and tweet about it. There's only one way that self published books get attention, and that's when everyone who liked them lets everyone within the sound of their voice know about them. So, go give it a read and give John a hand getting the word out.
Make that four now.
The Chosen by John Hartness is an example of all that is good and joyful in fiction. I love this book. It's fast paced, very well voiced, and genuinely funny.
In a nutshell, Adam, as in Adam and Eve, Father of Humanity, has to gather up his family, and head off with the Archangel Michael (described as a skinnier version of James Marsters) to find the human who will make another Eve level choice.
What's an Eve level choice? Well, there's where some of the irreverent theology comes in. Every so often one human is picked to make a choice that will effect them all. Eve made the first one, and others have followed, and now it's time for the final massive, humanity altering choice, and everyone who was there for the first choice has to show up for this one.
So, Adam, Eve (his very ex-wife), Cain (can't you already feel the how much fun this family reunion is going to be?), Myra (Adam's latest girlfriend), and Emily (their 23 year old daughter and stand in for Able, who, for obvious reasons, can't make it) need to find the man who will make the choice and get him to the place of choosing. Along the way Michael and Lucypher (This is my only quibble with this book, Lucypher? Really? There's no need to muck with the spelling on that one.) lend a hand (or fiery sword).
Along the way expect fist fights, lots of booze, guns, and the ever present voice of Adam, done with perfect pitch and tone. It's easy to believe this character has been around since literally the beginning of time and has seen it all.
The plot is fairly simple, find all of the main characters, get them all into the same place, and then make the choice. If it was a role playing game, it'd be called linear. It's the characterization and voice of these characters that make this book so much fun.
The theology is light-hearted and likely to annoy the true believers. Call it Eve was set up, rather than Eve was framed. If you liked the theological precepts of Good Omens, you will like this book. Actually, let me go further here, if you liked Good Omens for any reason, you will like this book.
The first link goes to the book form of The Chosen. The second link takes you to the Kindle edition. At $9.99 for the book and $3.99 for the Kindle edition, both versions are priced well for the content. It's two hundred pages long, so in addition to being fast paced, it's also a fast read. I easily finished it in two evenings, and wished it was longer.
So, here is is, my first five star review. Please, go buy this book and then review this book. Link to it on Facebook and tweet about it. There's only one way that self published books get attention, and that's when everyone who liked them lets everyone within the sound of their voice know about them. So, go give it a read and give John a hand getting the word out.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Interview with Hank Quense
Hank Quense was kind enough to answer some of my questions regarding his adventures in self publishing.
KR: Why did you self publish? Did you attempt to have Tales published by a publishing house? What service did you pick for self publishing and why?
HQ: I did send it to a few publishers. One of them expressed interest and reviewed a few of the stories. The editor wanted extensive revisions which I did to the example stories and with an idea of she wanted, I revised the stories I hadn't sent to her. She reviewed the edited stories and wanted more edits which I did. The changes she suggested really improved the stories and I was happy to do them. By now six months had passed. I subbed the selected stories again as she requested and after another several months she wanted still more changes and told me not to resub for six months or so. This time the edits were trivial and didn't improve the stories. I declined to spend more time on the stories. It old her they was as good as they would ever get, so that was the end of that potential publisher. Meanwhile my efforts to get an agent were just as frustrating. I sent out a number of queries, but only one agent had the courtesy to reply.(negatively)
I picked Createspace and Smashwords because they don't charge authors (if you don't need help) and most of the sales revenue flows to the author.
KR: How many copies have you sold? What marketing has worked best for you? How did you set your price points?
HQ: So far, the book hasn't sold as well as I had hoped. Since it hasn't, I can't advise on what works best. I set the price points by finding similar sized books in the marketplace
KR: How did you get your cover? Who did your art?
HQ: I shopped around for a cover artist and was fortunate to find Gary Tenuta. I told him what I thought the cover should look like (i.e. The three characters on it) and he got it right on the first try. Gary is a great cover artist and I highly recommend him.
KR: Anything else you'd like to say about self publishing?
HQ: It ain't easy going it alone, but I doubt having an agent and a publisher is any easier.
If you want to know more about Hank and his writing, you can check him out here:
Website: http://hankquense.com
Buy links: http://hankquense.com/TFG-
Twitter:http://twitter.com/
Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Indie Book Review: Tales From Gundarland
Imagine for a minute an alternative universe where Terry Pratchett and Monty Python could produce a love child. Now imagine that child had inherited both parents' skill at seeing a situation and sizing it up for satiric treatment but neither parents' talent for executing that satire. If you can hold that idea in your mind, you'll have a pretty good idea of how Tales From Gundarland reads. I have a crusty, old memory of an English teacher telling me to use writing to show, not tell. You probably have a similar one. Where Monty Python and Pratchett would show, Quense would tell.
Tales From Gundarland is a selection of two novellas and six short stories, most of them satires, set in a rather generic fantasy world of elves, dwarves, humans, and something called yuks (a modified ogre). The stories range from retellings of Shakespeare's greatest hits staring dwarfs and elves, to a Zorro/Lone Ranger (or Zarro and the Lone Stranger as they are known in Gundarland) crossover.
Bits of the stories are genuinely laugh out loud funny. There are moments where you see great insight into human nature. But on the whole the stories are competent and plain rather than exceptional reading. The use of language is solid but not brilliant. The occasional clunky line is offset by the occasional very well done image. The characters are likable but generic. Several of them are rather easily confused with each other because most of the main characters are somewhat young, unsure of themselves and their place in the world, adventurers looking to find their fortune and place.
Quense did come up with some unique details for setting his elves, dwarfs, and humans apart. His guild system requires adventurers to learn useful trades as well as how to bash in heads, so we run into a Warrior/Cooks looking to advance onto the Hero/Chef level. Likewise, the leader of his anti-pirate group is a caftan wearing dwarf looking to go legit by getting into women's bespoke fashion. Things like that are really cool, but we don't get much out of it because these things are mostly just mentioned as part of the background. Green leaves on the trees, babbling brook, Warrior/Cook armed with his trusty frying pan and razor sharp spatula ready to go off and save the princess. Tell me more about the guilds, tell me more about how he trained, write a novel about it, because there's a seed of a great story there, but... But it's just background.
Quense is good with voice. His characters speak differently from each other, which is a nice touch. The yuks speak in a sort of dumbed down mafiaesque English. The other main characters use different tone and vocabulary in a way that matches with their stations well. Unfortunately, voice is often the only easy way to distinguish one main character from the next.
Though I was kicked out of the feminist club a long, long time ago, I did notice his female characters, save one, are one dimensional, shallow, and annoying. Annoying in the sense of people you don't want to spend any time with, not badly written. Basically the reason there are women in this book is to be objects of love or lust. And, while I normally couldn't care less about the gender of the various characters I'm reading about, the fact that almost every woman in the entire book was a twit was grating.
The top link leads to the $17.99 softcover version. The bottom to the $3.99 Kindle version. While there are books I'd be willing to pay 17.99 for, this isn't one of them. However, the $3.99 Kindle version is priced just right.
Tales From Gundarland is a selection of two novellas and six short stories, most of them satires, set in a rather generic fantasy world of elves, dwarves, humans, and something called yuks (a modified ogre). The stories range from retellings of Shakespeare's greatest hits staring dwarfs and elves, to a Zorro/Lone Ranger (or Zarro and the Lone Stranger as they are known in Gundarland) crossover.
Bits of the stories are genuinely laugh out loud funny. There are moments where you see great insight into human nature. But on the whole the stories are competent and plain rather than exceptional reading. The use of language is solid but not brilliant. The occasional clunky line is offset by the occasional very well done image. The characters are likable but generic. Several of them are rather easily confused with each other because most of the main characters are somewhat young, unsure of themselves and their place in the world, adventurers looking to find their fortune and place.
Quense did come up with some unique details for setting his elves, dwarfs, and humans apart. His guild system requires adventurers to learn useful trades as well as how to bash in heads, so we run into a Warrior/Cooks looking to advance onto the Hero/Chef level. Likewise, the leader of his anti-pirate group is a caftan wearing dwarf looking to go legit by getting into women's bespoke fashion. Things like that are really cool, but we don't get much out of it because these things are mostly just mentioned as part of the background. Green leaves on the trees, babbling brook, Warrior/Cook armed with his trusty frying pan and razor sharp spatula ready to go off and save the princess. Tell me more about the guilds, tell me more about how he trained, write a novel about it, because there's a seed of a great story there, but... But it's just background.
Quense is good with voice. His characters speak differently from each other, which is a nice touch. The yuks speak in a sort of dumbed down mafiaesque English. The other main characters use different tone and vocabulary in a way that matches with their stations well. Unfortunately, voice is often the only easy way to distinguish one main character from the next.
Though I was kicked out of the feminist club a long, long time ago, I did notice his female characters, save one, are one dimensional, shallow, and annoying. Annoying in the sense of people you don't want to spend any time with, not badly written. Basically the reason there are women in this book is to be objects of love or lust. And, while I normally couldn't care less about the gender of the various characters I'm reading about, the fact that almost every woman in the entire book was a twit was grating.
The top link leads to the $17.99 softcover version. The bottom to the $3.99 Kindle version. While there are books I'd be willing to pay 17.99 for, this isn't one of them. However, the $3.99 Kindle version is priced just right.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Useful Tidbits
I've been a bit busy lately and haven't had the time to really research my next self publishing platform. So, instead of a the lowdown on Smashword.com (Coming soon, I promise!) I've got a few bits and pieces that may come in handy.
First off, my roving correspondent (okay, my buddy Gail Lewis) has returned from the James River Writer's Conference with some useful information for those of you looking for an agent. Gail is also in the midst of the glorious fun that is the agent hunt. If it weren't for the fact she already has three jobs and is working on writing a book, I'd try to cajole her into writing this herself. But, she's swamped, so here are her useful bits through me:
Agents do not want to see stories that start with dreams. More precisely agents see hundreds, if not thousands, of dream opening sequences a year and toss them all. So, if like Gail you did a ton of research on the kinds of book you intend to write, noticed no dream openings, thought, "Hey, here's a good way to differentiate myself," you've fallen into the same trap she has. Basically, it's a cliche, but a cliche you haven't seen in print because it never gets that far.
Next up: Query Letters. Agents want to see what your book is about. Do not leave any mystery here. They are not pleased when you are coy with what is going on. Those letters get booted. Remember the five W's? Make sure it gets into your query letter. (But in a pleasant, engaging, and unique way...)
Finally: What you think is important about your book may not be what the agent is interested in. Gail is writing fantasy fiction. Her's is a real world set YA about a group of magic users who stumble on someone who may be from their past and how they all interact and relate to each other. (She will write about her story here one day and do a better job of describing it.) Anyway, the main character, Penny, has an alcoholic father who moves them around constantly. He shows up like four times in the book and is more or less a vehicle to put Penny in the right place at the right time for the action to start up. Amid wizards, multi-dimensional monsters, a religion versus science theme, moving into a new school and finding out that you too are a powerful magic user, it is alcoholic parent that the agent was interested in knowing more about.
On my own fact finding this week I have learned the following things:
The find and replace function on Word is a very valuable editing tool. Due to recent developments I am going over my manuscript with a fine tooth comb and editing away. Here is a technique I've found that is good for making you see what you actually wrote, as opposed to what you thinkis on the page.
Locate an issue. The first one I tried was sentences that start with an introductory clause that starts with If. If blah blah blah, then blah blah blah. I've probably got 150 sentences that follow that basic pattern. Maybe fifty of them had a comma after that first clause. So, I searched for If, and all of those sentences popped up, and I was able to read each one by itself and add commas where warranted. I did that for every other common word that begins and introductory clause. A whole lot of commas got added.
Pleased by how well that was working, I tried conjunctions. I like conjunctions. I like long windy sentences with seventeen clauses, lots of commas, and lots of buts and ors. (I am rewriting, shortening, and tightening up most of them these days.) However, there are 6183 ands alone in my story. Probably 5500 of them are used correctly. The find function was painfully slow. I had images of still checking away three years from now until I noticed the find function has a subprogram called Highlight. For locating every conjunction on a page, so you can quickly check and drag your eyes to the next one, it's brilliant. The only thing I don't like about it is every time I change the document the highlighting vanishes and I have to redo it. Even with that, it's still much faster than manually finding each and, checking it, and hitting the find next button.
My other great nugget of wisdom this week is a grammatical one. No comma goes between and if. So, the correct form of this sentence is. We're going to the park, and if the weather is especially nice, we'll eat lunch outside.
The next installment of the Indie Book Review is due up soon. I'm almost done reading Tales From Gundarland, and will be expounding upon in the next week.
First off, my roving correspondent (okay, my buddy Gail Lewis) has returned from the James River Writer's Conference with some useful information for those of you looking for an agent. Gail is also in the midst of the glorious fun that is the agent hunt. If it weren't for the fact she already has three jobs and is working on writing a book, I'd try to cajole her into writing this herself. But, she's swamped, so here are her useful bits through me:
Agents do not want to see stories that start with dreams. More precisely agents see hundreds, if not thousands, of dream opening sequences a year and toss them all. So, if like Gail you did a ton of research on the kinds of book you intend to write, noticed no dream openings, thought, "Hey, here's a good way to differentiate myself," you've fallen into the same trap she has. Basically, it's a cliche, but a cliche you haven't seen in print because it never gets that far.
Next up: Query Letters. Agents want to see what your book is about. Do not leave any mystery here. They are not pleased when you are coy with what is going on. Those letters get booted. Remember the five W's? Make sure it gets into your query letter. (But in a pleasant, engaging, and unique way...)
Finally: What you think is important about your book may not be what the agent is interested in. Gail is writing fantasy fiction. Her's is a real world set YA about a group of magic users who stumble on someone who may be from their past and how they all interact and relate to each other. (She will write about her story here one day and do a better job of describing it.) Anyway, the main character, Penny, has an alcoholic father who moves them around constantly. He shows up like four times in the book and is more or less a vehicle to put Penny in the right place at the right time for the action to start up. Amid wizards, multi-dimensional monsters, a religion versus science theme, moving into a new school and finding out that you too are a powerful magic user, it is alcoholic parent that the agent was interested in knowing more about.
On my own fact finding this week I have learned the following things:
The find and replace function on Word is a very valuable editing tool. Due to recent developments I am going over my manuscript with a fine tooth comb and editing away. Here is a technique I've found that is good for making you see what you actually wrote, as opposed to what you thinkis on the page.
Locate an issue. The first one I tried was sentences that start with an introductory clause that starts with If. If blah blah blah, then blah blah blah. I've probably got 150 sentences that follow that basic pattern. Maybe fifty of them had a comma after that first clause. So, I searched for If, and all of those sentences popped up, and I was able to read each one by itself and add commas where warranted. I did that for every other common word that begins and introductory clause. A whole lot of commas got added.
Pleased by how well that was working, I tried conjunctions. I like conjunctions. I like long windy sentences with seventeen clauses, lots of commas, and lots of buts and ors. (I am rewriting, shortening, and tightening up most of them these days.) However, there are 6183 ands alone in my story. Probably 5500 of them are used correctly. The find function was painfully slow. I had images of still checking away three years from now until I noticed the find function has a subprogram called Highlight. For locating every conjunction on a page, so you can quickly check and drag your eyes to the next one, it's brilliant. The only thing I don't like about it is every time I change the document the highlighting vanishes and I have to redo it. Even with that, it's still much faster than manually finding each and, checking it, and hitting the find next button.
My other great nugget of wisdom this week is a grammatical one. No comma goes between and if. So, the correct form of this sentence is. We're going to the park, and if the weather is especially nice, we'll eat lunch outside.
The next installment of the Indie Book Review is due up soon. I'm almost done reading Tales From Gundarland, and will be expounding upon in the next week.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Working With Thomas Hill of Launch Pad Press
Back in August I wrote a post about the editor I hired, Thomas Hill of Launchpad Press.
Here is the follow up. Now, some of you may notice this post is rather... dry. There's a reason for that. While it is always acceptable to write the truth and facts, it is not always acceptable to write opinions or draw conclusions. So, since I have no interest in a business libel case heading my direction, I will stick with the facts.
As Joe Friday would say, "Just the facts, Ma'am."
On July 25th I returned the contract to him. It stated Thomas Hill of Launchpad Press would be "Copyediting for grammar, punctuation, word usage, style; adjustment and manipulation of text for clarity; conform manuscript to Chicago Manual of Style; style sheet for commonly used terms." This would be finished by August 24th.
On October 4th, 41 days late, the second half of my manuscript was returned to me. As Thomas Hill said, the manuscript still wasn't finished, he needed to work more, especially on bits from the beginning, to fix mistakes he had made earlier.
By October 14th, I had finished reading through and working with all of his edits. I did not think the quality was high enough and had lost confidence in his ability to fix the problems in the earlier sections. I sent him an email severing our business relationship. I was rash in that email, asking for most of my money back or saying I would blog about this. I realized that was a mistake and sent him another email on October 16, rescinding my request for my money back. Thomas did not respond to either of those two emails, or the one that proceeded them, asking about a collection of sentences I thought were grammatically incorrect.
If you click here, you will be taken to twenty pages of bits and pieces of my manuscript. They are verbatim copies of the Word final version he sent me. Some of the mistakes are ones he made. Some are ones I made that he didn't catch. I don't think it much matters which is which. And, while I did pick areas with the most mistakes in the smallest spaces, there is not a single three page long span of the entire story without an error in it.
The documents he sent me did allow for change tracking. Word date and time stamps every change in the document. There is not a single date or time stamp between August 20th and September 17th in any of the three documents he sent me. If he worked on the project between those two dates, he never sent me that work.
Thomas knows that I am a blogger. He knows that I am writing about writing and publishing. He knows it was my intent to write about him. He's a follower on this blog. When our business relationship was just beginning I asked if he might want to write a guest post for me.
I will leave my comments field open. If he so desires, he can respond.
Here is the follow up. Now, some of you may notice this post is rather... dry. There's a reason for that. While it is always acceptable to write the truth and facts, it is not always acceptable to write opinions or draw conclusions. So, since I have no interest in a business libel case heading my direction, I will stick with the facts.
As Joe Friday would say, "Just the facts, Ma'am."
On July 25th I returned the contract to him. It stated Thomas Hill of Launchpad Press would be "Copyediting for grammar, punctuation, word usage, style; adjustment and manipulation of text for clarity; conform manuscript to Chicago Manual of Style; style sheet for commonly used terms." This would be finished by August 24th.
On October 4th, 41 days late, the second half of my manuscript was returned to me. As Thomas Hill said, the manuscript still wasn't finished, he needed to work more, especially on bits from the beginning, to fix mistakes he had made earlier.
By October 14th, I had finished reading through and working with all of his edits. I did not think the quality was high enough and had lost confidence in his ability to fix the problems in the earlier sections. I sent him an email severing our business relationship. I was rash in that email, asking for most of my money back or saying I would blog about this. I realized that was a mistake and sent him another email on October 16, rescinding my request for my money back. Thomas did not respond to either of those two emails, or the one that proceeded them, asking about a collection of sentences I thought were grammatically incorrect.
If you click here, you will be taken to twenty pages of bits and pieces of my manuscript. They are verbatim copies of the Word final version he sent me. Some of the mistakes are ones he made. Some are ones I made that he didn't catch. I don't think it much matters which is which. And, while I did pick areas with the most mistakes in the smallest spaces, there is not a single three page long span of the entire story without an error in it.
The documents he sent me did allow for change tracking. Word date and time stamps every change in the document. There is not a single date or time stamp between August 20th and September 17th in any of the three documents he sent me. If he worked on the project between those two dates, he never sent me that work.
Thomas knows that I am a blogger. He knows that I am writing about writing and publishing. He knows it was my intent to write about him. He's a follower on this blog. When our business relationship was just beginning I asked if he might want to write a guest post for me.
I will leave my comments field open. If he so desires, he can respond.
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