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PROOFING IS MY LIFE (PT.2)

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It’s not just proofing and re-proofreading my work–everything from reclaiming the rights to my books to getting them onto as many download sites as possible is taking a lot longer than I ever expected. Not a terrible biggie since I’m not ready to keel over despite what friends say.  And, as impatient as I am to be writing new Matt Jacob books, I do accept the importance of all the above.

Still, there is one remaining area that has my stomach in a knot; how to become part of the signal rather than the noise of the Internet.  There’s the usual press release to particular blogs, websites, virtual and non-virtual newspapers that deal with books–especially mysteries.  There’s the hope of invitations to write guest posts about writing in general, writing a series, writing about my main man Matt himself.  And of course I’d love to be interviewed.  Plus, I have a friend who is actually good at this, Sherri
Frank Mazzotta who is on the Steering Committee of The Newburyport Literary Festival: http://www.newburyportliteraryfestival.org/ and she has been willing to help more than I could have hoped for.

But my gut tells me that even if everything I just mentioned comes true, it still wouldn’t be enough.  Because books sell through word of mouth.  That is true of the paper versions in brick and mortar stores and it’s just as true–perhaps even more so–in this virtual world.  Frankly, I’ve yet to conceive any strategy that actually creates word of mouth despite reading a fair amount of writers who post about this notion of “branding.”  Should I brand my reviews, my character, or myself?

I’ve watched authors plug away on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and other sites.  Hell, I do the same thing for my Monday posts.  I’ve watched as other writers give their books away free, charge 99 cents, have super-sales, and join collectives with the hope that the combined force of their work breaks through and creates that word of mouth.

Maybe some or all of these things actually work.  I’m not privy to sales figures.  But, at least right now, ninety nine centing, pushing my work everywhere I can, leaves me scratching my head ’cause I find this a really tough do.

I’ve been here before so knew this was coming, and was going to be an issue.  When I was publishing through traditional channels, it was the same conundrum.  But before was nearly twenty years ago and I found it easier to do that which I found uncomfortable.  I humped out whatever speaking gigs I could, though I never read from my books.  Even back then that took more hubris than I possessed.  But I did find places which wanted me to speak and mostly I worried whether the publishing house actually sent the stores or groups books for me to sell.  Often they didn’t.  Sometimes they actually did.  Usually because the sales rep for New England (with whom I still remain good friends) hammered on their head.

(An aside: Of all the people I met in the world of traditional publishing, I found the reps to be the most knowledgeable, most dedicated, and thoroughly committed to both authors and independent bookstores than anyone else.  It was a pleasure to go to their parties and talk books because they actually read ’em and passed them around to each other.  No surprise that by the end of my run, reps were being fired by the truckload as the independent bookstores were getting hacked by Borders, Barnes and Noble, and other chains.  And here I am writing for the Internet companies.  I’ll feel better when I get to Ties that Blind, my fourth book in the original series, and beyond because they will be available as ‘books on demand’ at local bookstores that can print them like The Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge, Ma. http://harvardbookstore.com/  and other independent stores that I will find and link to.)

Obviously I feel pretty damn uncomfortable pushing my own work–no matter how good I think it is.  So part of my new challenges will be to search for ideas to develop a personal method of generating buzz.  Ways that are comfortable to create this word of mouth phenomena.

So friends, readers, eventually all my copyediting will be finished and I’ll have to turn my attention to publicity.  Get ready ’cause I’m gonna need your help.

But not to worry now–next week I’m back to my opinion posts and will keep the proofing to myself.

“A person is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.”
– John Barrymore

PROOFING IS MY LIFE PT. 1

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I’m not entirely certain what was flapping inside my head when I decided to republish my Matt Jacob mystery series as digital books.  I do know I wanted to continue the series without going through the song and dances that drove me out of traditional publishing sixteen years ago.  A painful experience I have no inclination of repeating.

I also knew people who had been successful at re-launching their out of print books digitally. (See http://leegoldberg.typepad.com/).

But most of all I wanted to control MY work—not only its content, (the final straw with publishing that soured me on writing for almost two decades), but the entire process from cover design (see JUDGING A BOOK BY ITS COVER) to charging what I believe is a fair price.

Damn, was I in for a surprise.  I had very little knowledge of how much time, effort, and work it is to produce a quality E-book.  Somehow, I had imagined getting the original series ready to download would zoom along and I would be able to turn my attention to the new book which excited me.  (As I’ve mentioned in other posts, the idea of contemplating and writing about the individual, relational, social changes that occurred during this time for Matt Jacob draws me like a stoner to an ounce.)

Didn’t happen that way.  I can’t speak for other writers who have done this, but for me the process has been incredibly long, painstaking, with detail piling onto detail onto detail.

A bit about the process.  I first sent three of my four books to a scanning company that turned the published books into scanned documents. (Since I walked out of Random House with the fourth, I already have it in manuscript form.)  I don’t know how many of you have experience with scanning, but it sure ain’t an exact science.  Which meant I had to go sentence by sentence to make certain the scan was accurate.  Until my son Jake’s work picked up, I actually hired him to read Still Among The Living out loud while I scoured the scan.  “Quotation mark, capital, italicized the, period, capital, end of paragraph, indent,” and so on.  Hour after hour.  Day after day.  It reminded me of the Three Stooges, “Slowly I turned, step by step…”

I gotta tell you, Jake was one happy young man when his electrical apprenticing sky-rocketed and he no longer had to deal with our sessions.

That left me swiveling my head until I was dizzy.  On the other hand, I hadn’t read my books in a long time and was relieved and pleased they held up so well.  It was actually fun to see what I had written and how much of what I had written I still enjoyed.  Laugh out loud enjoy.  Although I had been prepared to rewrite if necessary, for the most part all I changed were a few arcane references that might have meant something in the nineties, but who the hell knows Quincy now?

Then comes ‘formatting.’  Life should be so good as to have one set of formatting rules for every digital reading device.  But that’s not life as I know it.  There are at least three or four different formats to accommodate the reading machines that people own. PDFs, (which will be able to be bought from my personal website) to .PRC for Amazon Kindles, .Epub for B&N Nooks, and another for Kobo, Smashwords, CreateSpace, Lightning Source, Ipads, and other E-book marketplaces.

So proofed scanned copies of Still Among The Living, Two Way Toll, and No Saving Grace were sent to http://www.52novels.com/ for formatting. (I was referred to them by Lee Goldberg, mentioned above, and all his advice is spot on.  I can’t imagine a more competent, decent group of people, with a special shout-out to Christina and Amy.)

But formatting comes with many of the same issues as scanning.  It too ain’t an exact science.  So once the books were formatted they also needed to be proofed, only this time, since there’s more than one format, it means proofing each book multiple times.  Gotta tell you, there aren’t nearly as many laugh out louds when you usher at the same movie over and over.  In fact, there are days when my mind simply shuts down after four or five chapters.  And while there are moments when I think traditional publishing and self-publishing are both lose/lose propositions, those moments are few and far between.

What’s really scary is how all the time it’s taking me to catch up with my writing self (and a lot more of that time is still to come) has driven me further away from my sit-down with the older, wiser  Matt and what’s left of his entourage.

MORE TO COME.

“It may be that my sole purpose in life is simply to serve
as a warning to others.”  Unknown.

Mind Bumps

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I recently met (live) Sherri Frank Mazzotta, with whom I’ve been chatting about writing via the Internet.  As yet unpublished, she is incredibly accomplished and passionate about of all kinds of books and different styles of writing.  As much as I enjoy the Internet, email, and all the people I meet in cyberspace, I guess I’m the age where “there’s nothing like the real thing.”  We spent hours comfortably talking, not only about books, but our lives and how we got to where we are.  A cool do.

One question Sherri asked me is what it’s like to come up with an idea for every week’s post.  My response: nerve-wracking.  From the moment Monday passes, there’s a part of me anxious about whether a new subject will pop.  And the game has to come to me.  If I sit down to conjure up an idea it’s like telling someone to “be funny.”  Just doesn’t work.

This week it’s multiple “nexts” since no single thing jumped out front.  But over this week, like all others, I do stuff, ideas flit in (and most often out), some news report or column or cartoon catches my eye.

Let’s forget the straw poll in Iowa.  Crazies only interested me when I worked as a therapist.  So one of the most important things that occurred this week was my softball team (Jah Energy) won its one-or-done playoff game against the Loan Sharks.  It was a wet one; took place in a steady shower.  The game had been rained out twice before and there were no more permit dates for a makeup.  Maybe not on dry land, but ironically we were better than the Sharks in the water.

Now we play the first place team for two out of three beginning tomorrow evening—weather permitting.  Not gonna be easy.  Ron’s Auto consists of farbissina players, both men and women.  People who Lenny Bruce would describe as the type who wear wool suits with no underwear.  Needless to say, we are major underdogs.  I guess it will make winning that much sweeter–if we win.  I’ll let you know.

Also, something that caught my eye this week was a letter to the New York Times by Stephen Sondheim (http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/stephen-sondheim-takes-issue-with-plan-for-revamped-porgy-and-bess/) that tore Diane Paulus and Pulitzer Prize winner and McArthur Genius award recipient, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks new assholes for their re-interpretation of Porgy and Bess.  Paulus is the Artistic Director for American Repertory Theater, a prestigious theater company connected to Harvard University.  My ticket isn’t until the end of September, but what I find interesting is:

Diane Paulus.  Who receives an enormous amount of shit for her productions while, at the same time, filling seats with a large number of people who rarely, if ever, attend theater of any kind.  I understand why critics often have trouble with her work.  When you take Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, turn it into a disco, replete with roller blades and semi-nude actors dancing up a storm with the audience and call it The Donkey Show, it’s easy to understand why traditionalists have a difficult time seeing it as theater despite having its run extended for months.

Or when she invited the British Theater Company Punchdrunk to use an abandoned local school and turn Macbeth into Sleep No More, a production where all ticket holders wore masks to become anonymous as they wandered through the building from room to room where different scenes were played out.  Paulus caught it for that one too—Which also sold out and went on to be a must-have ticket in New York.

It’s odd that I find myself defending over-the-top theater since my favorite playwrights are Eugene O’Neill, Tom Stoppard, Arthur Miller and similar writers—as well as traditionally performed Shakespeare.  But there’s something to be said for introducing theater to a brand new audience and introducing it in a way we can all relax and have fun with.  Hats off to Diane Paulus for fucking with A.R.T.’s traditions and succeeding—despite the avalanche of criticism.  Me, I’m looking forward to Porgy And Bess.

This week I also found out we are definitely going to trial on September 8th in that same unnamed Midwestern state for the second of our two malpractice cases.  The defendant refuses to negotiate or mediate and I expect them to stay their course.  It’s a complicated case in a very conservative county where the defendant’s employer has their hands in damn near everything.

So it’s yet another David versus Goliath; this time Goliath has all the weapons except truth.  It will be interesting to see whether truth can win.  It often doesn’t in our civil court system where clout has a way of determining judicial decisions throughout a trial.  We can only hope a jury is able to separate the wheat from the chaff.  They’ve had practice since a good many of them will probably be farmers.  Again I’ll try to do frequent posts on the day-to-day once the trial begins.

And finally, my friend and artist, Michael Smith (check him out by clicking his links on my website’s ‘links’ page) came by Sunday morning to do a photo shoot of the cover for my digitalized version of Still Among The Living.  Spent a fair amount of time Saturday hunting for my old Bakelite radios and deco objects and art.  And finding someone with a gun permit and gun to bring to the “shoot.”

Well, that was my week.  How was yours?

“Life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.” – John Maxwell