Sitting in Zoot’s Coffee Shop on Main Street in Camden, one of my favorite coffee haunts. I’ve spent a few hours here over the past couple of years revising Mother, Night, and Water, while Janis hits some of the consignment shops in town. It is about an hour-plus trip for us from home and we do it periodically during the off-season for a day drive that allows us to come up the coast when Route 1 is not too populated. Summer on this route is notorious, even famous, to Maine’s regular summer folks, for its traffic jam, somewhere in the vicinity of Wiscasset. (Stopping at Red’s for their lobster rolls creates a massive jam-up as folks approach the bridge from either north or south. And, I suspect, unless they have to go to the bathroom really bad, they think this hour or more of dead, creeping crawl is part of the quaint Maine experience.) I’m sitting here trying to focus on the fact that I’m not writing or revising MNW, it’s over; I’m waiting for Amazon’s CreateSpace team get back to me with the completed product for my book.
Let me tell you what I have done.
I jumped off a cliff. The last two books were published with a seven year contract by a small publisher that gave me little or no control over my book once I signed the contract (not unique or unexpected with traditional publishing, but this small, POD publisher operates as such). I owned the rights, but they had control. They did a good job and produced a nice product, and they did exactly what they said they would do in their contract. I have no complaints, in fact I almost went to them again. Instead, I took a chance with self publishing, something I haven’t really considered before.
Having control over almost every aspect of the book is exciting and it feels more creative. But it comes with more work. It has been difficult…nay, impossible to access big house publishers. There are several Catch-22’s involved. I don’t have the time at my age to play that whole thing out to the end with those guys, and honestly, I never intended this adventure to result in making fame or fortune (and that’s probably a good thing). What I am interested in is having folks read my books. Period. And maybe make a small income to cover my time and efforts. It makes an excellent retirement occupation, and I try not to regret starting this writing career earlier in life. But. Hey…I’m doing it now. The price of my new book reflects the costs of the publishing and shipping. I will offer some reduced costs if people want to order the book through me. (Contact me via my website and the listed email.)
LATER~
I started this blog entry last month: Since then? Wellll…I received a proof copy of my new novel from the Amazonbook company’s publisher: CreateSpace. It’s a beautiful product. However, as I proofed it ‘one-last-time’, I found some minor errors, and one significant one. Now…I am not going to beat this book up, but I cannot let those little things go. So one more time…and this takes time, folks. It’s a big book.
Revision and proofing is a dreadful part of the process. (I like the first revision, it gives me satisfaction, but three or more times and I find the book tedious. Of course, maybe it is anyway.) I had a proofreader and I did some myself, still, with a book that is 127,000+ words, little things will be missed.
The book will be delayed just a little past my deadline of April. I now expect it to be published early May.
My next book is a smaller one to tackle. I have three ideas in the pot, and one of them has a fifty page commitment. Still, I want to try something different – again. This is a learning process, and to paraphrase Steinbeck while writing East of Eden…I wonder if it will be interesting, to anyone else that is…
robertchapmanblog 