A Curmudgeonly Pontification on Editors and Self-Promotion

       I'm plenty old enough to be called a curmudgeon and I've occasionally written a post where I assume that appellation. A couple of observations have occurred to me lately that fall under that category.

      

Editors and Editing

 



Thanks to
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/composition/editing.htm

       I'm probably the only person around who prefers to indulge in that tremendous no-no, the violation of which shocks and horrifies!  I prefer to edit my own books.

       I have recently encountered someone who knew her book needed editing, so she hired an editor and paid good money, and then everybody who reviewed the book talked about how poorly edited it was (including me).  I am not about to waste money for somebody to do what I can do better, and I have no desire to be patronized by somebody who just assumes that if you're looking for an editor, you yourself are an uneducated simpleton.   (To be fair, I should insert a disclaimer here: I realize that not all editors are like that.)

       I have a sufficient academic background in English and language that I think I know how to write English using correct grammar and usage.  And I certainly know how to look things up, not only in the dictionary but in other tools.  I was a librarian, for goodness sake!  And when I first started writing when I was 29, I had my mother right there.  She was an English teacher and she's the one who taught me most of what I know about grammar and usage.  She and I proofread my early writing together, in the proper way -- with one person following the manuscript and the other reading in a slow, detailed way -- one word at a time, with all the punctuation verbalized.  Somewhere along the line I was taught that method, but it doesn't seem to be something anybody knows about these days.

       Now my mother is gone and I don't have anybody to proofread with, and I'm aware that when you proofread by yourself, you can miss a lot of typos.  So I apologize if a few typos slip through, or possibly the occasional small grammatical error.  Still, I trust myself to catch, for example, misuses of  homophones like "horde" and "hoard," a couple of words I always check out in every book so I don't have the Shshi sending out a "hoard" to found a new fortress.

       I think the reason people need editors so badly (apart from dyslexia, which can't be helped) is inferior education (and also poor typing skills, but that's a different problem).  Where were they during their high school English language classes?  Off in some adolescent haze, I guess, because it was obvious they ain't never gonna have no use for what the teacher was trying to larn 'em.  I think that's always been true to a considerable extent.  I'm quite sure many people who sat in my mother's classes back in the '30s, '40s, and '50s didn't learn grammar any better than the kids do today.

 

Self-Promotion

 

Thanks to
http://jezebel.com/5738957/social-minefield-how-to-self-promote-without-being-a-jerk

       We indie authors beat our brains out trying to get people to buy our books.  I list all my special prices on Twitter, Goodreads, Facebook, Google+, and in special forums and listings. I post them on my blog and I get promos on websites like The Story Reading Ape (bless his furry hide!)  I've been interviewed, and I thank all those interviewers.   I belong to several book promo groups on Facebook and Google+.  You put your posts on those and immediately they sink like a stone in the sea. 

       So I've decided all this is based on a false premise:  that people are actually out there trolling all these sites, looking for books to gobble up in order to fill their cavernous maws that hunger for reading matter. 

       I don't think this is true at all -- I don't think anybody is looking for books to read.  I'm basing this on myself.  I admit I hardly ever pay any attention to the myriad of books posted on these sites (not cites, you notice).  That's probably a flaw -- I should pay more attention, especially if I want them to pay attention back.  First off, who has time to investigate every book that's just been published?  Secondly, most of these books are in genres I have absolutely no interest in.  Erotic romance? Forget it!  Vampires?  Likewise (I have read one or two with vampires).  Zombies?  tha'sask|>|| as my Shshi would say.  Paranormal in general?  Nope!  I realize that my interests and the books that I write are literary in style and trends don't attract me.  I've even quit reading most high fantasy (dragons and elves and magic don't seem to appeal much to me these days).  I read tons of it in the '70s and '80s, as well as a good bit of more traditional science fiction.  Ursula K. LeGuin was my favorite, however, and I think everybody realizes her stuff is pretty literary in tone -- carefully crafted, with deeply dimensioned characters.   That's what I like, and I hope that's what I write, whether it's laid in the real world of the future or on a distant planet.

       There are many books that I would like to read before I die and unfortunately most of them were written years ago -- standards that I never got around to reading earlier, like The Great Gatsby or The House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende.  I cannot possibly check out every book that crops up on a promo listing no matter how much I want to support indie authors. When I do, sadly, the books often turn out to be a waste of time.  It's not only poor editing -- it's that the authors think they can toss off a book in a week or a month and publish it immediately and have a masterpiece that sells a million copies.  They need to write ... and write ... and write ... and put the manuscript away and let it cook and then go back to it months or years later after they've gained more knowledge and experience, and then judge if it was really any good.  Perspective -- authors need to gain perspective on their own works by coming to them as if they were new.  I have no intention of ever publishing anything I wrote in the first eight years of my writing life.  I rewrote it so many times that the beginning became nothing but a jumble.  I do have a couple of manuscripts from the late '70s or early '80s (the period around the writing of "The Blessing of Krozem," my free novelette on Smashwords) that I may resurrect someday, but much as I loved the really early stuff when I wrote it, I think it's consigned to oblivion.  Juvenilia, they call it -- only I was in my thirties at the time! 

       So I apologize if I cannot pay attention to every indie-published book out there, and I understand why mine get ignored.  If I don't like to read erotic romances, the writers of erotic romances surely don't want to read character studies of giant termite people.  But somebody out there does want to, and that's why I don't give up.  You just have to find your readership.  That is what is important, and probably the hardest thing you have to do!

      

 

Learn More about The Story Reading Ape!

 http://ailsaabraham.com/2014/04/08/chris-the-story-reading-ape-graham
(Reblogged)
A most entertaining way to learn more about and to thank
The Story Reading Ape
for all his great support for us indie authors!

Chris (The Story Reading Ape) Graham

April 8, 2014 · by Ailsa Author

Well, he FINALLY arrived at the Bingergread Cottage.
I could tell when he did, all the local wildlife went streaming through the open front door and out through the previously closed back door before disappearing into the tangled overgrowth called (imaginatively, considering it was the Council’s choice) ‘The Bingerbread Cottage Enchanted Forest’!
It was also evident when, after the last Squirrel had disappeared, I heard a loud CLATTER of my precious motorbike hitting the ground, followed by an equally loud “SORRY – I WAS ONLY LOOKING AT IT, NOT TRYING TO GET ON IT” from my Guest.
Yes, you’ve guessed who my Guest is – the biggest, strongest, furriest Blogger in the Cyberworld – Chris, The Story Reading Ape!

After Badger reluctantly assisted him to get untangled and out from under the motorbike Chris finally made it through the now permanently open front door (it was no longer attached to the door frame) and settled himself onto my three seater settee (which STILL has a sag in it)
I greeted him and the interview commenced as follows (I took the precaution of recording it, in case I wouldn’t have enough elbow room to write – and I was right – I didn’t)

Would you like some of my twin brother Cameron’s Home Made Peanut Brittle instead of nibbling the potpourri?
Thank you, these funny little multicoloured nibbles DO taste a little too exotic for me, sort of ‘perfumery’ if you know what I mean (he said with a big furry, pointy fanged grin).

Do you like dogs? No, not for lunch, I can always put them away in the other room if they bother you.
No, No, I LIKE dogs and I’d NEVER eat an uncooked one – ONLY JOKING !!!(he added quickly as Lily started chewing delicately on ape toes)

Well, Lily seems to have taken a great liking to you, judging by the way she’s gently tugging at your ankle fur and drooling copiously.
Y-E-S – I can see that mmmm.

So – your famous blog is one year old now and I really want to know – how did you come up with the idea?
I
I’m a great fan of Sir Terry Pratchett who writes all about the goings on at Discworld (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld) and he once said that all humans were really just apes and that the main difference between the ape-humans who survived and the other ape-humans who didn’t, was because they told stories! This helped them avoid and survive the things that destroyed the non-story telling ape-humans!
Well I thought, for every story teller there has to be at least one listener and since I can’t tell stories to save my life but love to hear them, I must be descended from the story listener species.
Taking this thought a little further, since people who do story TELLING (verbally) seem to be getting few and far between nowadays and story WRITING is on the increase, this must mean that evolution has changed them from story tellers to story writers!
THAT must mean that story LISTENERS have ALSO evolved to become story READERS, and that includes ME!
After this revelation, I decided to try and help keep these new evolved story writers (and thereby save the ape-human race) by promoting those ‘not yet rich and famous’ ones I discovered as I explored the mutliverse of stories I read.

Are you a writer yourself? Are the Ape memoires going to appear on the shelves sometime?
HAHAHAHA, as I said, I couldn’t tell a story to save my life, never mind WRITE any. With regards to my memoires, whoever would be interested in reading about an old moth-eaten, ape like me HAHAHA!

It is incredibly altruistic of you to give all us baby-writers a leg-up on the artistic ladder – does it cost you a fortune?
Oh, I don’t ever think of anyone who writes stories as Babies who need pampering – far from it – I’m, in fact challenging them to write more stories, write and edit better and to help them promote themselves and their stories!
With regards to any costs I incur, if I can sell a few book covers(http://thestoryreadingapeblog.com/tsra-doings/) occasionally, it will help keep those costs down.
But I regard any expenditure as an investment in the survival and future of ape-humankind (STOP TITTERING YOU IN THE CHEAP SEATS AT THE BACK!).
If I can help keep the art and skill of story making alive for future generations, so they can enjoy them as much as I do, then any costs will be worthwhile.

I imagine that all this voluntary work with authors takes up a lot of time but if you do find some free time – what do you like to do?
Oh I’m kept busy alright, but because I enjoy it, it’s no problem.
In my free time, apart from reading, which entertains and educates me, I like to listen to music from classical to some modern – I have a little hearing issue that prevents me making out the words of songs sometimes, but I find that the tunes themselves can benefit the spirit of the inner ape.
I also love walking in fresh air, be it in the countryside or seaside, although sometimes the wind can be a bit lazy, especially when cold, and cuts through me rather than go around me.

Where do you live?
In a nice leafy suburb of South East Manchester, England.

Is there a troupe or are you a lone silverback?
I have a treasure of a wife who, luckily, shares many of the things I like to do, plus I have a little sister and a daughter.


I don’t suppose Apes have jobs…but did you ever work before you became an author-promoter?
Oh yes, I’ve had a long and varied life of employment.
When I was 16, I worked for my hometown Council, in between leaving College and starting an apprenticeship in a local large Engineering Company. I helped to tend a large Cemetery and digging of graves. Did you know that when they say ‘Six Feet Under’, they mean it’s six feet of soil above the top of the coffin, but the grave is actually eight feet deep?
My friend and I had many an adventure discovering old unmarked graves running across new graves we were digging LOL.
I’ve worked at many aspects of engineering from the ground up, in design, manufacture, on-site supervision, installation and commissioning of equipment ranging from Power Station Turbines through Air-conditioning Chillers and Air Handling Units for Townhouses to Palaces and Tower Blocks through Shopping Malls and Hospitals.
I have also been fortunate enough to have lived and worked in several European and Middle Eastern Countries, with occasional visits to Far Eastern Countries, dealing with a variety of nationalities.

Do iyou have anything else you want to tell me?
Yes!
(he said, straightening his back, puffing out his impressive 75 inch belly and growling softly – but not in the least bit terrifyingly)
Readers, please do not dismiss the books of self-published independent authors (Indies) as a waste of time or money.
Granted, there are a lot who have not taken the proper time and care they should have before publishing, or who do it for all the wrong reasons (like making money).
But, there are also MANY who are turning out well written stories that easily rival those of the more famous authors.
Take a chance, after all, many of their books cost LESS than a Lottery Ticket, but you have a better chance of getting a good read than you have of winning the lottery!
If you want to know some I can recommend, check out my blog Authors Hall of Fame (http://thestoryreadingapeblog.com/tsras-hall-of-fame/)

Well, with that (and after persuading Lily to let go of him) Chris arose, removed the settee from his bottom, finished off the last of the Peanut Brittles and (luckily) left through the still wide open front door, resisting any further ‘Looking” at my motorcycle and knuckled off down the lane into the picturesque smog of sunset.

PS. Several hours later Badger, Lily and I awoke to the sight and sound of the local wildlife returning to their own homes via the reopened back door and the removed boards of the front door!
And we got to work on my bike!

 

Two Years in Social Media: So How Do I Feel about It?

Copied from http://orangutanmarketing.com/social-media/what-is-social-media-exactly/

       I'm not very social by nature, so about two years ago when I decided to self-publish, I had never done anything with social media.  It was about this time of year in 2011 when I first joined Twitter.  At first I was vague as to what Twitter all about, so I largely ignored it.  A few months later, I started looking for followers and posting promos about my books and occasional personal remarks.  Then I joined Facebook, started following other peoples' blogs, set up my own blog, and then set up a second one for my conlangs.  The latter morphed later into a promo for my series, The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head, and ultimately broadened into a vehicle to discuss myth in literature.   I discovered the Language Creation Society through Twitter and after joining that organization, I took a third blog through them and devoted it to my conlangs.  (Bet you didn't even know that one existed -- I haven't done anything with it for maybe a year, although it has some interesting material.  Here's the link: http://remembrancer.conlang.org )

       My goal was to make contacts and try to get myself recognized.  I've accomplished that to a certain extent.  Along the way, I sort of learned to understand the difference between selling and marketing.  With selling, it's one-on-one -- make a contact and pitch your book to that person.  With marketing, you have nobody specific in mind -- you simply aim to get the attention of  as wide a range of people as possible.  A billboard or a mail flyer or a TV ad is marketing; soliciting by phone would be selling.  Pitching your book directly to somebody on FB would be selling, as would sending a promo to a new Twitter follower.  Getting mentioned on somebody else's blog or through a Twitter retweet would be marketing.

       I have met some wonderful people over this past two years.  I can still remember my three initial Twitter encounters.  One of them has become a quite good friend and I'm still in touch with the other two through FB.  I've gotten quite well acquainted with several other people through my conlanging contacts and through Google+.  All of that has been quite rewarding; it makes all that effort worthwhile even without the potential of selling books.

       So which of those social media entities listed in the logo above have I joined?  A few of them I never heard of, like Digg and MeetUp and Delicious.  But I joined Reddit when somebody listed one of my posts on that site and I garnered a huge number of page views.  I don't think I use Reddit as much as I should.  I can't use YouTube, which I think is terrific, because I don't make videos (I'm technologically stone-age).  (YouTube is also a wonderful research tool -- whether you want to know what an alpenhorn sounds like or view the chair dance at a Jewish wedding, you can find it on YouTube!)

       I went with Blogger instead of WordPress (although my conlang blog is powered by WordPress) and I'm glad I did, because it's so much simpler.  (My only complaint is I don't have drop-down menus.)  I joined Pinterest and put up some of my drawings, but I really see no use for it except as a passtime, and I don't have that much time to pass.  And I only recently joined LinkedIn.  I'm still learning what that's all about.  It's really geared to people looking for work or to hire others.  I'm not looking for work -- mine's already cut out for me!  It does, however, open an avenue to a wider range of people.  One of my problems is that  my contacts are mostly other self-published authors, who (for the most part) would rather sell their own books than read other peoples'.

       One that's not listed on the logo is Goodreads.  It's rather difficult to use, so in the beginning I floundered.  I've gotten a little better with it lately.  It's good for record-keeping and for reviews.  It has a lot of avenues for giveaways and special promos, but I've never seen any results from using these.  I've also joined several specialty sites, like Mythic Scribes (I heartily recommend this one to fantasy writers), WANAtribe, and the Indie Writers' Network.  Some of these have forums.  I'm not crazy about forums.  They're difficult to use.  I always get my posts in the wrong categories.  I also follow a few FB groups, mostly for blog promotion.

       Which of these do I enjoy the most?  Lately it's been Google+.  I honestly like it better than FB, which still gets me confused at times.  I never get any traffic on my FB page; my own posts get lost there, so I pretty much ignore it.  Google+ has a lot of communities slanted toward your personal interests, and these can be quite valuable.  And I've set up a community of my own  called Books by TermiteWriter (see top of sidebar for link).  It's only been up about two weeks and I've already got 51 members.  It took about a year to reach 30 on my FB page.  I treat Books by TermiteWriter like a kind of mini-blog.  I can put up brief posts most days that don't require a lot of time or thought, as a kind of diary of my writing and publishing efforts.

       Has all this paid off in sales of my books?  I laugh out loud as I say, not really!  But if I hadn't done anything, I wouldn't have any sales at all!  I just keep nibbling away, expecting a big breakthrough!  So help me out by giving one of my books a try!  You can find them at Amazon and at Smashwords. 

Blogging and Self-Publishing: My First Year in Review

       Actually, it's been more than a year.  I put up my first blog post on October 11, 2011, about a year and four months ago.  That post was entitled "An Introduction to My Worlds" and featured a picture of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head.  Here's the picture:

 

 

        At that time I didn't know how to turn an image into a JPEG, so I printed out my drawing and took a picture of the print with my new digital camera.  That's why it has that funny shadowing around the edge.  I'm surprised it came out as good as it did!

 

       Boy, have I learned a lot since then!  Not that I've become an expert on anything, but I do know how to use Paint or GIMP to make a JPEG! 

 

       I published my first book ("Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder") on November 11, 2011.  Easy to remember -- 11/11/11.  I thought this novella would make a good trial run, to learn the self-publishing ropes with CreateSpace and Kindle, and later (not until February 2012) on Smashwords.  At that time, since I still didn't know how to make a JPEG, I elected to go with a generic cover for the print edition.  Not long ago, I republished it with my own cover, but because of the subtitle that appears on the paperback entry and not on the Kindle entry, Amazon has never put the two together.  But they definitely are the same book, and the cover turned out great in the print version!  If you plan to read the novella sometime, you really should shell out the $5.49 for the paperback.  The cover makes it worth it.

 

       I went on to publish The Termite Queen, v.1: The Speaking of the Dead on March 12, 2012; The Termite Queen, v.2: The Wound That Has No Healing on May 12, 2012; and The War of the Stolen Mother (v.1 of the series The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head) on July 16, 2012.  Now if you're thinking, boy, is she prolific!  She wrote all those books (which are not short, except for "Monster") in less than a year?  'Course I didn't!  I wrote them between the years 2000 and 2003.  Then I began The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars, and got bogged down for several years (enough on that for now!)  But during the three and a half years when I was writing about my termites, I wrote the entire Ki'shto'ba series, which consisted originally of three volumes, now split into six.   Therefore, I have another five volumes ready (or close to being ready) to publish.  I haven't written anything this past year except blog posts (although the splitting of the series necessitated a lot of revising).  That doesn't mean I don't have more new things in mind to write, but first things first.  I always have liked to finish what I start.

 

       So why did I start a blog?   I never intended to write a social blog or a humor blog, and I never intended to try to teach people how to write (there are scores of blogs out there aiming to do just that).  Also, I was not looking to learn how to write, because I don't consider myself to be a beginning writer.  I wrote too many words back in the first part of my life, even though I never published anything at that time.  I write best when I don't think too much about theory and just let it flow.  I think the best way to prepare to be a writer is to obtain a good liberal education (writing is always a part of that), study literature, and read, read, read, especially in the genre you intend to write.

      

       My main purpose in starting a blog was to promote my books and give myself an outlet for some of my ideas (as in the Mythmaker posts; a new one of those is long overdue).   However, I've ended up with three blogs to maintain and I've done some things with them I never intended.  The blog you're reading now, Ruminations of a Remembrancer, is my primary blog and it's become more diversified, with nostalgia posts about myself and my family, essays on poetry and grammar, a few book reviews, extracts from some of my unpublished writings, and some quite popular posts on how to format books for self-publishing.  I even put up a recipe at Christmas, which attracted a lot more attention than I expected! 

       The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head started out as my conlanging blog, with a different title.  Later, when I published the first volume of the series, I decided that a six-volume series needed a blog of its own, so I moved my specialized conlang materials to a website sponsored by the Language Creation Society (Conlangs of a Remembrancer).  Then I found I didn't have enough material for the "Labors" blog so I expanded it to include semi-scholarly discussions of myth as it's utilized in literature (after all, that's what I'm doing in the Ki'shto'ba series).  Besides discussing the background of the Labors series and the myths on which it is based, I've used some of the bird myth research that I conducted for Man Who Found Birds.  I've also had a nice guest post by Fel Wetzig on insects in folklore, analyzed one of Kat Anthony's stories that's based on Sumerian myth, and am now running a series on Welsh myth as retold by Evangeline Walton.  All that is a lot of fun, but pretty time-consuming.  Why don't you stop over there and take a look at some of the material?

       (And by the way, if anyone would like to write a guest post similar to the one Fel Wetzig did on insects, or if you would like to dissect a novel that is based on any variety of myth or folklore, or if you've published a piece of fiction that utilizes myth and want to do a little self-promotion, feel free to contact me.) 

 

       So what's next?  First off, I need to maintain my level of promotion.  Not nearly as many people have read my books as I would like, and that's too bad, because for the right person, they're terrific!  (Sorry -- I can't help blowing my own horn, because I love my books.  I know they aren't perfect, but they have a lot of meat in them, they have powerful characters and unexpected plot twists, and they move fast in spite of being long.)

       I'm especially disgruntled because almost nobody has read The War of the Stolen Mother.  Now, it does take off from the end of The Termite Queen, and it's probably better if you read TQ first, because a lot of plot points refer to what happened in that book.  But it's entirely possible to read The War of the Stolen Mother without reading TQ first, and so I'm going to be doing more promotion for my series on this blog.  I believe more people read this blog than read the other one. 

       And I'm working right now on preparing v.2: The Storm-Wing for publication.  I published v.1 way back in July and I intended to publish v.2 in about three months, but I waited, hoping people would start reading the first volume.  Now I'm not waiting any longer.  I'm doing a final proofread on the CreateSpace template right now (and I'm glad I am, because I'm catching a number of little mistakes, like "in" for "it," and a period following an exclamation mark, and missing quotation marks.  As everyone knows, it's really tough to proofread your own work, but since I have nobody to do it for me, I just plow ahead.

       I'll be doing another post soon on The Storm-Wing.  The other blog already has a lot of material about it -- go there and click on the Label "Storm-Wing" if you're interested.  And here is my cover art for the book (not too shabby):

 

   Click for larger image   

 

        So, what have I learned from this year's worth of blogging and self-publishing other than technical information about how to handle images and how to format for CreateSpace and Kindle and Smashwords?  I would say -- patience!  If you believe in what you write (and I do), you have to stay the course!  Every time I check my publishing stats, I think, well, one of these days there will be a dozen sales, and some of those people will read the books, and some of those people will review them, and then somebody else will read the reviews and decide to buy the books, etc.  (by the way, I've never had an adverse review on any of my books, and the rankings average out to 4 stars, although "Monster" has achieved 5 stars.)

       And I keep making interesting internet contacts with all kinds of fascinating people whose acquaintance I really enjoy.  That can't hurt, either.  I resurrected a fantasy novelette that I wrote back in the '70s called "The Blessing of Krozem" and have made it free on Smashwords.  Go over there and pick up a copy!  I've had 26 takers, gotten one little review and attracted some attention for my other books on Goodreads and through sample downloads on Smashwords.  I haven't become a best-seller -- probably never will.  But if I can reach enough people who like my type of literature (yes, I call it literature -- it's certainly not pulp) and keep growing a following, then I'll be willing to call myself a successful author.