(no subject)
Oct. 20th, 2010 03:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cblj_backupLink for your Wednesday, via ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rm: "If you want to improve circulation, run cat pictures."
Carl Gossett Jr. was clearly a man ahead of his time.
Speaking of circulation, does anyone know a good Australian print-on-demand company? (Please don't google and send me links -- I've done that, I'm looking for reccs from folks who've used them, since self-publishing is only now emerging from the realm of conmen and racketeers.) CompletelyNovel are sweet kids; using Lulu and then using CN, CN just comes off as adorable, like a Mom and Pop store. But they won't ship to a lot of places, including the southern hemisphere. I'm contemplating cancelling them entirely, in part because I cannot find anywhere on their website, literally anywhere, that will let me set up payment information so that the money I make can actually be sent to me. Plus their postage is just plain not that much cheaper.
I've been thinking a lot about publishing and writing, which is probably some kind of coping mechanism in order not to freak out now that we're near publish date. I don't have many illusions; my work is good, but if it were good enough to stand out from the crowd and if I were bold enough to sell myself the way authors should, I'd have an agent and a publisher by now. I'm okay with that, because I like the freedom I have with self-publishing and I get a kick out of doing my own typesetting, but I am always conscious of the "self" in self-publishing. I'm aware of the fact that there are no gatekeepers in print-on-demand and that without a preview nobody can tell the difference between my reasonably awesome book and the hack job below it in the listview.
Still, sometimes when I run into issues like the ones I'm facing now, I think that real publishers must have these kinds of problems too. I wonder if the people who read about my issues think of me as providing some kind of mysterious inside account they couldn't get themselves, not being in my position -- like when I (rarely) read the blogs of professionally published novelists and television writers and such.
This is likely untrue, but it makes the whole thing feel more professional.
My life is...unique. Stranger than I ever thought it would be. I like it, and it suits me, but it's definitely different. Society doesn't really provide us with many tools for being adults, but even of the tools it does provide, very few of them are of use to me in the place I find myself. It keeps me on my toes, learning as I go, and the ability to learn and adapt is a highly prized one. I'm surprised to find myself neither the man nor the writer I was three years ago, though I shouldn't be surprised, and probably wouldn't even have noticed if I didn't have a journal tracking me.
As a LOL to close on, yesterday I contacted a high-rise building in Chicago about looking at the condos they had for rent, since Mum wants me out of the cursed wasp building and I begin to agree with her, even if it means moving away from R. The website said "Call us at this number, or use our handy email form!"
So I used the handy email form, because I hate phones, and asked if I could set up a time to view the condos. This is the response I got:
Thank you for your e-mail. Please call our office to set up a showing.
Really helpful email response there, guys. Thanks for that.
rm: "If you want to improve circulation, run cat pictures." Carl Gossett Jr. was clearly a man ahead of his time.
Speaking of circulation, does anyone know a good Australian print-on-demand company? (Please don't google and send me links -- I've done that, I'm looking for reccs from folks who've used them, since self-publishing is only now emerging from the realm of conmen and racketeers.) CompletelyNovel are sweet kids; using Lulu and then using CN, CN just comes off as adorable, like a Mom and Pop store. But they won't ship to a lot of places, including the southern hemisphere. I'm contemplating cancelling them entirely, in part because I cannot find anywhere on their website, literally anywhere, that will let me set up payment information so that the money I make can actually be sent to me. Plus their postage is just plain not that much cheaper.
I've been thinking a lot about publishing and writing, which is probably some kind of coping mechanism in order not to freak out now that we're near publish date. I don't have many illusions; my work is good, but if it were good enough to stand out from the crowd and if I were bold enough to sell myself the way authors should, I'd have an agent and a publisher by now. I'm okay with that, because I like the freedom I have with self-publishing and I get a kick out of doing my own typesetting, but I am always conscious of the "self" in self-publishing. I'm aware of the fact that there are no gatekeepers in print-on-demand and that without a preview nobody can tell the difference between my reasonably awesome book and the hack job below it in the listview.
Still, sometimes when I run into issues like the ones I'm facing now, I think that real publishers must have these kinds of problems too. I wonder if the people who read about my issues think of me as providing some kind of mysterious inside account they couldn't get themselves, not being in my position -- like when I (rarely) read the blogs of professionally published novelists and television writers and such.
This is likely untrue, but it makes the whole thing feel more professional.
My life is...unique. Stranger than I ever thought it would be. I like it, and it suits me, but it's definitely different. Society doesn't really provide us with many tools for being adults, but even of the tools it does provide, very few of them are of use to me in the place I find myself. It keeps me on my toes, learning as I go, and the ability to learn and adapt is a highly prized one. I'm surprised to find myself neither the man nor the writer I was three years ago, though I shouldn't be surprised, and probably wouldn't even have noticed if I didn't have a journal tracking me.
As a LOL to close on, yesterday I contacted a high-rise building in Chicago about looking at the condos they had for rent, since Mum wants me out of the cursed wasp building and I begin to agree with her, even if it means moving away from R. The website said "Call us at this number, or use our handy email form!"
So I used the handy email form, because I hate phones, and asked if I could set up a time to view the condos. This is the response I got:
Thank you for your e-mail. Please call our office to set up a showing.
Really helpful email response there, guys. Thanks for that.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-21 03:55 am (UTC)I fret about a lot of the things upon which I see you write, as well, with the added pressures of publisher's deadlines, reproofs, and fighting with big wigs in corporate offices about what I will and will not rewrite in my stories. I write YA creepy, so my stories are going to be scary. I have actually been told, "This is really scary. I don't think kids will like to be this scared."
I have a much-younger brother who is fourteen and he is my first set of eyes, even before my editors, agent, or anyone else. At least with him I can turn around to my editors and go, "E loved this. It scared him witless and he loved it. I'm not changing this." He is their target audience, so they generally listen.
So far, being stubborn is one of the great traits my parents passed on to me. I know when to dig in and when to acquiesce. My two books, so far, have sold pretty well. Number three is at the mill and I'm starting up on number four once Hallowe'en is over. I wait tables, too, horrifyingly enough. I get the best horror stories, working in a restaurant and interacting with the public.
If it makes you feel any better, some of the shit my publishers put out is really, well, shit. I don't always know how I feel about having their little icon and name on the spine of my books when I know a crap author who wouldn't know a dictionary if it were put in front of her shares the same publishing house. (Holy ironic run-on sentence, Batman!) The best you can do is be confident in your story-telling and hope that your talent combined with good marketing and word of mouth will give you the opportunity to say "Time did tell."
no subject
Date: 2010-10-21 12:45 pm (UTC)I can't believe someone in YA publishing told you kids don't like to be scared. Have they ever met a child?
It's nice to know that the worries I have are at least ones other people share, uncomplicated by the opinions of editors and publishers. I mean I do get opinions from the Cafe, but nobody in the Cafe can actually order me on pain of no-publication to do something.
As for waiting tables -- I can just imagine. The closest I've come is working in a coffee shop and that was well horrifying enough :D
no subject
Date: 2010-10-21 07:14 pm (UTC)Waiting tables is great and I actually (a bit masochistically) enjoy it. It gets me out of the house and I get to talk to people. Keeps me human, gets me away from the computer (and that blinking cursor!) and forces me to get perspective. It seems to be my writer's block breaker, too! If I'm having a bad day for writing, I know that when I go to work and come home I'll be teeming with frustration and dislike for humanity, which will make it much easier to find a way to torment my characters. ;)
That, and I love getting free food.