Christmas musings

Hi All! Since I finished the series on my publishing journey, I thought I'd take a lighter stance for the holiday season and share some of my Christmas thoughts...after all, I've been told that fans enjoy learning details about their favourite authors, so here goes.

When I grew up I LOVED December. Christmas trees, Christmas carols, the manger scene, A Charlie Brown Christmas on TV and Frosty, and Rudolph, and Santa!!! Thank GOD the elf on the shelf didn't exist back then. I don't like those. ...creepy! 😒 When the tree went up, Dad would put on Bing or Nat and we'd decorate the tree and sing songs. It was wonderful! The anticipation of Santa coming was always exciting...and Christmas eve candle light service was the best (how often do kids get to hold candles?)

My brother was a great "snooper" so by the time I was 6 and he was 8, Mum and Dad would booby trap the hallway so we couldn't "peek" out and see what Santa was doing...although we knew that if we didn't go to sleep Santa wouldn't come, but that didn't stop my bro from getting up and taking a look after midnight. 

Usually around 5 we would go out and check out our Santa gifts...in our house Santa always brought us one gift that was opened and ready to play with...I guess he was thinking of our parents getting to sleep in while we quietly enjoyed our gifts! Finally, after Mum and Dad got up we would go about the business of ripping open all the other presents under the tree...those being from family, not Santa. I knew that he brought lots of presents to some of my other friends, but only the one to us...but we didn't care. haha

Then we'd have a nice Turkey dinner with all the trimmings and Mum always had apple pie and pumpkin pie for dessert. It was a wonderful tradition and I have many great memories of those years.

As an adult, I liked celebrating the Christmas traditions with my kids. My husband and I continued the traditions of Santa bringing one present all ready to play with, and while he isn't a Christian, I always got the boys to Candle light service. It was always nice.

After the boys grew up, however, there was a bad experience with Christmas for me and the idea of decorating or anything just didn't excite me anymore. I was sick of hearing Christmas songs starting in October. Tired of Christmas before Thanksgiving and just...eh, tired of it all. It just seemed pointless. Except of course the Christian element. I always looked forward to the first coming of Jesus and looking for His second coming. God was never boring to me, just the "trappings" of Christmas.

Then...*drumroll please* Kyleigh came into our lives. Kyleigh is my grand daughter, and someone to once again have fun with Christmas. There was turmoil in the family when she was young, and I still had not lost my "funk" of being tired of Christmas, but in the past few years something has changed. This little person, so joyfully loves to sing Christmas carols (albeit WAY out of tune) and loves to decorate and most importantly loves to hear about Jesus! It's funny how God works. He always comes full circle. So now, while I still love Church the best when it comes to Christmas, the joy of the "season" has climbed back into my life! 

I pray for all of you who read this a Merry Christmas and blessed Advent! And if you celebrate Hanukah or Kwanza or nothing at all, I also pray blessings upon you and your family. God is good all the time! And all the time God is Good!!!

The Final Path (so far)

 Well, it's been a long journey but we have finally come to the end, or at least to the present...does a journey really ever end? After my nightmare into the world of hybid-publishing, I finally decided to listen to a local author friend, Jay Foreman, and looked into KDP (formally Create Space) on Amazon. It was relatively easy once I took the tutorials, and best of all free.

As I said in my last post, once I removed all my old books from as many places as possible I began the task of reformatting the interiors of all my books, so they matched, and changing and touching up the covers. Now THAT was a task in and of itself. Thankfully I was able to purchase my completed book files back from Tate, BUT I did not realize that while I was allowed (and expected) to change the barcodes and Tate emblems the PDF was completely set. 

Thankfully I have friends who understand making changes to PDF files and gave me several options for programs to make changes to those files. I downloaded a program that allowed me to make the changes. It was another learning curve for this computer illiterate author. It took several tries (that means weeks)

to move and change the things I wanted. Not to mention that the Tate logo that graced the spine was some kind of mad puzzle of massive squiggly lines that had to be removed one at a time. That took a good few hours to remove all of it.

Because of my many mistakes along the way, I was nervous about uploading. I think I took a week of "should I or shouldn't I" before finally just doing it! The actual upload was easy as could be. It's a process of setting up background information on the book, prices, and exclusivity, but in the end I had a product I was happy with...or was I? hahaha

Thankfully I decided to order proofs and noticed the cover wasn't quite right and there were minor issues inside. But, instead of paying $100 or more to a self/hybrid company, I just went into my files and made the corrections myself. I chose to order author copies after that and they were exactly what I wanted!!!

I haven't made massive sales yet, but I have sold a few books (softcover and ebooks) each month and get a direct deposit exactly when promised. I can check daily sales and also get monthly reports. WAY better than the other companies I worked with. I'm looking into marketing ideas and options. With Covid, obviously book signings are difficult, but I am not giving up! I believe in my novels and totally get that you just need that "one" break to get noticed.

With my next series and a few one off books, I am going to try and get an agent and do the traditional route, but I know that I can always self publish and get the work out the the few fans that I do have. I'm thinking of trying Book Baby to create some hard cover versions of book II and III because I do have quite a few of Book I sitting in my closet...and I have a fan who would like the final book in hard cover. He was lucky enough to get only one of the two hard covers created by Tate.

I hope my journey has inspired someone out there. No matter what, if you believe in your "magnum opus" you can get it out into print. Just keep trying and working. Failure is just a way to learn and move forward. I bet there isn't a writer out there who hasn't made a mistake or gotten rejected many times. I'll have to figure out what my next blogs will be about, as I am going to keep trying to write weekly. If you have any thoughts that you would like me to tackle leave me a message. I'd love to hear.

If you'd like to check out my books or some of my personal story go to my web page at kimsauthorspot or my Amazon author page at kim's author central

Sorry

 Sorry for not posting this week. We had to have our roof replaced and now we have the satellite guys recalibrating the sights. And I'm feeling tired after the Thanksgiving week festivities (my grand daughter spent the week here. :) I will be posting again next Monday. Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving weekend.!!! 

 A moment of shameless publicity! Books make a great present so feel free to purchase the series! 😊  Order books 

The Hybrid Nightmare

 Hi all. Thanks for joining me again. The continuing saga of Kim's tempestuous journey through the publishing world...

Finally, I had decided to try the traditional rout or indi-publishing, either way I would be taking control. I bought some books on publishers, agents, and learning opportunities. I wrote a query letter and sent it out. To my surprise I received several replies from agents interested in the story...AND how many copies I had sold. *sigh* It was made very clear to me that while it was a good story, the fact that it had been self published and hadn't sold a ton of copies no one was going to pick me up--at least for my series. I do have hopes for my next project if I choose to go traditionally though. However, the Resistance series was now in my hands alone.

I started doing research into the indi world and was feeling good about doing some workshops, and since I had a loose understanding of type set and how books should look, I was excited to get started. Then the call came from Greenberry Press and hubris took over. Honestly, what do you do when out of the blue you get a call from an "agent" telling you they saw your book out there and really want to work with you? I was flattered, excited, and very dubious. However, mistakenly I listened to the spiel and looked into it.

I was told that it was not the same as vanity press and that it was a hybrid model. (If I'd taken the time to think, I would have worked out that it really was the same.) While I still would pay a price to have them do the publishing work, it was considerably less and I would get 100% of the royalties AND I would get to set the sales price. I thought well, this is different and would save me time...let me think about it. In my gut I KNEW it was a bad idea. I talked to some people about it, and began to question if I should let my "fear" of what happened before stop me from trying something new. I talked myself into going forward, and got both of my books on-line very quickly (after all they were already formatted and ready to go from Tate publishing).

Suddenly (once again) no one answered my calls. I could not get answers to email. My gut started telling my head "see I told you so!!!" Finally, and I don't remember how, I got in touch with the owner of Greenberry Publishing and she told me how half of the group split and were starting another company. Of course the agent I was with was going the other way to Westwood Books Publishing. The owner of Greenberry told me that they were not changing their name and that my books would still be with them. I should have just got out then, but I pressed on.

My agent got in touch with me a few days later to let me know of the change, and I told him that I wanted to stay with Greenberry, so I wouldn't have to make changes. In my head I was screaming, "but what if they publish my book without my permission? They have the copies I sent. What will I do? They're in California." Ugh! Thankfully Westwood Books did not publish my books, but other authors I spoke with from Greenberry had jumped over to the new press and no one seemed to know what was going on. THEN, Greenberry decided to change their name to Authorspress and once again my book went through a change. On Amazon I had copies of my first book being sold second hand...Tate publishing was out of business so those were at least gone...my first and second book were under Greenberry and Authorspress now, and I didn't know how to get paid, or how things would work, so finally I said "ENOUGH". 

I got in touch with now Authorspress and told them I wanted my book taken off their shelves and removed from Amazon. It took a while for them to remove the copies they had printed (without paying me of course), but Amazon was another matter. In very small confusing print in the contract it said that they would remove it from Amazon but it was my job to get other sellers to remove them. Well, since I hadn't sold any copies or received any payment, and the books were print on demand, I figure okay...until I looked up my book on Amazon and saw it in MANY place with many sellers.

Another nightmare of figuring out how a print on demand book, that had not sold any copies could be sold by third parties when the publishing company no longer had permission to sell it was mind blowing. I still honestly don't understand how it all works. Anyway, I had to get in touch with Ingram Spark (a self-publishing company with a global distribution network, that allows self-published authors to publish and distribute print books and and eBooks) personally and have them remove the books from sale. However, they said that the publishing company had to send them a message to remove the books. The publishing company said I had to do it. So after weeks of talking with Ingram Sparks and Authorspress/Greenberry press I finally got all the "print on demand" books taken down. 

I still get exhausted thinking about it all. It took me a good year before I was ready to do any more publishing...which did give me time to finish my third novel and get it beta read and edited. Are you all as exhausted as I am??? Well, next week I will finish my journey with where I am now, which is KDP.

Good writing and peace be with you all!!!.

Lessons Not Learned

 My last post seemed to be a bit confusing as to whether or not I encourage "vanity publishing." I can say I, personally, am not a fan of it, nor would I encourage it, but some people have done very well in that world. As always I say, "do what's best for you." Oh, how I wish I had learned...but as always a journey is full of ups and downs, rights and wrongs, steps forward and steps back...on to Tate Publishing.

After being with Westbow Press for 3 years, I started looking for other opportunities. I had finished book II and was in the process of editing. I was too afraid to go it alone and self-publish, so once again I turned to the internet. I came across Tate Publishing (now bankrupt and gone). Their prices were better than Westbow for what I believed I would be getting, and after talking with the representative it sounded like they would be helping more with the marketing AND after I sold a few thousand copies I'd get my investment back. *Let's all stop here for a moment and laugh; or cry* 

Like all authors, I believed that in the right hands my story would sell oodles of books, so I had no doubt that I would reach the magic number and all would be right in the world. *another pause for laughter*. Moronically, I decided to republish my first book to have all my novels with the same company. Leaving Westbow was easy enough and I began the new path with Tate. It went through another editing process, which surprisingly was very good. Not only did they catch some of the grammatical errors that I had neglected to correct from my first editor, they also found a POV error. I didn't think it was a big deal, but the editor explained how it really needed to be fixed, so after a few back and forths I figured out what she meant. (Again, I was a novice at the time and didn't understand all the intricacies of writing. Tate re-did the chapters and type setting as well as giving me the cover I really wanted and book one was up and available.

As far as marketing went, they did help me coordinate with some local book sellers for shelf space and put me in their catalogue, but as with Westbow the rest fell to me. I had a book launch party that had okay attendance for my small town, and began hitting local events when possible. I made some sales, but was still not getting as much help as I wanted. I had realized that this part of the business would fall on me. They set me up a web-page, and I did my best to get the word out while finishing up book II, which had grown so long I had to split it into another book, giving me a three book series.

I started getting concerned with Tate, when the editing for the second book was basically non existent. They sent me back grammatical corrections but no content reviews. However, much I wanted to believe my book was "just that good", in my heart I was worried that their standards had slipped. However, I had it beta read and unprofessional content edits, so I trusted they wouldn't let a bad product go out and continued the process. It struck me as strange that the interiors of the books didn't match (as one would think a company producing multiple books from a single author would do), but I had a deadline set for publication and wanted to get the book out. All the interior work looked good and the cover was good, so I moved forward. Once I received the hard proof I noticed that the spine did not have the subtitle--on EITHER book! How did I miss that? Since I already had a hundred copies of book one I wasn't going to get it changed, so I had them add a small "book II" at the top of the spine and just keep the title Resistance. 

After receiving all the soft covers I had ordered of book II, I began waiting for the hard covers to arrive. And I waited and waited. I tried contacting Tate and didn't get any responses. After a month of trying to get through I began looking on the internet for comments from other authors. Turns out that Tate publishing was going bankrupt. They put out a statement (not getting in touch personally with their authors) letting people know how to deal with their projects. I did get all my rights and copies of the PDF files of both books, but never received the money back for the hard covers and never received the books themselves. I had two author copies of the hard covers that I'd already received--one I kept and one I sent to someone who had preordered it. *sigh*. Finally, I had learned my lesson and was done with vanity presses. I would finish book III and learn how to independently publish. I went to a conference and bought some books and started on my new journey... Then the phone call came from Greenberry Publishing, a "hybrid-publisher". Can you guess what happens next? Come back next week and I'll let you know if I learned my lessons or not...

Keep the faith! Keep resisting! And never give up.

Vanity Publishing

 

Before beginning my publishing journey with Westbow Press I want to explain the problem I have with the term "vanity publishing". As a new author looking for publication I read tons of disrespectful blogs and commentaries on vanity publishing. Every article made those seeking to publish non-traditionally as vain-glorious and pathetic. However, I couldn't help thinking that I wasn't publishing for my "glory" but because I, and others, believed that my story was good and would bring joy to readers. It started me thinking about how arrogant these "traditionally-published" writers were. Just because they got a break or got a publishing contract didn't mean their work was any better than anyone else. Plenty of self-published authors gained attention for their work because the READERS wanted it. Basically what I'm trying to say is if you believe in your work don't let anyone make you feel "vain" or "narcissistic" or any other selfish adjective. There are so many platforms available that the traditional publishers no longer have a monopoly on books...just be prepared to have to market and work your butt off to get noticed.

Now, back to Westbow. I was/am blessed to have enough income to put a couple thousand dollars into my work. I believed in it and others believed in it, so the idea of "you gotta spend money to make money" made sense to me. I did a little research and found that Westbow Press is a subsidiary of Thomas Nelson publishing (a large Christian publishing house) and submitted my manuscript and got accepted. An aside--EVERYONE gets accepted by these places. You are not somehow a genius or special because they accept it. They want your money...just so you understand. However, I believed my manscript must be something great and began the process.

I have worked with three self/hybrid publishing houses and Westbow was by far the best and the only one that actually paid me royalties. I found the process exciting. Unlike a traditional publisher, where you sell them your manuscript and they edit, format, pick the cover, write the back cover, etc., I was involved in every part of the process. From choosing the font, to creating the cover, to type setting (with help from professionals of course) it was a great learning experience. For instance, I learned that the first paragraph of every chapter or section of your book is not indented. They all begin at the left. I remember getting the proof of my book and seeing that and being aghast, because I knew that I'd indented. However my liaison explained that that was how books are published...and sure enough, looking through all my traditionally published books that is how it is set.

Sadly with Westbow Press they could not give me the exact cover I wanted (I got that when I switched to Tate Publishing), BUT the cover that we created together was cool. In fact some people like the first edition cover better (I do have some available for purchase). Anyhow, I had the option of getting hard cover books made, and chose too, which began the cover sleeve design. That was fun because while the soft covers had a front, side, and back, the hard cover had the folded sleeves to be "decorated." I took the time to look up quotes that had to do with the story and put them on for inspirational purposes. I LOVE book covers so for me it was a very special activity.

Finally the book was finished, published, put on line, copies sent to me and then...nothing. Marketing was the part of the process I did not figure on having to do. While the books were available online, they were not in bookstores. They could be ordered through a book store, but since there is limited shelf space most did not pick up unknown authors. That frustrated me, because while they did not lie about book store distribution, they did not actually explain that you wouldn't be in book stores. Also, book signings and book shows were an extra expense. Sure you could have your book in a catalogue, but if you wanted space you had to pay extra. Turned out EVERYTHING to do with marketing was extra or done on your own. Some thing, I see now as okay, but as a newly published author, who had put thousands into publishing and marketing I felt a bit cheated. (although in fact I was not). 

After a year of talking with different liaisons for marketing and getting nowhere, I began looking into different companies for my second book. Oi-vey!!! My next chapter was Tate Publishing...which started out good and ended up REALLY bad. But that is a story for next week!

Keep writing! Believe in yourself! And come back next week for more of the journey! And keep on RESISTING!!!

Editing

Like all new authors, in the modern world, when I wanted to learn about publishing I went to the world wide web. YIKES!!! 😲 Can you say information overload? Should you traditional publish? Should you self publish? Should you vanity publish? Do you need an agent? What's your genre? Is your genre popular today? on and on and on! I didn't know what to do. BUT, that was okay because before sending my work off to anyone, I knew it needed proper editing. So my journey into editing began...

Of course I went to the world wide web once again and found tons of editors and editing companies. Who to choose? My choice was relatively easy. I had a manuscript that had over 100,000 words and with people charging a minimum of 2 cents a word I was looking at over $2000 just to get editing done. I went back and forth with, "do I really need it? I've had it proofread by friends." So, I shared a few pages with editing professionals as a trial and quickly learned that, YES I really needed it looked over. 

As I said, I was happy to pay to make my book presentable, but $2000 was A LOT of money. I looked around and found editors that were willing to charge per page and other objectives, so I took a chance on Keidi Keating from yourbookangel.com . She actually gave me a discount because she felt it would be too much to charge...is that cool or what? Anyway, I sent her the manuscript via Word, and she took about 6 weeks to copy-edit it. That means she didn't just check grammar but also content. 

The manuscript I received back was notably marked up. She asked questions about content she didn't understand. She pointed out parts where I repeated myself and got bogged down. Obviously she corrected the grammar mistakes, and it was obvious to me that she had taken the time to really read the manuscript, not just run it through a computer. 

At first (as I think all authors feel when getting critiques) I was a bit stunned. My "magnum opus" 😏 needed work. I read her comments and suggestions and really mulled them over. I had to admit that there was quite a bit that needed to be removed, and I did it. Some things I kept, but after my review of her edits, I would say a good 1/5 of the book had been deleted, and it was all the better for it! I cannot stress how important it is to have your work edited or at least beta-read, AND to be open to constructive criticism. It may be difficult to hear, but when someone takes the time to read and give you feed back you should take it. Just my opinion, but it will make your story so much stronger.

Anyway...after correcting and then re-correcting and re-reading I realized that I had to accept that I had done the best I could, stop editing, and move forward with the process.  I finally got down to deciding I would "vanity publish", which is a form of self publishing, through Westbow Press. But THAT is a story for next week. Thanks for reading, and please leave a comment.