Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot, cooking and eating in northwest England)
705
I could do with a lesson. As some folks now, I am an author in real life. But I have never quite got to grips with when to use a colon and when to use a semi-colon. Fortunately, the publisher’s commissioning manager also edited my last two books. Once a deal had been agreed, I would finish my efforts and send it off to him on a CD. Six weeks later, he’d return a hard copy, marked up with all his corrections (together with his invariably helpful suggestions for how I might word something better). Colons, or lack of them, were always a prime target. And there was then always a very tight deadline to get the amendments done and a final submission got off to him.
That company published three of the books. Another publisher did a fourth, with no editor. Which led me to give an account of an incident on one page. And, two pages later, recount the same incident, only differently. I do not know how many times Mrs H & I read the manuscript but it was several. And the error, of course, didnt get spotted until it was in print.
Good anecdote. I think that’s what they call that. I might be in need of another schooling.
I once aspired to that, and don’t even remember when I took the more traveled path. Daughter stepped up, lasted longer than I did, was an editor for a bit, and now does “SEO” with the promise of contributing a bit of content. Its crazy.
If one can write, is organized, know what one is writing about, and types reasonably well then content pretty well writes itself. The biggest challenge is getting down to word budgets. “If I’d had more time I would have written a shorter letter.”
The challenge is to be read. Getting a publisher is hard. Self publishing is a lot of work. Either way getting in people’s hands is far from guaranteed. Online content needs to be found to be read. SEO is a waste of money in my opinion. If you have good content it will be found, but in the morass of dreck on the Internet you really benefit from social media tags and references. All of that amounts to access: access of the reader to content and of the writer to readers.
I’ve found speaking engagements to be the best access to readers with a little Facebook and Reddit sprinkled in.
Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot, cooking and eating in northwest England)
714
Absolutely. My field is pretty specialist. Getting the publisher for book #1 was relatively easy. I was not surprised that they rejected #2, as it was a difficult format. I then approached a company that did “assisted self publishing”. Basically, I paid them a fee to do the technical work and, once in print, they would act as a traditional publisher marketing the work and I would recoup the fee I’d paid through sales. It was technical success but a very disappointing business relationship. When #3 came along, I approached the first publisher with confidence and was disappointed to be rejected. I mulled it over for a while and, in due course, happened to mention the issue on a forum. With in hours, I had a message from another member saying he had just become commissioning editor for that publisher and I should send him the manuscript. Within a couple of weeks, it had been accepted. I was writing #4 when I met the guy at a conference. Mentioned the book’s subject and then, literally on a handshake there and then, he said they’d take it. I was, as we say here, gob-smacked.
Released my first novel almost one year ago and working on my 2nd now. Once I retire from teaching it will be easier to just write. Read about a veteran middle school teacher and a cat and how they help each other cope with the trials life gives them:
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Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot, cooking and eating in northwest England)
719
Indeed. All four of my books were written after I retired, although much of the content for one had been published as an internet article some years before. I do wonder if it might have been better to have started from scratch but so much of the account was fixed in my head by then.
I’ve been through three major hurricanes on the Texas coast plus scores of smaller hurricanes and tropical storms and depressions, three of them produced biblical flooding.
Ya never know how they’ll turn out. Maximum power outage was three weeks, and it gets kinda hot down here.
Ouch. My max was 6 days . . . thankfully in the winter when I could layer clothes, bundle under blankets and light a fire. One or two mornings I even woke up too warm. And after the streets were plowed I could drive-thru for coffee and hot sandwiches.
I once had a 24 outage during summer and it was brutal. Luckily my local delivery spot brought a few large cups of ice with my sandwiches, but if it had extended to two days it would have been a hotel or a stay with friends\family. I don’t even want to contemplate three weeks of Texas heat without power.
Alicia was a small intense hurricane. We got the eyewall while my brother on the other side of town watched the whole thing on tv, although there was damage everywhere.
We stayed at his place at night, the wife worked and I went to the house everyday to clean up the debris and saw up the oak tree that landed on the roof, clean out the fridge and let it air out. I’d recently caught a mess of blue crabs and they were nasty.
