My Writing Week: Issue 3, Year 5


Hi all,

Best Place to Self-Publish a Book

For the past year or so I have followed a thread on LinkedIn that asked the question: What is the best place to self-publish a book? Here are a few things I have learnt:

  • Createspace (Amazon) comes up as the best self-publishing platform. It is relatively easy to use compared to other platforms and not many authors seem to have problems with it.
  • Smashwords rarely has a bad comment posted about it.
  • Until recently, I had not noted any references to Apple’s ibooks. This is probably due to writers having to use Smashwords or Lulu to prepare their ebook before it can be sold in the ibookstore.
  • Never use Publish America. It is a total rip off. The fact that it still exists means many writers do very little publishing research. Authors accuse Publish America of doing things like charging $350 for the placement of 15 copies of their book in Barnes and Noble. Many authors say they know they have sold books, but Publish America says they have not.  Publish America then seems to make it virtually impossible for an author to get the rights back to their non-selling book.

Typos

I am reading Hugo nominated author Ian McDonalds’ The Dervish House, published by Gollancz. Recently my reading was interrupted three times in thirty or so pages by typos. Twice a word was repeated and a word that should have been singular was pluralised. But in the hundred pages I have read since I have not noticed any more typos. Perhaps the proof-reader read those thirty pages on Friday, after a big night out.  

My Divine Writing

I wrote and submitted an article to DiVine magazine last week. It is about how I hid my Ulcerative Colitis from everyone. I will let the universe know when the article is published, which seems a bit odd when the article is about hiding my disease.

My Novel Writing.  

Much of my writing time last week was taken up with the Divine article. I had computer problems which always seem to happen at this time of year. I also spent a lot of time in the garden picking tomatoes and beans, watering and waging war on fruit flies. And then there was the cricket.

So I didn’t achieve my goal of 1000 words of the novel on any weekday. My best effort was 750 words on Friday. But, but, but…chapter thirty-four was so hard to write as the POV character kept on thinking up new evacuation supplies and activities for the crew to perform.

All up I added 1970 words to the now 70,900 word novel. This week I hope to do better.

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