Flying solo: when you're ready to self-publish...

The decision to self-publish is a courageous one. It demonstrates any writer’s or artist’s confidence in his or her own abilities, and a firm belief in the project.

This faith may not have been forthcoming from publishers to whom the work was shown -- but even the smallest understanding of how the major publishing houses operate should remove the feelings of failure and doubt which are suffered after the receipt of the first, or the thousandth, rejection slip.

In fact, writers across three continents have amassed a set of horror stories regarding their experiences with publishers -- stories which chill the bone marrow.

A rejection slip feels, to any writer or artist, like a rejection of oneself. Publishers and agents of integrity respond politely, with a few encouraging lines, even through the medium of a form letter. But many publishers and agents in today’s difficult market don’t see fit to respond at all.

In a majority of cases, your work will be returned to you in the SASE you provided, without any letter at all (which is certainly better than the worst-case scenario, in which an agent or publisher is actually insulting and abusive; it's not professional behavior, but it happens) and you wonder, did anyone even look at your work?

The answer is frequently, no one did, and the reasons for this are many and varied.

Publishers are not “reading” all the time. They have financial budgets, and lists which are filled for the whole year, frequently by March. When the lists are filled, they stop looking at manuscripts. You didn't know any of this when you submitted to them -- if you'd known, you'd have saved your time, money and nerves.

To prevent themselves drowning in the tide of manuscripts coming in from first-time writers (some of whom are genuinely “not ready yet”), most major publishers only read materials which are first filtered through by agencies.

Your problem swiftly becomes one of finding an agent who is reading! And, an agent who is not going to charge three-figures (in Australian dollars) per hour to read and edit. Understandably, most agents who serve the American and European markets would prefer to be sitting at a desk or restaurant table with you, and thrash out the pros and cons of your project over coffee. It can be extremely difficult to edit a book by remote control via email or physical mail; and one can forgive these agents if, being inundated with local New York and London writers, they choose not to collaborate with a writer on the far side of the world.

The reasons for the hundred-and-two rejection letters you’ve received could have nothing at all to do with the value of your work, or its publishability. They could easily be about business, budgets, and even about geography.

You might have an absolutely wonderful book ... but it will languish in your desk drawer if you don’t grasp this bull by the horns and wrestle it down yourself. Landing an agent has become as long and hard a chore as landing a publisher used to be. Some writers are never lucky enough to make the connection, and this failure can have nothing to do with the quality of their work.

How long do you walk this rocky road? The hunt for an agent or publisher should be given at least three years; but if you're still beating your head on this wall, throwing a lot of money at this problem, after seven years, it's time to seek out alternatives. Go on much (or any) longer, and you'll "burn out," lose your desire to write, and quit.

Understand that the leviathan of the publishing industry doesn't care if you quit. There are tens of thousands of writers just like you. They're skilled, with good stories to tell. However, the world does not have enough eager readers to support enough professional publishing houses to accommodate every good writer.

More and more, as times get harder, publishers are cutting their losses, amalgamating, merging, sacking staff, all in an effort to stay in business. The hardest part of this is that they will obviously choose to run with established writers who sell lots of copies.

Marginalized writers, or small niches, have been "feeling the chop" for more than a decade now. If this process is of interest, read this series of posts by Mel Keegan, in which the whole process of decay is discussed -- as well as the new industry which is still arising, phoenix-like, from the ashes of the old:

PART ONE: New York Publishing: Worms in the Big Apple
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/new-york-publishing-worms-in-big-apple.html
PART TWO: Learning to think outside the corporate box
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/publishing-learning-to-think-outside.html
PART THREE: Independent publishing- local goes global
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/independent-publishing-local-goes.html
PART FOUR: Digital publishing comes of age
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/digital-publishing-comes-of-age.html
PART FIVE: Publishing as sheer entrepreneurialism
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/publishing-as-sheer-entrepreneurialism.html
PART SIX: POD Publishing -- getting megatrendy
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/pod-publishing-getting-megatredy.html

Self publishing. Flying solo. The idea raises goose bumps, doesn't it?

Taking the first step in this process -- making the decision to "just do it" -- is difficult. For decades, there has been a stigma attached to self-publishing. It’s been labelled vanity publishing, and we are all warned against getting involved with it.

It was said (and forty years ago this was probably true), if your book was good, it would find a publisher. Many years ago, publishers were in command of publishing houses; they prided themselves in discovering new talent, and were always on the lookout for a gifted newcomer. In the golden days of publishing, such people could also afford to take a financial risk -- make a gamble on a new writer or a new book, and not suffer terminal economic wounds in the event of a mistake.

In these days of global recession, you’ll find accountants at the helm of the big publishing companies. Accountants have little interest in art, and are looking for the most marketable book; they’re hunting for high sales, big returns. Previously unpublished writers (or writers from modest-sales genres) are very low on their list of priorities ... and there are just so many fine, aspiring writers out there. More are churned out, degree qualified, by the world's colleges every year. The accountants can always fill their publishing quota with what they want and need. Celebrity books and best selling novelists come top of the list; and the list itself is much shorter than it used to be.

So where is the newcomer who is in no way connected to anyone on the inside to get a start? How does one break into an apparently impenetrable bastion, if you don't know someone on the inside? Having a friend of relative in the business has always been a wonderful opportunity, but most of us aren't so lucky. Doors are not about to swing open for us.

Which leaves many writers looking for viable alternatives.

The good news is, things have been changing lately, and changing quietly, behind the scenes, where it can be easy to ignore or not even see what’s going on.

The Internet has brought access to worldwide markets to your door; virtually every desk has a computer on it, and modern software is unspeakably powerful. The world has gone digital, and it’s suddenly possible to print very small numbers of a book. Or one. There are “empty warehouse” publishers. There are digital publishers and eBooks, and ebook "readers" which sit in the palm of your hand with nine hours of battery life before an hour's recharge, and these devices are actually (more or less) affordable.

(We'll look at the hardware in another post. We're going to review the reading devices and the software that runs on them ... be on the mailing list, and don't miss a thing!)

Little about the publishing industry is the way it was even five years ago, and it’s more possible now than ever to take on the “big guys,” play them at their own game ... and go into it with the expectation of winning.

It can be done. It's being done every day. It takes skill, determination, faith in yourself and your work, an enormous amount of energy, ingenuity, a spirit that won't be beaten, and a few bucks. But first, it takes a kind of epiphany -- an awakening...

You must hurl yourself over the first step, and turn a deaf ear when you should hear the term “vanity publishing.” In many ways this is an obsolete term. It harks back to the era where a good book would be published, and where a veteran publisher took a great joy in discovering a new writing talent.

Those days and over, and it's possible they might never return. Yet in 2009 there are more aspiring writers and artists on the fringes of the market than ever. What's to become of them? It's true that 90% of them are "not ready yet," or simply not good enough to make grade. They might have nothing new to contribute, or not enough integrity to settle down and learn a new trade -- the trade of the professional wordsmith. But 10% are good enough to make the grade, and this percentage works out to thousands of writers -- perhaps tens of thousands, globally -- for whom the opportunities to get into the traditional publishing industry are far too few.

After years of trying, the most determined writers arrive at the point where they think, "I can publish it myself and sell copies on the Internet. Why can't I do that?"

And you can -- if you can get past the stigma of self-publishing, which is still confused with vanity publishing, even now.

For marginalized writers (newcomers or niche market authors), the traditional publishing is a risky game. You may begin to break in professionally, with small printruns from a small publisher, only to find that corporate mergers close your publisher down or curtail their list. This is a very common scenario. All at once, after ten or twenty years dealing with a "proper publisher," you’re starting over, even though you have several or many published books to your credit. You can find it difficult or impossible to find another publisher, and after years of trying you'll reach the same point as the new writer who never found a publisher at all: "I can publish it myself and sell copies on the Internet. Why can't I do that?"

It's most important not to confuse self-publishing with self-marketing, or to confuse either of these with Vanity publishing. Vanity publishing can be a recipe for disaster ... self-publishing can open the door to fantastic success -- and we're about to look at the ocean of difference between all three of these types of publishing.

As someone once said, there is no better revenge than success!

The whole endeavour begins with information. If you're on this post, we assume you’ve already climbed several learning curves to get here:

• you’ve made yourself into a good, solid writer;
• you’re a good copy editor, too: your work is ready to go, and you know it;
• you’ve computerized yourself and your workspace;
• you've bought, and mastered, the DTP software...

In fact, you’ve arrived at the very last step in a thousand-mile journey. The only problem left is, this step is as wide as a river ... and you’re searching for a bridge. On one side is yourself, with a book (or more likely a pile of books, since you've spent the last 3 - 7 years trying to get a decent agent who will actually represent you instead of wasting your time and sending you bills), and the ambition to turn the damned books into earners.

On the other side of the river is The Reading, Buying Public. You need to connect the dots. These books need to find their way into the hands of those readers, and the Internet is the way to make it happen. But, damned if you can make the dots connect up. You're hunting for that bridge to bring it all together.

This bridge is made of several components, and by far the most important is information. You already have the faith in your gift and your work, or you wouldn’t be reading this. The financial costs of pre-press and printing won't be so high that some useful elbow-space on your Visa or MasterCard won’t cover them. A few hundred dollars, max. Maybe less.

In fact, the intention of this series of posts is to cut those costs down to size and get the manuscript to morph itself into a book, the way a caterpillar becomes a butterfly ... and then to get the book out there in front of readers. The decision -- to buy or not to buy? -- will be made not by an editor, publisher, or the buyer for bookstore chain. In the new marketplace there's just YOU and the READERS. You find them, you impress the hell out of them, and they'll happily give you $10 for the fun of reading your book.

After the sale, you must give them their ten bucks' worth. It better be a good book, because to make a living at this, you need what marketers call returning customers. You need to build a client base of readers who loved your first book and are dying for your next one. So it behooves you to double-check everything, make sure you're as good as you think you are, before you slap a cover on this novel and go to market.

Information is the key, and the most crucial component of this bridge. With information, you can bring self-publishing within your reach, physically and financially.

This series of posts is not about the marketing aspect! We're going to call this "Metamorphosis: From Manuscript to Book." When the printing process is finished, you’ll have something to go out there and sell -- this is the goal of this series. Marketing is a whole 'nother subject: you sell copies, make back your investment start to see a profit. That's a vast subject in itself, and we'll tackle it separately.

Marketing-wise, at this point we assume you’ve done your research, you know your markets. You are sure the sales are out there, if only you can figure out how to get the project off the ground. You're confident of your work: you're good enough to publish professionally, and have been good enough for some time now. It's killing you, not being able to find a decent agent or a publisher.

Time to fly solo. Your thousand-mile journey is about to end. Be on the mailing list or subscribe via RSS! And now --

Turn page to
Self publishing: why would you do it -- and how?!

The writer who hates to type

Do I have to type the darned thing? Must I use a computer? I hate typing. I wanted to learn to write here, not type!

You'll have to type eventually, but nothing prevents you from writing in longhand. Jackie Collins is famous for writing those massive tomes of hers in 50c exercise books, which are leather-bound when she's done! However, she can afford to pay a typist ... inquire locally as to how much this will cost before you make the decision to outsource your typing. You might be appalled. Some writers have no idea how to write passionate fiction at the keyboard, and yes, they write by hand. But the bottom line is, it has to be typed eventually.


If you're going to use a typing service, consider your handwriting. Do you write well ... or, like most of us, do you scrawl? Most adults evolve their own handwriting, and some of us are the only ones who can even begin to read what we're written! If a typing service can't understand what you scrawled, it can't be keyed in. If you do intend to use a typing service, it'll be most important to learn to write extremely clearly, in longhand. Or relearn how to do this, if the last several decades have reshaped your handwriting into ancient Greek!

If you really hate to type, by all means get the book finished in longhand. Then bribe your friends and family to type for you. The fact is, you could learn to write and never learn to type at all, if you're handy enough around the house. Do the dishes, wash the car, mow the lawn, walk the dog, babysit the kids. Have people key in a few pages here and there, and pretty soon, you're done.

Another caveat: have your helpers key it in on a computer. That way, their typographical errors, misreadings of your scrawl (!), and misspelled words, will be easy to correct when you start your proofing and editing work.

Bottom line: yes, eventually the work has to be typed ... but maybe not by you ... and ten people, all of them bad typists, can collaborate on a computer-based project, and achieve a perfect, seamless result in the end!

Turn page to Learn to love your keyboard...

Learn to write ... but learn to type ... a bit!

Learn to write ... but learn to type ... a bit!

No law says you have to be an expert typist, typing 100 words per minute. You can be a two-finger typist if you like, and type as slowly as you please. You also might be daunted by the prospect of having to learn to 'touch type.' Don't be, because no one cares if you watch your fingers while you type.

In the last twenty years or so, when one had to learn to write, and to read, as a child, a lot of people learned at a computer. The vast majority of folks under 30 right now are already well acquainted with keyboards. But if you're a little older, never worked in an office, never had the need to type anything — you might easily have some of the best novels ever written locked up in yor head, but they're going to have to get out somehow!

Try a little bribery, as mentioned above. Or (and you might shudder as you read this, but give it some serious thought before you leave it behind), consider investing in a computer and either having the kids or grandkids come over and show you how to use ir properly, or get a book, or take a course ... or stay on this website, and we'll talk you through the rudiments! We're also going to take a close-up look at computers for writers: what you need to buy, and what you don't need or want, but the salesman will sell you anyway, if you let him, for an extra suitcase full of money.

Learning to type ... a bit ... is the best way to solve the problems involved when you've decided to learn to write fiction, stories, books, novels, absolutely from scratch. Computers to make typing easier, but there'sa downside: using them us not quite as simple as turning them on. You do have to learn to use a mouse (which is a pointing device, used to 'point at' and 'cliclk-to-activate things on the desktop. The desktop is the computer's basic screen, before any program is started up. The 'things' on the desktop are 'icons' — you click on them to choose which program you want, and start it.)

In short, there's a small learning curve before you actually get started learning to type. But when you can tell your mouse from your moitor, save files, open folders ... and all the stuff five year olds are doing without even thinking about it (!), you'll be ready to conquer the keyboard. There are some very good typing tutors, if you want to get into this seriously, but remember, the objective is to learn to WRITE, not to type. It's your words, your plots, ideas, characters and situations which are important, not the process by which they get inside the computer.

Using a computer also gives you the ability to have the machine do a quick proofread for you. It's called 'spell cehcking,' and it will certainly pick up spelling errors, should you make them. However, it's far more useful for picking up typographical errors, which is sees by matching tyor typing against its database, the vocabulary of words it knows.

A word to the wise. Never trust the computer to proofread for you. It'll miss almost as many errors as it finds, because it doesn't read the contextual meaning of sentences, so it can't tell when you meant 'through' and typed 'threw,' or you wanted 'through' and got 'though,' or wanted to say 'then' and typed 'them' instead. Unless there is a genuine error in a word (rotatoon = rotation, planer = planet, swign = swing, and so on), the spell checker sees nothing. The human eye is the only tool which will find many typos, becuse even now, as smart and powerful as computers are, they don't actually read. They match individual words against a monstrous database. When you decide to learn to write, challenged pop up everywhere: you just discovered you can beat the machines!

We're going to talk more abouot computers in another post: what to buy, what to skip, and how to save some money. We'll be looking at the hardware (the machines thesmselves) and software (the programs which run on the machines), and you can choose which is right for you before you put down a penny.

Learn to write ... love your keyboard!

Learn to write ... learn to love your keyboard!


When you make to commitment to learn to write, and write well, you're actually looking at several layers of skills, from the most mundane to the most artistic and poetic. We live in an electronic world. TV and DVD, music, the Web, communication, publishing, reading, driving, flying ... there's not one darned thing you can do these days that doesn't involve digitizing something.

If you're an artist, you'll either scan your artwork when you're finished, or (and more commonly now) you'll create the whole piece of work inside the computer. Most artwork, in 2008. has never known a sheet of paper or canvas panel, nor felt the caress of a pencil. If you're a writer, your work has to end up inside the computer sooner or later.

The term 'learn to write' can also be understood as the process by which a young child figures out how to hold a crayon and draw the alphabet ... but in our world, the first words a child makes are more likely to be keyed into a computer.

If you write your book by hand, it'll be typed up by someone, somewhere, and the typing process will happen before a publisher takes a look. Sorry, guys. You might be horribly allergic to typing, but, like goldenrod and cottonwood, it's not going to go away! You'll have to grab the Kleenex and soldier on. Learn to write = learn to type. You don't have to like it, but you will have to do it.

Having said that, there are many ways to make the process easier!

Turn page to Learn to write ... but learn to type ... a bit!

Proofreading: weeding out spelling errors

Spelling errors are less common these days, due to the computer's spellchecking capabilities. (If the manuscript is 'only' typed, be vigilant.) Since the computer will pick up genuine spelling errors that result in 'gibberish,' you have the possibility of a spelling error being 'corrected' into the wrong word entirely in the spell checking process. The trick is ... when you're either proofreading or copy editing, you have to know the difference!

The computer will find these:
Brign = bring; folllow = follow; wheere = where; enrole = enroll; contemporery = contemporary; definate = definite; residentiel = residential; perequisite = prerequisite; solem = solemn; perogative = prerogative; mountainus = mountainous; affinnity = affinity; proffesional = professional; sherriff = sheriff; acoustic = accoustic; erradicate = eradicate...

The computer will not find these:
Compliment = complement; their = there; though = through; principal = principle; bright = bight; cost = coast; bow = bough; pallet = palate; crate = krait; bare = bear; price = prize; buoy = boy; gorilla = guerilla; wen = when; thee = the; broker = broken; sash = sack; cloth = clothe; sooth = soothe; reed = read; pore = pour; wait = weight; bred = bread; court = caught; jeans = genes; mite = might; lice = lies; spice = spies; wrack = rack; teeth = teethe; meet = meat; write = right; rigt = wright; wheel = we'll; urn= earn; bark = barque; flaw = floor; wring = ring; sword = soared; ice = eyes; cote = coat; mote = moat; maid; made; moan = mown...

In English, there are literally hundreds of words that sound alike, are spelled differently and have vastly different meanings. It drives tourists mad ... it makes life interesting for you, when you get your teeth into copy editing.


TIP: when you read anything, anywhere, be keenly aware of WHAT you're reading. Notice, remember or jot down things which are curious; look them up later. Keep a notebook of "weird stuff." It'll soon start to make sense.


The other side of the coin of "correct spelling" is the question of which spelling system you intend to use. UK/Australian English is quite different from American/Canadian English ... and both are correct. For the purposes of copy editing, you'll need to know which is which.

If you're writing with a publisher in London, Edinburgh, Sydney or Melborne in mind, it would be best to use the UK system. If you're targeting the New York publishers, it's very important to use the US spelling system. (These days, American authorities can be a lot less tolerant of spelling differences than their British, Aussie and Kiwi counterparts!)

There is only one cardinal copy editing (or writing) sin, and this is to mix up the two systems, willy-nilly. You'll just show your (sorry, guys!) ignorance and carelessness if you use British spellings here and American spellings there. And we've seen writers change from one to the other without a care, using "recognize" here and "recognise" there. This is actually bad mannered toward the editor or publisher ... not a good idea, when this is the person you're trying to impress.

So, what's the difference between the two spelling systems? In fact, there are hundreds of words which are spelled differently, but for copy editing purposes, you need to be aware of two things. One: the rules. Two: the exceptions to the rules.

Space and time don't permit us to go into them all, but I'll look at the broad rules, and make a recommendation here...

Buy an American English dictionary, and a British/Australian dictionary, and keep them to hand. Websters Riverside is a good American English reference; the Maquarrie dictionary is the best Australian English reference, and for UK English, get the Oxford. When you're copy editing, keep these on the desk, and when you're less than 100% certain of what you're doing ... check!

The rules for the different systems of spelling used in the States and Canada, the UK and Commonwealth countries (on a broad-spectrum level, with the caveat that there are scores of exceptions!) are these:

TIP: Know who you're writing for, and chose the spelling system accordingly. Never swap and change between systems inside the same document. Consistency is paramount. Remember to set your computer's spellchecker for which spelling environment you want for a specific job. Know the rules ... and know the exceptions!

Stay with us, while I plow our way through the Copy Editing 101 series of posts; we have some useful tips for picking up all kinds of errors.

Turn page to Grammatical errors...