iUniverse tells me this morning that my manuscript has received their Editor's Choice Award. From what I gather, that's a 90-to-94th percentile "grade". I guess I'd be more pleased about that if I knew what kind of stuff I'd been up against.
Now, the part of the process which I am least qualified to do begins: designing and writing the marketing plan. Brian Hallbauer from iUniverse called me this morning to start that discussion, and we're going to talk again on Monday. Marketing is (duh) the most expensive part of the process, (Runs high 4 to high 5 digits for a campaign) and also has the highest variability for ROI: until the final tally is in, you don't know if it was worth it.
Monday we begin planning. Here goes nothing...
Friday, March 18, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
Self-publishing: gut-check
Submitted my post-line-edit manuscript. Yay!
The problem (if there is one) with self-publishing is this: it requires a daily gut-check from the moment you sign up until you get the moment you cash your 'break even' check. If you publish through the established system, you get a strong indication that you WILL sell as soon as the publisher accepts your work. With self publishing, you can fool yourself for much longer, and for me, that's been hard. We shall see.
The problem (if there is one) with self-publishing is this: it requires a daily gut-check from the moment you sign up until you get the moment you cash your 'break even' check. If you publish through the established system, you get a strong indication that you WILL sell as soon as the publisher accepts your work. With self publishing, you can fool yourself for much longer, and for me, that's been hard. We shall see.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Line Edits
First let me say: Wow, I don't want a line editor's job. It's important, and apparently in-demand, but it is not my kind of "fun".
Of the changes proposed, I accepted a couple hundred, made alternate changes to three, and rejected five. I figure that's a pretty good indicator that the service was not only valuable in detecting mistakes, but also in correctly fixing them.
The two most common things fixed by this edit were "putting a comma before an 'and' in a list" and "not spelling out numbers". Both of which could be automated, but there are SO MANY fiddly exceptions that you really do have to check each one.
There was a lot of other good stuff though. Places where my sentences were overly complex, and they tweaked them a bit, a couple of places where I'd used "alternate spelling 1" and they preferred a different spelling. Although technically not a line-editor's job, they even detected an unsupported statistical claim, and flagged it. Overall, I got a lot more than I'd expected, but I'd also paid more than I expected, so I figure I got what I paid for, and that's the important bit for me: I really do seem to get what I pay for.
Of the changes proposed, I accepted a couple hundred, made alternate changes to three, and rejected five. I figure that's a pretty good indicator that the service was not only valuable in detecting mistakes, but also in correctly fixing them.
The two most common things fixed by this edit were "putting a comma before an 'and' in a list" and "not spelling out numbers". Both of which could be automated, but there are SO MANY fiddly exceptions that you really do have to check each one.
There was a lot of other good stuff though. Places where my sentences were overly complex, and they tweaked them a bit, a couple of places where I'd used "alternate spelling 1" and they preferred a different spelling. Although technically not a line-editor's job, they even detected an unsupported statistical claim, and flagged it. Overall, I got a lot more than I'd expected, but I'd also paid more than I expected, so I figure I got what I paid for, and that's the important bit for me: I really do seem to get what I pay for.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)