July 2007 Giveaway update

      Right now I have eight entries to win the hardcover version of Holly Lisle's wonderful dark fantasy Talyn: Frenzied Feline, MerylF, Trixie, Rain, Michelle, TL, Gloria Williams and Slim. If you haven't entered, you still have until midnight Friday night to enter. To enter, read Saturday's post here and comment on that post. Don't miss out on a chance to win this exciting, sexy book.
      I hope you had a good holiday. I basically did nothing. A little housework, a little napping, a little TV, a little filing, it was a little holiday for me. My back kept me from doing too much of anything. It is better but not healed. If I continue to be careful -- and I plan to be -- maybe it will be better by the weekend.
      I'm hoping I'll receive the second proof of Murder by Dewey Decimal by Wednesday next week. Then I'll look it over -- again -- and make the copyright page change, then order a third proof. That change is so minor, however, that I won't wait for the third proof to arrive (Famous Last Words) and will put the book out to sell as soon as it's published. I think. Depends on how long it takes. I'd like the book to go on sale July 15. Although that's just a date I picked out. I could wait until July 22 if I needed to. Decisions, decisions.
      I had a chance to talk to my published author friend the other day about self-publishing. She was very curious about how it worked. I told her that it wasn't hard for the most part, but that the proofing and editing had been difficult. Of course, I thought she was spared a lot of that because I figured her publisher would have copy editors. She then proceeded to tell me several horror stories about her battles with copy editors.
      Many times, the editors have introduced errors into the books. Examples: She had one copy editor change the name of a character halfway through the book. When she questioned the editor, the editor realized that she had somehow got the character from my friend's book mixed up with the character from another person's book. Her bad. Another time, she had a different editor change several double quote marks to single quote marks and remove some serial commas. On the quote marks, he was simply wrong, and on the serial commas, he was inconsistent. When she questioned him, he said that his "gut" did his editing. She told him that, in the future, she'd like for his head to be involved, too.
      My published friend has been publishing mystery novels for more than 30 years now, and she's seen the industry change a lot. She doesn't think it's changed for the better. She has thought about self-publishing a few of her earlier books that are now out-of-print. Her agent doesn't want her to do that, but the agent has been unable or unwilling to sell her older books to anyone else. She said her agent is contemptuous toward self-publishing to the point that he won't represent anyone who has self-published anything. At least that's what he tells her.
      She was at a book fair a few months back and met several self-published authors. She was impressed about how good the books looked and purchased a couple. One was bad, and she could easily see why it couldn't go the traditional route. The other was quite good. In speaking with the author of the second book, she learned that author had tried the traditional route for nearly five years before giving up and self-publishing.
      Of course, the advances my friend receives on her books are many times what self-published authors receive from sales. (Supposedly the most self-published authors sell less than 50 books. I sure hope MBDD does better than that!) So she's not going to looking at self-publishing anything new, but she'd like to have her out-of-print books available to her fans.
      You might be wondering why my published friend hasn't helped me get published. For one thing, our friendship is emails and chat. I've never met her face to face. Second, I've not asked for her help. I think it would put a strain on our tenous relationship for me to ask. Naturally if she offered, I'd happily take the help, but she would have to offer. Otherwise, I'll make it on my own. Or not as the case may be.
      I know I said I wouldn't mention the theater group here again, but I'm receiving a lot of pressure from my friends. Not to stay, no, to walk away now. See, I told the group I'd help them launch the patron drive so that means I'll be at the August meeting. My friends are telling me to not do that. However, I said I would do it, and I'm not one to go back on my word, however much I'd like to. And trust me, I wish I'd kept my big mouth shut. But I didn't so there I am.