Back Again

I have been neglecting my blog. 


Part of the reason is that I have been very busy, but the major reason is that I have been conflicted over just what my blog should be about. It was always geared toward eBooks, and it will remain that way, but I want to enlarge the scope of what I'm interested in. At one point I said I would use the blog to review eBoooks. The problem with that is I can't read fast enough to maintain a recurring blog. And to say that I liked a book or thought it terrible is not enough. I think I would like to go more deeply into the process of writing as applied to eBooks. 


What do I mean by that? Well, since my last blog I've read two eBooks that I believe have actually made it to the best seller list. One was The Mill River Recluse by Darcie Chan and the other The Girl in the Lighthouse by Roxane Tepfer Sanford. I rather liked both of them, but they both could have been better. The Darcie Chan book was more finished, a tighter book, but like the Sanford book, it could have been improved. What both books suffered from was a lack of content editing. 


There are two parts to editing a book. First and simplest is copy editing. For some crazy reason I always get lose and loose mixed up and never see it in my own writing. This is where a copy editor comes in. Make sure the commas are correct, the typos removed, etc. Although this seems a never ending job, it is really the easiest of the two editing tasks. The more difficult one is content editing. Both books lacked this, even though they have both been well received in the self publishing world. One reason for this is we don't have a very discerning audience out there, and part of it is because content editing is hard. 


I entered my review of The Girl in The Lighthouse on Goodreads and commented that the book was too long and drawn out in it's second half. I think I said something along the lines of "I get it already, move on." Oddly enough the author commented back to me that she appreciated my review because no one had ever reviewed her work in that way. I've gone back and looked at the reviews of the book and find they all praised it; no one commented on the drawn out content. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think the book could have been much, much better if it had been edited down, made tighter.


And here, I think, is the problem with self-published books. They are not edited strongly enough for content. This is what a publishing house does for you. The self publishing author has a loved-one read it, or a sympathetic friend. Really, is your mother going to tell you the scenes between Mary and John go on for fifty pages too long? Of course not.


Traditionally, writers have sought out other writers as critics. It's not an accident that the Bloomsbury Group produced so many good books. This is great if you happen to be an upper-crust Brit, live in Paris in the twenties, or New York at any time. It's difficult if you live in a small town in Nebraska and everyone you know thinks you're a dreamer because you want to write.  And if you do manage to find a group of other writers near you, you may find that while you want to write dark literary fiction, they all want to write romance novels. It should be possible on the web to form communities of writers with like interests who can read each other's work. I think this is what the self publishing world needs. 


Let's not be naive. Most of the self-published authors we find on Amazon or wherever, are there because the have been rejected by the publishing houses. Rejection in any form is had to take; receiving a rejection notice with your name spelled wrong after working for two years on a book you love is devastating. Believe me, I know.


I am probably the least successful writer working in America today. I began writing when I was thirteen. I started with my autobiography. When I was fifteen/sixteen I wrote my first novel. I have written, I think, eleven novels in all since and innumerable short stories. I am now seventy-one years old and have never been published- not once - until now.  One of my old novels is now going up on Amazon (Good People), another is in the works, and I am working on a new story. You could take from this the idea that I must be a terrible writer. I don't think so. In all those years I've never stopped reading, which is essential for an aspiring writer. I have read thousands of books. And I think I can tell a good book for a bad one. And in my writing I have learned to cut, and cut again.


I believe in the this new world of books. I think the publishing industry is in the midst of a revolution they have no idea is coming. All the self publishing world needs is a blockbuster and everything will be thrown into turmoil.  You can, of course, read from this that I hold a bitterness against the publishing industry. I don't think that's true. I have had a very successful life, have enjoyed all the books I've written, and have no regrets at all. If I were somehow in my dotage to write a masterpiece praised by the world, I would become the new J.D. Salinger and hide from it all. The old publishing industry, after all, gave me all the wonderful books I've read in my life. I just think their time is coming to an end.


But the new world of books, the self published world, needs a lot of work.


What I would really like to do is get the thousands of writers out there, who toil away on their PCs with stories they love, to somehow band together and help one another. How you do this is beyond me. But it can be done and a great book will come out of it.