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Mixed Emotions
By Administrator | June 23, 2007
While playing around online last night I found that Google Books has scanned about half my novel, Noble Savage, into their book search function. At first I was a little miffed, but then I realized that they may have done me a favor. If anyone should happen upon my book and start reading, they’ll find huge sections missing, so they may actually want to get their own copy. The odds of that are pretty low since the book was released four years ago and I’ve sold almost no copies. Still, who knows…stranger things have happened…
The story behind this book is an interesting one. Back in the mid-1990s, I wrote a short story based on a dream; a not-uncommon experience for me at that time. Everyone at the time was worried about Y2K, the turn of the century, the turn of the millennium, and many other things. Societies have long feared the unknown future and this has often led to mass hysteria and I started wondering what would happen if someone charismatic used that fear to gain power and bring about the “end of the world” through artificial means. My short story grew to a full-length manuscript based on that premise and, of course, I wasn’t able to sell the idea to anyone because the writing was still pretty amateur-hour.
I decided to write another story based on the same idea, but with definite differences: the main characters would use Mayan prophecy to bring about panic concerning the year 2012 instead of 2000, which had by then already passed. This incarnation of the idea was much stronger and had a lot of interesting background on the lives of the Mayans. When I came across a contest sponsored by a small print-on-demand I submitted my manuscript and promptly forgot the whole thing when “real life” took over. Some time later, I happened to come across a mention that I’d placed second in the contest, but the publisher had been unable to contact me due to some e-mail problems. My prize: Second Place: The second place book will be published as an e-book by Llumina Press. It will be given its own unique selling web page on the Llumina site. A full-color cover will be designed by Llumina artists, and the book will be reviewed by an independent E-Writer Magazine reviewer, and the review will be published in the magazine. Will write a press release about book and send it out to thousands of media contacts. I contacted the publisher and made a deal to have the book come out in hard copy instead of e-book format for a small fee.
Time passed and I received the typesetting to review before the book’s publication. I opened the file…and found that I’d submitted the wrong version of my manuscript to the contest. This was my first, less polished, story with all the problems that had caused my complete reworking of the idea. The problem was that we were at a point in the process where I couldn’t switch manuscripts without paying another fee and I just didn’t have the money so I decided to double-check the typesetting, grit my teeth, and dive in.
The book came out with a gorgeous cover provided by one of the publisher’s artists. Finally, I held in my hand something that represented years of work and struggle, and I was almost as proud and excited as I’d been when my daughters were born. I now find myself in a position where I’m not considered a published author by many people, and bookstores won’t stock my book, because my work came out as a print-on-demand. Noble Savage is mostly available on the internet through my publisher, Amazon.com, and bookstores such as Borders and Barnes & Noble. Several reviews, positive ones, can be found through places like Amazon.com and the Midwest Book Review. The trouble is that I’ve started feeling like my book is an adopted or foster child that hasn’t really been accepted by the family who took them in; and I haven’t given poor Noble Savage the support and encouragement necessary to sell copies.
My experiences as a writer have taught me some very important lessons. First, always double-check work before submission to be sure everything is correct. Keep work organized (I can’t find my second version of Noble Savage and fear that the manuscript may be gone for good). Finally, don’t be ashamed to promote work that might, in your opinion, not be your best since the work is still an honest representation of your time and effort.
I have mixed emotions about Google Books having put up so much of my writing. On one hand, I’ve received very little monetary compensation for the years of work I put into the book and I feel somewhat gypped. Yet I’ve also learned that the reason I write is not to be rich and famous, but to express thoughts and ideas that I hope might inspire and educate others. I guess I should thank Google Books for making my work available to readers who might not otherwise know the book exists.
If anyone ever happens to stumble upon the book, of course…
Topics: Writing, Entertainment |
