A WRITER'S WIT
Believe that story false that ought not to be true.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Born October 30, 1751
CREATESPACE STAFF: A PLEASURE
Let me enumerate the ways the staff at CS have served me in a most professional and mannerly way:
- To begin, the woman in sales answered all my questions, patiently explaining the various aspects of my contract: the cover, the interior, the Library of Congress database assignment, marketing essentials, the Kindle conversion.
- After I was assigned to a team, I had an initial talk with someone and had a chance to ask all the questions that had accumulated in my mind: An odd accent in a composer's name that MS Word didn't include? Royalty structure? Do I need a release from the artist whose work I'm using for the cover? What kind of timelines are we working with? And many more. All answered.
- After the book was nearly ready to be released, I had more questions: Which Kindle format will I be using? (After the hard copy is finished, I will fill out a questionnaire.) Pricing? (I set the price by responding to an "action" item in my account.) After I'd already approved the cover, I discovered a change I wanted to make in the back cover text, and I wondered if I had to count that as my only round of changes included for the price? (No, they were kind enough to waive the changes, demonstrating that CS has flexible policies. When I inadvertently received a bill for the changes, they went into my account to rectify the situation.)
Then when I decided to publish a collection of fifteen of the first twenty stories I've published this last decade, my days took on a different look: proofreading the copy not once but three times (including help from a fine copy editor) until I felt all the "issues" were cleared up. Often, as I uploaded the latest round of changes, I still had much to do on this end: marketing, publicity, readings, blog posts in which I would talk about my book, story by story, social media, online advertising. There has always been something on my plate, and I learned something else. As long as this book is in print and I care to sell it, there always will be something to do!
NEXT TIME: NEW YORKER FICTION 2014
NEXT THURSDAY (or the next): LAST INSTALLMENT OF DIY PUBLISHING, A Look at the Final Product!