Nathaniel Dean James's Blog, page 10

An observation about publicists

Nathaniel Dean James:

As a reviewer, I can back this up 100%. The last answer I received from a “publicist” who I politely turned away was, “We are sorry. We thought the book had been proofread.” This has something to do with the author, to be sure, but it also makes it clear that some publicists will quite happily publicize ANYTHING, whether they’ve actually seen it or not.

Originally posted on Indie Fic:

As this is an indie reviews blog, I think it is within my responsibility to point out a trend to my fellow broke, struggling authors out there:  Publicists, probably aren’t worth what you’re paying them.

[horror]Whatever do you mean!?[end horror]

I mean out of all the improper submissions to this review site a good 90% of them are made by publicists.  Publicists tend to do things like give me anything and sundry for the title of the book, except the title of the book.  They submit non-fiction or self-help to this fiction only review blog … the list goes on.  Really, if they can screw up the book submission in some way, they’ve done it.  Authors & publishers?  Some, but not hardly as often nor as badly.

So, just from a reviewer’s stand point, you’re really wasting your time and money on most of the publicists that I’ve…

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Using text-to-speech as a proofreading tool

I’m far too lazy to go looking all over the web for someone who has already pointed this out. I also don’t think it will kill anyone if I offer up my own experience.

Text-to-speech has been around for quite some time now. I remember downloading a program called Shit-Talker on my Window 95 PC back in the days when most of us still thought bankers knew what the hell they were doing. Not only could you write whatever you wanted it to say back, you could also manipulate the voice in a myriad of hilarious ways. My favorite was the “whiny fly”. It came out sounding like one of the Chipmunks with its balls stuck in a vice at the end of long and very disappointing day.

Technology has come a long way since then. I only caught up with it myself recently, after uploading an epub file to Google Play and inadvertently activating the built-in “read” feature. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t going to revolutionize the audiobook, at least not overnight, but it’s a far cry from the monotone, cyborg drone of the average satellite navigation system. That said, the minions in the basement at Amazon might well be working on a way to spread the chaos of its eBook empire to the comparatively calm waters of its audiobook satellite through some variant of this technology. Who knows.

Anyway, I found myself listening to this narration of my own book, and aside from being fascinated by the prospect of hearing my own words coming back at me in a pseudo-human, yet perfectly clear and tolerable voice, made me realize something far more significant.

As any author knows, proofing your own writing is a fool’s errand for the most part. A lot of it has to do with over-familiarity. Which is to say, you tend to zone-out because you already “know” what you want to say. But there is another factor at work, and this one affects authors, editors and proofreaders alike; the ingenious design of the human mind.

Unless you can consciously override the natural tendency to focus primarily on “meaning” in the flow of written words, as opposed to anomalies in the their structure (and I have no doubt that many good editors can), the mind has a tendency to “process-out” errors before they reach you. This isn’t a major issue if you’re only in it for the ride (and no doubt a boon to the many authors out there who do not believe in editing at all), but a considerable disadvantage if you’re determined to root out those pesky double words words, misplaced, commas(,) and the bane of all good people everywhere; the wrong world that’s spelled correctly.

The good news is, text-to-speech does a wonderful job of weeding these things out in a way that is surprisingly easy, and for the opposite reason; your PC or tablet can’t think. Thus the “override” is bypassed. The irony is, that when you hear these mistakes, the very thing that blinded you to them in the text does the exact opposite when you’re listening. Your attention is instantly drawn to words that are repeated, the misplaced pause (a good text-to-speech engine reacts to commas), and the word that makes no sense within the context.

This is not just a hypothesis. I listened to my entire book over a period of several days with a notepad at the ready. Bearing in mind this manuscript had been through two edits and several proofreads, I found over two dozen small but significant errors.

As I already mentioned, uploading your epub to Google Play is an easy way to access a good text-to-speech engine. I think the Kindle Fire already has this feature built in (I may be wrong). I know the Kindle reader app for Apple devices does. For Android users who don’t want to upload to Google, you can download the FBReader from the Play Store. If you do this, you also need to download the FBReader TTS plugin. You can also search for and install the IVONA custom voice packs (about 150MB each), which provide different accents (male and female), as well as foreign language versions.

I would seriously recommend adding this tool to your arsenal, whether you are an author, editor, or proofreader. Trust me, you’ll sleep better at night.

I didn’t say I could rite. I said I’m an author!

Sometimes, when I see a hornet’s nest, I get this uncontrollable urge to pick up a stick and pound it until I’m blue in the face. This has been happening more frequently of late as I set out to fulfill my obligation to the greater community as a reviewer of books.  

I shouldn’t really be writing this post. In fact, I shouldn’t even be thinking about it. No good will come of the things I have to say. No movement will spring to life on the back of the problems identified here. And no aspiring writer will ever thank me for suggesting they might be a hornet. But I’m going to say it anyway. Not because anyone wants to hear, but because I need to get it off my chest.

When I was about eight, I found an old, discarded vacuum cleaner leaning against the side of the apartment block where I lived. Something about the sleek, oblong contours of the housing invaded my prepubescent imagination with all manner of possibilities. But the one that stood out – the one that grabbed me by the ears and screamed, “pick me!” – was the idea that I could use the motor in the battered, old thing to propel a spaceship that would take me to the outer reaches of the galaxy and beyond. Anyway, I ran into some hitches during the design phase, one thing led to another, and the project was eventually scrapped.

Had I succeeded, I would not be writing this today. But I didn’t. Eventually, I came to accept that when it comes to space travel, a good idea just isn’t enough. You needed certain skills, for one. You also needed people who knew what they were doing to help you, materials, a suitable launch platform, years of hard work and tireless dedication. Basically, I grew up.

Many years later, caught in the throws of yet another great idea, I drew on this experience. This time there were no vacuum cleaners involved, only a fantastic idea for a book that would surely captivate the imagination of millions, and propel me to international super-stardom shortly thereafter. All I needed was a laptop and a little free time. After all, I was literate, relatively intelligent, and I’d read plenty of books. How hard could it be?

And so, if only for a little while, I lived the dream. The words came to me in droves. sometimes entire paragraphs would leap onto the page in a single mad frenzy of inspiration. At others, I would be scrambling to catch up with my overheated imagination, which knew no bounds and respected no limitations. In those mad, hectic weeks, subsisting primarily on a diet of Red Bull and rolled cigarettes, I gave birth to my masterpiece, one fourteen-hour day at a time. In fact, I was so confident about the prospects of success that I opened a publishing account with Amazon long before I reached the end. By the time I did, I already had a book cover uploaded, a synopsis written, and an empty bank account ready to receive my soon-to-be millions. And there I was, mouse pointer hovering over the “upload” button when it finally dawned on me that I didn’t know a god-damned thing about writing, editing, publishing, or even what I was supposed to do once all these things had been taken care of.

I’ll not lie, it was a sobering anticlimax. I had poured so much of my heart and soul into that book. The idea that it might not be everything I had imagined struck me as both unfair and cruel. And it was in this, my darkest hour, that I heard the voice of my childhood self whisper in my ear.

“Jon,” I heard myself say, “Where the fuck did you dig up the idiotic notion that an idea and the desire to achieve it were all it was ever going to take?”

Putting to one side my surprise at the profanity, it was a very good question. Where did I get the idea? Growing up, I’d had numerous and similarly harebrained ambitions. But all these I had cast aside with little lasting negative impact on my self-confidence. Why then did I believe so emphatically that being an author was any different? And that’s when I had the second major epiphany of my adult life.

It wasn’t any different!

People thought it was because they have an inherent tendency to ignore reality when it impinges too heavily on what they need to believe. And lacking any tangible barriers, that belief is free to soar to heights of absurdity rarely seen in otherwise perfectly rational human beings.

Needles to say, I capitalized on this insight and applied myself to the pursuit of rational ends. I didn’t give up on the idea of becoming an author. But I did divest myself of the notion that I was an author. I also took a step back and made a practical assessment of my work. What I concluded, rightly or wrongly, was that I had something. I was cautious to identify it with anything so lofty as talent, but there was potential for talent. And I set out to discover if, through hard work, dedication and time, I might achieve it.

Several years have passed since my rude awakening. In that time I have continued to write almost every day. I have also dedicated a good deal of time to research in an effort to gain a greater understanding of what publishing actually entails. What’s more, I continue to study the craft itself, reading works dedicated to grammar, style, character development, and setting. Whether I have yet to make good on my   aspirations remains to be seen. What I have not done – what I have abjectly refused to do – is publish my work prematurely.

And so we arrive at the final lesson in this short narrative.

Are you ready?

Hold on to your hats.

I spent money!

That’s right, I took some of the hard-earned cash out of my paycheck and invested it in my writing. And here’s why; I’m not an editor. Nor am I willing to delude myself a second time by pretending that I am. Many editors are also authors, to be sure. But these are two distinct disciplines, and ability in one is no guarantee of proficiency in the other.

The average novel consists of over 100,000 words. The ability to competently asses the applicability of each, as well as the myriad of intricate and often confusing relationships they bear to one another through the hierarchy of sentences and paragraphs, is no meager skill.

I once heard English described as the bastard son of a bastard son. As much as I love the language, I understand why someone might say that. English is an accident of history, built on a foundation of which logic is not always a part. I came face-to-face with this unpleasant truth some years ago in Budapest, where I was an English teacher for a while. Hungarian – a language I learned to speak fluently in my time there – is built on very clear and uniform rules. It has few nuances in use, and none at all in spelling. Yet for all my proficiency in speaking the language, I would never venture an attempt to write creatively in it. Literature is an art form. As such, it transcend structure, and cannot be taught like a science.

So what if you have the ambition, but you don’t have any money? Bearing in mind that we are primarily talking here about self-publishing, there are four things you can do. One, abandon the idea of self-publishing and find a literary agency willing to represent your work. Two, befriend the people you will need to get the job done. Three, get a better job or take out a loan. Or four, win the lottery.

The question of fairness, relevant as it may be to society in general, is not really of any practical value here. Abandoning your own work ethic in protest at the economic disparity of the age is not a rational thing to do. True, civilized society extends certain rights and privileges to the citizen. But the last time I checked, the guarantee of success in ones pursuit of choice was not one of them.

You can of course ignore everything I’ve said here and go for broke. I don’t particularly advise it, mind you. But in choosing that course, at least you have the full weight of the constitution behind you, which guarantees the right to the pursuit of happiness by any means not in direct violation of the law.

My advice would be to keep your chin up, your manuscript in your desk drawer, and your eye on the prize. If you can’t afford an editor, a designer, or someone that actually knows enough HTML and CSS to compile a professional eBook, approach an Indie publisher and see what they have to say. If they tell you to go back to the drawing board and start again, go back to the drawing board and start again.

And if every effort under the sun fails, is there some point at which you should just give up and throw your lot in with the circus, dream up a few stereotype-heavy, 5-star reviews and tell the world it can kiss your ass? No, there isn’t. But god knows, most people will.

What it Means to be an Indie Publisher

 

Disclosure: I am an Indie author. I own a stake in my own Indie Publisher. I review books.

Let’s be clear about one thing. I take no side in the debate over the rise of self-publishing and its implications for the industry. It has its down sides. It has its merits. But more importantly, it’s here to stay. All the arguing in the world won’t change that. More over, it was inevitable. Amazon may have kicked off the eBook revolution, but Jeff Bezos didn’t invent the internet, nor digital publishing. Sooner or later someone was going to realize there was money to be made from combining the two. For what it’s worth, I think Amazon has gone about it the right way.

What concerns me is where we go from here.  Revolutions are messy, haphazard things. The streets may not be lined with burnt-out cars and toppled barricades, but there are almost a million books on Amazon and many of them are a grim reminder of what happens when law and order break down. I think the question we must ask ourselves as independent publishers is just how much disorder is enough to hold off the status quo, and how much is too much?

Like most reviewers, I see a lot of books. Many are good. Some are great. Far too many are neither. I’m not talking here about enthralling characters or ingenious plots, I’m talking about spelling words correctly and understanding the difference between a sentence and a paragraph. Basics, in other words. When I see a book that has been thrown together and “published” without so much as a basic edit, I cringe. When that same book is being touted to potential readers on the back of a dozen five-star reviews, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

I have  a great deal of respect for anyone who puts in the time and effort to write a book. It’s an achievement anyone should be proud of. But writing a book and publishing one are two very different things. For one, publishing a book is not just a form of self-expression, it’s an economic undertaking. As such, there are both financial and moral implications. You could argue that the quality of a book is more subjective than say, that of a piece of furniture. That’s true, but only to an extent. Which is to say, there is a level below which neither could be considered an honest representation of what they claim to be. In the case of a kitchen sink the act would be condemned as fraud. I honestly don’t see why a book should be any different.

So we are clear, I draw a definite distinction between a writer who uploads a manuscript for sale, and a publisher who does the same. I do not consider the former to be “publishing” in any realistic sense of the word. Sharing is probably a better term for it. Amazon and it’s competitors could do worse than to draw a clear and visible  line between these two platforms. Not because it would necessarily have an impact on the quality of published books, but it would at least allow those of us determined to up the stakes for the Indie market a point of reference. By making this distinction clear,  perhaps some pressure could be brought to bare on those claiming to be conducting business, rather than just seeking an audience.

It is my opinion that if the Indie sector wants to consolidate its gains, some effort will need to be made by all of us to propagate at least a minimum standard. How this might be achieved I don’t know. Amazon is making too much money to be overly concerned, while most Indies aren’t making enough. All I know is that if we don’t do something, we’ll be playing second fiddle to the old guard indefinitely.

 

Ukraine – A Tale of Two Hypocrisies

Unless you still believe Francis Fukuyama’s assertion about the “end of history,” the situation in the Ukraine should not come as a surprise. Nor is it anything new from a purely historical perspective. Russia has been a looming threat to the independence of the Ukraine for as long as both have existed. The belief that the current century is somehow immune to the test of time is the trick every generation plays on itself, for better or worse. Peace and civilization alike are as much the product of prosperity as a recognition of the horrors of war. So it should come as no surprise that the current economic climate is putting pressure on both. Especially in those regions where the squeeze is being felt the hardest.

It may take a while for the truth to sink in, but the United States is not the global power it was even a decade ago and much, if not all of the moral authority it once exercised is gone. That’s not to suggest for a moment that Russia is any better suited to picking up the gauntlet. It’s not. One need only flip between the Russian sponsored news channel, RT, and its counterparts in the US to see how absurd the situation has become. On one side, failed presidential candidates are spouting claims of Russian imperialist ambitions while the other, in its rather comical determination to emulate its American rivals, makes counterarguments that blatantly ignore its own equally sordid political past.

One thing is clear: all this mudslinging will do little to soothe the anxieties of those caught in the middle, who can only watch as their country becomes an ideological battleground for two political heavyweights whose respective changes in fortune will likely open the door to similar crises developing in the border states of Eastern Europe.

The irony will surely not be lost on historians, many of whom might be marveling at how little has changed in this part of the world. Once again, a strong but resource-dependent Germany finds itself faced with the prospect of an ambitious Russia, keen to extend its sphere of influence in Europe. As for the United States, it’s difficult to imagine it will do much more than it already has. Faced with the prospect of a Europe heavily dependent on Russia for its energy needs, and an electorate at home unlikely to sanction any form of open aggression, there is little it can do now but come to terms with the new geopolitical state of affairs.

As for the prospects of the Ukraine, it’s hard to see how the country will come through this without making some tough, and possibly very unpopular choices. If Russia goes ahead with its plans to annex the Crimea, who can afford to stand in its way?

If there is a silver lining to all this, it’s that the chances of a wider military conflict seem slim. In this regard, perhaps Fukuyama was at least partially right. It may be too early to predict a replay of the Cold War, but it would also be naive to dismiss the possibility entirely. What does seem certain is that even if such a protracted standoff were to ensue, few can be under any illusion that the outcome of another war in Europe would be the end of civilization as we have come to know it, if not the world. One would like to think that faced with such a prospect, cooler heads will prevail now as they did then.

Ukraine – A Tale of Two Hypocrasies

Unless you still believe Francis Fukuyama’s assertion about the “end of history”, the situation in the Ukraine should not come as a surprise. Nor is it anything new from a purely historical perspective. Russia has been a looming threat to the independence of the Ukraine for as long as both have existed. The belief that the current century is somehow immune to the test of time is the trick every generation plays on itself, for better or worse. Peace and civilization alike are as much the product of prosperity as a recognition of the horrors of war. So it should come as no surprise that the current economic climate is putting pressure on both. Especially in those regions where the squeeze is being felt the hardest.

It may take a while for the truth to sink in, but the United States is not the global power it was even a decade ago and much, if not all of the moral authority it once exercised is gone. That’s not to suggest for a moment that Russia is any better suited to picking up the gauntlet. It’s not. One need only flip between the Russian sponsored news channel, RT, and its counterparts in the U.S to see how absurd the situation has become. On one side, failed presidential candidates are spouting claims of Russian imperialist ambitions while the other, in its rather comical determination to emulate its American rivals, makes counterarguments that blatantly ignore its own equally sordid political past.

One thing is clear, all this mudslinging will do little to soothe the anxieties of those caught in the middle, who can only watch as their country becomes an ideological battleground for two political heavyweights whose respective changes in fortune will likely open the door to similar crises developing in the border states of Eastern Europe.

The irony will surely not be lost on historians, many of whom might be marveling at how little has changed in this part of the world. Once again, a strong but resource-dependent Germany finds itself faced with the prospect of an ambitious Russia, keen to extend its sphere of influence in Europe. As for the United states, it’s difficult to image it will do much more than it already has. Faced with the prospect of a Europe heavily dependent on Russia for its energy needs, and an electorate at home unlikely to sanction any form of open aggression, there is little it can do now but come to terms with the new geopolitical state of affairs.

As for the prospects of the Ukraine, it’s hard to see how the country will come through this without making some tough, and possibly very unpopular choices. If Russia goes ahead with its plans to annex the Crimea, who can afford to stand in its way?

If there is a silver lining to all this, it’s that the chances of a wider military conflict seem slim. In this regard, perhaps Fukuyama was at least partially right. It may be too early to predict a replay of the Cold War, but it would also be naive to dismiss the possibility entirely. What does seem certain is that even if such a protracted stand-off were to ensue, few can be under any illusion that the outcome of another war in Europe would be the end of civilization as we have come to know it, if not the world. One would like to think that faced with such a prospect, cooler heads will prevail now as they did then.

Grammarly – the best possible way to completely ruin your writing

What better way to kick off my writer’s blog than with a horror story!

Okay, maybe that’s not quite fair. I did end up using Grammarly in the end, although not in the way it was intended.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the program, Grammarly purports to be a piece of software that can check your writing for grammar and spelling mistakes. Go onto any website aimed at writers, and chances are you will sooner or later see one of their banner ads.

Grammarly makes some pretty bold claims. Try this one:

“Academic, professional, and creative writings all require unique styles of editing. Grammarly’s technology adapts to your writing needs, ensuring that no matter what your project may be your grammar is impeccable. Just choose the genre of writing you need edited, and voilà! How might you utilize Grammarly’s proofreading prowess?”

Adapts to your writing needs? Impeccable? Wow! At first glance one might think editors the world over might be scanning the job section of their local paper for new career options. But I doubt it. First of all, to anyone familiar with the basics of English grammar, the notion of a program capable of delivering “impeccable” results will be a joke. And it is.

I first came across Grammarly while looking for a way to give my edited manuscript a final “once over” before sending it off to my publisher. Ironically, I did end up using it for just that. But here’s the thing; I know enough about grammar to be able to ignore both the 99% of “errors” discovered, as well as the recommended fix for remaining 1%. Had I let the program loose on my manuscripts and simply accepted what it had to say, I would have ended up not with a novel, but an incomprehensible mess. In the interest of fairness, I copied a few paragraphs out of  one of my favorite books to see what Grammarly would make of them. Needless to say, the result was frightening.

This got me thinking about the countless thousands who turn to this program for help with their manuscripts, essays and letters every day. So I went onto the website to have a look at some of the testimonials left by users. According to the company, Grammarly has over three million happy customers and some of the things they have to say about it are so ridiculously over the top that no one but a member of their own marketing department could possibly have come up with them.

My conclusion; Grammarly might improve your writing if you don’t speak English very well, but it won’t do much for anyone else, and it sure as hell won’t teach you how to write. If improving your written English is your aim, get a hold of a good grammar book, read a lot, and practice even more. And when you’re ready for editing, get a hold of a human one. They might be a little harder to deal with (and they’ll cost a little more), but they’re also capable of thinking. Something your Windows PC or MAC will never do.