My book is live on amazon

We uploaded the pdf and approved the proof last night. I checked this morning and, voila, my book is live online at amazon.com. Thrilling and chilling. Will anyone want to buy it?  Will they read it? Will they like it?  It's terrifying to lay yourself out there like that, baring your soul to the world. What will the naked truth turn out to be?

And here it is on amazon.co.uk...

Now to get the Kindle version up and start promoting it. The real work begins. I have just created a page for it on Goodreads. So much more to do.

Short Memoir by a Ukrainian American Irishwoman

I wrote a short memoir for a competition to be included in the Fish 2017 anthology. It's about my journey as a Ukrainian American Irishwoman and my search for home. I started developing my thoughts in my blog about what it means to be Ukrainian in the diaspora. This competition forced me to edit them into a story. The reviewer loved my piece and suggested I pursue a radio version as the story is very relevant and needs to be told. So my next project is underway. I have contacted the RTE Documentary on One, and am developing a proposal for their consideration. This could be fun.

Final phase of publishing for The Naked Truth

Yesterday, I completed the proofreading of the Create Space printed proof.  I found quite a few typos, so I took the opportunity to fix a few little things I did not like as well. It's interesting how much more you see in print than on the screen. We made a new pdf and I checked that to make certain nothing went wonky, which can always happen. It was fine. So Alex uploaded the revised pdf to Create Space.

This morning we received a new proof pdf to check, which I did again. Despite their indication that there were a few low res images in the book, I did not see anything I could identify as low res. We're going with it.

Final word count: 95,480. Final page count 400. Plus author bio and promotional pages for our other books. We always take the opportunity to promote the others when we can.

So yipee! I am finished with this phase. Now the marketing begins in earnest. Wish me luck.

Two spaces at the end vs one

No.  We don't use typewriters any more.

No. We don't use typewriters any more. 

I've been hunted by people who chide me for the modern ailment of instinctively using two spaces at the end of a sentence. The young ones rant about how it is totally unacceptable to use two spaces. That all the style guides use one space.

Welcome to the computer era when spacing is precisely calculated. I grew up typing on a manual typewriter. Yes, manual, long before electric. The spacing was erratic. In typing courses, which were required in high school, we learned to type two spaces after a full stop punctuation mark. What becomes rote at that age stays with you for a lifetime, trust me.

Look back in history and you will see that it was typesetters in the UK who first decided that one space would be the accepted standard in order to alleviate the mess in typography at the time. People were using one, two or even three spaces to make different typefaces more readable. To eliminate the inconsistencies, they made a new rule. That rule was adopted in America much later.

I happen to think that sentences are much more readable with two spaces between them, especially as my eyes age (I'll spare the rant about type size and color selected by young whipper snappers for another post.). But I'll accede to the masses, as it's a small and invisible point that could stand in the way of being published.

So when I am finished with a manuscript, I simply find and replace two spaces with one. See if you can tell the difference? At least it gives me more characters to tweet. Just wait 'till I whip out my typewriter when the grid goes down!

Oh, and by the way, in their new style manual (2017), the APA has returned to two spaces for readability.  Chicago Style Manual recommends one.

English is hard

Did you know there are 3000 words in English for being drunk? But having many ways of expressing yourself is only one of the difficulties with the English language. For me, homonyms are the worst. Read and Red, sell and cell, fair and fare, wine and whine, meet, meat and mete are just a few. For years, I thought Puff the magic dragon had something to do with ceiling wax rather than sealing wax.

Goodreads

I chose to express my author profiles differently on different websites.  On amazon, I wrote short bios that a publisher would likely prefer. On Goodreads I chose to write a more reader focused bio. Why, because I think Goodreads is run by readers and it's the person not the book that may appeal to those who administer it. We'll see if my logic works.

And here's a review of Turtle Bunbury's excellent book 1847 that I posted on Goodreads.

The Author Profile

I have been busy creating and updating my author profiles on sites like amazon, Goodreads, and Smashwords. The latter is a really interesting resource for indie publishers and self-publishers. It distributes eBooks to everyone but amazon. They take a small percentage of sales revenue and the author gets the lions share. Can't wait to see how it works.