Nothing to See Here, Keep Moving

So, just a warning.  Today's blog is unlike any other blog I've written.  It's kind of like my books, it's written by me and generally for me.  I find sometimes that writing things down helps me put them in perspective and allows me to move on.  If you're still reading this, you're probably going..."What the hell is he talking about?"

Well, this blog is about being a self-published author and some of the doubt and challenges that come with that.  Although I suspect some of it applies to any author.  And while I've blogged in the past about why someone should give the Verdan Chronicles a chance and read the books, this blog will probably give you plenty of reason not to read them.  In other words, just keep moving.

I've been at this for several years now.  It started as a "bucket list" item.  I'm not a spring chicken any more and before I pass from this realm, I want to tell my story.  And I want that story to sit nice and pretty on a shelf in my office so I can look at it and take personal satisfaction that I actually did it, I finished the story.  I'm not ashamed to say that I'm doing this for me and to that end, I'm making good progress.

But along the way I shared with some friends and coworkers how I was spending my weekends.  They became very supportive and a few of them wanted to actually read it.  Some of them wanted a physical book and some of them wanted to be able to download an ebook to their Kindle or Nook.  My son suggested I try Lulu, and so far it's been a decent choice.

Early on the feedback I was getting was pretty positive.  Keep in mind that only about 4 people actually read the first book or two, but comments were good to "one of the best books I've ever read in this genre, and I read a lot."  Yes, I put that last comment in quotes, because someone actually said that to me.  Don't worry, I didn't let it go to my head.  I never really thought my books were that good.  But it did make me wonder, how good are they?  Are they any good at all?  Or do they suck?

It's a few years later.  I've taken some of the feedback from the first half dozen people to read it and tried to improve the books.  The first book has been edited nine times.  Finally, still having no idea if its really any good I decided to commission an artist for the covers and pay Lulu to professionally format the books and push them out to several distribution channels.  I don't need to tell you the cost, you can check that out for yourself on Lulu.com.  Let's just say that for someone who doesn't have a lot of savings, it's a considerable amount of money.

So now more people have read it, I'm probably up to a dozen or so now, and I'm getting more feedback.  All the feedback I'm getting is well-intentioned.  And I'm being very honest in that I really appreciate getting the feedback; good and bad.  Yes, there still is some good.  So far the comments regarding the story have all been positive.  Ok, so there was a comment about one plot point begin contrived, but when I explained to the reader that they misinterpreted where the story was headed, they felt much better about it.  No, people generally like the story to one degrree or another and just about everyone wants to keep reading to see what happens to the characters.  If I stop there I feel very good about the books.  No, I feel ecstatic.  Heck, I do a happy dance every time I hear someone actually bothered to procure and read it in the first place.  I'm still amazed when anyone takes the time and effort to read something I wrote.  I can't say thank you enough.

So yeah, then there is the well-intentioned constructive feedback.  I think most of the genuine concern is around grammer and punctuation.  When asked, "who's your editor?", my reply was "the worst person possible, myself."  And I mean that.  If I do something wrong, what are the chances I'll correct it?  Or even know to correct it?  So how bad is it?  I think that's hard to say.  Two people have taken exception to some inconsistent use of tense and some of the punctuation.  Both are English majors, so I would not argue with them.  No one else has expressed a concern, so maybe if you're not an English major it's not so bad.

The truth is that their comments are dead accurate.  Even I saw some of the issues with my overuse of past tense or 'passive voice'.  I tried like crazy to correct that in my writing, but I think what ended up happening is that I corrected it in most situations, but not all, thus creating examples of inconsistent use.  In terms of punctuation, I'm still waiting to see some of the examples the person is sending me.  I would not argue the claims, but in my defense, if Microsoft Word grammar check didn't underline it, i assumed it was ok.  I'm thinking a lot of us are guilty of that.

There have been a couple of complaints that I use way too many characters and it gets too complex.  But for every complaint about that I've had a compliment regarding how much the reader enjoys the complexity.  There have been a few comments that I'm generally not as descriptive as I should be and in some cases my descriptions are bland.  That's another area I'm working on and would have to agree.  I can see this story unfold very clearly in my head and the vision comes back into perfect focus when I read my story.  But am I translating that in enough detail for other readers?  Probably not.

Of course one reader commented that I should not be afraid to add description and let the story run long; a lot of author page counts are extremely high.  Actually, in my case Lulu does set some page limits depending on the format I want to use and for every single page I add the cost of printing the book goes up.  Since I'm self-published, my books are not mass produced.  They are printed one at a time as orders are placed.  They are not cheap.  To keep reader costs down I add very little markup to my print books.  But that's a weak excuse.  I'm just afraid I'm not talented enough.  And I do find that thought depressing.  In those moments I feel that my books suck and ask myself again why I'm bothering to do this.

So that's it in a nutshell.  I love feedback, but feedback can make me sad.  Sad because it validates my worst fears.  But then I remind myself that I did this for myself.  I take heart that people are digging the story and starting to care about some of the characters.  If I had to pick between a good story or perfect grammer, I would take a good story every time.

So if you read this and are thinking about reading the books, here's the general feedback.  The story is good.  The characters are engaging enough, but there are a lot of them.  The descriptiveness can be lacking and at times not every exciting.  The use of grammer is inconsistent and ranges from average to problematic.  For most it isn't a problem, but if that type of thing bothers you, it'll bother you here.

The other thing that depresses me is that at this point the books are what they are.  Once they are published, there is NO opportunity to go back and fix them unless I want to pay Lulu more money that I don't have.  I'm afraid all I can do is be sensitive to the feedback and try to make future books better.  But unless something unimaginable happens and thousands begin to read the books, the funding just isn't there to publish them again.  Sorry.

So that's it.  Do I feel better?  Not really.  I've always felt good about telling the story and still do.  But I feel bad when a reader is disappointed in what they read and I contributed to that.  I'm always going to feel that way.  As much as I'm happy they took the time to give me feedback (bad feedback is better than no feedback), it frustrates me that I can't go back in time and fix it for them.  So do I continue to encourage people to read my books?  Not feeling it at the moment.  But I am still motivated to get them published for me.  Maybe tomorrow I'll feel better about promoting them.