Remotely Here
My historical memoir was published this week. The team that turned the manuscript into the book was excellent. We worked well together, although we never met. All our communication was by e mail. I was in San Francisco, the structural editor was in Berkeley, the third proofreader in Wisconsin, the cover designer in Brooklyn, and the designer and composer of the pages in Astoria, New York. I reviewed the work onscreen, never saw it on paper until I held the proof copy in my hand: Flight: A Memoir of Loss and Discovery by an Aviator’s Daughter. I am the publisher as well as the author.
How different was the experience with Turning On, my first book, in 1969. After I pulled the final page out of my typewriter, straightened the stack of pages, and secured the manuscript in a cardboard binder. Because it was too late in the day to deliver it to the publisher, Macmillan, I left it on my desk and went out to dinner with a friend, worrying all the while that the building where I lived would catch on fire while I was absent, my only copy of the book would be destroyed. That kind of thing actually happened to some writers before computers and automatic backups. Years of work down the drain.
After I delivered the precious parcel to my editor the following morning, I was free. All the copyediting, proofing, design and production were in the publisher’s hands. All I had to do was review the proofs. That was easy, no sweat. The cover glowed, stood out on a bookshelf. The marketing was also the publisher’s job. Turning On did well. I recently googled it and was surprised by many reviews I had not seen at the time. Lately I’ve seen the book referred to as a “Sixties’ classic.”
Well, we all know it’s a different world now. I published Flight on KDP Amazon, which means that I needed to do all the work that a publisher does after accepting a manuscript. Self-publishing (independent publishing) is a respectable path now, many good works see the light that way, although The New York Times still dismisses it as “vanity press.”
Experts advise, however, that you have to radiate confidence in your marketing efforts if you want the book to sell. Aye, there’s the rub. I have confidence in what I wrote, and the quality of the production. I am sure that those who read Flight will appreciate it--assuming they hear about its existence. As with all the books I’ve written, this one taught me a lot, including the possibilities of working together remotely.
But marketing? Well, here’s a start: Buy this book. It’s available right now, online, from Amazon KDP Publishing. And if you have a comment or question, write me at this website.