A damned lie

Hey everybody wish me luck. Tonight I’m having an author reading from my home-made book, Mean-Spirited Tales.  I’ll read two regular “mean” stories and part of one horror story in honor of Halloween.  It’ll be at a local café.

My friend came by the other day.  He told me that he finished my book.  I asked him if he saw any errors in it and he said no.  I did catch two in the Kindle version, before the hard-copy was published. I fixed them though.  It would’ve sucked worse if there were errors in it after I had paid somebody two hundred and fifteen million dollars and ninety nine cents to edit it.  I’ve seen this before – books from “reputable” publishers with errors.  I saw a mistake in An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England.  I wonder if Brock Clarke saw it.  It made me not feel so bad about the errors in my home-made book.

Before I published my book I read this WSJ article about another home-made book that did really well.  So I did the same thing this author did as far as advertising, etc.  I might have missed something though, because hers sold a gazillion copies – ha!  She said she didn’t spend more than $1500 I think.  I spent less than that.  Let’s see, she bought a review from Kirkus – check – she bought an ad on Goodreads – check – but I swear I don’t remember her saying anything about an editor.  I did have friends look at some of my stories.  The one published in Calliope, Night Terrors, only needed a couple of edits for clarity so I thought I had a handle on editing, although ‘they’ say never edit your own stuff.   Ah but bunk it!   Maybe I’ll do it for my novel – hire a cute boy editor.

Of course I’m one in the legions who harbors a fantasy that my home-made book will be the next self-published success story.  Aghh!  At this point I’m just happy that people are reading the book that I wrote.  No that’s a damned lie.  I want to be the next self-published success story.