I’ve Been on Hiatus Again
Add comment July 1st, 2010
From this blog, that is.
I have five books in progress as I write this. Tuesday I completed the first pass, over 600 pages, of a nurse practitioner’s textbook. After that I zoomed into correx—the corrections and author’s changes—for a 1,000+ page novel, which I had begun while working on, and alternated with, the nurse practitioner’s textbook. Somewhere along the way I also knocked out correx on the latest chapter of a physicist’s memoir containing transliterated Sanskrit.
Most recently, like an hour ago, I sent off a second pass with author’s changes and some corrections on a book about the Alaskan pipeline. This one is particularly timely, what with the off-shore oil-drilling disaster in the Gulf still raging.
All that means tomorrow I dive into making pages for the student guide Taking Charge. I finished the design template for this book in March, if memory serves, so it will be good to see how the book finally goes down.
And those are the reasons why this blog has been on hiatus for a good five or so weeks. It’s not like I simply had no time to blog—which I most certainly did not—but not a single idea to blog about sprouted while I was so consumed with making books. (I hope to stay that busy throughout the remainder of the year.)
But one thing that keeps snaring my attention is an ongoing discussion on LinkedIn, I think, titled something like, “Does Anyone Else Wish Self-Publishing Would Go Away?” It turns out that the person who started the discussion did so expressly to get a controversial and, therefore, long-lasting exchange going. She succeeded.
Truthfully, however, it needs to be made clear for those who may not know: Self-publishing is no longer automatically synonymous with “vanity publishing.” I say that not because three of the five books I mentioned above are to be self-published by their authors, although they are my proof that self-publishing can be legitimate and self-published books can be works worthy of publication.
I have only walked away from potential projects for reasons other than that the fee offered three times in about 20 years. Both times these were to be self-published books on subjects that I found either objectionable or not helpful to my reputation. As much as I think everyone has the right to try to find an audience, I also have the right to not help ideas I do not support into the light.
That all said, Vive la self-publishing!