Well, I did it. After several false starts, my pirate memoirs have finally been released. What started out to be Memoirs of a Buccaneer: 25 Years Before the Mast is now 30 Years Before the Mast, given that a lot of tumult had occurred in the intervening five years that not only consumed my personal life, but added another 10 chapters to the book.
I discovered a lot of things as I wrote this book, which consists of approximately 135,500 words over 432 pages. You can buy it right now, right here, by the way.
First, I’ve written books for others before. I think I’ve ghostwritten about a dozen. It is far easier to write a book for someone else than one that carries your name on it, by the way. There is so much more pressure to get it right.
I only know this because I spent the entire weekend doing one last proofing of the book. Even though it had been through two other rounds, there were still a few nits. To find them, I read all 432 pages backwards, one paragraph at a time. That is a difficult thing to do by the way. But it makes you read the sentences for accuracy, correct spelling and grammar. You can’t get caught up in the story itself.
It takes a lot of discipline to write a book, too. When I ghostwrite books for others, they pay me. When you write your own book, no one pays you to do it these days, unless you’re a big name in the marketplace. Rarely do you get a sizable advance, at least one that can tie you through financially as you slave over every word for days on end. You only hope that on the back side enough people order your book to make it worthwhile. In my case, I’d like to cover my expenses.
The good news is that it doesn’t cost as much to publish a book these days. Outside of the ISBN number, which ran me $95, my book hasn’t cost me anything, at least in terms of out of pocket expenses. Lots of blood, sweat and tears, sure. But in contrast to the old vanity printing days, publishing a book isn’t expensive.
I can thank places like lulu.com and createspace.com for this. The latter is Amazon’s self-publishing arm. You’d be amazed how many books you buy on Amazon.com are self-published these days. The publishing houses are having hissy fits about the whole print on demand concept, as it is killing their business model. In fact, Amazon regularly haunts the sales numbers on CreateSpace looking for the next big author, then signs them to do another book for a nice advance.
I have to say that it is quite the ego boost to see your book for sale on Amazon.com. And while I only get something like $4 a book when one is sold there, people can now find my book anywhere in the world and purchase it. That’s pretty cool.
I also get the bragging rights now. I am officially a published author. My book is as official as it gets, certainly on a par with anything Stephen King has written. We both have ISBN numbers, bar codes on the back and our work can be purchased from the same places. I can get distribution in bookstores across the country now, all thanks to this miracle of modern publishing. And digital versions for iBooks and Kindle are in the works.
I’m not going to say that it’s easy for the average person. I am blessed to have been a writer and designer all my life, so designing the book, which is really the more difficult part, came relatively easy for me. I knew how to do all the formatting, design and prepress work that is required to get the book to pass muster with the printing folks, including the cover.
I was originally very worried about this because I saw all the rejections that were being made to people’s books, seemingly for the smallest things. Mine passed review the first time.
But it was hardly done. Three versions later, I finally have it all correct. The first time I had a small typo. The second time I had to upload a new draft as I had forgotten to include my ISBN number on the title pages. It’s always the little things.
Now, I have the writing bug. I have a proof of the book next to me. It’s surreal seeing it in its three dimensional glory – a real printed book, indistinguishable from any others on my bookshelf.
It’s not, however, the first book I’ve ever written. Many, many years ago, I started Brewster McCabe: Ace Private Eye. It remains unfinished, largely because in Key West one year I nearly doubled the book’s size in a manic moment of writing, only to lose it when Word locked up during the Save. Gone was the perpetrator, the motive and the murder weapon, never to be seen again.
So it has been on a timeout since. But now that Memoirs is done, it’s time to finish Brewster. I will also be releasing the first volume of RobZerrvations in February, I think.
That alone has been an exciting adventure and shows the power of writing a little bit each and every day. You see, these columns take me about an hour, usually in the morning before my mind becomes consumed with client issues. Five a week at a thousand plus words really adds up. I figure I will have written about 250,000 words by the end of this year. That’s almost double the words in my Memoirs. Once I pick the best of the best for the year, I should have another book about the size and scale of Memoirs.
So dawns the era of me being a “real writer” as one of my exes once chided me for not being. She asked me when I was going to finally become a “real writer.” It led to the end of our relationship. But now I have the answer – and she can buy it on Amazon for $17.95.
Out on the Treasure Coast, hanging out in my writer’s garret (OK, so it’s the corner of the apartment that would ordinarily be the dining area),
– Robb