Publishing And Writing

Two very different skill sets. Results vary. Interests vary, and for more reasons than mere mechanics; ask any writer who's had to do a book tour just how much energy they would choose to spend on self-promotion vs. actually writing, then extrapolate that to having to do every step but feeding the press yourself. There are good reasons for dividing that labor.

Larry Correia did a great job on his self-published first novel. His subsequent works from a bigtime pro publisher benefit, I strongly suspect, from his attention to detail and understanding of the process. SF and fantasy -- perhaps especially his style, a cross between Travis McGee, Doc Savage and Unknown -- is pure-dee hell to proofread unless you're hip to it.

M. Z. Williamson probably does his first drafts longhand and works 'em over into fast-moving narratives by hand; he's published by one of the big guys, too, and I'd bet his MS is pretty error-free.

Typesetting these days is a lot more GIGO than it used to be.

Me, I struggle; even in the second edition, I'm catching mistakes. I like my writing but by the fourth time through, readin' that stuff gets to be real work.

On the other hand, Carl Bussjaeger writes interesting stories and turns out as clean and well-formatted a manuscript as the first two guys cited...and A) his publisher has yet to send Check One plus B) they didn't properly reformat for publication. I know this because reading Net Assets the book is like reading over Carl's shoulder with added typesetting typos. Simple stuff, straightforward stuff that even I know as standards in the biz, like the _italicize_ convention or closing paragraph breaks, he did as it should be done and they failed at. (They did even worse besides, like omitting intros and entire stories; his reaction to seeing one book -- The Anarchists -- was "I am appalled.") He's had about the worst luck I've ever seen when it comes to getting into print and then his publisher upped and died.

The widow's not being helpful, either; grief or whatever, it's small consolation to the guy left holding the bag.

So he's doing the next better thing: Bargaining Position, the sequel to Net Assets, can be yours for $5.00, free, though hitting Carl's tip jar would not be remiss (ahem!); the download which gets you the Word .doc file. I don't know if e-readers will cope with that but turning it into a PDF is a pretty darned fast process, not to mention simple.

Take a look. It's enough to have even me pondering a Nook or a Kindle.

(I'm very sorry to read in comments that he's done with writing. Dammit. D'jever notice how the best ice-cream shops go out of business in what feels like much too short a time? His referenced last piece is a depressingly perceptive market analysis of libertarianism; right as he is, I can't change my spots: I was born with 'em).