I paid a professional editor a SIGNIFICANT amount of money, though she managed to still leave several noticeable errors in the manuscript, I went ahead and moved forward anyway. Well lo and behold, I go to publish and she not only has a panic attack via email, but also threatens to sue me for using her name, as the editor.
Man, I can not begin to tell you how frustrating this was, considering how much I had paid her, and also just how prideful of her it is, to make me go back and change the whole book, the amazon entry, the Lightning Source manuscript, everything, back to the drawing board.
Well, I supposed nobody died, and as Robert Frost, in all his intricate wisdom stated of what he knew of life for certain, “It goes on.”
This is true. I have learned from that mistake, I must always ask, and get permission to use ANYONE’s name on anything I publish and write about. I always want to yell, “but nobody reads my book!” What are you getting so worked up about.
The ISBN system, copyright, copy editing, full editing, man it gets tiresome. Some days i wish I’d picked a different pet project.
That said, I think I’m closer than I’ve ever been. I’m more prepared now, than I was before.
And if I can bring traffic to the site, via free books, then I can give publishers visibility, and even if creating a studio in my home, and doing freelance audio-book readings is the next step, well then so be it, I can read. And I have a nice voice, hell that is my day job.
So I’ll press forward, and try to bring help to other rookie writers like myself, that didn’t get official schooling, or were otherwise preoccupied with bills and survival, to get published, noticed, and create some revenue stream from their work. It’s only been 20 years , whats a few more on this journey.
-Jared Bryan Smith
JB Smiths Blog - Author @ books4free.com 