Tag Archives: writing

Maybe Something Good, Maybe Something Bad

Years ago I worked in magazine publishing, trade magazines to be specific. I really liked how we had complete creative control over what we produced, but note I said “we.” The workload was shared, and we had people who were very good at layout, editing, sales, etc. You could specialize and thrive if you were really good at something. Despite all of the hands working to create an issue, I swear to you, no matter how many times you edited, read, corrected and scanned your work for errors, the first time you’d pick up the magazine after it had been printed, you’d find a typo. Boy did that suck!

In the digital world, we can have complete control over everything. That’s good. And that’s bad. If you’re doing it for yourself, as I did, you’ll find that the freedom you gain with the new technologies can also become a burden. You don’t have any experts in layout, editing, sales, etc. Now the hundreds of decisions that must be made in order to bring a publication to fruition are all on you. And it can be exhausting sometimes, especially when you’ve hit the point at which you’ve read your own words so many times that you fill in the missing words, autocorrect transpositions in your mind, and completely miss the extra period at the end of that one sentence on page 3. Page 3! You’ve seen that one a thousand times! Trust me, you’ll do this.

This is where patience comes in. You’ve got to have patience with yourself and you’ve got to find someone you trust to read for you. Once you get the book in pretty good shape, it is very rewarding.  – Phil Reebius

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Self-publishing

I chose to self-publish my first book, The Randy Scuffle Papers, because I couldn’t stand the idea of throwing my work into the ocean of agents and publishers to see what would happen. At least this way I have more control of the look and feel of the publication, as well as my destiny. Self-publishing allows me to work on my own schedule, and I can continually work on the content, while managing the marketing. To me, that’s more productive than waiting around for an acceptance letter, the inevitable delays, the promised publishing date, and the painful “sorry, we decided not to publish after all.” I’ve heard all of these stories before. There’s also something rewarding about taking a project from an idea through publishing. You learn a lot and then get started on the next project.

After looking at most of the other self-publishing platforms, I selected CreateSpace. The process was pretty straightforward. It wasn’t without problems however, and I had to make a few adjustments. Actually, I thought turning the book into an e-book was more challenging than publishing through CreateSpace. I spent my last vacation figuring out how to do that. I know it should be simple but there were circumstances that added some level of challenge to this task. – Phil Reebius

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