Reading, reading, reading.

by Louis Bertrand Shalako

c2010

All Rights Reserved


On Lulu.com recently, I revised my POD project of 'The Case of the Curious Killers.' The site must have been plagued by glitches that night. As I recall, the thing wouldn't go in if it was over 411 pages.

This bothered me for some reason. In re-reading, it clearly states in Lulu data somewhere, 'Max size 740 pages' in the 4x7" class of pocket book.

I also noticed something in there somewhere about half inch margins being the minimum. My margins were set at .38 left and right. After making this change, my book was 435 pages overall.

The file uploaded just fine...now that that worked, I'm considering a couple more blank pages in the front matter. The whole process seems very organic, but then my brain is organic, and so are my eyes. So far, no one has bought that paperback, and I guess no harm has been done!

***

Speaking of organic processes, I have set the goal of learning more about social media, and Twitter in particular. One of my challenges is to identify some specific demographic group and write and I suppose tweet for them.

In the writing, it's fine to try a young adult science fiction story, or a raunchy humour story, or a fantasy, or a horror story.

How do people know what to expect? This whole notion of branding is intriguing, because it is so important.

Tagging is another one: my Amazon Kindle Platform account was tagged lackadaisically, and I went in there and added some more key words, and checked all the other accounts I could think of.

***

In the past few days, I have combed through my folder and made a few more subs to pro markets, semi-pro markets, and people who pay good money for stories. One commonly-accepted theory is that every story will eventually find a market. I suspect that only holds true for the really top-ranked professionals, but there's no reason not to submit a story...anywhere one can think of.

***

I read an article called, 'Fifty ways to improve your results on twitter,' or whatever. That link is stuck in a document file, and I plan on reading that one about ten times! It's a lot to take in all at once, but I have already implemented five or six of the suggestions. We'll see what works. Not all of the suggestions are practical to someone with a crap camera, or no cell-phone! Yet anything you can do with a phone can probably be done with a home PC.

That one bears some deep thought, but I think I am actually signed up for tweetdeck. I have never been back there, but I am signed up!

Interestingly enough, there may be room for some informal teamwork on Twitter and other social media as well.

Should I capitalize 'tweetdeck,' and not capitalize 'Facebook?'

Who cares. I'm tired and the day is not over.

Update: Going into my new Lulu POD file, I checked three very specific revisions of a scientific nature, and yes, I did indeed upload the correct file! 'Version Control.' (And if I catch any dumb little mistake, I'll fix it and do it again.)

Also, the last time I checked into Google books, I still had two ebooks 'processing.' This should not take three weeks as books one and four uploaded sucessfully. The problem here is no 'action required' reports, so no feedback. At some point I will try to re-upload, but for an unknown author, the revenue to be generated by free reads and page-impressions is ludicrous anyway. When Google Ebooks Canada gets up and running, (reportedly by this summer,) then I want to be in there...right? For the time being, two free reads on there is fine.

A man with a plan is better off than a man with no plan at all.

Let's see here...yes. A useful tip: sites that are well edited are more sucessful than ones that are not edited at all.

On twitter, I was thinking some of my little 'three-liners,' a kind of fairly structrured free verse might go well. The last thing you want to do on twitter is get too edgy, and that might include being a little too cryptic or even enigmatic. Sometimes a person on a social network might make a person kind of creeped out. While a friend might have a bad day, this sort of thing is best avoided in your own presentation. As for the aura coming off of another; trust your instincts first and foremost.

You can block, remove, report, whatever. At some point I became a little more discriminating about clicking on any particular potential friend. No doubt facebook would like to know what makes a person pass up a pretty girl to click on some fat old lady with blue hair, or maybe go for a book cover with a big green toad and a bright red rose...but that's another story.

I must be learning a lot because I have so many more questions.

LuluPODfile Nearly Complete.

(Proposed rear image, 'The Case of the Curious Killers.')

by Louis Bertrand Shalako

c2010

All Rights Reserved


It looks like my file is all set to go, although I just scrolled through it and found two more minor formatting errors.

Basically, I'm just stalling. In all liklihood there will be changes that need to be made after reading the proof copy. So why fight it?

I'm still unable to right-justify the text on the rear cover art, so it may be a couple of days yet. The text on the front cover is a little too near the edge.

A Long Job.

by Louis Bertrand Shalako

c2010

All Rights Reserved


Still working on that Lulu POD file.

This part of the process is a long job. I'm checking every left indent in the file, and any deviation, even as little as one-tenth of an inch, sticks out. If you like the story and kind of get into it, you might not notice, but if you are inclined to be critical to begin with, or have low expectations, you might.

So far I've only done about eighty pages out of over four hundred. Another thing I have noticed, is that if a word on the end of a line ends in 'f,' then the curl of the 'f' sticks out a little into the right margin. It is possible to rewrite the sentence, and make sure there are no 'f's on the end of the line. Sticking a few words into a line to aid in the justification process is time consuming and a pain in the ass, and like any rewrite, it has to make sense.

What I find strange is that taking an old smashfile and converting it to .txt really did not cure this problem, not in this Open Office program.

The smashfile would have had indents defined under the 'define paragraph' thingy, and turning it into a .txt preserves indents pretty well. I made those files in Word. They look fine in the e-books.

If nothing else, setting a two-month deadline for myself shows something.

Justification.

That's a rubber band stretched down the side to check indents...

by Louis Bertrand Shalako

c2010

All Rights Reserved


I am starting off the year with a little bit of back pain, and the sort of fuzzy, nagging headache that goes on for days or even longer.

No, I am not hung over from New Year's celebrations as I did not drink. I paid off my credit card last month, and thus will be going completely without money for forty long, dark and cold days and nights.

But it's all in a good cause, namely and to wit, balancing the massive provincial deficit on the backs of the most vulnerable people in the nation. And a little justification goes a long way, which is one reason I'm always so rude to the government. 'I feel your pain.' And I sure wouldn't want you to have no justification.

So anyway, I have the right hand margins of 'The Case of the Curious Killers' er; 'justified,' as it were, and of course now the left indents have gone all kooky. I've noted this sort of thing before, when working with an old file that has been through three or four random computer crashes and the changes from Word '93, Word 97, Word 2003, .doc to .docx. It is 'the usual thing.'

Now I am engaged in the painstaking and painsgiving process of combing the work one line at a time. Each of the indents must be as precise as I can make it, for we are all aware that as a writer I will be judged by the typesetting, among other things.

Other artists will tell you, it is extremely unwise to have your work condemned by those who refuse to read it...

For the record, I took an old 'smashfile,' although perhaps not the most current and upt to date one; and saved it as a .txt file. Then I imported or pasted it in to the Open Office program. But more experience editors have noted problems with right margin justification in the past, and Microsoft Word was specifically mentioned.

There is no end matter at the far end of the book. There will be a blurb just inside the front cover. I still need to do the cover design again, for the e-books had no real outer back cover.

I should throw another couple of blank pages in there and dedicate it to my mom.

Other than that, it is just a matter of finding the time to work on it. I only checked about thirteen pges today, and now I really need to get out of this chair.