Author: Pat Chiles

An expatriate Southerner in the Midwest, writing about writing and whatever dadgum else interests him. Author of the science fiction thrillers FROZEN ORBIT, FRONTIER, and ESCAPE ORBIT, published by Baen Books.
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The Indie Publishing Year

David Gaughran provides a great wrap-up of 2011 from the perspective of independent authors: The Self-Publishing Year in Review.

Here’s his introduction, but read the whole thing:

This has been a year of massive changes. Some of the older hands say that the business has always been this way.

However, I don’t think we are simply seeing another year of flux. Instead, we are witnessing a process unfold which will revolutionize publishing forever (or at the very least, the foreseeable future).

But hey, I could be wrong, and we might all be back querying – and fawning in the comments of agents’ blogs – by March.

I for one am praying that he is not wrong. I’m not much of a fawner.

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The Long and Winding Road

Via Sarah Hoyt’s site, a new how-to series at MadGeniusClub: The Road to Digital Publication. Just based on the first installment, I’d recommend it to anyone contemplating e-publishing their work.

And for crying out loud, if you don’t take any other advice, take this:

Tabs – don’t use them. I repeat, do NOT use tabs. In the conversion from your word processing document to HTML, etc., you will lose them. Instead, go to your paragraph style box and choose first line indent. Set that indent somewhere between 0.25 and 0.33 (this isn’t a hard and fast rule, but those are my preferences. Anything larger looks odd on an e-reader).

If you’ve read this far, I’ll add a couple pointers of my own:

1. Spend the $40 on Scrivener. Do NOT use Word if at all possible.

2. Justify your margins. It’ll look so much better on e-readers, especially as readers adjust their own margins and font size.

3. When in doubt, refer to item 1 above.

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Why I am an Indie Author

Now that Perigee is finally out there for public consumption, I had thought about posting a long essay about how the whole thing almost ended up in a drawer.

The always-worthwhile Passive Voice blog saved me the trouble with this link to a pitch-perfect essay by writer Anne R. Allen: Confessions of a Former Query Addict. A few choice excerpts:

There it was in my inbox on New Year’s morning—a positive response to a query I’d sent to an agent months before:
 “Your writing is delightful, and your characters are original and inviting. I would cheerfully read anything you wrote. I think you’re very talented…” I started to squee and do a happy dance.

Then I read on. It was a no.

And this:
In September, I finally got that offer I’d been dreaming of for five years. Here was my big score–an offer of representation!

But it came with an astronomical price tag. The agency wanted a total rewrite. Not an edit. A tear-it-up-and-start-over rewrite…

Not only was I going to have to give up the story I’d been aching to tell for decades, I was also going to have to erase my own personality: squelch all my Dorothy Parker snark to become Barbara Cartland-sweet.
It took me three days, but I finally had to admit the price of that fix was too high.
What she said. Read the whole thing here.
This is the very thing that almost made me decide writing was a waste of valuable time. Thank goodness, then, for two things: the burning desire that just wouldn’t let go and the indie e-book revolution. The option that I wouldn’t even consider this time last year became the only path I was willing to follow.
Here’s to a Happy New Year, with happy new writing.
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The End is Nigh

The end of 2011, at least. And if you buy in to the whole Mayan-calendar thing, then you probably should be spending what’s left of your retirement savings in anticipation of certain Apocalypse by this time next year.

Now that I’m published, my perspective on writing is beginning to change since I’m faced with the transition between finishing the @%$#! book and actually getting people to buy it. You know, that whole marketing thing.

Perigee has been for sale exactly one week now. Speaking for myself, that’s been a week blissfully spent not writing, thinking about writing, or fussing over the edits of my writing. I owed it to my family. And it’s been nice to not have a major project constantly gnawing at the back of my mind.

More to follow on that topic, but for now here are some great stories on the current state of publishing.

Digital Book World: Five Big Stories of 2011 That Will Bleed Into 2012

Emily Casey: Self-Publishing vs Sushi. Worth reading just for the Venn Diagram that explains much of what you see on bookstore shelves.

Bob Mayer: Ten Daring Predictions for 2012 from the Indie Author Trenches

Read and discuss amongst yourselves. A belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!

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PERIGEE … On Sale Now!

A revolutionary spaceplane is stranded in orbit with no way home before the air runs out.

At hypersonic speed, Polaris AeroSpace has become the premium choice for rapid travel around the globe. When a veteran crew is marooned after a series of baffling malfunctions, they must try to stay alive knowing that help may never arrive.

As they struggle with dwindling life support and increasingly desperate passengers, their colleagues scramble to mount an audacious rescue. Racing against time, they will face shocking betrayals in a fight to save their friends and their company. As they unravel a web of industrial espionage, the truth will reveal itself to be worse than imagined. And one man will discover that escape may demand a terrible sacrifice.

PERIGEE is a novel of the next generation of travel in air and space. Look for it now at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other e-book distributors.

Here’s the link, to make it easy for you: http://www.amazon.com/Perigee-ebook/dp/B006PNL48I/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324741340&sr=1-5

 

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Unambiguously Lame Euro

I wish I could say this was a Saturday Night Live skit but sadly, it’s not:

Behold, Captain Euro! Fighting for Egalitarian Nonsense Truth, Bureaucratic Ninnies Justice, and the Unsustainable Welfare State European Way!

…or something like that. We really shouldn’t pile on.

Oh, why not? Yes, we should.

If the EU collapses and things turn violent, any possible armed conflict among member states is bound to look more like a slap-fight between the playground sissies.

 

This would be really funny if it weren’t so pathetic.

Hat tip: Instapundit

 

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The Mask Finally Slips

…and the Left reveals their true intentions. Separately, any one of these stories would be just more dismaying evidence of the sorry state of our politics. But taken together, they paint a truly frightening picture:

Climate Changers Game Plan Revealed. Surprise: world domination! Worth considering when you read the ClimateGate 2.0 emails.

Obama’s True Convictions Revealed. Surprise: Marxism! Okay, so it’s not a surprise for anyone who’s actually been paying attention.

Occupy Wall Street’s Goal Revealed. Surprise: crush Capitalism!

Fast & Furious Objective Revealed. Surprise: gun control!

Democrats Abandon the Middle Class in favor of either extreme of the income-distribution curve: those who rely on government handouts and the very wealthy who supposedly pay for it all. In reality, all of us who actually work for a living are paying for it all. And our kids. And their kids…

And lest I forget, former SEIU thug-in-chief Andy Stern advocates for a Chinese Communist economic model in the Wall Street Journal, of all places. Before you dismiss that as having any relevance, don’t forget that the former head Purple People Beater has been the single most frequent visitor to the Obama White House.

At this point, it’d make perfect sense for Dr. Evil to surface off of Washington in his hidden submarine lair to demand one trillion dollars. And we would laugh collectively as Geithner and Bernanke happily roll up with a dump truck’s load of freshly-minted bills, as Dr. Evil certainly wouldn’t appreciate what a screw job they’d just given him.

After decades of hiding their true intentions, the radicals who’ve taken over the Democratic Party have finally dropped any pretense of hiding what they’re really all about. It’s a sign that they see this as the end game, all or nothing.

Well, thank God for that, however infuriating they may be. So bring it, you Commie pukes. And I mean that in the true sense of the word, as that’s the ideology you’ve aligned yourselves with. It’s nice that you’ve finally admitted to it. 2012 will be one of the most consequential elections in our history, equal to 1860 or 1932. It’s only fitting that we know what our choices are really going to be.

Of course, that assumes the Republicans get their collective act together and present us with an actual choice, and not just a less-scary version of what the Dims have been pushing since the Sixties. Hint: that probably won’t be coming from the Mittster.

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