Expectations Dashed and Other Life Lessons

Let me start by admitting that my tech skills are minimal. I love to write, just for the pleasure of writing. But I once lost the best story I’d ever written because my computer, which had been warning me of an impending disaster like a rumbling volcano, imploded and I had not backed up my story.

I went into mourning, bought a new laptop, but did not write anything significant for a long time. I now backup everything.

However, I do appreciate the wonders of modern technology. I used to send entire manuscripts with a self-addressed envelope to potential publishers to have them returned with a rejection letter. Modern technology makes rejection much easier.

I have had stories published, and I was a reporter at one time and had my words published every day. But I, like most writers, want a proper book. I have had a play performed at a University in Hawaii, which was difficult to produce as the action took place in a winter cabin in Alaska. The actors were sweltering in parkas and long johns. I had one play rejected by Circle in the Square Theatre in New York. It was the nicest rejection letter I had ever received. I think I still have it saved in a trunk along with valentines from my children, old love letters, and pressed flowers.

Lately, I have been working on screenplays. I subscribe to a service that puts everything in the proper format. I need to go back and add a lot of angles, shots, and other scene descriptors. This goes against everything I learned from writing plays where you leave so much to the director and the actors to stage and interpret.

But I digress from my saga of trying to get a book published. I re-read a book I’d written several years ago and decided it wasn’t half bad. It is a mystery set in Alaska. The heroine is a Chief of Staff to a legislator, so there are a lot of political intrigues and Alaskan mystique. I worked in Juneau as a staffer for a half-dozen years, but any resemblance between the heroine and I is strictly coincidental.

I decided that it would be fun to try to get my book published. I did editing and some re-writing and then I got down to the hard part. I knew several people who had used Amazon to self-publish and decided this was a good idea. I got bogged down with formatting, editing, and finally trying to develop a cover and I decided I needed help. Also, ask any editor who dealt with me as a reporter. I am really bad at editing my material. Amazon does not edit.

I vetted several companies that said they did all the tasks that I needed and worked with Amazon. I found one that looked legit. Meanwhile, because I was searching for companies online, I was barraged with literary agents of questionable abilities, self-publishing companies, and a host of others hot to get into my pocket and launch me into massive successes, New York Times best-seller lists, and a potential Nobel prize. They smelled blood in the water: an author desperate to hold her book in her hands.

I was never delusional. It was a fun read and maybe my family, friends, and people who like my occasional rambling posts on Facebook might buy the book. It wasn’t Proust. It was a book under the umbrella at the beach.

Tangentially to my finding the right company, I was seeing stories about lonely men and women who meet the wrong person on a dating site. The person is always in a foreign country for work or saving the planet, doctors without borders, etc. A lengthy communication begins. It may take years, but the bond strengthens, and love is announced. The person feels on top of the world and can’t wait until their love returns to the States for a visit. The big day is arriving, but there is some problem with funds that can be solved once the beloved is in the States and he or she will reimburse him or her. And so it begins. It may happen more than once, but something always happens, so the visit is aborted. And the “lent” money is increasing. There is no happy ending. Eventually, the person has to recognize that they were duped.

I went into my relationship with this company with this scenario in the back of my mind. I didn’t want love. I wanted my book in print. But I knew I could be vulnerable.

And so it began. The fee wasn’t outrageous, and I figured if this turned out to be a scam, it was a loss I could afford. I was seeing red flags from the get-go. My initial conversation with Henry who was to be my guide through this process. He talked fast and I could tell English was not his first language. I will not name the company, but Henry was his name. Or the name he gave me. All phone calls were coming from the Midwest, although the company allegedly was based in New York. I informed Henry and his boss that I wanted all communication via email. I am a great believer that if it isn’t in writing, it never happened.

I would receive a chapter or a little more per week. I could tell that a lot of the edits were what I could do by spellcheck and the grammar function I already had. But some of the edits were really good—they could catch words that were spelled correctly but the wrong word. It would have been embarrassing to have such errors in print. Henry kept talking about the editing team that was working on my opus. I assumed it was some housewife working at her kitchen table, but hey, the work was being done.

I did have some issues with the changes. The book was from the point of view of my heroine, a snarky smart ass with a definite “voice”—well, maybe the heroine is a little like me. The editor was turning the dialogue into “Little Dorrit.” Stilted sentences. I insisted that even the most erudite human does not always speak in complete sentences. I prevailed.

The process was laborious, but progressing. Formatting and other mundane but necessary functions were being performed, and I felt hopeful. And then finally, the ask. They wanted several thousand dollars to have hundreds of copies of the book for Amazon to sell. They would not answer who was printing the book. My understanding from what I knew about Amazon was that they only produced books when orders were submitted. Henry insisted that this was a standard operating procedure. Earlier he had tried to “sell” me another feature that would ensure a blitz of media coverage of my book when it was available. I had refused that and said I’d take my chances on sales. Now they wanted a lot of money to overproduce a book that might not sell. I could just imagine Amazon finally sending me boxes full of unsold books they were tired of warehousing. At least I have Amazon Prime, so I wouldn’t have to pay the postage. I live in a condo where even a bulk buy of paper towels from Costo creates a storage problem. There would be boxes of books being used as end tables.

Again, I refused despite dire warnings of lack of sales, books, and other doomsday scenarios. Finally, he sent me the paperwork to provide for Amazon. Some of it I had seen before when I was trying to do it myself. Giving my Social Security number, bank account, and routing number to a third party didn’t sit well. And then there was the IBSN number that I apparently needed to acquire, but had no idea where to start. I kept asking too many questions and finally, my emails were returned as undeliverable. I suppose they decided I wasn’t worth spending any more time on because I wasn’t going to pay off—like walking away from a cold slot machine.

I am licking my wounds. I think I will take a break. Maybe do some actual writing. Then I will brave the technological elements and approach the Amazon gauntlet with a better product. I don’t feel like the duped lover of a fictional person because I always knew this outcome was a possibility and I did get some value from the money spent. I may hold that elusive book in my hands sometime in the future.