Thomas Wolfe and his Manuscripts
from Wikipedia

Thomas Wolfe, manically writing while standing, using the top of his icebox as a desk, tossing his manuscript pages into a nearby wooden packing crate, would not understand how my two novels got mangled when transformed into Kindle versions. I don’t understand the processes involved either. But he might have sympathized with the horror I felt on learning that these deformed renditions have been available to buyers for a number of days.

I take full blame. In a hurry to get out e-book versions, though admittedly a bit of a Luddite and not comfortable with the Digital Age, I uploaded the text files in PDF format, which Amazon did warn was not the preferred format. In my hurry–and glowing in a new satisfaction that I was mastering the process of e-book publication–I assumed there might be a few minor glitches which could be edited out. Also, I failed to preview the text files, there again trusting in the process. When belatedly I checked out the “look inside” previews on my Amazon author’s page, what came up was a run-on version for each book. No page differentiation or numbers, confused paragraph spacing, unreadable copyright and title pages, crammed-in image captions, and so forth. The gist of the story in each was readable, but were I a customer investigating the book, I’d be less-than-impressed. And I will never know–would rather not know–how many would-be readers, and buyers, I may have chased away.

Putting out Kindle versions is an idea that came to me lately, after looking at statistics of what what kind of remuneration self-publishers can expect from e-books as opposed to real paper-page books. I’ve also been hearing nothing but discouraging things about the state of “traditional” publishing these days. It seems that beginning authors are caught between a rock and a hard spot, with the potential to be crushed by forces too big, whether they be represented by the likes of Hachette, or of Amazon. We can expect being steamrolled over by the mega-publishers, run by people who care nothing about books or writing, only profit, who see promotion not as a mutual benefit but only as a negative post on the ledger sheet. Or we can at best expect–by going the self-publishing route, relying on e-books–to make little more than minimum wage.

I’m not writing just as a hobby. It is a passion, and I believe most of it is very good, and I aspire to make more than a poverty-level living at it. But as I wrote in a blog last winter (“Where Have You Gone, Maxwell Perkins?”), the challenges to becoming a successful author, with proper compensation, are approaching the insurmountable. That is, unless some gatekeeper decides your work is the next Harry Potter or 50 Shades of Grey.

Not about to give up, I shall unpublish the Kindle versions of Cinders Over The Junction and Beyond The Divide. And I’ll resolve to be more methodical if and when I decide to republish them as e-books. Meantime, they’re both available as bound books, with text of ink on turnable pages of paper. And they both have had excellent reviews, and one is an award finalist. And in whatever number of years or decades remaining (I’m just shy of 70), I’ll do my best to navigate the Brave New Worlds of digitalization and mega-publishing, seeking the recognition and compensation that I believe my books, and their sequels, deserve.

Other than time, or money, or peace-of-mind, what is there to loose?