JUST DO IT! - Susan Price

NIGHTCOMERS by Susan Price

          On Hallowe’en, I published my fourth and fifth e-books, the ghost-story collections, HAUNTINGS and NIGHTCOMERS.  I’m getting into a working routine.

          I start by opening a file in Word 2010.  I type in and centre the title and my name, then insert a page-break.  I paste in the copyright details, which I have on file, and alter dates and names where necessary.  I add a ‘Contents’ page.

          All my e-books have been previously published, so I take an old copy and rip it apart.  I scan the separate pages into my computer using a free Optical Character Recognition programme (OCR).  I click ‘convert to text’, and correct the programme’s near guesses – it almost always turns ‘wall’ into ‘wail’, for instance.

          Once a whole story or chapter is converted to text, I edit the separate pages together and add them to the book’s file.  It’s tedious, but easier than typing out the whole book.

          While I’m doing this, my brother designs the cover, and we swop ideas and sketches by e-mail until we have something we’re both happy with.

           As I add to the file, I format as I go – centring titles and quotes, adding bookmarks and hyperlinks.

          At the end I paste in another standard page, with details of Electric Authors and my forthcoming books.

          Then I proof-read.  I attach the file to an e-mail and send it, via Amazon, to my own personal Kindle.  It takes minutes.

          I have the ‘master copy’ open on my laptop as I proof-read on the kindle,  correcting every mistake I spot in the master-copy.

          I remove the test run from my kindle, add the cover which my brother has now finished, and e-mail it to my kindle again.  This time I use the AZW file which Amazon returns to me, to test it on my computer, using the kindle previewer.  This shows me how my book will look on various other devices.  My brother usually drops in at this point, to check how his cover looks, and to make last minute tweaks.  (He works on a computer, first scanning in a sketch, and then adding layers.)

          Finally, I load the book up to Amazon Direct Publishing – and publish!

HAUNTINGS by Susan Price

          This all worked very well until I got to the proof-reading stage of NIGHTCOMERS.  Then it all came to a halt – because I didn’t want to do it.

          I had so much else to do - preparing for another year as Royal Literary Fund Fellow at De Montfort, finishing the third Sterkarm book, roughing out the ‘next big novel’ (as my agent calls it).  Washing up.  Shopping.  Laundry. And I was supposed to read this book again?

          I’d read it as I’d scanned it and converted to text.  I’d read it as I edited the pages together.  It was fine.  Why not save some time, and just publish it?

          But no.  I gritted my teeth, made a cup of coffee and told myself:  Just Do It .

          On almost the first page, there was a big glaring typo.

          And in the Contents, the last story, Cold Silver, one of my best, didn’t have its teaser sentence.  Or a hyper-link to take you to its beginning.  I’d forgotten them.  I was sure that I’d gone over and over the book, and it was all correct, and proof-reading was a waste of time, and – I was wrong.

          In the first story was a stray apostrophe – not even a grocer’s apostrophe, just one wandering loose by itself.  There was also ‘arid’ masquerading as ‘and’.

          A note to self, and a warning to e-publishers everywhere: no matter how fed up you are, no matter how sure that it doesn’t need another proof-read before publishing – it does.

          So Just Do It.  (My motto)

          Praise for NIGHTCOMERS:-  'Every tale shows the quality of the imagination, and the accuracy of the telling. What most impresses is the authority of Susan Price's voice: exact, rich or spare when necessary, able to evoke the Past without falsity, and the present without effort.' (PHILIP PULLMAN, THE GUARDIAN )

                              To read a story from NIGHTCOMERS, click here.
My award winning blog is the Nennius Blog
          And my website, with other stories and extracts, is here.