Unexpected Bonuses by Dennis Hamley

All my life I've tried to avoid feeling smug about anything because it's a very dangerous condition to be in. However, just this once I've indulged myself. I've put two books on Createspace, the second much more quickly and easily than the first, so I must have climbed the learning curve with unexpected and unaccustomed despatch. I know the first book and the second proof copy I'm admiring at this very moment are the inevitable result of a well-tried process and really just bog-standard paperbacks but I still haven't quite got over the incredulity of realising that I actually brought them into being. Fellow IT-deficients can take heart.

My reason for trying out Createspace in the first place was to test it out to see if it would be a cheap and immediate way to produce print copies for Blank Page Press, when the last obstacles to making it run the way we'd like it to are surmounted (yes, I know it's been an unconscionably long time). Createspace's main attraction is that it's free at the point of delivery so we don't have to commit money which we haven't got yet on printing contracts. I wanted to know how to do it, how time-consuming it was and whether, because I'd heard criticisms of the quality of the product, using Createspace with our own Neilsen-provided ISBNs might do little for our reputation.

It's next day now: I wrote the first paragraphs last night.  I see that I used the phrase 'bog-standard' and mentioned the quality issues some people report.  But hardly as I sat down at the computer, the entry-phone rang and I let in a man carrying a box. I signed for it, opened it - and found the ten finished copies I'd ordered of Out of the Deep, my ghost story collection, the second book I've subjected to this process. And I gasped. Nothing 'bog-standard' about this and no complaints about quality. It is a very, very handsome book indeed, well-bound, substantial, good to hold because the gutter on the inside of each page is wide enough to mean you don't have to stretch the book open  unduly as you read.  An alarming number of commercially published books are very bad at this. The formatting on the beginner's template really works. My favourite font, Baskerville Old Face, looks lovely. All I want now is for a few people to buy it.  I suppose that's down to me. It won't sell itself.     

         

Sadly unclear  picture of a great cover - and with extracts from reviews by Mari and Valerie on the back!

By the way, one or two reviewers of the first ebook edition pointed out that there were some unsightly typos in it. And they were right. I was ashamed of them - sheer carelessness and trying to do things too quickly. Well, they are all gone now, both in the paperback and the ebook.

I have one or two observations to make about the Createspace process. These may be obvious to most of you but they sure weren't to me and I'm slightly surprised at what facility outside Createspace they give. One of the things which, early on, I couldn't fathom was this: when I first started I downloaded  a template, inserted the text, put it in Interior Review, noted the issues, tried to sort them out and then closed the file and signed out thinking this was an absolute doddle. When, next day, I returned to it I clicked on the book title to open it - and nothing happened. I single-clicked, double-clicked, left-clicked, right-clicked and the title still stared stonily at me. I left it in disgust and didn't look at it again for weeks, assuming that Fate was against me and I just wasn't meant to do it. When I finally came back to it I was soon just as frustrated and emailed Createspace. I had a  reply, courteous, clear but in a tone which suggested that they knew they were talking to an idiot, telling me to do all the things which I thought I'd already done. I think I put something on AE Private about my difficulties and had replies which suggested that some of you also thought I was an idiot.

But then a great light dawned. I had somehow assumed that the whole process was contained within the programme so nothing could get out to non-users. By this reasoning it followed that when I made alterations in Word I had to download a new template inside Createspace and laboriously transfer everything I had been working on into it. It simply hadn't occurred to me that the process was exactly the same as for Kindle. There were some implications here. Just to experiment, I started to copy a book in Word onto a template already used for another book, deleting the old one as I went. Would this upload onto Createspace or do you have to use new templates for each book? I had a feeling that it would be the second.

But it wasn't. The template uploaded perfectly well, so I decided to let it stay there and be my next book. It looks so good in Createspace, formatted and completely print ready, paginated and with prelims nicely separated from text, that I decided there and then to do everything I would in future submit to any publisher, whoever it was, on an old Createspace template. They would get something far better than the usual Word document double-spaced on A4. The 1.15 spacing looks beautiful, clear, print-ready and  excellent for an editor's pencil. And they'll love you because you've done all the work for them almost without noticing. If any non-Createspacer wants to have a go, I'll send them an old, pre-used, pre-loved template to play with.

Well, what is this next book? I said last time that I was putting old books and new compilations of old stories on Createspace under the imprint JOSLIN BOOKS and leaving any what I call 'major' work to Blank Page Press when it finally lumbers into action. So I'm now putting two 'new' books on the Joslin Books list - the first two in my Bright Sea, Dark Graves series. The first, now complete, is The Guns of St Therese and the second, just being finished, is The Nightmares of Invasion. Nelson's Navy - but for kids, so nowhere near as outspoken as Jan's books. But they have their moments. Guns was actually accepted for publication by Catnip and they promised a contract within a month. A year later my agent finally flushed an excuse out of them: a new editor had decided that 'it isn't now part of our future plans.' Another episode in the process of weary disillusion. The second is nearly finished and I'll probably be sending it out to Julia and Jan for my howlers to do with sailing to be eradicated - if they're willing.

Guns will be published as soon as the cover is done. I'm not going outside for this one. I'll use the cover template and Kay and I will do it together.  A few years ago we were in Skye and Kay painted a marvellous cloudscape at dusk. 

From Trotternish looking over to Dunvegan

It's hanging in our flat and there it stays. But it fits perfectly with a scene in the story where the frigate HMS Fortune limps into the Bay of Melusine, on the coast of Brittany, just five miles west of the harbour at St Therese (don't bother looking on a map!) after a skirmish which has left her with no mizzen mast and wrecked steering, to try to make overnight jury repairs without being detected. 

So, when we've sorted out how to use Microsoft Paint, there will be the dark silhouette superimposed on the sea of the stricken Fortune slipping into the bay and title and author discreetly placed so as to be well visible - but not enough to draw attention from the picture. And I think that will be a great cover for this particular book. It will be a paperback - and this time I'll use their offer of free upload to Kindle, which will save me some work, always a good thing.

If anyone would like a free copy to read - and hopefully review - and also, if non-Createspacers, want to have a go at uploading something onto the same template as a dummy run without actually having to sign up, then let me know and I'll send it to you.

And, to end with, while we're talking about ships on seas, here's another ploy to make me get down to some proper work. I see to my horror that it's two years since I blogged about my in-progress novel about Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Since then it's made perilously little progress, though it's actually quite close to being finished. Well, two months ago the Aidan Meller Gallery in Oxford had an exhibition of work by the Bloomsbury group, which we went to. And there we found some prints by Duncan Grant illustrating a limited edition of The Ancient Mariner. Well, I thought, they're OK, I suppose. But then I saw a print of the 'painted ship upon a painted ocean' and something told me to buy it. 

And here it is, now hanging in a place right over my desk. I'm always aware of it as I work, with a pitiless sun staring down and its reflection staring up at me and saying, 'Get on with it, Hamley, and stop prevaricating or you'll be as bad as the man you're writing about.'

Time alone will show if it will make me.