I received my Sony Reader (touch model) a couple of Christmases ago, and then when I bought the iPad, I loaded on several ebook reading apps: iBooks, kobo, Bluefire Reader, Stanza, Kindle. As a person with a brain injury, I was surprised and chuffed to find reading ebooks is easier than print books. There’s less text on the “page,” and on Sony and in iBooks, it’s easy to highlight and write notes (kobo is a close second), all strategies to help the reader to absorb, process, and synthesize the text. Still, at first I remained wedded to my favourite, familiar mass paperback. But after I became a member of Goodreads and began borrowing ebooks from the Toronto Public Library, I read ebooks more and more often. Before I wrote this post, I last read a print book months ago.

Most ebooks I read are borrowed. Until Overdrive finally created an eReading app, I used Bluefire Reader to read them on my iPad. I wasn’t interested in highlighting, printing, looking up words, or writing notes on these ebooks, so the rudimentary and restrictive practices of the apps and publishers didn’t impinge on me. But this week I wanted to buy three books for my background reading as I begin dreaming up my next novel. I wanted to buy them in ebook format. I wanted them to be as flexible and convenient to read as the mass paperback.

Apparently, I wanted the moon.

Traditional publishers are so scared — and seemingly ignorant of how readers use, lend, give away, sell print books — of what readers can do with ebooks that they insist on DRM (Digital Rights Management) locks. The idea is that they protect copyright.

The reality is they frustrate law-abiding readers and provide no deterrent to thieves.

The real result is that the publisher controls how, when, where the law-abiding reader can read the ebook and do nothing to thwart the pirates. Although ePub is an international standard, DRM locks are not. Everyone but Apple iBooks uses one standard. Apple uses another. An ebook readable in iBooks is not readable in any other app or Sony Reader. And vice versa. And Amazon is outside the ePub universe entirely. Consumer friendly, eh? Not.

Book #1 was available in Kindle format for about $4 cheaper than the ePub version. But I can only read Amazon’s mobi format ebook on my iPad’d Kindle app, which is rudimentary to say the least, lacking the features I need for background reading. I also wanted to be able to read it on my Sony Reader. To compound the insult to the international ebook standard and non-Amazon readers, the ePub version was more expensive than the mass paperback. If I bought it through the kobo bookstore or Sony bookstore, the ePub version would not be readable in iBooks, yet iBooks did not list their ePub version in the Canadian store.

Book #2 was the only book in that author’s arsenal that was not available in ebook format. What gives with the discrimination?

Book #3′s situation was totally ridiculous. It was available in ePub but only in certain territorial markets. So if I was a US customer of iBooks, I could’ve bought it in iBooks ePub. But as a Canadian, I was barred from buying it. My only option was mobi through Amazon’s Kindle store. Territorial rights in the global digital age are not only obsolete but an obstacle to reading. Given I resent buying an ebook I can read in exactly one place, I decided not to purchase the mobi ebook.

I wanted to buy all three in ePub. I could buy only one at an inflated price with limitations on which apps I could read it in. If this ebook did not have a DRM lock, I could’ve read it the way I wanted to on the device I wanted to in the app I wanted to. The upshot is that I’m reminded why I don’t buy traditionally published ebooks beyond what I must, why I prefer buying ebooks by indie authors that are DRM-free, why I will continue to mostly borrow ebooks — and why I will never put DRM locks on my ebooks. I don’t want to annoy my readers before they even load one up.

To check out what I’m reading currently and my Goodreads Author Page and bookshelves, please visit my Goodreads profile.

The Error message reads: “Whoops! No publishing allowed. This lens is currently locked for a violation of our Terms of Service, as per the email we sent you. You’re welcome to a) Grab your content and take it elsewhere, if you’d rather not continue with Squidoo or b) Review your content and make edits here in the Workshop to improve the lens. But you won’t be able to Publish the lens live until you can demonstrate that the violation has been addressed. Thanks.“

I wrote this how-to lens on autographing books for authors almost four years ago. Squidoo decided three days before Christmas 2011 (when book sales spike) that my article was  — pick one, your guess, they won’t tell, shhhh — pornographic; contained profanity; spammy (guess too many copies of Lifeliner in my pic); something they couldn’t support cause, you know, authors autographing books for readers is so … well, words fail me; a “doorway” lens  to affiliate programs like promoting authors autographing their own books; unoriginal (all those hours I spent writing and polishing was just, well, meh); article spinning (whatever the heck that is, but if I don’t know what it means then I must’ve done it, eh?); and plagiarism.

I’ve been down the false accusation of plagiarism road with Squidoo before.

They sent a nice note saying sorry, it was a “false positive” after I found the plagiarist of my article that they blocked last May. They wrote that they would greenlight it so it wouldn’t happen again, but they didn’t think to greenlight the author, namely me. They seem to have a default stance that Squidoo authors plagiarize and so no point telling Squidoo authors when their work is plagiarized, just cut out the articles. Some site.

Squidoo also wrote in their email to me dated 22 December 2011:

“We aim to support high-quality, original and useful lifestyle content that real readers will be glad to land on.”

Yes I can see how comments like these most recent ones would mean readers were not glad to land on it:

“i like this..” Oct 24, 2010 5:14 pm

“I will release my first book and it is all about my experiences as a mystery shopper. I found this site very informative and I am so excited to sign my book to someone who will really appreciate it. Thanks for the signing guides and more power” MysterySh0pper, Dec 11, 2010 6:32 am

“Thanks for the ideas….my first book signing is coming up in a few days!! http://map-thenovel.com” nitronarc, Feb 21, 2011 9:23 pm

“A lens about how to autograph a book: now I’ve seen it all! I am impressed with the research you did! (I’ve never had to autograph a book, but I have had to autograph the CD copy of an ebook!)” TravelingRae, Jun 18, 2011 12:16 am

This week, after I finished revising my novel and finally had the energy to deal with this company and do their work for them, I searched for plagiarized words from my autographing article, and it looks like it was copied elsewhere then possibly taken down or made invisible. Although Google shows other sites as having plagiarized my article, the sites themselves no longer show it, as far as I can tell.

Violations of my copyright are the only thing important to me.

Then I also noticed all my Squidoo lenses on installing and using Ubuntu were taken down. I can’t be bothered yelling at this stupid company again. If it doesn’t have the ability to know which writers are original and to see that it had screwed up before with the same writer, it’s not worth the effort to tell them. I know I said I was going to take down my Squidoo account last time they blasted me with their spraying figure-out-which-term-you-violated-then-maybe-we’ll-talk gun. But didn’t. This time I am.

There may be orphaned links on my website to my old Squidoo lenses once I’ve cancelled my account. Please let me know if you find any.

Last time, they only made nice because I blasted them back and reprimanded my copyright violator — thanks for the help Squidoo in telling me about them and helping me demand they take the plagiarized copy down, not — but I was mollified. This time, I don’t see why again I have to be treated as guilty until innocent. If they default to that position, then they have a problem with their contributors. From telecoms to Squidoo, I’ve had enough of behemoth companies banging their weight around. I quit. Writers looking for autographing advice — and my other former Squidoo essays — can come straight to my own website, thank you very much.

"We're lucky to have you around."

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve just published a new ebook! But to backtrack a bit…

I wrote short stories and poetry all the way back to elementary school and up until my brain injury. In the 1980s and 90s, I got serious about writing shorts. Poetry not so much. After my brain injury, that flipped. Anyway, back in those days, there was no digital publishing and much of the mainstream press had long since stopped publishing short stories in their pages. A short story writer submitted stories to small literary magazines for the most part and to contests. If you were lucky, an anthology may publish an unknown. Established short story writers also had a chance to be published in the big American magazines or papers like The Atlantic. One of my stories received Honourable Mention in the 1988 Hart House Short Story contest and appeared in WORDSCAPE 3 in 1997. Another was accepted by the editor of a local literary magazine but nixed by the publishers. Not sure who was more upset by that. I developed a system of sending out, recording rejections, sending out again. They were usually rejected for “not the right time” reasons and “please submit again.” Give me a break. And though it’s taboo to say, after having a racist run-in with a publisher (you know how racists look through you) and attending a bookseller’s convention, I started wondering if my “foreign” name was getting in the way of me being published in Canada. That convention was rather like stepping back into 1960s Toronto where I was the darkest person around. (For those who’ve never seen me, I ain’t that dark. My skin tans deeply but is deceptively fair.) It was all rather disheartening. After my brain injury, I stuffed them away.

And then I published Lifeliner on Smashwords. I followed up a year later with She, A Nibble of Chocolate, and The Job Sessions. And I got to thinking: I could package those short stories into an ebook. I could make them available directly to readers. There’s something rather freeing about going around capricious publishers and getting your work into the public realm at last. All I had to do was go find the files (easier said than done as most were still on floppies) and shoot a photo for the book cover.

I trotted down to Sugar Beach, shot hundreds of pictures, looked up into one of the pink umbrellas, and thought, simple is best, and clicked. That became my cover.

I then formatted it for Smashwords and discovered that their Meatgrinder — which converts Microsoft Word docs to ebook formats — now includes an ePub Check, which failed my book. Although I always use their nuclear method, as I know how sneaky Word is in introducing codes that muck up documents, I had made the mistake of copying Author info and other standard text into the document after nuking out all the codes. At least the second time around went quick. And while I was at it, I uploaded it to Kindle publishing too.

Eleven Shorts +1 is now available on Smashwords as a multi-format ebook and Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon.de as a Kindle ebook.

I am awaiting approval for distribution to other retailers, and distribution can take a few days to a few months, depending on the retailer. I will be uploading it to Goodreads too in due course and creating a page for it on my website.

These stories are unlike my books. Several are literary, a couple are creepy, some have funny bits, and they’re all a nice-sized bite for a quick read. I have also included a bonus, a romance short story that my grandmother wrote back in 1919. I hope you will check it out!

For those who don’t know, this practice of following a person and then within a day or perhaps a generous five days unfollowing the person if they don’t follow back arose because of Twitter’s policy. Once you follow 2,000 people, you must have a certain ratio of follow:being followed in order to increase that number above 2,000. So the idea is you follow a person, they immediately follow you. You unfollow the person and repeat with another. (Writers who do this may not unfollow as it’s also, in their view, some sort of support thing.) If they don’t follow you, you definitely unfollow them. That way the number of people who follow you will remain higher than the number you follow, and Twitter will let you increase the number of people you follow beyond 2,000. You follow? However, with apps like TwitDiff, people like me can now spot these kind of Twitterers and no longer have to waste our time checking out their Twitter feed.

I have never immediately followed back because I am too slow. First off, it can take me weeks to check out feeds, it all depends on my energy levels and what else I’m doing. With some feeds, I can’t make up my mind if I want to follow them. With feeds filled with RTs and @ replies, I know I don’t because a feed filled with RTs is too difficult to read, and a feed filled with @ replies means I won’t see it with how Twitter handles those tweets. Only TweetDeck would show me them, and I’m not on TweetDeck that often. In a very, very few cases, feeds are a slam-dunk to follow. They have funny tweets, interesting tweets, intriguing links, banal tweets, good info, some @ replies, a few RTs, or a combo of all of those; they have conversations; they’re not filled with hashtags fore and aft, which make my eyes spin. In short, they’re worth the follow.

Those kinds of feeds ought to be a natural for writers to write, or at least aspire to.

Apparently not.

I joined Twitter for the same reason I started a blog: to practice my writing (those 10,000 hours Malcolm Gladwell writes about plus it’s fun or at least work I like) and to express myself. Twitter had the added discipline of imposing brevity. Short writing, putting a complex thought into few words, is not easy. Twitter provides the perfect opportunity to practise.

Twitter also provides the writer the chance to write pithy thoughts on a wide variety of subjects. You’re not confined to the subject of your books or the theme of your blog.

I have also discovered that Twitter allows an author to meet readers. Goodreads does that too, but not in the real-time, free-flowing conversational way that Twitter does, in which others can join in to your conversations.

And Twitter allows you to meet or follow interesting people in the publishing industry and learn from them. You can’t do that — heck, you can’t do any of the above — if all you’re doing is exchanging book shills, which becomes extremely tedious before the day is half over.

Yes, an author does need to tweet on their books, what others are saying about the books, where to buy, sales and promotions. And yes, there will be bursts of these tweets when a new book comes out. But over the course of a year, those tweets should be a small part; even in the bursts they should not be the only topic on the author’s feed.

Twitter is a merit thing when it comes to following. I don’t expect people to follow me just for following support. I don’t expect people to follow me back just because I followed them. My tweets may not be their cup of tea. So I don’t like it when people impose the expectation of you-have-to-follow-me-just-because-I-followed-you-even-if-my-feed-is-the-biggest-yawnfest-you-ever-encountered. TwittDiff lets me spot these kinds of Twitterers in the ease of my email inbox. I no longer have to spend precious energy or minutes checking out a feed, only to discover that they’ve already unfollowed me (you can tell by the lack of direct message ability). But even with TwitDiff, it really irritates me when writers unfollow because I didn’t follow back right away or at all.

Authors who think we should follow each other because it’s how we support each other and that by boosting Twitter follower numbers we will somehow sell books, are missing out. And they are also missing out in how we can truly support each other: by sharing info, by discussing how we do things, joining up under a shared hashtag like #amwriting or #nanowrimo even though we may not follow each other. These authors and writers have just stuck a finger in the eye of Twitter’s opportunity.

“Real” authors, the established ones, don’t do this follow-you-follow-me thing. They’re too busy writing interesting tweets.

Lifeliner and She will both be fifty percent off their regular price. And as always, all ebook formats will be available for download. So whether you have a Kindle, Sony Reader, kobo, Nook, iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone, smartphone, or a computer, you will be able to read all my ebooks. And for July only, at a special price too! Just click the images below to be taken directly to the respective book pages.

If you need instructions on how to download and read ebooks from Smashwords, please check out my 2010 post on Reading Any DRM-Free ePub on iPod Touch, iPad, or iPhone. To read an ePub ebook on your computer, download the free Adobe Digital Editions, then download the ebooks from Smashwords. And when you’ve finished reading, please don’t forget to leave a review on the Smashwords book pages! Enjoy!!

Here it is: front, back, and spine. Way cool! Flipping through it, I already found my first sentence to rewrite. Needless to say the manuscript needs revising, feedback, and editing. So this won’t be the version I’ll be publishing, and it will be awhile before it’s available to the public. But it is rather nice to have a book version of the first draft!

But that’s not the only place you can find She in. So far, Apple’s iBooks and iTunes now lists all four of my ebooks in ePub version in its store: She, Lifeliner, The Job Sessions, and A Nibble of Chocolate. The latter two are available for only 99¢. And in a bizarre twist, the Canadian ebook retailer kobo, hasn’t listed Lifeliner, a biography on a remarkable Canadian woman who made medical, world-changing Canadian history, yet they have listed A Nibble of Chocolate, a nice bite-sized look at the nutrition of chocolate with a recipe included because nutritious food should always taste yummy.

If you’re a Goodreads member, you can now purchase and/or read both Lifeliner and She right on the site, as well as fan my author profile.

And as always, all four of my ebooks are listed and available on Smashwords (and through the ebook app Stanza) for instant download in your preferred format to your favourite device.

I hope you will enjoy my ebooks and be inspired to make a donation towards the substantial cost of She’s editing, by clicking the button in the right sidebar. No good novel appears in public without first going under the critical eyes of an editor. And you can be assured that mine have and always will. I hugely appreciate all those who have already donated and helped me afford this necessary step. Will you not join their number? Regardless, as always, I wish you happy reading!

Right now, I am doing a soft launch of the eBook. I had read about this method of launching a book awhile ago and thought it a good idea. Basically, I upload the final DOC file to Smashwords, which converts it to all the eBook formats, creates a book page for my urban fantasy novel, and lists it on all their appropriate shelves. I tweet about She a little and tell a few close people and my Beta Readers, increase the small announcements once I’ve had a chance to check and fix it for errors, but I hold off on doing the big announcement and marketing push until everything else is in place, like ISBNs and retailers stocking it. A soft launch gives me a chance to see it in its final eBook form on my Sony Reader, on the computer, and on my iPad in the various apps — kobo, iBooks, Stanza, Bluefire Reader, Kindle. That’s the best way to find formatting errors, like a title not fully italicized, or minor punctuation errors, or typos that would’ve been missed in the DOC file. After several readings of the same file, your eyes tend to see what is supposed to be there instead of what is actually there. Looking at the ePub is like seeing it for the first time, and errors pop out at you. With Smashwords, it is easy to fix the file and re-upload it. Anyone who has bought the original version will also be able to download the newer one.

The soft launch also means I have time to create a Goodreads page for She and a page for it on my website (yet to do!). Yet I can still get the eBook out into the public while doing that and while waiting for the Canadian agency that issues ISBNs to process my registration and to issue me a block of ISBNs. Canada does not charge for this service, unlike other countries, but you have to wait. I also have to wait for Smashwords to distribute She to retailers. Some won’t take it until I have assigned it an ISBN; others will. And, as well, I want to assign the Kindle version an ISBN before I publish it in the Amazon Kindle store. In a couple of months, I hope to have the print book out.

But you don’t have to wait to read it: just head over to Smashwords, buy it for the low, low price of $2.99, and download your preferred format to your computer and eReader and smartphone and iPad. Once you’ve bought it, you can download it as many times as you like without paying again. You can also read samples of and buy my other eBooks. Enjoy! And if you can spare a moment, please leave a review on Smashwords!

To be published by a large, traditional publisher, but not a small press, you need an agent. And besides it would be nice to have someone alongside, who knows the ropes. Writing is a solitary game otherwise. But how to get an agent, especially in this era of vampires and paranormals? I don’t read them or write them, but I am getting tired of reading about them, they’re that ubiquitous.

Also, how long must one wait? For an agent to say yes, for a publisher to say yes, for the book to appear? I suppose if you’re young and have another job, a year or two each is no big deal. But I had to ask myself, after losing a decade, how many more years was I willing to lose in this never-ending waiting game? When I was honest with myself, the answer: none.

And so once again into the self-publishing world I go. After the unhappy end with iUniverse and the little matter of no longer having the money, who to go with? And more importantly, should I publish print books or eBooks only? I decided eBooks only. But as is my way, my decision sat on unstable ground.

Next question: who to hire as an editor? I went with the smaller, less expensive outfit. More in another post on that choice. In contrast to trying to choose an editor, revising my novel once I’d received the edits was a relief. This was known territory. Still I worried: was it good enough? Had all the lost threads and inconsistencies, the grammar oops and verbos been found?

I needed a proofreader. But they are hard to find. Amazon CreateSpace doesn’t even provide that service. Instead they offer a round of basic copy editing. But editing and proofreading are physically done differently. In editing, you read like a normal person, left to right, down the page, seeing both content and grammar. In proofreading, you read backwards, from bottom to top of page, sentence by sentence. I start on the first page, but it wouldn’t surprise me if others start on the last page. Not distracted by content, you’re more likely to catch grammatical errors, misspellings, and typos that way. It’s also faster. As a result, the cost for proofreading should be much less than copy editing. So to pay for the latter when you want the former is a bit heavy on the wallet.

I finally did learn of a real book proofreader. But she was booked into the summer. And so I huffed and sighed and groaned and printed out my manuscript, slapped it down on my desk, pulled out my green pen, and began proofreading. I was astonished that though I hadn’t worked as a proofreader in *mumble* years, I went right into proofreading mode as if I had never stopped. I wish I could learn that well today — it really hit home how learning today never becomes ingrained in me like things did pre-injury.

At the same time as I was trying to find a proofreader, I had to contend with what to do with the cover. Do I hire a cover designer or do it myself? A good book cover designer has a special skillset of knowing what looks good in that format and will sell a print book. Yet covers for eBooks work differently than covers for paperbacks or hard covers, which just a perusal of cover thumbnails on kobo or Amazon will tell you as most are designed for print and copied unthinkingly to the eBook.

Unlike other authors, I actually have some design skills and a decent eye for what looks good. And so it wasn’t a case for me of, of course get a cover designer. Cost became the overriding decision-maker. My work is free to me.

And finally came the back cover copy, or in Smashwords parlance, the extended description. But writing back cover blurb is the work for marketers. Now some in the traditional publishers don’t read the book, which is why the back cover blurbs don’t match the story, but good ones do and know what will catch the eye of a reader. I do not. But free is me. And I had a brilliant idea: all those query letters I wrote and had rewritten, they would make a good base for the description. I had already written a logline. So I used that for the short description.

Still, once I had done the soft launch of my novel She and could see the book page, I was not happy with my initial effort. I found a how-to and tried again.

Then someone asked me when readers like her, who read only print books, would be able to read my novel. Sigh. I revisted my first decision, and I suddenly remembered that NaNoWriMo had offered a CreateSpace proof to winners. Could I use that? Well, no, not for this novel, but it did get me to read the website for winners and realise that if I once again, did it myself, I could get it into print for free. So once again, into the tedious brain-busting physically-draining world of formatting I go. And do I go into the formatting world of Word, for which CreateSpace has a template, or my traditional desktop publishing world of Corel Ventura? Formatting a manuscript for print is different than for an eBook or the Kindle, and Ventura does give you more control. I have yet to do the Kindle on Amazon itself (Smashwords converts to Kindle format but it isn’t available on Amazon); I am both procrastinating and waiting to ensure my soft-launch readers don’t find typos or formatting errors. Formatting for print will take a few days and by the time I’m done, assuming I make up my mind which software to use, I will (I hope!) know of any typos.

Well, isn’t that a surprise! First Squidoo does the right thing and restores my deleted article and now Greener Families does the right thing and deletes their illegal copy of it.

Two lessons I’ve learnt:

1. Don’t give up when you see injustice done: Write! Write the transgressors, use civil language, include sentences that tell them you can prove your claim, and copy legal language from websites who’ve gone through the same steps as you.

2. People in the wrong don’t apologise, don’t acknowledge they did wrong, and don’t let you know when they’ve rectified the situation. With people like Squidoo or Greener Families, it doesn’t matter really, other than it’s annoying, because I don’t have a personal relationship with them. But when it happens in a personal relationship, that relationship is doomed to superficiality at best and will likely fade away. For when the transgressor fails to admit wrong, apologise, and repent (change their mind, way of doing things), then the trangressed is likely to hold them at harm’s length even if s/he shows a smiling face to the transgressor. Don’t fool yourself. Being a coward and not apologising (in the hopes it’ll all go away and why can’t we all make nice) isn’t going to fix anything and will ruin what relationship you have left.

Now I can get back to my regularly scheduled programming. Yay!

So now that I’m feeling more human, I’ve followed the advice of two excellent articles on what to do when someone or some thing has plagiarized your work.

DevTopics in How to File a DMCA Complaint talks about splogs as an introduction on how to fight back. Until I read this post, I’d never heard of splogs before:

“A splog or “spam blog” is a blog that steals content from other web sites, then aggregates and republishes the content on its own blog.”

I don’t know if greenerfamilies.com is a splog or not, but it is a strange site in that there are no last names and there is no contact information. Yet the site presents itself as a kind of company or organization that will help make people healthier and greener, a company that has professionals behind it. Legitimate companies that sell products to improve people’s lives have all sorts of information about themselves right on their websites. They don’t hide.

I also read Lorelle on WordPress’s article What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content. She has excellent tips on how to find out who is behind a website or blog and how to find contact  information.

The apparent owner of greenerfamilies.com also owns 33 other domains. That’s an awful lot of domains for a self-described doctor with a business. On greenerfamilies.com’s About page, John describes himself as a former Olympic athlete and a worldwide lecturer. Seems to me that someone with that kind of pedigree would not be hiding his last name. The photos look kind of, uh, generic for a couple of professionals.

Using the email information DomainTools spat out, and using the templates both DevTopic and Lorelle on WordPress provided, I emailed a cease and desist message to the two email addresses I could find, namely jpahau@yahoo.com and registrars@ecommerce.com. I gave them until Friday for them to respond.

This is a Notice of Infringement as authorized in § 512(c) of the U.S. Copyright Law under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This is to advise you that you are using copyrighted and protected material on your website/blog. Your illegal use of "Fat into Fuel" article at http://www.greenerfamilies.com/?p=55 is originally from my Squidoo website page called "A Nibble of Chocolate, Part Three" at http://www.squidoo.com/chocolatepartthree. This is original content, and I am the author and copyright holder. Use of copyright protected material without permission is illegal under U.S. and Canadian copyright laws.

Please remove this article immediately or we will file an official complaint with the U.S. Copyright Office, FeedBurner, and Google, Inc. Google’s response may include removing or disabling access to material claimed to be the subject of infringing activity and/or terminating subscribers.
I expect a response by Friday, May 20, 2011 to this issue. Thank you for your immediate action on this matter.

Shireen Jeejeebhoy

Meanwhile, I discovered through writing this email that – although they had not informed me — Squidoo had restored the chocolate article that they had locked out from the public and were about the delete, the same article that greenerfamilies.com had plagiarized. Was I ever surprised! Sometimes it pays to speak up. Sometimes there is a measure of justice.

Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Battle Is Done and Chapter Thirty: Resurrection

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Despair

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Dr. Cowboy, Where Are You?

To recap, I’ve written two novels during two consecutive National Novel Writing Months in November 2009 and 2010. A year ago, I had written, received feedback on, and revised my first novel She. I then decided to submit it to agents. Each agent likes a different way to submit. Some want just a query letter, others like pages too (usually the first ten pages of the manuscript), some want a synopsis on top of that. I wrote and rewrote and had others rewrite that query letter and synopsis. To no avail. I received no “bad” responses, no “your manuscript sucks,” no “maybe if you tweaked it…,” no “this is a good sleep aid.” Nope, I received for the most part standard form rejection letters, that is, if I received a reply at all. Most agents aren’t big on replying if it’s a no. And since agents can take months to respond, you can’t assume it’s a no for about four months or so. I did receive requests for a partial or full, which is the agent saying I’m intrigued, but I want to see more first. After that, the “not for me” or “no one’s publishing” or “it’s not commercial enough” response.

So what’s a gal to do?

I quit. I suddenly realised I’d spent almost a year futzing around trying to find an agent so I could then get a publisher and meanwhile my memory for what I’d written was disappearing fast. If I didn’t get that thing edited soon, I’d completely forget what it was I wanted to say, never mind the storyline. On top of that, I was never comfortable with some publisher choosing the title of my book or the cover art. I’ve always felt that titles are a writer’s prerogative, a writer’s responsibility. After all, a title is the first word of a manuscript. Having some pinhead in the marketing department (or if I’m lucky, the editor working with me) deciding on my title repulses every bone in my body.

But the big question was who to get to edit it? And how do I pay for it? I took a stab at the latter by putting a PayPal donation button on the sidebars of my blog and website. May I digress a moment and ask if you would kindly consider making a donation to a good cause – the editing of my novel? Please? Pretty please with a sugar plum on top?

Anyway, I had a couple of choices: an editor here in Toronto, one I could work face-to-face with but would cost me the earth, relatively speaking — worth it too, but tis a matter of available dollars — or an online one that would cost much less. I suppose it was telling that I got sick as I was trying to make this decision.

As I do with anything I buy, I looked for reviews. I found none. Recently, I read JA Konrath’s blog, looking specifically for what he had to say about CreateSpace’s editing services. I finally found it, or rather his comment on editing in general when publishing an ebook. He doesn’t have it done. Peachy. Real helpful. He relies on a writing friend to vet his ebooks. As a former editor, I ain’t impressed. Only trained editors will pick up on stuff, from a missed serial comma to narrative threads dropped. Good readers will find much as well, but as with anything, if you don’t have the training or experience, you won’t do it as well as a professional.

Now Konrath and, I assume, his writing buddies have been writing and have been edited by traditional publishers for years and years, and so they will have experience. But for most of us…well, relying on equally inexperienced writer friends is why we get ebooks formatted like blogs with crappy grammar and all-over-the-map spelling and language usage. A good editor provides the single most important step in getting a book from manuscript to published.

In the end, I chose Bubblecow (will review later). I have now gone through the line edits (such as they were) and extensive overall and chapter-by-chapter reader notes. I’ve tweaked my novel and am done!

Well, almost. I just have to proofread. I did the same thing for proofreaders as I did for editors and found even less information. But now I see Konrath decides to talk about proofreading, after I looked around for reviews and what was available last week. Sheesh. Anyway, for purely monetary reasons, I and a friend will proofread She. As a former proofreader, I worry we won’t do as good a job as a professional, but I kinda have no choice. As my friend said, as long as we catch the big grammar mistakes and typos, it should be fine. I agree, but the perfectionist in me is grumbling away of course. Perhaps I’ll look at Konrath’s recommended proofreader…

But before we get to that, I’m giving myself some space from the text and working on the cover. I know exactly what I want. I took photographs on Easter of the city skyline — wow, is the CN Tower ever tall — and now have all the elements I need to put together my cover. I’ve been working with my photographs in Corel Paint Shop Photo Pro X2 and X3 for years, so I’m confident I know how to do it…it’s just a matter of being able to take what’s in my head and putting it in the computer. It’s at times like these I’d like to be in that ST:TNG society where if you thunk it, it was created!

The proofreading will take the longest amount of time. After that, I will format the interior for ebook publishing, add the cover art to the file, and publish!

I hate private insurance. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. Did I mention how much I loathe some bean counter deciding on my health, usurping my medical decisions that affect my body? Did I state how much I loathe the paperwork, the begging, the stinginess, and most of all the denial of care just because some bean counter decides he knows better than me and my doctor what health care I need? Well, let me be clear: I hate it! I had to endure it for years when I made accident benefits claims under the no-fault system of car insurance in Ontario. OHIP, which leaves all my health care decisions up to me and my doctor (with the proviso that they cover it, of course), was a haven compared to that special hell.

Another big complaint was my bona fides. Well, I did think about putting “brain injury survivor” in my bio so readers would know I have experience in what I speak about. But I loathed (again, that word!) painting myself as a brain injury. I try very hard not to use the words “schizophrenic” or “autistic” when writing about people with schizophrenia or children with autism because persons are not diseases or injuries. We may have them; we may have to live within the limitations they impose; but they are not us. I don’t even like the term “brain injury survivor.” So I feared putting those words in would instantly slant people’s perception of me as a writer and an authority on the subject. I had also hoped people would click over to my website and discover my full bona fides there. But, sigh, we’re all too lazy to make that extra effort, aren’t we?

As my regular readers know, I’ve had way too much experience with the health care system in Canada. So my point of view comes from experience, not just what is theory or word of mouth. I’m very pleased to announce that my piece is now live on canada.com:

It’s time to accept private health care clinics

I like very much what they chose as the lift-out to appear under my photograph:

“I would never want U.S.-style medicine here, but the current Canadian way rewards the idiots as much as the geniuses.”

I hope you will check it out now and perhaps contribute your two-cents’ worth to this topic!

“It was like travelling with a celebrity,” Marlene told me when I was interviewing her about Judy Taylor. Nowhere was that more true than on their road trips down to New York state for the annual Oley conferences. Judy loved those conferences, meeting fellow patients, being able to travel with her friends from Toronto General Hospital, talking to doctors and nurses involved in TPN care. For being the first to live on Home TPN and for inspiring so many to live good lives on this artificial form of feeding, Judy won the inaugural LifelineLetter Award from Oley.

Chapter Twenty-Six: LifelineLetter Award

In this chapter, Judy starts experiencing the consequences of too little nutrient knowledge early in her life on TPN. Back in the late 1960s/early 1970s, not much was known about Vitamin D given intravenously; because of Judy, they discovered the requirements are much less in TPN than in a normal food diet. At first, it seemed she’d be OK. But then in the 1980s, she began breaking bones. And soon her hair began falling out, for reasons unknown. Her health care team spent the decade trying to learn more, trying to help her.

Chapter Twenty-Five: Breaking Bones, Falling Hair

Anyway, BrainLine asked me to contribute to their site! Right out of the blue, I received an email asking permission to reprint four of my articles — from the personal to my research on how brain injury can affect diabetes, the heart, and internal functioning — that I’d published on this website and also offering to publish a page on me with links back to jeejeebhoy.ca. Wow! What an honour. I said yes, of course. I hope I recognize an opportunity when I see one.

Please go check out my new BrainLine page and my articles. And let me know what you think!

Chapter Twenty-Four: Sweden

Chapter Twenty-Three: Death Creeps Close

Chapter Twenty-Two: More Family Trouble

We are in an age of transition. Like those who went from calligraphy to the Gutenberg press, so we are going from pen and print books to tablet computers and ebooks.

Up until early last century, manuscripts were written by hand. Then typewriters came along, and writers mastered the two-finger peck. Soon word processors appeared and at about the same time personal computers.

Writers now had a choice of handwriting or typing their drafts on a typewriter or on a computer. But final drafts, the ones sent out as submissions or completed manuscripts to publishers, always had to be typed or printed from a computer.

That changed after the anthrax scare, particularly in the US. Agents and publishers began to demand queries via email only and manuscripts in MS Word DOC format, also via email. But in Canada, some agents and publishers prefer the old ways; perhaps they feel it’s more literary for writing to be on paper than in pixel form. They refuse emails; they want snail mail submissions only. That slow, expensive, tree-wasting method is on the way out though, especially as more and more of us writers refuse to participate and submit only to agents or publishers who accept queries and manuscripts by email.

The revising and editing process has undergone a change too. No longer do editors mark up printed copies with pencil or red pen. Instead they use tracking changes in MS Word and communicate with authors via email. Again, in Canada, some editors still work in the dark ages of print-outs. A few even think it’s not necessary to be on the Internet or have email. Seriously. And so a Canadian author has to pay attention to what specific publishers or agents want: paper or pixels.

But despite a few Canadian anachronisms, writers today must use a computer to write the final draft, however they write their first drafts.

Then last year Apple released the iPad, and things changed radically for writers again.

Up until the iPad, even with computers, writers jotted down ideas in notebooks, sketched out floor plans on paper with coloured pencils. Writers only had one copy of these things, and we panicked if they were lost. No more. The iPad allows us writers to outline, jot down ideas, sketch settings, as well as write our manuscript, all on one electronic medium.

The entire process can now be done on some form of computer. And everything can be saved and backed up to the cloud and shared with others or between our own computers.

Writers are no longer limited to physical media like the typewritten page or thumb drive.

The ability to save one’s work in the cloud means that a writer can work on a manuscript on any computer, tablet computer, or smartphone wherever we are, whenever the mood strikes or a free moment appears.

For those who like to revise on a printed copy, printing itself has undergone a change. With the advent of networked printers, one can print from anywhere on the planet to the printer at home.

In addition to all that, the traditional process of writing, revising, and editing has had a new step inserted: Beta Readers.

Beta readers love to read. They may be strangers or people in one’s writing club. They read our manuscripts and comment on anything from writing style to plot to characters to endings or mood, depending on what their strengths are as readers.

Beta Readers can often be found on social media. When we writers engage with people on Twitter and they begin to read our blogs as well and get to know our long-form writing style, they may well offer to read our manuscripts.

That is just one of the many benefits of social media. Twitter also has a thriving writer community, which holds regular writer chats. So in addition to the traditional associations like the Canadian Authors Association, which provides opportunities to meet fellow writers face-to-face in our own regions, Canadian writers can now talk with writers from all over the world in cyberspace.

After we receive feedback from our Beta Readers, we revise once more and then send out the manuscript to agents or small publishers. Or not. Publishing too has changed.

Traditionally, a book writer would seek out a publisher directly, for the publisher would handle all the chores except the writing. (The publisher choosing the title and front cover still bugs me. I cannot imagine why writers in times past gave up that control.) It was very difficult for a writer to self-publish as printing and distribution were expensive and not easy to arrange.

But that has changed. First, traditional large publishers — the big six — began accepting submissions from agents only. Only small or indie publishers accept submissions from authors directly today. An author still has to wait a week or 6 months to hear back though. Although most agents and small publishers have long since allowed simultaneous submissions, realising writers can’t waste half their lives watching the mailbox, the waiting time can still be excessive. I have already spent over a year trying to find an agent with a few nibbles but no bites.

Then the rise of print-on-demand shifted this balance of power towards the author. It has become more feasible financially for authors to self-publish and nix the long, long process of traditional publishing, although it is controversial to turn one’s back on the traditional way.

As a result, in the last decade, companies that support self-publishing authors sprang up. AuthorHouse is the big one today (I won’t use them — see my adventures with iUniverse). But there are others like Lulu and CreateSpace. They provide whatever service an author needs, from editing to printing, for a fee.

But it is the ebook that has truly exploded author emancipation.

The publishing world has been turned upside down in the last year. Ebooks cost virtually nothing (aside from the essential professional editing step) for the multi-competent writer to create.

Readers like their eReaders. Some tell me no one can pry them out of their hands. They also prefer ebooks under $6.99, maybe up to $9.99. Traditional publishers prefer to price their ebooks high — $12.99 is their low end — and release them after hard cover editions. Both readers and authors are unhappy with that.

This traditional-minded approach gives indie authors an edge. They can price their ebooks at a level readers are willing to pay and release them at the same time as the print books, thus allowing readers to buy their preferred format when the book first comes out. After all, books are written for readers. It’s not for us to tell them which format they should read first. It’s the content that’s paramount, not whether the words are printed on paper or shown in pixels.

Ebooks themselves are in transition as different companies support different formats. PubIt! by Barnes & Noble supports ePub, as does Smashwords, kobo, and Sony Reader. Amazon’s Kindle uses the mobi format. Luckily, it’s become easier to publish in all of them, thus covering eReaders from Kindle to Kobo.

Since traditional publishers support only best-selling authors fully, mid-list and small authors now have an alternative to being ignored: self-publish ebooks.

Regardless of which path an author takes, all authors, except best sellers, have to market their own work. And that’s the hardest job in writing.

But here again, the online revolution has made it easier than ever for an author. Social media is a must. Virtual book tours, book trailers on YouTube, pages on Amazon and Chapters are now possible.

A Facebook Page, Twitter, and an author website are the foundation upon which to build a marketing plan. The writer begins building this foundation while still outlining the book, and does not talk just shop online, but shows the whole of who they are. Readers like to know their authors (well, maybe not all, but followers become readers when they get to know the author as a person first, then become intrigued enough to find out about the author’s works).

The author’s Facebook Page — not Profile — shows their professional side, things like writing-related blog posts, book events, links to reviews, and so on.

Twitter is where the author converses on many different topics, showing off their various interests and connecting with other writers. It is also an excellent place to publicize one’s blog posts, books, poetry, etc. via links.

The author website will not be just for blogging but a place where people can find out about the author’s background and how to contact them (really important, contact info is), their writing, and where to buy their books or articles. It needs to be kept up to date, else people will think you, the author, have died and stopped writing.

One caveat to authors: Do not post your drafts or any part of your book online. Some writers do. But your work has value. Your blog posts and status updates are free. Your work writing, your books, are not free because they’re your income and they’re worth the money for the time and effort you’ve put into them. Treat them that way.

Goodreads is a site for readers, but it also has Author Pages, which authors can use to connect with their readers as readers themselves. The most important part of writing is reading. Here the author can foster that side long before publishing that first book.

There are many other social media sites. It’s tempting to join all of them, but over time too tiring. It’s better to focus on a few and be active on them than spread oneself out too thinly.

The move from paper to pixels lets us authors take control and speeds the publishing process; it gives readers their choice of format; and the trees flutter their leaves in joy.

That’s what a publisher is supposed to do for a writer: edit. But these days, some advocate the editing step before finding a publisher or agent; other writers do it on their own because they’re self-publishing. That’s me.

I’ve experienced this step on both sides of the fence. My first job after university was as a proofreader. I was quickly promoted to copy editor and trained by an excellent editor. We also took workshops or short courses at George Brown College together in related areas like graphic design. So I know what to expect when I send my manuscript out to a pro for a critical look.

One thing has changed though since my editing days: technology. Now instead of marking up paper, editors mark up word processing docs electronically. (Well, most. I hear there are still editors with no email and no Internet, paper being so romantic and the material of real Canadian writers, you know. But I digress.) I miss the different coloured pens we used in the publishing house. Green for proofreading; pencil or red for editing. I like the new way though. So efficient!

But I lied at the top. First does not come the writing. First comes an outline that I take to my main editor, the man who gently but firmly tells me how to structure the book better, how to fix plot holes or timelines or characterizations, teaches me new structural or character techniques, and gives me the confidence to proceed, to turn my idea from outline to polished outline to a manuscript I write during NaNoWriMo.

That kind of editing, structural editing, is not the same as the kind you get after writing and revising and revising a bit more. The latter kind is copy editing. But with editing companies or self-publishing houses, the copy editing will also include structural and stylistic editing. Some call it comprehensive editing.

In comprehensive editing, the editor looks for everything from how the narrative flows to misplaced commas. The editor sends back your manuscript with both notes and line edits. Line edits are when the editor goes through the manuscript line by line looking for and highlighting grammatical, spelling, punctuation, and diction errors. The margins of one’s manuscript can be filled with comments from Microsoft Word’s tracking changes.

I hate Word.

But that’s what the publishing industry uses. So for Lifeliner I borrowed my Dad’s ancient laptop which had Word on it so I could see and interact with the tracking changes. This time round I have QuickOffice on my iPad, but it doesn’t show tracking changes. Grrr. I also have OpenOffice. It does show tracking changes but not with the offending text highlighted. Grrr. Still, I’m not emptying my bank account to pay for Word. I hate that program. I’ll use OpenOffice, and when I get down to the nitty gritty of responding to every line edit, I’ll use a demo copy of Word that I have on my new computer till it won’t let me use it no more.

So this past February, I found an editor — did you check out yet my Donations button in the right sidebar, to help me with the costs of editing and publishing? If not, please take a moment to consider any size of donation. I’d appreciate it hugely!

Back to what I was saying. What was I saying? Oh yeah – I gathered up my courage and sent my manuscript off, crossed my fingers, and this past Monday, I received it back. My stomach lurched upon seeing the email. Only one antidote for that – read it! I did. It was more than I expected, not because there was so much wrong with the manuscript (there wasn’t, yay!) but because the editor didn’t confine her remarks to generalities only but also included specific comments on each chapter.

I now have the notes and line edits open on my computer and am going through each, chapter by chapter, to see what the big and little problems are. Big problems could include a detail missing or a storyline not threaded through the narrative clearly. Little problems could be a double “and” or a period instead of an exclamation mark. As I go through, I’m writing ideas down or asking questions of the editor on many but not all of the notes or complex line edits. This is the “big picture” scan. Once I’m done, I’ll email my questions to the editor and begin the final revisions. The only problem I have is how to stop the exclamation marks in my document from turning into squares. I’ve tried many methods and none so far have worked. I hate Word.

I’m quite excited because this is the last big job to do before prepping my novel currently called “She” for publishing.

Sometimes the price people pay for being the first, being a pioneer, appears in their children. And so it was for Judy. It began in her eldest, first with minor rebellion then with running away and finally with an arrest. Judy didn’t know what to do. In the end, she had to send her daughter to Toronto.

Chapter Twenty-One: At the Police Station

This chapter is a story about diabetes, about how a remarkable discovery was made because of Judy, because of Jeej’s work with her. They discovered that chromium plays a vital role in diabetes. It was decades before the wider scientific and research audience started to understand the full ramifications of this discovery, but at the time it made the news. And Jeej enjoyed hugely both curing Judy’s diabetes, including her fuzzy feet, and making this ground-breaking connection between chromium and diabetes. She could eat cake again — if she still ate! In this chapter, he tells the tale to a receptive audience: the Swedish professor who conducted the first pioneering work in artificial feeding and who developed intravenous fat, the very fat Judy uses.

Chapter Twenty: Chromium Deficiency and the Swedish Professor

Chapter Nineteen: JJ, the Guinea Pig

Chapter Eighteen: The Bliss of Life

Chapter Seventeen: Barbecue Season