Freitag, 25. März 2011

Night Publishing, an update.

Well I sent my first chapter in and now I'm just waiting to se if anything comes of it.

However, now I'm into the website I find myself visiting there at least once a day. It really is such a nice community of fellow writers, published and unpublished, who lend constant support to each other; it's inspiring, it really is.

It's just like the Struggling Authors website but on a slightly larger scale and I'm lovin' it! As we all know, I have very little time on my hands nowadays and writing did take a back seat for a long time but now, thanks to the pleasant, unconditional atmosphere on the site I'm starting to plan things again.

I'm slowly finding my fire again and it feels good, it really does feel good.



On another positive note, my friend Tee made me an offer yesterday that I couldn't refuse, ooer!

Well, I'll let her tell you about it as this is the email I received last night:

"Lorraine Holloway White (Authors on Show) asked me to join their team a while back but i was too busy at the time.
I now feel the time is right. So as well as being on NP I will be part of AOS.
Lorraine offered me a page which will also make me part of the admin.
As they promote books primarily, I decided to dedicate my page to unpublished authors. Promotion etc.

My first page will be an introduction of me. Then the second will be about ARC and Paul Rudd as I edited his book.

I would then like to feature you after that. Promotion of your book and maybe interview etc. Are you up for that?"



UP for it? UP FOR IT???

I'm so up for it I'm moonwalking… literally walking on the moon!

So I have to sort out a promo package for the Teester. It really is moving forward again, isn't it?

On a more somber note, a good friend of mine, Peter Roth passed away last week. We held a church service of remembrance for him. I attended the service before going to work and what an awful shift it was after it. I nearly had an accident with 30 tons of white hot liquid slag on the back of my wagon. It might have been better to have taken the day off actually.

Anyway, I'm planning to write something about him later on.

Right, that's it for now.

Please feel free to check NP out at this link.

http://nightreading.ning.com/

And have a look at my chapter. Leave a message, preferably a nice one, if you feel the need. Look for R.R.Jones.

http://nightreading.ning.com/profiles/blogs/rrjones-reggie-jones-on

Take it easy.

Reg :-)

Montag, 7. März 2011

Night Publishing.

"Welcome to Night Publishing - join the revolution and help us ensure that all great books get published."


Having shunned Authonomy for the sham I had always felt it was, I never thought I'd give my work in to another peer driven publishing website until now.
My friend, writing buddy and all round nice person Teresa Geering suggested AGES ago that I do it and now, after prevaricating for so long on the issue, I finally have.
I have put my first chapter up on Night Publishing to be scorned, ridiculed and despised, (or maybe, just maybe admired?) by other writers, in the hope that it will be voted in to be printed.

Who are these Night Publishing people, I hear you cry?

Mmm, well under the refreshingly idealistic motto, "Good books must be published" and using the POD platform to print them off, Messrs Tim Roux and Bruce Essar started up their Night Publishing project.
At first they used Create Space, the Amazon.com print on demand website but have now branched into other, more local printing houses due to the ridiculously priced postage involved.

However, it was the boom in e-books that really started the ball rolling.

We in Europe prefer our reading material to be on paper. Kindle and all the other e-book reading devices haven't really taken off here yet, however, across the great pond the situation is vastly different. Amazon's Kindle seems to have exploded and with it Night Publishing's sales figures.

But, I hasten to add, it wasn't the sales figures that turned my head on to actually putting my first chapter up, (no, honestly it wasn't!).

The thing I found with Authonomy was that nothing seemed to happen. You were constantly reviewing other chapters for other people, being nice to them in the hope that it would be reciprocated somewhere along the line, sometimes even receiving offers of deals with other writers, "I'll recommend yours if you recommend mine" etc etc.

And I just got fed up of it.

There was no forward movement on the whole thing, it was one big slurry of faceless authors and it quickly developed into me writing more or less the same review, (friendly, encouraging, deal-ready…) for all the chapters I received.

After a while I just stopped answering the mails.

Authonomy left me with a bad taste in my mouth and I felt disappointed in myself for letting myself be sucked up into the whole thing.

Then, three years later, after so many rejections that I felt about as optimistic as Quasimodo's case manager at a dating agency, I decided to post a poem on a website that Tee had pushed onto me, (actually, she wanted me to put my first chapter up so, to mollify her, I sent in a poem).

What I liked best was that the critique came straight away; there was no waiting on an email for weeks on end while someone decides on whether to read your work or not. This put Night Reading, as it was then, in a good light and it felt like the people who actually had read it were interested, (I'm so easily flattered, lol).

This obviously encouraged me to put up a second poem, one that wasn't so well received as the first but still attracted a couple of comments.

Whatever, yesterday, around three in the morning, I decided I'd go for it.

The chapter went up at 0508 AM and can be found at this link:


http://nightreading.ning.com/profiles/blogs/pa-targetself


If you feel the need to drop a comment off, please do ;-)



Right, that's it for now, take it easy and I'll try not to let it take so long for the Blog post.

Reg