Mistakes and Other Miseries

By Janis Patterson

My father always said, “When you make a mistake, make a big one.” Daddy would be so proud of me.

Back when I was new to the internet, I was told repeatedly to get a website, so I did – JanisSusanMay.com. I was so proud - it was beautiful, in shades of gold with dark orange roses all over the place. (You do know I’m crazy about roses, don’t you?) A lovely lady designed it for me and for a smallish fee each month maintained it, as there is no possible way I knew enough about computers to arrange and put things in a website, let alone make it so beautiful.

Time passed and I started to write more mysteries. For branding and other reasons, I chose the name Janis Patterson for my mystery name and decided to get another website. There was no way I could afford design or maintenance for two websites, so through one of my writers’ organizations I got one for just a few dollars a quarter that was supposed to be do-it-yourself foolproof. It wasn’t, as least as far as I was concerned, and to the utter relief of their tech support team I finally did learn to do my own updates. That one was JanisPattersonMysteries.com.

Time passed, and I came to a point that I simply could not afford to pay a monthly maintenance fee – especially since I wasn’t doing much updating. I didn’t know what to do, until my darling friend Jane Akshar in Luxor offered to design me one for a price that was incredibly low – so low that I could afford it without my abused and overworked credit card going into spasms. Patiently she led me through every step of sending her information, advising me what to do and why.

Okay, here’s where the mistake comes in. Since I already had websites under both my names (both of which were supposed to go away) she advised me to choose a new name – something like Janis Susan May Patterson, which would show up in searches no matter which name was input. I didn’t want to do that – I wanted to keep my names separate, thinking that in the future I could have both names point to the new website, which I couldn’t do until the old sites were down, but the new site needed a name. So, in my infinite wisdom (snark mode overwhelmingly on) I used the name www.Sefkhat-Awbi-Books.com. It does make a kind of sense – Sefkhat Awbi Books is the name of the company I started to bring out all my backlist during my publishing blitz last year. Unfortunately, no one knows to search for it, and worse, I have been getting all kinds of weird book submissions from people who want to be published by Sefkhat-Awbi. (Wouldn’t you think they’d notice that S-A Books only had one writer – me?)

I asked the support team at my writers’ organization to ‘park’ the JanisPattersonMysteries.com name on top of the new website, but when I type that into a search engine all that shows up is S-A Books. Which, I guess, is okay.

I was alarmed, however, to find that when I put in JanisSusanMay.com, my old webmistress hasn’t taken the site down as requested, and that there’s no mention of the S-A Books site. Yes, the old site is still beautiful, but it hasn’t been touched in over two years by either one of us, and I haven’t been able to get in touch with her.

And it gets worse, because the change in website names means I can’t use the lovely business cards I designed, nor the spectacular bookmarks Dawn Charles made for me. Of course, I was running low and thinking about getting more, but being cheap I wanted to use all I had. Now I can’t. There is something to be said for starting fresh, but quite frankly I think it’s overrated. So does my poor, limping credit card.

Trust me - it doesn't make it easy to know that all these problems are my own fault. I know, they're just little things that need to be and can be done, and in the grand scheme of life are hardly worth mentioning, but - if I may wax philosophical - it isn't the mountain ahead that impedes your progress, it's the grain of sand in your shoe. 

I keep thinking that I need to call my hosting system and see what I can do about changing the Sefkhat-Awbi-Books.com address to something practical like JanisSusanMayPatterson.com (I can hear Jane laughing now) and really work on finding my old webmistress and having her take down the old JanisSusanMay.com site down, but let’s face it – there are only so many hours in a day, and with my obligations I need to spend every one of them humanly possible writing.

Sigh. Ain’t technology grand? 

Down the Rabbit Hole…, or My Adventures in Self-Publishing

by Janis Susan May

I put off self-publishing my backlist for a long time. Not that I didn’t want my early books given new life or to find new readers. I was even entranced at the thought of maybe making the kind of BIG MONEY that some self-pubbers are. (Am still waiting for that…)

So why did I wait? Because I am such a thoroughgoing techno-naif the entire process terrified me. (Yes, there are services who do this sort of thing – I couldn’t afford them.) As one who can open and save a Word document and feels inordinate pride in being able to read and respond to emails, the idea of putting up a book was overwhelming. What if something went wrong and I looked like even more of an idiot than I already felt? What if I pushed the wrong button and my book disappeared? What if I pushed a bunch of wrong buttons and crashed Amazon or Barnes&Noble? (Yes, I do tend to overestimate my abilities.)

Finally, after a small amount of my favorite adult libation and a heartening pep talk from The Husband, I put up my first ebook to a resounding round of… silence. The first review complained about the formatting, over which I had slaved. The second trashed my baby so badly we were both bleeding, so I and my ego crawled into a metaphoric hole and pulled the dirt in over us.

The Husband was relentlessly encouraging, and urged me to persevere. I had enough royalties from my trad published books to hire a formatter and buy some inexpensive pre-made covers for a few more books so I gave in. My sales inched up and I was overjoyed.

Time passed. I became less terrified of the process. The Husband pushed me again, even though I told him it would probably be a couple of centuries before we could retire (his dream) on my writing income. We went back to the drawing board and he agreed to float my writing career a much-needed loan.

I found an incredible cover artist who, for a surprisingly reasonable amount, created a fantastic cover that would do for both paperback and ebook. (Most pre-made ebook covers will not go for paper – the resolution is too low to print well. Who knew?) She also created a beautiful logo for my newly christened publishing company, Sefkhat-Awbi Books, a name that resonates with both The Husband and me as both of us are enthusiastic amateur Egyptologists. For those who are curious, Sefkhat-Awbi is an obscure New Kingdom regional variant on the name of Sheshat, the Ancient Egyptian goddess of writing.

I went back to my fave formatter, who not only re-formatted my newly tidied ebook but created a paperback that would rival anything done by New York. Frankly, considering some of the things that have come from the Big 5 recently, it looks much better than many a New York product!

Curious about the result? FAMILY OF STRANGERS is a traditional Gothic romance set in Victorian-era Scotland and is now available from better retailers. (The paper version can even be ordered through brick-and-mortar stores as well as on the net!) Here’s the cover …

Stay tuned – I’ve scheduled a few more Gothic mysteries (not necessarily set in Scotland, though), a clutch of traditional Regencies, a couple of international romantic adventures and a cozy mystery or two to come.

I’m not to the point of feeling smug or truly comfortable with the process of being my own publisher yet, but it’s getting less intimidating by the day!