Trouserpress

There are two sides to every banality.

Also on Twitter as Psipook. Why? Erm …

Spent the day creating a press page for Weed (the novel) with preview copy downloads. And when I wasn’t doing that I was fielding email and phone calls about a certain magazine from people who want to know what is going on, and when not doing that, I have been sprawled on the futon feeling the effects of the last 47 years of alcohol on my poor, tired drinking bone.

And many thanks for all the people who wrote to me yesterday to remind me in numerical terms exactly how decrepit I am getting.

On the good side, September 21 is the UN International Day of Peace, in celebration of which I shot no one. I discover today that September 22 is International Fuck Cars Day. Not that anyone is suggesting that we should bonk our motors — a sufficiency of inadequate morons are doing that every day of the year already. I am talking about World Carfree Day, a happy day of leaving your toxic millstone brumbrum at home. Had I had use of a car, I would certainly have ignored it. You guys in the alternative time zones from me are now fully forewarned and forearmed, and if you can get on a plane and get over here, you can borrow my bike for the day. And all this reminds me what a cool month September is in which to have a birthday.

Meanwhile, continuing the cool autumnal theme: Saturday 28th November is Buy Nothing Day. I hope Australian red wine and beer are exempt, but if I remember to lay in a supply in advance, wey hey!

Oh groan. That’s not the good kind of groan, that’s a really groany kind of groan. I am sitting here utterly shagged (and that’s not the good kind of shagged either) with the stems of broken wine glasses keeping my eyelids open, while supping more of the same to keep me sane.

Bloody ebook publishers. This ebook technology is supposed to take publishing control (the censorship of the market) out of the hands of the corporate totalitarians and put it in the hand of the ordinary Joe, or ordinary Chris in this case. But no! Not a bit of it! Bollocks! That’s what I say. The big boys are apparently sewing up the means of publication. Oh, yes, the proles (hi!) have the means of production (if you can afford the software or a freelancer who can do it for you) but the suits have put armed guards on the store doors.

Yikes.

I am ranting on about my favourite novel in the history of the universe, Weed, the one wot I wrote myself. It was finished years ago and has been sitting on my HD so long it is covered in cyberdust.

Once I had dashed down (very slow and tentative kind of dashing, to be honest) the last full stop, a new narrative started: the fucking Greek epic of trying to get agents and publishers to take it on, a process full of hydras and clashing rock-like brains that I have mentioned here before.

Digression: when in London recently, I was chatting with a friend who has written and published a book. I won’t say who this was, because she may not want her stories repeated in public — not that the sub zero readership of this page constitutes public … a whisper in a locked cupboard, perhaps, but whatever. My friend’s book involved time money and months and months abroad researching when she was earning no money from her usual occupation as a freelance journalist, well paid and stable job, that freelancing is. Book finished, she found an agent. Months later, the book had not been placed with a publisher. My friend one morning fired the agent and within three hours found a publisher herself. So there you are, another tale to add to the many I have about the freeloaders and timewasters and parasites that are agents and publishers (and yes, I will be happy to take back those rude words if any agent agrees to take me on).

Where was I? Oh yes, I was ranting.

Thoroughly bored with this Greek epic of not publishing the normal way, I decided to self publish. Why not? James Joyce started that way. So having abandoned the Greek epic we start on the long difficult modern novel with a Greek name of trying the get the effing story put out as an ebook.

I tried to do the cover myself. I did used to be an artist of some enthusiasm, but the enthusiasm goes all soggy when it actually matters. I engaged an artist who … well, never mind. I decided again (re-decided? Is that a word?) to do the cover myself. That was a success until I decided one day it wasn’t a success. I re-did the cover myself which involved a lot of head scratching technical bother and the help of a friend who can actually use the software I have on my own machine.

Then I needed to format the documents and convert them to as many as possible of the myriad ebook formats, which involved a lot of terminally boring reading of very long blurbs and which were so long and difficult to read that by the time I had finished them the technology had moved on two more generations and I needed to start again. Once having gleaned the basics I was stumped for software to do the formatting and conversions, and I could not beg, borrow, steal or afford all this stuff.

Sorry, Mr. ePolice bot, I in no way intended to imply there that I was in any way whatsoeveratall intending to do anything that would infract copyright laws vis ownership and acquisition of software. Oh no. Just an expression.

Eventually, I hit on the stunningly obvious idea of using a freelancer in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which is apparently in the USA. The freelancer did not have to be in Kalamazoo, or at least I don’t think that was a requisite and I could have had one in Sophia, Bulgaria, which is not in the US, and which sounded like a pretty wild night out. But Kalamazoo it was, and my instinct for once was right because the chap has been enormously helpful, which is an adjective I cannot apply to the major ebook outlets.

Amazon UK have stopped listing ebooks while they set up an ebook store, though they could presumably have continued listing ebooks while they set up the store. They don’t know when their store will be up and running, and I know that because I have asked them twice this year. Of course, there is Amazon’s Kindle ebook store but you have to be a resident of the US to list with them. Mobipocket just rejected the files I uploaded. Neither the http nor the ftp uploads would accept the file. At one point I was sitting here using three computers to try to get the file accepted: a G4 700 series Powermac running Tiger, a Macbook running Leopard and a Hewlett Packard thingy running Vista; I used Safari, Firefox and two different versions of Explorer and nothing would stick. Ebook.com simply wouldn’t work with me because I am not exalted enough and Waterstones have bidden me to write to a snail mail address in London — of course: digital publishing; British company; snail mail.

Anyway, so here I am no further on. Except I might be. Wherever there is a problem, there is a solution, other than in my private life, so I am already working on the workarounds, ie, blogging about the situation and drinking more wine. There is a cunning plan in my head (and where else would one keep a cunning plan? The sock drawer?).

Er, so. There we have it. Weed will be with us eventually, but I will have spent so much time sorting it out, I won’t have time to write any more.

Back to the wine, in that case. Glug. Cheers. Burp. Weed.