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Why every author should fully review a proof copy of their book

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Gah! That moment where you realise you forgot to do something really simple…

I’ve been reading through my first novel again – The Great Scottish Land Grab. I’m having a small print run done to finally allow me to sell to Scottish book shops and took the opportunity to make a few changes, the main one being updating my contact details.

When I published Land Grab, back in 2014, I thought it would be a good idea to buy the domain www.cafepolitics.net as Cafe Politics played such a huge role in the story and www.markandersonsmith.co.uk (and all variants) were taken, and www.thegreatscottishlandgrab.co.uk would have just been silly.

I’ve since decided on www.dragonlake.co.uk as my permanent web presence and wanted to update the new edition of Land Grab to use this website and my current email address. The Copyright page was done fine. I added in an author note asking people to sign up to my mailing list – all fine. Even the Call to Action at the end of the book was updated okay.

Everything bar the acknowledgements page which I foolishly didn’t even read before sending off the manuscript to the printer… Turns out the acknowledgements page contained a request to email me if the reader found any mistakes using the old email address… Gah!

I’m in two minds whether to just let it slide as I still own that domain, except, it just doesn’t sit right.

Maybe I’ll call the printer tomorrow and ask about just sending through a new manuscript and forgoing a new proof.

What would you do in this situation?

How much time should we spend on preparation?

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I tend towards over thinking: analysing eventualities, considering contingencies, thinking things over and over like a dog worrying a bone.

But not always.

Sometimes I think just far enough ahead to get myself into trouble and then hindsight starts to kick in.

My task for today was to scrape loose paint off the front of our house – above the porch – as preparation for repainting it and if the rain held off actually do the repainting.

I thought through what I needed:

  • A bucket to mix paint with sand which I’ve been told might stop the paint flexing as much in the sun and prevent having to repaint too soon.
  • The tin of paint.
  • A screwdriver to lift the lid off.
  • A ladder to get up to where the paint was flaking away.
  • Someone to hold the ladder.
  • A scraper.

I was set. I had everything I needed. We did everything carefully – no broken windows when we moved the ladder. I didn’t fall off the porch roof. I cleared away all the loose paint and left a surface that should be just right to apply the first coat of paint.

I was prepared.

Apart from considering what would happen to all those small flecks of paint I’d be scraping off…

Thousands of differing sized, cream coloured, slivers of paint. All over our driveway…

I wasn’t prepared for that. I picked up the larger pieces by hand. I tried sweeping. Got some of them. Tried hoovering (don’t tell the wife!) Got most of the rest.

If I do this again I’ll get some ground sheets out and can capture the worst of it in them and shake them out into a bin.

Sometimes we can over prepare, sometimes we can under prepare. I under prepared. The job took longer, but the job got done. Well, mostly. It looked like it was going to rain so painting has been moved back to another day.

Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb…

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Rhubarb is a strange plant. It grows like a living iceberg, mostly underground, but with a prominent bulge above ground that sprouts these long edible stems and not so edible giant leafs.

In the autumn, every few years, it is possible to cut the root in half with a shovel and transplant it elsewhere to start another rhubarb.

In our old house, my parents had taken us some rhubarb, separated from the parent plant in Shetland. It had thrived in our garden in Central Scotland. Unfortunately, in the busyness of selling our house, I forgot to cut that rhubarb plant in half and plant it in a pot: Scots law states that once an offer to buy a house is accepted, no plants rooted in the soil can be removed.

Our new house has a rhubarb plant, but it isn’t as productive, or as tasty as the Shetland variety.

I thought we had lost our Shetland rhubarb for ever.

Until yesterday when my parents came down for a visit bearing not one, but two different cut-offs of rhubarb plants they had carried down, wrapped in wet newspaper, in a plastic bag and safely boxed. Both plants had even started putting out new stems!

The rhubarb has now been planted and I’m determined that I’ll be making rhubarb pie at some point in the near future!

Digging a trench for Pod Point Cabling and our new Nissan Leaf

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Did I mention we signed up to a PCP deal for a new Nissan Leaf? I’m utterly hooked on the Leaf now. After the initial shock at how quiet the demo car was and then the delight at how good the acceleration is (especially compared to our Diesel Renault), I now can’t imagine not preferring to drive an electric car.

Technically we got the car for my wife, but since we can get free electricity at various charging stations, I’m driving the Leaf a lot more than I thought I would. It’s great! Simpler than a standard automatic and the 30kW Tekna model we chose has these all round cameras that make reversing so much safer.

Anyway, I could bore you for ever so here’s just a couple of photos of a trench and a charger point…

As part of the government scheme to promote electric vehicles, we received money towards a charging point that allows us to charge the Leaf faster than through a standard household socket. We’re keeping the Leaf in our garage overnight and so wanted the charger in the garage. All fine except the garage isn’t attached to the house. So, earlier this week (with some help) I pulled up a slab and proceeded to hack through a foot of grit and clay and rock and cement to prepare a trench so the engineer could lay a cable to the garage. I could have paid £90 for him to do it, but… you know…

The engineer arrived today as scheduled and we now have a Pod Point charger:

The weirdest thing while I was digging that trench – I kept smelling what I initially thought was gas. I’d dig out some clay and worry if I’d hit the gas pipe. Then I reached a foot down (Pod Point asked me to dig down 30cm) and I found what smelled and looked like beach shingle… Very strange. Now I’m wondering if that was imported by the builders who built the house or the garage, or if it had been there all along, under the clay…

Goals and the Christian Life

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Should Christians have goals? A question posed by a friend on Facebook which immediately caught my attention. I’ve been goal obsessed for over a decade and my first response to this and similar questions is always: of course! But, after this initial burst of enthusiasm for goals, I then remember that my goals sometimes seem to suck the joy out of my life and so I need to explore the question in a deeper way.

Words are powerful tools, yet each language and each generation can interpret them so differently.

Growing up I had the following passage almost imprinted on me: “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Phillipians 3 12-14 NIV)

This extract from one of Paul’s letters seems to make it clear that goals, or at least one specific goal, are something every Christian should aspire to. Yet perhaps the word itself: goal, is a modern invention that isn’t necessary.

Try reading the same extract in the King James Version: “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” (Phillipians 3 12-14 KJV)

The language is similar, but a subtly different interpretation can be seen in the two translations made several centuries apart.

There are many accounts of people in the Bible who clearly had what I would call goals. Yet how they acted differed enormously. Paul seems to have been an all or nothing kind of guy and he frequently encouraged and challenged others to be like him. I’ve been reading through the two books of Samuel over the last month or so and another famous person had a very different perspective on goals…

David was chosen by God to be king over Israel. There was a problem though, Israel already had a king: Saul, who had also been chosen by God…

There’s an important point in that situation. God gave Saul the opportunity to be king, to have a dynasty established with his children and their children after them set up for life to rule over God’s kingdom on Earth. An opportunity like that wasn’t to be taken lightly though and it seems Saul just didn’t have the faith in God, the trust and patience that anyone would hope a leader would display.

Saul disobeyed God out of fear and his dynasty was taken away. But he was still king…

I heard someone say once that David was an astute political careerist. Several situations are recorded of David having every opportunity to kill Saul off and take the throne himself. In every instance, David chose instead to look to the longer game. He spared Saul’s life again and again making it clear that no-one, even God’s annointed, had the right to take the life of someone else that God had previously annointed. When opportunists claimed to have killed Saul and his family, David had them executed for the high crime of treason against God’s annointed.

David had a goal – to become king, but that goal was not to be achieved at any cost!

Should Christians have goals?

Perhaps the problem is with the word “should”. Christians are called to be obedient to God. We are called to follow Jesus. We are encouraged to become like Jesus. There are many examples in the Bible of people who have what I would call goals, but each person deals with that differently and each situation is also different. Some people have goals given to them, like Jonah who was commanded to tell the population of Ninevah they were going to be destroyed because they were wicked. Not a pleasant goal to be given when you were far more likely to be executed than be fined or spend time in jail if the authorities didn’t like you. Perhaps understandable that Jonah ran in the opposite direction until God steered him back…

Esther found herself with one of the most basic goals that exist – find a way to survive.

Gideon kept on questioning the goal he was given.

Nehemiah set his own goal – to rebuild Jerusalem and would not let anyone distract or trap him as he set out to achieve that goal.

I’m not sure that any of these people used the word goal. I am certain that many did not break their objective into chunks or daily tasks. None of them will have read the seven habits of highly effective people, Stephen Covey, Brian Tracy or Norman Hill…

Yet each of them did, eventually, and sometimes with a lot of persuasion, press on towards the mark.

It’s okay to have goals. It’s also okay to not have goals. But, if you want to achieve something, whether that is finish a poem, write a novel, or even change a nation, you have to have something you are aiming for and working towards.

Book Shop Discounts

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One of the many aspects of self-publishing I’m having to come to terms with is the discounts that book shops expect before they will be willing to stock a book.

I’ve heard some authors talk about fifty percent discounts – the bookshop expecting a book to be sold to them at fifty percent off the cover price (or Recommended Retail Price.)

It’s one thing to be able to offer a discount when you can walk to a book shop and hand deliver your book. Quite another when you have to post it. Another still when you have a fairly steep cost per unit.

Yet book shop owners need to be able to make a profit too. They have costs to cover – far more than I do with rates, rent, electricity, wages etc.

There has to be a balance. Finding the point at which the book shop owner can sustain their business while also allowing the writer to sustain theirs.

I’ve started to negotiate discounts as I’m trying to sell my books to book shops as I know in the long term, the more people I have helping me sell my books, the better it will be for us all.

I’m currently planning to offer a range of discounts based on how many books are ordered from a discounted price of 80% down to 60% if I can hand deliver them.

If you’ve negotiated deals with book shops, how have you gone about it?