THE MAKING OF “MEMORIES AND REFLECTION”.
I never fully understood the phrase “Labour of Love” until I embarked on this long self-publishing journey. Having no publishing experience but a ready manuscript ( the book is a collection of the articles I have written in the last ten years ), I thought, how much more do I need to get a book out? It’s the worst allusion that ever crossed my mind.
The problem began with my lack of understanding of “self-publishing.” It inferred incorrectly that I don’t need anybody, just myself, to put a cover and title to my manuscript, assemble its contents into a book and then engage a printer. Strictly speaking, that is what publishing is all about, whether it is self or traditional. Except, there is so much more to it than that, including several professionals to put the book together. We’ll get into the details later.
First, look at what is out there in the publishing world. Some 300,000,000 books worth 1.2 billion are self-published and sold each year. The number has increased by 264% in the last five years and is growing at 17% yearly. 30-34% of all e-books are self-published. Amazon pays $520 M in royalties for these books each year. Some publishers cater exclusively to self-publishers, and there are big, established ones that cater to traditional publishing.
Best-selling authors have long-term contracts and exclusive arrangements with their publishers. The world’s Stephen Kings and Margaret Atwoods are served by major syndication that handles distribution, marketing and editorial guidance. The authors submit the manuscript, and the publisher does the rest. How big does it get with these pros? J.K. Rowling, of the Harry Potter series, is the first billionaire author, but the most famous is, without a doubt, William Shakespeare.
The average person is only concerned with this trivia if he is a regular consumer of the printed word. Still, even before the dawn of the digital world, even the barest high school survivor surely has heard of Shakespeare or Charles Dickens. It’s hard to imagine that a Filipino wouldn’t know that Jose Rizal was not only a social reformer but also the writer behind “Noli Me Tangere”—the best we have ever had.
WOULDN’T I BE A BETTER WRITER IN MY FIRST LANGUAGE, PILIPINO?
I have no illusions about my incapacity to write in Pilipino ( Tagalog ); not in a hundred years! While Tagalog was the language of my childhood and the everyday talk with fellow Filipinos, we were never into an articulation that uses the unadulterated variant that we hear spoken formally. I have never used words like “ngunit” or “bagamat” or nouns like “paliparan” or “Estados Unidos” in an everyday conversation. As with many, we constantly, at least in the region where I was born, use a mix of English, Spanish and Tagalog ( the so-called Taglish ). Our national language has been bastardized for years. Fewer and fewer Filipinos can use a pure version of the national language. My little writing capacity would have been quashed even before it took root. It had to logically express itself in English.
The boomer generations of Filipinos have been exposed to English as the school’s instructional medium. On top of that, as a school teacher, English was my working language. I have had to utilize it more than the average individual to communicate with fellow teachers, students and parents. But more than these, for over twenty-five years, my contact with Filipinos had been minor, and the language spoken at home was English, being married, at the time, to a non-Filipino. Of course, many people are in the same situation but do not end up in a journalistic endeavour.
There was something very nurturing about how English is spoken in Newfoundland ( where I spent the bulk of my teaching career, 25 years in all ). Even mainland Canadians are mesmerized by the oratory of late M.P. John Crosbie or Premier Joey Smallwood. Newfoundland has a rich and distinct vernacular that is unmatched anywhere in Canada, so much so that an 850-page Dictionary of Newfoundland English would be a shoo-in reference to understand the distinctive vocabulary of the Newfoundland dialect.
For years, I was a quiet admirer and follower of Rex Murphy ( Read: Memories of Newfoundland, Part I, Jul 2021 ) in the prime evening news
“The National.” His nightly commentaries were much more than a critique of current events but an enriching and stimulating command of the English language. A mix of colloquial “Newfineese” had been an instructive cultural experience. I recall Peter Mansbridge, the host of the National, often with an approving grin after many of Mr. Murphy’s narratives.
MY EARLY FORAYS INTO WRITING.
Throughout my teaching years, I had no idea there was a latent potential within me to harness a literary capacity that had been dormant for years. The occasional sports, school or community news I did as a school teacher did not suddenly result in a leap to journalism.
My postgraduate degree at Memorial ( University of Newfoundland ) was my epiphany about my capacity to do more than during my undergraduate years at Santo Tomas ( the University ). There was nothing at UST that improved the expanse of my writing potential; if anything, I was barely surviving my language courses. It only deepened my skepticism about the church’s role in a progressive future, ironically the topic of my early forays in writing.
As a lifelong skeptic, a one-dimensional belief of most Filipinos provided a lot of fodder about the poverty of church doctrines. My early writings were mainly about the inanities of catholic ideology and why people fall into this vortex of incomprehensible superstitious asininity. As I continued reading and writing into retirement and became more confident in my newfound precepts, a torrent of prose saw topics dear to me, just waiting to express my contrariety with church ideology. What started as a letter to the editor ( in the Philippine Daily Inquirer ) about church matters became more formal commentaries.
The limited space ( 650 words ) offered by the Inquirer eventually gave way to BALITA, a Fil-Can community newspaper ( Toronto ) published by Tess Cusipag. ( The widow of the late Ruben Cusipag, a well known journalist in the Philippines and Canada.) It was an opportunity to break into human interest pieces and other contemporary topics.
Compiling the articles into a book did not enter my mind, as I thought the topics were too mundane. As I continued writing and became more confident in various issues, the thought of a book became increasingly enticing. The motivation had more to do with leaving something for posterity rather than as a for-profit venture, as I have no illusion of becoming a best seller on the shelves of Chapters or Barnes & Noble.
EARLY CHALLENGES
Lack of experience in publishing was incapacitating. Where to begin? How to begin? How long does it take to put a book together? Even with the dozens of books I have read before, none of the titles are authored by someone I know personally. These books are typically published by huge publishing concerns and are printed in the tens of thousands. ( The God Delusion, 2006 by Richard Dawkins, my all-time favourite, has sold over 3.5 M in 35 languages ) Had I contracted a well-known traditional publisher ( Penguin/ Random House ), the limited copies would cost each book upwards of $200 each if they even agreed to do it.
This total void of publishing experience led me to the internet; searching, the closest I could find, took me west to Manitoba, east to Newfoundland and south to New Jersey. I finally settled with BookBaby, a publisher that specializes in self-publishing. The promise of completing a book in weeks got me hooked; the others I reached talked in months, years even. Not understanding the full ramifications of the entire process, I signed up without a single pro. I depended on the two in-house publishing and production specialists assigned by the publisher to work on my project. “Creative Control,” supposedly the big advantage of self-publishing, was lost to the overwhelming job of editing, proofreading, cover design, formatting, marketing, etc. Emails and phone consultations were the working channels involved.
I engaged two people to help with cover design and editing from the outset. Ruben Aquino, a former student and retired Disney Animator, designed the front and back covers. My son Marc, a computer/ IT specialist, did the technical editing. We all shared some formatting and proofreading with the product specialist from BookBaby. Because of the nature of the book, I felt no need for professional copy editors, as each article had gone through this process before publication.
What I envisioned as a 250-page compendium of articles became a 385-page book after additional articles and reader comments were added. One that took more time than anticipated was pictures that were initially included but turned out to be copyrighted.
Securing permissions for their use took more time than foreseen. I have had to drop some or make substitutions when I wonder if they were copyrighted. Sometimes, we contacted relatives to take local shots ( e.g. overloaded tricycles and jeepneys in Iloilo ) instead of copyrighted pictures on Google. Some are too expensive as an accent to certain parts of an article. I recall writing Harper’s Magazine for permission to reprint a few sentences from Christopher Hitchen’s essay. Harper’s wanted US$65 for the privilege. Another was a paragraph from Rex Murphy’s “My Favourite Place: A Cove of Inner Peace on Newfoundland’s Cape Shore.” The publisher had exacted a cost to it but relented after the non-profit nature of my project. There were those I sought permission from and gave at no cost. I detailed these in “acknowledgment.”
These are examples of things that took a lot of time and, in hindsight, should have been done by a pro. It would have given me more time to do other things that cannot be assigned and lessened the stress of publishing. One pro that I could have used a lot of is an editorial consultant, somebody who can give me feedback on my manuscript, and an independent assistant with other ideas on the design and organization of the book. While content is paramount, a polished look adds to the allure of the finished product. The hope is it does not look too much like a textbook.
Finding endorsements for the book ( read: “Praise for Memories and Reflections” ) became problematic because only a select few read the articles I publish each month. There are also controversial topics in religion and politics that do not resonate with some of my readership. I decided not to put them on the spot by not asking for their endorsement; some avoided the issue altogether by making a general endorsement or were very specific with the article(s) that they liked.
After weeks of preparations and when it was time to put the pieces together, problems started unfolding; this was when I realized BookBaby’s lack of guidance in the publishing process and how professional help could have prevented much of it. The cover size was incompatible with the template BookBaby provided; then, there was a problem with PDF files in the manuscript that were incompatible with their “Word” requirement. Ruben resized the cover, and Marc looked after the technical specifications of the contents. BookBaby’s less-than-stellar performance in redressing errors from their faulty editing finally ended my further involvement with this US-based publisher. As of this writing, Blitzprint of Calgary, Alberta, is taking over the printing component of the project.
Without any further challenges ahead, and barring unforeseen circumstances, the Mississauga book launch will occur on Sunday, June 30, 2024 (@ 5 PM ) at 3170 Kirwin Ave. Please RSVP by May 24. email: edwingdeleon@gmail.com
The Philippine book launch will be in February 2025.