Adrift in the Ocean of ISBN

Trying to pull things together towards publication of The Single Eye. I've been researching the whole matter of ISBNs and whether it's the best idea to own your own or if it's no big deal to take what CreateSpace or whoever assigns you. And even after a week of hitting expert websites I still feel like I'm drowning in a sea of murky gray sludge.

One thing has come clear: Turns out that Bowker, who has the American monopoly on ISBNs (how is that even legal?) makes whoever purchases the numbers put down their name or company name as the publisher, even when the purchaser is an ISBN reselling outfit like Publisher Services or ISBN Agency. The name attached to the number doesn't change, even after the buyer sells it to a third party. (And apparently, not just anyone is permitted to do that.)  Ergo, the original ISBN purchaser is the publisher of the work that has the number on it, period. Some ISBN resellers will allow you to put your own imprint name on your work, but the ultimate, official publisher is still the reseller.

The web authorities I've been reading are most of them adamant that it's best for indie authors to own their own ISBNs, because . . . because . . . well, of all sorts of reasons. But they assume you know why those reasons are a big deal. They say a lot about distribution, and availability, and record-keeping, and tracking, and readers' ability to find your book in search engines.  But they don't give examples of what that all means on the ground. Putting it bluntly, how will owning my ISBNs enhance the income from my books? Exactly how does it lead to fame and fortune? The discussion is over my head and I can't get my mind around it.

At the moment my desire to Own My Own is more a gut feeling than anything else. Life is so messy, it's nice to have things tidy when I can. I'd like to have my own little private DBA publishing concern and put out all my books under that name from the beginning, maybe with different imprints depending on if the book is romantic suspense or horror or whatever. I'd like to start as I mean to go on.

The immediate question is, if I stretch my already-tight budget to cover an ISBN purchase, will it be a Prudent Move or a Wicked Waste?

To A Musician. A Poem

On Not Facing Reality – As Usual

What then, if I should do this foolish thing
And leap into the gulf between gray earth
And all my yet unwrit eternity,
And what if plea of yearning spanless dearth
Of music pulls me unsupported on,
Preferring dissonance, some sound absurd,
Uncertain harmonies to dull accord,
To dry-cut unisons, too often heard?

What if I brace and step into the mist
To grasp a ghost unknown outside a dream,
And wide-eyed, bring a figure vaguely-drawn
To phantom view, and paint what it would seem
Aside from any cool reality?
And feel and touch what only in my mind
Has flesh and bone and solidness of light
And take to heart a thing of unsure line?

Oh God! what then? Could I not fail to fall
Into abyss sans dream, sans light, sans sound,
And would my folly be the only line
To noose me up, a slipped and tightened crown?

Or would I, credulous, go forth to live
These imaged lines, all treachery above,
Called forth from void to firm reality
And Heaven save the mark! find you to love?

by Catrin Lewis, March 1985

Free Souls, Chapter 10

Sandy climbed the stairs to her apartment in a distracted state of mind. She unlocked the door and routinely, almost mechanically, placed her hat on its hook and hung her coat and scarf in the minuscule coat closet. She hardly paid attention to what she was doing: something unsettled and sad had bedded down in the pit of her stomach and would not let her look back on the afternoon with any degree of contentment or rest.

“What do I want, anyway?” she demanded of the four walls. “I should be ecstatic!” 

Her boss, whom she respected, esteemed, and yes, yes, yes, loved had just asked her to accept a promotion to associate architect in his firm! “He runs the best damn design practice in Wapatomekie, and I’m going to be his first associate! And I’m only twenty-eight!” It would bring amazing new opportunities, not to mention an increase in pay, all tied in with the fact that Eric Baumann thought she was worthy of the position. “Ecstacy” certainly should be the word.

But she was not ecstatic. She felt flat, empty, and painfully at odds with herself.

“What’s wrong with me?” she cried aloud as she kicked off her shoes and drew herself up on the sofa. “I was horrible to him! There at the exhibition, and later on in the car! Why can’t I take a compliment from a man I care about with any sort of grace? Would it have killed me simply to say ‘Thank you’ and get it over with? But no, I have to throw it back in his teeth and twist his words!”

But it wasn’t just that. Any other woman, loving a man and wanting to lead him on to love her, would have skilfully laid hold of that compliment (“You look like an Old Master,” he had said, and she had known exactly what he meant: the ensemble was one of her favorites; she knew it became her, though it was too good for office wear). Any woman would have made of his words a golden cord to bind him to her and make him her own. Any woman, that is, but herself.

She was sure Leah Matthews would have taken full advantage had Eric so complimented her. On the thought, she stopped. “He probably has said such things to her.”

But so what if he had? The point wasn’t what he had or hadn’t done, it was what she, Alexandra Marie Beichten, had done and had kept on doing to him.

Painfully, she recalled every word of their exchange over the El Greco. 

A self-justifying voice within her spoke up: “Well, there was no meaning in that, anyway. Totally silly for him to talk about giving you something neither he nor you could ever own. Talk is cheap. Easy enough for him to go on like that, when he’ll never be called on to back it up!”

But the contrary voice died away, suppressed by what she knew was the truth. For what Eric had offered her there in the Spanish gallery was not a priceless Old Master painting, but the assurance, much more valuable, that he could be aware of her wishes and desires, and in some way desired to fulfill them. No, he was not aware of everything she desired– not that, not the impossible That– but to the extent her wishes were right and fitting given their present relationship, that certainly was how he felt.

He’d shown it when he’d offered– no, given– her the position as associate architect. He had known that was something she wanted before she had been willing to see it for herself. The thought had crossed her mind over the past few months, but she had always repressed it as a dim, distant, impossible dream. But Eric had known she longed to handle projects on her own, to make a greater contribution to their mutual effort. And at some cost to himself he had given the opportunity to her.

And how had she reacted? 

"I practically turned my back on him in the car!  I acted like I had nothing to do with him, the office, or our work. Did I really have to make him spell it out for me as if I were a stubborn kid in the slow learners' class?"  But that's what he'd had to do before she would stop putting words in his mouth and consent to receive what he would give.

And then in her heart she had impugned his motives.

"'He's trying to see less of me', that's what you automatically thought.  All your life since you were a kid you've wanted to stretch your architectural wings and fly, and now you're saying 'Feed me, coddle me, don't make me leave the nest'?  He's going to give you more freedom, and you know how hard that must be for him, he's such a strong designer himself.  And your first thought is to think he's deliberately being cruel to you?  Where is your self-respect, Alexandra, your good sense, your-- your gratitude?"

She should have been happy about how things had turned out; happy, joyful, and relieved. But she wasn’t yet and as yet she couldn’t be. “What is wrong with me?” she demanded again. 

Then, “I should call him. He’ll be home by now. Things seemed better by the time he dropped me off, but I should apologize for being such a shrew before that.”

But she knew she wouldn’t even pick up the phone. She knew why she wouldn’t, and she knew what had driven her to act the way she had.

It was fear.

Fear crouched like a shrivelled loathsome gnome visible to her mind’s eye, grinning in her face, mocking her. She got off the sofa, put on the kettle, and made herself a cup of tea. Maybe that would break its grip on her and she could go on with her evening as she had planned. There was an orchestra concert on the radio she was looking forward to listening to. And maybe she would draw a little on the sketches for her dream house.

But twenty cups of tea would have been no charm against a demon so long in residence. And the question of how her prospective kitchen should relate to a possible family room was nothing compared to the problem of how she had gotten to this point in her life and what she should do about it. And she had to do something about it, or her career (she would not allow herself to say “more than her career”) might be in jeopardy.

She pushed back her hair from her face with both hands, as if trying to clear her sight. “Why,” she whispered into the silence, “why do I act like this? Especially towards him? Why am I so afraid?”

Especially when for so long in her life there had been no need to be?

_________________________________

by Catrin Lewis, 1983, revised 2013 & 2014, all rights reserved

Blogger vs. WordPress: Duelling Blog Platforms

Last November I started a new blog on WordPress with the same title and tagline as this one.  I've been with Blogspot/Blogger for the last seven years or so, and I've done fine on it.  But for various reasons I wanted to publish my writer's blog under a separate nom de plume than I use for the ones where I post about house renovations and my adorable cats and air my opinions on Things in General.  At the very least, I needed to post under a name that would look decent on a book cover should I ever-- miracle of miracles-- get my fiction into print.

But I couldn't figure out how to obtain a separate account on Blogger-Google.  So I said phooey on it, and for that one blog only, went to WordPress.

A lot of people migrate from Blogger to WordPress.  I think they must be people with money.  You have to pay over there in order to get more than the most minimal of templates-- which you can't tart up with your own pictures or choice of widgets.  Or individualize with your choice of colors.  Nor will it let you vary the style and size of the post type.

And I found WeirdPretzel's format to be full of obscurities and difficult to learn.  After four months I still don't know how to start a new post without needing three or four clicks to get to the writing form.  I have to write out the same labels every time and they don't appear on the sidebar.  The Categories feature is nice, but I can't figure out how to edit or delete one once it's created.

So I never gave up my intention to punch through the brick wall of getting a second Blogger-Google account. Meanwhile I've slogged through on what I can figure out about WordPress to post a few articles on the joys and pains of amateur fiction writing and a lot of chapters of a novel I wrote a few years ago and am now revising.

But I haven't been urgent about it, for WordPress does have something Blogger does not.  It has this cute little orange icon up in the bar at the top.  At least, it's orange when somebody Likes your post, or decides to follow your blog, or leaves you a comment.  And damn, it's addictive.  I'm so pathetic, I'll check five times a day to see if that gray icon has gone orange.

I think I'm up to twenty-three followers, and a very select and interesting group they are.  Some of them just collect other blogs for commercial purposes-- they're selling a service they want you to buy.  But a lot of them are struggling writers from all over the world.  This range of readership may be one of the coolest things about WordPress.

But maybe I decide to follow somebody who's following me.   I have no idea how to get to my WP Reader; no, correction, I think I tripped over it yesterday, but it involves clicking on my account button then clicking on the Reader link after that.  But why?  On Blogger I can just stick a feed in the sidebar and see who's got a new post up without leaving the main page!  So these fellow bloggers probably think I don't care.

Moreover, I have no idea who's dropping by.  Or if anyone is at all.  I'll get a Like from a visitor in India and the map says all my readers that day were from the US.  I'll get Likes and the stat counter says nobody's been on the blog at all.  I mean, really?  I feel like I'm working blind.

So, I finally did it.  This past weekend I worked out how to create a second Blogger-Google account and I've created a separate writer's blog with the same name over here.  But I don't think I'll simply import the WordPretzel content to Blogger and have done with it.  No, I'm going to copy in the posts I put up on WP until I get caught up, and see which platform gets the most traffic.  Should take till the end of April, maybe, and after that I'll do simultaneous posts.  I read that it can be done.

And if I find I can expand my readership traffic through Google and people like what I write, there might be some hope for the second novel I'm working on, which I hope I won't have to offer online for free.