If it seems, to you, that I’ve been touting these “major milestones” for many months, with regard to “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts,” that’s because I have. And every time I think I’ve reached the final one I discover a new one coming at me from over the horizon. Who knew this was so much work? There was the Kickstarter campaign that was so successful. There was October 20, when I finished the first draft of principal writing. There was November and December, when Greg Halling and I went through the whole thing, multiple times, editing out stuff that could go and tightening it up. And then there was the last three weeks, as I saved $5,000 by doing the copy-editing page by page, paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, word by word, and comma by comma.
If I’d just written a 100-page book, all of that would be far easier. I was actually looking at a book on one of our shelves yesterday, which was my first “sample” of a self-published book, and it’s a self-help, how-to book. It’s so short it has three blank pages in the back, it’s on heavy stock paper, and almost every page has decorations and illustrations. It’s even a smaller than normal size, in terms of page height and width. All of that was an effort to make it seem more substantial. My problem is just the opposite, but this week I’ve clicked past another one of those major milestones and I think we’re finally getting there.
The pre-production part of the process was one I was not looking forward to. Writing was a joy. The thought of doing the paperwork, filling out forms, selecting options, and getting the whole thing organized, almost intimidated me. What if I accidentally clicked on a box that had the whole thing translate to Chinese? What if I accidentally deleted everything? What if…? I loved getting up every day and writing for a year. I even enjoyed the editing because that was a new skill to learn. I looked forward to the rest of it so little I procrastinated like crazy. But then, it was all I had left and I had to get through it.
Her name is Bridget and she’s my author representative at Outskirts Press. Early in the writing process, when I was just getting started and still an “author to be” in the publisher’s eyes (in baseball parlance, I was a prospect) we only corresponded every few months. I just concentrated on getting all the stories and characters into place. As we got closer, and my lists of questions grew, we ramped up our emails and phone calls. Once I initially submitted my manuscript, the motor revved up even more. Over the last couple of weeks, as I went through my online “publishing center” to fill out all the forms and select all my options, she was a valuable assistant, guiding me through it all and answering all my dumb questions. I had plenty of those.
I discovered there were more options and upgrades available, while doing all that, and while I declined most of them there were a few I jumped on. I purchased the elite version of digital publishing, making sure the book would be available for download to just about any device on a wide variety of platforms. I also went with the customized layout option, so that I could determine how the book would be laid out and constructed. Yeah, I clicked on “Let the designer decide” a couple of times, but for most of the steps I chose all the things that would make the book as short as possible. Narrow margins, no spaces between paragraphs (just indentations), no “header” at the top of the page, no index at the back, and other options that will keep the page-count as low as possible.
That’s a critical thing, because of something else I discovered. The wholesale cost of the book takes page count into serious consideration. It has to. A 200-page book is a lot less expensive to print than a 700-page book. We won’t know the exact page count until it’s laid out for the first time, but right now it looks like the wholesale price, and therefore the retail price, are going to be considerably higher than I originally thought (dreamed) and that worries me. After all of this, I don’t want people who have waited so long to think “Well heck, that’s too much. No way I’m paying that for a book.” But, I don’t really have any control over it. Since Outskirts partners with the author in this process, they set minimum limits on the profit margin for the book. They don’t allow you to only make a buck per copy to keep the price down. And I told Bridget I wasn’t interested in cutting more pages. I’ve left too many good stories on the editing floor already. So… I hope people don’t have sticker shock when they see the number in the upper corner of the cover. But, since there are no printed pages in the digital version, maybe that will be a better option for some folks.
The good news is I can also sell some directly. Of course, I have to buy them first and I’ll want to make a little bit of money on each one, but at least I don’t have to split the income with the publisher. More details to work out… And more things to consider. If I sell them directly, I have to not only be an author and a salesman, I have to be an accountant as well. I’m pretty much a terrible accountant.
The bottom line to all of this is that the book is now so “out of my hands” I need to take a break from even reading it. I’ve been through it so many times I could probably recite many of the parts from memory, but now the little birdie has flown from the nest and I need to let her go. If I can get through a few weeks without opening the files to read it some more, I hope I’ll have a fresh perspective and be able to see the forest more, instead of just the trees.
It was interesting, over the last few months, when I’d read and reread again. Sometimes I’d think, “You know what? This is really good” and other times the same chapter would make me think, “Gosh, who would want to read this?” I think it’s all just a matter of your frame of mind on any given day. I still feel that way about this blog, after having written my NHRA blog for more than 10 years. Some days I’d crack myself up. Other days I wondered what the purpose of it was.
But speaking of purposes, after last week’s blog I figured one thing I can keep doing is to continue posting photos that didn’t make the cut. I have 39 photographs scheduled to be in the book, so a few more might get axed, but I know I can’t put any more in there. It’s already too long. I like this photo, but I couldn’t secure the rights to print it, because it’s copyrighted by a newspaper. That’s me, just outside the dugout in Johnson City, Tenn. as my Paintsville Hilanders take on the Johnson City Cardinals near the end of the season. I can even tell who the two guys next to me are. Roy Dixon is just to my left, and I recognize Tom Kokos next to him, just from his hair. Great guys and great teammates, and all part of one truly great season of pro ball. And that’s our manager, Yank Mihal, inside the dugout.
The Paintsville chapter is one of my favorites in the book, because the memories are still so vivid and the characters were insanely fun guys. Most of us had never met the day we arrived in that tiny town in the coal-mining hills of eastern Kentucky, but within days we were like family. I was so sad when the season ended. I wanted to get home, but I didn’t want to leave. I was tired, after a full college season followed by 66 games in the Appalachian League, in 68 days. All while riding in our bus for up to five hours each way for all 10 road trips. Overnight trips in the dark, just to get back to Paintsville by sunrise so we could play the next night, happened every week. It was exhausting, even for fit young men like us, but we would’ve kept doing it forever if they’d let us.
After I got home from that season, I never saw any of those guys again except for four of them. My roomie was Stan Osterbur, and we’d played college ball together. We were both at our induction into the SIUE Hall of Fame last fall. Tom Bloemke was a roomie as well, on road trips near the end of the season, and he came to visit me a year later. Roy Dixon signed with Detroit at the end of the season and we played together in spring training and at Lakeland the next year. Vince “The Bronze Fox” Bienek and I went 37 years between the last day of the Paintsville season and our reunion in Sonoma in 2015.
And then there’s this shot. That would be good old Shasta on my lap, on the day we got back home to our old Woodbury house after a 15-day cruise to Hawaii and back. He was glued to me for days. What a good boy he was.
Shasta was with me through so much, and always a loyal friend who could sense when I needed a little extra attention or some extra purring to perk me up.
He adopted me when I visited the shelter while living in Topeka, in 1991. He moved with me to St. Louis, then to New Jersey, then back to St. Louis, then to Kansas City, then to Indianapolis, then to Chapel Hill, N.C. where he got to move in with Barbara Doyle before I did, then to Austin, then finally to Woodbury. He was a well-traveled cat. And he was my pal.
So now what? I’m looking forward to the production process, and I’m hoping the fact I also selected “Expedited Publishing” speeds the process up at least a little bit. I’m eager to hold one of the copies in my hand and hope I don’t throw my back out due to its weight.
Then, once we have them and they’re on sale, it will be time to get back out there to NHRA tracks around the country. Maybe we can even sell a few. And sign a few as well.
I’ll see you here again next week, but not before getting on a plane tomorrow to fly out to Spokane. Barbara needs to maximize her time out there right now, so rather than having her lose two days to travel, I’m going out there. And, we’re going to spend Saturday night at the Coeur d’Alene resort! Woo Hoo!!! I can’t wait. I’ll fly back home on Monday, eager to see how things are going with Outskirts.
See you then!
Bob Wilber, at your service and in the publishing business.