Pratfalls and Persistence: A personal odyssey in self-publishing
Recently I self-published a book – my second - a themed collection of short stories, titled Boiled Branches, Green Wood: A Book of Trespassers. After I finished writing it, I edited it, which took absolutely ages. I laid it out three times. OpenOffice corrupted the formatting twice; the first time in a manner that was so random that it gave me pause to wonder whether I was watching an emerging artificial intelligence failing to fully grasp its responsibilities. The second time was more comprehensive, in line with the application of some disruptive algorithmic principle, to which I had not been made privy. Apparently I was not the first to have experienced this unexpected reorganisation of the furniture in a saved OpenOffice document. The responses on the support forums were, at their most helpful and polite, along the lines of ‘Yeah, it’ll do that’. I have reached a peculiar point in my life where setbacks of this kind no longer fill me with self-righteous anger directed at an u...