Thursday, 24 March 2016

Edit your chocky likes ...


24 March



At long last I have made an effort to get my book Finding Our Way self-published on Lulu. It was available on Amazon as a Kindle file but none of my books are now available simply because of the need to register for tax in the States. I can’t be bothered seeing as I only had 6 cents in royalties anyway. So they removed my books from sale, even though they are listed. The problem for me was that having used Amazon’s CreateSpace to publish them, they were printed and shipped from the States, which could take ages to arrive and added a good bit to the cost. At least with Lulu I can get them printed here in the UK, much better all round. They will be available for Kindle too.



I have tried to download one of Lulu’s templates to format the book, but it needs to be unzipped before I can use it. And that is where I came unstuck yet again. Me old mate the Rochdale Sage sent me a program to do the same thing as WinZip, but I forgot about that and clicked on the option to only use WinZip. Now I have to pay up for it. What a silly so-n-so I am. Ha well … Once that is done the rest should be fairly straight forward and I shall be looking at doing the other four I have ready.



One person read The Mission for me and said I needed a good editor. Another person read it and pointed out that I had mixed up two characters but other than that it was fine. And here’s part of the problem, my friends; how can any writer be sure just which editor is best for them when writing is so subjective? Local we have the Hussy who was born close to Dorktown. There’s a sizable group of folks who love her work, I can’t stand the stuff. See what I mean? Each story is at the mercy of each reader.



Cost is another issue. I tried one of the free edits for a certain word count for Shipshape, and was told that the cost of the full edit for the whole of 53,000 words would be £200. But when the time came, they added another £75 to the price. I wasn’t happy about that, so the file sits here waiting for who knows what. A friend of friend has read through it and made a number of comments that have led to changes being made. But it is still here doing nowt. I’ve wondered just lately how unknown writers manage to fund such edits, cos right now I can’t afford it. It’s a good job I like writing then eh.



Jan has just informed of something on face book; it seems that Cadbury’s is banning the word Easter from there Easter eggs, in case it offends other religions. My first thought was that we should stop buying their goods until they see sense and put the word back. Of course, that has probably come from its yanky owners, a bigger pack of liars and twisters ever to disgrace our shores. I once tried some Hershey chocolate, uck! Horrible stuff. The stuff sold abroad isn’t all that nice either. So here in the UK, if you want nice tasting chocky bar, you’re stuck with Cadbury’s … or are you?



I like Turkish Delight and the Fry’s chocolate creams, but that is now under the Cadbury’s banner.  I’ve just looked at the Kraft website and there is no mention of them owning Cadbury’s, so I wonder why? Cormack is one I don’t like, but what about Galaxy? That one is nice and it’s owned by Mars (https://www.galaxychocolate.co.uk). I think I shall be moving over to Galaxy instead.



Photo time …

Yes, this one, a big X for Cadbury’s big fail! It’s actually in Coventry outside the transport museum and has something to do with Sir Frink Whittle.



Today’s funny …



What do you call a Scotsman with a castle on his head?
Fort William.

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