A couple of years ago I noticed that every time I e-mailed a manuscript to my web master that an ad would pop up from some self-publishing company. When I was a kid these used to be called ‘vanity press’ publishers. When I was a young man they were called ‘subsidy press’ publishers. Now they are calling themselves self publishing houses. I negotiated with four of these over six months and eventually went with one.

I had spoken with one other author concerning his experiences. He told me, “Under no circumstances relinquish editorial control. If you find yourself sensing that you are not in full editorial control, pull out. The editorial staff is Filipino and they have their own idea of what English is.”

I avoided the two outfits that had Filipino ‘consultants’ and ended up going with the one with a strong American sales rep. I signed up for a half-price deal to have all of my short science fiction published under the title Darkly: The Short Fiction of James LaFond.

I had never wanted to go this route. However, it is painfully obvious when one looks at the sci-fi book rack that sci-fi editorial policy and marketing has become decidedly politically correct, having taken a 360 turn since my youth. The way I see it, the only chance of me getting sci-fi in print is to do it myself.

This was my one shot of being in print as a fiction author, as I spent the last $500 to my name [my life’s savings] to have this book published. Knowing from experience that I could only expect 30 sales per a year from a catalogued and unbranded book, I rationalized it by figuring that if a third of these readers purchased an e-book from the website, we would break even after a few years.

The first blow came when I received the detailed contract, which only comes after payment, in which it states that I would have to pay an annual fee every year to keep it in print. I would never do this, so was looking at a $500 print run for a projected 30 sales, and 5 free copies. I also noted that there were payback cutoff points. If at a certain point I wanted to back out, I would get this percentage refund, etc.

I submitted my e-file along with mailing in the contract. At this point the only rational left for proceeding was to get a hard copy for my Uncle Fred, who won’t read e-books, and whom I dedicated the book to, and to get the editorial review. I had never been able to get editorial comment on my fiction and wanted to know where I stood.

The editorial review was well worth the $200 dollar price tag. Some style points that I was murky on were made clear to me. This was a lot cheaper than paying $1,400 at a community college. I also knew that this editor was a professional, as the publishing house was owned by a major book publisher, and the extensive review was excellent and detailed, far better than anything I could attempt. Keep in mind, that at this point, with seven sci-fi novels and as many novelettes written and e-published, I have still never spoken to a person that had read one of these books. I literally knew no one that actually reads sci-fi, and I had recently been barred from a local writer’s club based on the content of the story I submitted [Organa].

The editorial reviewer began with stating that the publisher could not accept this book in their annual contest, and could not back it with the imprint of the parent company, due to the ‘insensitive’ nature of some of the content. Two of the characters in the five novelettes made critical statements about gays and women. I also committed the egregious sin of having a black teenage gangster use the term ‘nigga’, a term we all know is never used by black teenage gangsters, and was therefore some racist fantasy of mine. I sensed the reviewer was either gay or female as he/she took particular offense to the biker who believed he was the reincarnated God of War having a less then liberal view of feminism. Really, what ancient war god is going to be a Helen Ready fan?

My suspicion that I was beyond the pale, had been confirmed. That is fine. I knew going in that any sci-fi without a leading heroic female was doomed to low sales. I just wanted a book to give to my Uncle at this point.

The reviewer went on to a detailed rundown of stylist changes that could be made, mistakes I had made, and, most importantly, that my subtitle sucked! I recalled Jon Ford from Paladin Press telling me when I apologized for the weak title of the book he rechristened ‘The Fighting Edge’, “The title is too important to leave up to an author.”

I made all suggested stylistic and grammatical corrections and changed the title to ‘Dystopia in Power’. I then resubmitted this version of the manuscript, had a further consultation with two more people, and was handed off to a third [which was the sixth person over all, as you never get to speak to the same person a second time] who asked me to reformat the 9 document folder into a single document. I did this and resubmitted.

I had noticed, after the review, that each person I got handed off to farther down this publication assembly line spoke a more exotic form of English. Finally, when it came to the lady handling the cover, she could not understand my English, at all. I am not James Earl Jones, but I can be understood, when not concussed or drunk, by anyone whose first language is English.

The lady with the book cover job, and the one with the interior job, both submitted me their versions of Darkly, which were based on the original uncorrected manuscript. I re-sent the corrected version three times to three people in the chain. I was told over and over again that I could never talk to Krista [the American contact] again, as if she had been shot behind an Indonesian landfill. Finally, I received a notice that I was racking up additional editorial costs, with all of these requested changes [which were just requests for them to base the PDF galley on the corrected version, which they had received five times].

Going into Christmas 2013 I finally got to speak with the Filipino chick who did the cover, who re-sent me the cover based on [she claimed] the corrected file. It was the same original subtitle. I was speaking to her on the phone when I read out loud the words of the original off of her version, “The Short Fiction of James LaFond”, and then read the corrected version off of my file, that I had now sent five times, “Dystopia in Power”.

The little lady responded, “I do not distinguish the difference.”

In the end, I was billed for her work. I spent three hours calling a dozen people around the world who spoke English as a second or third language, before I got in touch with one man, who had worse English than the rest. By now it was January. I finally said, about ten times, “I am due a partial refund. Send it, or I post this on my website. I got 94,000 hits last month. Send me a partial refund.”

For my entire conversation with this single man in the entire 14 woman organization he just defended his people, saying that I sent the wrong file. I said, “Of course it was the wrong file after I corrected it, and resubmitted it as instructed!”

It is good that this all happened on line. If I had been sitting cross the desk from this guy I would be typing this from prison. I finally received the refund in mid February for $168.99

People tell me, that there are print-on-demand publishers that you can send a file to and they will pop out a book. I know that you cannot go from word to PDF without corruptions. What I want to know is if anybody out there knows of a company that could take one of our PDFs and print it, as is.

If you know of such a company please place their name in the comment box below. I would still like Uncle Fred to get his copy.