I Wrote A Book

 

I Wrote a Book

I wrote a book.  Everyone has a book inside them.  The trick is getting it out without surgery.  All you need are characters and plot, a catchy start, a twist at the end, and a lot of filler in between.  For example:

1.      Moby Dick: A guy goes fishing, followed by chapters of filler, then he dies.

2.      Tale of Two Cities: It was the best of times, lots of filler, then he dies.

3.      Romeo and Juliet: He falls in love.  She falls in love.  Filler.  She dies.  He dies.

    So I wrote my book following those three simple principles. I tried to copyright it, but the U.S. Copyright Office website is all legalese, lists, and links.  I decided to use the “Poor man’s copyright,” an accepted practice in common law.  I mailed the manuscript to myself, proving it existed on a date certain.  My copyright now protects me from lawsuits by Melville, Dickens, and Shakespeare.

            Always use a pen name with punch.  Like Mark Twain, Bram Stoker, or Herodotus.  I wanted to use Jack Vail as my pen name, but it was taken, so I tried Jak Vaille, but it was also taken.  Jacques Villa?  Taken. Every name in the history of names is taken.  So I settled on Norm DePlume. 

A website that rhymes with “beagle zoom” offered a formatting service guaranteed to prep my work for publication.  For a couple hundred dollars they took my word document and butchered it.  I complained, and they explained that all they do is run it through their software and send it back.  I asked for my money back, and they said they would run my request through their software. 

            I pitched my book to a publisher, who told me she gets a million books a year, doesn’t read a one, and saves them securely in her “Burn room.”  I called an agent, who read my book and said “Keep your day job.”  I contacted an editor, who recommended I remove the filler, which would turn my novel into a short story.  

             Writers who can’t publish have to “Self-publish.”  You send your work to a “Vanity press,” which prints it for a fee, binds it for another fee, adds cover art for an additional charge, and sends you twenty copies for the low price of five-thousand dollars and up.  Mostly up.  You market it yourself, which means you gift it to family and friends, who put it on their top shelf, out of childrens’ reach.

            Big bookstores like the one that rhymes with “Farms and Noble,” will put your book on their shelves, way in back by the bathroom, if you make it through the agent-editor-publisher-distributor labyrinth, and are recommended by established authors, like Mariel Hemingway. 

Not wanting to spend thousands of dollars on a lark, I sent my book to an online ebook service that rhymes with ”Kindall.”  Their software shrank the font to 2, so it was like reading an aspirin label.  I re-submitted it after “saving” the format and font, then by making it “read-only” and finally, encrypting it in pig latin.  Kindall told me that their “Miminum standards” department required the removal of all culturally offensive content, all f-words, and all gender-specific pronouns, which shrunk my book to a pamphlet.  I re-submitted it, and they regurgitated it repeatedly, until they suggested using their editing service, for a fee, and they would market it, for a percentage, or stick it in their virtual library of amateurish literature.  There it would stay forever, for future generations to read, or until the next change of terms and conditions, at which time fees would apply

After months of re-writes and rejections, Kindall finally accepted my book and made it available on the dark web.  I ordered twenty copies for friends and family. When the books arrived, the title had been changed to “Author’s Proof,” which I found catchy.  I made one hundred and eleven dollars in royalties in my first year, after an initial investment of two thousand.  To order my book, go to the website that rhymes with “Ham is on.”