A consequence of my publisher, Five Rivers Publishing, shutting down operations this year was that the novel I had published with them, A Time and a Place (which I will henceforth refer to as ATAAP in this post), was delisted from most book sellers. It therefore became imperative that I get it back out there lest it become well and truly out of print.
My experience with Five Rivers has been a uniformly positive one all the way through and this proved true at the end as well. I say Five Rivers but really I mean Lorina Stephens, the soul, essence, and driving force of Five Rivers. Lorina ensured that the transition of rights was as painless as possible, transforming all the rights for ATAAP back to me (and the rest of her authors) without any fuss or bother. The situation with Audible proved a little problematic for some of Lorina’s other authors as Audible was a bit of a stickler with third party producers involved, but it turned out to be easier for me as I was the sole performer and producer on the audiobook version of ATAAP. Three or four emails with Audible and we got that all sorted out.
Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Indigo and so on was a little more time consuming. I decided to release what turned out to be a second edition of ATAAP under my own publishing house, Donovan Street Press. I took the opportunity to scour the manuscript and eliminate about eight typos that had driven me crazy since the original publication. Even though I had gone over the manuscript umpteen times after we finished editing it back in 2017, I’d still managed to miss those eight. It is unbelievably difficult to catch every typo in a novel. Your eye scans right past them. Every time I read a book from one of the major publishers I delight in spotting typos as they make me feel better about mine. Typose exist in just about every book you will ever read (and if they don’t, I don’t want to hear about it).
Typos in the original version of ATAAP included (in no particular order):
- P 186 the only way could think of (missing the “I”)
- P180 passenger street (should be passenger seat)
- P363 excess spaces in sentence
- P291 made a mess of it (should be make a mess of it)
- P289 eying (should be eyeing)
- Diane Savident (should be Diana Savident) (this was rather embarrassing for me as Diana was a family friend)
- P28: should be “the two of them vanished…” (Not the two of them had vanished)
- P181 print version: should be Nissan Rogue (not Nissan Rouge) (invariably over the last three years I’d be out running errands and I’d find myself behind a Nissan Rogue, and I’d think of that typo. I’d grit my teeth and think, “I’m following a typo.”)
- P375 “You’re here, where ever here is, allowing people to use you (to) wipe out entire civilizations” (missing “to”)
Rereading the manuscript, I was also horrified to discover a story glitch, a missing bit of narrative hand-holding regarding the nature of Sebastian. Probably not a big deal to the average reader, as Sebastian’s nature eventually becomes crystal clear, but it really needed to be made explicit early on. So this was an opportunity to correct that with the addition of a bit of extra dialogue in Chapter Five.
Finally, one reader had pointed out in private correspondence that I had exhibited a particular fondness for the word particularly. You will find far fewer instances of this word in the Second Edition of A Time and a Place (and in any future novels I write).
Despite the over abundance of the word particularly, ATAAP has managed to receive some pretty good reviews since its original publication in 2017. Releasing a second edition was an opportunity to include some of those reviews off the top of the book. I’m grateful to the following authors for their kind words in support of the book: Andrew Weston (author of the internationally bestselling IX series), A.B. Funkhauser (author of Shell Game: A Black Cat Novel), Brian Wyvill (author of The Second Gate), and comedian, actor and writer Matt Watts (Newsroom, Michael: Tuesdays and Thursdays).
All these updates required getting a new ISBN and hiring Eric Desmarais to produce a new layout (Eric had done an excellent job on the original layout). I’ve also contracted an updated cover from original cover artist Jeff Minkevics which I hope to make a part of ATAAP‘s Second Edition sometime in the next month or so.
Because it was important to get ATAAP back out there, I’ve already released the ebook and Kindle version on the sly through Draft2Digital. You will find it at every major online book retailer. Physical copies are still available but they will be second hand. I’m waiting to publish the second edition of A Time and a Place in physical form once I have the new cover in hand which, as I mentioned, will hopefully be in the next month or so.
I should also point out that the version of ATAAP up on Audible is the original version. Maybe I’ll update that version too one day, but to be honest I’m not in a rush to do so. Too many other important things to do, like finish my second novel, Captain’s Away. More on that later.
So, long story short, there’s a new, updated version of A Time and a Place out there, folks. Feel free to check it out.
So glad that’s back out there in a timely fashion.
Including the reviews in this one is an excellent idea. (I trust you have retained the same brilliant backcover blurb?)
Jonas Saul at his WWC workshop today was mentioning that publishers used to hold to the standard of 98% error-free, but that this has dropped to 95% for the bigger publishers, 90% for independents, and even lower for lousy presses. It’s too expensive for even the big publishers to pay a human to copy edit when software is almost good enough. 10 mistakes for nearly 400 pages works out to one per 40 pages, which is pretty good by even big press standards! Lorina ran a tight ship.
Particularly, eh? The beta reader on one of my stories recently pointed out I overuse ‘so’. Now, every manuscript I edit, the ‘so’s jump out at me and I realize that’s a pretty common problem. Why didn’t I see those before? It can’t be that I am just now getting work from so-abusers. They must always have been there. But it’s easy to miss that stuff. Suzi Vadori on another WWC panel mentioned that you can get author software now that will analyze your manuscript to see which words you’re overusing. I forget which word she said was her word, but she went from over 800 to below 200 in the final draft, thus saving 600 words….
Anyway, good luck with the re-release!
Good luck indeed, Joe. My publisher, Dan Thompson of Thunderchild Publishing https://ourworlds.net/thunderchild_cms/index.php/en/, has officially retired but still looking after his active authors – thank you, Dan (also a great bloke).
For more indi-support and generally writing support, the Creative Academy https://creativeacademyforwriters.com/ are a wonderful bunch of people. VIRA – the Vancouver Island Romance Writers are also very supportive of we writers in the trenches. VIRA people are helpful and willing to share their knowledge and you don’t have to write Romance.
Welcome back, Joe, and congratulations on the new imprint. Taking the helm is daunting, but so rewarding.