While not self-pubbing, I am revising one of my stories before submitting it to a different publisher. The difficulty with revision is making sure the 'new' story hangs together. For every small change you make, you must scour the rest of the story for consistency. The greater the changes, the more opportunities to slip up.
Then you get silly things like eye color changes in the middle of the story. Or even in one case I recall name changes for both the hero and the heroine. It's very disconcerting to be reading along and sudden find the hero's name is Joe instead of Nathan.
In the story I'm working on, I added a new first chapter to explain some things that were kinda murky in the original. Now I need to go remove the later references lest my readers wonder if I'm on drugs. I also changed the background 'world' for the story. Technology, laws, customs all have to be altered to fit the new world.
It will be a better story when I finish. Yes, it will...if I can just get it all to hang together.
anny
It's kind of fun, isn't it. Yes, lots of new opportunities but many more people taking advantage of those opportunities.
ReplyDeleteYep. So far, I've not put my toe in that pool. I'm not technologically savvy and don't have expertise to call on. :-)
DeleteI sometimes wonder if this trend is a good thing--making the writing world so much more elastic (or versatile). I mean, yeah it's great, but as a writer, how are you ever supposed to decide your done? I mean, if you can change the book at any time...
ReplyDeleteOn the whole, I don't advocate changing the book at will (unless you find a HUGE mistake). And once a book is released by an established publisher, that's pretty much it. However, my rights for this book were returned and in order to submit it elsewhere, I'm altering it to fit in with another series I have at that publisher. Changes can be good, if well thought out.
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