So my grandpa was a self-publishing fool. He signed his books up with two companies and refused to believe they might be shady or anything. Now I have to get his books off their lists, re-edit and reformat everything, and republish them.
He died several years ago and it’s just one of those things – I really don’t want to see his stuff being maintained by a group of people that really don’t care about him or his writings, just the money he paid them (thousands and thousands of dollars. Enough money to just make you sick.) At the time he published his stuff, there wasn’t a whole lot of self-publishing options, so he went with the old-fashioned pay some company to do nothing approach. They got thousands of dollars from him, but he was happy as long as he had a couple copies of his books.
I told the family that I would take over his stuff though. I mean, he put so much of himself into his books, and the sad thing is that they would have been pretty good if he would just have listened to anyone about a few changes. He simply got bogged down by the details – like 1000 words right in the middle of the action about shoeing a horse or loading a wagon,
He tried so hard to be Louis L’Amour, and he simply would not listen about just writing his own stuff. He was such a stubborn, frustrating old man. It’s no wonder he lived to be 97 – he was just too ornery to quit.
And I’ll always remember the time he used “he ejaculated” instead of “he yelled,” then refused to change it even though I kept telling him he should. Then, when I went and changed it for him… he waited until I was gone and put it back. He finally changed it for real when the self-publishing company told him he should. Right up until then, he kept insisting I didn’t know what I was talking about.
Crazy old man.
