Part II The continuing saga of trying to produce the Abuse book

Yesterday I reported my decision to publish my book as an ebook because  of the refusal of the traditional stores to carry it. However that too has turned into a dead end. After about 10 hours of unsuccessfully trying to convert my files into errorless ePUb files I have simply given up. On the surface the process is very simple. A word document is fed into a conversion program. 5 minutes later it produce an ePub formatted file. That file must be checked with ePubcheck to make sure that it has no errors. If there are any errors Barnes and Noble will not publish it. However since I have not succeeded in producing errorless files that is simply the end of that alternative. I am not so upset about this as ebooks are very difficult to navigate for large and complex books such as mine. Also most people would prefer to have a physical book.

Fortunately I discovered what seems to be a viable alternative - publishing on demand with Createspace (an Amazon company). They store your files and produce one book at a time and ship it anywhere in the world. The production cost is lower than other publishing on demand companies and it is very easy to do. They collect sales tax and there is an option of listing it on Amazon. The only downside is that they only produce softcover works.

 I will be sending them the finished files next week - then they will produce a proof copy which I need to review and approve and then I am in business.

Because of their lower cost I will probably be selling the book at $25 or less. They also offer the service of selling the books to me  at cost amd shipping them to anyone I wish - so that I can sell it to any store which is brave enough to carry it. In essence they have eliminated the need for a distributor or middleman.

The only issue which I am still wrestling with is that of some of the descriptions and language used in the book. One suggestion is simply to place a warning on those chapters which would make some people blush or get sick. On the other hand that is the nature of the beast and too many people are naive and are ignorant of  what abuse is. They imagine some wild eyed psychotic monster attacking their child while he/she is walking down the wrong street late at night. David Morris has recently written about the issue of grooming. He has given me permission for that post to be included in my book. Others argue that any descriptions which upset people will sink the book so why sacrifice the whole project for the sake of realism? That is a good question which I am still wrestling with.