Well done Mick I’ll have something else to read to keep myself occupied for a couple of days… but hurry up and get the next one done…
Chris I read Randy Road Trip a few years back…
If I remember right the first books to come out in this style were in the late 70’s early 80 's Coca Cola Cowboys, Danger heavy Goods, which was also sold under another title… There was probably 4 or 5 reasonable publications getting about…I also read one about a husband and wife 2 up team with a MAN that had to smuggle gold to pay of ransom …And of course Long Distance Diary… I had a good look about in America when I was there but the only thing I could find on trucks were the usual encyclopaedia style books that you could get form any good book store that had gone to a US book fare. I’m sure there must have been some wonderful trucking tales to tell… but nothing… As far as I know the next wave was kicked of by Kevin Nobel doing the Baghdad Trucker, the a whole raft of other stuff. The only offering so far out of America being Alex Beber Ice road’s book, which wasn’t to bad… There are a few trucking stories from Australia by publishers that I’ve never heard of. Considering the epic stories told by Out Back Truckers … and I’m trying to be objective here…but the written versions seem to fall a long way short… the sort of thing you would find in an old magazine in the doctors waiting room…Unfortunately just because you have a good story to tell doesn’t mean you can tell it well… Not having all the information it hard to say if the story was bad or if the editor couldn’t be arsed, or was un aware of the subject matter.
Lulu… as far as I can tell and from what Mick and my wife had said it seems to be pretty similar to Creataspace… they print exactly what you submit… They do offer all the things that a publishing house would offer like font, style and size, page lay out, editing, promotion, there’s even a thing where they’ll format and submit it for a screen play… But all that is extra and you have to pay for it up front with no guarantee of anything… You set the price, just like Mick and it gets listed on Kindle and Amazon, which seems like the same sort of deal… We did struggle with the cover design as the photos wouldn’t embed… then the writing wouldn’t go where we wanted it… that was at the end a very long and tyring learning curve… and I was making a lot of grovelling toast and hot chocolate for my wife…
Looking back I should have gone down the route that Mick took and did a hack job ( cherry pick ) on my first book with R.T. then self publish the rest … Sorry Mick I didn’t mean it to come over like that but I’m sure you know what I mean as does Mat Ireland, and many others. With out that company being so bold and taking a risk with so many niche subjects then we wouldn’t have much to read at all…
I went back into it a while back to have a re read and some of it stands up pretty well but other parts are cringe worthy… that isn’t a process that I’m unfamiliar to as I used to do a lot of visual art and if I look back at some older photos of works I’ve done the some can be said… But at least there I can say I was commissioned by the customer and they insisted that was the what they wanted …I’ll sure I’ll get back to it one day but it’ll come out a lot different to the way it was when first intender…
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the forget full person at Toll Adelaide that left there computer turned on last night…
Steve I don’t blame you for backing of, I really didn’t know what I was doing either… and the first draft unedited version was a bit mixed up any way, it wasn’t till later on the my wife taught me something called cut and paste. and I was still using tipex on the screen…
Just before I go …
There’s this road house I go to… for no other reason than it about 4 1/2 hours fully loaded from where I start… eggs on toast gets you 3 fried eggs on 2 bits of toast, and just cause they’ve been watching MKR and Master Chef there’s an arrant bit of parsley lurking on the plate as well… so eggs on toast it was… And I bought 2 bottles of water for $4… the rest of the trip I was thinking if I had 3 eggs it would be better if I had 3 bits of toast, cause there’s just to much yoke for 2 bits of toast… I came up with a cunning plan… The next time I was in I would order eggs on toast with extra bit of toast… Well I was so exited by the prospect that could hardly sleep for the next few nights… Next time in the road house I went to the fridge and got my 2 for 1 water then boldly strolled over to the counter and like a rebel with out a clue I ordered eggs on toast with an extra bit of toast… Well there was total confusion and the duty shift manager had to be called in… where upon I confirmed my order… eggs on toast with an extra bit of toast… I paid for my meal took my 2 for 1 water and sat at the table… ( waiting to be recognised by all my adoring fans ) lol lol…
What I actually got was 2 plates consisting of 5 eggs, 6 bits of toast of which only 4 were buttered. a spoonful of beans and a cup of tea… all for $9.
Jeff…