Many thanks for the kind support on this thread.
Mr. Green,
... I know you have emotional scars from the way the publisher handled your book but this could be the start of something great.
Ah, hmm, well, let's be fair about this. I
AM the publisher of the paperback. To be fair I had to sack myself as Director of Marketing, Vice President of Internal Sales etc.
I did get an offer from some big publishing house before I published it myself but the tone of their offer sounded as though they were going to butcher it. I have dealt with quite a few editors in the past. Some have a light touch and some hack and slash. I am sure the presentation of the book would have been much better if done "professionally" but then it wouldn't have been quite so much mine.
Publication is an interesting process and not without its own skill sets. When I did the first printing the graphics were wrong in the detail. Word is a WYSIWYG program and the PDF'ing looked fine on the screen, but the graphics aliased with the high resolution printer at the publisher dropping some of the lines from the graphics. I had to go through 500 graphics and re-format them at a different resolution so the ripper at the printer would render the detail correctly. I can't imagine getting somebody to have done this for me; it would just have been a torrent of abuse!
In terms of sales I can account for 33, which includes 9 sold recently (3 of which are packed to go out Monday). As you can imagine, it is this sales figure which was the real killer.
When the company that I work for went into receivership and I went for a job interview the book was on the CV and of course the sales figure was brought up, to my embarrassment. Then this one particular guy, in asking what I had done, proceeded to take each item and tell me how he had done one twice that fast, or twice as big, or whatever. I must be getting feeble in my old age because he actually survived the interview process! Needless to say they never offered me a job and frankly I would rather have been unemployed than have to work with such a complete a-hole.