I'M NOT A REAL  AUTHOR,
BUT I PLAY ONE ON THE INTERNET
(Part One)

By Steve Ludwig

I'm not a real author, but I play one on the internet.

I'm actually a member of the greatest, most rewarding profession there is--TEACHING.

But, write a book I did...At least that's what it says when I google my name.

I prefer to think of myself as a teacher who wrote down his experiences about open-heart surgery, and it got turned into a rectangular thingy with pages.

Back in 2006, after I returned home from the hospital and my quintuple open-heart bypass procedure, I started keeping a journal. 

Although it did physically pain me to sit and put pen to paper (even more so when I'd attempt to sit at my computer and type), it was my only choice if I wanted to keep track of my experiences.

I had first tried speaking into a tape recorder, planning eventually to transcribe my spoken words into written; but, ya see, I got into a bad habit of downing these things they call Percosets whenever I felt pain from my days-previously sawed-apart, then stapled, wired, and stitched-together chest and rib cage.

So with my percs quite effectively doing their job and numbing my pain, they pretty much also numbed my ability to speak clearly. My vocal chords produced slurred, stoned gibberish into my recorder, and on playback the next day, I didn't know WHAT the heck I'd said. 

So I bit the bullet (and downed more percosets) and wrote into my notebook all the things I'd been through before, during, and after my five clogged arteries were bypassed (but not removed, incidentally) with five new ones taken from other veins in my body.

Before long, I had quite a thick journal.
Now ever since I was in grammar school, I remember telling my mom that someday I was gonna write a book.

When I looked at my journal, I thought to myself,  Hey, I think this is my book!

Unfortunately, my mom, in a display of unmitigated nerve, passed away before I had written my book; so she never got to see the final product. (By the way, my mom would've laughed her head off at what I wrote about her "unmitigated nerve," so please don't think I'm unfeeling. But thanks for nothin' just the same, Mom! Ah, if there is one, I'm goin' to Hell anyway...Hope to see some of you there! We'll have a helluva hot time!)

My friend (and retired, fellow teacher), Mike Spina, had written a great book called Teachers Under Attack: How NJ Governor Chris Christie's Personal Vendetta Against Teachers Will Destroy Public Education (It's available, so check it out!). When I was ready to formally write my book and try to get it published, I asked Mike what he did.

He said he had self-published the book (which means you pay the publisher to print it), and he hooked me up with the publishing company that did his book.

Initially, I figured I'd send my manuscript to a publisher such as Random House, Penguin, one of those, and they'd publish it for me on their own dime.

Then I slapped myself back into reality and decided I didn't want to receive a ton of rejection letters, nor did I want to wait forever to have a publisher accept my work; I wanted my book published as soon as I finished it!

And after I had done a bit of research and discovered some of the authors who had self-published their first books -- Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Wolf, Stephen King, Gertrude Stein, William E.B. DuBois, Beatrix Potter, Upton Sinclair, to name just a few -- I figured, OK, I'm in for self-publishing!

Another neat perk of being self-published is that I own all the rights to my book. If in the event a newspaper, magazine, etc. ever wanted to reprint a section of my book, they wouldn't have to contact a publisher; I own the rights forever, so I give them the permission.

From the start, when I convinced myself to publish what I had written, I decided that I didn't care if I ever sold a single copy; all I wanted was to finally have a book published and have a book number in the Library of Congress.

And...

But before I get too far ahead of myself...

My book turned out being titled See You In CCU - A Lighthearted Tale of My Open-Heart Surgery. But originally it was going to be called Fun With Bypass.

I changed the title to See You in CCU for reasons that I never put in the book, but I have explained to reporter Lynn Paret first, then later at one of my book readings and on one of my radio show appearances. 

And the cover turned out differently than was originally planned.

Here's the cover I used:

But, at first, I wanted a cover that included images that, when I was initially brought to the emergency room, made me laugh. You may have seen these if you've ever been a patient:

Now to me, these little guys are hilarious. The zero guy is so happy, carefree, life is great. Then check out the four guy. He's got that "hmmm...uh oh...ummmm, I guess things could be better" look.

So I was gonna have the faces as part of the cover, but without the numbers and the descriptions. BUT I was gonna make a little change to their appearance. I, Steve, have a very slightly receding hairline. (If you're reading this and you know me personally, you know I'm lyin' through my teeth right now. If you don't know me personally, I hope we can meet in person someday, but if we don't, think of me as having a full head of hair...)

Anyhow, the change was going to make my smiley (and not so smiley) friends look more like me:

Check out their hair. Hehehehe...

I also had some wiseass comments for under the faces, but they never made it into the book. However, I will have a separate chapter in my upcoming book that tells what those goofy new comments were. 

While I'm on the subject of my new book (although I still don't consider myself an author), the title is going to be Feeling Well: Surviving Life and Stupid Puns. It should be ready by Summer 2013. It's gonna be about things I've gone through in life, but things that I feel we've all experienced at one point or another, so it's not as much a me book as it's gonna be an us book.

How often have we wished we could just snap our fingers and be where we want to be without having to do all the preparation that goes with it? Or have a job be finished with the snap of a finger? Once I had my manuscript typed up, I wanted to wake up the next morning with the completed book in the bookstores and available online. 

No such luck, right? Once I emailed my manuscript to the publisher, and they formatted it, etc., I had to proofread their edits, and then show them my corrections to what they had sent back to me.

Here's a copy of one of the pages I sent to them. My corrections are in the far right column. The column to the left of mine is what I wanted changed after I received their formatted edits:

This was merely one of thirty-three pages of changes I needed to submit.

However, looking back now, it was worth every minute of work to get my book published; I just never would have guessed all the work, besides the actual writing of the book, that went into getting a book published.

I assure you, if I did it, you can do it!

 OK, so I sent in my manuscript; I knew nothing about the behind-the-scenes stuff of publishing a book. Part of my "package" that I'd selected from the publisher was an email marketing campaign. It sounded like a good idea. The release of my book would be shared with thousands of emailers who subscribe to "newly released books" sites. But I was stymied by some of the questions I had to answer:

Hmmm...What are the selling points? Uh, let's see. I really don't know! Who will be most interested in your book and why? OK, that one I figured would be heart patients, but then I felt I'd be narrowing my audience...Mommy!! Help!! Oh, wait, I forgot...My mom had the unmitigated nerve...

Then I had to choose TWO of the following million areas of interest...

Huh? Wha?! I mean, OK, Health and Fitness seemed obvious and so did Doctors and Fitness. Then I thought General Female and General Male might apply, but I found it difficult to define General. And with the doctors and fitness gurus, I would have used up my two choices. So I think (I really was confused about the whole thing) I chose Health and Fitness and Entertainment.  I'm clueless as to why I chose Entertainment.

Later on, I found that my book was marketed to the physically-standing bookstores as a Biography. Wonderful! I'm sure the Tuscon, Arizona Barnes and Noble bookstore patrons will specifically be looking for the story of that well-known eighth-grade Language Arts teacher, Steve Ludwig...

It was in situations like these that I kept reminding myself of my mantra: I don't care if I sell a single book...

Then I'd hear from some family members and friends that I should be more aggressive in selling my book; that I'd worked hard on it, and people would want to read it. 

Well, I do remember thinking, I do love them all, but I wish they would SHUUUUUUUUTTTTTTT UUUPPPPPP!!!!!!!

I just wanted to be lazy about it; I wrote my book, case closed. But soon enough, what my family and friends starting saying to me started to sink in.

I'll tell you all about my grass-roots campaign (which sometimes became quite embarrassing) to sell my book in my next blog.

See ya then!!

Follow me on Twitter:  www.Twitter.com/LudGuy.

I'd like to thank the 10,000-plus of you from around the world who have read my blogs. I truly appreciate it!

If you like pop culture, you may enjoy listening to my radio show, STEVE LUDWIG'S CLASSIC POP CULTURE. It's at www.PlanetLudwig.com. Thanks!

AND, HEY, IF YOU'D LIKE TO READ MY ACTUAL PUBLISHED FIRST BOOK, JUST GO TO MY WEBSITE:  CCUBOOK.COM.

YOU CAN BUY IT HALF-PRICED THERE (PayPal, check, or money order).

Aside from my friend Mike Spina, whom I mentioned above in my blog, writing a book, another friend, Theresa Iannantuano just had her first book published.

It's called Who Took My Lunch? It's a really delightful children's book!

And I can't forget my cool brother Tom's blog site:

It's called "Second Grade Minds," and Tom and he buddy since the second grade do a point-counterpoint blog on all things political, sports, and pop-cultural. Check it out at www.secondgrademinds.wordpress.com.

THANKS EVERYBODY! Steve Ludwig