Tuesday, March 06, 2007

The Forbidden Word . . .
.


By Kirsten Nour Namskau


I wrote my book “Tell Me Who I Am” in 2002. I had not sent it to many Mainstream Publishers before the manuscript got banned by the Norwegian authorities.
The contains of the book was not in the favor of Norway. . .
I got the message “accidental” by someone who “talked” too much or slipped in the choice of words, may say that the manuscript was banned.

The contains of the book is authentic. You don’t have to believe it, it is the truth anyway.
Because of the ban, I had only one chance to publish the book and that was through a funded Publisher.
That means; I have to pay by myself for the 2000 first copies. About $8000,- (4600,- Sterling Pound)
I found Athena Press, UK and wrote them a letter where I sent a parcel of a chapter. I told them that the manuscript was banned at the Mainstream Publisher.

They accepted to publish the book to the price mentioned above.

Now . . . For those of you who already have read the book, you know that I had to give up everything of belongings. Material belongings as well did I loose all my money, bank accounts, properties, houses, and apartments I had around the world. Even movables, jewelleries and clothes were taken away from me.
I was deprived work-permit in Norway as well as all juridical rights. All lawyers in Norway were told not to support me in any juridical claims.
This itself is against “The Humans Rights” But when all Norwegian lawyers was told not to help me, I could not even get a lawyer to bring the case to the court of Human Rights.

Because of all this, when I left the country as refugee and found myself settling in Egypt, more and less in exile, I now live from hand to mouth. I have my small work and a close friend of mine offered me one of his flats to a decent rent in an area the Egyptian themselves look at as “the poor peoples village”. For me, it is "paradise".

My work keeps me living, but it should take 4 years before a friend from Denmark offered to sponsor the publishing of the book. Since I knew that I never actually would be able to finance it.
It takes about one year before I can expect any income of sale, and maybe it doesn’t sell that well neither.
It is not that I expect to become a best-seller, but I hoped I would sell enough to let me retire with a peace of mind.

After I came to Egypt, the Norwegian embassy and authorities have several times tried to “get to me” and several very embarrassing situations have occurred in the process. (Embarrassing for the Norwegian embassy and the Norwegian authorities. For me it has been in favor, since the situations have proofed the truth of my stories.)

My book had been on the marked only 4 weeks when I got a message from one of the biggest Russian Publisher for the sole right to translate the book to Russian.
The book is deliberately written in a way so it should be easy for whoever authority to find out if the stories is true or not.
The Russian Publisher did that investigation and got to know far more than what I had written about. Through ways, I learned to know that they even had found witnesses I never dared to count on.
But they did one mistake . . . They contacted the Norwegian Embassy.

I think it is by no coincidence that suddenly, everyone who had contact with me got fired from the Publisher and the translation process was put on freeze.

I have been asked, from several directions, to write the second book. Some with specific interest in certain events they know has happened in my life.

The book is now finish and I contacted Athena Press if they were interested in the next book too. They said that they certainly were.

But again, I meet the same problem . . . I don’t have the money to Publish it.

Therefore am I now going out in public and I ask you; “Can you help me to publish my book?”

If you can, please contact me through e-mail. You find it in my profile. Or send me an off-line message on my "giggle" on this page, with your e-mail address.

It is only one way that I can receive money, to ensure the money reach me.

Since years of torture, my days are counted. The injuries in my body do not get better by age . . . they get worse. I do not get younger and healthier.
It is only me that know and feel how the injuries are changing character.
That is why I never count on another day, another month or year.

I can wait a year and see if I have earned enough money from my first book to publish the next . . . But will I live so long???

13 comments:

tkkerouac said...

Sounds as if you have been through hell and back. I have no idea about the publishing world, I do know that my daughter Raymi wrote a book and self published it.
I wish you success, you might try going into other blogs where writers have published books,this might help. I'm still wondering what your book is about.

Kirsten N. Namskau said...

As a matter of fact, I had that in my mind.(self-publishing) But the case is ...
1) I am not native English speaking, so I need to get the manuscript edited, corrected and put in correct grammatical order.

2) To make a self-publishing, I need to download certain tools. My computer is so old and have so low memory, so if I download anything more than the absolute needed to be able to use the internet sufficient, it crushes all the time.

3) To pay someone to correct and edit the manuscript cost almost more than to publish it from a funded publisher.
(I searched around concerning my first book ...)

But ... If it is meant to be, it will ... If not, that is OK too.

Lee Ann said...

Thank you for stopping by! I hope to see you more often.

tkkerouac said...

You sound very easy going.

Can you tell me how to get this pink parchment paper that you write on. I think it will go well with my new banner.

Lexcen said...

kirsten, may I suggest that if you can gain access to someone with a more advanced computer than yourself, you can run the manuscript via the word processor program and it will correct any spelling and grammar mistakes. This wouldn't cost you anything, like a professional editor but would do the job. Even Firefox comments box has a spell checker so it can't be that hard to find someone with a computer that could help you.

Lexcen said...

Sorry, my suggestion was a bit hasty because I just tried it and it didn't work as I expected.

Kirsten N. Namskau said...

tkkerouac: Copy the link and transform it to html on your post-page. Copy again the html and copy it into your template.
Thank you...

lee ann: Thanks for stopping by

Lexcen: I had in my mind to turn the first book too into an eBook. But first of all, I have to earn money enough to buy a new computer.
I try to come in contact with Steven Novak and another friend of mine "Kristo" from Australia who are authors, hopefully to get some help and advice.
I have correction on my PC, but although I used it at the first manuscript, I was shocked by how much work I put the editor through.
(sigh)

none said...

I hope to read the second book. My father is looking to get his book published and I want to find out how he does it and if I can possibly help with more information.

KATHBEE said...

Wow! I feel for you Kirsten, I know how hard it is to 'do things' without money - it is a necessary evil - I hate it and need it at the same time!

Sorry I can't help you with advice nor money, but I wish you all the best =)

Anonymous said...

Kirsten, just in case you should not know them yet:

Pen Press is told to be a fair self-publishing house: http://www.penpress.co.uk/

Unfortunately, Macmillan's "New Writing" is exclusively for fresh novel authors:
http://www.macmillannewwriting.com/Contact%20Us/displayPage.asp?PageTitle=Submit%20Manuscript

But St. Martin's Press (Macmillan group, too) might be a convenient traditional publisher:
http://www.stmartins.com/

The DreamStar Books / Books4publishing site seems to be under construction presently, but in case it should work again:
http://www.books4publishing.com/index.html
However, I do not know whether they are fair or not.

Good luck!

Anonymous said...

p/s concerning your computer and software: In a world without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates? You might have to send in your book as a Word file, but you do neither need MS Office nor MS Word to do so. There is an excellent alternative: http://www.openoffice.org/ The suite is freeware yet very professional, and the software as well as the files are much smaller than the MS products, thus saving a lot of disk space.

The word processor is called OpenOffice Writer. It can read MS Word documents and convert the Writer documents into Word files (which is a very easy thing to do: just choose the format in "save as" menu). The Writer user interface is similar to that of MS Word, so if you can handle the latter, there would not be much relearning for you.

I can see only one small disadvantage: complex Writer layouts, i.e., two column pages with big or nested tables, are not fully compatible with MS Word. But you can create PDF files out of your text files, so even if you should need to exchange documents with very clomplex layouts, it would not really be a problem.

Kirsten N. Namskau said...

e: Thank you SO much for your very valuable information. This is grate.
My biggest problem though is that English is not my first language, so I need to have it edited, corrected and put in correct grammatical order.
One thing is to speak the language, but to write a book, I feel it's used another term of "rules" ...
But I will ask a friend of mine for help in that matter.

Thank's again for grate help and encouragement.

Anonymous said...

Kirsten, I am sorry that I cannot give a hand with proofreading. As you will have realised, English is not my mother tongue, either. But I keep my fingers crossed for you and your book.