Writing Japanese for Americans in Canadian

A few days ago, I uploaded an eReader preview of The Samurai Poet on my website, the last step in the process before making the entire novel available for sale. Independently preparing the manuscript has led to some pitfalls and dilemmas that took an unexpected amount of time to resolve.

For example, the proper way to present Japanese words in the novel had me vacillating for the longest time. I went from integrating the Japanese words in a regular font to eliminating most of them for English approximations to italicizing every single Japanese word throughout the text. For some stubborn reason, I did not consult with style guides on this issue until this summer, finally accepting their sensible advice to italicize only the first instance of any Japanese word not found in an English dictionary.

For all the consternation this seemingly trivial issue caused me, an even bigger one was whether to use Canadian or American spellings. For the longest time, I had been relying on an American dictionary as my spellchecker. My reasoning was that it would be best to adopt the spelling of my largest potential market. Along the way, I realized that I liked the look of words like "traveling" better than "travelling," which eased my patriotic conscience. Still, every time I looked at a word like "armor" instead of "armour" something inside me cringed. It's hard to explain, but those "-our" endings seem to resonate just a little longer whether I read them aloud or in my mind. The attachment went deep enough that I finally decided to go with all Canadian spellings, even if "centring" throws a few people off who were expecting a three syllable "centering."

In a perfect world, I would be able to release customized versions for amazon.ca, amazon.com, and amazon.co.uk, but pre-investigation I suspect it might end up being more trouble than its worth. If all of this seems like a tempest in a tiny teapot, at least it illustrates how time consuming the last 1% of novel can be to complete. It's the farthest thing from creativity, yet issues as small as how to present foreign words and which spelling conventions to follow must be dealt with by the author in the brave new world of indie publishing. In the end, the best advice I can offer is to consult with a wide range of reputable style guides and authoritative dictionaries. Once the final decisions have been made, make sure you're comfortable with them, because someone will inevitably question you about them.