The Journal of Joe The Peacock. Yay.

No, I'm Not Coming Out of the Closet.

2010-07-28T16:04:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I went full-on whiny bitch mode about not getting my laptop when I wanted it. I recognize I was being a whiny bitch. I was just venting.

Jeremy added to the post that I was just being whiny because I was coming out of the closet to my parents, and am feeling emotional. This made it out to the RSS feeds.

For clarity: no, I'm not coming out of the closet to my parents. If I were, I'd actually be in a great mood, because it'd piss them off, and ever since I was 10 years old, pissing off my parents has been my #1 goal in life. And it'd be all like "Mission Accomplished" and shit. And second, Jeremy's had his admin privleges revoked on the blog, so now I can call him a motherfucker anytime I want and not have to worry about his getting butthurt to the point of editing my blog entries.

Also, I think Jeremy's very handsome and I also suck cocks and no, Jeremy did not edit this portion I wrote it myself.

"It Could Be Worse..."

2010-07-27T14:26:00.003-04:00

No other four-word phrase produces the amount of ire in me that "It could be worse..." does.

Case in point: I am expecting a box containing a new Macbook Pro today. I need this Macbook Pro today because I will be away from home the next few days, and the shipment requires a signature. Apparently, FedEx are a bunch of clowns who can't actually deliver items on the day that they say they will, and the shipment has been delayed for delivery until tomorrow.

This comes on the heels of several different people in several different positions of authority giving me hearty boot up the ass for several different things -- all of which are not directly my fault and should have been handled with a lot more tact, except that the persons involved are feeling pain so they're passing it down to me.

So I share my lament with my friend Jeremy, who then lets me know that, while my very exciting (and necessary) Macbook Pro delivery being delayed is certainly an "assache", especially combined with the rest of today's bullshit, "it could be worse."

OF COURSE IT COULD BE WORSE. It could have fallen out of the airplane and hit a little boy, killing the kid and voiding my warranty on the new computer. It could have been misdelivered to a house where a terrorist cell member covertly lives, where the computer would then be used to mastermind the next 9-11. Lots and lots of things could have happened that could be worse.

This does not make me feel better. It makes me feel like taking out all of my frustrations on your face. The point is not that this situation is as bad as it could possibly get. The point is that I'm already frustrated, and this just causes more frustration. Knowing how much worse it could be does not alleviate the pain and frustration I'm feeling right now. Actually getting the fucking thing would do that.

So my retort to all of you ridiculous not-experiencing-pain-right-now optimists when you tell me it could be worse? Yes, but it could be better - I could have my computer right now, AND I could be punching you. Best possible situation in my book.

*** Edit ***

Just now, I let Jeremy know I wrote this, and told him "You know I don't mean this personally." He replied "Oh I don't give a shit, it was just something trying to get you to realize you're just having a bad day and the world isn't out to get you."

I'd prefer the world was out to get me. Then, I could fight back and be in the right. As it stands, anyone I kill right now would just be an innocent person in an unfortunate situation. I don't feel better, I feel even worse. So yeah, yet another point against Jeremy.

"Should I Quit My Day Job?"

2010-07-24T22:43:00.004-04:00

Great timing on this one. Lifehacker links to a post on Get Rich Slowly that posits the question of whether or not you should quit your day job to pursue a passion.

Well, I've just finished a huge how-to on writing, publishing and selling your book. One of my huge points: don't quit your day job. But what if you want to? What if you ARE so gung-ho that you're ready to take on the world with your talents? Well, here's what Get Rich Slowly suggests you ask yourself first:

Chasing a dream isn't for everyone. There are plenty of people who prefer the stability and security of a job. Many creative, interesting, passionate people like the advantages of a steady paycheck, good benefits, and the ability to leave work behind at the end of the day.
Before you consider quitting your day job to follow your passions, ask yourself:
How comfortable am I taking a risk with my livelihood?
Am I willing to maintain a business?
How will I handle the business management aspects of my new career?
Do I want to do this all day, every workday, or will that strip the joy from it?
Will my family and friends support this move?

Those are all well and good. And general. And pretty much useless. This flowery hand-holdy "God, we need to fill space and sell ads" bullshit blogging crap gets on my nerves. Those are NOT the questions you ask. They're the beautifully generic overarching theme of what you should actually ask yourself, which is this:

How the hell will I feed myself, keep the lights on, keep the roof over my (or our) head, and still be a writer (or whatever other creative field you want to pursue)?

Here's the answer: You will work almost twice as hard as you did at your day job, over and above the actual work of whatever it is you want to leave that job to do.

You want to be a writer? You will put in your hours writing, and then twice the number of hours of your old job promoting that writing, selling that writing, managing the checks that (might) come from that writing. This is, of course, after you've established some sort of revenue source from that writing.

If you're single:

The essentials are food, water, shelter, air and something soft to sleep on. Additional necessities will include electricity, internet and garbage service. Air is free, and hopefully you already have a bed, so those two are handled. Everything else has a bill attached. Add those up. This is a figure we will call X.

Mind you, "food" does not mean eating out. Period. No eating out. This is not the place to figure out eating out expenses. This is the place to figure out the base caloric intake your body needs to survive. The same goes with water: fuck Pelligrino. You're drinking out of the tap.

As far as shelter goes, you have to figure out if you're okay with downsizing, or if you're going to attempt to keep the mortgage / rent paid on where you're at now. Don't be afraid to take on a roommate, or move to a cheaper place.

Everything else -- EVERYTHING -- is expendable. Yes, including your car (especially if you have a bike). From this point forward, you've got to make enough money to be able to afford everything else. This means cable, satellite, strip clubs - EVERYTHING.

If you're married / living with someone:

Everything I just said above, plus "Is he/she okay with that?" If they make enough money to support you both, are you ready to accept the fact that taking a year or two years to write your book had better be met with some measure of success? Because I don't give a shit how much they love you and care about you and tickle your ass with the feather of support, two years of paying for your food, shelter, water, and everything else? That's going to require that at some point you come back strong and make up for your lack of keeping up with your end of the bargain. Period. Because if you don't, there WILL be resentment.

No no, you're right, I DON'T know him or her. I don't know how much they love you, and support you, and wants you to be happy... But I do know people. And people don't like being fucked. And you taking two years and doing something that does not pay off end in the end? That's fucking them.

Note that paying off doesn't necessarily mean a huge financial windfall. Maybe your book / art project / whatever leads to new contacts and opportunities. Maybe you write something that leads you to discover that you're amazing at research, and you end up taking that on as a career. Who knows. Just make sure it pays off.

Got all that covered? Know where the next three months worth of bills are coming from already? You're ready to quit your job. Not because you've secured the money, but because doing enough of the work to know the answers to everything above puts you in a certain mindset to either accept how hard it's going to be or quit.

Go for it.

Why "The Big Bang Theory" Sucks

2010-07-22T19:07:00.002-04:00

I bag on "The Big Bang Theory" quite a lot on this blog. Well, today, a reader Facebook-messaged me to let me know she was leaving me:

I've been asked quite often why I hate The Big Bang Theory. Here is a simple photo essay explaining it:

	is to
as
	is to

Go on... Tell me I'm wrong.

The Flame Which Fuels, Consumes

2010-07-21T23:24:00.007-04:00

Colonel Tanner: All that hate's gonna burn you up, kid.
Robert: It keeps me warm.
-- Red Dawn, 1984

I loved this quote. I loved it from the second I heard it, when I was 7 years old and we saw Red Dawn in the theater. I loved it as a teenager, young adult, and adult. And only recently -- two days ago, in fact -- did the full gravity of that statement finally hit me.

I posted about my lack of discipline the other day. Shortly after I posted it, I was talking to a friend about the situation, and it finally dawned on me... My fire's gone out. And it's not a bad thing.

For many, many years, I had this deep desire to prove everyone wrong. 33 years, in fact. Everyone in my life who ever told me I couldn't do anything I wanted to do. That I had no talent. That I had no chance in life. That I should just quit dreaming and go get a job at the Home Depot. That I couldn't draw - not technically, but physically was not allowed to.

Family members. "Friends." People that were supposed to help me and support me... I spent a lot of years living in fear -- seriously, fear -- of my own creativity and need to do things like write and draw, because I knew I'd hear shit about it and get relentlessly mocked and derided.

I hated them. Hated. It's a strong word, and I just used it. I hated my birth father for abandoning me. I hated my older brother for tormenting me. I hated every kid in every school I went to who refused to just let me be a normal kid. I hated my family for having a particular viewpoint of me, which was ultimately wrong -- because they always assumed, since I was related to them, that they knew me by default. I hated and hated and hated.

And I don't hate anymore.

I mean, yeah, I still hate hipsters and wannabes and fashion geeks Glenn Beck and the usual cast of people who pull our collective conscious down into the gutter and make us lesser as a society. But that's just hate for the sake of calling people out on their bullshit. I don't want to actually punch and hurt and maim these people, I just want them to stop with their nonsense.

...Okay, maybe I do want to punch Glenn Beck. And maim and hurt him. But the others... You get what I'm talking about.

After my breakdown last winter, I had to face a lot of things that were very, very difficult - not just things in my immediate periphery, like what was going on with my book or my life, but deep-seated, root issues that caused this panic and fear that I felt I was always forced to overcome every time I sat down to do ANYTHING. Draw. Design. Write. The ghosts of a hundred horrible people whispered in my ear each and every time, and I had to force my way past them and put pen to paper and push as hard as I could to get it to move.

I felt it in everything I ever did. I had to force myself to put these mental walls up every time I sought out to do anything I wanted to do that even remotely involved creativity. After all, I was supposed to be working at the Home Depot all this time - which is not a bad career, I love my local Home Depot guys. Those guys know what the hell they're talking about, and have helped me fix more than one thing around my home. But that's not me, and the context in which I was told that was not "go help people fix their homes," it was "you will never - EVER - make it as a web developer, designer, writer, or artist. You need to find a comfortable job with a basic skillset and do that."

Teachers. "Friends." Family, you guys - the one group you're supposed to be able to rely on no matter what... They were awful. My birth father would get drunk when I was a kid and smash up everything. He'd break my pencils just to be an asshole. My older brother would melt my crayons with a torch. It was ridiculous.

And they can't get at me anymore. No one can. I realized the night I wrote the discipline post that my fire's extinguished... And I'm the one who put it out, and it's a great, great thing. I'm no longer motivated by "Fuck YOU, I sure as hell can write, or draw, or bench press a ton of plates, or play pro football, or whatever the hell I want! You can't stop me!" It's now "Man, this would be so cool to do. I think I'll go do it."

I'm not afraid of myself anymore. I'm not afraid of BEING myself. And that's part of why I finally wrote the "How to write, publish and sell your book" thing. I'm okay admitting to myself now that I AM a writer. I have succeeded. I get to create things for a living, and I don't have to hide from anyone or justify it to anyone or explain why I did it. I do okay at this here writing thing. And I can help people do okay at it as well, if I can just get over the shyness of saying out loud the various things I do and do well.

I'm not scared anymore. There's no more hate in me. I'm not letting anyone's "No you can't" make me prove I can. I'm just happy doing what I like doing... For the first time in my life. That flame which I thought was fueling me was consuming me.

You can't let anyone - ANYONE - own that much of you. Ever. Hate is a leash. You buck and you growl and you snarl, and still they're the ones keeping you tethered to them. You can hate them, or you can get the ultimate revenge... You can let them go forever and make them watch as you forget they even exist.

The Absolute No-Bulls**t Guide To Writing, Publishing And Selling A Book, Chapter 5: Selling

2010-07-20T22:53:00.005-04:00

The Absolute No-Bulls**t Guide To Writing, Publishing And Selling A Book

Introduction and Chapter 1: 90% Of What You Need To Know, In One Chapter

Chapter 2: Writing Your Book

Chapter 3: Publishing Your Book, Part 1: Traditional Publishing

Chapter 4: Publishing Your Book, Part 2: Self Publishing

Chapter 5: Selling Your Book

* * *

Champagne wishes and caviar dreams... And all that stands between you and your lifetime of fame is getting a copy of this book into every pair of hands in America (or Canada, or the UK, or wherever it is you wish to be famous).

When you figure that part out, let me know. I'm still working on it myself. Although, I have found one sure-fire method: be famous first. It helps a LOT. The rest of us... We're left hocking the thing the best we can to whomever will buy it. And based on the method of publishing you chose, you actually have two very different customers: the publisher and the reader.

This is where I, once again, trumpet the choice of self-publishing, because it allows you to actually sell to both readers and publishers. You can make a few bucks (if you're lucky) by selling it to readers who might recommend it to their friends, all the while trying to sell it to a publisher for a bigger distribution base. Or, just stick with selling it to readers if it's doing well enough (or you don't want to be a part of the big corporate machine... Which you will be if you sell to a publisher, whether you like it or not). And the other thing is that no matter which choice you make, you're selling to the readers. Selling to a publisher does not absolve you from the responsibility of selling your book to the readers. It just takes all the logistics off your shoulders.

Let's Say You Get A Book Deal...

You've gotten an agent... Or maybe you haven't. Maybe your cousin's best friend is on the intramural lacrosse team with an editor at a publisher. Or maybe you just threw the book proposal we discussed earlier into the mailbox, it went into the slush pile, and somehow it was selected, read, and liked. Whatever happened, you've now got the attention of a buying editor at a publisher.

First thing to know: There's no "standard" book deal. How much you get as an advance, how much you get in royalties, how many books you'll be asked to deliver... Who knows. It all depends on how good your material is, how good your agent is (even if you are your own agent), and who the publisher is. What I can tell you are a few things you can expect.

First, the advance... The big number with a bunch of zeroes that makes headlines when some breakout new author sells a ~~future Hollywood movie featuring tons and TONS of pathos and stars Rachel McAdams~~ book. Otherwise known as the fuel for every single wannabe author's dreams of never, ever working again due to their amazing imagination being validated by society at large.

How much do you ask for in your advance? Shoot, go for a million bucks. It'll make the editor laugh, and starting with a joke always makes the process go easier.

But really, the process is pretty basic. One of you starts with a number, and the other party either says "Hey, that's fair" and accepts or says "No, how about this" and counters. What number one of you starts with depends entirely on the potential market, the size of the publisher, and the strength of your material. I was courted by three publishing houses when I decided to sell to Gotham / Penguin. I received offers of $7,500, $27,500 and $50,000. Penguin was the middle offer.

I chose them because I really liked the editor. He gets me. She understood what the book was trying to be: not another Tucker Max self-loveathon catered toward fratboys with gross misconceptions about how women work. The lowest offer came from a small publishing house that apparently specializes in blog-to-book properties, who got the process but didn't really offer much in the way of helping me grow. The highest came from another big-six publisher whose buying editor did not understand in the slightest what I was actually trying to achieve with my writing.

$27,500 might sound like a lot of money. It's not. And it doesn't come all at once - it comes in three payments: one when you sign, one when you turn in the manuscript, and one when the book is published. Taking into account that the process takes about a year no matter who you are, it's hardly a big payday.

It's called an "advance" for a reason. It's an advance against future royalties. This is not a big fat book check on top of all those millions of book sales you're going to make, it's a down payment. And until you sell enough books to make enough royalties to cover the advance payment, you won't be getting royalty checks. My royalty is 7.5% of cover price, which is $14.95 -- meaning I get $1.12 a book. This means I had to sell roughly 24,533 copies of my book to break even with the publisher's advance and begin receiving royalty checks.

It's hard work selling enough copies to cover an advance. The publisher will want you to spend most of that advance on marketing and promotion efforts. Suggestions include hiring a web developer to build the book's website (they don't do this in-house - at least, mine doesn't), print / radio / web ads, Facebook app development, etcetera. The publisher does not pay for these things out of pocket unless there is a VERY good pitch placed in front of them. The pitch will require figures: anticipated sales that are generated by x demographic for y money. And you won't get it. Just letting you know.

When I sold Mentally Incontinent to Gotham, the publishing industry still wasn't ready for internet-to-book properties for the sake of doing internet-to-book properties (which they apparently got over, because these days, anyone with a Tumblr account and a unique hook to collect photos of strange things will get a book deal. If you're looking for a shortcut to a book deal, this is the only one I have for you. Go figure out something clever to collect photographs of, slap captions on them, and profit).

I got offers on my book from publishers because I was able to demonstrate a history of sales and an established audience. I had people I could sell my book to already lined up and ready to get my next book. This was vital, because my book never would have made it on the strength of its merits alone. I self-published first, stumbled upon success, and the publisher noticed.

Had I not self-published, I would have had to convince a publisher that 1) a book full of short stories 2) written on the internet 3) by a non-famous person 4) about his life in suburban Georgia 5) that were selected by the readers was worth publishing.

Right. Exactly. Now you see why I advocate self-publishing first. It doesn't matter how hard I tried to convince them that it was funny, touching, interesting or whatever. But when I can show them sales figures of people who bought it, there's no need to convince them. The readers who bought my book did that for me.

Selling it to Readers

The major thing that you need to know is that there is no magic sales fairy who will make your book sell, no matter whether you decide to self-publish or go through a traditional publisher. The publisher certainly has a motivation to promote you and help you sell your book... But they're also not stupid. They put the vast majority of their money and time into promoting books from celebrities and in categories they know they can make massive profits on.

Unless you fall into one of those two categories, it's going to be up to you. And if you self-publish, it's definitely up to you. The publisher may help promote your book. They may do some print or digital marketing - but as a first time author, chances will be slim. They will help you get some PR and book you on radio shows - but who listens to radio? Unless it's a politically-themed book and you get airtime on the yapping frothing fevered-ego talk shows (or, you're zany AND VERY VERY LUCKY and get a shot on Howard Stern), you're talking into the air and no one's listening.

But at the end of the day, they're going to tell you what they told me, and what every single author I know heard with their first (and usually second and third and fourth) books. The publisher expects you to spend your advance on marketing and PR. They say (and they're right) that the more you spend promoting your book, the more you'll make up on the back end in royalties.

You can do a few things:

Buying print / tv ads. If you're a millionaire, and you just really want the world to know about your book as fast as possible, you can do this. It's expensive, and no one gives a crap about ads, especially for books. But you can do it.

Book reviews / mentions on blogs. Building relationships with people with a voice. The thing is, everyone wants a piece of these people, and blindly sending them your book meets with slightly less resistance than sending it to a publisher sight-unseen. And then, they may hate it. But it's an avenue.

Buy your way into the New York Times Bestseller List. Yes, you certainly can do this. The NYT Bestseller list is NOT a chart of best-selling books. It's editorialized. And if you hire the right number of old ladies in the right cities to buy your book on launch day from the right bookstores, you can end up there as an unknown author selling a billion copies. You're not actually selling a billion - more like a thousand. But because those stores are set up with BookScan (like Neilson ratings for tv), they register as a boatload of books. This service is very expensive, but hey... NYT Bestseller.

Hire a PR rep / publicist. Just like an agent is to the publisher, a PR rep is a shortcut between you and everyone in the industry with a voice who can chirp about your book. Unlike an agent, these guys get paid up front. They have to, because it's how their job works. There's no commission with publicity. With PR / publicity, the work gets done, and the performance of your book actually rests on your ability to a) communicate what it's about, and b) convince people they want it. You can get ten interviews in ten days on the top ten talk shows in the nation, and if your book is crap or you're unable to convince people quickly what it's about, there will be no sales. A good publicist will tell you how to handle this. For the record, I don't have a publicist, outside of the one Gotham assigned to me (and in-house publicists are not people you can command the time of too often, especially as a first-timer). I can't afford it, and I just don't see it as necessary.

Other things that cost a lot of money. Skywrite your book's title in the sky over every NASCAR event. Sponsor a NASCAR car. Buy an NFL team and take them to the Super Bowl, and stitch your book's title on the jersey of every player. You get my point.

Marketing is expensive. But one thing you can do that is relatively inexpensive if you do it right:

Tour. Tour like a motherfucker. Arrange signings in stores. If you're with a publisher, or if you hired a publicist yourself, you can have your publicist arrange signings, but there's no reason on earth why you can't do that yourself. It's as simple as calling the store of your choice, asking for the community relations person (or asking the person who answers the phone who you speak to if you want to arrange a signing), and you're off. If you've self-published, being in Ingram (the big catalog every store orders from) helps a LOT, because it shows the person making the decision that you're taking it seriously. But if you're not, it's not game over - they'll just ask you to sell them copies and ship them so they can prepare your signing. If you can bring 20 people to the store, they'll consider your day a success. Even if you can't, you can sell lots of books by being interesting. Be a carnival barker - don't be afraid to stop people walking by and ask them if they'd be interested in hearing what your book is about.

And touring gets a LOT easier if you...

Build an audience first. This is what I did, albeit by accident. I didn't actually intend to build a huge audience who would eventually help push my book along, I just thought it was a very cool thing to write a book, and a very cool thing to let readers tell me what they wanted in the book. When I released my first book, I had a base of people I could ask to show up to my signings and bring friends, and a network of couches I could crash on as I toured around to keep costs down.

The internet makes things so easy these days - you stick your stuff out there and you tell people about it, and if it's not shit, you can build an audience. I fully believe that EVERY SINGLE BOOK ever written has an audience somewhere. There are people out there who build bat boxes, people. These are boxes that bats live in. People build these. And trust me, before they built one, they bought a book about building a bat box. You get my point?

And by sticking stuff out on the net, you open the door for people to discover you and, much much much more importantly, share you with someone they know. How you do this can be discovered in detail on other marketing, web development and social networking blogs - and yes, I'll write a guide on how to do this part as a supplement to this guide eventually. For now, it's important to know that in 2010, this is not only a great way to market and promote your book, it's pretty much essential.

Because I had an audience first, I could put my book on pre-sale before I printed copies so I could gauge how many to print in the initial run. When it came to promoting it, I found college campuses the best place on earth to get the word out - if I could reach one motivated reader in college, before I knew it, I had 100+ fans from that school, and they appreciated greatly the fact that they could read what I wrote without having to buy it first. It actually encouraged them to buy the book as a souvenir.

I got to a point where, if I could sell 20 or so books per signing, I could break even. And I did, a lot. I targeted independent bookstores who had mailing lists of committed, happy customers who came to events, and found those to be the best signings. The bigger stores were cool, too -- just harder. We had parties at night, and I kept my food expenses low by stopping at grocery stores and buying bread, peanut butter and jelly and eating that nearly 3 meals a day.

And now that Kindle and iPad / iPhones are making books just a click away from being read, the market is completely reinvigorated - it's a huge wide-open market. Now, I personally read paper books. I HATE reading e-books. I just can't stand them. I don't know what it is... Maybe I'm just a crusty old curmudgeon. But there are millions of ebooks sold a year via Amazon and Apple's iBook store, so that means there's a gigantic market full of people who DO like reading digitally.

Having a solid internet presence makes it easy as hell to make your book one simple click away from purchase and delivery. And if you self-publish, this is doubly exciting, because the actual return on investment is huge - there's no physical product to produce or ship. Profit goes up. You have more money to promote your book. Rinse, repeat, success.

And how do you know when you're successful? It's a question I get constantly when I do talks and whatnot. And my only answer: when you've reached your goals. If your goal is to write a book, you're a success the moment you type "The End." If your goal is to sell a million copies, well, you have a LOT of work ahead of you. My goal was to sell 100 copies of my first book. I beat that goal in the first hour of pre-orders. I had no idea what sort of community I was sitting on. I hope the same happens for you - I hope you set a low goal that would make you happy beyond your wildest dreams, and you beat it into oblivion. And there's the cautionary tale - set manageable goals. Or, to get all Buddah, be happy with less, because you'll be way happier with more if it comes. It'll be a great ride. No need to set yourself up for disappointment.

But whatever you do, and I cannot stress this enough: Don't quit your day job.

Summing Up

I hope this guide has done two things: 1) discouraged the people who think it's all writing jackets and pipes and being a "writer", and 2) encouraged the rest of you. You CAN do it. You just have to understand that it's a lot of hard work.

That doesn't mean it's a job, however. I consider jobs things you do in return for money when you'd rather be doing something else. To date, I have not found anything else in the world I'd rather be doing than writing, producing and sharing my books with you guys. Every single ounce of the process is amazing for me, even when it's painful and my brain's being stubborn and bookstores are being difficult and radio hosts try to make you the butt of the joke. It's a fantastic experience to watch someone who started off ready to make you sorry you ever showed up change into someone who believes in what you're up to.

And if you believe in it - really, seriously, honestly believe in it, enough to do the work and push through the hard times and make this happen - you can convert them. All you have to do is make them feel what you feel... And that's what you do, isn't it? You're a writer, after all.

So go write.

Lack of Discipline

2010-07-19T22:42:00.000-04:00

I completely lack discipline right now.

There was a point in time, oh, about six months ago when I was super disciplined. I was at the gym twice a day. I wrote something new every single day. I ate right.

I had a bag of chips and a pint of orange sherbet for dinner, people. And that was at 5:30PM, when I was supposed to be at the gym.

I've been trying the past few weeks to get it back, you know? Trying to establish regimen and set goals and push myself. I've done pretty well - I wrote four out of five parts of a series I've been sitting on for about a year (The writing / publishing thing, which will be done tomorrow). I went to the gym 4 days last week. I ate okay.

It's not enough. The antithesis of discipline is not failure, it's "okay." Sometimes doing what you said you'd do. Lax standards, but just enough work to make yourself feel like you're getting somewhere. I need that back.

I don't have an answer or a plan, save for confession. For some reason, every time I confess things like this to you guys, I go get my shit together. I'm hoping this is the case here. I hope that tomorrow I'll wake up terrified that you guys are going to start hammering me on why I didn't go to the gym or post that last peice of the thing I said would be done last week or finally announce the new book project.

Let's see what tomorrow brings.

The Absolute No-Bulls**t Guide To Writing, Publishing And Selling A Book, Chapter 4: Self-Publishing

2010-07-16T17:36:00.005-04:00

The Absolute No-Bulls**t Guide To Writing, Publishing And Selling A Book

Introduction and Chapter 1: 90% Of What You Need To Know, In One Chapter
Chapter 2: Writing Your Book

Chapter 3: Publishing Your Book, Part 1: Traditional Publishing

Chapter 4: Publishing Your Book, Part 2: Self Publishing (you are here)

Chapter 5: Selling Your Book

* * *

Chapter 4: Publishing Your Book (Self-Publishing)

The one thing you need to realize right here, right now: It's all on you.

It can be overwhelming. And yeah, when you start thinking about the fact that you are now responsible for editing, layout, cover design, printing, proofing, distribution and warehousing, you're probably going to feel a bit nervous. But that's why we're here, and why I am writing this. With just a little bit of homework, you can actually handle all of this yourself, or cut costs on having others handle it for you.

You don't have to do this alone. But it does ultimately fall on you. You're making all the decisions. It's really quite liberating. And at the end of it, you're guaranteed to have a book in your hands. A trophy to celebrate all your hard work. How much it sparkles and shines, though, depends on how much effort and attention to detail you put into the process.

One good thing - you don't have to format a formal manuscript like when you submit to a publisher / agent, unless you want to for your editor. Good thing too, cause that format is ugly.

First Thing's First: Your Intentions

Are you planning on making a go of this as a business, or are you just doing a few copies (or a few hundred copies) as gifts for friends?

If you're doing the gift thing, use Lulu.com - it's the easiest, quickest most direct way to put a book out at minimal cost to yourself. The books come out looking pretty good when you use the "professional" quality setting, and you'll save yourself a ton of effort on logistics (warehousing, shipping, getting an ISBN, etc). You upload a word document or pdf, choose a simple layout and design, put a picture on the cover and automagically, it becomes a book. Done. Glad I could help. Same goes if you want an e-book, but have no idea how to create a .mobi or other ebook format.

If you're planning on taking this further - building a customer base, marketing and selling your books, distribution to stores and through Amazon... There's a lot to talk about. I'm going to start with the "Everything else" first, because believe it or not, it's shorter.

Everything Else That Isn't Actually Publishing (Or, "Cover your ass")

I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.

That said, I highly recommend you start a business. You don't have to, but consider it. The process is remarkably simple - you file some paperwork in your local municipality, and you're done. You can be a sole proprietorship, a corporation or an LLC (Limited Liability Corporation). I chose LLC because, to make a long story short, you get all of the separation of liability benefits you get with a corporation, without any of the paperwork overhead (no meetings, no officers, etc). When you pay your taxes at the end of the year, it's "tax-through" - you do it on your personal taxes. It's simple.

The IRS has a great checklist for their side of the business. READ IT. Know it. You're responsible for your own taxes. Do the paperwork right. Use LegalZoom - they're more expensive than doing it yourself, but it's no-muss, no-fuss. Don't get cute - file the paperwork in the state you live in, unless you plan on growing the corporation to a multi-million dollar a year industry. If you don't want to use LegalZoom, your state's Department of Revenue website will have filing instructions. I did mine myself, and it cost me $60 in the state of Georgia to start my LLC. I wish I'd used LegalZoom, though, as my initial articles of incorporation were wrong. The extra $150 would have saved me a bunch of time and money.

Name your company whatever you want - YourNameIndustries, LLC is just fine. Then, file a DBA (Doing Business As). You can then legally do business under any names you file - including your personal name. Keeps things simple. My company is This Is Not Art! Productions, and I have a DBA for This Is Not Art! - that way I can be all vain and call it that if I want.

Next, file your EIN - this is like a Social Security Number, but for your business. You may never use it, but if you open a line of credit or a credit card, you'll want to use this number instead of your EIN for separation of purchase crap.

Next, open a checking account for the business. KEEP ALL BUSINESS MONEY SEPARATE. At worst, if you're a corporation or LLC, a judge can rule that you didn't keep things separate enough and you're on the hook if anyone sues you or your corporation. Basically, your house will be on the line if you fuck up as your corporation. Don't let that happen.

Now, since you're about to publish your own book, you're about to incur expenses -- the editor, the printing costs, shipping, any services you hire to help you out, packing materials, pens, envelopes, gas when driving to book signings. Keep tabs on every ounce of this, and write it all off on your taxes.

Next, figure out a place where you can do the work of packaging and shipping books (if you're only doing an e-book, this won't be an issue). If you plan to order copies in bulk and store them, you need a place to do that. Just make sure you heed my warning in the introduction about properly sealing garage doors.

Uline.com offers packing materials in bulk for decent prices. This is who you'll want to use to box, tape, label and marker your book packaging if you ship them yourself.

Okay, Now The Publishing

There are literally hundreds of ways you can go about publishing your own book. If you do Google "Self Publishing," you're going to be inundated with hundreds of companies who all promise to guide you along the path of putting your book out.

My job is to cut through the shit and tell you what to do, right? So the first thing is that most of the companies out there offering print on demand aren't actually "print on demand" companies, they're vanity press companies who do their printing on demand. They will sell you high-priced packages, mark up the cost of an ISBN and charge you for being listed in Ingram, and ultimately cost you way too much to be worth it - regardless of whether you choose to do this for yourself and friends, or build a business of it.

For physical paper books, there's really only three options: Bulk, Full-Service Print-on-Demand, and Partial-Service Print-on-Demand.

For each of these options, I'll use an example book that is paperback perfect bound, 240 pages, 5.5" x 8.5" (Digest size), color cover with black and white interior on bright white (professional) paper... A professional quality book that doesn't look like shit. Don't worry if you don't know what some of these terms are or what your various options are - we'll go over that in a bit. Just know that what I've described above is the "standard" paperback book that isn't pocket edition. It looks like this:

Bulk Printing: Hire a book printer who will print copies of your book in quantity and ship them to you. When you run out, place another order.

Pros: High-quality copies (provided you did your research and picked a good printer). It's what the publishers do. The cheapest of the options per copy. If you're certain you can sell inventory and you're concern is the bottom line, do this. It's what the major publishers do. Our example book would cost about $2.20 a copy starting at 1000 copies, and price breaks go into effect as you go up in quantity. If you already know you can sell 10k copies of your book, do this. The savings will be VERY worth it, as you can save between $2.50 and $5.00 per book, depending on the other services you might have used, and $12,500 - $50,000 is a LOT of money. But unless you have a pre-order sheet with paid sales in those figures, you probably still want to investigate print on demand.

Cons: You have to manage inventory and distribution, minimum orders are pretty large quantities that require a substantial investment up front (usually 1000 copies, so $2250ish), shipping is expensive, you're responsible for shipping EVERY SINGLE BOOK for every single order, regardless of source. You'll have to produce a separate e-book if you want one.

Notes: This is the most hands-on, but also most profitable of the solutions. It's not what I did, because I didn't anticipate selling a lot of copies. If I had to do it over again, I might consider this more due to the number of copies I actually did sell... But ultimately would still use Lightning Source. Plus I really didn't want to be responsible for Amazon / bookstore orders. You'll have to create an imprint yourself if you plan on getting an ISBN. Remember also that every minute you spend doing one thing is a minute you can't spend doing something else - if you're shipping books all day, you can't market them. If you hire someone to ship the books, will you pay them as much as if you just went print-on-demand?

Full Service + Print on Demand: These services are much less hands-on - they tend to market the fact that they're fire and forget. Send a document to them, wait a few days, proof your book, and boom - you have a book.

There's only one option I personally recommend, and it's Lulu.com. Lulu is the simplest, but also most fully-featured, of the full-service print-on-demand options out there. Others that i've heard not terrible things about are iUniverse.com and Trafford.com - I can't personally recommend either, and in researching them, they seem awfully expensive and "package oriented". So I say stick with lulu.

Lulu not only does all of the heavy lifting when converting your document (be it word, text or fully-laid-out PDF), but they also have a digital marketplace where your book will be sold. They also make it available in Amazon.com (if you want it). It's Print-on-Demand, meaning when an order comes in, they print it at the point of sale. They also handle shipping it to the buyer, and they deposit the profit into an account for you. They also make ebook formats and put you in both the Kindle Marketplace and Apple iBook store.

Pros: No out-of-pocket costs (unless you buy a proof copy), so low barrier to entry. VERY simple to get the book from document to print / e-book. Print on demand, so there's no warehousing on your end. Drop-ships to buyers, so you don't have to ship every order. Offers full service packages if you need help or want professional services, like layout, design, editing. Offers an ISBN service, so your book can be registered and found by people. Pretty much a one-stop shop for both paper and e-book. Puts you in Amazon if you buy the ISBN package. If you don't want to buy the ISBN, you can just sell in the Lulu Marketplace. Offers Kindle and iBook (Apple) publishing options.

Cons: VERY EXPENSIVE OVERALL - even though you're not fronting any money, the per-copy price is by far the most expensive option on this list, at $6.70 a copy for our example book (you can cut costs down by choosing "standard" paper, but the book will look like shit). Every copy will be "published" by Lulu Press, not your fancy imprint name. On Amazon, it'll be listed as published by lulu. Like it or not, "Lulu Press" is synonymous with "crap." I hate this, but it's true. ISBN is marked up like crazy. Editing service is a bit too closed off, the editor isn't someone you can meet and trust (as they're outsourced). Book isn't listed in Ingram by default (the catalog most every bookstore orders from). Distribution is not set with bookstores, so if you want to sell to them, you have to manage that. Even on the "professional" paper option, the covers still look a little sub-par. Bulk discounts for large orders don't apply on "professional" paper option.

Notes: Lulu is pretty much the easiest option on the list if you can overcome the stigma of having Lulu Press on your book and marketing material. Very expensive per copy, but that's because they literally do everything for you. Even though you can just upload a word doc to them and have it turn into a book, I still highly recommend you lay it out so it looks professional (and you can put your own personal touches on it). This is the option if you seriously feel like everything else is just too much to handle, but know that you'll never create a sustainable business out of it - you'll eventually need to move to Lightning Source or bulk printing.

Partial Service Print on Demand: Lightning Source. These guys are who I use, and there's a huge reason why. Even though I had to do all the pre-printing stuff myself, the books come out looking 100% top notch professional. They list you in Ingram, who is the major catalog for book sellers in the US and UK. They handle shipping to resellers, and you can order in bulk to cut the cost. They require that you set up an imprint, which is going to require that you set up a business (you need a Tax ID). They output both physical and e-books. The price is middle-of-the-road for all options, at about $4.40 per copy of our sample book. There is a set-up fee, but it's only $50 (whereas Lulu.com is free). But again, because it's print-on-demand, you're not paying up front to produce books (unless you have pre-orders, and bulk order prices do apply, cutting costs a bit).

Pros: Ingram, plain and simple. You're now in every bookstore in the nation (but not on the shelves - more on this in Selling). Drop-ship for orders placed by every retailer, meaning you don't have to ship books to most bookstore yourself, they can just order it. Available in US, UK and Canada. Manuscripts are published in both physical and e-book format, and made available to retailers. Price is decent for print-on-demand / drop ship. Covers are bright and vibrant, books are very professional quality. Bulk discounts for quantity (roughly $3.60 for 1000 copies of our sample book).

Cons: You have to manage all pre-press yourself. Layout, editing, ISBN, cover, etc. I personally wanted to do all of that myself. Very hands-off. You must have a tax ID to set up an imprint. No marketplace to offer the book if you don't have an ISBN (unlike Lulu). No automatic Kindle / iBook store integration (but it's easy enough to do yourself). There is a setup fee per book of $50, and proof copies are $50 each. But at $100 bucks, it's a super cheap trade to get into Ingram and not deal with logistics.

* * *

Once you've picked your method of printing, there's a process to go through. If you chose Lulu.com, you're pretty much good to go (except I still recommend highly that you format the book in a layout program instead of just uploading a word document, but that's a style thing).

Getting an ISBN + Barcode

If you want to be found in libraries, Amazon, or at all, you need an ISBN. The International Standardized Book Number is how everyone who isn't a friend of yours will locate your book. Simply having an ISBN doesn't guarantee that your book can be ordered through Amazon or other retailers -- you have to set up distribution with buyers so they know how to actually get your book. That's why Lulu and Lightning Source are so useful - they are the distribution for your book, and they list you with retailers (Lulu with Amazon, Lightning Source with everyone who buys through Ingram including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Books-A-Million, etc).

There's only one place you can get an ISBN, and that's through Bowker. You can buy just one, and it'll cost you $125, or you can buy them in quantity starting at ten for $250 - I went with ten, because hell, I know a bargain when I see one.

When you register your ISBN, you'll have to set up the book's metadata. This is the title, publisher / imprint, category, description, long description, etc. This is the stuff that shows up on your book's Amazon / store listing page, so write it well and choose carefully.

You'll also get the barcode that you'll put on your book. I'm sure this part is self-explanitory.

Laying out the book

If you want the book to look professional on the inside, you'll want to use something like Adobe InDesign or Quark Express to lay it out. These programs have huge learning curves and aren't free - so unless you're the intrepid digital explorer I am, you may want to hire this part out. But I sincerely hope you'll do this step, instead of just uploading a word document to lulu. Trust me -- it does make a huge difference in how the book comes out.

I found the process of laying out a book very, very rewarding. But also very frustrating. I made some big mistakes when I put out the first Mentally Incontinent -- I chose a terrible font (verdana), but my intention was to bring some of the "websitey" aspect of the writing to the book. I also started some chapters on the left page - never do that. Chapters start on the right side. Everything else is going to be your own personal aesthetic. Look in books you like and see how they're laid out.

Designing the cover

You can just slap black text on a blue background and have it be your cover, but it'll look every bit as bad as it sounds. Seriously, design a nice cover. Hire a designer. Everyone says you can't judge a book by it's cover, and while this is true about the quality, you sure as hell can determine a book is ugly by its color. Attractive things may not necessarily instantly sell, but ugly things definitely take more convincing. Who needs the hassle? Your job is hard enough. The big thing is the barcode for the back cover. You need to have that there, along with the ISBN and price of your book.

The Proof

Once you've gotten the pdfs of the book and the cover to the printer, you will have the option of buying a proof copy. DO IT. It's $50 for a proof copy at Lightning Source, and it'll save you a TON in recalls or reprints if you find mistakes (or rather, when you find mistakes). The most important thing you do when you get your proof copy is pop open a bottle of champaign, because lo and behold - you have a book.

Submitting a revision

Most everyplace you have your book printed will have a process for revisions. It's as simple as uploading a corrected copy of your book document and / or cover. It'll cost you to print a new proof copy, and Lightning Source will charge you another setup fee.

And now it exists. Your book is a real life no kidding thing. Time to sell the sucker.

A Slight Delay In The Writing / Publishing thingy...

2010-07-15T23:06:00.002-04:00

Sorry guys, today got away from me. I'm working on Part 4 right now - it's LONG. LONG LONG LONG. It likely won't be up before midnight. But I'll try to get it up tomorrow, as well as Selling (Part 5).

I apologize.

The Absolute No-Bulls**t Guide To Writing, Publishing And Selling A Book, Chapter 3: Publishing Part 1

2010-07-14T21:04:00.004-04:00

The Absolute No-Bulls**t Guide To Writing, Publishing And Selling A Book

Introduction and Chapter 1: 90% Of What You Need To Know, In One Chapter
Chapter 2: Writing Your Book

Chapter 3: Publishing Your Book, Part 1: Traditional Publishing (you are here)

Chapter 4: Publishing Your Book, Part 2: Self Publishing

Chapter 5: Selling Your Book

* * *

Chapter 3: Publishing Your Book (Traditional Publishing)

I want to be as clear as I possibly can, right away: I want you to self-publish your first book. The reasons are myriad, but the most important of them is that, in 2010, you do not need anyone's permission or seal of approval to do what you've always dreamed of.

There is one incredibly undeniable fact in the world of publishing: Your chances of having a book published by a traditional publisher increase exponentially when you can prove success in the writing market. The book market isn't dead, but thanks to the internet and the whole of the earth finally deciding gaming is cool, it's nowhere near what it was ten or even five years ago. Every single editor at every single publisher in the world has to put food on the table by making decisions on what to buy and what not to buy.

To a publisher, you are a business decision. You will cost [x] amount of money to retain, they will print [n] copies of your book which will cost [y] amount, then they have to spend [z] to market and promote and ship your book. They have to pay the salaries of the sales guys they employ to sell your book to bookstores, who see you as a whole new set of business decisions. In total, you will cost them [x] + ([y] * [n]) + [z], and if your book proposal doesn't immediately convey that you can cover that expenditure, you get a nice form letter saying thanks but no thanks. If you're lucky, they'll even sign it by hand and put your name at the top.

If they even read it, that is. Because without an agent or a contact, your book proposal comes through the mail room along with hundreds (at a small publisher) to thousands (at a large publisher) of others. A week. It's called a slush pile, and it's a God-awful mess of a thing to see in person. Here's a fantastic article about Tor, the legendary Sci-Fi publisher, that features a few great pics of their slush pile. To keep you from having to click It looks like this:

That's their morning slush pile. One day's worth.

And don't think that decorating it in clever stickers or mailing it in a metal coffin or any other slick packaging is going to get you read. Unless it's REALLY clever (and by this, I mean so clever, you're better off putting that effort into your own marketing efforts on your own book so you make money on your book), it actually stands less of a chance of being read. And sending it registered mail with signature required will get you the signature of the already annoyed mailroom guy who has to deal with misconceptions on how this shit really works every single day.

I'm not saying this to discourage you. This is reality. I've seen it with my own eyes. I've watched an editorial assistant dump a box of submissions into the canvas wheelie trash bin unopened, at three separate publishing houses. They weren't making a show if it, it's daily life.

Let me be as direct as I possibly can: I really, really, really, really hope you'll self-publish your first book. Really. And that's not because I want you to pay any sort of dues and experience the hard work and cut your teeth on the experience or any of that. It's because I want you to have your book. It's the whole point of writing this guide. It's an incredible and powerful feeling; the moment you open the box containing your proof copy. You have a book in your hands with your name on the cover, and your stuff in the middle, and holy shit, you just did it. It'll motivate you beyond belief.

The chances of that happening with your first book if you choose the traditional publishing route are drastically reduced by several orders of magnitude. And here's the really great thing - when you self-publish, you own all the rights and the copyright, so if you ever do get tired of selling it out of the back of your truck, you can just package that sucker right up and send it to every publisher you were going to send the manuscript to, only now you'll have sales figures and a history of executing under your belt. Yep, that exact same book can still be published by the publisher. It's still your manuscript, it's just in book form, and has earned you a few bucks along the way.

I'll be discussing the financial aspects of selling your book to a publisher vs. self-publishing it and selling it to your readers directly in Chapter 5. For now, just know that the second money starts getting exchanged for things - even art - it's business. And thanks to the internet and print-on-demand technology, it's now easier than ever to just skip the middleman and, in the process, actually create this thing you've worked so hard making.

Now, on to the process.

The Manuscript

Remember all that stuff I told you not to worry about while writing the book in Chapter 2? Well, now it's time to worry about it.

You can submit your manuscript any way you want. There's no rule that says the Post Office will refuse to deliver your package if your manuscript isn't set up just so. But if you want the editor to take it seriously, you'll want to do a few things. These rules apply whether you're submitting it to a publisher directly, or sending it to a potential agent.

1) Set up the manuscript. You'll need a cover page. In the top right corner, list the category of the book, followed by the word count. Middle aligned, in the middle of the page, put the title of the book (in bold), then "by", then your name. Put your copyright notice if you want, your name, address and contact info at the bottom. It should look like this:

The document should be double-spaced, with 1" margins all around. All paragraphs begin with an indent, not an extra hard return (don't double-double space). 12 or 14 point font, in a readable standard font. I like Georgia or Times New Roman for a serif font (recommended). Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma, Verdana for sans-serif. Some guides recommend monotype (that font you see on movie scripts). Whatever you do, don't use some cutesie or fancy or scripty font. And I swear to God, if you use Comic Sans or Papyrus, I'll hunt you down and slap you myself. Running headers on every single page, in the format of LastName / BookTitle / PageNumber (e.g. Peacock / Mentally Incontinent / 4). It should look like this:

Chapter heading pages should list the chapter number and chapter title (if there is one) at the top, and the manuscript copy should begin in the middle of the page, like so:

If you're wondering why the format is the way it is, read this incredible article by Annie Mini, who has a fair deal of expertise in these matters. Personally, I think the format looks stupid, but apparently people who edit books and read manuscripts all day like this way of doing it.

So do it.

If you want to, you can actually write your book in manuscript format to save a step. I can't stand it myself, so I write first, then format later.

It's not time to print it yet. First you have to:

2) Edit. Hire that editor I talked to you about. I don't care how much you edited it yourself, which of your aunts who got straight A's in English in college looked it over, or how many times you ran spellcheck. Hire a professional editor. There'll be several of them at any of the colleges near you. They work in the English department, and they'd relish the opportunity to work on your manuscript for a few hundred dollars. If you don't live near a college, or the one near you has a particularly horrible reputation, there are likely proofreading services near you.

I can't recommend Googling "Proofreaders" and using any of the services listed, because when I just now did that, I was inundated with lowest bidders. You can if you like, but I'd recommend you get to talk to and know the person who now stands between you and the impression you're about to make on the publishing house.

Be sure the editor you choose understands what you're trying to achieve with your writing if you're deviating from standard formats. If you're writing in dialect (like Huckleberry Finn), make it clear so they don't bleed red all over your manuscript (my advice: don't write in dialect, seriously. You want a character to sound Irish in someone's head, write "She said in her crisp Irish brogue, 'I want you to eat my soup.' Don't bother with "Aye went yew ta' eat me soooooup." It's distracting, and your reader's plenty smart enough to imagine an Irish dialect when you ask them to).

If your editor prefers to work digitally and is using Microsoft Word or Pages for Mac (or OpenOffice), and they plan to use Track Changes, make damn sure you have a word processing program that can support it, or else all their changes will just show up and you'll wonder where the edits were made.

Once you've gotten your edited manuscript, go through it. ALL of it. Make sure you're happy with the proposed changes. You should trust your editor on all suggestions regarding grammar and spelling, but don't be afraid to push back on content suggestions. You're paying for it, after all, and it's your book.

That said, don't be an idiot. If it really does sound better the way they suggest it, just take the suggestion. Get rid of the ego.

Now, you're ready to get that manuscript in front of folks. But before you do, you need to make a decision.

An Aside: To Agent Or Not To Agent

I didn't have an agent when Gotham bought the second Mentally Incontinent book. My book was passed to a buying editor via another Gotham author, and the editor contacted me directly. But without that "insider" help, it's very, very likely my book never would have made it to an editor's desk.

That's what an agent is... A good one anyway. They have contacts. They know the market. They look at your work and determine if it's something they can represent, and once they do, they go represent it. They know the market, they know the language of the industry, and they collect %15 off the top. And getting through to an agent is almost more difficult than getting through to an editor at a publisher. The editor is salaried; the agent works on commission. They don't get paid unless you get paid, and so they're extra, extra, extra picky.

That said, you don't have to have one. But unsolicited manuscripts -- those are the ones you send with no representation, sight unseen, through the mail room -- end up on the slush pile, and we already discussed how that works. If you know how to market yourself, bargain for a better advance and royalty, and know someone who knows a guy who went to college with another dude who is owed a favor by an editor, by all means, save the 15%.

Google is NOT the place to find agents for hire, it's the place to research the ones you find in The Writer's Market (the link goes to the 2010 edition). Seriously, if you're going to look for an agent, just use The Writer's Market. Googling "Literary Agent" is going to return a ton of people out there looking to charge you reading fees or build their little boutique business.

When you do look in The Writer's Market, you want to find agents who represent what you write. If you wrote an epic Sci-Fi novel, don't query a mystery agent, or a short-story agent, or any other agent besides a Sci-Fi agent. You're wasting your time and theirs. They specialize in markets for a reason. Sending your amazing poetry to a historical fiction agent is stupid. Even if they were to actually take you seriously, do you want that person trying to sell your work outside of their market?

If you do find an agent, you will sign an agreement. This agreement will likely be 15% commission, plus expenses of printing and mailing your manuscript / proposal to publishers. They won't bill you until it sells. Like I said in the intro, DO NOT PAY AN AGENT A SINGLE CENT. No agent collects up front unless they're a scam artist.

Listen to the agent. They know the market. They know the publishers. They're your mama. Do what they say. That said, they're also your employee. If you're not happy, feel free to fire them. But know that ANY book they represented when you signed the agreement, if you sell it somewhere else without them, will still be subject to that 15% fee. Is this a scam? I dunno, that's a lawyer question, and I've not experienced that yet. But I know it'll happen. So be aware.

4) Submit the Manuscript. If you choose to pursue an agent, you'll have to submit the manuscript to them. Print the sucker out on bright white, 8.5" x 11" standard letter-size paper. Don't get cute and use non-standard sized paper, colored paper, tinted paper, recycled paper with the little flecks of what used to be toilet paper showing through the fabric... Bright. White. Letter. Sized.

Place it in an envelope unfolded and unbound. The editor or agent (we'll get to that) will be flipping through it pretty fast, and on my editor's desk is a special bin especially for removed staples from submitted manuscripts. Use a binder clip if you want, but don't bind it.

Write your name VERY CLEARLY on the envelope in the return area. Include a self-addressed stamped envelope if you want a reply, otherwise you likely won't get one. What, you expect them to buy a stamp AND get you an advance?

If you choose not to use an agent, all of the above applies. But you have to add more - the book proposal. This is a big package that basically explains how and why you think you're going to get this book off the book store shelves. If you use an agent, they'll do this. This is actually a great summary of a book proposal. You will include two chapters (or, enough material to get the idea of what the book is about and that you can actually write) in your proposal. Should you include the whole manuscript? Sure, why not.

We'll discuss the advance and royalties and money bits in Chapter 5: Selling Your Book. For now, here's what to expect if a publisher takes on your book.

If your manuscript is 100% complete, you can expect about a year before the book is ready to hit shelves. If it's not, they'll set up terms for delivery of the final manuscript. If the manuscript isn't delivered in time, and they don't give you an extension (which, the book would have to either deal with timely / dated material, or you've been a rotten ass and they hate you), your deal will end and you'll have to return the advance.

It takes about a year at a publisher for a book to get edited, go through the sales briefings, get to the printer, have the cover designed, and all the other stuff that goes into a publisher publishing your book (it took me 14 months, because I sat on the damn manuscript for too long). It's why they get paid 90% or more of your book sales. If you publish it yourself, you'll be doing all of that, which we'll cover in the next chapter... But having gone both routes, I feel all that work is worth the effort.

A few notes, based on questions I've actually been asked about this process:

Agents and publishers are not looking to steal your work. If you're worried about that, stop. They don't have the time or resources to worry with passing your work off to someone else to write for less money or whatever. It's so much easier to just let the person who came up with the good idea write the thing.

You're not getting a two hundred thousand dollar advance. Don't buy that Viper just yet.

You're not selling the copyright to the work. You always own that. You're selling the rights to publish and distribute in print, digital and possibly audio.

If things go really well and you end up with two publishers expressing interest, don't start getting all Wall Street on them. You can let each know that the other is interested, and you might see a bidding war, but more than likely they'll just say "Okay, well, we hope you pick us, but if you don't, good luck." The industry knows itself, just like you know a lot of people in your current industry. And they talk. Start pitting one against the other, and you can expect they'll just call each other and figure it out.

The Absolute No-Bulls**t Guide To Writing, Publishing And Selling A Book, Chapter 2: Writing Your Book

2010-07-13T16:27:00.009-04:00

The Absolute No-Bulls**t Guide To Writing, Publishing And Selling A Book

Introduction and Chapter 1: 90% Of What You Need To Know, In One Chapter

Chapter 2: Writing Your Book (you are here)

Chapter 3: Publishing Your Book, Part 1: Traditional Publishing

Chapter 4: Publishing Your Book, Part 2: Self Publishing

Chapter 5: Selling Your Book

* * *

Chapter 2: Writing Your Book

I wrote a blog post a while back about the difference between writers, authors and wannabe's. I feel that it's relevant here.

Authors: have constructed a body of work (book, article, paper) and published it. Self-published or through a publishing house, either way. Not necessarily a working writer, and not necessarily concerned with the art and craft of the written word. Mathematicians can be authors. So can painters.

Writers: The short version: Writers write. They're never not writing. They are students of the written word; always looking for new ways to express ideas through the act of writing. They keep journals, or they blog, or they write articles or they write novels... It can't be stopped. The words pour out. And Writers don't necessarily have to be read to be Writers. In fact, Writers may or may not want to be read, but they MUST write.

Working Writers (AKA: Those who have the right to, when asked "What do you do?", answer "I'm a writer"): Take the above definition of Writer. Add the fact that this person received a check for an amount of money for a piece of writing, deposited it or cashed it at the bank, and the check cleared. You have a Working Writer. Now, Authors may have done the same thing - but remember that Authors aren't really students of writing, they just compose works which include written words. Writers are not necessarily Authors. Authors aren't necessarily Writers. But a Working Writer is an Author. Make sense? No? Too bad, I'm kinda bored with this point, because I now want to talk about:

Wannabes (AKA: Douchebags): Blah. Blah blah blah blah. This is what you hear out of the mouth of a Wannabe - first they disparage the unfair bias of The Industry because they can't get published and are too lazy (or weak) to self-publish. Then, they won't shut the fuck up about their work... Regardless of whatever else you may have been talking about beforehand. They mention their "short fiction" while giving directions to the interstate. They bring up their book during discussions on the weather (usually on Dark and Stormy Nights). They've participated in and failed to finish NaNoWriMo, usually only once, and usually a few years ago, but it STILL HURTS. They go on and on about how tedious and tiring and laborious the job of writing is, forgetting that every job on Earth can (and probably should) be that if it's worth doing - but unlike actual Writers, they can't see past that stuff to realize the good parts, because they're too busy focusing on the lifestyle of the tortured artist.

This section is intended for Writers who want to become Authors and, possibly, Working Writers. It's not intended for Douchebags. But that's okay, most of them stopped reading during the TL;DR portion of the introduction to go cry in a coffee shop about how nobody gets them. Why a coffee shop? Because there's other people there.

Okay, so, you want to know how to write a book? I won't lie to you - It's very tempting to just say "just write the damn thing." And guess what -- it's the correct answer. It took me years to learn that.

But when I first started, the idea of writing a book was so scary and strange and new. How do I format it? How do I get it into stores? How long should chapters be? How long should the whole thing be? How do I tie stories together?

I thought every author who said "just write the damn thing" was a big prick. But they aren't - they're being honest with you. Something you figure out after you've written a book or two is that writing a book and creating a book are two entirely different things, and most if not all of your questions are focused on creating a book. It's a faint line to draw for those who don't know what they're looking for, so I'm going to point it out to you. That way, you'll quit tripping over it.

One thing I won't be talking about: What to write. I'm not a creative writing instructor. I cannot tell you what to write. I cannot help you come up with ideas. I cannot give you advice on plot devices, characterization, clever turns of phrase... What you write and how you write about it are very individual experiences that colleges and workshops across the nation charge handsome sums of money to educate you on.

You can write about anything you want. Hell, you can write about anything you DON'T want. Novels, how-to, slice of life antecdotes, poetry... Whatever. You can crank words out about anything, even if you hate the topic. But the best stuff is going to be stuff you care about.

Note that I didn't say stuff you know. "Write what you know" is old and very true advice. You'll get honest, open writing that connects with audiences when you do that. But I have also found that I can write about things I don't know per se, but I care deeply about. I care enough to go research it. I experience it. Then I write about it on the fly. It's a whole different experience, because instead of opening the door to a new world your reader may not know about, you're walking through that door with them and learning as they do.

I think the major thing is that, if you want your readers to give a shit about what you write about, you need to give a shit about it first. Trust me -- if you don't, it absolutely will show.

A Few Words About Twilight (Or, "Art vs. Commerce" or something equally trite but true)

Let's go ahead and get this out of the way: if you're looking for a step-by-step guide on creating the next Twilight, move on. I can't help you.

Now, I LOVE to hate Twilight. It's one of my favorite things to do. Stephanie Meyer is not a good writer. In fact, she's awful. She has absolutely no technical writing skill, save for a somewhat tenuous grasp on the English alphabet. I've read better writing on the sides of cereal boxes. Her characters are about as three dimensional as the sillouettes in the "A diamond is forever" commercials.

But here's the thing, and there's no getting around it -- she tapped into a very real place with teen (and sadly enough, adult) females. It's a very unfufilled place where romance and passion and the idea of a man's complete dedication to his lover go to die inside a girl.

Yes, Twilight is rife with glittery gender-ambiguous vampire boys and underwear model warewolf boys and a girl who really, really, really just needs to get her head out of her Barbie Playset world. But the sentiments are genuine. There's romance. There's passion. Bella is what just about every female wanted to be when she played princess as a child -- vulnerable and at odds with the two sides of herself which want passion versus romance. She needs protection. She wants to be just powerful enough to push her lover away, but not powerful enough to keep him from coming back and taking ownership of her.

It's disgusting. But it's true. Bella is the western female archetype. Edward is the western male royalty archetype. Jacob is the western bad-boy archetype. It's Philosophy 101. But Meyer didn't hold focus groups to decide what teen girls wanted to read about. She didn't study human behavior and draw vectors for emotional engagement based on archetypes. She was an unfufilled female craving romance and wrote what she knew about. The setting and characters she used are absolutely unattached to why Twilight is such a success.

Sexually-unfufilled women across the globe aren't into Edward because he's a hot VAMIPRE, they're into Edward because he is attractive and has the means to protect Bella in all regards - financially, physically and emotionally. The franchise of Twilight and its ensuing financial windfalls were byproducts of striking a chord in a massive audience and casting underwear models in the movie adaptations. Lightning struck. But it started from an honest place, and from the interviews I've read, the person most shocked by Meyer's success is Meyer herself.

As much as it galls me to say it, Meyer is a writer. Is she a shitty, horrible, talentless writer? That's what us other writers who obsess over our own craft say because we're jealous. We say the same things about Dan Brown -- another guy who started with an idea borne of what he knew, which was acadameia and historical landmarks. Neither one of them started by saying "What could I write that'd appeal to a mass audience?" They started with what they knew, and it just so happened what they produced sturck a chord.

If you start with the commercial success of your material as the primary energy source, it's going to burn out and leave you in the dark, because the motivation isn't what you're doing - it's what might happen when you're done. It's not "wrong" to do per se, it's just really dishonest writing. You're not writing a book, you're managing a product which happens to be bound on paper. You're no different than Hasbro or General Mills, only instead of doing brand awareness studies on kids about toys and cereal, you're doing it with written words.

Again, nothing wrong with it. Just know what and who you are. It helps the process tremendously. Case in point -- it helps the process of using this guide, because you now know you can safely stop reading and go do something else. I can't help you here. It's not my expertise. My base is writing books and getting them out the door. I care about what I write. Not just the content, but the craft of it. The actual mechanics of saying something the right way so that it lands safely in your skull. I want nothing more than to emotionally connect to people who read what I write. I want you to feel what I feel when I write it. It's a big, big, BIG fucking deal to me. I obsess over it.

Do I hit the mark? Not nearly as often as I wish I would. But I try hard. And while I do care about the sales of my books, it's because it's a metric for how many people I've reached, not how much I have in the bank.

If you want the next big hit, go hire a focus group and poll them about their favorite genres, then craft something that fits their liking. You'll end up with a Michael Bay-esque flat peice of shit that hits every note your audience says it wants, without once striking a chord and creating beautiful harmonies in them. It'll be forgotten just as quickly as it was read... If it's read at all.

Creating A Book vs. Writing A Book

Creating a book is much, much different than writing a book. Anything that can be printed, can be printed and bound and called a book. Cookbooks are books. Dictionaries are books. Novels are books. Collections of short stories are books.

Books are containers. Nothing more. They're the exact same as a shopping cart. When you go shopping, you don't choose the container before you decide what to shop for. You need food; you go buy food. And when you do, don't buy enough food to fill the shopping cart each trip. Sometimes, you just need a few things -- some capers and a fresh cut of salmon. Other times, it's time to stock up, so you head to Sam's Club and buy five gallons of mayonnaise among three hundred other things.

Writing is shopping. You start with what you want to say, and you worry about how to say it along the way. While you do, you'll browse the creative shelves in your brain and pick up a few things you may not necessarily need, but want to add. You might even stumble upon some really great stuff you didn't even know existed, or maybe something new to try that you have no idea how it will work.

Don't worry about the container - you'll get the shit home eventually. Focus on the shopping. Start with the shopping list. Browse a bit and pick up other things (or leave them). Worry about the container when it's time.

Page counts, chapter headings and length, margins, font sizes, font faces, page offsets, photos and cropping, target markets, hardcover versus paperback, dimensions. That's all part of creating the book, and believe it or not, has fuck all to do with writing. I won't be so blasé as to tell you not to think about it while you're writing. You're excited about your book; it's natural and even okay to think about this stuff while you're writing. Just make sure you think about it in its seperate container, with its seperate process. Don't start there. Start with the writing process.

On The Writing Process

This whole guide on writing, publishing and selling your book could end up being a book itself. It very likely might be (a free e-book - I refuse to charge for it). The whole thing started as a single blog post, probably about five printed pages long. I intended to simply make a short list of self-publishing services and stick it out there. But I realized I had much more I wanted to say, so it has morphed into this five chapter monolith of a thing that I never really intended it to be.

That's writing a book. You start with an idea, you begin writing it, it takes over until it's done talking, then you finish. You want to write a murder mystery. Great. That's all you need to start with. It's that simple. You can start right there, then think about what kind of gal your detective might be, or think about the world in which this murder mystery takes place (is it in space, or Hartford, CT?), or focus on what the room that the body was discovered looks like. Start writing. The story will be as long as it needs to be. Chapters will stop when you feel like they need to stop.

The same goes with a self-help guide, or a series of essays on your favorite vacation spots, or how to program in Objective C. The material is agnostic to the format. I still haven't written the last three chapters of this guide as of the day I posted this one. I know what they'll be about, but I haven't the first clue how I want to organize them or what wise-ass remarks I'm going to make in them. And yet here you are, reading this chapter, because I hit "publish" in my blog editor.

This is how I've come to write. You're witnessing right this very minute my process. I like writing in front of an audience, in parts and pieces, and editing as I go along. I can't sit on ideas. Once I finish a piece of writing, I want feedback immediately. That's just me. It's very atypical -- most authors I know want everything finished, polished and ready before they'll even show it to an editor, much less their audience. I'm strange that way. But it's my way.

I start with a blank page -- and oh, what TORTURE that stupid blank page is. I spent years (literally, years) fighting that stupid blank white word processing document. It's the single most oppressing thing I've ever encountered. I stared at it for minutes and hours at a time, just wondering where to start. I'd type a line, then backspace it out. At some point, I'd let a line sit long enough to join other lines and become a paragraph. Then I'd highlight and delete that whole thing. Over and over. It was awful.

One day, I figured out that I could just stick my notes into the document and start from there. It wasn't so much like a breath of fresh air as it was an oxygen mask placed over my face in the midst of a room full of smoke. It changed the way I do things forever. Now, I just start with notes. Ideas jotted out in short form, as they come into my head (or, chronological events if I'm writing a short story like what's in Mentally Incontinent). I then just start fleshing out the various ideas into sentences, like a potter does with clay. Slap a little here, shape it. Stick some there, smooth it out. Before I know it, I've got a story.

To continue abusing the pottery metaphor, once I see the general shape of the thing, I begin really working on the details. Individual jokes or phrases placed in parts. The overall tone of a peice begins coming into view. Before I know it, my little word sculpture has definition. Then I edit and chip away the flakes, edit again to sand down the rough parts, and edit once more to polish and shine the peice for display. Then I stick the sucker on the mantle and turn it so that no one sees those rough spots in the back that I didn't know how to do right.

That's me.

Some people create outlines first. I know one writer who can literally just start typing and finish a chapter (or a story or an article), go back through, edit it, and it's good to go. My friend Drew Curtis's method for writing his book was to just write 500 words a day, every single day, then go back and edit the blocks of text together until his book was done. Another friend of mine dictates his books into a text-to-speech program and then goes back and edits that.

You won't find your own personal process until you've tried every single other process in the world and decided whether or not they work for you. I've tried hand writing a story. I've tried dictation software. I've tried every word processor there is. I've finally settled on using Pages for Mac. I tried Writeroom and OmmWriter (word processing programs that obscure the entire screen so you can "focus" on just writing). I hate them. Too isolating. I'm very werid, in that I'm ADD in a way that actually thrives on visual and auditory noise. I need music and visual distractions around me so I can force myself to block them out and focus on writing. I know, it's weird - but that's the thing. It took me a while and a lot of trial and error to figure these things out about myself. What's really strange is that I actually LOVE OmmWriter for writing my personal journal. But for any sort of "creative" writing? No thanks. Again, something I learned by doing.

There's also "Writing in the cloud" -- Google Docs and the like. I personally don't like these, mostly because if I have no internet connection, I can't write. But they're free and they work.

A lot of authors, especially fiction writers, will put plot items or key milestones in their plotlines on post-it notes or index cards and arrange them on a wall or on the floor, so that they can be arranged and re-arranged on a more meta scale, before they're committed to pages and pages of text. There's some great software out there for that purpose if you want to go digital. CelTX starts off free (but you can add all sorts of "packs" to it) and does all of that, without costing an arm and a leg for Final Draft. I don't do that, but then again, I don't write traditional fiction or novels. I probably will one day, and when I do, I'll use CelTX.

But the big thing is, software is just tools. Tools aren't writing. Writing is simply the process of getting what's in your head, out of your head and onto the page. Everything else is just details or creature comforts or how you like doing it. Start with an idea. Start writing about that idea. Stop when you're finished. If you have enough pages to be bound and printed, you have a book. Don't buy $400 worth of Office software to be a writer. Don't invest in a $299 Mont Blanc pen and a $24 Moleskine notebook, unless it just makes you feel really good. Pens are pens. Paper is paper. Software is software. The tools are not the writer. The method is not the writer. You are the writer. So write.

If you're still hung up on the process, feel free to copy mine. Or, just do what you learned in English class - start with an outline, then do the introduction, body, conclusion thing for each chapter until you've finished your story. It'll all work itself out. The most important thing is that you start putting words on the page. Remember, working on your book isn't anything other than starting at line one, word one and writing until you're done.

The Technical Bits

Word counts dictate the classification of a book. The Nebula Awards (a very prestigious sci-fi award) uses word count to classify the categories for its awards. From Wikipedia:

Classification	Word count
Novel	over 40,000 words
Novella	17,500 to 40,000 words
Novelette	7,500 to 17,500 words
Short story	under 7,500 words

National Novel Writing Month requires its novels to be at least 50,000 words. While the length of a novel is to a large extent up to its writer,^[2] expectations of novel lengths may differ by genre: a typical mystery novel might be in the 60,000 to 80,000 word range while a thriller could be over 100,000 words.^[3]

The standard paperback book has roughly 300 words per page, give or take. It varies on font size and font choice, but 300 is a good guideline for a standard size book (textbooks, which are larger, might have up to 500 - 600 words per page. Children's books have 50 or less).

A novel is a story that is roughly 180 pages or more. I haven't yet written a novel. I've written collections of short stories, between 4 and 30 pages each, and then collected them into two 240+ page books. It's where I'm most comfortable, and its a format I'm happy with. Write a bunch of content and see where the page counts end up. There's no reason to force yourself to write 60,000 words just because you really, really want a novel. Arthur C. Clarke and Issac Asamov wrote TONS of short stories. Fantastically great short stories. Let the story itself dictate how long you take to tell it. If you want to beef up your book's page count, add more stories; don't make one story anemic on content because you forced it to come out longer.

When it comes to grammar, The Elements of Style by Strunk & White is is the Bible. In fact, it's more important than the Bible -- it's how the Bible gets written. This is the word of God himself when it comes to writing. Defy it only when you must.

There's no set rules for paragraph lengths. One thing I can tell you is that people get fatigued almost instantly when they see massive "walls of text" with very few breaks. They also get fatigued very quickly when they have to jump from line to line of single or two-line paragraphs.

Margins should be about 1" on all sides while you write. It keeps the page clean and readable, and gives just enough "buffer" between your writing and the desktop of your computer (or, your writing and the desk / table that your notebook is sitting on). Being in the space matters a LOT. If your eye keeps getting "caught" by either edge of the page, you'll get distracted.

There's no correct font for writing. Choose one that's easy on your eyes. I write in serif fonts (Specifically Georgia). I find it easy to read and not distracting. I write at about 14pt, so that I can relax my eyes and not have to squint as I read my words.

Learn to touch-type (type without looking at the keyboard) if you're going to work in a word processor. The best way to do this: Chat in chat rooms a lot. It works. Otherwise, you're going to have a very hard time with your fingers keeping up with your thoughts.

If you feel like you need to write down ideas while you're writing your book, try to either a) do it in a separate notebook that's close by, or b) in a completely different color and size font than what you're working on, at the very end of your document. Otherwise, you will end up stumbling on it during your process and it'll just screw you up.

I said earlier that this isn't a creative writing course. But I'd be remiss if I didn't share just a few rules I've figured out the hard way:

Please, please PLEASE only use words you know. The best writing is simple writing that sounds natural and provides context for ideas. As Stephen King said in his amazingly awesome article Everything You Need To Know About Writing In Ten Minutes, "Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word."

Commas are speed bumps. Use them when you think you need the reader should slow down and take a breath, and even then, use them sparingly. Don't fucking abuse them. "When in doubt, leave it out" -- remember that old saying from English class? Here's a new one: Misuse a comma, and I'll misuse your head. Take that however you want.

Learn to use a semi-colon.

Wait until you're done with a piece of writing before you edit yourself, or you'll make yourself miserable. When you do edit yourself, become someone else. Don't let your artsy writer self get in the way. Edit ruthlessly. Cut out all unnecessary words. Cut more. Does the sentence still make sense? Cut more. Keep cutting until the sentence stops making sense, then re-add in only the words that get it to a point of making sense. Then stop.

Summing Up

You'll save yourself a lot of headaches if you just focus on the actual content when writing your book, and leave everything else for later. Everything that isn't directly related to putting words together into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs is a distraction. Forget about the "book" part of writing a book, and focus on the "writing" part. After all, a book is just a container for writing. No different than a cup is a container for water. In the immortal words of Bruce Lee, when you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. When you put it into a kettle, it becomes the kettle.

Focus on the water. The container comes later. And ultimately, what I said in Chapter 1 applies: if you want to write a book, you'll write a damn book. Nothing's going to stop you. You'll figure it out.

Down (And Out) With The Sickness

2010-07-13T12:46:00.000-04:00

I'm confined to my house until Friday. It's torture. I can't even go to the gym.

The reason is actually a pretty decent cautionary tale. To start, I haven't had a cold in almost four years. Before that time, I used to get 4-6 colds / flus a year. But once I started eating better, working out, and taking my vitamins, that stuff stopped.

About 2 days before I left for California last month, I got a cold. Nothing big, just a runny nose and a bit of a sore throat. I hopped on a plane with very little sleep, landed, gave my talk at Pixar (with a little bit of a scratchy voice) and had to work all weekend. By that Sunday, I'd lost my voice and couldn't breathe without coughing, which then tore my throat all apart. I crashed the entire day in a friend's bed and stared helplessly out at San Francisco Bay, wishing I could go running by it or something.

I chugged Day-Quil and Ny-Quil, took Muscinex D, drank orange juice, took my Zinc... Nothing really stopped this crap. It subsided just in time for some meetings, but didn't fully go away. It hung with me for the entire week. When Andrea showed up, I was still feeling pretty blah (this is now a week and a half of having a cold). She had half a bottle of Amoxicilin in her bag from when she had a cold a few months back, so I took it.

Within 2 days, I was feeling 100% better. I felt well, in fact. We hiked and climbed mountains and had a blast. When the half-bottle of antibiotics was gone, I figured I was fine. The day before we flew home, I woke up with a bit of a sore throat and a slight cough.

It's been with me ever since. I've had this cold for a month. It's been pissing me off. So yesterday, I went to the doctor and told her what went on.

What I found out is something I always knew, but I never honestly thought about. Because I took half a regemin of antibiotics, I basically trained these bacterial Pokemon to be stronger and more resistant. The cold I have is now living pretty much in harmony with my immune system -- without something powerful to kick its ass, it'll be here for pretty much forever.

She gave me a steroid and some more powerful antibiotics, and told me to stay home for the week. I'm basically a vector for disease - I can make others sick because of my stupidity in treating my dumb-ass cold.

So yeah, expect a lot of writing this week.

The Absolute No-Bulls**t Guide To Writing, Publishing And Selling A Book: Introduction And Chapter 1

2010-07-12T08:02:00.015-04:00

The Absolute No-Bulls**t Guide To Writing, Publishing And Selling A Book

Introduction and Chapter 1: 90% Of What You Need To Know, In One Chapter (you are here)

Chapter 2: Writing Your Book

Chapter 3: Publishing Your Book, Part 1: Traditional Publishing

Chapter 4: Publishing Your Book, Part 2: Self Publishing

Chapter 5: Selling Your Book

* * *

Synopsis (Or, "TL;DR [Too Long; Didn't Read]"):

This thing is long. I don't blame you if you don't want to read the whole thing. Of course, if you're that sort, you'll never, EVER finish writing a book, much less publishing and selling one. You're probably the kind of person that thinks life is so unfair and you never get your shot and the world hates you and blah blah blah. Guess what: life isn't fair, but it does favor those who DO THEIR RESEARCH AND THEN WORK REALLY HARD. So you really should read my whole guide, you lazy bastard. But if you don't want to, here's the synopsis:

No one from a big publisher is going to come knocking on every door in your neighborhood looking for that one perfect person with that one great idea that should be transformed into a book. Guess what - you don't need them to, thanks to the Internet. Get off your ass and write your book or shut up about it. Don't let anyone stop you. Don't sit on it, paralyzed with fear that it'll be hated or stolen. Create a book you love, and let it live. Self publish it. Tell everyone you know, but never spam or annoy people.

Also, it's a lot of hard work. A. LOT. You need to be completely in love with it, because it takes a LOT of commitment and time. So if you're the sort that only reads TL;DR's, seriously... Just stop now. Go play World of Warcraft.

* * *

Pre-Introduction (Or, "You've Been Warned")

Before I even get started on getting started, there's a few things you need to know before you read this guide to writing, publishing and selling your own book.

First, I use a lot of poopy words. That's me. It's how I write. If you read past this point and get offended, I'm not sorry.

Second, this is a free, plain-as-day no bullshit guide to writing, publishing and selling your book. It is not a hand-holdy, flowers-and-rainbows self-empowerment guide meant to convince you your shit doesn't stink and that everyone in the world has a great book in them and blah-de-blah. If you're looking for someone to rub your shoulders and whisper nice things in your ear about how great you are and how great your book (which doesn't yet exist) will be and how many copies of your book (which still doesn't yet exist) you will sell... Go to the book store and look for a section probably called "how-to" or "writing" or possibly even "self-help" and spend $24.95 on it. Cause this ain't it.

This is the guide which tells you the truth about the whole thing. This guide is free because no one pays for the truth. It doesn't sell; bullshit sells. Anyone selling you your dreams is after one thing, and it's not your well being.

* * *

About The Author (Or, "Who The Hell Are You And Why Should I Care?")

I'm Joe Peacock. As of the time of this writing, I've written two books and maintain two moderately well-read blogs as well as a fairly successful freelancing career.

My first book, Mentally Incontinent (2005), was written on the Internet, in plain view of anyone who wanted to pay attention. I wrote five stories per chapter, and asked my readers to vote on the one they liked the best. The winner became a chapter in the book. After 12 rounds, I self-published the book and sold directly to customers who wanted to buy it. The writing process took about three years, and the publishing process took about four months.

My second book, Mentally Incontinent (2009) (same title, but a totally separate, new book) was also written on the Internet. However, it was sold to and published by Gotham, an imprint of Penguin Books. The writing process took about three years (again), and the publishing process took about 14 months.

I am in a unique position to write this guide, in that I've released books through both self-publishing and through a traditional publisher. I don't know everything, but I know what I went through and what I've seen other writers go through. I am not in the slightest degree famous. That said, I pay my bills through writing and have a customer base which buys my books. I am very happy with this. My books have also led me to other opportunities, such as freelancing with AOLNews and other outlets who pay me for my writing.

It took about ten years to get to the point I am at right now. That's not to say it'll take you ten years. Most of you won't decide the investment is worth the effort and will go back to pouting while doing what your boss at your job tells you to do. Some of you will work harder and faster than I did and get your books out quicker (and likely won't choose to write five stories per chapter and have people vote on which one they like, thus cutting your writing time by 80%).

I don't presume to know everything about writing. In fact, I know precious little compared to the most successful authors and the great writers of our time. But I know what I went through, and I know what it takes to write a book, stick it out there, and make it work.

* * *

Introduction (or, "Finally, he's getting to the point")

Let's cut the shit.

Writing a book is a lot of hard work. Some people are deluded into thinking that it's not. Well, I'm here to tell you it is, and I have a TON of other author contacts who will confirm this. In fact, the only people for whom writing a book isn't hard work are the ones who hire ghost writers, like Sarah Palin and Paris Hilton (or just about any celebrity who decides to "write" a book, except Steve Martin - he probably writes his own stuff, and I'm sure he'll tell you it's really hard work).

Once you get past the very hard work of writing a book, it's even more hard work publishing it. And even harder work still selling the thing. And there's one thing I've discovered in life to be absolutely true beyond a shadow of a doubt: most people don't like doing work. They will decide to fail, and they'll blame every single condition in the world besides their lack of desire to work hard. "No one gave me my shot!" "I couldn't get an advance on writing the book, so why bother?" "No agents picked it up, so I gave up trying to get it published."

In this day and age, there's NO excuse for not writing, publishing and selling your own book your own way. Well, actually there are two: laziness ("I couldn't find time!") or greed ("I couldn't get an advance on my idea, so I didn't write the book!"). The internet has made it possible to not only write the thing, but publish it and sell it to people. Only those who think they deserve to be paid BEFORE they work hold out for a publisher these days. Are you one of them?

I hope not. I sincerely hope you're like me: someone who simply must write. Someone who sits up nights thinking of ways to have people read and be affected by what he or she writes. Someone with stories that must be told, regardless of whether or not anyone wants to hear them. Someone who will NOT be held back by people who are either too jealous or too lazy to support you.

If you're that person, then I'll make a deal with you: follow this guide, and you'll have a book out and for sale. And when you do, I'll buy one from you. Email me and let me know when it's coming out, and I'll buy your first copy. Deal?

This guide is a challenge to you as a writer and aspiring author. I want to remove every single excuse you might have as to why your book doesn't exist yet and see what you do once the path is laid before you. If you get through this and still can't get your book together and out -- and I mean this in the most loving, honest way possible -- you need to find something else to aspire to.

When I first started, I wished to hell someone had written something like what I'm writing now. Not a "How to self-publish your book" guide or "how to write a book" - those existed. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott is a great book on the process of actually writing a book, and Dan Poynter's Self-Publishing Manual is a fairly great book about the process of self-publishing.

However, both of those books (and just about every book on writing and self-publishing) take way too long to get to the point, which they ultimately miss: If you want to write a book, you'll write a damn book, and no one will stop you. If you want it to exist outside of a word processing document (or hand-written manuscript), you'll figure out how to print it, and again, no one will stop you. If you want people to read it, you'll figure out how to sell it.

I did. If I can do it, anyone can.

My job here is to pop the hot air balloon of delusion and keep you from making the same mistakes I did, as well as mistakes I was fortunate enough to not make myself but saw others make. More than that, I'm going to give you a playbook which, if you follow, will result in a book that exists, is published, and can be sold to people.

Ready?

* * *

Chapter 1: 90% Of What You Need To Know, In One Chapter

I'm going to save you a tremendous amout of time and money in just one chapter.

I get a LOT of questions about writing, creating books, publishing, and marketing them. The vast majority of them are at least three steps ahead of where the person should be. "How do you manage a book tour?" "How much of an advance should I ask for on my book?" "How do you get published by Penguin?" "How do you sell [x] number of copies?"

To butcher a phrase by Dave Sim, asking these sorts of questions without first establishing that you can even write a book is like asking Tiger Woods what putter he uses on the 7th hole in Augusta before you even buy your first set of clubs. You're doing one of two things: grossly misunderstanding the process, or looking for shortcuts. Cool down, relax, and start at square one.

First, a list of things you should never, ever do, no matter how desperate you feel at the moment:

NEVER pay an agent to read your work. No legitimate agent charges a reading fee or submission fee or any other sort of fee. Legitimate, working agents who have relationships with publishers and sell manuscripts on behalf of their clients make their money by having relationships with publishers and selling manuscripts on behalf of their clients, PERIOD. Absolutely never ever no matter what should you pay an agent. They collect when they sell your work.

NEVER pay a publisher. Take very special care when selecting a method of publishing your book. If you're being published by a publisher (who handles printing, distribution, marketing and sales), THEY PAY YOU. You do not pay $395 or $5,995 or even $1 to be published. Those are called vanity press, and they're pretty much scams. You can do exactly what they do for a fraction of the cost by self-publishing. When you self-publish, you should pay for nothing more than the costs of services. If your self-publishing efforts lead you to an all-in-one package shop (like lulu.com), look at the services they offer, then go price them out on your own and decide if the overhead is worth whatever time or effort you're saving by using them. More on this in the Publishing portion.

Don't quit your day job. It's very romantic to think about waking up when you feel like it, pouring a steaming cup of coffee, sitting in front of your computer and creating your next masterpeice. If you're James Patterson or Stephen King or J. K. Rowling, it can be pretty much like that. But note that those people are making enough money off the residual sales of their books that they can pay the house note, buy groceries, keep the lights and gas and water on... Yes, you could be the next Nicholas Sparks and get a million dollar first book deal. You could also win the lottery. The odds of both are about equal. How many lottery tickets have you bought? Did you win?

Don't be an idiot. Work hard nights and weekends and make your book happen. Or, do be an idiot, whatever. It's your life. I'm not your dad. But don't email me crying about how my guide didn't make you rich and famous even though you cut off your only revenue stream to follow your dreams.

Don't edit the book yourself. Yes, you must learn the process of self-editing. This will largely end up being grammar and spelling mistakes, because when you read your own words back to yourself -- at least in the beginning of your writing career -- it's going to sound 100% fine. They're your words. They play in your brain all day long, so they sound exactly right. Hire someone to edit your work, preferably someone with two very distinct traits: a keen grasp on the English language, and the ability to hurt your feelings for the greater good. Because it does hurt, at least at first. But trust me, a good editor makes the difference between a readable book and next month's recycling bin material.

Don't trust critiques from family or friends. Your friends and family (hopefully) love you. People who love you don't want to see you hurt, and critiques - if they're true - hurt. At least at first. And if you want to get better, you need critique. Honest critique. Seek their opinion, but do not trust them to critique your work. Join a local writers group, or hit the online community.

Don't listen to the naysayers. This one's important, because it's absolutely going to be the biggest hurdle you face in writing, publishing and selling your book.

Some people are going to be very jealous of you, believe it or not. The mere process of writing a book is something a LOT of people aspire to, and you're doing it. People will scoff. Sometimes, it'll come out of left field from someone you love and trust. A friend or family member's look of shock and horror when you announce you're writing a book will leave scars on your heart. I have several.

Don't let them stop you, ever. If they love you -- really love you -- they'll support you.

Don't let them hide behind the mask of "critique" -- Note the tone in which something is said. "You can't write a book" is much different than "You need to work on [x]," where [x] is some aspect of your writing. People are assholes. They stand on the ground shooting arrows at the birds in the sky. Soar.

The greatest gift someone can give another person is empowering them to follow their dreams. If someone in your life is holding you back, decide now whether you want to be their pet or run free.

Don't use your book as an excuse to stop doing everything else. All that stuff I just said in the last few paragraphs is 100% true. That this doesn't mean that you're allowed to stop doing your share of the laundry and then yell at your wife because she's holding you back when she calls you on your bullshit. The world keeps turning, and you're still on the hook for anything and everything you agreed to do before writing your book. Want more time to write? Finish everything you're responsible for early.

Don't sign SHIT without having a lawyer read it first. It's worth the money. Find a lawyer in your county, ask them if they'd be willing to help a starting author out. You'll pay a few hundred bucks. DO IT. Don't use LegalZoom - not that they suck; they're actually fantastic for simple business filings. But you want someone you can punch in the face if they screw up when it comes to your intellectual property. Same goes for an accountant if / when you need one.

Things I wish people had told me when I started out:

You've got a LOT to learn. I'm ten years into this and there isn't a day that goes by where I don't learn something new (usualy by mistake) about the process of writing. I can get you most of the way toward having a book, but the actual process of being a writer? That's a lifelong thing.

4000 books will fill an entire garage.

If you decide to fill your garage with 4000 books, seal your garage door, lest it rain and flood and ruin about 300 of them.

Friends make awful employees. If you choose to hire a friend as an editor, envelope stuffer, or any other job, know right off the bat that at some point, you two are going to fight over how something should be done. If you fire them, you're not firing an employee, you're firing a friend. Either accept it, or cough up the dough for an employee.

The realistic daily goal for shipping books is about fifteen an hour, per person. After about four hours, fatigue begins to set in - stop for the day, lest half your envelopes come back because the address was illegible.

Shipping on time is hard, but it saves you a LOT in make-up copies and apologies and refunds.

Rejection letters suck. It doesn't matter how much you prepare to get one, they suck. Period. What you need to know is that agents and editors at publishers get THOUSANDS of submissions a year. Some get thousands a month. You are one of several thousand. You didn't cut the mustard for that particular person at that particular moment during the brief scan they did of your work. Take it any harder than that, and you're reflecting and wallowing in self doubt.

The return on investment for writing my first book was about $1.20 an hour. I seriously cannot stress this enough: Love it or don't do it. It might pay off later, after it's done. Don't even bother looking for money before or during the process, unless you're searching the cushions of your sofa.

Things people did tell me, but I was too stubborn or stupid to pay attention:

You never, ever have it all figured out. The moment you think you do, look up, because there's an anvil of reality hurdling toward your head.

You're not clever, interesting or even remotely unique when you break established laws of writing. Sprinkling exclamation points in the middle of sentences or using one-sentence paragraphs 200 times in one story isn't hip or cool or rebellious. It's obnoxious. The point of breaking convention is to make a point. Do it when you have a point to make, or don't do it at all. Anything else is just abusing your reader for the sake of your own cleverness.

Buying books about writing, working on your outline, designing your book cover, writing character cards, arranging post-its full of plot items into lines... None of this actually qualifies as working on your book. It feels like work, but it's not. Work begins with line one, word one, and ends with the very last word of your manuscript. PERIOD. Everything else is masturbation. Not that it's useless -- it's a fun and worthwhile endeavor, and sometimes it's totally necessary. It's just the stuff you do for yourself that you should never, ever talk about in public if you respect yourself. "I worked on my plot through-lines today" sounds like "I totally played with myself" to everyone within earshot. Line one, word one.

Keep a notepad with you at ALL times. You will not remember that clever turn of phrase when you get home or when you get out of the shower. You can use a voice recorder if you like, but in my experience, writers are self-conscious enough as it is without having to hear themselves say things aloud that aren't quite fleshed out. But if it works for you, go for it - just know you can't use it in the shower. I use Field Notes notepads - they're cheap, very durable, and come in three packs, so I can put one by my bed, one in the car, and one in my bag for when I'm on the go. In the shower, I keep a dry erase board above the shower nozzle.

Write every single day. It's just like the gym - taking one day off makes it much easier to take two days off, and before you know it, you're three months off practice. Three months off of writing doesn't hurt your technical ability to write, but it REALLY screws with your ability to shut off the inner voices telling you things suck.

If you're writing a blog or publishing your work on a schedule and you stop writing, you're also risking losing readers in addition to messing with your internal processes. It's tempting to think "They're not paying me, they get what they get when I give it to them." They ARE paying you, in time and attention. Those two things are worth 100x the price of what you'd charge for your writing. By establishing a schedule, you've signed a social contract. You owe your readers material to read, when you say you'll deliver it. If you don't pay up, they'll break their end of the contract. Sure, they might love you enough to forgive you some of the time, but eventually, if you bend the reed of trust too many times, it'll snap. You need them much more than they need you.

Never, ever publish anything at four in the morning. Nothing good ever happens at four in the morning, no matter how good it feels at the time.

Ask other writers, especially established authors, questions about the process, but make damn sure that none of them sound like "can you get me a book deal?" As long as you're asking honest questions, the vast majority of them are more than glad to talk through it with you. They were once you, after all. And if they're assholes, just let them be assholes.

The rest of the process is covered in the next four chapters. Anything else is pretty much trial and error, or covered the laws established by the municipalities governing our land. Or, I just forgot to put it in here.

The Money The Dog Ate And Shat Out

2010-07-09T08:09:00.001-04:00

I'm not sure how many of you read my stuff over on AOLNews, but I filed an article a few weeks ago about a dog who ate $58 in cash and pooped it out, and then followed it up with another article about how the dog's owner was eBaying the cash to raise money for the Humane Society.

Well, a surreal-enough day yesterday became even more surreal when my editor, Buck Wolf, handed me a surprise upon our finally meeting face to face - the actual bills the dog digested. He then told me I could either keep it, or I could send it to Ripley's Believe it or Not, who has contacted him about displaying the money in one of its museums. I opted for the latter - I mean, how cool is that, something I own is going to be in Ripley's! But I did snag some photos of the dough:

My life is officially weird.

Both The Worst And The Best Flight Experience EVER

2010-07-08T12:30:00.001-04:00

I'm on a plane from Atlanta to New York. I'm on this plane because the one I was supposed to be on an hour earlier left the gate without me. It left the gate without me because I arrived 4 minutes too late to get on board. I arrived 4 minutes too late because the TSA are staffed by inept power-hungry morons who can't cut it in legitimate law enforcement and need a job where they can subject people to their ridiculously needs to be in control of situations. And steal belts.

I arrived at the airport with about an hour to spare to get on my flight. It's a simple one day trip (I hope!) so I only brought my laptop bag. For this particular trip, I have to be dressed nicely, so I'm in slacks and a tie (for the second day in a row, actually - yesterday was a funeral).

I know the routine by now, so I took off my shoes and belt. I stuck the belt in an open back pocket on my bag, along with my phone (which I forgot to charge last night and is dead) and my wallet. I put everything on the belt and went through the detectors without issue.

The guy monitoring bags through the scanner decided my bag needed extra attention and called over a particularly obnoxious asshole to do a manual search of my bag. The guy started rummaging though my bag and after about five minutes, I asked if I could help him find whatever he wax looking for. He immediately got all stalwart and said "Sir, I have to ask you to back away from the screening area." So I did, and the shouted "Okay, NOW can I help you find whatever you're looking for?"

He practically threw a narrowed-eyed stare at my head.

What followed was nothing short of ridiculous. He proceeded to question me about EVERY. SINGLE. THING. in my bag, including aspirin. I was getting fed up with his shit, but a) needed to hurry to make my flight and b) didn't want to end up like Jason Bourne in the Bourne Supremecy, receiving questions from a puffed-up fruit loop in a locked room somewhere (I've done it before - it's no fun).

By the end of it, he took 32 minutes to clear my bag, and decided to confiscate - of all things - my fucking belt. I didn't get a clear reason why either - he just said I could surrender it or exit security and ship it back to myself.

He was being a dick.

I said "Fuck it, keep it" and ran to the terminal tram. I was at gate B1, which is the last gate in a fairly large terminal (for those who don't know, ATL is HUGE). When I got off the tram, I ran - in dress shoes - to the gate. And from there, you know the rest.

I was rebooked on the 9:40 AM, and was feeling pretty frustrated and sweaty and wanted to beat someone and wished I had the power to shoot lasers from my mouth so I could kill people with my screams. Since my new seat was at the front of the plane, I knew I had a few minutes to waste. I took a short walk to get some water and generally just keep from yelling at people. I came back after getting a water and some yogurt and boarded to find a teenage brother and sister sitting on my row. The brother was screwing with an iPod, and the sister was - much to my surprise - reading a copy of my book.

I had to do a triple take, because it was just too weird. After a few minutes, I leaned over her brother in the middle seat and asked her what she was reading. She showed me the cover, and I smiled. "Ah," I said, " I read that one. How do you like it?"

She said it was pretty funny, that her brother insisted she read it after he finished it. The brother chimed in saying it was the funniest book he'd read in a long time.

"I actually know the author," I said. The boy, about 16 I'd wager, perked up. "He's a dick," I said with a grin.

He kinda frowned. "Really?" he asked. I proceeded to tell him all kinds of stuff about how awful I really was, that I treat people really horribly and added "He even interrupts people on planes who are trying to read a book."

They looked at me strangely. The boy then gave me a sly smile, indicating he got the joke. I smiled back.

"You don't really know him, do you!" he accused.

I grinned and said "Check the back cover."

Now, I was wearing a tie, NOT wearing a hat, and I've shaved my goatee and lost a little more weight since that photo was taken, so I can see why it took him a minute to put it together. Even after he did, he said "No way..."

I rolled up my left sleeve and showed him the tattoo. He pretty much flipped out.

We talked for a bit; I autographed the book and drew a pirate fighting a ninja. I was introduced to his parents an they said he was gaga over the book and insisted everyone read it. He got it with a gift card to Barnes and Noble he got for his birthday a few weeks ago. He gave me some critique on the Mentally Incontinent site, saying he only recently figured out how to find the rest of the stories (which gutted me - expect a redesign of that realllllly soon).

They're asleep right now.

Its been both the worst and best flight experience I've ever had.

Prince Is Right: The Internet Is Over, And You Just Proved It

2010-07-08T07:06:00.006-04:00

Prince is getting a lot of shit for his recent statement saying that the internet is "completely over."

He's right. And all of the recent arguments about his being a "technophobe" or "fogey" are proving it, because anyone saying that clearly has no idea what they're talking about. Prince was here and selling music on the net long before iTunes.

Folks, there was a time when simply being on the internet was actually an indicator of how "cool" or "hip" or "smart" you were. It's because only those with an interest in the internet - either what was on it or how to build it - were actually on the internet. Believe it or not, you used to have to be intelligent to actually operate a computer.

The internet was once a pretty fantastic place. It was full of knowledge, facts, memes and yes, even trolling. It wasn't a perfect place, but it was "our" place - a place where those of us who actually got the culture and understood the power of the net were using it. We'd talk about some interesting fact or article or other item we discovered on the internet, and the straights would balk and say "Oh, the INTERNET... That can be trusted..." Dating online used to be a freaky, scary, "Only a loser would do that" thing. And yet, there we were, sharing and posting and meeting people and playing games. And artists like Prince were putting their entire catalog of music online for download.

That's where I begin to shake my head. The vast majority of you weren't even online by the time Prince was selling music here. He started the NPG (New Power Generation) Network in 2000, an online marketplace selling DRM-free MP3s of his music. That was the same year Lars Ulrich was crying about Napster and whining about how the internet was killing his profits, despite the fact that Metallica was a band who was practically made from free music sharing (mixtapes).

What most of you don't understand is that saying the internet is "completely over" is not a technophobic, luddite, or even old man stance. He's not speaking about the technology; he's speaking about the culture. And it is - the internet, as we once knew it, is gone forever. It's now a commodity like television and telephone and radio. Everyone is on it. The common denominator is so much lower now.

That's not to say I'm going to leave it. I still love it, and it's done wonders for me and my career. But I will say (and it should be no secret or surprise) that I am completely over things like Twitter and "Social Media" and the novelty aspect of everything online. Now, its simply tools and channels, and I find myself avoiding and eschewing the channels where the majority of people congregate. This is not because I think of myself as hip or counter-culture or any of that bullshit; it's just because the vast majority of people are very, very, very uninteresting WHILE THINKING THEY ACTUALLY ARE INTERESTING. And they pollute and water down the medium.

The mere fact that your music or book or video is available on the net is no longer interesting. EVERYTHING IS. When Prince and Public Enemy released their catalogs and began selling albums online, it wasn't news. It wasn't even interesting, because the vast majority of today's internet audience - including the major media - weren't even here, so it wasn't relevant to them. By the time Radiohead and Trent Reznor started pulling "pay what you want" schemes and selling millions, it attracted attention because critical mass had been reached. It was now relevant, because yes, they were selling millions. But that's because millions of their fans were now online. Note that I'm not saying millions of people, I'm saying millions of their fans - a much smaller subgroup. When Prince and Public Enemy did it in 2000, they had millions of fans, but not millions of fans ONLINE. They were releasing into a medium that held a fraction of their base. And they did it because selling 60,000 records online paid them 10 times what selling six million records in record stores did, and it made sense.

I don't hate the internet. Far from it; the internet has given me a career and continues to do so. My only point is that, culturally, "The Internet" IS over. It's a commodity now. The fact that you're on the internet doesn't guarantee that you understand it, as it once did. The content on the internet has increased several orders of magnitude; you are no longer assured of a particular level or quality of content anymore. "The Internet" is over. The internet is now just another tool; another communication medium. But in that, there's really quite an amazing amount of potential. Now, you aren't a star just because you create content on the net - you actually have to create GOOD content, because you're competing against EVERYONE.

Or, you have to do very clever marketing things like going out in public and declaring that the internet is "totally over." Because that's what this is, after all - just a PR stunt by an accomplished musician who knows how to get attention. Not that it's necessarily a good thing; he's merely heading into new territory marketing-wise and seeing if "not being on the internet" actually results in increased record sales... Because "The Internet" is over. Being here means exactly nothing in terms of being something special or unique or original.

Is Translating "Ching Chong Ching Ching Chong" Into Chinese Characters Racist?

2010-07-07T09:34:00.000-04:00

So, I did this today:

What you're looking at is the words "Ching chong ching ching chong" translated into Chinese (simplified, not traditional) via TweetDeck's "Translate" feature.

My friend Jeremy immediately said it was racist.

Now, I don't believe this is true. I did this as a nonsensical, goofy thing. I see it the same as translating "Blah Blah Blab Blah Blah" into English. It's just nonsense words used to represent a language by non-speakers of that language, translated into that language.

Jeremy, however, likened this to going up to a black person and emulating tribal languages and clicks. My argument is that translating "Ching chong ching ching chong" into Chinese (simplified, not complicated) is not the same as actively going up to a Chinese person and yelling the same words at them.

He then asked if I felt that using the word "Nigger" was racist. I said that it was, because the word has absolutely zero context outside of a racial epithet (and don't give me that shit that it once meant something else. "Nigger" has never meant anything other than "black person," EVER). Using the word "Nigger" is inherently racist, even when discussing the word in abstract, because it only means one thing.

If I went up to an Asian person and asked them to directly translate the words "Ching chong ching ching chong" into Chinese (simplified, not ex-girlfriend-like), I'd argue that there'd be a cause for calling me racist. It'd be rude. The words, used in that context in that conversation, are used for more than just abstract placeholders for a language I don't speak, they're being used to offend. And that's racist.

However, I don't believe what I did with TweetDeck to be racist. I believe it to be silly, or at worst stupid. The words were directed at no one, and mean nothing.

Do you agree? Or did I just do something racist?

I Don't Even Care If My Wife Gets Mad At Me For It, I Just Had To Have Two Double-Double Burgers From In-N-Out Burger

2010-07-01T17:52:00.000-04:00

You guys, I hiked over 30 miles the past four days.

Yesterday, we did six miles literally straight up - two mountains with carved-in steps across multiple switchbacks.

So yeah, today I said "fuck it" and I ate two Double-Double burgers from In-N-Out Burger. I held off the entire time I have been here in California, two and a half weeks, and today was that day where I said "screw restraint, I'm eatin' those Double-Double burgers." And my wife said "You should behave" and I said "No fucking way, Double-Doubles right now" and so we pulled off the interstate about thirty minutes ago and I ordered two Double-Doubles and I ate them like a motherfucker.

That is a picture of a Double Double I downloaded from the internet. It has tomatoes and onions and pickles, whereas mine only had lettuce and cheese and beefy yum.

She Said Yes - Again

2010-06-29T00:22:00.000-04:00

So, I asked my wife to marry me again. She said yes. I've had the ring for a month. She's known about it (long story, I barely told it in a previous post, go look for it), but has behaved and not asked when I was going to give it to her. We hiked to the top of Sentinel Dome today, and in front of the majestic Yosemite Falls, I decided to finally give it to her.

Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca

2010-06-26T15:02:00.000-04:00

Part of an assignment I'm on for AOLNews led me to Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca to drive some laps with Randy Buck from the Skip Barber Racing School. Sorry the writeup on this is so short, but I'm saving it for the piece. I will say this: it was a dream of nearly 20 years come true.

Enjoy the pics!

(if you can't see the slideshow above, click here)

Art of Akira at Pixar - PICS!

2010-06-22T19:04:00.002-04:00

I still can't believe it, but last Friday, I was invited to Pixar to give a talk about the Art of Akira Exhibit and show some of the art. It was AMAZING. I have been blabbering ever since about it, mostly because it's the exact sort of thing I dreamed about when I was cooking up this little exhibit. My intent was to share this art with animators, artists, illustrators and film people. It's a piece of film history, and it's important that everyone and anyone with a background or interest in the medium get to see it.

Anyway, here's some photos from the whole shebang.

Art of Akira at Pixar

2010-06-17T23:03:00.000-04:00

Holy. Crap.

That's all I can really say at this point. Well, that and the rest of this blog post. But I figured I'd start with that because it's what I said when I got the email inviting me to come to Pixar tomorrow morning (Friday) at 11:30 to talk about Art of Akira to the animators.

This is a huge milestone for me, because these guys are exactly the type of people I was hoping would be interested in the Art of Akira Exhibit -- industry pros who want to see the behind-the-scenes aspects of what made Akira tick. From what I understand, there will be people in attendance tomorrow who have never done handmade animation - they've used a computer their entire careers. It's for them that I put this thing together in the first place.

I feel it's incredibly vital that we as a society hold on to our ability to make things with our hands. I use a computer daily; I love my computer. It speeds things up tremendously and gives me a quality of output I can't achieve with handwritten or hand designed things. But the physical has something very magical about it... Especially when it's something as astonishing and groundbreaking as Akira.

That said, for the very first time since I started talking about Akira, I'm nervous. As I tweeted earlier today, I feel like me picking out things that the pros at Pixar would want to see is like a guy who plays Golden Tee all day at a bar telling Tiger Woods what clubs to use at Augusta. But I'm going to do my best to get stuff that isn't just "OH COOL THE BIKE!" or "NEAT EXPLOSION BRO!" I'm going to pick things that really show the heart behind the art - the sketches, the layouts, the painted backgrounds. I'm bringing two sets that have never ever seen the light of day just for the Pixar guys.

Wish me luck.

I'll try to Ustream the talk - no guarantees, but if it happens, it'll be on the Art of Akira blog.

Gay Christian Witnessing: Surrealism Defined

2010-06-16T14:58:00.001-04:00

Sitting at Octane Coffee House in Atlanta, currently being witnessed to by members of the Gay Christian Alliance. Seriously, this is happening. Right now. I am writing this as they tell me about their church and why I should come and how open and non-judgemental it is.

I have already explained that the religion thing isn't my bag, and they've countered with how it wasn't for them either, due to all the stereotypical judgmental aspects and how judgmental it is. And their church isn't judgmental, and they're not judgmental. So they won't judge me. I should really come to the church.

I'm not so sure I even understand the whole concept here. Christ changed their life and turned them around, according to both of these guys. They were headed down the wrong path. And now they're "realigned."

What does that even mean? This is why I hang out in stereotypically gay environments - so I don't have to hear this shit. Homosexuals, you my homies! Don't be flippin' the script or other street slang I really shouldn't be using!

And for the record, it's not the fact that they're gay and Christian. It's the fact that they're gay and Christian and won't shut the fuck up about it and leave me alone in my straight heathenism. For a couple of non-judgmental dudes, these guys sure are disapproving of my lifestyle choice of being without religion by way of not relenting on their message.

***Update 3:03PM ***

Immediate question: Are they trolls? I'm pretty sure they're not trolls. The one guy has a huge cross on his forearm, and they're not giving each other weird eye signs or whatever like friends who troll do when they troll. Also, how cool would a reality show called TROLLIN IRL be? Cause I think it's pretty awesome, it's Tony Deconick's idea.

They moved to their own table, and as they stood up, I put on my cones of silence (headphones). I've accidentally caught one of the guys' eye once, and he smiled and nodded and mouthed something. I took off the headphones for a sec to be polite, and he said "Let me know if you want to talk more." I said "Sure, I'll do that."

Still not over it.

The Ship of Peacockeus

2010-06-15T12:28:00.000-04:00

Talking to a gamer and game critic friend of mine, Evan, I began to realize that I'm getting old.

He was asking if I was excited for E3. My response: "Meh." He asked if I was excited about the ESPN + Microsoft deal, where games will be streamed over the 360. My response: "Huh?" I had to explain to him that I just don't keep up with gaming news anymore -- which is pretty strange, considering I've spent the last 20 or so years being a hardcore gamer who saw E3 the same way I saw Christmas when I was seven.

Along with things like taking longer to recover from hard workouts, starting to like things like "Greek Style Yogurt," not eating fast food, seeing grey hairs, and other tell-tale signs that your body's on a non-stop journey toward ruin, there's a number of changes I've made that have basically started ushering me toward the "old fogey" corral in the social demographic theme park.

The gaming thing, for one. Take Red Dead Redemption for example. I liked it a lot - I loved the story, I loved the gameplay. And when I sat longer than, say, 2 hours playing it, I began to fidget. There were two nights in particular where I forced myself to play longer than 2 or 3 hours, based solely on the fact that my entire identity as a "hardcore gamer" was at stake if I didn't put in a ton of hours to get to the end of this game. And when I reached the end of it (which took two and a half weeks, whereas in days of old, I'd be through it in a day or two), I took it out of the Xbox and haven't touched it since.

I still enjoy gaming. What I don't enjoy is the thought that there's other stuff I should be doing while I'm playing a game. And those thoughts don't really set in until right at the two hour mark - two hours is about the max I'm willing to spend doing any one thing that isn't considered productive. And if I do go over that two hour mark, it ends up eating into sleep time, as I am no longer capable of pushing things off until another day (things that matter, anyway).

I'm old.

As you get older you begin to realize you have far too many hoses from far too many sources filling your attention pool, and you're constantly having to turn them off or drain the pool. So, you eventually begin eliminating hoses. I've eliminated quite a few of them, one of them being any and all "industry news" about gaming, tech, etc. A few others: 24 hour news, watching sports as my main activity (I will keep them on in the background now), any and all discussion regarding religion or politics (the only two things I can think of that rank above gaming in terms of "completely useless wastes of time"), IRC and other general chat activities.

It's not that I don't like these things. I still like them a lot. I just don't feel comfortable anymore doing any of them for protracted periods of time. And that's where the whole identity crisis begins to play in my head - these are the things that made me "me" in my eyes. The things I most enjoyed, the things I filled my time with. These days, what I fill my time with is different. It's no less enjoyable; I love writing, I love researching topics for articles and essays, I love working out. But even my workouts are completely different than they were years ago. These days, I don't even lift weights on the main floor. I have completely shifted to a "fitness" oriented regimen and can't even tell you the last time I did a real bench press. Or, the last time I listened to Slayer, for that matter.

And therein lies the eternal issue that far greater men than me have pondered - am I the same guy, and will I be by the time I die? It's the Ship of Theseus puzzle, and it goes like this:

Over the years, the Athenians replaced each plank in the original ship of Theseus as it decayed, thereby keeping it in good repair. Eventually, there was not a single plank left of the original ship. So, did the Athenians still have one and the same ship that used to belong to Theseus?

As I get older, I start to see pieces of me in disrepair, so I replace them. I change them. I mold and shape them. And now, at 33, I like to think of myself as being the same guy I was at 18, at least at my core. But if you compare the actual time spent doing things between the two ages, the production value of those things, the level of interest... I'm not. None of us are. We change, we adapt, we grow.

At what point are we no longer who we were? Do our interests define us, or is there something much deeper driving those interests which persists our entire lives? And what happens when THAT thing changes?

Bah, too much thinking. I think I'll go play some Xbox. See you in 2 hours.

Notes on the World Cup

2010-06-14T08:07:00.000-04:00

- Who is the fucking marketing genius who handed out 100,000 free horns to the fans for the World Cup? And did they do any research on the actual note struck when everyone blows the damn things in unison? It's supposed to "mimic the sound of a swarm of bees." WHY IS THIS A GOOD THING? And it's not so much like a swarm of bees as it is like a sine wave bouncing around my brain with a hidden signal from the government enticing me to either kill the sitting president of a small republic or eat a specific brand of pudding. I'm not quite clear which yet. They may yet be banned - here's hoping. And a German dude has built an audio filter to attenuate the sound of the vuvuzela. Apparently, the horn is "a vital part of South African soccer culture." So vital, it only began use in the late 90's. Get rid of it please.

- The New York Post has no idea what a "win" actually is.

- I've never even heard of n+1, a bi-yearly publication out of New York, but their writeup on the teams of the World Cup had me hooked. I've become a subscriber. Drew Curtis also pointed me to this similar-yet-even-funnier writeup from his local radio station's website. Horrible website, great article.

- I love how every SportsCenter addict I know is now an expert on soccer. The most annoying ones (usually New York Yankees or Dallas Cowboy fans who have never even been to either city) call it "football." I want to punch them in the neck. They know nothing outside of what the anchors on ESPN tell them to know, and even then, half of what they spout is mis-memorized. This is true about every sport they watch, by the way.

- Landon Donovan sure does get a lot of publicity for being a marginal performer. He's the only player from the US team that can't make it in any European league.

- Even after losing a lot of weight, I look ridiculous in a soccer jersey.

- This Nike World Cup spot is the best commercial I've ever seen for anything, ever. It's even better than my previous favorite commercial, also by Nike (just below). The "Search and Destroy" commercial is on my iPod and iPhone. I watch it while running on a loop, no kidding. It's one of the single most inspiring videos I've seen, right up there with the training montage from Rocky IV. And it's been beat.

- Soccer, while fun to watch every 4 years, still escapes me as a sport I'd like to keep an interest in. I don't get it. Why the hell would you watch a slower-paced, hitless hockey? This is fun due to the international aspect, where we all get to bellow about how our pseudo-nationalities are the best at something. But as a sport, this is not a daily, monthly or even yearly interest. This is a sport where the majority of players worldwide receive a juice box and a Fruit Rollup after the game. It's second only to baseball in terms of things only children should do seriously.