(no subject)

[cblj_backup]

Link for your Wednesday, via rm: "If you want to improve circulation, run cat pictures."

Carl Gossett Jr. was clearly a man ahead of his time.

Speaking of circulation, does anyone know a good Australian print-on-demand company? (Please don't google and send me links -- I've done that, I'm looking for reccs from folks who've used them, since self-publishing is only now emerging from the realm of conmen and racketeers.) CompletelyNovel are sweet kids; using Lulu and then using CN, CN just comes off as adorable, like a Mom and Pop store. But they won't ship to a lot of places, including the southern hemisphere. I'm contemplating cancelling them entirely, in part because I cannot find anywhere on their website, literally anywhere, that will let me set up payment information so that the money I make can actually be sent to me. Plus their postage is just plain not that much cheaper.

I've been thinking a lot about publishing and writing, which is probably some kind of coping mechanism in order not to freak out now that we're near publish date. I don't have many illusions; my work is good, but if it were good enough to stand out from the crowd and if I were bold enough to sell myself the way authors should, I'd have an agent and a publisher by now. I'm okay with that, because I like the freedom I have with self-publishing and I get a kick out of doing my own typesetting, but I am always conscious of the "self" in self-publishing. I'm aware of the fact that there are no gatekeepers in print-on-demand and that without a preview nobody can tell the difference between my reasonably awesome book and the hack job below it in the listview.

Still, sometimes when I run into issues like the ones I'm facing now, I think that real publishers must have these kinds of problems too. I wonder if the people who read about my issues think of me as providing some kind of mysterious inside account they couldn't get themselves, not being in my position -- like when I (rarely) read the blogs of professionally published novelists and television writers and such.

This is likely untrue, but it makes the whole thing feel more professional.

My life is...unique. Stranger than I ever thought it would be. I like it, and it suits me, but it's definitely different. Society doesn't really provide us with many tools for being adults, but even of the tools it does provide, very few of them are of use to me in the place I find myself. It keeps me on my toes, learning as I go, and the ability to learn and adapt is a highly prized one. I'm surprised to find myself neither the man nor the writer I was three years ago, though I shouldn't be surprised, and probably wouldn't even have noticed if I didn't have a journal tracking me.

As a LOL to close on, yesterday I contacted a high-rise building in Chicago about looking at the condos they had for rent, since Mum wants me out of the cursed wasp building and I begin to agree with her, even if it means moving away from R. The website said "Call us at this number, or use our handy email form!"

So I used the handy email form, because I hate phones, and asked if I could set up a time to view the condos. This is the response I got:

Thank you for your e-mail. Please call our office to set up a showing.

Really helpful email response there, guys. Thanks for that.

Comments

[adina-atl.livejournal.com]

Trust me when I say that other publishers also worry about things like international postage and distribution. I've had personal glimpses into the workings of three (smallish) publishing companies, and all three had to deal with issue of printing, international postage/shipping (you think one book is difficult? try a pallet full!), and distribution.

Be very grateful that you aren't dealing with a distribution company--one publisher folded when the distributor went into bankruptcy along with at least six months worth of book receipts (and author royalties!), and another had to force the distributor to do a hard inventory count when the publisher discovered that the distributor had no clue how many books they had on hand.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

*nods vigorously* I can certainly concur with your first paragraph, though I've thankfully never had to deal with experiences like yours distribution-wise.

Not that it helps you in the immediate future, Sam, but I happen to know that a reasonably well-established POD company that already does distributed printing in the US and the UK, and has experience with what they call "mom and pop" publishing operations in the States, is planning to open a printing plant in Australia, so that it would be theoretically possible to upload and check over files for a book in the US and run off as many copies as necessary for the Australian market.

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

Oh god, I can imagine. And it's really worse for small presses and magazines, because I don't have to care about postage -- I'm not the one covering it as part of my expenses. I choose to, because I care about not drilling the cafe for all they're worth, but it's not a life or death decision at least.