That Is So Cool: Paperbacks.

Ian Cooper

That is just so cool.

My first two paperbacks have been produced, and are available from Lulu.com at what sure looks like cut-throat pricing. This is one attraction of the 4 x 7” format, (a pocketbook.) The other is pure esthetics. If I have always wanted to write pulp fiction (and I have) then putting them out in the regular ‘paperback’ size makes some kind of sense. They are the modern counterpart of the dime novel.

Each file took a couple of hours to prepare, upload and publish. We’re using existing cover shots, hopefully costumers on other platforms are hip enough to read the product descriptions. On this project, we’re using Lulu as a single, stand-alone online store. We don't have any ebooks on Lulu  at this point in time. We’re not using their extended distribution channels. For one, Smashwords does a reasonable job of that, and we have gotten books into iTunes through OmniLit, (although it’s their only other distribution channel so far.) We do sell books on OmniLit, so it’s important to learn every site.

Using some pretty basic covers and Lulu’s older cover creator keeps the investment of time and money down.

Both books are still processing through Createspace in the 5 x 8” trade paperback format. This allows us to take advantage of Createspace’s six full expanded distribution channels. We’ve published one of those titles directly through Createspace into the Amazon website.

We just want to see what happens.

There’s a form for that at the end of the publishing pages. This saves the uploading, although you have to sign into the account and go through the publish pages, set prices and territories, etc.

There is some difference in formatting from what I would have normally done. In that sense, any new thing has the potential to be a learning experience. For one thing, going through Createspace probably precludes internal and external navigation (hot links) in the ebook product.

That’s because there is no real good reason (we assume) for Createspace to make provision for live links…my logic here is that they are useless except as website names in a paper product. You could put them in, I don’t know if they would be live in the ebook.

Going through Smashwords, for example, iTunes insists on internal navigation, i.e. the table of contents, which takes a few minutes to create. Some authors report good results with external navigation, taking readers off to blogs, websites, previews of new stories, social media interaction, etc. We have put some thought into that…but perhaps not enough.

The paperbacks rarely have a web address or anything. It’s just something we don’t tend to think about when making a paper product. That’s backwards thinking, out of touch with the 21^st Century. Much food for thought there, but is really is a learning curve, ladies and gentlemen.

Looking for Love is something we all do once in a while. The results can be surprising, from lonely middle-aged bachelors, to college boys with a plan, or Cro-Magnon raiders and predatory beachcombers.

Here is the pocketbook on Lulu.com. $4.49

Love, or lust, is a many-splendoured thing. Moonshine, a collection of short stories by Ian Cooper, will raise the pulse rate and possibly the eyebrows.

4 x 7” paperback for $4.99 (erotica.)

END

Punching Through Those Personal Barriers.

Photo by Robert A. Hoover.

Ian Cooper

When Chuck Yeager broke through the sound barrier, it was not so much a personal achievement as a scientific breakthrough, a leap forward for mankind. It was an epoch-making event.

Sometimes people need to break through their own personal barriers. 

And if you ever hit rock bottom, and decide not to stay there, there are all kinds of barriers to getting back up again.

People hit rock bottom for all kinds of reasons.

It can be drugs or alcohol, it can be divorce, or bankruptcy, a serious illness in the family, or an accident in the car, the workplace or in sport.

It’s never that simple, either.

It’s never any one thing that throws a person to the bottom of the heap. Issues feed on each other and contribute to the whole picture of that person. A person forced out of work due to an injury may become dependent on painkillers. They may get depressed, and suffer from financial problems. They may turn to drink, a bad mix with those painkillers…begin fighting with the spouse, et cetera. It all builds on itself until a situation spirals out of control. It can happen quickly.

There are the questions of character, and then there are the questions of circumstance. If your spouse is killed by a drunk driver, leaving you solely responsible for three small children under the age of seven, that is a circumstance. How a person deals with such tragedy indicates something about their character.

It reflects not just the choices that they made, but the choices that they had to begin with, for surely choices are limited at the best of times. Sometimes there are no good choices.

There is no such thing as choosing the lesser of two evils, sometimes. Based on the reader’s own personal experience, isn’t it really more a matter of choosing between a whole bunch of lesser and greater evils, some of which involve pain, suffering or sacrifice on our own parts and so we don’t want to do them? A good example would involve quitting smoking. Smokers know they need to quit, the problem is, they also know it’s going to hurt—and so they continually put it off. And of course it never happens.

So here’s my personal sound barrier: how do I take, what is at most a couple of hundred bucks in book and story sales per month, less than a grand a year essentially, and push it through that magical barrier, where I can get off the Ontario Disability Support Program and live on the proceeds of my work?

I read a lot of blogs, many by long-standing professional writers. Mention has been made of ‘editors with a million dollars to spend,’ or ‘hundred-thousand dollar advances.’

It’s true that would be enough to get me off disability. The problem is that the more likely scenario involves a five, or ten, or twenty thousand dollar advance. I would be an unknown, first-time author in a pretty big pond.

Some would say that I would be extremely fortunate to get that. Not everyone gets the professional book contract, after all.

And they would be correct to a certain extent.

In fact; they’re absolutely right.

Not everyone gets the chance.

The trouble is that at a certain level, I would be giving up the benefits, with small chance of qualifying ever again. That’s because I would have to prove to a tribunal that I could no longer write, not just no longer haul 12” concrete blocks around in wheelbarrows, or weld, or carry ladders around on job sites. It’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish at that point. The onus of proof is always on the client or applicant in this particular system.

The other scenario involves continuing to build up the independently-published book sales, simply by writing more, and following that curve as best one can these days. It really is early days and information goes out of date notoriously fast. The fact that I am selling any books at all proves that it can be done, I’m just not doing it well enough…or something.

Even then, in terms of my personal sound barrier, there’s a time where we’re at Mach .95 and there’s a lot of buffeting and you need to be structurally sound. You have to have the surplus power to punch through that barrier. Otherwise you’re going to break up and it’s game over at that point.

Living in a one-roomer, lining up at the soup kitchen and the food bank, and earning four or five hundred a month (when you’re lucky) is a distinct possibility if one should lose the pension for any reason.

It really wouldn’t be worth it on those terms. You can do exactly the same thing and not have to work at all. It’s called Welfare, right? Why bust your ass putting in sixty or eighty hours a week of thankless and minimally-paid work just for the privilege of calling yourself a writer. I know, we’re supposed to do it for the love, but you have to be practical as well.

At that rate, I might as well stay on ODSP, make my hundred or two a month—and maybe be a grand a month ahead some months on that deal. We know book sales fluctuate pretty markedly for reasons that are difficult to analyze and therefore predict.

If there was a quick way to go from a couple hundred a month in sales, to two thousand a month, I suppose someone would have to be a fool not to do it.

Punching through that barrier involves questions of circumstance, and questions of character. There are questions of knowledge and application, and then there is the factor of time.

For all we know, simply plugging away and doing exactly what I’m doing now may turn out to be the right path, over time. 

There is also a kind of psychological barrier to be overcome.

***

They say there’s a certain amount of luck involved and they are probably right.

Here’s what happens if I get a $20,000 advance one month. I immediately lose $1,100 roughly, that’s my pension cheque for that month. Then the ODSP says I owe them fifty cents on the dollar from the ‘earnings.’ 

That costs $10,000, add that to the eleven hundred. Then the ODSP tells me that I got too much money in the bank, and that I must spend it down—as long as I don’t spend it on food, shelter or clothing. I can only have six or seven grand in the bank. So I would have to go out and piss away three grand by the end of the month. Then I would be back to getting my pension chequel and yes, I would have six grand in the bank, or whatever I'm allowed.

I would still also be on ODSP. It's either that or taking my full advance, going off ODSP and living in that one-roomer I told you about earlier.

That's where the psychological barrier really comes in. That's because I now have an actual, one-bedroom apartment and that monthly pension coming in.

I don’t know about that personal (possibly even psychological) barrier any more than Chuck Yeager did—I mean, I think it is possible, it’s just a question of going for it when we’ve got everything right.

It's a question of having all of our shit together.

It could be a while yet.

END