Retrogrades and returns…

It’s the Full Moon (12:18 p.m. UTC) and the inferior conjunction of Sun and retrograde Mercury (4:44 p.m. UTC) and today is definitely following a pattern. Have I mentioned lately that I hate retrograde Mercury?

I’ve been printing bound books with Lightning Source (LSI) since 2007. I’ve always set wholesale terms to industry standard, because the main reason I print with LSI is for bookstore and library sales. I make [lots] more money (and sales, period) with other types of sales, but LSI gets me into Ingram and Baker & Taylor. So I set a 55% wholesale discount, returnable, which cuts my profit margin to the bone, but I want books to be available in bookstores and this is the only way to do it at the moment. Up to now, I have never had a returned book with LSI–that’s one advantage of using the costlier-per-unit digital printing (I refuse to call it “POD” or “print on demand” and you shouldn’t, either. “Print quantity needed” or PQN is much more accurate). It minimizes returns because customers order only what they need.

Well, today I finally got some returns–and I’ve really taken a whack with them, because LSI charges me a return fee as well as debiting my account for the cost of the books. *grump* Getting a whole bunch all together like that suggests they’re all from one customer, and I have no idea who, or whether I can get that information from LSI. I know I’ve gotten spoiled, but I am definitely not a happy camper. LSI sends me the books (that’s what the fee is for), so I can recoup the cost selling them at a discount myself. In fact, if I can sell them direct, even at “used” prices, I’ll make a substantially higher profit than selling them wholesale through LSI (and I’ll pay my authors royalties on that, since it counts as net, being the books’ first sale). But that’s an “if” at the moment. I have no idea what shape the books will be in when they get here.

Kindle sales of Mortal Touch are continuing to rise, but I had another Kindle refund: this time for Gideon Redoak, and I have no idea why. Maybe I should check the formating of all those Kindle books, again. *sigh* But maybe the customer just couldn’t get through the torture scenes. 🙁 By the way: you may have seen it repeated, in all the discussion about the “ebook revolution,” that ebooks are better for publishers because they can’t be returned or refunded by customers. Not necessarily so!!! Amazon can and does refund Kindle editions and the publisher gets docked for the royalty. I don’t know what Apple’s policy is.

I shipped the Copyright Office the copies of Gideon Redoak they needed, and I sent the author comp copies of Krymsin Nocturnes. I’ve been at Staples (also the UPS dropoff) three days in a row! I’ve sent some review copies out, too.

Amazon finally added the cover image and Search Inside This Book feature to Krymsin Nocturnes’ paperback edition detail page. What I’m slightly more excited about is that Amazon has already picked up The Longer the Fall from Bowker/Books In Print and set up its skeleton detail page. I think that’s the earliest that I’ve spotted one of BLUM’s titles on Amazon! Powell’s Books has realized that Krymsin Nocturnes exists and now lists it, I’m still waiting for Borders and the Barnes & Noble ebook store to pick it up. Still absolute zippo from the Sony Reader Store Losers-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named-Until-They-List-BLUM’s-Books. :-p

Sunday’s church service went well, although we had low attendance. For the Beltane “sacrament” which I blessed and gave out during the service, I made little May Baskets. I got miniature baskets at Michael’s and put silk rosebuds in them along with hand-molded chocolates I made myself. There were about half a dozen baskets left over and I took them to the Pepperell library yesterday and gave them to the staff. I didn’t even realize until last night that I forgot to keep one for myself! I gave them all away!

I started the week having a wrestling match with my new printer. Its original installation disk didn’t work with Windows 7, IIRC, but Windows 7 automatically detected and installed the printer. Then I set up the wireless server as a virtual printer port, which was a completely separate process. Up to now, everything was working fine, but I hadn’t made a lot of demands on the printer.

On Sunday night, I was preparing stacks of cartons of books to send out to Brodart and other places, and the printer started being wonky. It wouldn’t print at all; or it printed several copies of, say, a review packet and then just stopped halfway through a page. It wouldn’t print PDFs from Adobe Reader and that was a real problem because both UPS and the USPS generate their online mailing labels using Adobe Reader. I couldn’t print out mailing labels if Adobe Reader wouldn’t print–and I print PDFs for other reasons, too. I’m a slave to Adobe. 🙁

So the second thing I did on Monday as soon as I got up was drive to Staples to buy ink cartridges, because three of them showed as empty or nearly so on the status window and I thought that might be the problem. And indeed it may have been a contributing factor, but replacing them didn’t solve all the issues, including with Adobe Reader. I then theorized that the printer’s driver might have gotten corrupted, maybe by something related to that nonsense with McAfee’s defective update (have I mentioned lately that I hate McAfee? It came with the computer, though, and I haven’t gotten around to changing it). So I downloaded the full driver and utility package specifically for Windows 7 64-bit from HP’s website and installed it, and threw in a diagnostic utility as well. That seems to have solved the issues, at least, Adobe Reader now prints and so does everything else. So far. And I now have lots of spare ink cartridges. *wry smile* I ended up getting all the book orders out by 5:00 p.m. Monday, but I had to drive to Nashua twice in one day to do it. I just made UPS’s pickup by about 10 minutes.

The first thing I did on Monday was call Dad. I got up to hang-ups on the machine, and when I Googled the number, it came up as Emerson Hospital! 8-( Normally Dad wouldn’t be at Emerson, but you never know where he might have been when there was some emergency. I was sure a nurse or someone would have left a message to call, but maybe my machine wanked out. I called the number and got a fax (or modem) tone (although my machine should have taken a fax. Then I’d have gotten some stranger’s medical records, probably!). I called Dad at home, and he was fine and we spent 20 minutes discussing the NFL draft–which I’d have been more interested in discussing had I not been so fidgety to get to Staples and get my printer working, now that I knew Dad was okay. Sheesh.

I did Full Moon ritual last night, and tomorrow morning around 4:00 a.m. I’ll be dropping my car off at the dealership for maintenance and a state inspection sticker–before it expires for a change! I’m awful with getting the car inspected and I don’t get caught because the windshield wiper hides the sticker–and walking home just ahead of the dawn. With luck, there won’t be any expensive surprises and I can walk down and get the car tomorrow afternoon. It’s cold and rainy, but at least we haven’t had a foot of snow like northern Vermont! Hard to believe it’s forecast to be in the 80s this weekend.

I voted on Monday in what must have been Pepperell’s liveliest town election in decades. Our Town Clerk, an elected position, is retiring and there was a stampede for her job: seven candidates ran for the post! I voted for the sole man on the ballot, because he’s a freelance writer and the webmaster for the town website (which just won an award). Yes, I am guilty of voting for people like me, so sue me! I guess I’m not the only one because he won by a landslide. Yay. 🙂 Alas, I also went to the polls hoping to vote out an incumbent School Committee member and he barely managed to keep his seat, to my disappointment. I think the candidate who came in 13 votes behind him is going to try for a recount. It was a three-way race or she’d have won for sure. It’s too bad, because the town/gown tension between Pepperell, the school district and our current Superintendent of schools is reaching the red zone. Annual Town Meeting starts next Monday and I bet we’re going to have another marathon this year. They aren’t threatening to close the library but they are cutting the library’s budget, and I’m hearing noises that the cut is going to be challenged on Town Meeting floor. Ah, democracy…!