The last couple of weeks have been busy, but–apart from Albacon, of course!–not in a way that makes for exciting blog posts. Being self-employed definitely makes you all work, no play, and pretty darned dull!
David Burton’s Blood Justice was officially released on October 1, and I’ve been following up with the author’s promotional opportunities, calling bookstores (and Ingram) trying to straighten out confusion about BLUM’s books being returnable, filling orders, and sending out review copies.
I’m doing a big push of review queries right now. It’s gotten much harder to get reviews than it was a couple of years ago. I got all those reviews for Mortal Touch, and now most of the book bloggers don’t even reply to a query. Those that do usually plead huge backlogs of review copies and say they’re not taking any more books. I am getting some positive responses, of course, and I’m very appreciative of those! But I’ve given up even offering review books on Blogcritics. Not one single book I’ve listed there has been requested by a reviewer (and most of the books offered to Blogcritics are never requested by anybody).
I’ve gotten very frustrated with Smashwords, and I’m looking into other alternatives for most of the ebook markets that Smashwords is presently supplying with BLUM’s titles. The fact that I can now easily create ePub editions myself definitely expands my options. I’m using Barnes & Noble’s new program, PubIt!, to put titles in Barnes & Noble’s ebook store. I’m going to sign up directly with Kobo as soon as I work out their exacting metadata requirements. The Smashwords editions that took so long to appear on Kobo still don’t show up on Borders, so we’ll see if I have better luck supplying titles to Kobo myself. Apple requires you to have a Mac or use an aggregator, but Ingram supplies Apple so I have an application in with them. The only thing I’ll continue using Smashwords for is (hack, ptooey!) Sony, and as far as I know I’m not selling any books there, anyway. Of course, Smashwords takes so long to report sales and update our account balance, Sony could have sold dozens of copies and I won’t even know about it for months.
I wish I could get into Fictionwise, because they supply ebooks to libraries, but BLUM doesn’t meet Fictionwise’s volume requirements yet (>25 titles from >5 different “professional” authors, whatever that means).
Turns out Lightning Source does do direct deposit. I couldn’t find anything on their website or in the ops manuals–then I was checking my daily sales, and I noticed a tiny little text link at the very bottom of the Publisher Compensation Report page: “Direct Deposit Form.” Talk about subtle! It’s a PDF form that you have to manually fill out and mail or fax in. I’m tellin’ ya, Lightning Source has not quite made it into the 21st century yet, sheesh. But I’ve faxed the form in.
Minor annoyance du jour: every single blippin’ online retailer has different maximum and minimum size requirements for cover images. I have to rescale new cover images every time I create a new account! Thank goddess for Photoshop. (Actually, thank goddess for Creative Suite CS5. I don’t know how I was managing without it!)
I heard from a former co-worker that the battered women’s shelter where I worked from 1996 to 2006 was closed down a couple of weeks ago. It had been in operation for around thirty years. I don’t know any further details, but I’m not surprised. The agency itself had merged with another non-profit since I left and was no longer an independent entity–now I’m not sure what its status is. It’s kind of a shame, when there’s more need for shelter space now than ever, but it was a horrific place to work. It’s still a funny feeling to have outlived the place! I did so much maintenance and repair work there, I knew both buildings (there was a house and a big barn) almost as well as my own house.
The outdoor watering situation here in Pepperell has not relaxed, and the latest news is that all this part of the state is under a drought advisory and the outside water use ban may continue through next spring–which totally sucks for people with gardens. I really will have to divert all my gray water…if I’m still here, that is. (More on that in a moment.) Even though it’s October, we haven’t had a hard frost, and the tomatoes are still covered with green fruit. When they get pinkish I bring them in and put them on the windowsills, where they ripen amazingly well. The silly peppers, after doing bupkis all summer long, suddenly started setting fruit last month and are covered with baby peppers. I’ll let them grow as long as possible, and I’ll actually eat some peppers from my garden–for Thanksgiving, the way the weather is holding! I’m still eating fresh basil from the basil plants although they’re just about done; I’ve gotten spoiled rotten, I’ve never grown basil so successfully before! The marigolds are still huge and flowering like mad, I practically have a marigold hedge. I’m waiting for a couple of hard frosts to pull the carrots and see what I’ve got. I’m actually thinking of asking to borrow Dad’s electric leaf blower (gasp!) because the raking is just too daunting this year. Besides…I can’t use the hose to clean off the top of the greenhouse, *grump*.
I am thinking, however, very seriously, of moving closer to Dad. I’m thinking about it so seriously that I’ve progressed beyond real estate listings to reading up on town bylaws and zoning districts so I can be sure to find a place where I can continue running BLUM as a home-based business (not a big problem, as far as I’ve found), and I’m checking options for things like high speed Internet and phones. I’m still exploring logistics and “outside the box” solutions, but it’s gone way past a casual idea.
Two Blockbuster movies I just finished cycling to and mailed back: Me and Orson Welles and Sherlock Holmes. The first one is a quirky little period piece with some very good acting; the performers who play Welles (Christian McKay) and other members of the Mercury Theatre, like Joseph Cotton (James Tupper), are downright spooky in their spot-on impressions of the originals. I knew the backstory of this film (Welles’ production of Julius Caesar) from the American Experience documentary, “The Battle Over Citizen Kane,” so it was a lot of fun to see this fictionalized version (and the recreation of the legendary stage production itself). Sherlock Holmes was…eh. I found it so boring, it barely got me through cycling. I like Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law, and unlike some people, I didn’t find the movie’s take on the characters to be all that revisionist with respect to the original stories (in which Holmes is athletic, physical, earthy and very odd, and Watson is a fit former soldier and a fairly brilliant doctor, not a fat dummy). But I’m so sick of Irene Adler being stuck into every single Holmes redux, and the storyline, for me, was poorly paced and dragged miserably. YMMV.
I just got a review copy of The Lost Boys: The Thirst, so I’ll be cycling to that next!
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