State of the BLUMosphere, Barnes&NobleFail and other trivia

Yes I Can! …make a post that has nothing to do with politics for a change. Or mostly nothing, anyway.

I’ve been quiet for a while partly because I’ve been busy, partly due to a series of ego-battering minor stumbling blocks, and partly because I wasn’t feeling well for several weeks after Albacon. Nothing serious, but I felt like I was fighting off a virus of some kind, with headaches, fatigue, bleary eyes, raw throat, slight congestion, but never a full-blown cold. I’ve just spent most of a month feeling like most people do when they’re about to come down with a cold. No fever, in fact, a couple of mornings my body temperature has been so low, I wondered if I was supposed to be hibernating.

Nevertheless, I’ve been busy. I sent out dozens of queries to book bloggers and reviewers, and have been shipping review copies as they’re requested. I’ve been filling orders from Baker & Taylor and Brodart. I’ve been tracking daily sales, and in the past week, I’ve been watching money appear in BLUM’s bank account via the magic of direct deposit. Lightning Source obviously got the form I faxed because now their payment is coming in electronically. Money is always good! Of course, it isn’t all mine. 🙂 I’m getting quarterly statements ready for my authors.

I had a number of wrangles with Barnes & Noble which included a conversation with the most condescending, patronizing rep I’ve ever dealt with as a publisher. She all but called me a liar to my face. I was trying to find out why the San Diego Barnes & Noble kept telling David Burton, author of Blood Justice, that they couldn’t order books for him to have an author signing because the title showed as “non-returnable” in their database. I’d checked with Ingram and Lightning Source and they both had the correct information. After discussions with numerous people in Barnes & Noble Corporate (on one call, I was transferred four times and finally dead-ended in someone’s voice mail), I had formed several strong conclusions.

One, Barnes & Noble hates authors, especially “self-published” authors, but any author who isn’t a huge celebrity who will pack the store. Ms. Condescending said, “We could could host an author signing in every one of our stores every day of the year, and not sell a single book, that’s how many authors we get requests from.” (Emphasis mine.) A friendlier rep told me that authors “shouldn’t talk directly to the stores” and that “the stores will sometimes use anything they can to avoid dealing with the author.”

Two, Barnes & Noble assumes that any book that’s “POD” (gods, I hate that term!!!!!!), i.e. digitally printed or so-called “print on demand,” is “non-returnable” by definition. I had a conversation with yet another rep that went like this: Rep: “It’s listed as POD, so it’s not returnable.” Me: “No, all our titles are fully returnable. Does your listing say non-returnable?” Rep: “Well, no, it shows as returnable, but it’s listed as POD.” That repeated a few times. (Really. I couldn’t make this up.) Along with this, they obviously assume that any “POD” book is a self-published vanity press book. Ms. Condescending very obviously thought I was a self-publisher and that “David Burton” was just my pseudonym. I wasn’t kidding when I said she strongly implied I was a liar.

It’s rather ironic for Barnes & Noble to have such a prejudice against “POD” books and/or self-published authors, by the way. Barnes & Noble partly owns iUniverse, the so-called “self-publishing company” that is now part of Author Solutions (the “self-publishing conglomerate,” heh). They’re up to their knees in the “self-publishing” scam but they don’t want it in their stores! Oh, and it doesn’t matter if you have a company imprint on your book because most of the “self publishing companies” let you assign your own imprint name to the book. Owning a block of ISBNs registered in your company name with Bowker proves that you’re really a publishing company (only companies can buy ISBN blocks and they’re non-transferrable), but bookstores don’t bother to check that.

There is a way to get around all this–possibly–but not in time to help David Burton now, because I need to submit applications and send copies to the Barnes & Noble Small Press Department and then they have to consider whether they want to “stock the book in stores.” Apparently, they have to go through all that just to order in a few copies for a one-time author event, not just to stock the book in the warehouses for general distribution (which is what I thought). By the way, one Barnes & Noble rep suggested that Mr. Burton could bring books to the store “on consignment” and another rep told me that authors aren’t allowed to do that.

I was still smarting from all this when I heard from Mysterious Galaxy, where Mr. Burton is doing a signing this Saturday. They’d sent a purchase order for books that I never received! I rushed around getting the books off to them and the tracking number says they just made it, they were delivered today. Big whew, but I felt like I must look like a complete fuck-up to Mysterious Galaxy, and that didn’t help my self-esteem. 🙁

I chaired Readercon Committee meeting on Sunday the 24th–and I was more than a half hour late! I was so embarrassed! Everyone had to wait for me because not only am I Con Chair, I had all the hardware to run the conference call. We had the meeting at the NESFA Clubhouse, which I had never been to before. The directions on the website seemed a bit tricky, so I looked at a street map. It appeared to me that if I went in via a route I was very familiar with from commuting to grad school, there was a street that ran in a straight line from Somerville Avenue right to the Clubhouse. And indeed, that would have been a perfect route–except that the City of Somerville was holding a big street festival that afternoon and had blocked off Somerville Ave. and most of the side streets leading to it. I got detoured, had no idea where I was, followed my nose, my nose took me in exactly the right direction but also landed me in the bumper-to-bumper traffic jam caused by the diverted traffic. What a mess! But at least I got there and no one had given up on me and gone home, so we did have our meeting.

I heard some follow-up on my little problem with Search Local Online: I received a call from Passaic County Consumer Protection because the NJ Attorney General’s office had forwarded them the copies of my phone bill that I mailed, but didn’t send them any of the information about the case which I’d submitted in a long, detailed online form. (Your tax dollars at work, Garden Staters, sheesh.) I sent the Consumer Protection folks (who were really nice) a long email, and in the course of checking the information for that, I discovered that Search Local now has two new domains, and those are registered anonymously. (Ha.) Shortly after that, I got a message from the NJ Better Business Bureau that Search Local never responded to them. I haven’t seen any more fishy charges on my phone bill (or anywhere else) so I guess I’ll quit worrying about it.

The garden is done; we had a hard killing frost on October 22, and that was it for the peppers, tomatoes and basil. I got a few tiny peppers which I added to a potato fry-up, and all the green tomatoes are lined up on the kitchen windowsills where most of them are ripening. I’m going to pull all the carrots in a few more days and see what I got. Then I’ll clear out the plot for the winter. I borrowed Dad’s leaf blower and spent four and half solid hours blowing, raking and dragging (on tarps) leaves in the front yard yesterday. I have more yard clean-up to do, and right now it’s pouring rain, but the heaviest 90% or so of the leaves are moved and the yard looks pretty good. Gods, that was hard work, though: the leaf blower was actually slower and not that much easier–just noisier. I was so stiff and sore last night, it wasn’t even funny. 🙁 It turned out, though, that I didn’t need the leaf blower for the roof of the greenhouse-to-be. To my utter amazement, there wasn’t a single leaf on it.

I’ve ordered two cords of firewood and those will be delivered Saturday. Then I get to stack two cords of firewood, lucky me! My thoughts about moving closer to Dad have progressed to plans to move now, but I’m still researching the financial aspect. I doubt that I’ll move before spring, but if an opportunity arises suddenly (and with the astrological transits going on now, it might), I’ll take the darned firewood with me. A woodstove or fireplace is one of my three deal-breaker conditions for any property I buy. I’m watching the listings and I actually drove by one place and took a look at the outside, but I haven’t contacted a realtor for a viewing yet. I’ve been going up to Dad’s for the Patriots’ games on Sundays. Today I completely paid off the balance on my car loan–no more car payments!

On Halloween, I got up four hours early, did a church service at the Ashby First Parish (Unitarian), then went up to Dad’s for the game at 4:00 p.m. I did a “sacrament” for the church service, which is always something I make by hand, bless to the four quarters, and then members of the congregation can take some home. I decided to make luminarias, with little orange paper bags, decorations and orange sand from Michael’s, and I handmade all the votive candles to put inside. So, I was making candles for four straight days, and when I finished the votives I went on and made a good supply of ritual candles for myself because I was all out. I used the story about Elizabeth Moon and Wiscon as a focal point for the sermon, which worked very well, and that is the one and only positive thing to come out of that whole lose-lose affair (I’ve wasted more damn time reading blog posts, gods, it’s like an addiction!).

I drove home from Dad’s right after most towns finished their trick-or-treating hours, and I was struck by how many fewer Halloween decorations and lights I saw than I used to a few years ago. I imagine it’s the economy. But I didn’t even see many jack o’ lanterns, and I drove through five towns on the way home.

I went to Pepperell’s Fall Town Meeting on the 25th, which was the shortest Town Meeting, ever: we had eleven articles on the warrant, passed over four of them and were done in forty minutes. I voted on Tuesday, not that it matters much, Pepperell consistently votes two-thirds Republican. I am pleased that Barney Frank and Governor Patrick were re-elected, I am not pleased that our retiring Republican State rep, who is older than God and has been in office even longer, has been replaced with another Republican. Fooey. But at least the two seriously scary Republican nut jobs up for other offices (named, I’m serious, Buba and Gunn) were defeated!

I’ve gotten through two more Blockbuster movies: All the King’s Men, the remake with Sean Penn, which was very interesting to watch in context of the current election season; and Daybreakers, which I thought was clichéd and silly. But I’m totally bored with vampire movies that use the “incendiary sunlight” nonsense, it’s so stupid.

I’m not doing NaNoWriMo. My top writing priorities are to finish my next two books, and they’re both partially written, rendering them ineligible for NaNo. Maybe next year!

My kitty Vincent turned 14 on October 28. It’s hard to believe I’ve had him that long! I got him when he was three days old, on Halloween night, 1996.