First, a public service announcement:
After the holidays, I’m going to take a serious look at self-publishing the manuscript of “Goldberg Variations.” Except I’ve been told by several marketing-types that the title has to go. (Feh. I liked it) I’m on the fence, and can’t think of any better ideas. If you read the manuscript and have an idea for a new title, I’d love to hear your suggestions. Also anyone who's had experience with self-publishing and can recommend a house that won't rip me off or give me a problem with rights, your thoughts would also be appreciated.
Thank you.
Now back to our regularly scheduled broadcast.
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OK. I’ve been…well, mostly good this year. I haven’t sent nefarious instant messages to underage males, there is no cash in my freezer, and I always wear underpants in public (especially when getting out of the limousine). I’ve taken the Lord’s name in vain only in traffic and only when warranted, and I’ve used far less foul language than, say, Lewis Black. Although I’ve only been late with a handful of household payments, I pay my taxes, vote and generally am a good citizen. So I think Santa might be open to the following list of things I’d like to see under my tree come Christmas morning:
• A job writing Jeopardy! categories (my favorite: Celebrities whose names form complete sentences…eg Britney Spears, Leanne Rimes, etc.)
• Someone to vote for instead of against
• A heated driveway that will never require plowing or sanding
• Really big breasts. For about a week. Just to see what it's like.
• A lifetime supply of Lidocaine patches
• For Michael Jackson to go away. Please. And take OJ with you. And Ann Coulter.
• Term limits for members of Congress. Starting with Ted Kennedy.
• To collaborate with TC Boyle on his next novel. If he won't do it, then John Irving.
• A mink-covered exercise mat and a personal physical therapist
• A Daisy Red Ryder 200-shot Carbine Action BB Gun
• To be able to write for “Gilmore Girls” after the new writers jump the shark
• The ability to teleport
• An invisibility cloak
• A hot tub with stairs. In my own house.
• A device that disables cell phone usage in public places. Also mutes screaming children.
• Did I mention a Daisy Red Ryder 200-shot Carbine Action BB Gun?
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6 comments:
Feh! I like Goldberg Variations too. Did the marketing types say why?
Sorry about the Daisy Red Ryder. Ryderless package already enroute.
They claimed that no one would know what it means. Or that they would think it was a book about music.
If you're going to self publish, you can have any title you want, and you of all people should know what a sham so many marketing types are. And, hey, last I heard, weren't YOU somewhat proficient in the area of marketing? You like the title, you keep it. That's what I say.
I haven't read the ms. but if you want to email me a copy I'll try to take a look.
PublishAmerica hasn't given me any trouble about rights, but I haven't tried to do anything about rights, either, so... ::shrug:: I believe they own Universal Maintenance until, like, 2009 or something, but it's not like anyone else is pounding on the door.
P/A will publish your stuff, assuming you can string sentences together more or less coherently, which you obviously can. But, as with any of these houses, they won't do a goddam thing to market it and they have no ability whatsoever to get it into stores; all that is on you. As I've written before, this whole 'web publishing' industry is basically set up to make money by peddling our dream of success back to us... and if you're going to buy into this, you may want to look into Windstorm Publishing instead. They seem to do as nice a job creating the eventual book as P/A (in terms of what the covers look like, etc) and they don't seem to charge as much for the finished product (P/A has my book on sale for something like $21 or $22, while Windstorm prices things around $12 or $13 for a trade paperback, I believe.)
This is vital, because you're going to end up buying copies of your own book so you can try to market them yourself, setting up those pathetic little card tables at the front of any bookstores that will let you, trying desperately to get enough people to show interest in your book that that particular bookstore will agree to maybe, MAAAAAYbe, take a few of your hard bought copies from you on consignment.
You'll be pitching the book to local newspapers and local book reviewers on local news stations, hoping fervently you can get them to mention it, so a bookstore will agree to stock it, even if only for a month or so.
It will all be on you. Your publisher will already have made a profit on the book, when you ordered 100 copies, or 200 copies, or however many copies you decide to order, so you can drive around from one venue to another with a couple of opened cardboard boxes full of your book in the back seat, hoping desperately that this is the place where you manage to sell enough copies to pay you back for the gas you're spending getting here.
It's a road I've deliberately chosen to turn my back on, but if you decide to travel it, let me know; I'll at least order a copy of your book. And sincerely wish you the very best of luck.
On your wish list --
* I don't care about Jeopardy, but, wait, how do you get Blogger to do these cool bullet points things?
* If Al runs, I will vote for him. That wasn't true in 2000, but it would be true now.
* Little known fact about those heated driveways -- people have tried them, and the only drawback is, every stray cat for a thousand mile radius comes to sleep on your driveway, and there's nothing you can do to keep them out. Also, they greatly accelerate the entropy of the driveway; you'll need to patch cracks a great deal more than otherwise. And then there's the electricity bill...
* Our 16 year old (she just had a birthday, yay!) will trade chests with you blind, any time you're willing.
* I'm lucky enough, at this point, to not need any serious pain control meds, but, well, I keep getting older...
* The list of people I would like to see just 'go away' is seemingly endless. Those people could populate their own parallel Earth. And God, what a horrible, horrible place it would be. Where's Superman's Phantom Zone projector when we all really need it?
* We don't need term limits. We need the national referendum for firing elected officials that I have proposed on my blog, and an independent entity that controls political redistricting. (My plan there? Just do it by county. The borders are already drawn. Assign representation per county by county population. Of course, this means that the bulk of representation in the House will come from the cities, but, well, cities tend to be more liberal than the countryside, so this works for me.)
* I don't know who TC Boyle is. I do know who John Irving is, but I won't read his novels, so...
* For a moment, I thought you wanted the physical therapist to be mink covered, too.
* Kid, you'll put your eye out.
* 'After' the Gilmore Girl writers jump the shark?
* Read JUMPER by Steven Gould. And its sequel, REFLEX, which is actually just as good if not better.
* On wishing for super powers, I eventually tend to come back to super intelligence. Then you can get all the rest, too. (Not my insight. Goes back to our old buddy Slappy.)
* Oooh, me too, me too!
* They have them; the Japanese invented them quite a while ago. (Okay, the muting cell phones thing, I mean.) They are, as you might expect, completely illegal in the United States. I wish they'd at least let theater owners install them, though.
As to screaming children, I guess most people just turn their headphones up.
* Did I mention, you'll put your eye out, kid?
You'll shoot your eye out, kid.
Argh!! Bastard beat me to it!!
H: thanks for the P/A and self-pub advice. I haven't decided if I'm doing this yet, but after the first of the year I'll organize an exploratory committee and perhaps start stumping in New Hampshire. Everyone else is doing it.
• The bullet things I do in Word. I write my blog pieces in Word on my Mac (using option-8) and then in the cut-and-paste process, they stay in place.
• It's the beard, isn't it. Lots of folks liked him better 'cause they were diggin' on the beard...
• I'll forgive you now knowing who TC Boyle is. He's an off-the-beaten-track literary short story and novel writer. I just love his stuff.
• I was just waiting for someone to come back with that one!!!
• Yeah, now that I think about it, I think that whole Luke having a daughter thing already jumped the shark. I mean, he blows off a woman he's been pining for for eight years because he learns about the daughter he never knew he had. Can you say "we're probably going to get cancelled at the end of the season?"
Might not be the beard so much as the 'not being a Republican or Hillary'. 'Vote against someone', remember?
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