Read an Ebook Week
Posted on March 8, 2010 by jesse
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it’s Read an Ebook Week, and that means free shit. To that end, both Heroes’ Day and SuperMegaNet, Vol. 1 are available as free downloads from Smashwords now through March 13. Here are the free linkie-poohs:
Just use the promo code “RFREE” (without the quotes) during checkout and you’re good to go. Don’t forget to tell your mother. And the pool boy. No untoward insinuation intended. 
Category: News; Feedback: No Comments
Tags: e-books, ebooks, free, publishing, subtle promo
[SuperMegaNet 3.5] doctor_cracker
Posted on March 2, 2010 by theo
There are voices surrounding me. I can’t see a thing, but it sounds like I’m in a moderately-sized room full of people. A lobby or parlor, maybe. Beta’s got his hands on my shoulders and is guiding me into a chair.
“Where are we?” I ask, feeling for the arm rests, easing myself in. “Some kind of free clinic?”
“It’s a secure proxy,” Beta answers. “doctor_cracker is a little OCD with his privacy.”
doctor_cracker? “We’re going to see someone named doctor_cracker?”
“Chill. That’s just his screen name. Speaking of which, you should know it’s screen names only while we’re here. Okay, l33t_master?”
“Okay.”
“All right. Wait here. I’m going to get us in the queue.”
As if I’m in any position to be wandering around by myself.
I lean back in my chair, cross my fingers and pray that Beta remembers to come back. It doesn’t occur to me that someone might notice my condition and ask questions until I hear a soft, low whistle coming from beside me.
“You a Wes Borland fan?” asks a male voice.
I don’t know who that is. “Why do you say that?”
“The contacts. You look like Wes Borland from Limp Bizkit.”
“They’re not contacts,” I reply, immediately regretting my honesty, but unable to wrangle my tongue before the words are out. “I…I had a little accident. New Eyes.”
“Oh.” The guy beside me goes quiet for a moment. “Shit. Well, look on the bright side. It could be worse.”
“How’s that?” How could it possibly be worse?
“I had a friend who tried Big Dick. Got himself up to eight inches, went to try it out on his girlfriend and the damned thing fell off, left him with the nastiest pussy you ever saw. Turns out that particular batch of Big Dick had been infected with a computer virus.”
Wow. That’s truly horrific. And yet it does make me feel better to know my penis is tucked safely between my legs and not laying on the floor, covered in voracious nanobots. I’ll have to remember that the next time I run into trouble.
Momentarily, Beta returns.
“Yo, l33t. I got the doc out of bed. Let’s go.”
I stand. Beta leads me several steps in one direction, stops me, does something with his free hand. I hear a mouse click—and off we go, out of the proxy, into doctor_cracker’s domicile. I can’t tell you what the place looks like, but I can tell you what it smells like: pizza boxes. Leftover pizza boxes.
“What’s up, cracker?” Beta says. He pats me on the back. “This is my friend, l33t_master.”
doctor_cracker sighs, snorts grumpily. Without returning Beta’s greeting he asks me, “You’ve been playing with corrective eye drops, haven’t you?”
I nod.
“Yeah. Um, okay. Thanks but no thanks, Beta. You and your friend can show yourselves out—”
“Don’t be like that, Doc,” Beta interrupts. “We’re supposed to be old pals, remember?”
“Friends or not, this is messy business, this nanotech stuff.”
“Which is why l33t needs your help. I mean, he can’t very well waltz over to the ER, can he? Not unless he wants his parents fined, his Internet connection cut.”
“And I could go to jail. You could be deleted. Shit, you especially should know the risks involved in associating with a nano-junkie.”
“He’s not a junkie, he just had a bad reaction. And it’s a free country. I’m not out to hurt anyone or hack any government servers. Fuck living in fear.”
doctor_cracker is starting to get worked up. He whispers loudly, “That’s all fine and dandy for you, you’ve gone virtual. But I—” (I can practically hear him jabbing his finger in the direction of a nearby hallway or staircase.) “—still have a life to live and a family to take care of, thank you very much!”
“Do this for me and I’ll get you the new Steely Dan album.”
doctor_cracker pauses, then says, “You’re bluffing.”
“I’m not.”
“No one’s got that—not even Steely Dan’s got that.”
“I know one of the engineers. He got me the files. FLAC. None of that MP3 bullshit.”
doctor_cracker keeps quiet for a good long while. Then he sighs again, and I can hear him moving away. “All right. Bring him down to my workshop.”
It’s slow and precarious work, but Beta guides me across the room and down a flight of stairs. Here, it smells like spray cleaner and wood chips. I’m seated on a hard chair; I can hear another chair or stool being dragged towards me. Beta lets go. I swallow hard, considering that if he and the doc were to ditch me here, I’d be lost forever.
“Tilt your head back,” doctor_cracker says, and lifts my chin. He flips a switch, and suddenly I can see vague shapes, a bright light—like a street lamp through a very thick fog. “Okay,” he says after a moment. “You want the good news or the bad news first?”
“Good news,” I tell him.
“Your internal eye structures are intact. The bad news is that your vitreous—the fluid filling your eyes—is all gunked up with dead nanobots. Probably terminated prematurely, before they could do a proper cleanup. Sort of like when you try to uninstall a shitty Windows program from your computer. You’ve got registry keys and discarded files everywhere. In this case, the nanobots left themselves unpacked.”
“Oh.”
“Basically, you’re not getting enough light to the backs of your eyes. Normally I’d give you some drops that would go in and flush out the excess bots, but I’m hesitant to do that since I don’t have a decent medical history on you. I don’t know if this is an allergic reaction kind of thing or if the drops you used were defective or what.”
Beta clicks his tongue. “I’m disappointed, Doc. All this equipment down here and you can’t do anything?”
“You didn’t let me finish,” doctor_cracker says. “Now, l33t, it’s not a permanent solution, as your eyes are still fucked up, and, penalty or no penalty for using illegal eye drops, you should be seen by an actual doctor…but it just so happens I’m a tinkerer. I can give you special contact lenses that’ll beam the necessary light to the backs of your eyes.”
“Bravo!” Beta cheers, clapping lightly. “You see, l33t? This is why I love the doc.”
I want to tell him that no, I don’t see—I’m flippin’ blind! Instead, I smile and try not to hope for the best.
Category: Fiction, SuperMegaNet; Feedback: 1 Comment
Tags: beta, blindness, blogfic, blook, doctor_cracker, netfic, supermeganet, theo, web fiction, webfic, webserial
On Being UnsubScribd
Posted on February 22, 2010 by jesse
Last week Scribd sent me a pair of take-down notices for posting PDFs of my own work (Heroes’ Day and Stories from the Steel Garden) to their site:
We have removed your [document titles and ID numbers here] because our text matching system determined that it was very similar to a work that has been marked as copyrighted and not permitted on Scribd.
The problem has since been taken care of, though it’s obvious online communities are stumbling over their own feet trying to find a middle ground between proper copyright and the DMCA. Clearly the HD / SFTSG removal was the result of an over-zealous copyright robot looking for genuine infringement. Still, I would have liked to have been contacted first, before my files were deleted and a misconduct notice posted to my Scribd page(s). Unfortunately, the current IP climate makes even a moment’s hesitation risky business. File-sharing Web sites—even legit ones, like Scribd—have to assume guilt until innocence is proven, lest they risk an expensive lawsuit by the likes of certain major corporations out to make a few extra bucks while protecting their IP. Kind of makes me wonder what the final solution will be. Copyright records requested up front, before material is uploaded, or a super-AI copyright bot named Infringinator that reviews your work at gunpoint?
Category: Journal; Feedback: 3 Comments
Tags: copyright, dmca, file-sharing, heroes' day, infringement, publishing, scribd, stories from the steel garden
[SuperMegaNet 3.4] A Way Out of the Darkness
Posted on February 13, 2010 by theo
I didn’t mean to freak Ernie out. Usually he’s so nonchalant about everything I guess I thought he’d have some whimsical angle about me losing my eyesight. I thought he’d make light of my situation so that I’d end up feeling almost silly about the whole thing, so that I could relax enough to go wake my parents and tell them what’s happened. Instead I just feel worse. Ernie had sounded so…scared. Like when you’re horsing around with your friends at the mall and one of you falls down the stairs and starts bleeding all over the floor in front of GameStop. Everyone in your group takes off running because they don’t want to have to stay and listen to the crying. They don’t want to get in trouble. And even though you know better, you leave too, because you’d much rather hear the story later than try to stop the bleeding yourself, possibly fuck it up so that your friend has to get his leg amputated at the hospital afterward. You know what I mean, right? That’s how I feel right now.
Except I can’t run away from myself.
And I have absolutely no clue how to get rid of the darkness surrounding me.
They say your sense of hearing becomes sharper when you’re blind. It’s true. I can hear everything now, every rustle, every whisper, the muffled clicks of my computer’s hard drive, the creak of my office chair beneath me. These are things I’ve heard before but never noticed. Their meaning now is momentous.
I sit still for a few minutes, listening closely for Mini-Theo. He’s probably hiding from me because he knows he’s gotten me in big trouble. After all, he was the one who insisted I use the New Eyes in the first place. Oh, why did I listen to him? He’s not even real…is he? I mean, did Jan really see him that day I brought him to school with me, or was it me imagining that he did—
—I’m grasping at tangents. I’m trying not to notice that my hands are trembling and my heart is racing. I’m burning up and yet not sweating. This is ridiculous. Why can’t I simply get up and go tell my parents? I could let it all out, then. I could just cry and sob while they get dressed, find their keys, take me out to the car; I could fall asleep in the backseat as they whisper reassuringly that everything is going to be all right. On waking I’d be in good hands, surrounded by doctors, specialists, people to make me feel better.
“But what about what happens after?” Mini-Theo asks softly.
I swivel in my seat, frown in the direction of his voice. “There you are. Traitor.”
“Me? A traitor? Hardly!”
“This whole thing was your idea.”
“I was just trying to get you to think and act more proactively. And if you want to get technical, yes, it was my suggestion to try the New Eyes—and it would’ve worked, too, if you hadn’t pissed your pants a whole two days later. The Old Eyes were your doing, not mine. But let’s not get off task here. My original question is still valid: What happens after?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lie.
“What happens when—if—the doctors fix your eyes and you’ve recovered well enough for your parents to ask you to explain yourself—”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“They’ll pity you, that’s what. They’ll use your weakness to dig up all the dirt on you, expose all the cracks and crevices of your facade. They’ll treat you like the twelve-year-old you really are.”
I want to swat at him, but I can’t see exactly where he is. And besides, he’s right. I hate being the needy kid, the fragile only child who’s afraid of everything and everyone. Blowing my cover story now would be suicide. But how do I keep this a secret? And, besides the blindness thing, how can I maintain the illusion that my noggin is improving, that my sessions with Chandelier are working, that I’m once again getting a full eight hours of sleep each night?
Beta’s got to know something. I mean, he’s figured out how to store his entire self on a server. Maybe there’s a chance he also knows how to bring sight to the blind.
My instinct is to reach for the mouse—duh, I can’t see. I start hitting the Tab key, trying to visualize in my head what the layout of my desktop is. It’s wishful thinking, though. There’s no way to know which buttons are active in which windows. Getting to Ernie’s had been easy the last time because his window had already been active from when he’d downloaded into my room. Now it’s all chance.
Tab.
“Beta?”
No answer.
Tab.
“Beta?”
Fumbling. A pissed off voice (not Beta’s) asking, “What the fuck?”
Good! At least I know I’m tabbing through my SMN buddy list (and not just through the icons on my desktop)!
Tab.
“Beta?”
Snoring, followed by a quick cough, the rustle of a blanket, Summer’s sleepy voice— “Theo? Are you still awake—have you kicked Beta out yet?”
Tab.
(Summer snores!)
I’m about to call out Beta’s name again when suddenly I feel the keyboard slipping out from beneath my hands.
“For Christ’s sake,” Mini-Theo grunts. “Let me do it.”
I hear him moving the mouse and pounding a few keys with his fists. It must be tedious, considering his diminutive size, but worth the wait, as in a moment I hear Beta’s voice coming through my speakers:
“Yo, little dude, what’s—holy fuck.”
Holy eff is right. “Oh, Beta, thank goodness! I need your help. I…I think my Old Eyes messed up my original eyes.”
“Yeah, I can see that. I…holy fuck.”
I can hear it in his voice: He’s never seen this before. He’s never talked to someone in the Five Percent Side-Effects Club, of which I’m a member.
It takes all my willpower not to burst into tears as I ask, “Can you do anything for me?”
Beta sighs. “Shit, no way. I’m just a programmer—nanotech is programming and biology and, in your case, ophthalmology.”
“Oh.” Well, that settles it. Dark glasses and a cane for me—
“But I might know someone who can help you.”
My hopes do a cautious about turn. “Yeah?”
“I have to warn you, though, he’s an old dude. He gets grumpy when people wake him up in the middle of the night.”
“I’ll take that chance,” I say.
Category: Fiction, SuperMegaNet; Feedback: 1 Comment
Tags: beta, blindness, blogfic, blook, netfic, summer, supermeganet, theo, web fiction, webfic, webserial
[SuperMegaNet 3.3] Of Cabaret Crackers and Hamster Eyes
Posted on February 1, 2010 by ernie
In case you haven’t noticed, I have a slight weight problem. No, it’s true. I’ve come to terms with it, I accept it—so why can’t my grandparents do the same? Why do they have to meddle? Why do they insist on trying to fit me into their own ridiculous set of standards? And after they’ve been doing so well these past few days, keeping off my back, living their own boring lives and letting me live mine. We had an unspoken truce—then we have dinner last night, and everything goes to hell just because I bust my shirt while reaching for the mashed potatoes. Just because, in said busting process, one of my shirt buttons happens to fly across the table and hit my gramps in the forehead.
(Don’t laugh. I’m sure at some point in your life you’ve busted a seam or lost a button at the dinner table while reaching for your second or third helping. It can happen to anyone!)
Anyway, my grandparents both set their forks down and give me the third degree in their quiet, restrained old-farts way. Gramps asks me if I think I’ve had a little too much to eat; Grams asks if I’ve taken a look at the gym brochure she left outside my bedroom door the other day; both give me dirty looks when I say, “Oh, my God. I’m fine. You’re both overreacting. Now, what’s for dessert?”
Grams quietly gets up from the table, goes into the kitchen, comes back a few minutes later with a plate of Cabaret crackers. Cabaret crackers! Have you ever had those? You need a whole box just to get the impression of flavor!
Naturally, I push the crackers aside and get up, heading for the kitchen. We bought a box of chocolate chip ice cream on Wednesday, and I plan on making a sizable dent in it.
“Don’t bother,” Grams says, in the coldest, quietest tone you ever heard. “I’ve put the lock back on the fridge.”
Can you believe that? She’s put the lock back on already! It’s only been off since Tuesday! What the hell? Fucking tease!
I yell at her that it’s unfair, but she just takes a sip of water, tells me I haven’t been excused from the table yet.
I sit back down. The three Cabarets are chilling there on their plate and looking as unappetizing as cardboard coasters. I try one, just to humor my grandparents, and let me tell you, they’re worse than they look. They’re so bad my eyes tear up. Throwing my head back, I scream, “It’s like biting into nothingness!” I down the rest of the crackers, each one dissolving almost as soon as it hits my tongue. “Nothingness!” I wail.
In spite of my pain, my grandparents ignore me and start to clear the table. Gramps tells me to finish my homework, take my shower—so I think fine, I’ll just hit up Becky later and we’ll share a bag of Doritos or half a pound cake or whatever. Turns out she’s in on it too. Either that, or she’s got the worst timing ever. When I message her with my suggestion, she smiles at me, scrunches up her freckled nose, and says, “I’m glad you messaged me, Ernie. I’ve decided that I’m going on a diet with you.”
“Wait, I’m not on a diet,” I say—and then it hits me: She wants me to go on a diet with her.
You’ve got to be jerking me off.
I sit there at my desk for a while, alone in my bedroom, isolated from everything and everyone I hold dear. No fridge, no food, no sugar to level my nerves—and Becky going on and on about how she thinks she can drop fifty pounds so that she can fit into some stupid pair of jeans. Eventually I just close her SMN window (though I can still hear her voice) and bring up Theo’s. Normally, he wouldn’t be my first choice as far as snacks are concerned, but Eva’s never at her computer anymore, and Jan’s too poor to afford any good treats. Lucky me, though: Theo’s in one of his moods, worried about beauty sleep or something.
That was yesterday night. Now it’s Saturday morning, five or six hours away from dawn, and I haven’t had my usual midnight snack. Hunger is a terrible thing. Psychological hunger is even worse. I’m all twitchy and hyper; I can’t think, I can’t game, I can’t fall asleep. Fucking grandparents.
I’m going to message Becky back. Maybe she’ll let me help her clear out her fridge to make space for all the carrots and broccoli she’s going to be starving herself on. I start to bring up her SMN window, but freeze in mid-click when something rustles behind me. I glance over my shoulder—and spot Theo, fully dressed, stumbling over a pile of my clothes. He goes down hard, landing face-first on the floor, arms and legs splayed every which way.
Hmf.
“Have you come to apologize?” I ask, swiveling around in my chair, folding my arms—and nearly shitting myself when Theo rolls onto all fours, looks in my direction.
He’s got black eyes.
Like, his pupils have enlarged and swallowed up his irises, which have, in turn, swallowed up his eye whites.
“Holy shit,” I breathe, jumping out of my chair. “Nice, er, contact lenses.”
“What do you mean?” he asks, whimpering, carefully getting to his feet and reaching out with his arms like he’s blind.
“Your eyes,” I say. “They’re all black…like a hamster’s.”
Theo starts feeling his face with his hands. “Oh, no! What else?”
“I don’t know. Look in the fucking mirror.”
“Damn it, Ernie! Don’t you think I would if I could?”
Oh, shit. He is blind.
And he’s just cussed for the second or third time in his whole life.
I step forward a little, wave my hand in front of his face. “Really? You can’t see at all?”
“Just…shapes. Lights, sometimes.”
“Does it hurt?”
He frowns, swallows. “No. See, I…I got New Eyes—”
“New Eyes? You got New Eyes?”
“Shut up and let me finish!”
I can’t believe Theo—little, adorable, innocent, straight-edge, New Age, vegetarian Theo—got New Eyes!
“I got some Old Eyes to remove them,” he continues, “because I didn’t tell my parents about the New ones, and I was worried about what they’d say when they found out. But instead of giving me back my old vision, the Old Eyes made me go blind.” He settles back down onto the floor, sitting cross-legged. He puts his head in his hands and starts crying. “What am I going to do, Ernie?”
“Well,” I say, trying to sound like I’m putting a helpful suggestion into words when really I’ve got absolutely nothing. “It’s Saturday morning. You, um, can probably sleep in a while. Maybe the effects will wear off.”
“And if they don’t? If I’m stuck like this for good?”
“Then…” I trail off. What the fuck am I supposed to say? I don’t know shit about New Eyes except that those old TV commercials had some seriously stacked babes in them. What can I possibly tell Theo that will make him feel the least bit better about going blind?
I look at him, and he’s crying and shaking all over. I guess I’m kind of flattered that he came to me for help, but now that he’s here I don’t know what the fuck to do. I’ve never seen this before in real life. On TV, yes, but never like this. I want to run from the room and hide in a closet or something; I want to cover my ears and hum really loud—I want to pretend I don’t know that my friend is in deep trouble and I haven’t a clue how to help him.
Eventually I say, “You should go wake up your parents, get to a hospital or something.”
Theo looks up, looks totally spooked. “I can’t tell my parents. No way.”
“Why not?”
“Are you kidding? They trust me too much.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Come on, how many twelve-year-olds do you know who have their own business?” Theo shakes his head. “Everything in the world works because of constant pressure between forces that balance themselves out. My world exists because I’m careful about everything I do. I plan ahead, I follow through on promises. My parents let me make my own money, they give me total privacy because they trust me not to do stupid things with their trust. No hacking into government sites, no gambling, no porn or sex meet-ups or cybering. No giving in to those opposing pressures. If they find out I’ve lost my sight because of something I got off the Internet, that’ll be it. Everything will fall apart. They’ll treat me no better than your average brat.”
My sarcasm reflex goes off without warning. “You say that like you’re above all the rest of us poor pubescent slobs.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant I actually do something with myself after school—wait, no, I don’t mean it like that, either—damn it, Ernie, you know what I mean! I can’t let my parents know what’s happened because it means I’ll get in trouble!”
“Um, they’re kind of going to find out,” I say, “when you start running into walls and falling down stairs.”
“Ugh, I know.” Theo starts nibbling on his lower lip. He looks angry all of the sudden. “This is all Beta’s fault.”
“Beta? You mean the metro-Asian dude living in your bedroom?”
Theo nods in my general direction. “Yeah. He’s the one who gave me the New Eyes in the first place.”
“I hate to be the one to remind you of this, but you were the one who actually used them.”
“I know,” Theo says, looking like he’s about to start crying again.
“Why’d you want New Eyes, anyway?” I ask, hoping to catch him before he does.
“Um…no reason.”
“Oh, so you woke up one morning and thought to yourself, ‘Fuck it, I’m bored. I’m going to mess around with some eye drops?’”
Theo sighs. “This is going to sound stupid, but…I wanted Eva to notice me. I thought…I thought without my dumb ol’ glasses getting in the way she might stop paying so much attention to Jan and start paying more attention to me.”
I should’ve known. In retrospect it’s perfectly obvious why Theo would ever do something that might unsettle his perfectly meticulous little life: he has a hard-on for Eva.
“Oh, that,” I say nonchalantly.
Theo stops crying. He blinks at me, sightless. “You don’t sound surprised.”
“Well, it’s not like I didn’t know.”
“Really? You knew?”
Poor naïve Theo. It’s been written all over him since that first day in Thrill-Kill’s office. The way he looked at Eva, hung on her every word—if there’d been any chance of him not getting expelled, he so would’ve whipped out his dick and plowed the shit out of her right there on the desk. Repeatedly. “I’m very perceptive despite my fatness. You like ponytails, she’s got one. You like small and petite, she’s like a little pixie minus the fairy dust. Sure, she’s got the bug eyes, but she’s also got the firmest little handful-tight-bottom I’ve ever seen.”
Theo narrows his hamster eyes.
“Hey,” I say, spreading my hands, “I’m not the one you have to worry about. Bug Eyes is totally not my type from the neck up. Which would make things awkward before and after sex. No, it’s Jan you should be worrying about.”
“But Jan doesn’t like her—”
“Doesn’t matter! She likes him. Eva looks at him like you look at her.”
I think I’m getting through to him. For a sec something like recognition flashes across his face—but then he just shakes his head. “Why are we even having this conversation? I’m blind.”
“You never know,” I tell him. “Some chicks dig blind guys, or guys without legs, or guys—”
“Ernie, stop. You’re not making me feel any better.”
“Sorry.” Back to the awkwardness.
The two of us are quiet for a while. I think we’re trying feel the right way about what’s happened, if that makes any sense. I know my tangent on Eva is proof that I’m in some kind of shock. It’s a weird feeling, not knowing how you’re feeling.
After a while Theo gets to his feet, wobbles, reaches out with his arms. “Where’s your computer?”
“Over here,” I say, pointing (my gesture is, of course, completely useless under the circumstances). “Why?”
“I’m going home. Send me home.”
“What are you going to do?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
I shrug. I know I should probably say something else to make him feel better, or maybe I should offer to go back to his place with him, offer my support—but, honestly, I just want him out and on his away. I know that sounds fucked up, but I’ve never had to watch someone suffer before.
There’s a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I don’t like it.
Category: Fiction, SuperMegaNet; Feedback: 4 Comments
Tags: blindness, blogfic, blook, ernie, netfic, supermeganet, theo, web fiction, webfic, webserial
Suggested by The New Podler: A Self-Publishing Symposium
Posted on January 30, 2010 by jesse
The New Podler is gathering opinions from a variety of authors regarding the current state of self-publishing. My hopelessly optimistic answers follow below. What are your thoughts?
How does self-publishing differ from traditional publishing?
Self-publishing is either liberation or self-indulgence depending on how you go about it. There’s a dubious association with instant gratification. The core benefits: you retain all control over your material, you keep a bigger chunk of the profits, and, oftentimes, you’re able to forge a more personal relationship with your audience. The drawbacks (which, depending on your motivation, can also be benefits): you must be your own publisher, editing, formatting, creating effective packaging; you must be your own marketing team—you must be willing and able to spend a portion of your time as a door-to-door salesperson of sorts. It’s a lesson in patience and refinement, though not such an added burden considering that many traditional publishers these days require you to have a marketing plan anyway.
Regarding availability, the gap is narrowing between books sold off of a book shelf and those sold via a web site. Chain book stores are steadily closing, and while you still have Barnes & Noble, Borders, and the independents, these stores only have so much physical space. There are legions of capable, entertaining “mid-list” authors whose books are not often included between Dan Brown and Stephenie Meyer. Selling through the Internet is a way to defeat the problem of limited shelf space. It also happens to be the most accessible method available to self-publishers.
Do self-published book review blogs help to raise the reader awareness of self-published books?
Absolutely. Legitimate, critical self-publishing review blogs (like good traditional-publishing review blogs) point out the blemishes as well as the dimples. For serious self-publishers, this is what you want if you have a good, solid book that doesn’t carry the reputation of being self-published because it can’t stand on its own, because it can’t find traditional publication. It should never be assumed that getting reviewed at a self-publishing review blog is easier than getting reviewed elsewhere.
How do you respond to the following statement: “Self-publishing is not a serious way to get one’s work into print now and never will be.”
I daresay a more accurate version of the above statement is: “Self-indulgence is not a serious way to get one’s work into print now and never will be.” If you’re not ready, if you’re rushed, then it will come across to reviewers and readers alike. With self-publishing, there’s no editor or agent acting as a stop-gap. What I’m finding as I go along is that it’s not so much the self-publishing model itself that needs to clean up its image as it is the ability of self-publishing authors to effectively promote their work. It’s all in how you do it.
Has the golden age of self-publishing already passed or is it yet to come?
Bigger and better things are yet to come. I’m convinced the traditional publishing industry had to stumble before a real awareness was raised regarding alternative book markets. The technology had to improve to a point where anyone with a computer and Internet connection could feasibly create and publish. Book stores, whether they’re selling print or digital copies, will continue to be country clubs for the elites, which is perfectly fine. Many authors are bestsellers for a reason: they’re very good at what they do. But they’re not the only kids on the block. Self-published books—good ones—will continue to fill the gaps. Eventually, when (and I do think it’s a matter of when and not if) e-books become the norm, everyone will be selling via digital download. The old notion that you find professional authors’ books on store shelves, and amateurs’ online will hold much less water.
What about the challenges posed to the self-published writer by having to promote and edit his or her own book?
This is something many traditional publishers are requiring of their authors due to tighter budgets. In the past, you could, to some extent, get away with merely sending in your manuscript and letting the publishing team handle the rest. You only needed to be on hand for signings or interviews. Now you need a marketing plan to go along with your synopsis and sample chapters. You need to convince your would-be publisher that you’re a hustler. You need an agent. And even then, a contract with a traditional publisher comes with no guarantees. Yes, depending on your contract, you’ll have access to physical store shelves, but you still have to work your butt off promoting yourself. You’re selling more books, but getting a smaller percentage of each sale. Not a bad thing. On the DIY side, you’re selling fewer books, but keeping more of the profits; you’re having to manage all your book sales yourself, whether through your web site or via consignment agreements with local book shop owners. All stereotypes aside, both traditional and self-publishing endeavors involve a lot of work. The latter is more easily attainable, whether as your sole method of publishing or as a hook to attract a mainstream publisher.
Why is it that a self-published author has yet to emerge into national recognition as a self-published author? (As opposed to being given a mainstream publishing contract after a self-published book attracts attention.)
I think a lot of it is the social stigma of someone coming up to you and saying, “My latest novel is great! You should read it!” People don’t like it when other people toot their own horn—but they don’t mind as much when you toot someone else’s horn. With self-publishing, this is something of a challenge. You have to promote yourself without sounding like a greasy car salesman, you have to get other people to blurb you and promote you. It can be exceedingly difficult, because you’re not working with a paid staff, you’re working with friends, other self-published authors, family members. They all have their own lives to worry about.
Also, at this point in time, traditional publishers still carry a lot of clout. A contract with Random House can do wonders for your literary presence. I’ve seen numerous instances where an author will start a series of books with a mainstream publisher, and then finish the series at a smaller press, or under his / her own imprint. Whatever politics are going on behind the scenes, an audience has gathered, and they’ll follow if the books are good. Bands do it all the time.
Has the experience of self-publishing changed the way you write? (If you have self-published.)
I started self-publishing because the small presses I’d been with closed up shop, and I felt my work up until that point was still relevant enough to warrant some kind of distribution. With new material I’ve found that I’ve become more daring. After all, I’m no longer having to adhere to a publisher’s tastes or guidelines. I’ve been able to stretch out a little, blending genres and styles. I’ve already had to go it alone, and so I’m not worried about falling from grace, so to speak. At the same time, though, I’ve had to make sure I don’t get too lax. Proofreaders are still important (before the publishing process!), honest opinions still matter, and it’s still my main goal each time around to write the best book I can.
There you go. As I mentioned at the start, I’m optimistic when it comes to the DIY movement. What’s happening now in the publishing world is sort of like what was happening fifteen years ago during the rise of the commercial Internet. And MP3s a short while after. I mean, who texted back then? Who ditched their CD collection in favor of MP3s? Nowadays, everyone texts (and sexts), everyone listens to MP3s—and, I wager, in a few more years, (nearly) everyone will be reading e-books instead of paperbacks. We just need that iTunes-like revolution. Maybe it’s the Kindle or the nook or some other fancied contraption that makes it as easy to squeeze 10,000 books onto a hand-held reader as it is to fit your entire music collection onto a handy portable player. Maybe it’s the mass production of such devices that lowers prices and suddenly makes not having one a social embarrassment (like with the iPod). Maybe it’s the passing of new environmental laws that restrict paper production. Whatever. The day will come. Are you looking forward to it, or do you already have your “Physical, not digital!” protest sign ready?
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Tags: diy, indie, interview, pod, podler, publishing, small press, symposium
TV Won’t Steal Your Vision After All
Posted on January 28, 2010 by jesse
A recent Scientific American article offers up some insight regarding that modern-day question of the ages: Does TV ruin your eyesight? I know until I hit my mid-teens, my mother was always yelling at me and my brother to “sit back from the TV!” while we played the shit out of Metroid. No doubt her logic was motivated to some degree by the likes of this:
…back in the 1960s General Electric sold some new-fangled color TV sets that emitted excessive amounts of radiation—as much as 100,000 times more than federal health officials considered safe. GE quickly recalled and repaired the faulty TVs, but the stigma lingers to this day.
Nice to know, even though those old-school CRT televisions and computer monitors used to drive me nuts with their refresh rate / flicker. I had to limit my exposure to a few hours a day or else I got headaches. LCDs have removed this problem, but have, of course, opened the door to another: extended comfort while remaining completely sedentary during tantric coding sessions. Before LCDs I had to get up and walk around, do other things out of necessity; now it’s just a prudent suggestion if I want to keep the ol’ muscles from atrophying.
I do agree with the part of the article that mentions TV as not causing nearsightedness, but rather drawing attention to a person’s pre-existing vision problems. That’s how it worked for me. I started losing my 20/20 at an early age, but it wasn’t until I started playing video games habitually that I realized I couldn’t see Mario or Simon Belmont on the TV screen unless I was pressing my nose against the glass.
That’s still no excuse for inactivity. The basic theme here is moderation. It’s been said that the longest-lived residents of the world (the healthy ones, that is) practice lifestyles that involve frequent, low-impact activities distributed throughout each day—as opposed to the typical Western norm of lengthy office chair vigils broken only by occasional trips to the gym. As annoyingly cliche as the saying is, “use it or lose it” just about sums it up. But, then, our parents already knew that long ago, back when they used to tell us to put down our effing gamepads and play outside for a while.
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Tags: 20-20, health, outlook, science, technology, tv
Regarding Awkward Poses Performed in Skin-Tight Pants…
Posted on January 27, 2010 by jesse
This gem is from page 3 (towards the bottom) of a thread over at the TrekBBS forum:
I swear I only found this by happenstance, and not because I routinely hang out on Star Trek boards where the members post cheesy photo manips of Kirk and Spock as pimps. I’m tempted to start, though. Some of those user avatars are absolute winners.
Regarding the “awkward poses performed in skin-tight pants” thing: Shatner’s pose is actually somewhat close to how I imagined Theo in “Carjam.” You know, when he downloaded into the backseat of Mrs. Flammer’s car and unwittingly enacted the flexibility of an aerobics instructor without having stretched first? Yeah, it was like that, without the tight pants or go-go boots, yes—but I bet Theo’s expression was the same.
Category: Journal; Feedback: 3 Comments
Tags: geekdom, humor, randomness, star trek, subtle promo
Steve Ballmer Signs MacBook
Posted on January 23, 2010 by jesse
The above is what happened to one student’s MacBook during Steve Ballmer’s recent Trevacca Nazarene University visit. It should be noted that the MacBook wasn’t entirely Apple:
…the machine was running Windows—we’ve yet to find out what would happen if Ballmer was asked to sign a MacBook running OS X.
Maybe it would be something like what happened to the second, less-fortunate student who asked for a MacBook signature:
Personally, I would’ve had Ballmer autograph my retail copy of Windows ME—or does the statute of limitations apply?
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Tags: geekdom, humor, mac, randomness, windows
The Topless Bikini
Posted on January 18, 2010 by jesse
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a staunch supporter of the “-less” suffix when added to either the top or the bottom of a woman’s bikini. But can a topless bathing suit really be called a “suit” at this point? Isn’t it just…briefs?
According to the film short, the topless suit is advertised as “Half the Bikini, Twice as Sexy.”
As this is being touted by Victoria’s Secret, I’d say the slogan should be more like, “Half the Bikini, Twice the Price.” I can imagine the department store conversation between a guy and his girl:
“What do you think?” asks the girl, holding up the topless against herself.
“It looks nice,” says the guy, “but where’s the top?”
“There is no top. It’s a topless bathing suit.”
“Hm.” The guy glances at the price tag. “It’s kind of pricey for what it is.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s only half a bathing suit, now isn’t it?”
“No it isn’t,” says the girl.
The guy frowns, takes a two-piece bikini off a nearby rack, holds it up. “See this?” He removes the top from the hanger, tosses it away. “Half the price and just as stylish.”
“That’s not stylish,” the girl says, scowling. “That’s being cheap and buying only half a bikini.”
“That’s half a bikini!” the guy insists, jabbing his finger at her.
“No, it’s a complete suit. It’s just topless.”
“Exactly—half!”
The girl shakes her head. “‘Half’ is taking a complete suit and throwing away the top to give it the appearance of a topless.”
“Ugh,” sighs the guy. “You’re ridiculous, you know that?”
“And you’re no fun,” sighs the girl. She sets the topless back on the rack and leaves the aisle.
The guy watches her go, and it dawns on him that she’d been about to buy a topless bathing suit.
Shit, he thinks to himself. Should’ve just kept my mouth shut.
On a semi-related note, I wonder, considering the apparent bikini fabric shortage plaguing the women’s fashion industry, if this means Calvin Klein will be putting out a bottomless swim suit for men?
Category: Journal; Feedback: 2 Comments
Tags: bikini, boobs, cool, fashion, humor, randomness, swimwear, topless
