Hey Folks,
Well, this is a long post.
Awhile back, Nate Hoffelder of The Digital Reader mentioned that soon Google will begin prioritizing sites (in search results) that are secure (https vs. http). As a result, I was going to spend part of the day today converting my main website over to https.
But the more I read, the more I suspect SSL is primarily a necessity for monetized sites, which mine is not. Everything on the site itself is free, and anything that can be ordered goes through a secure site elsewhere: Amazon, B&N, PayPal, etc.
The cost involved in installing SSL myself isn’t all that great, but it’s a seemingly involved process that would take a professional web designer two to three hours. So it would probably take me three to four hours.
Then there’s the fact that my site still hasn’t migrated from my web host (ehost) to the new host (JustHost), to which ehost sold out. Therefore an SSL certificate is not currently available to me, so I can put off this process for awhile.
So the reason I wrote all of that: Does anyone out there have knowledge of SSL and converting a site from http to https? If so, please email me.
Topic: Print (Paper) Books (a word to the wise)
If it’s important to you to put your books out in paper, you have to do so via POD (print on demand) unless you are extremely well-heeled and can afford to send an order (10,000 books or so) to an offset printer.
My choice for POD is CreateSpace. Always has been, always will be. Yes, it’s an Amazon company. I don’t care.
I pay a designer, Kat MaGee at https://daringcreativedesigns.com/ to turn my covers into paper covers and to design the interior layout of my paper books. It costs me $100 per book. It’s an investment, and it’s my only cost. CreateSpace costs nothing. In fact, Kat even uploads them to my CS account for me.
Awhile back, a friend told me he’d heard a speaker say “in public” that books published through CreateSpace are not available at Barnes & Noble and other brick and mortar stores. My poor BS Detector almost exploded.
That is a bald-faced lie. So if you hear that, disregard it.
To make your CreateSpace books available for order by brick and mortar stores, you have only to select Expanded Distribution on CreateSpace. You should also set the price so that you earn at least a $2.00 royalty. (Yeah, that’s a measly two dollars. Not a typo.)
The price will seem high to you, but that’s because you devalue your own work and you’re comparing trade paperbacks (your books) to mass produced mass-market paperbacks.
You can set your price too low, then order a trunkload and sell them yourself, but then you aren’t concerned about whether they’re in B&N anyway. So why not set the price to get Extended Distribution and then sell the ones in your trunk at a “substantial discount” (or not)?
Anyway, that speaker also recommended a printer called Ingram-Spark. That tells me she has an iron in the fire. A dog in the hunt. Maybe stock options. Hey, she might even own the place.
At any rate, Ingram-Spark is NOT affiliated with Ingram, the distributor, and shame on them for leaching off the Ingram name. I have a feeling it’s just another scam aimed at writers.
Now, Ingram (the distributor) DOES have a printer in its family. The name of that printer is Lightning Source.
Lightning Source does pretty much the same thing CreateSpace does, but they charge a fee. CreateSpace does not. (CS does have paid services of which you can avail yourself, but there’s no reason to.)
So if you want to publish your books to paper, I strongly recommend using CreateSpace. If you want to pay money to have your books published to paper, use Lightning Source.
CreateSpace puts out an excellent product. In my case, I publish to paper only so shoppers at Amazon, B&N, etc. can see and compare the print price with the ebook price. In other words, I use print books to drive ebook sales.
This sort of thing really annoys me. When someone sets herself up as an authority figure and then delivers intentionally misleading information, it makes me wanna chew wheels and spit nails.
If I ever attend an event where she says that in public, you can bet I will call her on it. Also in public.
A Brief Factoid
To earn only $1,000,000 (ONE million dollars) in a single year, you would have to work 365 days, 16 hours per day (that 5840 hours). And you would have to earn $171.23 per hour.
Think about that the next time you hear a professional baseball player gripe about the “long season” or the next time you see an NFL or NBA player disrespect the very nation that enables them to be so rich.
(And we can’t really cite “Freedom of Speech” because they aren’t allowed to speak their mind on myriad other topics.)
***
Re my WIP, I don’t have the patience I used to have. My strongest urge is to simply drop it and move on to something else.
But I really like the main character.
So this morning I’m going to review some notes, then read over the WIP from the beginning and try to discern where it took a wrong turn into a dead end.
My main problem is that I’m not trusting the process. Been there before. I’m allowing things I’ve learned recently (conscious mind) to leach into the writing so that I’m watching for those things (again, conscious mind) and allowing the story to grind to a halt as I add them.
So there y’go. Again I find myself wanting to get back to the basics of writing. Writing a story like this is so much fun that grinding to a halt is really annoying.
So that will be today. It’s currently 6:15 a.m. We’ll see how the day turns out.
***
Well, by 10 (while doing several other things) I went back through some of the videos of a recent workshop and even added to my notes, then went over the more pertinent notes.
I also wrote a topic for tomorrow (I’ll count those words tomorrow) and mentioned I’m going to switch back over to my dedicated writing computer and why.
I made the switch today, then had to wait for Dropbox to sync about a b’jillion files. Now it’s almost 1 p.m. and I’m just about to begin reading over my WIP to see where it slipped off the deep end.
Oh wow. I found the problem. Major, major critical mind stuff. So I’m cutting a lot. And I don’t really care. I’m just glad I was able to save this WIP and especially this character. (grin)
I’m also writing a little, but I doubt the new stuff will add up to more than a few hundred words. It’ll take a couple more hours to finish going over this, and that’s about all the time I have left in the day.
Okay, so officially I’m calling today a nonwriting day. I’ll include any new writing with tomorrow’s count.
UPDATE: I wrote a lot more than I thought I would, considering. I’ve amended the totals below. (grin)
See you then.
Of Interest
To stir thought, see “What’s the Best Way…?” at https://the-digital-reader.com/2017/10/03/whats-best-way-create-distraction-free-writing-environment/.
See “Found: A Lost Dictionary of Slang…” at http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/anthony-burgess-slang-dictionary. I started a dictionary myself years ago and have added to it ever since, one akin to Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary.
From Space.com, see “Best Space Books and Sci-Fi” at https://www.space.com/28973-best-space-books.html. They have five separate lists, including one of the best SF. I’m not on it. Oh darn. (grin) But the four nonfiction lists look pretty good. I added four new links to my website that begin with “Books” under Writers’ Resources.
Two of Dean’s posts made the cut today. See “Novel Structure Workshop Announced” at https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/novel-structure-workshop-announced/ and “One Time Science Fiction Cover Branding Workshop” at https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/one-time-science-fiction-cover-branding-workshop/.
Fiction Words: 1840
Nonfiction Words: 1320 (Journal)
So total words for the day: 1320
Writing of “Pulp Novel 5” (a Stern Richards novel)
Day 1…… 1080 words. Total words to date…… 1080
Day 2…… 2167 words. Total words to date…… 3247
Day 3…… 1370 words. Total words to date…… 4617
Day 4…… 1840 words. Total words to date…… 6457
Total fiction words for the month……… 8682
Total fiction words for the year………… 442828
Total nonfiction words for the month… 2980
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 155663
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 598491
The Daily Journal blog streak……………………………………… 675 days
Calendar Year 2017 Novels to Date………………………… 9
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)………………………………………… 27
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)……………………………………… 4
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……………………………… 182