Feeling inept without my Macbook

My Macbook Air was making an odd, straining, whirring noise, like the hard drive was protesting being worked so much. You'll have to force my clawed hands to scrape against these brick walls if you want another file written. My hubby took it to the Apple Store in Santa Rosa for repair and they're holding it hostage... I mean, storing it... until probably Tuesday when the part "should" come in.

There is a large blank spot on my desk now. My major writing tool is missing and I am forced to use the PC in the living room, which is where I do most of the business work for Medusa's Muse anyway, so it shouldn't be that big of a deal. But it is. I cannot work on my novel here. I can barely work on my blog. This is the desk where I do the bookkeeping and inventory for my press, not where I feel creative.

The tools we choose to help us create become a part of us. I am attached to the feel and sound of my keyboard as I type, the angle of the screen, the particular glare of the desk top as I work. I love how light my computer is, how portable and sturdy, how its shiny metallic surface gleams when the sun pours onto my desk in the late morning.

My Macbook air was a Christmas gift from my hubby last year and I'm saddened it already needs work; granted, it was a refurb (no way could we afford a new one). I'm also surprised at how attached I am to it, like it's a new car or my favorite pair of comfortable shoes. I don't usually get this attached to things, but I am in love with my Macbook, loving the furtive glances of laptop users as I whip out my ultralight in the cafe and don't even bother plugging it in. I can type for over three hours just on the battery. Yep, Dell laptop users, go ahead and sulk in jealousy.

To add insult to injury I've caught the flu. I can't lie in bed with my Macbook and surf the net or work on a short story. Nope, I'm forced to sit up at the PC Tower to work on my blog.

Perhaps this is revenge of the Dell laptop genie. I shouldn't have gloated so much.

The Marketing My Book More Effectively Challenge - Amazon.com

The majority of the books sold by Medusa's Muse are sold via Amazon.com, so on day one of my marketing my book more effectively challenge, I focused there. I quickly discovered that Amazon is still the mysterious, controlling behemoth it appeared to be when I first started publishing books two years ago. I couldn't find a how-to or any kind of guide, so I updated my profile by trial and error.

After signing in, I clicked on "Terena's Amazon.com," then selected my profile. I uploaded a photo of me from the the What You Need to Know to be a Pro photo shoot, one of the top three we debated to be on the cover of the book, but wasn't the one we chose. I updated my bio and interests, added a list of favorites, and wrote a couple of reviews. but then I realized that although updating my profile was good to do, none of the information was appearing on my book page. Why am I spending all this time updating a profile that is basically there just to show off my reviews?

I noticed on Pete Masterson's page (I reviewed his book, Book Production and Design, which is fabulous, btw) there was a link to an Author Page. His was blank, so I went to my friend Jody Gerhman's Amazon page for her novel, Tart (also a fabulous book) and clicked on her Author Page. Scrolling down her page I found the link to make my own author page.

The process was quick and easy, but it takes up to 7 days for the profile to be "verified," so I can't post the link to my author profile yet. When it's finished, I'll let you know. This is a beta feature, which means it's new and may still have some kinks, so I'll also let you know how the feature is working and what problems I run into. One problem I found was that Amazon wouldn't let me use the word "ass" in my bio. Instead, I had to write the title of the punk book as "Punk Rock Saved my A**." I wonder how much of an issue it will be when the book launches.

Lastly, I contacted Amazon to upload text for the "search inside" feature, and requested more information about allowing my books to become Kindle books. We'll see how that process goes.

The next phase of the marketing on Amazon challenge is to post reviews of every single book I listed in the resource guide of What You Need to Know to be a Pro as well as the publishers/writers who provided advice in the book. This could take a while, and I already sacrificed writing time for navigating Amazon. But as my muse said, why did I publish my book if I didn't plan on selling any copies?

A middle-aged Emily the Strange

This Halloween I had class, so my husband Rick decided to join me in San Fran while my daughter's bio dad stayed with her at home. They went trick-or-treating and had a nice, long visit, which was good because she doesn't get to see him often. Rick rode the motorcycle down to The City which meant we could tool around on Halloween on the bike, rather than fighting for parking with the mini-van.

After class on Halloween, Rick and I went out to dinner then returned to our friend's apartment so I could put on my costume. I decided to be Emily the Strange, one of my favorite characters. When I was 12 I was just as dark and sullen, so I have a soft spot for that nihilistic child. With a long black wig, darkened eyebrows I shaped downwards to give me that angry-child look, and black lipstick, I embraced my inner goth-girl. Unfortunately all that black made me look as haggard and sleep-deprived as I feel. Whatever. I pulled on my Doc Martins and my "seeing is disbelieving" t-shirt and declared "I'm Emily the Strange at middle age."

We sped across town on the motorcycle under a moon that was just on the edge of full. Mist poured in from the ocean and I shivered a little in my black leather jacket. The sidewalks were filled with people dressed up in silly and seductive costumes, and the closer we got to Market street, the drunker the people seemed. I felt a rush of euphoria, a tingle of freedom. I was on the back of a motorcycle holding on to the man I loved in the city I loved and for one night I was free. No child to tend, no phone calls to make, no dishes to wash. I am Emily the Strange and the night is my friend.

A friend of ours is in a Sisters of Mercy tribute band called The Reptile House and that night they were playing at a bar called Annie's on Folsom street. We parked the bike and went to the door to pay the cover. $7.00, or $5.00 in costume. Cool. I handed him my $5.00 just as he said, "Seven."

"I thought it was five in costume."

"Yeah."

"I'm in costume."

He looked me over closely, then recognized I was wearing a wig. "Okay, five."

When I walked into the bar I realized dressing up like an iconic goth chick wasn't exactly a great costume to wear to a punk bar on goth night. As I looked around I saw many people dressed in black with long black hair and black lipstick, only they weren't in costume. This was what they wear out, what I used to wear out before I was old enough to get into bars legally (but I managed to). I laughed. Rick said, "I told you."

Whatever. He bought me a saki (I LOVE Annie's because they serve saki) and we found our friend who was about to play drums in the first band, a tribute to Souxie and the Banshees. The lead singer had a bad cold so sounded terrible but had good energy, and the musicians were great. Dancing in the front row, I sipped my little bottle of saki and fell into the music. I have never outgrown my love for goth music and I felt that euphoric rush of freedom again.

That feeling was quickly followed by the stupefying realization that I'm getting old. This was the first time I'd been to a tribute show for a band I listened to when I was young and the understanding that I was that goth girl 20 years ago was stunning. It's all going too fast; I'm not ready to be middle aged. I just figured out who I am and what is important to me and it's too late to go back and start again. Can I please have a little more time?

More friends arrived, both parents who'd also managed to take the night off from kid duty. We drank and chatted and listened to the music and slowly my blues faded (I'd been channeling Emily the Strange a bit too much, I think). When The Reptile House started, I stood in the front row and danced every vestige of sadness away. The euphoria returned as I sang along to the songs I knew and felt my inner goth girl stir in remembrance. I may be older now, but that girl I used to be is still a part of me. She just needs to come out and play now and then.

My husband and I managed to stay almost to last call, then we hopped back on the bike and sped away through the nighttime streets of San Francisco. I held on tight and let him drive, not worrying about where we were or what we should be doing. Rarely do I have a moment where I'm not in control of something, so those moments on the back of his motorcycle were liberating. He's a good driver and I trusted him to get us home. I relaxed and watched the city zip by.

Oidhche Shamhna

Halloween is my muse's favorite holiday because she like to see what people reveal about themselves on that one night, when they put on a costume and give themselves permission to be ridiculous. All the hidden fears, desires and childhood fantasies are on display. Children become powerful superheroes with the ability to control the universe. Housewives become dangerous vixens. Business men show off their garter-belts. Creatures from horror movies wander the streets, hunting for candy instead of blood. Grown women dress up like cowboys, complete with cigar and six-shooter. Suddenly, everyone is an outlaw.

Halloween is also called Oidhche Shamhna, or the eve of samhain, which is the Celtic new year (Nov. 1). The Celts built bonfires to celebrate the death of the old year, in which bones were burned (bone-fires). It was said that the veil between the world became thin as the year turned, so spirits and the ghosts of loved ones could come for a visit with a living. Not all of those spirits were friendly though, so the Celts decorated gourds with symbols and scary faces to keep the bad ghosts away. People also wore masks to confuse the evil spirits.

"The Celts really knew how to throw a party," my muse said while trying on one of my vintage hats.

"You were there?" I asked, startled to think of my muse at a party 2000 years ago.

She shrugged. "Of course. Why are you so surprised? I've been to all the hot spots." She adjusted the hat's veil and turned her head side to side while studying her reflection. "As soon as the sun set, the bonfires were lit and the feasting began. We dressed in our finest, danced in the light of the fire and sang songs to the gods. The music was incredible. I'll never hear better." She scowled and took off the hat, but almost ripped the veil when a snake got its fangs tangled in the netting.

"Sounds beautiful."

"It was. But I think I like today's celebrations better. Back then, people conformed to the traditions of the ceremony. Now, you can dress up any way you want and if you get arrested, so what? It's much more egalitarian now days."

"What are you going to dress up as?" I asked.

With a slow, almost wicked grin, she said, "A goddess of course."

A galley! A galley! We have a galley!

Sitting on my laptop's desktop is one beautiful, professional looking, although not yet polished, galley of the punk anthology, Punk Rock Saved My Ass. After many arduous months in which the designer was so slammed with work he couldn't see any glimmer of hope that he'd actually be able to make the galley, he put in several long nights and walla, a galley proof was finished.

Well, mostly finished. He still needs to insert the photographs and he's still unhappy with the cover (so much so I'm not allowed to show any of his ideas). Once the photos are added, he'll go back through and polish each page, looking for "orphans" and "widows." In book lingo, an orphan is when the first line of a paragraph sits all alone on one page, separated from the rest of the paragraph. A widow is when the last line of a paragraph sits all alone at the top of a page. Or as Wendy Woudstra wrote in her book design article for Ezine Articles, "an orphan has no past, a widow has no future."

Now I will send the galley to each author so they can examine their submission and make sure I didn't make any mistakes with their name, bio, or other facts. This is NOT the time to change the essay; this is strictly for checking accuracy. Once I have any notes back (within two weeks), the designer will add the photos and fix any design flaws. I will add the page numbers to the table of contents. Then the galley gets one more comb-through from the copy editor before going to the printer.

We should have an actual book in our hands by New Years.

Do you really want to be a niche market clone?

I've been thinking a lot about social networking and company branding, and I've decided that adhering too strictly to the dominant culture of your niche market is a very bad idea. Do you really want to be a niche market clone?

Most micro publishers embrace their niche market. How else can you compete with the big publishers? A niche market is specialized around a certain topic or population, like hang-gliding enthusiasts and the hearing impaired. It makes good financial sense to find your niche and market to those readers because you'll spend less money trying to compete with hundreds of thousands of books. I know one press who made a fortune publishing books to dentists and another press that specializes in law books for real estate agents. Medusa's Muse publishes "transformative memoir," which is a pretty broad term for my niche market, which gives me the flexibility I want while letting readers know we are THE place for good quality, true stories written by people who have changed their lives by embracing what scared them.

The trouble with focusing on a niche market is how that market can start to define you, the person. When your publishing niche requires you to behave, dress, and speak a certain way, then you may have a problem. If your comfortable dressing and behaving the way your niche likes, then go for it. Problem solved. But just because you're really excited about your books on Chinese antiques, that doesn't mean you have to wear white gloves and listen to classical music.

Don't let your market define who you are. Embrace your creative, eccentric self and use it to your advantage.

I would be curious about a person who stomped around a high dollar auction in her combat boots while looking at fine china. Or a person who was terrified of flying but loved airplanes. Those people would stick out in a niche market dominated by ladies in pearls or former airline pilots. And if you stick out, your books get noticed.

Of course it can back fire if you go too far (breaking a Ming vase because you stomped too hard in your boots could create some issues), and trying to rebel from your niche mold is just as insincere as forcing yourself to fit in. Find the happy balance between what your market needs and what you need.

And now a word from the Tech Guy

After I posted answers to the questions from a reader (see previous post), my tech guy sent me an email. "We need to talk."

It appears I was wrong about Ava Host having good tech support. They do, if you already know how to design and update a website. If you're a newby, it may not be the best choice for you. They have a great FAQ section on their website and a chat/forum to get help, but it can be difficult to find the info you need when you don't even know what question to ask.

As I said in my book, What You Need to Know to Be a Pro, go with the web hosting service your web master likes to use. If you're a newby and plan to do it yourself, then Go Daddy, or one of the other sites that has more personal tech support will probably work best for you.

Questions from a reader

I received an email from a person who bought What You Need to Know to Be a Pro: The Start-Up Business Guide for Publishers and after reading it had a few questions. I'm posting his questions here because I think they may be helpful to others.

I'm curious as to how, for state tax reporting requirements, you note sales to non-profits such as libraries. Do you simply put $0 in your spread sheet for the tax part of the sale or do you also need additional backup materials from the library (or non-profit) confirming their non-profit status to attach to the invoice as proof?

Also, when you chose your domain for your website did you register it separately and then choose a web host or did you register it through your web host? Also, what was your process for choosing the web host you are with?

Finally, after you purchased your initial block of ISBNs from Bowker have you had to pay additional fees to keep your company information with them current?

This was my response:

Congratulations on starting your press. These are great questions. Thanks for asking. I will add these to the list for the next edition.

What State do you live in? When I sold to libraries here in California, they paid sales tax. The same was true when I sold to non-profits. If a non-profit says they don't have to pay sales tax, ask to see their resale license. But again, this applies to California. You should call your own State's Tax board for help. When I sell to bookstores, I do not collect sales tax because the bookstore has their own retail license and will collect sales tax directly from the book reader. Whenever I don't collect sales tax, I put a zero in the tax column. Sometimes I decide not to collect tax if I'm at a fair or conference as a type of promotion, but I still owe that tax to the State. So for my bookkeeping I put a zero in the tax column, but include a tax due amount at the end of that column so I know how much to pay the State.

I registered my domain name through my web host. Avahost was recommended to me by a web designer who had used them often and said their customer service was excellent. There are cheaper places, but I wanted the security of knowing if something went wrong with the site, I could contact a real human to help me solve it.

As for Bowker, yes, you do have to pay a fee every year for your catalog listing. I paid $25.00

I hope this helps. Please feel free to contact me again if you have more questions.

Terena

These questions are very helpful to me and I appreciate so much when people take the time to ask. I file them all for the second edition of What You Need to Know to Be a Pro.

Plus, it's a thrill to know that my book is being used by people who are tackling their dreams and starting their own small press. I'm so glad I can help.

If you have a question, leave them as a comment on this blog, or send me an email.

I can't open the file of the first book I wrote back in 1998! Now what?

Remember all those lovely stories you wrote ten years ago and then saved on a disc because the stories showed promise and you didn't want to lose them? Always back up your files, you've been told, and you did. Good girl. Now it's ten years later and you'd like to drag out that old novel, dust it off, and see if there was indeed anything promising in there. Only one problem. You wrote that novel using Apple Works in 1999 and now your computer can't understand that language. Apple Works? What es dis Apple Verks you speek ov? I haf never heard ov Apple Verks.

No matter how much you try, or beg, or plead, or threaten you computer with imminent death, the computer can not recognize the file, and therefore is incapable of showing anything other than "xvnuoairtykhfklavjio hbr349p" when you open the file.

Ten years ago I finished my first novel, a memoir about my best friend Paul who died of AIDS in 1992. It began as a way to heal my own scars from his death and evolved into a story about the power of friendship over death. It is a very personal story to me, and whether or not anyone else ever reads it, I need to turn it into a bound book as a memorial to my friend.

I couldn't open the F*&$KING file.

Luckily I live with a tech guy. I do his laundry, so you'd think he'd have the time to fix my novel. Alas, he was swamped with multiple projects as well as finals at school, so had zero time to help (plus, any free time he has needs to be spent on the Punk book, not on a novel I wrote so long ago it's barely readable).

And then I was rescued by another techy friend, a Mac guy none the less. He took my files and after some maneuvering transfered my old files into something my computer could read: rich text file (rtf). Hooray for people who collect Macintosh products and know how to use them!

I have learned a very valuable lesson from this experience. Making a back-up of your files is good, but making at least one of those back-ups an rtf is better. Just because I'm using "Word for Mac" on my Macbook today doesn't mean that program will be able to read the words I'm writing in 10 years. Computer companies like to update word processing programs every couple of years (sometimes more) and with every update, your old files become less and less compatible.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get to work on a novel that needs A LOT of editing. Let's just say I've learned a lot about writing in the last ten years (I hope). Maybe recovering old text files isn't such a good idea after all.

Thanks again, Scott.

Why am I not promoting my own book?

I know I'm in trouble when my Muse puts on a suit. Dark blue with a red tie and black, shiny shoes. Her hair-snakes are pulled back into a severe pony-tale that wiggles down her back. She does not look amused.

"What did I do now?" I ask.

"Why haven't you been marketing your own book?"

I shrug. "In case you haven't noticed, I've been a little busy."

"Bullshit." She taps her foot and glares at me.

"Bullshit?"

"Yes, bullshit. You're not that busy."

"Excuse me, Miss I-wear-a-power-suit-so-I-know-everything. I am in grad-school! I'm up to my eyeballs in homework and exams, plus I'm still a mom, in case you forgot, and I have a press to run. So yeah, I've been a little busy."

She sits down in my chair and puts her feet up on my desk. "Those are just excuses."

Now I'm getting mad. "Easy for you to say."

"You have enough time to do something every week to promote your own book, but you don't. You've tossed your book to the side and have focused solely on the punk anthology and school. If all you did was one small thing every week to promote your book, more people would be reading it. But instead you've shoved the box holding your books under the couch and act as if you never published it. Like your work doesn't matter." She looks directly into my eyes. "Your work matters."

"I know my work matters..."

"Prove it."

I sigh and sit across from her on the desk. "I really am busy right now..."

"How many places have you sent your play?"

"My play?"

"How many places have you submitted it?"

"One."

"Just one?"

"Yes."

"And how about your other play, the ten minute one? Where have you sent that?"

"A festival in New York."

"Have you heard from them?"

"Yes."

"What did they say?"

"They said no."

"Where did you send it after that?"

"Nowhere... it might need work."

She rolls her eyes. "Hah. Again, you act as if your work doesn't matter. You write volumes of pages, some of it good, and then stick it in a drawer and forget it. Just like you did you book, a book you dedicated an entire year of your life to. Why did you spend money printing it if you weren't planning to sell it?" A snake strains over her shoulder to see what is going on. My muse shoves it back impatiently. "All you have to do is one simple thing to market your book every week. That's it. Nothing expensive or too time consuming. Just one small thing. I'll bet you have time to do that."

"But what?"

Swinging her legs off my desk, my muse stands and walks to my book case where she pulls out a large, heavy book. "Pick a page and do what it says." She tosses the book on the desk where it lands with a startling bang.

I pick it up. "1001 ways to market your book."

"Do you even remember buying it."

"Yes. A long time ago. I hear there's a new volume."

"Why did you buy it if you weren't going to use it?"

I shrug.

"Just pick a page and do it. One thing every week." She stands beside me and leans against my shoulder. "Do it for me," she whispers.

One thing a week.

I open a page.