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It is! The one I'm co-writing, per previous in this thread. Mind you my coauthor's done way more work ... Will probably do one on El Salvador's bitcoin misadventure. Which is still unfolding, but that's a great time to start. I've never been there and don't speak Spanish, but I have a few Salvadorans who love my coverage so far and have offered to help ...
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Feb 21, 2022 15:25
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divabot posted:It is! The one I'm co-writing, per previous in this thread. Mind you my coauthor's done way more work ... El Salvador's Bitcoin thing is a super cool premise for a book, and definitely one I would read
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Feb 21, 2022 21:39
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In this month's misadventures in self-publishing, I learned that:
TL;DR: never archive the latest typeset versions of your published books—in fact, probably you should have multiple copies of that floating around everywhere. Because you're gonna have to update that front/matter with every new release and you don't want to deal with wasting a week troubleshooting network access issues with your file server. This especially sucks if you're doing picture/image heavy books because that's a LOT of files taking up storage.  I look forward to getting this next kids' book out of the way so I can go back to my prose novel which is all 100% in the cloud right now.
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Feb 22, 2022 02:59
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yyyyyyeah. Delighted user of Dropbox here. Also shove it on Google Drive. Also shove it onto the home server. My filing system is a pile of folders in Dropbox.
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Feb 22, 2022 10:31
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And get Backblaze, for the files that end up elsewhere on your computer (downloads folder, pictures folder, desktop) and didn't make it into Dropbox
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Feb 22, 2022 11:13
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Dropbox has saved my rear end at least three times. I would have lost thousands upon thousands of words without Dropbox's rollback tool.
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Feb 22, 2022 18:09
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Just do what I did when I was writing and write directly into Google Docs and then format it later. Then you don't even have to think about it.
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Feb 23, 2022 02:30
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Bardeh posted:Just do what I did when I was writing and write directly into Google Docs and then format it later. Then you don't even have to think about it. This works great for my prose novel. Not so great for illustrating a kids' picture book. 
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Feb 23, 2022 02:58
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Also I just spent three weeks on super unreliable NHS hospital WiFi for much of the day and yeah, started just taking notes in notepad
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Feb 23, 2022 15:22
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personally i am addicted to Scrivener, and without it my work would be a complete indecipherable mess. e: also dropbox helps me sync files across machines. sometimes I have to sit in my car for a couple hours while my wife (who can't drive because of a brain injury) runs errands or w/e. so dropbox is huge help since it keeps files local and i can just take my laptop and work offline. KrunkMcGrunk fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Feb 23, 2022 |
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Feb 23, 2022 19:45
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drat, Brandon Sanderson is raking in cash from his fans. What I wonder is how he can pull off a kickstarter without royally pissing off his publisher - either they already passed on the stuff he wants to publish, or he's giving them a piece of kickstarter money, or he's just telling them to get hosed.
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Mar 1, 2022 21:52
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KrunkMcGrunk posted:personally i am addicted to Scrivener, and without it my work would be a complete indecipherable mess. I remember picking up Scrivener after receiving recommendations from friends, and thinking it was the worst thing I'd ever used. Said friends thought I was crazy until I streamed my desktop to them and showed them that the baseline Scrivener experience is a pile of garbage. Someone then linked me to a Nanowrimo-approved configuration of Scrivener that was much better.
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Mar 1, 2022 22:31
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KrunkMcGrunk posted:drat, Brandon Sanderson is raking in cash from his fans. What I wonder is how he can pull off a kickstarter without royally pissing off his publisher - either they already passed on the stuff he wants to publish, or he's giving them a piece of kickstarter money, or he's just telling them to get hosed. So I made a post in the Sanderson thread last year speculating that he's moving towards self-publishing because over the years he's done a few things to signify this and today's announcement cinches it. With his publisher - as far as I know, Sanderson is their golden goose, so Tor is gonna let him do whatever. Not only does he have a super engaged fan base who buy everything, he sells tons of books, he's big enough to organize his own convention and have it well-attended and on top of all of that, he is consistent in meeting his deadlines. As long as he keeps delivering on his contracted books, Tor isn't gonna be pissed off. The only reason I can think of why Tor would pass on the stuff he wants to publish is literally capacity, but I suspect it's not Tor saying no, it's more that Sanderson wants to diversify himself from reliance on traditional publishing. These aren't the first books he's self-publishing either. Way of Kings Prime and Dawnshard are what I'd call his first self-publishing efforts. Way of Kings Prime is branded as a "Sanderson curiosity" because it's first draft alternate edition of a published work that only hardcore fans would ever want to read and is a freebie on his website, though he did do the full production process on it—it is like the highest quality reader magnet ever. Dawnshard is the first TRUE self-pub effort. It was ebook first—Dragonsteel Entertainment (his LLC) is the listed publisher for the ebook—was released as a reward for the Way of Kings leatherbound Kickstarter and the audiobook production is also being self-published, though he's hiring the same narrators as he does for his other books. The Kickstarter print version was a hardcover that Team Dragonsteel self-published with an offset printer and since then, has been published by Tor via their normal process (Tor is listed as the publisher of the hardcover which only just came out in mid-Feb apparently). I'm gonna have to spend the rest of today unpacking what this means and analyzing it in a video because the business strategy is genius. But he definitely psyched me out yesterday with his update video and I genuinely thought he was gonna burn himself out. The TL;DR here though is whether or not you enjoy his writing as a reader, Sanderson is at the top of the author game and is a very smart business owner and branding genius. By virtue of writing books that people love and building a great community of fans, he's been able to avoid the typical traditional publisher/author dynamic and has been able to leverage a traditional publisher's strengths into making him a household name as far as epic fantasy is concerned. And now he's leveraging the power of his brand and his share of the accumulated profits to build out his own production and distribution infrastructure and systems. With a lot of his recent projects, he's brought on co-writers to free himself up to write other books. Just watch. I might have been wrong about what today's announcement was but I really think Sanderson is building himself the next Marvel, with him in control. It's like what Michael Anderle does with the Kurtherian Gambit (which obviously works very well for him) but it's amazing because Sanderson is making this move as someone who has benefited from having the backing of a large traditional publisher.
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Mar 2, 2022 02:28
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He'll go Full Marvel, when he starts hiring other writers to write Cosmere novels under his editorial control.
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Mar 2, 2022 12:21
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Megazver posted:He'll go Full Marvel, when he starts hiring other writers to write Cosmere novels under his editorial control. So this already happened with the Cytoverse. 3 novellas already published, actually, with more to come. Cosmere is another story, but this has ALSO happened, just on a smaller scale. It's his life's work so he's more protective of who gets to write in it. But the Allomancer Jak short stories in the broadsheets in the Wax and Wayne novels are written by his art director Isaac who I think is the only person allowed to write in the Cosmere right now.
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Mar 2, 2022 12:33
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Leng posted:So I made a post in the Sanderson thread last year speculating that he's moving towards self-publishing because over the years he's done a few things to signify this and today's announcement cinches it. It's really cool to see a big name trad author like Sanderson strike out on his own, in a business sense. I know this will probably inspire a gang of copycats in the indie-sphere, but I don't think anyone will be able to do it as successfully as Sanderson. He has the perfect confluence of factors in play. He has a huge, loyal fanbase, he's offering them insane value (all four of his ebooks would cost $60 through TOR, but he's selling for $40, plus the other tiers with goodies), and he's near and dear to the kind of person who is familiar with backing stuff on kickstarter. Kudos to him for doing something genius. The thing that really blows me away is when I last checked this morning, the average backer has spent $260 on his Kickstarter campaign. Nuts! I hope this opens the floodgates for trad authors. Publishing houses are getting filthy rich off authors like Sanderson, who can sell, and those same authors are not getting anything close to their value. I am all for whatever gives them better power to negotiate with publishers. KrunkMcGrunk fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Mar 2, 2022 |
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Mar 2, 2022 19:50
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I went to high school with a lot of people who now work at hedge funds or in tech for places like Meta and they all love Sanderson’s books and think nothing of spending like $300 on his kickstarters. I’ve recommended other fantasy novels like Baru Cormorant or even The First Law to them but the politics of those series rubs them the wrong way (these were people who were liberals in highschool but as they’ve accumulated wealth over the past 10 years have shifted toward the right.) Probably the only other fantasy novelist they’d drop that kind of cash on is Rothfuss but he is allergic to writing.
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Mar 3, 2022 16:42
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I'm wondering if someone with experience in self publishing or who has done their research can point out which services might let me print on demand through a storefront with the lowest possible price to quality ratio. Royalty isn't an issue as unless my manuscript out of the blue gets accepted by a publisher (and it won't) I am just hoping to let people who worked where the story takes place buy a physical copy without shelling out $20 for a paperback.
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Mar 4, 2022 18:56
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Coquito Ergo Sum posted:I remember picking up Scrivener after receiving recommendations from friends, and thinking it was the worst thing I'd ever used. Said friends thought I was crazy until I streamed my desktop to them and showed them that the baseline Scrivener experience is a pile of garbage. Someone then linked me to a Nanowrimo-approved configuration of Scrivener that was much better. I loathed Scrivener too and would love a link to this
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Mar 4, 2022 20:01
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divabot posted:I loathed Scrivener too and would love a link to this Oh man I can see Scriv being completely unusable you have at ton of footnotes. Win Scrivener is definitely the leftover child of the family. L&L didn't even bother updating Win Scrivener to 2.x iirc, and just skipped it up to 3.x. Mac is Scrivener's unquestioned lead platform, but I'll be damned if I'm buying an $800 laptop with an additional $1200 charge for the Apple logo on the lid. I just like Scriv for the organizational binder and the ability to drag and drop binder files from one project to another. Other than that, I use it just like a word processor.
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Mar 4, 2022 21:22
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Bright Bart posted:I'm wondering if someone with experience in self publishing or who has done their research can point out which services might let me print on demand through a storefront with the lowest possible price to quality ratio. Royalty isn't an issue as unless my manuscript out of the blue gets accepted by a publisher (and it won't) I am just hoping to let people who worked where the story takes place buy a physical copy without shelling out $20 for a paperback. Where is that located and are you local to them? Because probably the cheapest answer is KDP with you ordering author copies and selling directly to them. But that will automatically distribute your book on the Amazon storefront. If you DON'T want your book publicly available for sale, you can set it up on Ingram Spark which has a print only option. I haven't compared prices lately since Ingram Spark is raising prices as of 8 March.
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Mar 4, 2022 23:07
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KrunkMcGrunk posted:I hope this opens the floodgates for trad authors. Publishing houses are getting filthy rich off authors like Sanderson, who can sell, and those same authors are not getting anything close to their value. I am all for whatever gives them better power to negotiate with publishers.  I got very excited about this. The traditional publishing business model has been problematic for so long, I can't wait to see the end of it: https://youtu.be/av64WXh_f80Also Will Wight dropped this response video: https://youtu.be/KjoQate39Po It's not going to be comparable exactly in terms of rewards (not gonna compare on scale because nothing will be comparable in terms of sheer scale) because it's raising funds for an omnibus but I can't help wanting to see what would happen if Will Wight went Kickstarter exclusive for a preorder of the last Cradle book.
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Mar 4, 2022 23:13
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Leng posted:Where is that located and are you local to them? Because probably the cheapest answer is KDP with you ordering author copies and selling directly to them. But that will automatically distribute your book on the Amazon storefront. The place is Scotland. Presumably at least one or two friends back in Canada might also want a copy. That *would* make KDP a reasonable option especially since I'm guessing the books quality for Prime shipping. I did ask (and am still hoping someone has something up their serve that blowing KDP out of the water) as quick Google has a lot of complaint about quality. If I'm going to ask someone to pay more than 10 USD for anything it can't fall apart. e: Prior to asking here I tried to find blogs run by Goons to see how they are selling their books but came up blank. Bright Bart fucked around with this message at 09:49 on Mar 5, 2022 |
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Mar 5, 2022 08:39
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Bright Bart posted:I did ask (and am still hoping someone has something up their serve that blowing KDP out of the water) as quick Google has a lot of complaint about quality. If I'm going to ask someone to pay more than 10 USD for anything it can't fall apart. Uh, what kinds of quality complaints? Because sometimes that's because those people didn't RTFM and messed up their print files. By and large, the print quality is fine. There are millions of indie books all being printed and sold via KDP/IngramSpark with no complaints about quality. If you're just doing a few copies and you want better quality, then you can try smaller printers. Lulu (which I've not used) is supposed to have better printing quality than either KDP or IngramSpark but they are more expensive. A lot of these other printers are more expensive because they specialize in doing photo books and have better paper quality and ink quality options. But again, will be more expensive. I don't recommend it as a commercially viable option for a prose novel. There's a reason why most indie authors use KDP and IngramSpark to print. You could TRY signing up for the Draft2Digital printing beta which is slowly rolling out—it's in beta to make sure they can scale but does work. I haven't personally tried it yet but I'm not holding my breath for a significant jump in quality. If you REALLY want to have high quality at a reasonable cost and you don't mind dealing with fulfilment yourself, just work directly with an offset printer in China or India and order like 100 copies. Eat the cost of shipping the 1-2 copies to your friends in Canada for the sake of friendship.
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Mar 5, 2022 22:59
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Leng posted:[Lots of good material] The complaints were more about the binding or ink blogs. I guess it might depend on which printer they use for your book in particular? I am in a country with relatively cheap printers actually. Nearly all of the domestic books including those by small organizations or clubs are "Printed and bound in (here)". Your idea about offset printers makes me wonder if that might not be the way to go. Bright Bart fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Mar 8, 2022 |
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Mar 6, 2022 09:04
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Does Amazon allow cover images that depict smoking? I know you can’t have that in any image used to advertise a book, but I can’t seem to find anything about the content allowed on actual covers.
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Mar 7, 2022 00:57
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Bright Bart posted:I am in a country with relatively cheap printers actually. Nearly all of the domestic books including those by small organizations or club are "Printed and bound in (here)". In that case, I'd go around and get some quotes! Leng fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Mar 7, 2022 |
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Mar 7, 2022 01:18
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divabot posted:I loathed Scrivener too and would love a link to this Your complaints sound like they're more in depth than mine, which were that I couldn't even adjust the margins or page format without it being a gigantic hassle, so YMMV. https://web.archive.org/web/20220108133811/https://www.literatureandlatte.com/nanowrimo I had that 5 year old version on my computer and it automatically updated to a 2021 version when Nanowrimo 2021 started up. My problem is that basic WinScriv seems like it was focus-tested for people who have been very good at using Scrivener for the last ten years and want it to do very specific things, but that it's a nightmare for newer users. It's like the Destiny 2 of word processors.
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Mar 7, 2022 15:36
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I really wish Notion didn't suck rear end for text work. If that worked and if there were more possibilities for output, they could eat Scrivener's lunch. The way both Scrivener and Notion allow you to organize stuff are similar enough, but Notion is definitely not made for people who actually write and are used to modern word processing software. You can't even properly select paragraphs with just the normal hotkeys that the rest of the world has used for over a decade. Plugins could take care of generating output files.
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Mar 8, 2022 15:55
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Bright Bart posted:The complaints were more about the binding or ink blogs. I guess it might depend on which printer they use for your book in particular? Your local printer will have a digital printing option for paperbacks and if you care about quality I'm sure they'll be happy to offer you different card stocks for a higher quality final product. You can print as little as 100 copies.
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Mar 8, 2022 22:33
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After being a member for like 3 years, I'm *finally* going to the Novelists Inc. conference this year! I'm excited. I finally get to meet a bunch of online friends I've made over the years.
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Mar 16, 2022 20:45
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E: nm
sean10mm fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Mar 22, 2022 |
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Mar 21, 2022 16:10
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I hate pre-orders. The only good thing about pre-orders is that it forces me to haul rear end and get everything set up ASAP. The downside of pre-orders is how long it takes for IngramSpark's information to replicate across to everything. It's 3 days before my release date and the Amazon.com store STILL doesn't have price info or the pre-order active. But Amazon AU, CA, UK are all active, except for the hardcover not being available on one of them which is  but whatever.I'm gonna fix up the Amazon KDP paperback today so hopefully my US customers can still order a copy, they just won't be able to get hardcovers. But as far as I can tell, people mostly buy the paperback anyway, because the hardcover is expensive (thanks POD) so...whatevs!
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Mar 28, 2022 01:17
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Awful quiet here lately. How's everybody coming on their projects? What're your new goals? What're you thinking about doing next?
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Apr 13, 2022 14:30
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KrunkMcGrunk posted:Awful quiet here lately. How's everybody coming on their projects? What're your new goals? What're you thinking about doing next? actually talking to that agent I mentioned. We worked out a limited trial deal where she would represent a particular project we had in mind - El Salvador's disastrous adoption of bitcoin. It's commercial publishing, so (apart from being off topic for this thread) she thinks this story of historical material forces needs lots of personalities!! Cos nonfiction books that read like real life is a novel with characters? You can sell those and do Netflix deals and poo poo. I'm giving it a go because this particular story is in fact full of goddamn bizarre personalities, I think Dickens would go "my goodness" at some of them. And also I'm tempted by dreams of money. But I can also say that I have rarely felt so resolutely indie in my nature ...
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Apr 14, 2022 00:36
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I’m working on the cover and blurb for my sequel, while my writing group buds work furiously to proofread my manuscript. I honestly love them  I think I’ve finished the cover art (I did not paint the bricks, they are a texture):  The next step is an epic battle with fonts because I think I need to update the cover to the first book too. So that will be fun.
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Apr 14, 2022 02:43
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KrunkMcGrunk posted:Awful quiet here lately. How's everybody coming on their projects? What're your new goals? What're you thinking about doing next? I've published a second kids book but since it's bilingual, I was gonna hold off posting links until I had the English version done. I did get the English version of my first book done though: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/064514987X/ Otherwise I'm working through structural revisions for my fantasy novel. I'm finally getting to the tail end of things, after this will be line edits and then copyedits and then publication (by May, hopefully).
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Apr 14, 2022 04:29
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I'm working on releasing the second book in my newest series--got all the promos lined up for book one, a release date set, and have mostly updated the backmatter in the previous book. I'm a little nervous about contacting my mailing list because I've *really* fallen behind with them. It's been several months since I've sent them an email mostly because I get really in my head about writing about myself and what I'm doing. Like, who cares what I'm doing, right? Anyway, that's just my anxiety talking. I think those people will be happy to hear from me again, though I'll probably have to cull a bunch of inactives from the list. Anyway, I'm going to offer them a free short they can't get anywhere else, so hopefully that's enough to get back in my readers' good graces. divabot posted:actually talking to that agent I mentioned. We worked out a limited trial deal where she would represent a particular project we had in mind - El Salvador's disastrous adoption of bitcoin. It's commercial publishing, so (apart from being off topic for this thread) she thinks this story of historical material forces needs lots of personalities!! Cos nonfiction books that read like real life is a novel with characters? You can sell those and do Netflix deals and poo poo. I'm giving it a go because this particular story is in fact full of goddamn bizarre personalities, I think Dickens would go "my goodness" at some of them. And also I'm tempted by dreams of money. But I can also say that I have rarely felt so resolutely indie in my nature ... Oh man, that sounds really exciting and daunting at the same time. Are you going to get your feet on the ground in El Salvador to talk to people or is it not really necessary? Who are the characters? KrunkMcGrunk fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Apr 14, 2022 |
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Apr 14, 2022 16:09
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KrunkMcGrunk posted:Oh man, that sounds really exciting and daunting at the same time. Are you going to get your feet on the ground in El Salvador to talk to people or is it not really necessary? Who are the characters? I've been writing about the saga since the Bitcoin announcement in June on my blog and in three articles for Foreign Policy, and I've acquired a pile of Salvadoran sources who tell me wild rumours that keep turning out a week later to be absolutely true. The characters are people like the president, Nayib Bukele. He's like a Trump that's got his poo poo together. Very good at politics, very bad at follow-through on his big plans, and even worse when he does follow through on them. Is also right now going full dictator, quasi-fascist videos and all. I call this one "Triumph of the Shill." https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1512263501728862215 And then there's the crypto grifters, American libertarians with colonialist ambitions. Mike Peterson the surfing evangelist preacher. Jack Mallers, the son and grandson of bankers in a hoodie who says "gently caress" on stage a lot. Max Keiser, the guy from RT. The story's still in progress, but I've covered it for the past year and my lovely Salvadorans are sending me links to history books to read. All in Spanish of course. Google Translate gets me some of the way ... but I need to hit Duolingo, yeah. The other book is the attempted collaboration on the NFT thing. I expect this will be a self-pub, though if anyone wants to give us an advance for it we'll probably take it. We completely stalled on this because the whole area sucks and we want these people to die in a fire. We have a cool looking outline, but it's just a slog to write and we both stalled out badly. We just had a zoom call earlier and have resolved to call and chat regularly, twitter DMs don't cut it. So we're thinking about how to do a reset and write something that will head for a book but where we won't hate each sentence individually. So my writing queue at present is: * three or four sample chapters on characters in the El Salvador bitcoin saga * about 10 half-written blog posts * a news roundup I need to write before it goes over 3000 words * a 9000-word book review that no poo poo I took three years on, but it's in with the editor now * I think that's all that springs to mind * good lord did I mention I also work a day job divabot fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Apr 14, 2022 |
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Apr 14, 2022 19:55
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Holy poo poo that's a lot.
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Apr 15, 2022 01:23
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