I recently came across the blog, Publetariat: People Who Publish, through an article to which someone on my reading list linked. The articles I saw on their blog were articles that had been republished with the permission of the original authors and I found many of them interesting, so I started following the blog. Then along came this article, which Publetariat states is included in their Vault University as a "sample" article, Crunching The Numbers: How It's Possible To Sell Every Copy Of Your Self-Published Book And Still Lose Money (And How To Avoid That Outcome). Looking more closely at Vault University, I see that they are offering a "curriculum" centered around self-publishing.

[As an aside, at TusCon 36, Mike Stackpole spoke for most of two hours on self-publishing and related issues, so you can expect a future post on the subject.]

I don't feel that the figures given in Crunching The Numbers are reasonable, at least with regard to the cost of getting books into the hands of readers. Here's why:

1. Someone who orders a book expects to pay for postage, so it's far more reasonable to assume that the self-published author will charge for postage.
2. The actual cost of postage for a standard hardback is closer to $3.50, which I know because my family has been involved in the used book market and has shipped many books.
3. It's not unreasonable to charge one's customers a fee of $6 for shipping and handling within the U.S., with appropriately higher fees for international purchases, should you choose to ship world-wide.

So, instead of adding $89,700 to the author's expenses to cover the postage, if one assumes that the author only charges $2.50 more than the cost of shipping regardless of the final destination, and that the author does his or her own handling, rather than paying someone to do it for them, it's possible to actually subtract $25,000 (10,000 x $2.50) from the expenses (or add that to the profits, which is the same thing). Here's what happens to the table of expenses shown in the article, showing what happens when you make the changes I've mentioned here:

Item	Income/Expense
10,000 books sold at US$20 each, minus 3% proc. fee	+ $194,000
Fees paid to Publisher X for setup, + add-on services	- $10,500
10,000 copies of book @ $12 per copy	- $120,000
Shipping from Publisher X	- $5,000
Padded envelopes	- $1,000
Shipping to all buyers, 10,000 copies @ a profit of $2.50 ea	+ $25,000
Total	+ $82,500

 
 
Now, I'm not going to go to the effort of verifying the rest of these figures; I certainly don't have any experience or particular knowledge of self-publishing. But, I don't feel it's reasonable or necessary to exaggerate the financial costs of self-publishing a successful book (i.e., one that sells out) in order to suggest that one needs to be cautious when considering self-publishing, primarily because it makes far more sense to be aware that very, very few self-published books will sell in large enough numbers to pay back the cost of publication.

There's a new post on Scratch Vegetarian: Feed 5 for Under 10 Deliciously from Scratch.

Arriving at TusCon 36 around 5 p.m., I checked in and got my participant packet. Pulling out the schedule, I saw that my options for the next hour included a panel (Star Trek: Heresy or new revelation?) or a reading by David Lee Summers, the editor of Space Pirates, the anthology in which my collaboration with Karl, "Ship's Daughter," appeared. Guess which option I chose.

( David Lee Summers )

I arrived a few minutes late, so I missed the opening of "Electric Kachinas", a story published in Science Fiction Trails #2, According to David, this story is also part of Owl Dance, a novel currently in progress. His second reading was a selection from his novel The Solar Sea. Both stories were a lot of fun. David's a good reader, too, and some of his books are available in audio formats. I discovered that his novel, The Pirates of Sufiro, is available in a free audio version from Podiobooks, so you might consider giving it a try.

( Elaine Charton )

Now that I was in the reading room, I hung around for the next reading, by Elaine Charton. She read from her novel The Man in the Mirror, which is currently out of print. The Man in the Mirror, which combines fantasy and romance. Another fun read and I was glad I stuck around.

After that, it was off to the Meet the Guests party, which I will cover in another post.

With all that was going on over the weekend, I managed to miss mentioning that there's a new post up on Scratch Vegetarian: Mushroom Goulash Poblano from Scratch.

Getting to eat great food is definitely one of the perks of having "Scratch" in the family.

I'm back from TusCon 36. It was a good con & much fun was had by all. I took plenty of pictures (more Blurry Cell Phone Pictures(tm)), went to lots of readings and some really fabulous panels. The participants were really sparkling this year. (I hope that doesn't mean we've had an invasion of teenage vampires.)

I'll be taking the rest of the evening to recuperate, but will be making a full report over multiple posts, as well as finishing up my report on Tucson Comic Con, in the near future.

I had a great time at TusCon yesterday evening and am looking forward to a fun and busy day there, today. It's always great to touch base with other writers and since I've been attending TusCon for over 15 years, I've got lots of friends among both pros and guests. This year, there's a CosPlay event with a steampunk theme, which should be lots of fun.

All of my panels are scheduled for today: I'm on a panel on "Retelling Fairytales: How does the medium and the culture affect the story?" at 11 a.m., do my reading at 4 p.m., and have a second panel on "Teaching Old Tropes New Tricks: Making formulae interesting" at 5 p.m.

I'm taking lots of blurry cell phone pictures and trying to make notes of the con highlights, so I can make a proper report at the end of the weekend. It'll probably be spread over multiple posts and I haven't quite finished the Comic Con series, so you can expect several posts from me in the next couple of weeks.

Update to Tucson Comic Con 2009 - Part 1: I found the missing card for Pat Billings, who customizes character figures to your specifications. You can see some examples of his work at http://usn1.deviantart.com/.

Now, on to Tucson Comic Con 2009 - Part 2:

There were many free items available. Sometimes promotional goods from merchants, I've already mentioned R-Galaxy, but there were numerous other merchants, both of the individual and store-front variety. Unfortunately, I wasn't as careful about noting exactly who was who among the merchants, which makes me very sad, because one of the bigger merchants had a whole bunch of free preview comics, posters, stickers, pins, and—wonder of wonders—bags in which we con goers could carry our stash.

The Monster Commute folks have a really clever comic, in which monsters live in their cars, perpetually stuck in traffic >> read the Introduction. It turns out, and I'm sorry to say that I missed this when I was talking to them, that the artists are a husband and wife team, Dawna and Daniel Davis, from Phoenix, AZ, who operate under the name Steam Crow. Yay for spousal collaborations!

Josey at Damage Control was handing out black and white "Color Your Own!!" drawings—I got one of Stinkerbelle.

Ernest Romero was giving away free Jigga comic books. Ernest anticipates that Jigga will be available as a free daily strip; check his website for the big reveal planned for December 2009. I truly do hope you'll drop by and check out his work, which I think shows a lot of talent and skill, as well as the many styles that influence him. If you like his work, why don't you drop him a line and tell him so.

One of the biggest comic production groups present was Evil Robo Productions, where several artists were busy sketching free pen and ink caricatures. There were too many people lined up for me to feel that it was a good use of my limited time (family obligations meant I had to leave early), so I can't give you as much detail as I'd like about this effort, but I thought it was a really great idea.

Pete Arriola, of Savvi was there with a couple of other folks, distributing free stickers and packs of temporary tattoos. If I'm feeling very brave at TusCon, I may decide to wear one of the colorful butterfly temporary tattoos I brought home.

The following is my Goodreads review of gillpolack's latest novel.

Life Through Cellophane by Gillian Polack


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Romance, mystery, magic. And a slow build to a creepy finish.

I was especially disturbed by the protagonist's ex-boss, Penelope, aka The Bee Hive. I've read articles about workplace bullying on Monster.com, but this story really brings that kind of situation and its emotional toll to life.

The romance was fun; not at all traditional, and very well handled.

I really enjoyed the way the mirror was handled. I can remember being both frightened and fascinated by mirrors when I was a child; I was certain that there was another universe on the other side and that if I watched closely enough I would eventually catch one of the people I could see there in an action that didn't exactly match those on our side, so when the mirror [in the novel] began to act up, I was instantly suspicious of what the results would be. While drawing on the classic fairytale concept of a magic mirror, as well as upon traditional horror approaches to mirrors, the mirror in Life Through Cellophane is entirely itself and doesn't feel cliched. I also loved the way the ants were at once a whimsical touch and an analogue for what might happen to humans in their interactions with the mirror.

If you're looking for an urban fantasy that doesn't just follow the same old standard tropes, I recommend you give this book a try.

View all my reviews >>

To the best of my knowledge, this book is not currently available from booksellers in the US, but it can be purchased from Eneit Press.

Last Saturday I attended the second annual Tucson Comic Con, a one-day event held in The Hotel Arizona in beautiful, downtown Tucson. Entering from the West side entrance into the lower lobby, I didn't have to ask for directions as the crowd of people, many wearing costumes, were all headed in the same direction, to the right through the nearby antechamber and the ballroom beyond it. Both rooms had tables full of interesting comic-related items, but it took me only seconds to realize that the artists and writers and their ilk were in the ballroom, so that's where I headed first.

( blurry picture of Tucson Comic Con crowd )

I tried to get some kind of contact information for each of the exibits I stopped at, but looking through my stash, I think I must have lost (more than) a few before I had a bag in which to plunk them, because I sure don't have nearly enough cards for the number of people who were at the show. The first table I stopped at was exhibiting plastic models. It turns out that the artist re-scuplts figurines so that they conform to either his, or his customers', visions. Unfortunately, after searching through all my stuff and clicking a lot of links on the Comic Con website* I can't find any information about the artist. If anyone else who attended happens to read this, and knows who this guy was, please let me know so I can update this post.

I was pleased to run into betsywrites, who was there with other members of the Tucson Roller Derby. She told me that this coming Saturday (in conflict with TusCon, which is this Friday through Sunday) they're having a match between the "Children of the 70´s" (and earlier decades), and the "Children of the 80´s".** Go Children of the 70's!

I enjoyed visiting with Paul Fini, whom I'd met previously at a library panel discussion, his lovely wife Christy Cameron Smith, and their friend, comic book artist Clay Lewis. Paul Fini is the founder of indieonlycomics. Paul is the author/artist of the semiautobiographical comic, Bliss, as well as several other comics (Plant Guy is a blast!), and he's also published the Warlock’s Home Brew Adventure: The Outpost on the Edge of the Far Reaches role-playing books. He and Christy used to be in a band together; I don't remember the specifics of the music or who played what instrument, for which I must ask your forgiveness, but I do remember that Christy was a singer for the band. Oh, and I happened to catch sight of her sketchbook; she's a good artist in her own right, although she's a bit shy about it. Clay is working on the fabulous project, Moon Mission Filey, the first episode of which should be available as a Flash animation sometime around the end of this year. Of all the gorgeous art I saw on Saturday (and there's lots!) I think this was my favorite. He's working in a style reminiscent of art from the 1920´s and 30´s and the hero of his Buck Rodgers-inspired comic is his cat, Filey. Unfortunately, there's nothing up, yet, at the website (so the link I gave you is dead), but I'm hoping it will be live soon.

I also spent some time talking to writer/publisher Anthony (Tony) Garcia, of TwentyToSix Books and his (sister?), singer ArleneWow!. His most recent (I think) publication is Crown of Spears. His website describes this as "an historical fiction that chronicles the Shuar rebellion against the Spanish Empire in 1599. The Shuar (aka) the Jivaro headhunters of Ecuador are the only indiginous tribe to successfully repel the Aztecs and the Spanish conquistadors. This story takes you to the wilds of the Amazon to witness these historic events through the eyes of a young priest who falls victim to their sway." He's even entered into a deal with the Shuar to produce some gruesome looking "shrunken heads" (actually leather masks with attached fur or hair, but still suitably horrific).

( Tony Garcia and shrunken heads )

Now, I'm sure that, notwithstanding the tradition of comics as a male bastion, there are plenty of female comic book artists and writers out there—heck, my sons went to school with some very talented female artists, at least one of whom was publishing some very fine comic books while still in high school—but you couldn't tell from the line-up at the con, as I only met one, count her, one, female artist/writer. I sure hope that the folks who run the Tucson Comic Con will work on making sure that the word gets out that the con is female comic creator friendly (and that this is true), and I hope that more women doing work with comics will sign up to exhibit at future cons. (This is not to say that there weren't plenty of women sitting at the various tables, just that most of them were there in support of guys.) The one woman I met who was exhibiting her own work was Tanya Burr. Hot off the presses—she told me she'd just opened the boxes that morning—was the first issue of her first comic, Dreds, the story of a dreadlocked meditation student who, despite his desultory approach to the activity and his relative n00b-ness, experiences some fabulous astral travel. Check out her DeviantArt page, where you can see a picture of her in her cow hat and view examples of her art; I also learned there that she's posted the entire comic online at her website, starting with the cover (just follow the links in the comments below each image).

Trivia fact about Tanya: she works at R-Galaxy and says that owners Rick and Maritsa were instrumental in helping her to get her start.

Rick and Maritsa were also at Tucson Comic Con, with what was probably the largest selection of comic book and anime-related merchandise. I've known them for over ten years, since R-Galaxy is the place where my boys and I first went to rent anime. Now that my boys are out of the house, I don't get by very often, but they still remember me, even in a crowd as big as this was.

This has turned into a very long entry, so I'll end it here and finish up tomorrow or Friday with the costume-related portion of this program.

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* You can find a complete list of the various artists and vendors who attended here.

** If you're a roller derby fan, there's a discount offered for active military and for fans dressed in 70's or 80's style.

Back in January, I posted about how Birthdays Bring Our Family Together and mentioned Ten Thousand Golden Dragons of Happiness Mushroom Soup, a recipe my husband developed in order to recreate the joy of bouillabaisse in a vegetarian form. Now that he's started Scratch Vegetarian, he's sharing his recipe with anyone who's interested. He was very busy posting today, so there's a bonus post about making a pie crust with a diamond pane effect.

I hope everyone's enjoying the recipes, but I also have a couple of posts I hope to manage in the very near future.

ETA: You may also remember that asakiyume was inspired by my original post to draw a beautiful picture to illustrate the concept of Ten Thousand Golden Dragons of Happiness Mushroom Soup. I've used that as the basis for my icon here, and she has also graciously agreed to allow my husband to post the image in his post about the soup. Many, many thanks go out to her for her kindness.

Now that he's online, my husband is busy posting to his new blog. I got home a few minutes ago to learn that he'd posted an entry on Scratch Vegetarian about making Egg Foo Yung. Enjoy.

My husband has just started his very first blog, Scratch Vegetarian, and it's all about food. He'll be sharing recipes and tips for preparing healthy vegetarian meals on a budget. His first entry tells about how to make your own fresh ricotta cheese for a fraction of the cost of store bought.

If you like to cook, or just like food, even if you don't plan to start making your own cheese, you're invited to drop by and check it out. I hope you'll find something to enjoy there.

Jonathan Morrow has a thought-provoking article on the 7 Bad Writing Habits You Learned in School.

I think that in stating his case, he may have gone a bit too far. For example, there are many situations when I want to know the source of information and I'm not always averse to footnotes. I also think that it's important that students learn enough grammar to be able to express themselves in something approaching standard English. But, I do think it's true that students' creativity can be endangered by too many stultifying writing assignments and too many rules to follow. I do believe that it's important that students develop the ability to write in ways that provoke both thought and feeling. I want students to have the self-confidence to allow themselves to break grammatical rules in the interests of voice.

What are your thoughts on the matter?



ETA: I'm listening to music composed by John Boswell that uses electronic modulation to remix snippets of old science shows. You can see videos and download mp3s at http://symphonyofscience.com/.

It has been nearly a month since I posted anything. Bad me. I must make myself heard more often.

I am still looking for a new position. Last weekend I attended an Adjunct Faculty Job Fair held by Pima Community College. I learned that they have already filled most of the vacancies for the Spring semester; I think the job fair was mostly to get new potential faculty into the system, since PCC requires a fairly lengthy certification process. I noticed that most of the people attending in hopes of teaching still needed to go through the certification process; fortunately, I completed this process last year, so should they suddenly find an opening for me, I'll be prepared to step right in. I was able to make some contacts and have a tentative appointment to meet with someone about tutoring in early November, after she returns from a conference.

I'll also be one of the participants at TusCon. I've been assigned to two panels and a reading, all on Saturday, November 14, 2009. I had an additional panel on Sunday, but due to a programming error, it had to be removed from the schedule.

My Schedule:

Time	Location	Topic
11:00 a.m.	McArthur	Retelling Fairytales: How does the medium and the culture affect the story?
4:00 p.m.	El Dorado	Reading
5:00 p.m.	Gold Ballroom	Teaching Old Tropes New Tricks: Making formulae interesting.

Of course, I'll also be attending the Friday evening Meet the Guests reception at 7:00 p.m. in the Gold Ballroom.

I just found a cool new way to display word clouds: Tagul. Tagul works a bit differently than Wordle, because it doesn't just create an image; instead, it creates a Flash animation in which each of the words (tags) acts as a link, with the default being a link to a Google search for the tag.



In this Tagul, I used this website as the basis for the text, "blacklisted" words like 'that' and 'and' to create a more interesting set of tags, and set the font and colors to be displayed.

ETA: Oops! I thought the linking to a Google search was a default, but I was wrong, and made doubly so when I didn't think to test this feature. Clearly, I've got a bit more exploration of Tagul to do in order to create a Tagul that actually links to something.

Today, Muffin, one of my sons' cats, came home (to my sons' house) from the Broadway Animal Clinic, where he spent nearly three weeks following surgery to prevent him from being blocked by kidney stones. Although Muffin is only three years old, we've had to rush him off to vets twice, because he's developed blockages. The care Muffin received at the Broadway Animal Clinic far exceeded my expectations, as we received a substantial discount on the surgery and free boarding for the entire duration of his stay. This was not his usual vet, btw; we were referred by Feline Ltd. when they couldn't schedule an emergency appointment at the time we called.

Muffin had a difficult time while he was there. He had an emergency treatment to remove the blockage, without which he would not have survived, then had to wait a few days for his vitals to stabilize before the surgery. Shortly after his surgery, he managed, despite the plastic cone around his head, to reach back and pull his stitches loose, necessitating a blood transfusion. There was another transfusion, too, which I think was related to internal bleeding, and a second operation. For several days he wavered, developing an infection and with high levels of the toxins that indicate a failing kidney. Dr Mueller was forced to put him on antibiotics, despite fears that his kidneys might not be able to handle the medicine. Finally, he began to recover, but he didn't return to eating solid food and had to be hand fed. In my experience, most vets would have sent him home at this point with instructions on how do use a syringe to feed him, but Dr. Mueller never suggested that, preferring to make sure he was eating on his own again and "out of the woods."

When I thanked Dr. Mueller and told her how much I appreciated the care Muffin had received, she shrugged off my thanks and my offer to help in some way, since I couldn't afford to pay her usual fees, with one exception: she and the staff enjoy gifts of chocolate baked goods. Especially chocolate. Especially gooey, fudge-y brownies.

They will get some.

Yesterday, museums around the country participated in Museum Day, an event connected to Smithsonian Magazine, in which they opened their doors to some visitors* for free. My husband, Karl, and I took advantage of this to visit a new museum here in Tucson, The Mini-Time Machine Museum of Miniatures, which turned out to be based on the miniatures collection of one woman. (I didn't catch her name while we were there and it turns out that the website offers very little information about the collection or its source, possibly because they are so new--their grand opening celebration is scheduled for next month.)

In a small room off the lobby we watched a professionally-produced video about miniatures that employed an interesting "trick" in which the narrator is "magically" transported from the screen into a miniature setting to the right of the screen. Also in this small chamber were: a full-sized violin which had been modified to serve as a showcase for a number of miniature violins; a full-sized cut crystal decanter and wine glasses, along with a miniature version, also cut crystal, which had been made by the same artisan; and a miniature armoire which housed a doubly-miniaturized set of furnished rooms which if I understand correctly, would have been at 144th scale.

The main collection was housed in several interconnected rooms and each room had a main theme. The Fantasy room was divided into sections, the nature of which was suggested by a huge "tree" in the center of the room, one side of which sported a kindly face, and the other a more sinister countenance. The trunk of the tree was somewhere between three and four feet in diameter, I think, and provided little windows into dioramas with mouse themes. One the friendly side, the dioramas were of fairies, cute anthropomorphized animals, and similar fantasy figures. There was one wonderful setting that was quite castle-like, with wizards and dragons and such on the top two floors, and a grotto beneath in which mermaids swam through a resin sea. On the more ominous side of the room were figures with Halloween themes. The entire room was clearly put together with a lot of imagination and love, but was slightly disappointing to our adult eyes (the kids around us were enchanted) as many of the figures were commercially available modern miniatures. We almost left after just that one room, but decided to give the historical section a try and were very glad we did.

In the History rooms were many, many miniatures and dioramas the vast majority of which appeared to be handmade and quite old. Had the museum housed only this part of the collection it would be well worth the trip. Many of the houses which contain the dioramas look to me as if they might once have been dollhouses, although the level of detail suggests that only the wealthiest children might have played with them. Of course, they may also have been built solely as display pieces, and many others clearly were. I think my biggest complaint in these rooms is that I would have loved to have seen a history of each piece, rather than the very simple plaques that identify the county, setting, and time period depicted (or possibly the date of the piece itself).

In the History section, we also met five teen-aged girls dressed in Lolita outfits, including one who was in a Black Lolita outfit. Although I'd heard of this fashion before, I'd not encountered it before and didn't immediately recognize it, so I had to stop them and ask. They were very nice about it and quite willing to explain. I mentioned that the local science fiction convention, TusCon 36, which has got to be the best kept secret in Tucson, is planning on having a Steampunk-themed Cosplay event this year and the face of one girl lit up, while the others were at least mildly interested. Who knows, maybe I'll see them there this November.

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* Why not all visitors? I can't tell you. In order to take advantage of this offer, I had to print a "ticket" which allowed me and one other person free entry. I would have preferred a more generous policy, and one which wasn't dependent upon an Internet connection and being in the know, although I was very glad for the opportunity to do something I wouldn't otherwise have done, since we're watching our pennies carefully while I'm looking for a new job.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Wow! Just . . . Wow.



I loved this book. Reading it was like reading a distillation of all I like in fantasy fiction.


View all my reviews.

One of the blogs I follow is the Writer Beware Blogs!. A recent post by Victoria Strauss, It's Official: DOJ Investigates Google Book Settlement discusses the complex Google Books Settlement, which requires a number of authors and publishers to make a crucial decision to opt in or out of the settlement, before fairness hearings and the results of a DOJ investigation are complete.

As I don't have any published novels and I'm not a member of the Authors' Guild, I don't (to the best of my knowledge) have an official stake in the issue, but it's possible that some of you, Fair Readers and Steadfast Friends, may. So, you may want to go check out Victoria Strauss' take on this and consider your options.

ETA Here's a very different take on the Google Books Settlement, courtesy of Lisa Gold: Research Maven: "…those lost books of the last century can be brought back to life and made searchable, discoverable, and citable…".