But you want to see the shirts, yes?  Just follow these links (really, you could just follow one of them, and then use the navigation on that site from there – no need to come back here):

• ‘THIS SIDE UP’ – T-Shirt
• ‘PLEASE USE OTHER DOOR’ – T-Shirt
• ‘SEX&LOVE’ – T-Shirt

I’ll also have all these shirts available with me in a variety of sizes at the Phoenix First Friday Art Walk, every month, and I also accept credit cards in person.  (Though I prefer cash.)

Now, I’m going to try to turn something disappointing into something a little bit better.  I’m going to change the nature of the contest, and the reward.  The idea now is to have an open-ended opportunity for anyone who reads my books and wants to try another.  Anyone, at any time, for any of my books, who can provide something to help me sell my books that’s better than what I’m currently using can win a free paperback of one of my books of their choice.

If that’s a better answer to the question “What is this book about?” – great!  If that’s better marketing copy, a better “elevator pitch,” a blurb from another author that I can put on the cover & the website, or even an entirely new cover image – wonderful!  If that’s an insightful blog post, or a detailed review (not necessarily positive), or a thoughtful analysis of character, theme, plot (or lack thereof) – I look forward to it!  Be creative!  Write a spin-off or sequel, a short story in the same universe, a song or a poem, shoot a video, or create any other derivative work (automatically allowed for non-commercial uses, since all my novels are available under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license) – and you’re a shoe-in!

As before, simply email your entries to me at teel@modernevil.com - perhaps containing your entry, or perhaps linking to your blog / a review / a video – and I’ll consider all entries using my personal judgement as to whether you’re doing a better job marketing my book than I am (which shouldn’t be hard – Marketing is not one of my strengths).  Every time I receive an entry that I believe will help sell books, I’ll send out a signed paperback copy of one of my books (their choice) to the entrant, and I’ll get my marketing efforts updated to incorporate the new materials.  So go, read or listen to one of my books, and think about how you might let someone else know about them.

Void where prohibited. No purchase necessary: You can read the eBook or listen to the podcast for free. Officially open to US Residents only – but only because I don’t want to deal with shipping books internationally. You can still enter from anywhere and, if you’re willing to help me with international shipping, get your free book. Winners will be selected by whatever method I want – probably I’ll just pick the entries I think are best, but I’m not ruling out asking people on Twitter or some such. Contest runs until I don’t feel like it anymore – which probably means it never ends, since when wouldn’t I want to sell more books?  By submitting an entry you are granting me an unlimited, nonexclusive right to use your entry and any derivations thereof for any purpose, including commercial - ie: the point of having better marketing material is to be able to get more people to read and/or buy my book, so I need the right to use the best entries to that end.  If you create a derivative work & would like to license it for commercial use (ex: you want to be able to make money by writing a sequel and selling it yourself), we can talk. I’m open to that, too.

Details for those afraid of Swine Flu (or not in the Phoenix area):
Browse my books at modernevil.com and my art at wretchedcreature.com.  Email me at teel@modernevil.com and mention the “Swine Flu Sale” along with whatever books and/or art you want to order, and I’ll take 20% off the full price of your order (before any sales tax & shipping costs, if applicable).  Offer not available via the shopping cart on modernevil.com – I’ll have to manually invoice you to give you this discount.

Details for brave Phoenix residents:
Come out to the Phoenix First Friday Art Walk May 1st – you can find me among the vendors in the street closure one block South of Roosevelt between 4th & 6th Streets, usually just south of the corner of 5th & Garfield.  Mention the “Swine Flu Sale” and receive 20% off your entire purchase.  Plus, by showing up in person there’s no possibility of shipping cost, and I won’t charge you sales tax if you pay cash.

The sale lasts as long as the WHO Pandemic Alert Level for Swine Flu is Phase 5 or Phase 6.  I’m still happy to deliver purchases to people in the Phoenix area free of charge, myself.  If I think of anything else, I’ll edit this post later.  Stay healthy, everyone!

There seems to be less traffic noise in the mornings, after everyone has gone to work and before they begin to be released from it, so I tend to try to record in the mornings.  My sleep schedule has been bizarre, of late, and I’ve been sleeping starting at roughly 3AM-7AM and -despite my best efforts (hampered significantly by an ongoing and severe bout of depression) to get out of bed after only a few hours- running through the middle of the afternoon.  Today it’s further off – I put myself to bed last night at 10PM, managed to fall asleep somewhat quickly, but then my mind woke me up at 2:30AM.  I tried to sleep, I fought against waking, I felt quite … I don’t know whether I’m physically or mentally tired, but … tired, but at 3:30AM this morning, I gave up on it.  Got up.  Started laundry.  Played the Free Realms Beta for a while…

Mandy’s up now, eating a breakfast I made for her, and as I finish writing this, she’ll be getting ready for school today.  I don’t think I knew how noisy getting ready for the day is until I started recording audio books.  So, in an hour or so, she’ll be done with that and I can try to begin recording.  I’d like to get a couple of hours of recording done today, if my voice works that long.  I need to get ahead of my podcasting; trying to record at the last minute doesn’t always work, especially when I’m depressed and/or my sleep schedule is severely kinked.  Last minute is where I’m at right now, actually.  I don’t have today’s podcast episode edited yet.  Realistically, I give myself until midnight of the day I’ve said it will go up.  Preferably, it always goes up on the morning of that day.  Which, for episodes longer than a minute, means I have to have it recorded ahead of time.

((For the episodes going up on Podiobooks.com, I really need to be done ahead of time – in my experience, if I fail to have my episode uploaded & ready to go there by late Thursday night, chances are it won’t hit the site until Monday.  Which feels like I’m three days late, even if I uploaded it at 7AM Friday.  Even if it was on my own feed at 7AM Friday.  Podiobooks.com feels like the “real” venue for my audiobooks.  So I really need to be ahead.  Consequently, I think I’m going to let the Podiobooks feed run a week or so behind my direct feed for the next few books.))

Recording a half-hour episode takes a lot longer than half an hour, by the way.  (Assuming I’m not doing multiple voices, which takes even longer.)  The actual recording part tends to take me about double, so about an hour.  (Last night I tried to record in the evening, since I seemed not to have a choice, and it took me over 100 minutes to record what will be about 30 minutes of text.)  Editing what I’ve recorded – selecting takes when I’ve recorded multiple takes, cutting out dead air, background noises, mouth noises and the like – takes about double that, so about two more hours.  With my new computer, mixing together the intro, outro, multiple sections of an episode & transitions between them, leveling everything so volume matches within and across episodes… actually only takes a few minutes.  I haven’t timed it, but I seem to be able to do both versions (MEPod & PB) in under half an hour, now, including compression.  Then I have to listen to the entire episode, to be sure I didn’t miss anything during the edit.  I usually do this while uploading it to both servers & writing the episode description.  So, for a typical 30-minute episode (without character voices), it takes me 4 hours of work.  All of it while listening carefully not just to my own voice, but also to tiny background noises.

This is not work I can do eight hours a day, five days a week.  And not merely because wearing the over-the-ear headphones becomes annoying well before the 4-hour mark.  I am certainly going to try to put in a few long days over the next few weeks, though.  I am certainly going to try to get the other 8 episodes of this book recorded, edited, and ready to go just as fast as I am able, and on to the next book.  Theoretically, it should only take me a total of 40 hours to complete this entire book (not to mention I’ve already got the first episode done), so why not?  The next two books in the series are each almost exactly the same length book – so three 40-hour work weeks and I should be done with the entire series, right?

Except I’m also an artist.  And I’m also writing a book on my Self Publishing experiences.  And I’m also creating a deck of Christian cards (and a book to go along with them).  And I’m also a househusband – cooking and cleaning and the like are part of my responsibilities.  And I’m also a marketer.  And a web developer.  And a blogger.  And a filmmaker.  And involved in social media.  And emotionally unstable, currently depressed & off-kilter.

It’s only 1 week until the next First Friday, when I have another Art Walk to show at.  (If you’re in the Phoenix area, come down and see me!  I’m among the ‘Roosevelt Row‘ vendors, and I’m usually near 5th & Garfield.)  I’d like to produce some more new art before that happens (though I have plenty in stock, right now – more than I could possibly show), so that cancels out part of the next week.  I’ve only just begun writing that book on MicroPublishing, and I’d like to build some momentum in the writing of it, instead of letting it perhaps wither with only a couple thousand words.  I can’t record every day (I can’t recall now which day it was, exactly, but one day this week I managed to stay up late enough that I thought I could record in the morning, after Mandy left, at the end of my waking hours – but apparently that was when Bulk Trash Pickup decided it was time to slowly and noisily scour my neighborhood.) and I can’t usually stand to work on audio all day, when I do.  Oh, and because I want to continue posting two episodes a week to my feed, I’m doing poetry episodes again – a one to two minute episode of which seems to take 30-45 minutes to create.

So maybe I’ll get ahead by a couple of episodes in the next week.  And hopefully I’ll get ahead by the rest in another week or two.  Mandy just walked out the door.  I’d better get to it.

• One (1) First Prize: I’ll name a character after you in my next novel & let you decide whether that character lives or dies, plus send you a signed paperback copy of one of my books (your choice).
• Two (2) Second Prizes: I’ll send you a signed paperback copy of one of my books (your choice).

 
How to enter:
Email your answer to the question “What is Forget What You Can’t Remember about?” to teel@modernevil.com. The deadline for entry is May 1st, 2009, two weeks after the final chapter goes live at Podiobooks.com.
 
Void where prohibited. No purchase necessary: You can read the eBook or listen to the podcast for free. Officially open to US Residents only – but only because I don’t want to deal with shipping books internationally. You can still enter from anywhere & if you win I’ll still name a character after you… and… I don’t know, maybe look up international shipping rates & customs paperwork? Winners will be selected by whatever method I want – probably I’ll just pick the answers I think are best, but I’m not ruling out asking people on Twitter or some such. By submitting an entry you are granting me an unlimited, nonexclusive right to use your entry and any derivations thereof for any purpose, including commercial - ie: the point of having a better answer to this question is to be able to get more people to read and/or buy my book, so I need the right to use the best answers to that end. I will be running a very similar contest for both Lost and Not Found and Dragons’ Truth in May, in case you want to go read and/or listen to those books & prepare your answer in advance.

Yesterday I only did three or four hours of audio work, and even though I know I worked on other things, it feels like I didn’t get anything done, since it’s harder to tally the hours and to quantify what’s work and what isn’t. Does Twitter count? Reading publishing & other blogs? Blogging? It’s all part of connecting with people, with building an audience and building myself as a “brand” and educating myself about what’s going on, what’s working, and driving ideas forward. So in a way, yes. Then there’s the oft-repeated idea that everything an author does and experiences is a sort of reasearch for future books; this is somewhat true, but feels like a sort of excuse.

In addition to feeling that perhaps I’m not being productive enough, I also think a lot about my not being profitable enough. Even with the reduced up-front costs of doing business the way I am, not a single one of my books has even reached break-even, yet. The art, comparably, has been doing great – not bringing in enough to live on, but if not for the cost of going to Tools of Change in New York (ie: if not for a big, extra publishing expense), I’d already be profitable this year on art sales alone, with only bluer skies on the horizon. The margins on the art, even with prices basically cut in half & then frozen since 2004, are great – not just in money, but in time. It takes me hundreds of hours to produce a book, and somehow it’s harder to sell a copy of the book for $14 (or less) than it is to sell a painting (that took me less than 10 hours to create) for $150.  Lately I’ve been creating a lot of “Mini Paintings”: 8×10″ for $20, 5×7″ for $15, and 4×4″ for $10, right now.  Most of them are done in under 1 hour of work (though admittedly, some have taken up to 3), and they earn me as much as or more than a book does, usually without having to try to sell them at all.

Obviously, the art sales can only scale to the limits of my creativity & time to produce original works – I’m not sure what the upper limit is, but perhaps dozens a month. Certainly not hundreds.  Whereas the book sales can scale without proportional extra work on my part – Lightning Source prints however many copies people order, whether it’s dozens a month or thousands.  If/when I “hit it big” the books will quickly win in this regard.  Not to mention I can sell a book more than once, and without doing prints (something I am currently opposed to), I can only sell an original work of art once.  So it takes orders of magnitude more work to produce a book, but I can keep selling it over and over again forever, instead of just once.

If only my sales numbers were orders of magnitude better.  Did I mention not a single one of my books has yet earned back the costs associated with its production, yet?  That’s with $0 value associated with my time, no less.  Which is to say: if I were more productive (of books), I’d perhaps only be digging myself deeper and deeper into a hole.  Being more productive of art is good, but when I really need to figure out is how to be more productive of profitability.  I need to produce more book sales.  That’s a hard one.  The podcasting thing is meant to be helping with that – it certainly puts my writing in front of a lot more minds than everything else I’ve been doing, even if it is for free, right now.  Something approaching five hundred times as many people have downloaded Dragons’ Truth from Podiobooks.com than have purchased a copy of the paperback (not counting sales to family) – that’s a huge multiplier.  Unfortunately, for whatever reason, it hasn’t translated directly into interest in my other podiobooks or in sales of my paperbacks or eBooks.  Gotta keep it up, though.  Gotta keep working on it.  Gotta get back to work, right now – I’m supposed to be editing together next week’s episodes of Forget What You Can’t Remember, right now.  Gotta go.

This post is about everything else.  This post is about how, in between the last two First Friday Art Walks (ie: basically in January), I painted 6 new paintings, recorded the audio for the podcast version of FWYCR (inlcuding 6 chapters ahead of where I needed to be), wrote 5 (mostly long) blog posts, did my taxes, et cetera, et cetera.  This post is about how, since the February First Friday Art Walk I haven’t painted anything new, have only written this blog post, and have only finished the single chapter of MEPod that was due today.  This post is about how I don’t know when my next book will be ready for publication, or what book it will be.  This post is about how I occasionally notice that I don’t have a “marketing strategy.” This post is about feeling insignificant, helpless.

After this month’s First Friday Art Walk in downtown Phoenix (I show among the vendors known as “Roosevelt Row” – the booths in the blocked off streets of Garfield between 4th & 6th, on 5th between Garfield & McKinley, and starting next month on 6th as well – I’m there every month, I pre-paid for all of 2009, and you can see/buy my art and/or books in person there for cash), I sold two paintings.  Did not sell them at the Art Walk, one because I don’t take credit cards on site, the other because there wasn’t a convenient ATM, but sold them after being seen there.  Gladly drove across town on Saturday to deliver one (after processing the payment through Google Checkout) and to a different part of town on Sunday to deliver the other.  I’m always glad to put my creations into the hands of people who appreciate them.  People who love them.  People who are excited to be able to see them again and again.  These kind of sales are awesome.

Very early Monday morning I left for NY. Thursday evening I returned to Phoenix.  Friday I did laundry and tried to recover from the conference & the trip.

Saturday I had another Art Walk / Art Fair, this time at Angel’s Serenity in North Phoenix/Scottsdale.  The Angel’s Serenity Art Fair is a Saturday, daytime event.  It had better turnout when the economy was in better shape (and when there was an open coffee shop involved – since gone out of business), but I still feel it’s worthwhile to show there.  It certainly doesn’t cost anything but my time and effort.  Sold a few books (You’ve seen the new books, right?), about half to returning customers.  That’s my favorite and most reassuring sort of customer, the ones who have bought my books before, read them, and want to buy the new books, too.  That’s the basis for my publishing model; to build an audience of people who will continue buying my books as I continue to write them.  Didn’t move any art at the Art Fair, but a past customer and I spent a lot of time discussing the 5 or 6 pieces he wants to buy – if only I catch him at the right time of the month.  I’ll follow up with him after the first of the month.

Writing it out, I know it hasn’t been a lot of time – especially since the conference was actually work.  Yet I feel unaccomplished, so far.  Dilligent, yes.  I recorded three more chapters of FWYCR yesterday, and worked on trying to figure out what to do about the final main character’s voice – it needs to be distinct, striking, but not distracting or confusing.  I edited, mixed, compressed & posted chapter 15 today, went to two banks and a book store, and am writing this blog post.  I’ve been working on some other ideas (more below) as well.  Still, I feel I haven’t done enough.  On the other hand, a big part of why I chose not to buy the big TV was so that I would be able to work longer without stress and worry – so that I would be able to go at my own pace without having to freak out about whether my art & writing were bringing in enough money on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis.  So I’m trying not to freak out.

I’m also looking at some new projects.  I’m considering designing a deck of cards – you can think of them like tarot cards or fortune telling cards, though I’m developing them largely from scratch.  I’m working out some planning and manufacturing ideas already, starting work on basic artwork & meanings.  Probably a set of 50 cards – thinking of maybe putting it out as a “deck” of moo business cards, actually, though I haven’t fully considered all the different custom card-deck printing options out there yet.  Feel free to suggest someone in the comments.  Then, in parallel with developing the deck, write a book explaining the cards, their meanings, and how to do a “reading” from them.  Publish the book & make the cards available – because I can, and it interests me to do so.  Not sure how to market such a thing, and certainly can’t bundle the cards with the book via Lightning Source, but it’s an idea.  If I decide to paint the images for the cards, that could mean up to 50 new Mini-Paintings – I’d want to do them at a size I could scan with the equipment I have, so probably 8×10″ or smaller canvas or canvas boards.  Or perhaps illustrations on paper, but then I’d have to mount/mat/frame them.  bleh.  But either way, that could be a gallery show I could shop around.  Hang the originals on the walls, sell the cards & books (& originals), and have me (someone) do readings for guests all night/nights.

I’m also increasingly thinking of trying to put together a music “album.”  Probably a “Christian music album,” at that.  I keep having to compose my own music for the podcasts (because I’m quite stubborn and independent) and thus to think about music, to design music, and to practice with its creation.  I’ve been vaguely thinking about creating music since middle or high school, but have rarely stuck with any physical instrument for more than a few weeks at a time & have never studied musical composition.  Having Garageband in front of me several hours a week, listening to music I’ve composed play behind my audiobooks, it’s been pushing me more and more toward writing songs & putting together an album.  That, I don’t have outlines or plans or marketing plans for (yet), unlike the cards/book thing above, but it’s rolling around in my head, closer and closer to the front all the time.

Which brings me around to what may be a lack of focus.  If I’m writing/composing/recording/producing an album of Christian music, am I focused on art?  On writing?  On publishing?  I’ve squeezed the designing of a deck of fortune cards (did you know the Old Testament  condemns divination?) into the art/publishing worlds with the hand-painting of the art & the writing/publishing of a companion book, but has my focus slipped?  What happened to the anthology of short stories I was working on last year?  When is UTFBF-RoaAP: Book Four going to be written?  Will I paint anything other than these cards any time soon?  What about my next podcast novel (due in April)?  What about marketing?

Marketing?  Fuck.  I knew I was forgetting something.  I still haven’t figured out how to do marketing.  Sigh.

In other news, since my books are increasingly apparent as some sort of idealized-communist propaganda, I’ve begun slogging my way through Atlas Shrugged.  The Fountainhead is next.  Then probably the Communist Manifesto, Wealth of Nations and Mein Kampf.  I’ve never read any of these, but time for reading is part of what I bought myself when I didn’t buy a 73″ HDTV.  Speaking of which, I’m going to go work on Atlas Shrugged right now.

<complain>
What this means, for my time, is that I have effectively been running three weekly podcasts: The podiobooks feed, with just the novel, the Modern Evil Podcast Friday episodes, with the novel and alternate introduction and closing, and the Modern Evil Podcast mid-week episodes, with my poetry and short fiction. ~2.2x the recording and editing, 3x the mixing, converting, and uploading vs. doing one weekly podcast. It’s been a lot of work, and time and thought consuming.
</complain>

So, along with the upcoming release of my new book, Forget What You Can’t Remember (now targeting a January release), I’m going to be starting podcasting it. In fact, I’m planning to overlap the two novels’ releases, so that people who listen to the final episode of Lost and Not Found on Podiobooks can immediately go subscribe to Forget What You Can’t Remember and so that people who subscribe to the Modern Evil Podcast will -instead of going for a while without episodes- get an extra episode or two during the overlap. Now, here’s the lazy part:

I’m going to continue releasing on the MEPodcast at the same time as Podiobooks, but Forget What You Can’t Remember is already broken into chapters of roughly even length, each of which should be around 15 minutes long. I’m going to release one chapter at a time, twice a week, into each feed. No poetry or short stories in the MEPodcast during the run, just chapter after chapter of the novel. Also: because of the structure of Forget What You Can’t Remember, the majority of chapters have no “breaks” in them, and thus will have a somewhat reduced editing time and effort – a savings then multiplied by the double feeds.

The Forget What You Can’t Remember podcast should wrap up around mid-April, 2009, according to this release schedule. Hopefully by then I’ll have another book or two written.

Over the course of the day I sold (and signed) several books (good thing I brought them along, instead of just the art, eh?), and talked to a lot of people about the paintings I brought, and ran into a couple of old friends.  Then, when I thought for sure I’d make more money from books than art at an Art Walk (which is about the opposite of my typical average sales numbers), in the last hour of the day, I sold one of my latest paintings, ‘fibonacci series #1′.  Yay!

Between these actual sales and the fact that I didn’t have to pay for the privilege of setting up (well, aside from all the $$ we spent eating and drinking at Intatto over the course of the day…), it was infinitely better than First Fridays.  No, seriously, I’ve never sold more than a single paperback (and usually less) at the First Fridays Art Walk.  Maybe in the fall, but until and unless and in a few weeks I’ll be at Intatto again.  I’ll let you know when I know more.

Conversation threads this morning on Twitter (which I can’t retrieve, on account of Twitter is “stressing out” – and I don’t feel like trying to track everything down with tweetscan/summize), included one creator saying they were thinking of planning on releasing a project they’re working on … in September or October.  To which my mind replied: “I don’t understand.  If you have a releasable product, why not put it out there as soon as it’s ready? For a finished product, why wait?”

Now, I can see how with certain products – say, a dancing Santa Claus doll or a new line of Valentine’s Day candies – releasing at a particular time of year might be appropriate.  And I can see how products which will only be relevant for a limited time should be released in a specific time period – though that’s now, not later – to avoid irrelevance.

I can even see where something like a blockbuster movie, trying to maximize attention and profits would want to schedule its release to not be the same weekend as a directly competing release, which would not only compete for viewers dollars but for the actual, finite number of screens, but — and this is a big but — I can’t see why a studio would hold off on releasing a movie for months or, as actually happens more often than you’d think, years after it was ready to be shown.  The finite number of screens is (I believe) now well over 30,000 in the US alone, and even the widest of releases hasn’t topped 1/3 of those – there’s a LOT of screens, if you have a movie ready to go, put it out there!   If you don’t think it’ll make “enough” money in theatres, throw it to DVD – as long as you keep it in print, it’ll be available to whoever wants it.  As long as it’s sitting “in the can”, unreleased, it’s not making anyone any money, it’s not entertaining anyone, it’s not communicating anything, it’s wasted.

Which, I think, is part of my problem with the whole thing:  Someone, possibly a lot of someones, put their hard work and creative energy and ideas into creating something, and that work, that creation, is being held back, hidden, kept from its audience.

The only response I got to my query on Twitter gave a few possibilities. Responding to a competitor, because it could hurt sales of a past product… but the number one response, and the one I see most often relating to this subject, generally is: To get good press.

And based on my research, the press wants your finished product and your press release months in advance of the product’s launch.  A three month lead time – for everything except daily newspapers – is the barest minimum.  Monthly magazines are effectively finalized three months before they hit newsstands, so they need even more lead time.  From what I’ve read, if you give them several months’ advance notice that you’re going to do so, daily newspapers only need weeks prior to a product’s launch to cover it.  And since that’s what the press asks for, that’s what the press gets, AND that’s what companies have become used to giving them.  So… the standard is that -if you want ‘good’ press- you have to have your product finished and ready for market a quarter or half a year before you want to release it.  The lead time in publishing, between an author turning in a complete manuscript and the book hitting store shelves seems to be one to two years, leaning toward two years, and the book is effectively done for most of a year of that. WTF?  Seriously?

I can upload a file to my printer today and -if I wanted to pay for expedited shipping- have finished, salable books in hand this time next week.  (Possibly within a week, depending.)  Amazon goes a little slower, so another week or two to have a complete page on Amazon (though if I wanted to be a Marketplace Seller, I could probably get the product up by the time the printer got it to me), but usually a couple fewer days than Amazon to hit other online booksellers like B&N, ABEBooks, Powell’s, et cetera.  I had set myself an arbitrary goal of having the book of short stories I’m working on finished in “May 2008″ and had been thinking of trying to churn away at it all week to have the finished book to the printer by the end of the month – if I did that, it would be 100% as available as every other book I’ve ever written by mid-June at the latest, and right now it’s just a virtual stack of rough drafts.  Except, apparently, if I did that, no reputable publication would ever, EVER, review the book, because I didn’t send them a “galley” to read 3-6 months in advance of publication.  WTF?  The book will be available, “in print”, indefinitely.  Forever.  It’s not a limited-time release.  It doesn’t stop being a book worth reading because it’s already out, or because it’s been out a year or two years or ten years.  It doesn’t actually stop being something worth reviewing the moment it becomes available to the public.

Yes, I know new books are coming out all the time – but that’s a separate issue.  The fact that something in the neighborhood of 100,000 new books were published last year in the English language is … wow.  Amazing, ridiculous, fantastic, encouraging, inspiring, et cetera.  Impossible for any one person, really even any team of people, to keep up with.  A publication dedicated entirely to reviewing books, a daily publication, an internet publication, a blog, even, with new reviews going up all the time … well, maybe a blog or wiki with thousands of reviewers working together to thoroughly cover every release could, but … it would be difficult, if not impossible, to review every book.  A normal publication, in the face of this, must decide how it will choose which books to review – that is a simple fact.  The idea that they’ve all decided that rule #1 is to ignore all books already in print is … arbitrary at best, but also ignorant and highly irrational.  What about the thousand-plus books that were released each week that they never even heard about?  If only a tiny portion of those were worth review, but came to the reviewers’ attention too late, too bad, eh?  What a terrible criteria.

I’ve gone on a tangent, have I?  Fine.  To sum up: The “good reason” to put off product releases is to get “good press” — because the press generally refuses to cover anything they don’t get access to before everyone else.  My response:  This is a practice based in the limitations of the past, on false scarcity and a lack of persistence -not just of products, but of vision-, which in the face of previously unheard-of levels of production (ie: 100k new books a year) and availability (ie: print on demand means nothing ever needs to go out of print), needs a massive overhaul.

The wrapping up of which brings me around to the second concept I wanted to address in this post, which I will try to do somewhat more succinctly:  I think that what people want is more content, more products; I don’t think that what people want is more marketing.

My basic, foundational, concept for what I plan to do with Modern Evil Press and wretched creature as I go forward, is based on this idea.  I’m going to paint as many paintings as I have ideas for, and make them available online for sale as soon as I can get a photograph of them taken – usually as soon as the paint is dry.  I’m going to write as much fiction as I have time for (I’ll likely never run out of ideas – I have hundreds of them, filling notebooks and file folders, usually a book’s worth of ideas per page), and put it out as quickly as possible – probably within a few weeks of getting first drafts I’m happy with.  I’m going to let people know what new things are available through whatever channels I have available (twitter, mailing list, shouting from street corners (did I mention I snagged a corner spot for the Phoenix First Friday Art Walk in June & July?), et cetera), and it is my belief that if enough people are interested enough in what I’m doing to want to pay attention, then I’ll be able to make a living on volume.  This is a version of the “1000 true fans” model – if I can find a critical mass of people who will gladly buy every book I put out, and enough people who will buy a piece or two of my art every year, and I just keep putting out new stuff all the time – two, three, or more books a year and dozens of paintings, I  can do what I love and still eat.

Because I believe people want what I create, not to see ads for what I’ve created and will be releasing later.  Marketing is to let people know the product is available – don’t confuse the issue and begin to believe that marketing is what the people want.

But that’s not what I want.  I’m not doing what I’m doing in an attempt to get a job doing something else.  I’m not doing what I’m doing because I want to get noticed by a big publisher, an internet startup, or some faceless corporate entity.  I’m doing what I’m doing because this is what I want to be doing.

I want to create art.  I want to write stories.  I want to record my stories, in my own voice.  I want to explore new distribution techniques (podcasting audiobooks, publishing books with some features of a wiki, creating an internet video channel of a poet reading their own poetry, et cetera), new ways of sharing, using and re-using ideas (all my novels and audiobooks are available under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license),  and new ways of connecting with an audience of interested people and of fans (twitter, blogging, facebook/mySpace, and platforms yet to come).  I want people to be able to enjoy what I create.

I hate money, conceptually.  It would be my preference to not have to deal with the foul stuff at all.  I have no desire to accumulate wealth.  Yet I must eat, and the grocery store doesn’t seem to accept stories and art in trade for food.  So:  I want to publish my books myself, not just because it gives me complete control and complete freedom with the finished product, but because as the publisher and the major retailer (via modernevil.com), I get those portions of the revenue (70%+ vs. 8%-12%).  I want to show my art on my own terms, sell directly through my website to the people who want it, talk to the people who are interested in it directly, and -yes- take the full retail price for myself, not just out of greed, but so that -as I’m starting out and building a name- I can set my retail prices lower (and hopefully make more sales), and still make a reasonable amount of money.  –  If I get a deal with a publisher, I still have to do most of the marketing (a fact that most authors learn too late; that except for the top few books, most publishers do little to market the books they print) for the book I wrote myself, but I only get a small percentage of the retail price of each copy sold (the retailer takes half or more, the distributor takes some, the publisher takes a chunk, and the author gets the leftovers).  If I get my art shown in a gallery in Phoenix, and hand-deliver it, the gallery takes half and I get the other half, but if I get shown in galleries out of state or -ohmygosh- in a big gallery in New York or internationally, then the gallery takes their half AND I get to pay (at least part of) shipping costs for getting everything there and -for everything that doesn’t sell- back again.

Advanced technologies, internet connections, and other modern wonders make these things possible.  One person, from anywhere, can run a business doing most anything.  They can have books professionally printed and distributed, and can do so with less overall environmental impact and for lower upfront costs than “big” publishers by using the bizarrely looked down upon technology of print on demand instead of giant offset print runs coupled with later pulping of unsold copies.  They can connect with more people, in more meaningful ways, anywhere in the world – far more than a traditional author signing tour or art festival circuit allows – and they can do it every day, all year, even while doing those more traditional marketing things.  This is the future, people.  Creators whose hard work pays them directly, and gets the IP into the hands of the fans directly, using technology.  It’s either this or a total collapse of civilization and a return to pre-oil lifestyles, and then the sell-outs lose, too.

Why does it seem like I’m the only one who not only sees that this is the future, but actually wants to make it a reality now?  I’m not doing what I’m doing because I want to be doing something else – this is what I want to do, and it’s possible now, and I’m doing it!  I may not be the best at marketing, but at least I’m getting every dollar of pitiful sales that I earn instead of a few cents of each dollar my weak marketing can pull in.  At least I’m trying to be both feet in the future instead of one foot in the future and both eyes on the model of success that is rapidly becoming past.  I’m going to get to work on another painting (write-up soon; it’s nearly complete).  That’s enough blogging for now, I think.

First: The Dragons’ Truth Audiobook.

I’m as satisfied with the recording as I’m going to be without doing a complete re-record from scratch, and after spending the last month recording, editing, and going over and over and over Dragons’ Truth I’ve remembered why it’s my least favorite of my novels, and have no interest in repeating the entire process immediately.  Maybe next year, or perhaps later this year, if I write a sequel (or the prequel I recently thought of and which -I believe- would make a much better book, all around), I’ll record both of them at the same time for a re-release and “box set” containing the pair.  Bleh, who knows?  Anyway, the recording is done, the mixing is done, I’ve got the Podiobook-compatible files ready and broken into eight episodes ranging from about 28min to 46min in length (avg. ~35min, if I recall correctly), I’ve got CD Master disc images of the MP3 CD and the 4-disc Audio CD versions created and ready to burn.  I’ve received the packaging for the MP3 CDs, designed it all, inside and out, and even have the first two copies burned, assembled, and shrink-wrapped. (Yay, shrink-wrap!  Very nice end-product!)  I forgot to take a bunch of photos of it being assembled to post – I’ll remember to photograph everything when I put together the first of the Audio CD packages, and do a couple more MP3 CD packages at the same time.  The packaging I chose for the multi-disc Audio CD sets will arrive Monday (UPS-willing), and I’ve begun working on the cover for that as well (which is a headache, btw, and I’m not sure my printer is up to the task.  If I forget, remind me to try: Print from two sides, 50% opacity on overlapping center, scream and cry when alignment is inevitably off), so with any luck, those will be good to go on Monday as well.  ((ooh, I forgot to buy more labels for those.  Sigh.  Add that to shopping list.))

Erk.  I just spent two hours (since the last paragraph) adding the MP3 Audiobook to modernevil.com (and updating the styling a bit).  You can now order the MP3 Audiobook.  I will add the link for ordering the audio CD version as soon as I have a copy in hand that I consider salable.  I’ve priced both the MP3 CD version and the AudioCD version a little lower than I probably ought to have, but since there’s no sales through standard retail channels (I don’t have & can’t afford mass production, warehousing, distribution, et cetera) for the audiobooks -which is to say that I’m manually making them with my own two hands and then shipping them out- I don’t have to worry too much about making sure I still get a profit after retail takes 50%+ like I do with my paperbacks; I’m the sole retailer.

The Dragons’ Truth Paperback is $12.99.

The Dragons’ Truth Audiobook on 1 MP3 CD is $12.99.

The Dragons’ Truth Audiobook on 4 Audio CDs will probably be $25.99.

If I offered a version that contained the paperback and all 5 discs for $44.99, would anyone buy it?

–Oh, and since I’ve passed 1:30AM now, I’m not going to do the other posts tonight.  At least one of them requires more Photoshop work.  I’ve made a list of them, and I’ll post more tomorrow.  LJ people who notice this post: I’ll cross-post tomorrow, too.  Goodnight!

Getting everything together was psychologically taxing.  Which paintings to take along to display, how to display them without spending too much, testing the generator/lights setup, thinking endlessly about signage, how much change should we have in the money box, how to fit everything into the car…  And when I checked the official website for Roosevelt Row on Friday morning, they’d moved the setup time from 4PM to 5PM up to 5PM to 6PM, so I was aiming to leave the house by 4:30.  Everything took a little longer than expected (especially fitting everything into the car), and there was unexpected “baseball traffic” and it was a little after 5:30 when I showed up.  Bleh.

The original spot I’d been assigned … well, it looked like most people had been setting up for at least an hour, and expanding into any unfilled spaces.  My original space was on the edge of things (if they hadn’t expanded to 4x the original size to accommodate everyone who showed up at last minute, it would have been in the middle of things), and a friend of mine had already expanded her stuff into it (since no one had showed up to claim it).  They offered me another space which was apparently being filled by someone who hadn’t even paid (?), but it looked like they were almost done setting up in it, too… so when they offered me a space way down, around the corner … well, I knew that that corner always had thousands upon thousands of people going by it — Fifth and Garfield, most of the houses up and down Fifth between Roosevelt and Garfield are now used as galleries on First Friday, and last month Mandy and I just turned around upon seeing the entire block packed (standing room only) from the front door on one side of the street to the front door on the other.  So I picked that spot, two spaces down from the corner space on Fifth just South of Garfield, and I moved over there and was unloaded and setting up just before 6PM.

Heath and Sean were about 1/2hr behind us, and I still wasn’t entirely set up (the wind kept knocking things over, and I kept having to come up with new ways to counter it) before he was there AND set up.  He sold two bracelets before the sun even set.  I mostly just fought the wind.  My sisters showed up to show their support and hang out.  Few people were out while it was still light.  Before long, it was clear that I was “the end of the road” — the last person to show up, apparently, and the last vendor on a row with only 4 vendors total.  Not a lot of reason to bother turning off Garfield (the main drag of vendors) to see the few booths on Fifth, really.  But I was close enough to be in view, and I’d angled a bunch of my stuff so that it faced Garfield, and after the sun set and I turned the generator on (there was a bit of finagling to get it going, but we eventually figured out how to read the clearly labeled parts) I also re-arranged so that lighter-colored art was facing that way, to draw the most attention in the dark.

Fairly quickly, I sold a book to a man who seemed sold before I even spoke to him, which was nice.  And speaking to people is what I did most on Friday.  I’d set up the space in a way that I’d thought would draw people in, and I certainly created a space that was “mine” – everyone could see the edge of that space, and most seemed to feel like they oughtn’t cross into it – but in trying to create a welcoming space (as opposed to pushing the tables & merchandise all the way to the edge of my 10×10′ space, like most of the vendors), I’d effectively moved my merchandise (art, books) five feet further away from where most people were comfortable with approaching.  I’d effectively put my books out of reach of the bulk of the people who showed up.  Admittedly, most people seemed to be there strictly to “look at art,” so having books at all seemed almost foolish.  Still, a lot of people who are seriously interested in art are so because they’re intellectually curious, and are also readers.  So I spent a lot of time talking to people, giving out cards, being friendly, shaking hands, and trying to get people to take that step into the space I’d created to get a closer look.

My overall feeling about the evening, after I’d got home, was that I’d basically been working the crowd as though it were a gallery opening – except that the gallery had only one wall, eight feet wide and five feet tall, and it was a group show with three people (an artist, a writer, and a jeweler) all showing in that same tiny space.  I think Heath got the feeling that everyone who’d showed up to that tiny gallery had only been told about the art, because he didn’t get much attention (and didn’t make any more sales) after the sun went down and the lights came on.  Which may be a fair view, considering that what was drawing people in, across the street, down the crossroad, to the last vendor, out of the way, was seeing my paintings, glowing in the dark.  (One under its own power.)  A LOT of people, standing only a few feet away, looking at my art, able to discuss intelligently both the art above and below the books standing on the table, didn’t even see the books until I pointed them out. Wow. Heath (and Sean) merely sat behind their table of jewelry (like nearly every other vendor out there, every month), trying to speak to people they couldn’t see (beyond the wall of light I’d built), so what chance did they have? I don’t know. It was hard for me, too, and I was out in the crowd, sometimes literally pulling people in.

After 9PM or so, a problem that hadn’t seemed too serious caught my attention. At the North side of Garfield, just my side of the “Street Closed” barricades blocking off Fifth Street, was a huge (SUV/Suburban type) Police vehicle, several Police cars, and a dozen cops. All night. It was like, barricade, sure, but throw in a seven-foot-tall, intimidating wall between my booth and … I don’t know, a hundred thousand people… and yeah, they’re going to turn and go the other way instead of coming into the blocked-off vendor area to see what else there is to see. It was most apparent after 9PM, when 5th street North of the barricade was completely packed with people (as I’d seen it last month), illegally — that part of the road was supposedly open to traffic — and the block-party vendor area on the other side of the massive police barricade was relatively sparse. I mean, a lot of people came by -often more than I could hand cards to or even acknowledge- but, on our side it was like a semi-popular street faire (vendor booths, a reasonable turnout), and on the other side it was like … I don’t know, a street party slash packed outdoor concert… It was literally packed until about 11:30 when the police took the barricades down and traffic actually started to push people out of the road.

Mandy left around 9 to go to her HS’s Prom (she’s an English Teacher, she was chaperoning), my sisters left sometime after 10 and Heath and Sean left around 11 – I didn’t realize it until it was too late, but by not giving up “early” so that someone was there with me, I didn’t have anyone to help, I didn’t have anyone to watch the stuff while I went to get the car to put it in, and I certainly couldn’t then go pick Mandy up. ((That had been the arrangement – she would walk to the Prom, about a mile away, and I would be done between 10PM and 11PM (since the Art Walk “ends” at 10PM) and come to pick her up at or before the time Prom ended (between 11 and 11:30PM), so she wouldn’t have to walk around downtown Phoenix, alone, after all the art-walkers et cetera had gone home.)) When Heath and Sean left, it didn’t look like anyone was packing up, and like I said, 5th street was completely full of people until at least 11:30… plenty of people were still coming by, looking at things…. plenty seemed semi-interested… And then, between 11, when I suddenly found myself by myself, and 11:15, everyone was packing up, the organizer came over and personally told me I ought to be packing up (I was, but slowly, since I was alone), and a few cars, here and there, were being let onto the less-and-less blocked off street. Well before the barricades actually came down I had my everything out of the road and up on the curb, where I did most of the re-packing / stacking. And then I just had to wait, watch the crowds slowly diminish and the other vendors load their vehicles and leave, and hope Mandy made it safely across downtown Phoenix.

Now, that’s not the whole story, of course. I also was friendly with my “neighbor” whose lighting hadn’t come through (I had plenty of light, and he was glad to pay for some gas to be able to plug one of his in). I got a few business cards. I gave out probably over 300 of my own cards (perhaps too many to teens/college-students). Hopefully some of those people will actually look at my sites. Hopefully some of them will actually order something. I heard later that at least two separate sets of people who knew I was there, knew what I look like and what my art looks like, and came to the vendor/blocked-off area to look for me specifically, couldn’t find me and never saw me. So, that spot wasn’t so good, maybe, for being found. Oh, and there are pictures. I’ll have to get my wife’s pictures, my sister’s pictures, and my iPhone’s pictures together and up on flickr, and I’ll make a post here when I do. But that’s what I’ve got for now. Hope you like it.

Hope you can make it out to see me, next time.

Is it too late to make a blog post about something happening tonight?  Will anyone see it before-the-fact?  We’ll see.  Gotta get that mailing list thing figured out, so I can email everyone and let them know when things are happening.

Like tonight: I’m going to be displaying at First Friday in downtown Phoenix.  I’ve mentioned it before, but now that it’s mere hours away, I’m getting restless with excitement.  Trying to get everything together & figured out so it goes of “without a hitch,” as they say.  I’m not showing in a gallery (yet), and as I’ve been avoiding doing for years now, I’m not illegally showing on the sidewalk or in an empty lot, either.  Instead, I’ve rented a space from Roosevelt Row, an organization which is legally getting a section of Garfield (one block south of Roosevelt) blocked off under “Block Party” rules and dividing it up for licensed vendors on First Fridays.  A lot of the people who have been setting up illegally already had tents &c., which is something I lack, but I’ve got tables, lights, a generator, and more art than I could possibly show in a 10×10 space (without a tent/walls to hang it all on).  Plus my books and Heath’s jewelry (chainmail) and … maybe we’ll make some money, eh?

I’m trying to decide which art to show (show first, that is – I’ll take most of it anyway, in case anything sells, I can replace it), since there’s only so much that can be seen in a setup like this.  Thinking about price tags, signage, labels, all that. Only hours to go.  But the basics are covered. I’ve even got stands for my books and some of my art, which is better than having it just laying there.  I’ve spent enough, between renting the space and getting extras, that if I don’t sell at least one painting (or a lot of books) it’ll come out at a loss — And I didn’t spend much.

Anyway, that’s it, I guess.  If you see this in time, please come show your support (maybe buy a book – they’re cheap!)

wretched creature & Modern Evil Press
will be showing at:
Phoenix First Fridays / Roosevelt Row
Garfield St., between 3rd and 4th St.
Friday, May 2nd, 2008, 6PM to 10PM