009: Inside Baseball
Prologue
First, COMPILATION.
I HAVE RECEIVED NEWS OF MY BOOK BEING OUT IN THE WILD.
IF YOU GET ONE IN THE MAIL LET ME KNOOOOOWWW. (and also review on the website with the big river and also Goodreads.)
Do you not have a copy AND you haven't been able to order one yet? Jump down to section four!
Ptooooo. Into the void.
Dropped kiddo off for what would have been Freshman Orientation last year, but is, in fact, Sophomore Orientation this year. Kid is so, so happy to be out of the house. I'm just glad they're vax'd up and masked and the school is taking things seriously. Last year was really rough on them, and I get it. Hopefully the teachers' union keeps up the pressure to maintain protocols through the rest of this. It was a battle just to get the admin to get on board with vaccinations last year.
My favorite internal conundrum is loving science, technology, and engineering, but hating faux patriotism, war profiteering, and imperialsim. Makes these Blue Angels practice flyovers real interesting emotionally.
Me: I should organize a book release party.
Covid: *still pandemicking*
Me: ...right.
We seem to have acquired a garage space. Better than wrenching on bikes in the street, I suppose. (Also at WAAAAAY below market average, so that's a plus.)
I love how Marketplace is like eight kinds of broken if you actually want to search for things. It's rill neat.
Second, INSIDE BASEBALL
That bit above about my book being out in the wild? It's true.
Now for the inside baseball part: I paid $16 to enter the contest that got this manuscript in front of the editors. I did not win, but I did get offered the standard contract, which is what non-contest entries also get. I sold 64 presales, which set my contracted royalty rate at 8% of net revenue from the book. That means that, from each book sold, I receive about 51 cents. Now, considering this will likely be the single largest royalty I receive (the next one won't be til February) and will likely account for the bulk of my sales, this might end up being all I make off the book. Figuring in the $16 I paid for the editor eyeballs, that's $16.61 I actually made, or about 26 cents per book.
The amount of promotion I've received from the publisher is: one Facebook post, one Instagram post, and one tweet, all on the same day, on a day they posted two other books as well. It is totally on me to make plans for readings, press releases, interviews, etc, which they claim they will amplify (they have 3100 Instagram followers), but other than that, all marketing/promotion is mine alone.
I secured not just the artwork, but also the permission from :: zoem :: to use it, which I still need to pay her for. I sought out the blurbs for the back cover. They DID register the ISBN and do the work to distribute through Amazon and Ingram, but I had to create the keyword list and categories and all the other text related to the book on Amazon/BN.com. They also fucked up the title in the listings, and I haven't heard back from them yet on fixing it. (I also have a sneaking suspicion that all the layout work they did for prepress was limited to copying and pasting my manuscript into their template, as my proofing experience was not fun a'tall.) Also, I still haven't received my copy of my book, though I think that might be due to Chicago's very fucked up mail delivery situation.
Would I do it again? I dunno. When we Kickstarted my previous chapbook, Hypersigil, we ended up pulling in about $1400, almost all of which was dedicated to the physical construction of the book: Libby hand-set, printed, and stitched every single copy. Roo drew the art by hand over several weeks. It took me over a month to write and revise, with Libby and I making layout decisions up to the day of printing. Of the final take I got enough to buy the cheapest laser printer on Amazon, because I was planning on starting my Patreon, one of the tiers of which rewards a chapbook of poems periodically. So the thing becomes "I have the ability and resources to do effectively this same process." But in books (and music, and film), that doesn't necessarily mean shit. We have progressed that anyone can make a book or an album or a movie in their bedroom with relatively low overhead. Billie Eilish and her brother basically created all of When We Fall Asleep Where Do We Go? in their bedrooms with a laptop and an audio interface. The difficulty is in getting eyeballs/earholes on it. In that case, am I really in that much better a place working with (this particular) publisher than I would be making a book myself and filing an ISBN? It's hard to say. I absolutely love the fact that I'm on with the biggest distributor in the world. But that means fuck-all if no one knows the book exists.
More considerations must be... considered.
Third, CONSUMPTION.
I have genuinely not been reading, watching, or listening to anything the past two weeks aside from the same ol' Youtube subscriptions. I managed to finish reading the Louise Glück collection I have been reading since January and enjoyed that tremendously. But other than that? It's mostly been waking up, putting out fires, staring into space, keeping cats sequestered, and going to bed. Occasionally eating.
Fourth, PROMOTION.
This is the part where I talk about my book, A Void and Cloudless Sky, which you can order here. The book itself is up for sale on Amazon and BN.com now, too! I assume they'll ship out ASAP, but I haven't seen any copies from my publishers, but whatever. Do you want a FREE Advanced Reader Copy? All I ask is that you review it on either/both of those sites and/or Goodreads. Let me know!
And as usual, if you'd like to support this whole endeavor more directly, you can check out my Patreon, where I post poetry, notes to poems, the occasional essay, and whatnot. At upper tiers I even write poems FOR YOU!
If you like what I do here and don't have the scratch or the inclination to do the above, please share this newsletter with you friends. I like making words wiggle people's brainjuices.
Finally, THE OUTRO.
I don't actually have anything for this week, not really. I have a headache that I'm not sure is a migraine--it certainly has the hallmarks, but I'm mobile enough--and so little has happened that I can't really think of anything specific right now. That might be depression, too. All I know is that I have to try to get ahold of a guy about a 1984 Fiero in hopes that I can have one of the cars I've always wanted. It's a pity he won't let me get it for $16.61. Then I could say I bought a car with my royalty check.
For the debt I owe, gotta sell my soul
'Cause I can't say no, no, I can't say no
Then my limbs all froze and my eyes won't close
And I can't say no, I can't say no
~ Billie Eilish, Bury a Friend
First, COMPILATION.
Literally the only complaint I have about my apartment isn't even the apartment, it's the upstairs neighbor who seems to be a horse made out of uranium that is always late for work. Just SPRINTING from one end to the other for approximately 21 hours a day. YOU'RE AN ORCHESTRAL VIOLINIST. WHAT ARE YOU DOING ALL DAY.
I HAVE RECEIVED NEWS OF MY BOOK BEING OUT IN THE WILD.
IF YOU GET ONE IN THE MAIL LET ME KNOOOOOWWW. (and also review on the website with the big river and also Goodreads.)
Do you not have a copy AND you haven't been able to order one yet? Jump down to section four!
Ptooooo. Into the void.
Dropped kiddo off for what would have been Freshman Orientation last year, but is, in fact, Sophomore Orientation this year. Kid is so, so happy to be out of the house. I'm just glad they're vax'd up and masked and the school is taking things seriously. Last year was really rough on them, and I get it. Hopefully the teachers' union keeps up the pressure to maintain protocols through the rest of this. It was a battle just to get the admin to get on board with vaccinations last year.
My favorite internal conundrum is loving science, technology, and engineering, but hating faux patriotism, war profiteering, and imperialsim. Makes these Blue Angels practice flyovers real interesting emotionally.
Me: I should organize a book release party.
Covid: *still pandemicking*
Me: ...right.
We seem to have acquired a garage space. Better than wrenching on bikes in the street, I suppose. (Also at WAAAAAY below market average, so that's a plus.)
I love how Marketplace is like eight kinds of broken if you actually want to search for things. It's rill neat.
You know I just now remembered that it was THIS WEEK that Trump was shouted down by his own fans at his own rally for suggesting people get vaccinated. For a long time I thought the monster that the GOP created was Donnie. Now it's getting obvious that it was actually their base that became the monster, broken loose from its moorings and rampaging through the populace. Under the right conditions, the American West can seem a lot like Antarctica. "...carried away by the waves and I soon lost sight of him in the darkness and distance."
Second, INSIDE BASEBALL
That bit above about my book being out in the wild? It's true.
Now for the inside baseball part: I paid $16 to enter the contest that got this manuscript in front of the editors. I did not win, but I did get offered the standard contract, which is what non-contest entries also get. I sold 64 presales, which set my contracted royalty rate at 8% of net revenue from the book. That means that, from each book sold, I receive about 51 cents. Now, considering this will likely be the single largest royalty I receive (the next one won't be til February) and will likely account for the bulk of my sales, this might end up being all I make off the book. Figuring in the $16 I paid for the editor eyeballs, that's $16.61 I actually made, or about 26 cents per book.
The amount of promotion I've received from the publisher is: one Facebook post, one Instagram post, and one tweet, all on the same day, on a day they posted two other books as well. It is totally on me to make plans for readings, press releases, interviews, etc, which they claim they will amplify (they have 3100 Instagram followers), but other than that, all marketing/promotion is mine alone.
I secured not just the artwork, but also the permission from :: zoem :: to use it, which I still need to pay her for. I sought out the blurbs for the back cover. They DID register the ISBN and do the work to distribute through Amazon and Ingram, but I had to create the keyword list and categories and all the other text related to the book on Amazon/BN.com. They also fucked up the title in the listings, and I haven't heard back from them yet on fixing it. (I also have a sneaking suspicion that all the layout work they did for prepress was limited to copying and pasting my manuscript into their template, as my proofing experience was not fun a'tall.) Also, I still haven't received my copy of my book, though I think that might be due to Chicago's very fucked up mail delivery situation.
Would I do it again? I dunno. When we Kickstarted my previous chapbook, Hypersigil, we ended up pulling in about $1400, almost all of which was dedicated to the physical construction of the book: Libby hand-set, printed, and stitched every single copy. Roo drew the art by hand over several weeks. It took me over a month to write and revise, with Libby and I making layout decisions up to the day of printing. Of the final take I got enough to buy the cheapest laser printer on Amazon, because I was planning on starting my Patreon, one of the tiers of which rewards a chapbook of poems periodically. So the thing becomes "I have the ability and resources to do effectively this same process." But in books (and music, and film), that doesn't necessarily mean shit. We have progressed that anyone can make a book or an album or a movie in their bedroom with relatively low overhead. Billie Eilish and her brother basically created all of When We Fall Asleep Where Do We Go? in their bedrooms with a laptop and an audio interface. The difficulty is in getting eyeballs/earholes on it. In that case, am I really in that much better a place working with (this particular) publisher than I would be making a book myself and filing an ISBN? It's hard to say. I absolutely love the fact that I'm on with the biggest distributor in the world. But that means fuck-all if no one knows the book exists.
More considerations must be... considered.
Third, CONSUMPTION.
I have genuinely not been reading, watching, or listening to anything the past two weeks aside from the same ol' Youtube subscriptions. I managed to finish reading the Louise Glück collection I have been reading since January and enjoyed that tremendously. But other than that? It's mostly been waking up, putting out fires, staring into space, keeping cats sequestered, and going to bed. Occasionally eating.
Fourth, PROMOTION.
This is the part where I talk about my book, A Void and Cloudless Sky, which you can order here. The book itself is up for sale on Amazon and BN.com now, too! I assume they'll ship out ASAP, but I haven't seen any copies from my publishers, but whatever. Do you want a FREE Advanced Reader Copy? All I ask is that you review it on either/both of those sites and/or Goodreads. Let me know!
And as usual, if you'd like to support this whole endeavor more directly, you can check out my Patreon, where I post poetry, notes to poems, the occasional essay, and whatnot. At upper tiers I even write poems FOR YOU!
If you like what I do here and don't have the scratch or the inclination to do the above, please share this newsletter with you friends. I like making words wiggle people's brainjuices.
Finally, THE OUTRO.
I don't actually have anything for this week, not really. I have a headache that I'm not sure is a migraine--it certainly has the hallmarks, but I'm mobile enough--and so little has happened that I can't really think of anything specific right now. That might be depression, too. All I know is that I have to try to get ahold of a guy about a 1984 Fiero in hopes that I can have one of the cars I've always wanted. It's a pity he won't let me get it for $16.61. Then I could say I bought a car with my royalty check.
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