Curiosity On Mars… Touchdown successful, Website Crashed!… (but only for a short time)

Filed Under: Blogs @ How to Self Publish by Corinne — Comments Off on Curiosity On Mars… Touchdown successful, Website Crashed!… (but only for a short time)
August 5, 2012
Mars Curiosity Image of Rover Wheel

The Back Tire of the Mars Rover, “Curiosity” sent within minutes of touchdown.

How uber-cool is NASA’s live feed of the Mars Rover “Curiosity” touchdown?  Mega UBER-cool… as was the substitution of a hover craft (wha, sky crane is more accurate?) for the bouncing ball tech of the last touchdowns… also successful, but what, less precise?  AND Curiosity sent back images right away…. of her own back tire.

Okay, still an UBER COOL back tire!

And another image…. of her own shadow,

Okay, her shadow on MARS!

And then NASA’s websites crashed.
The touchdown was a success…
but the websites all crashed.

But then they came up again….

Curiosity's Shadow On The Surface Of Mars.

Who hasn’t taken a picture of her own shadow? On Mars!

And anyway, I already had my pics of their pics…. the ultimate in public domain,

I hope.

 

 

 

Tags:
Comment

What is Short Run Printing?

Filed Under: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions by Corinne — Comments Off on What is Short Run Printing?
August 3, 2012
Self Publishing Advice Duckling

What is Short Run Printing? What? What IS it?

Short Run Printing is a small (short) order of printed hard copy books (usually paperback, but could refer to hard cover) produced by a professional printing company. Short run printing is important to self publishers because it is the main way we can get a physical inventory of our books to sell at a profit. Traditional publishers usually order big numbers of books at a time, more than 5,000, and that’s how they get the books for a low enough price to be able to make a profit selling them in bookstores or anywhere else.

Before Print On Demand came around, small presses had to rely on short run printing to bring a book to market.  Now most self publishers can get a very good start with print on demand – having very small stocks of books on hand. But with enough sales volume, self publishers quickly look to short run printing to provide more inventory at a price that makes room for profitable sales.

As the self publisher, you write and create and design the book and have a final file of book interior and cover ready, then you work with a book printer to produce anywhere from 500 to 5,000 books. Some printers won’t do less than 1000. The cost per book goes down when the print order goes up. More and more traditional book printers are willing to do short runs in our current economy, when before it was not worth their time to work with the smaller orders and less experienced publishers.

We used Worzalla for the second short run printing of “Just A Couple Of Chickens” and were VERY pleased. And they did have to take more time to work with us, since we were less experienced as publishers. They were very patient… (…headsup the proof is called a blueline and it comes to you uncut and if you find a typo that late in the process it’s going to take a couple of hundred dollars to fix…)

I deeply believe in buying American, so I didn’t even consider a printer in China. With rising gas prices worldwide and rising basic wages in China, that competition is beginning to change – but regardless, I believe it is important to our economy to do our business here.

And that is Short Run Printing!

 

Tags: , , , ,
Comment

Watch Out For Self Publishing Scams

Filed Under: How to Get Started in Self Publishing by Corinne — Comments Off on Watch Out For Self Publishing Scams
August 1, 2012
Self Publishing Advice Busy Bees

The editors at Writer Beware Blogs have been busy bees gathering important information for us writers.

The technology that has made self publishing possible has opened new possibilities for scammers. The industry is so new and so confusing that it’s way too easy to get caught in a scam. But writers are artists who create with their minds – using words as their medium, and we are not helpless marks.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, with support from the Mystery Writers of America formed a Committee on Writing Scams and They Have An Excellent Blog.

As a self publisher, you will use one of the dozens of print on demand companies out there to produce your book and make it available for sale online, but you should be very aware of the fees they are charging. As a true self publisher, you will be using your time more than your bank account. There are basic fees you can’t get around, like the cost of a business license, ISBN number (don’t accept the free one – buy your own to be your own publisher), and proof copy of the book… but you shouldn’t be paying extra to get the book on Amazon.com, for instance. If you choose the right print-on-demand company, there’s just the royalty schedule and distribution channel choices.

I use CreateSpace and I’m happy with them… and LightingSource is highly recommended also, and although each of these companies offers service packages so that you can pay to have things done that you can do yourself… I suggest you only do that if you would rather pay the money and save the time, not because you think you have to pay for it.

Do it yourself self publishing takes an enormous amount of time and learning – but it does NOT take an enormous amount of cash.
You also may not make an enormous amount of cash doing it… but then again, you might!

 

Tags: , ,
Comment

How Much Can I Make As A Self Published Author?

Filed Under: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions by Corinne — Comments Off on How Much Can I Make As A Self Published Author?
July 30, 2012
Sandy Grains of Self Publishing Advice

A sandy mix of answers to an ocean of questions.

Most articles I’ve seen don’t answer this question, and I’m not really going to either in this post, but I will describe my costs and earnings in my soon-to-be-available How To Self Publish series…

So far, the figure is not zero but it would be if I valued my time at minimum wage. I did earn back my first print costs and more, but I used the earnings to fund another print run, so….

But my point in posing the question is to say that the real answer is based on another question…

“How many books can you sell?”

If you can sell 100,000 books as a self published author, you can make a decent living with even a crappy paying distribution channel.
But most books don’t sell 100,000 copies. Most books don’t sell even 2,000 copies.

As a self published author, you will receive payment on as many books as you sell.
Therefore, how much you can make depends on how many books you sold and how much it cost you to produce them.

The amount of payment you will actually receive depends on how that book sold. Each distribution channel should tell you up front how much it will pay, and it depends on the book’s retail price, and the kind of account you have with the distributor. The payment is often called a royalty. You may not feel like you have a book deal with a publisher, but you do. Your publisher is you, and the royalty deal you got is anywhere from cents per copy to dollars per copy.

But before you “make” any money, your publisher is probably going to require you to pay back the book production cost. Publishers are just weird like that.

So sky’s the limit, right?  As a self publisher, you are free to hit it big or quietly starve. You can make nothing as a self published author most easily. Or less than nothing, because you will incur some costs in getting set up. Or you can make a full time living as a self published author… people are doing it. But there’s a reason for the common term “starving artist” and the new eBook dictionaries are starting to show pictures of self publishers under the same heading.

Just kidding, but still… it was one of those kinds of questions.

 

 

 

 

Tags: , , ,
Comment

Tour de Coops 2012 in Portland, Oregon… (is on hiatus this year )

Filed Under: Blogs @ "Just a Couple of Chickens" by Corinne — 2 Comments
July 27, 2012
Just a couple of chickens wonder where is tour de coops 2012

Tour de Coops 2012? Where is it? Where? It’s on break for 2012? What? What?

Tour de Coops in Portland Oregon is a fantastic self guided tour of backyard chicken coops throughout the city organized by www.growing-gardens.org. The urban chicken movement is strong in Portland, and urban homesteaders and chicken raising masters in the neighborhoods East of the Willamette River have some of the best backyard coops in the business.

The coops are home made, or manufactured, or customized, or pulled together with frugal ingenuity. They are a parade of homes for backyard hens. Anyone wanting to know how to raise chickens in the city would love this tour. I should have taken a tour like this when I was building coops for my chickens, but instead, I re-invented the concept. The results are some of the ruefunniest parts of “Just a Couple of Chickens”, my book on raising chickens the hard way.

I was all ready to go! The Tour de Coops usually takes place in July, and tickets go on sale a couple of weeks before the event and sell out fast. But then I discovered that the organizers of the fun event decided to take a haitus for 2012 and get their ducks in a row regarding how to do next year’s tour.  So I’ve marked my calendar for 2013 and took a little time to look into the details and history of the event.

Growing-gardens.org is an award winning organization that mobilizes voluteers to build local organic raised bed vegetable gardens in low income neighborhoods in Portland, Oregon. They run several outreach programs centered around sustainable food gardens in city environments. They host workshops that help urban homesteaders get started farming in the city.

The 2011 Tour de Coops was the 8th annual and it’s a well-known Portland event. I was particularly looking forward to seeing how people matched their coops to their house architecture. I noticed some very creative coops last year during my walks around town.

I’ll keep watch for the Tour 2013, and maybe by then I’ll have my own coop stashed in my urban farm backyard… not that I’m counting my chicks before they hatch or nuttin’.

 

 

Tags: , , , , ,
Comment

Air Force One Is Double-Parked At PDX…

Filed Under: Blogs @ "Colonel C. J. Tippett" by Corinne — Comments Off on Air Force One Is Double-Parked At PDX…
July 24, 2012
Colonel C J Tippett did not fly Air Force One

Air Force One at PDX in Portland, Oregon on July 24th, 2012.

I can ignore one pass of a heavy helicopter over the house… immersed in my blogging as I am, but I cannot ignore three.
So low and so loud that it shakes my pen off my desk… I finally realize that Something Is Going On In Portland.

It is a Coast Guard helicopter and it isn’t landing. It’s circling just beyond the hospital, towards the river, towards the…. Convention Center.

ah, President Obama is visiting Portland, Oregon today. I remember. I made a note to remind myself because traffic was going to be utter hell on that day. But I forgot. And based on the twitter traffic #ObamaPDX, it wouldn’t have mattered if I had remembered. The max trains and the pedestrian walkways and the freeways and the surface streets are all standing still as the motorcade passes. Wow. Thousands of people are going to be late this afternoon, no matter where they were going. Kind of a downside to rating high enough as a voting block to earn a visit from the President of the United States.

But I am focused on getting my grandfather’s aviation history biography ready for release and I cannot be distracted for long by such things as current events… until I realize that if President Obama is at the Convention Center, then…….
Air Force One must be double-parked at PDX!!

And sure ‘nuf, yes it is. Now that catches my attention.

Because the very first Air Force One was a Douglas C-54 Skymaster, and that was one of the 98+ aircraft that my grandfather flew!  Not while it was actually designated Air Force One, and not the actual plane that was the first Air Force One, but a plane that was the same kind of plane. Maybe a bit of a reach, but heck, I’m stuck where I am right now because traffic is totally frozen – including foot traffic – so I might as well let my mind soar.

“Air Force One” is actually only an air traffic control sign given to whatever aircraft is carrying the president. Maybe that makes his big black limo “Street Force One” right now. Today’s big bird out at PDX is a Boeing VC-25, the military version of the Boeing 747, only with more missiles than commercial craft usually carry.

But back in 1945, Air Force One referred to a Douglas C-54 Skymaster, and Tip piloted that model aircraft for 8:05 hrs and 7:55 hrs in August, 1958 in and out of Limatambo Airport in Lima, Peru.

Now, I figure that practically makes me best friends with the president and I’m wondering why I wasn’t one of the invitation-only people attending his speech, and being served voodoo doughnuts bacon-and-maple bars.

Seriously, twitter must be the secret service’s worst nightmare.

 

 

Tags: , ,
Comment

How Often Should I Post On My Blog?

Filed Under: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions by Corinne — Comments Off on How Often Should I Post On My Blog?
July 23, 2012

I’ve been plugging the same question into google for hours now, and I keep getting the same answer.

“How often should I post on my blog?” I ask…
“Every day” blogging experts answer…

But I don’t like that answer, so I try again.
Google has the infinite patience of a robot.

An Ocean of Self Publishing Advice

Days, like breakers, roll up on my beach endlessly when I contemplate posting every day.

“Every day if you want to build traffic…”
“Every day if you want to attract new readers…”
“Every day if you want to keep loyal readers…”
“Every day if you want to rank higher on keyword searches, which brings you more traffic…”

I switch up my question, still hoping for an answer I will like better.
Google has the flexibility of a robot – it gives me the same answer while it varies the sources.

I choose some of my favorite blogs… how often are they posting?
Every day.
Hmm, sometimes they skip a day.
Oh, no they don’t.
Those are weekend days.

Wah.

Well, for now I will stick with posting at least three times a week.
But the answer to the question is that posting every day builds traffic. And for those of you bloggers who are valiantly posting every day… I raise my glass to you!

 

 

 

Tags: , , ,
Comment
Copyright 2012 Corinne Tippett & The Westchester Press
Powered by WordPress & Web Design Company
Social Media Icons Powered by Acurax Wordpress Development Company