Friday Morning Blue Cheese Stuffed Burgers

No need to be weary of the calories, because the P5 is fat free!

(1) SUFFER IN SILENCE: 9,466 5
(2) GOLEM: 25,912 5
(3) WAITING FOR THE WORLD TO END: 26,866 5
(4) INFERTILITY SUCKS: 37,923 5
(5) STUCK OUTSIDE OF PHOENIX: 87,114 5
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If you haven't seen any of the articles on how well the self-published Bruce Plasket book, BUFFALOED: HOW RACE, GENDER AND MEDIA BIAS FUELED A SEASON OF SCANDAL, is doing, you should take a peak. The piece is mostly about the scandal the book discusses in detail, but a few nuggets of wisdom are hidden inside:

"There's a story behind the book, too: Plasket had to self-publish after two publishers withdrew, apparently scared off by warnings of litigation from the attorney for one of the female accusers.

He wound up delivering copies to bookstores from the back of his Chevy Cavalier, but his persistence paid off. "Buffaloed" has emerged as a hot seller for the Colorado-based Tattered Cover Book Store chain, hitting No. 3 on the state's best-seller list for paperback nonfiction."

I have no idea if Mr. Plasket used POD or not, but two things should be learned here:

(1) If you have a timely and important story to tell and no one wants to buy in at a corporate level, find a way to get it out there;

(2) Sell books out of the back of your Chevy if you have to.

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This article on the National Book Awards discusses the "reprinting" of many of the winners--that is, how big the second (or beyond) print runs would be since the books have won their awards.

The interesting thing here is this section:

"William T. Vollmann has received little attention from book buyers. But that could change now that he has won the fiction prize for EURPOE CENTRAL, intertwined stories about World War II. His publisher, Viking, says it is printing 35,000 copies in paperback.

"Vollmann is exactly the kind of writer literary awards were made for," Viking's Paul Slovak says. "I don't think he's ever had a book that has sold more than 15,000 copies in either hardcover or paperback. ... So he's made a giant leap."

See? An award-winning author (now) having never sold more than 15,000 copies per book? To makes things simple, let's say he gets $2 per book. That's $30,000. Hard to make a living at this racket.

If you write, do so because you love it. I do. And I still have a day job that is paying the bills--and providing health insurance.

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Authorhouse has announced two items that make them a slightly juicier fruit:

(1) They have officially formed a partnership with Google Print. While there is much debate about the copyright issues here, believe me when I say the best thing for a self-(or under-) published author is exposure--and if that means getting your book noticed via a Google search, so be it.

(2) They now have a service that guarantees your book will be produced in 30 days or less (you will have it in hand in 30 days.) And that's pretty swift. The only way to beat that (that I know of) is to produce it yourself via Lulu.

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Well, thanks for stopping by. Nothing better than sharing some blue-veined cheese with a few thousand friends.

We'll have a big old ruby ready for you Monday.