People want different things from writing a book. The first step you must take is to ask yourself: “What do I want?” and actually get to the rock bottom of the truth.
For many people, that is difficult. Too difficult. Some people (me) only get halfway there, but I freely admit I don’t know what I want most of the time.[1]
So there I was with my cursor perpetually on the SEND button sending my manuscript out to real agents and publishers (not those poseur ebook publishers) and getting nowhere. Meh, I don’t blame the early rejections. My blurb sucked and so did my beginning (which I rewrote) and my tag line was apparently only appropriate for my blog.
I retooled and sent out another round. Meanwhile, I saw that an in-real-life critique group friend I’d had back in the day and had gotten published by her chosen publisher was talking up ebooks. Well. If she had no problem with it, maybe I should just peek. One night, after another long shift of medical transcriptioning, I decided to browse the poseur ebook publishers.
I found one whose blurb was satisfactory, so I bought it and read it. It was good. It was really good. I bought another one from a different ebook publishing house. Also good. A third, from a third ebook publishing house. Excellent, in fact.
After another spate of flat rejections, I started sending it to ebook publishers. Lo and behold, I got one rather complimentary rejection with several suggestions I implemented immediately. I got a couple of other complimentary rejections, and a few more. People liked it, but they didn’t know what it was, precisely, or what to call it.
That was encouraging, but it was still a wall. At least I knew I could still write.
Yet I despaired and my husband finally said (quite innocently) (it was cute), “Why don’t you publish it yourself?”
That sparked the REEEEist REEEE that ever was REEEEd.
YOU CAN’T DO THAT! IT’S NOT ALLOWED!
And that would make me no better than Judy the MT.
He was completely confused. “You publish your cross-stitch patterns. You already have the skills to do it.”
THAT’S DIFFERENT!
I REEEEd for days.
The problem was … in between those very complimentary rejections and the odd editorial suggestion here and there, I was fiddling with covers and doing the typesetting to create a pretty galley. I kept that part to myself. It was my dirty little secret because yes, I did have the chops to do it myself, I didn’t trust what a publisher would do with it, so I’d already begun in the hopes I could say, “Yeah, hey, uh … could you use this cover? And this typesetting?”[2] I was halfway out the door of my church, but I was afraid of the heat I’d take.
“Look, do you want people to read it?” Mr. Mojeaux asked me.
“Yes.”
“Then put it out there. Who’s it going to hurt?”
MY FEELINGS! MY PRIDE! WHAT IF THEY DON’T LIKE IT? WHAT IF THEY SAY MEAN THINGS ABOUT ME ON THE INTERNET?! WHAT IF SIMON & SCHUSTER WANTS TO DESTROY MY CAREER?! REEEEEEEEEEEEE
Then. Then. THEN.
He used The Words on me.
“Remind me who said, ‘The question is not ‘Who’s going to let me?’ The question is ‘Who’s going to stop me?’”
I should never have given him Rand.
My last name is Beeton. B10. Get it?
The pros and cons of self-publishing have, since 2008, tipped heavily toward the pros side. I won’t bother you with what I had to do, as it is irrelevant, other than to note I set up a publishing company to attempt to cover myself in a glamour of legitimacy. That involved changing my business name from Effervescent Designs to B10 Mediaworx, but the state of Missouri was very understanding and it took like 3 seconds.
| PROS | CONS |
| total control | total control |
|
|
You are now sitting there staring at your computer screen where you have just triumphantly typed THE END. Now what?
This is what you need to know before you do anything else:
There are many services that can put your ebook anywhere ebook readers buy, but the most efficient way is a combination of Smashwords and Amazon.
Smashwords is the leading distributor of ebooks to iBooks, Barnes & Noble, and Overdrive (a library supplier). They distribute to other places too, but these three are the most important. They do not distribute to Amazon (they do, but negligibly). They do not do print. They do do audiobooks. However, I know nothing about that.
Amazon plays by its own rules, so you will go to them directly for ebook and print. They can make your print book available to bookstores and libraries that want to stock your book.
There are companies that will take you from soup to nuts (including ghostwriting), handling the whole process for you. You will still have to set the accounts up yourself, key in payment and tax information so you can wake up on the first of every month with money having magically appeared in your bank account and trust your vendor with your login information. This may seem self-evident to the more savvy, but I spend a surprising amount of time guiding clients through this process.
Smashwords. Go here and set up your account. Once you have signed up, do not forget to put in your banking and tax information here.
Amazon. You will go here, but log in using your consumer account (the one you use to buy stuff). Go here and put in your banking and tax information.
Now that you’ve done that, figure out how to market it[4]. Spend a lot of time on this.
Time to get everything ready to go.
EDITING
There are three levels of editing: Content, line editing, and proofing. There are editing services. Lots of them. I am not going to recommend one, not even myself, because that is not my forte. I can line edit and proofread, but content editing isn’t my bag.
Good editing won’t gain you readers but bad editing will lose them.
This could cost you anywhere from nothing to several thousand dollars. I had nowhere to go to edit The Proviso, so I clattered around the internet and finally found someone who was even willing to do it. She did a very good job and I felt I got my money’s worth, all $3,000 of it. Though I really needed a second pass, that was going to cost more money. I simply couldn’t do it.
I have since acquired skilled friends who will do it for free in exchange for an early read. I have also gotten good enough that I can point out the problem areas myself[5].
Teh Bewbies(TM)
COVER DESIGN
This, plus your back-cover copy, is your most important marketing tool. Do not skimp, but get a young designer who is hungry. Mine Deviant Art first.
I did my own first cover. It isn’t horrible, but it’s not good or representative of what’s in the book. I take comfort in what Reid Hoffman at LinkedIn said: “If you aren’t embarrassed by the first version of your product, you launched too late.”[6] I re-edited it and put out a second edition with a new cover (that someone else did).
FORMATS
Do you want ebook only or do you want print also? Smashwords has “Mark’s List,” which has a list of vendors on it.
Smashwords:
You will need either a Word DOC properly formatted to spec (this is harder than it seems for most people, especially after they read the instruction manual) and/or an EPUB file.
Smashwords will take your Word DOC and convert it into several formats (e.g., Kindle, PDF, HTML, EPUB) for people to be able to buy the format of their choice directly from Smashwords. Smashwords cannot take an EPUB and convert it to any other format.
However, all the important ebook retail outlets require a properly formatted EPUB. They don’t get the other formats, so it is a convenience for Smashwords shoppers only.
Why one or the other or both? Several reasons:
-
- Say you have a pretty print nonfiction book that has lots of text boxes or recipes or images or footnotes you want to link and you want it to look just like your expensively typeset print book. A Word DOC is useless because it has to be plain jane; it will look like a raw manuscript. You want to be able to control how it looks on an ebook reader screen, so you will want an EPUB.
- Say you have lots of images and/or high-resolution images that must retain their fidelity. Smashwords has an upper limit on file size. A Word DOC has to be smaller than an EPUB does, so if your Word DOC cannot be hewn to under the limit, you’ll have to have an EPUB.
- Say you have a fiction book with straight text. You don’t need an EPUB; just upload the properly formatted Word DOC and you’re golden.
- Say you want to control the formatting for all the other ebook retailers, but you want to make it available to Smashwords customers as well. If it’s not as important to you to recreate formatting for the (probably) few copies you will sell at Smashwords, then you’ll want a Word DOC for those people who want to buy other formats and a properly formatted EPUB that will be sent off to retailers and libraries.
You will need an appropriately sized cover image. I use 1400×2100, 72dpi.
You will then upload your text and cover files[7]
To get into the retailers and libraries, you will need an ISBN, which you can get for free from Smashwords, although Smashwords will show up as your publisher, or you can buy your own.
Amazon:
For ebooks, you will upload a file. It can be a Word DOC, RTF, PDF, EPUB, or a MOBI (which is Kindle’s native format). I generally do not tell my clients that they can upload any one of those because more often than not, the conversion will come out nastily. I do not want to be blamed for formatting a Word DOC for Smashwords that someone then uploads to Kindle that then comes out looking like someone who only found out about Kindle books yesterday typed up. Therefore, I simply sell a MOBI file and call it good. Most of my clients are tired of thinking about it, need guidance, and don’t want to hear all sorts of options that hinge on technicalities and might have a bad outcome.
You will not need an ISBN for this if you do not own one.
You will also need a cover image, as above.
For print, you will need a typeset print-ready PDF file and a properly constructed print-ready cover PDF file. Your interior can be as pretty or as plain as you care to have it.
As to getting the files onto Smashwords and/or Amazon, you can do that, following all the directions, or you can let your book shepherd/formatting vendor (if you have one) do it.
You may or may not want an ISBN, depending on whether you go with Amazon’s “expanded distribution” program or not. If you do want bookstores and libraries to be able to order your book from a catalog, you will need one assigned by Amazon. Amazon will show up as your publisher there, as well.
Audiobooks:
I know nothing about this. My books are doorstoppers, I don’t have the money to pay good voices, and I sound like a 12-year-old redneck who ate a dictionary, so I can’t do it myself.
ISBNs
If you plan to publish more than one book in more than one format, I suggest getting an account with Bowker and purchasing a block of 10. It’s expensive and I’ve always been pissy about it, especially since other countries give them away for free. But yay capitalism. By using your own ISBN, you can be shown as the publisher. I believe Amazon now has the option of expanded distribution for those who have their own ISBNs, but I haven’t checked. I have an alternate method because I was forced to start out as a publishing company.
Last …
MARKETING
Yeah, about that …[8]
[1] What I want is to sit on my ass in a lovely home I don’t have to clean so I can spend my time writing or reading and codding around on the internet, not having to worry about money. I want to travel well and when I am doing none of the above, I want to play golf (yes really). But no self-respecting libertarian likes to admit they just want to be aimless with no money worries.
Cods & Cuntes
[2] You know that point in a job you hate when you’re calling in all the time because you hate it but you haven’t yet figured out that you should probably just quit? But you don’t? Because you’re kind of afraid to because you don’t have another gig lined up yet? No? Just me?
[3] You will not be able to get yourself into a bookstore, Walmart, Costco, Sam’s Club, Target, grocery stores, truck stops, or airports. You might be able to get yourself into libraries. Fortunately, that may not make much difference.
[4] Please do not ask me how to do this. If I knew how, I would be sitting on my ass in a nice house I don’t have to clean heckling you lot before hitting the links.
[5] At the moment, I’m struggling with the pivotal scene in Cods & Cuntes when the heroine gets out of the friendzone. I have two different scenes written, they’re both good, and I can’t choose between them. That’ll be up to Mr. Mojeaux.
[6] I wasn’t too embarrassed until a friend said, “I am amused by your creative use of verbs.” I dun fucked up.
[7] My next post will be more how-to.
[8] I’ve resolved to market the hell out of Cods & Cuntes. It’s a popular trope in a popular time period in a popular area of the world. It’s an easy read with little philosophizing and a simple conflict and, if I may say so myself, it is a rockin’ good time.
A note: This process is very simple to me. No matter how disoriented a potential client is, I can always figure out what they need and guide them in the simplest language possible. This may not be enough information for you and it may be I structured the post awkwardly, but I’m at 2,200 words. If there are many questions in the comments, I’ll do a followup QA post.
Thanks Mojeaux, seeing all the business decisions made me appreciate all the things writers/authors have to go through to get me some pieces of printed paper that I can enjoy.
That’s not to mention the artistry and craftsmanship that go into the actual creativity portion. Great explanation for us of little skills/talent.
Thank you and you’re welcome!
So That’s where Mojeaux comes from!, great job, very informative
No, that’s backwards. I have been Mojeaux online since the 90s. I wanted something with a Mo- and a Jo- so I could continue to use that in forums that weren’t writing related.
Moriah Jovan is the stupidest name ever of the stupidest names I could have come up with. I hate it. But I’m stuck with it. At least it’s unique.
I always think of this.
😉
Yeaaaaaaaah, I know. :/
I completely forgot about that. I looked at Jovan and heard JOvun, not joVAHN.
Only us old people would remember. You’re good.
I think it’s very cool, it flows….
So if I’m understanding correctly – if you used a service to create your manuscript you’d want it in Word DOC, but properly formatted to a publishing spec. Will this work for both electronic and print?
ONLY for Smashwords. Possibly Kindle IF it’s simple. There is logic and history behind this, but it’s irrelevant.
No* For print you will need a print-ready PDF. This can be made using any word processor or publishing platform (e.g., InDesign), so long as the PDF comes out print-ready (there are specs for that). You will need to have a predetermined book size (for instance, 6″x9″ is common), proper margins (that will depend on how many pages you have), and page numbers. Ebooks do not have page numbers.
The only other restriction is how you want it to look. Do you care what font you use? Do you care about line spacing? Do you care about running headers? Do you care about presentation at all? Those are decisions you must make and as part of my service, I will choose about 4 font combos and send samples. I do not give the client any more options than about 4, and what I feel is appropriate to the topic of the book. Clients will be paralyzed by choice, given too many.
*The only caveat is if you are okay with putting out a print book that looks like a manuscript, 8.5″x11″, Times New Roman or Arial or Calibri, single or double-spaced, no running headers, no page numbers, just something you’d turn in to your publisher. Then, sure, it’ll work for print.
Times New Roman or Arial or Calibri
Apparently I am the last person still fighting for Garamond. It is better looking than the big 3!
I really like Garamond.
I am also fond of Windsor.
+1 for Garamond. I also like Georgia. And Georgia.
I named my D&D Cleric Garamond Bold.
Lots and lots of PDFs (that I am to convert to text and then to an ebook) come to me in Garamond. That and Palatino.
They’re both elegant, but I hate them both simply for overuse, but I will use them in certain circumstances.
I use Adobe Jenson for all my own books, only changing the title/chapter font depending on the tone of the book. I used a girly swirly font for book 2 because it’s a squishy girly romance. I used an art deco one for the Prohibition book. So whatever “feels” right and is not overpowering even if used sparingly.
I learned something today.* Thanks Mojeaux.
*other than my fellow humans are even dumber than I thought.
Yay!
Obligatory
Mo, thanks for the post. I’m in the early stages of writing a thriller, sorta, and what you say inclines me toward the epublishing route.
One thing; I’ve heard that if your epublished book takes off, one of the print publishers might be interested in picking it up. Any truth to that?
Sort of, but by that time the author is making good money and there is nothing a publisher can do for them that they can’t do themselves. Bookstores? Meh. There aren’t enough to matter. If a publisher thinks he can get you onto Walmart, grocery store, and truck stop shelves, then jump on it.
Publishers want proven marketers. Part of what a publisher/agent will want to know in your proposal is about your “platform” on social media.
What they did heavily in the early to mid 10s was to mine the fanfiction forums, particularly Twilight fanfic. They would approach the most popular ones and ask them to pull their work from the site, allow them to edit it, and put it out.
Now, this pissed off a lot of people. Pull-to-publish is, IMO, a little unethical because the editing and polishing that went into making it a manuscript worth refining is a group effort by the fandom. They felt, rightfully, cheated out of their labor and a reward for their labor was to be able to read for free.
Marketing marketing marketing.
I’m slightly surprised that LaTex isn’t a go-to for formatting a book. I’d figure that the level of control afforded to the user would be a benefit.
There’s a reason for this.
1. Barrier of entry: In the olden days, publishers used Adobe Pagemaker and then InDesign to set the type for books. As we all know, that cunte Adobe is very expensive. It also has a steep learning curve. Authors couldn’t afford it or do it.
2. Word is ubiquitous and accessible to mostly everyone. Of course, there’s LaTex and Open Office (and now programs that can simply save-as to EPUB like Scrivener, Vellum, and Atlantis). The price tag is nice and all, but there is a reason you need a Word DOC for electronic publishing … and we’ll get to typesetting in a minute.
3. Smashwords has been around self-publishing almost as long as I have. In fact, the founder and I teamed up. At the beginning, Smashwords would accept an HTML or RTF file as well as Word. Since I was publishing myself in about 8 different formats (yes, there were that many), I had a base HTML file. It was huge, but not necessarily complex. I uploaded it to Smashwords and…broke their conversion engine. For an entire weekend. Then I did it again with an RTF file. For an entire weekend. We, Smashwords and I, figured out that to keep that from happening, it would have to be a Word document. Period. My business was built on the fact that Smashwords would only accept a Word document. Not LaTex. Not Open Office. CERTAINLY not InDesign or any other desktop publishing software.
4. Most people don’t know Word very well. Or at all. So print, even with print-on-demand, was a challenge because the “only” software that you could use to typeset a book was InDesign. See aforementioned cost and learning curve. Well, Word has a learning curve also. I had already learned it. I can make Word sit up, roll over, and play fetch. So I do all my typesetting in Word.
Smashwords and Word made it easy for people to self-publish ebooks, but I had to break Smashwords twice before we figured out Word was the only option. It’s fortunate for ME that the instructions to making a Word DOC appropriate for upload to Smashwords is impenetrable.
And I see my comment below is moot.
LOL.
Interesting article and I loved the intro.
Thanks!
So which Glib is Chinese, again?
It’s Crusty, I think. He sent me a dick pic once.
Funny enough in today’s WSJ (paywall):
Drunk in China’ Review: The Proletariat’s White Wine
Newcomers to China are usually horrified by their first encounter with baijiu, the fiery spirit consumed at banquets and family dinners, typically comparing it to jet fuel, paint stripper or drain cleaner. Even long-term expatriates often shudder at the stuff. So can foreigners learn to love baijiu? Derek Sandhaus proves it is possible. But it takes some work, as he describes in “Drunk in China.”
A Mandarin-speaker and the trailing spouse of an American diplomat to China, Mr. Sandhaus sniffs his first glass of baijiu and compares it to “the last whiff one senses before waking up in a serial killer’s rumpus room.” So when a friend tells him it takes 300 shots to learn to love the liquor, he accepts the challenge and starts a blog about his odyssey. The promised epiphany comes after 70 shots when Mr. Sandhaus cracks open a bottle of National Cellar 1573, made by Sichuan’s Luzhou Laojiao distillery. “This was not simply a magnificent baijiu,” he writes. “It was a magnificent drink. Period.”
You know what else takes 300 shots?
Annabel Chong?
Sean knows what’s up.
Curing the STDs after a relaxing weekend eating ass?
A policeman at any dog he sees?
Kim Duk Koo?
It’s a lot like turpentine with a little sugar in it, like you used to get from your grandmother as a cure-all.
Our team dinners in China are awash with it, but less so than in previous years before a bunch of the guys there got drivers licenses. Each toast is a thimblefull, but after a bunch of full-table toasts to various work-related congratulations, everybody wanders around the room with their little pitcher and thimble finding folks for 1:1 toasts.
Ugh a friend gave that as what can only be construed as a gag gift to another friend. One shot and done.
I enjoy Baijiu. I recall the trip I took to China for my MBA program. We’d start our evening carousing by heading to the closes convenience store and negotiating for 40s of Tsingtao each and bottles of Baijiu to share, then headed out swigging the TT as fast as possible and then starting in on sipping the baijiu and passing it around like a female ensign at Tailhook. We’d get roaring drunk in public and have a blast.
I’m well passed the 300 shot buy-in. And I don’t remember much about ‘flavor’ or ‘taste.’
But I did learn to play that dice game like a stone-cold killah. I got good enough to smoke some Chinese college students at a bar near Xiamen University.
Oh man, poker in Macau was a /blast/. Best dollar / hour and ROI i’ve ever made at the poker table. And no, I don’t recall the taste or flavor.
There’s a boutique distiller here in Oregon that makes what they call baijiu, but it’s $25/fifth, and that can’t be baijiu. I think we paid like $3.50 US per fifth.
I got a small bottle of baijiu when I arrived in Beijing. Totally nasty when I tried it. But shot by shot I still finished it a week later. Yes, it gets better.
Only once?
Berry berry interesstink. Thanks for the inflammation.
PS: if you’re an aspiring odalisque, what’s stopping you from following through. I’m pretty sure Mr. Mojeaux wouldn’t complain about setting up a harem.
I do not like the way my belly and breasts look. I can barely stand to look in the mirror.
I’m working on that; hence, aspiring.
My bad. I thought you meant in reference to the art only.
Great stuff, Mo!
Good news! You can officially write me off as a potential competitor – that looks like waaaaaay too much work for me.
I’ll stick with being an appreciator.
As it happens, I have now read books from UCS and Animal, now it’s your turn.
Which one should I read?
Pirates and privateers and the American Revolution.
Very little of it actually occurs in the US or American waters.
Or if you’re into mobsters and machines and Prohibition, there’s this one. Creosote Achilles did the beta read and he seemed to think it was a good representation of the period.
Or if you’re into mobsters and machines and Prohibition
Boom. There it is. I will report back.
Yay!
All my books (thus far) are in the same universe, with the first book I published as the hub, but they each pretty much stand alone, with references to things that happened in previous books.
The pirate book is the several-greats-grandparents of the 3 cousins in book 1.
The Prohibition book is their grandparents.
Cods & Cuntes is the many-many-greats-grandparents of one of the love interests in book 1.
But do you have a recurring character with a magic box to bring people back to life?
Actually…yes.
One recurring character. One magic box called a refrigerator. However, I do not have a magical refrigerator being carted around by a recurring character to store all the dead people for revival later.
In MY version, Hamlet doesn’t stay dead.
I enjoyed it. Not my usual genre, but it was a good yarn and not being able to predict the twists was a novel experience.
I see what you did there.
Thank you for writing these articles! Please keep them coming as quickly as you can under your current circumstances.
Re: starting your own publishing company – if you buy a batch of ISBNs, is that unnecessary? Are there other pros/cons to creating your own company? If you do, is it simply a matter of registering it with your state?
Also, since when do you have to clean a house??
If you don’t clean it, critters can set up ambushes and steal your lunch.
Thanks. Writing these articles is a respite.
PROS:
Everything is under your control. Neither Amazon nor Smashwords will be listed as your publisher IF you own your own ISBNs.
It’s cooler and possibly more advantageous to say you are a “publisher” under certain circumstances (which I cannot think of right now).
For the most part you can better control where your ebook is sold.
CONS:
If you choose not to use a distributor like Smashwords (there are others; I don’t pay them any mind), you will be responsible for each retailer’s accounts, uploading, updating, etc. When I started, iBooks didn’t exist so I had to go to an app maker and make an actual APP out of my book.
You won’t be able to get into iTunes easily and without a Mac. This is what I didn’t know early on and I struggled with getting my stuff into iTunes.
Lots more work is involved.
Honestly, it all comes down to owning your own ISBNs. You don’t HAVE to set up a business anymore, the way I did. You can call it whatever you like (go ahead and register your fictitious name, though), even if just your name, but as long as you have your own ISBNs, you are seen as a publisher.
If you don’t care, use Smashwords’s and Amazon’s free ones. It’s so much easier.
“It’s cooler and possibly more advantageous to say you are a “publisher” under certain circumstances (which I cannot think of right now).”
At the bar while trying to hit on the ladies.
Oh, also. I’m on Google Play. There was a brief window of time when people could get in. Smashwords does not distribute to Google Play and almost nobody else can get in (I’m sure there are ways).
I’m grandfathered in, so there you have it.
I like my spaces to be tidy and clean. It makes me jittery and my head jumbled when they aren’t. It’s just that I hate doing it so much, I will simply tune it out until I can’t anymore and then shit gets real. I would like a housekeeper to do that, make my spaces tidy and clean so I am not jittery and my head is not jumbled.
For better or for worse, I’m clutterblind and “suffer” (feels fine to me) from dustlexia.
I make myself be clutterblind deliberately.
When I was growing up, every day was spring cleaning. Every Single. Day.
Thus, it’s either an A+ or an F-. I clean when I can’t stand it anymore. And then I have to force myself to not let perfect be the enemy of good.
Thanks for writing this.
Thanks for reading!
Hey Mo. I love these. No interest in publishing, but I do enjoy people explaining there own areas of interest and expertese. I enjoy the way you project a very human combination self confidence and self doubt.
Thanks, mikey. 🙂
My husband thinks I have no room for any doubt whatsoever. He’s been trying for 17 years to wheedle me out of it.
The few people I know that have no self doubts are actually delusional.
I meant both as a compliment . Kinnath gets it.
Thank you.
I envy people who can keep their self-doubts hidden. I can’t. I’m just going to lay it all out because it is part of the process. It doesn’t happen on the side or in a vacuum. It would be dishonest for me not to disclose it.
XX just made brownies. I’m in my office. She’s upstairs in the kitchen furiously texting me about how it’s not going right. Too thin, too whatever. She bakes a mean pumpkin bread, though, so I’m not worried. She wants to throw it out and start over again and there is one food rule in this house: DON’T WASTE THE FOOD.
I tell her to bake it anyway.
Well, the problem is that she likes her brownies all fluffy and cakey and I like them thin and fudgy. They’re not QUITE perfect because she didn’t let the edges crisp up enough, but they’re damned close.
Cool story, Mo.
No but really this is what happens when I make chocolate “cake”. It’s only really ever brownies. Of course there are some “libertarian” people who might word police my use of “cake” to describe something that doesn’t contain egg. Come at me, bros.
*puts dukes up and makes motion with fists as if milking a cow with horizontal udders*
The one true chocolate cake, sanctioned by God himself.
These are great, Mo. I write a great deal, but don’t have the discipline to turn any of it into anything long form. I have a shit ton of short stories I’ve written and about a dozen novel outlines or first few chapters. I guess I don’t have a bad enough case of the bug to finish it up, but this is fascinating to me.
Thanks! And thank you so much for beta reading 1520. I really can’t thank you enough.
What , no one accepts TeX?
Nope. Those folks hire me to get it into Word according to Smashwords’s specs.
I was thinking more to be print ready- which is what TeX is great at. TeX to PDF tools exist, so no big deal.
I wrote some courseware in TeX, back in the day, Convert final doc to pdf and print for students.
TeX just looks freakin nice.
But it’s not the word processor making it nice. It’s the person making it nice that makes it nice.
TeX makes equations and code blocks and etc look nicely relatively easily. I have never been able to do that with Word. Probably isn’t as useful for straight text.
The problem with TeX is simple. It requires that you learn TeX. As somebody who used to code for a living, I picked up TeX pretty quickly. As somebody who works with people who have never written a line of code in their lives, I also dropped TeX very quickly.
I learned it to accomplish a task. And then stopped using it, so would have to learn it again. But it is the only way I have found to do certain things well.
I can’t wait until I’m in a nursing home and they roll me out once a week to listen to concerts like this.
Rendering political dissidents like cattle is hard work!
Staged.
The correct term is “fake and gay.”
How many shots does that take?
Well, it would never happen to me. Army life taught me that.
I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.
#3.
No, um, Hitler?
Idk what game we are playing here.
Great read and great info, Mojeaux. I may write a book of physics problems that go a little beyond what you normally find in intro courses, but didn’t think a conventional publisher would be that interested — what you outlined looks perfect for that.
Yes, it is.
Self-publishing non-fiction has always been popular amongst niche interests. Nobody expects a publisher to pick up something that 100 people are interested in, so there is no shame in that. It’s always been fiction that is shameful to self-publish.
I actually prefer to format and design non-fiction. It’s fun and challenging. To make fiction pretty, all you have to do is play with the fonts a little and it’s all good. Non-fiction has charts and equations and pictures and subheadings galore.
Here the most fun project I ever did. It was a beast, with different colors (8) and fonts galore (12 fonts AND their italic, bold, and italic bold variations) and I loved every second of it.
Pelosi Releases Limited-Edition Replica Of Dentures Worn During Trump Impeachment
Nothing about them being poorly fitting or soaked in vodka, so not really authentic.
Ok, which one of you wrote this?
Senate Asks Pelosi If She Can Send Over Copy Of Impeachment Articles Without Wine Stains All Over It
Fucking genius!
TheBern! really missed an opportunity on that the other day. He should have said, “Hell yes I called you a liar, Lying Liz*.”
*I guess we will have to wait for Trump to use this one.
My reply
Her “You just called me a liar”
Me “Well then, stop telling lies”
OT: Microsoft commits to destroying shareholder value to the tune of billions
https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/01/16/microsoft-will-be-carbon-negative-by-2030/
Ten years? Bullshit. Not without very creative accounting.
1. Grounding in science and math.
And.. already failing.
Will this be just like how Black Rock said they will no longer invest in polluters, but since they mainly just invest in a sampling of the market their statement is completely meaningless and just one giant transparent virtue signal?
In 1971 Bill Grates invented Michaelsoft. In 1992 he went to bat against the FTC, culminating in an epic kaiju battle against Janeto Riino that raged until in 1994, she won, but on being prompted by the off-screen announcer to “FINISH HIM!”, she spared him the FATALITY. Bill Gate survives to this day, only he deaths as the WokeBiruGetsu lays waste to the once proud dynasty of Microsoft® and it’s range of operating systems and software?has now managed to become his own worst enemy. In 2020, he will enter into mortal combat with himself in, MICRO: THE SOFT & THE HARD. How many shareholders will be thrown to their deaths by WokeBiruGetsu
2/7 – “Mixed metaphors… only tentatively accurate…” – Slate
1/10 – “Shit sandwich.” – Rolling Stone
8/10 – “Shit.. gay… bad writing.” – Martha Stewart
I wana a beer.
*cheering applause*
Damnit Microsoft, all I want is an operating system that doesn’t suck balls. Maybe invest your effort in that.
Linux exists.
^^^What he said.
Carbon negative?
Planting trees? outside that, I dont see how that is possible.
https://twitter.com/Jayy_Phillips95/status/1218248439886204930
This video is apparently really upsetting a lot of “journalists” because some LSU players seem to be enjoying their trip to the White House, which is verboten if you have a certain skin color that is suppose to predetermine how you behave and think.
I’m just embarrassed for everyone in this video and want that blonde to twerk again. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The blonde: yowza.
Damn son she fly as hell. Outfit on point. Fine ass lady.
Informative article, Mo. My wife went about publishing a book a few years back, so unfortunately I am more familiar with this process than I would like to be. I’ll have to send this along to her. Thanks
You’re welcome!
It’s a lot easier now than it was 12 years ago.
‘We’ll Take Good Care Of These,’ Says Mitch McConnell While Placing Impeachment Articles In Special Rectangular Filing Bin
Gwyneth Paltrow may be the most intolerable person on Earth.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/goops-netflix-series-its-so-much-worse-than-i-expected-and-i-cant-unsee-it/
Would NOT!
*retches*
On topic since this is a Mojeaux article:
https://www.suzannevenker.com/toxic-masculinity/looking-masculine-is-one-thing-being-masculine-is-another/
I like it. Thanks.
This made me chuckle:
He used The Words on me.
“Remind me who said, ‘The question is not ‘Who’s going to let me?’ The question is ‘Who’s going to stop me?’”
I should never have given him Rand.
😀 Thanks for reading!