A giant tangle of stuff, and it’s all related. Plus, I want your opinion on two questions.
OpenBSD Mastery: Filesystems is at the copyeditor, and due back 15 December. I should have print in stores immediately before Christmas. Barely.
Prohibition Orcs and Frozen Talons are leaking out in ebook right now. If you buy them directly from me, they come with an exclusive bonus–To Serve Orc: Enduring Recipes from the Old Country, Watered Down for America. It’s short, but you won’t find it anywhere except my site. The print books are underway, and the leather-covered Orcibus will have to wait until I can deliver print books to the cover maker. Covers should exist in early December, so I should completely fulfill everything before 2023.
Which brings me to scheduling.
People sometimes ask me if they can buy signed print books directly from me. I had intended to run a Kickstarter as an advance sale for OpenBSD Mastery: Filesystems, which would let those folks buy signed books from me. Kickstarter will not let you run a new Kickstarter while an old one has not yet been fulfilled, however. If I’m honest, I can’t run a new Kickstarter until, oh, 1 January 2023.
Which means I can’t realistically do one for OMF. I am considering running a thirty-day print sale for OMF on my web site, however. Paperbacks would be $25, hardcovers $40. Shipping would be $10 US, $15 Canada, and $40 rest of world. (Yeah, shipping is terrible.) You’d have the option to order one extra book, at the same prices, for the same shipping. I can cram two Mastery books, or a Mastery and a novel, in an USPS Priority Mail envelope. Shipments would go out with the sponsor shipments, but would NOT arrive in time for Christmas. Comment if you’d buy one. If nobody wants it, I won’t bother setting it up.
Which means that my next Kickstarter will be for a fiction collection (Corrosive Devotion: Ten Tales of Love that Aren’t Love Stories), probably in January 2023.
About that time, I’ll open sponsorships for the next Mastery title, “Running Your Own Mail Server.” Because, like Kickstarter, I won’t open new sponsorships until I’ve fulfilled the old ones. Prices are rising everywhere, so I’m contemplating raising print sponsorship prices from $100 to $120. If you’re a previous print sponsor, would that stop you from sponsoring again? This will let me integrate a Kickstarter into the business plan, rather than being a late addition haphazardly nailed onto the side.
For similar reasons, the ebook of OpenBSD Mastery: Filesystems will be $12.99 rather than $10.99. This means that while the Kindle version will be available at any number of bookstores, it will not be in Amazon’s Kindle bookstore. Amazon will have the print edition. Amazon is no longer a viable e-bookstore for my new shorter nonfiction, mostly because I’m not willing to screw my readers.
That’s the reasons for the schedule.
Speaking of schedules, I have once again completed all current writing projects simultaneously and now must perform a laborious cold start. I truly must figure out how to de-synchronize my multiple projects.
I plan on purchasing OMF hardcover, so I’m in favor of anything that makes that happen sooner.
“Running Your Own Mail Server.”
To quote the movie: “You had me at ehlo”; count me in.
And I understand the reason for increasing the price, that’s okay with me.