This post went to Patronizers at the beginning of April, and to the public at the beginning of May. Not a Patronizer? You could be. It’s a terrible deal, but you could be.
I’ve considered myself well-prepared for personal financial disaster, but we’re not headed into personal financial disaster. We’re headed into a global one. I would say that I’m conservative–I save money, look after my family, mind my own business–but the reactionaries have stolen that term from me. Plus, I’m not conservative enough to cope with this economy. Nobody could be.
Last year was an all-time writing income peak, thanks to the Run Your Own Mail Server Kickstarter.
This year? Well, the Laserblasted Kickstarter is concerning. Yes, this is something of a gag book–but it’s a real novel. Folks who would normally take a $200 leather-cased book are backing for $6 ebooks. Several folks wrote me to say that they wanted to support the book, but simply couldn’t right now. I’ve also lost Patronizers.
I don’t blame them. But the upshot is, I’m expecting this year to be ugly.
Plus, this month I’m writing checks for taxes and retirement fund. Because of RYOMS, those checks are large. While I understand the logic of “feed the IRA while the stock market is low,” it definitely feels like I should just set the money on fire instead. The IRS would let me record that as a business loss.
From the latest happenings, I think it’s clear that I need to start increasing my overseas business. I need my books to become more accessible to European and Asian markets. That means dealing with VAT. Even with the RYOMS Kickstarter, I didn’t quite make enough in Europe to qualify for IOSS. I suspect that if I can include VAT in my book prices more Europeans will buy them. If I get an IOSS number I can have my books printed inside the EU, which would make them still more accessible. To get there, I need to sell more.
Chicken, meet egg.
I need to ask folks who run businesses in the EU for their thoughts. Fortunately, there’ll be a bunch at BSDCan.
Anyway. Money sucks.
The good news is, my readers seem to like ordering print books through my store! Each week there’s a handful of print sales from my bookstore. While I still have no idea what my best-selling titles are, I used a couple months of Amazon print sales as a proxy and have started working my way down that list. I’ve set up PAM Mastery, the two versions of TLS Mastery, and FreeBSD Mastery: Jails with the new printer and ordered the proofs. If they come out okay, I’ll have them on the store as print/ebook bundles straight away.
When converting books to the new printer, my titles are either simple or disastrous. I plan to focus on the simple ones first, but ideally I want to offer “The Full Michael” in print. I don’t know that anyone will actually buy that stack, but being able to offer that makes me as independent as possible.
The other good news about direct print sales? Bookvault recently added printers in Australia and Canada. Cracking Canada has long been a goal. Yes, I can ship from the States, but for two countries right next to each other, shipping to Canada sure is expensive and annoying. Printing and shipping from Canada also lets me skip the annoyance of customs.
The funny thing about this exercise is: chapbooks. When Amazon shifted their prices, I stopped putting short stories in print. I might bring short stories into print again, but make them exclusive to my store. If I was smart, I’d put them in a series like William Meikle did. Number them. Make them seem collectible. Brand them like a unit. See if I can trigger that completist urge in collectors.
Oh, wait. My hardcore collectors are mostly Patronizers. I’d just have to ship them copies. Huh. Well, I might do it anyway just for the laughs.
On the writing front: Project IDGAF, aka Laserblasted, survived first readers. People like the stupid thing. Many Patronizers will get a copy as part of their benefits, but if you’re not one of them you might take a look at the first chapter as see if it interests you. First reader reaction was universally positive, which was quite a shock. I wanted to write something that I had no stakes in, that people were not expecting or demanding, so I’d be free to stretch myself and be a little daft. (More daft. Whatever.) It seems to have worked, which is nice.
Which leaves me grinding on the new Networking for Systems Administrators. Writing a cross-platform book is weird. We pretend that TCP/IP is a universal standard, but everybody made different decisions regarding that standard. Sigh. Still, it’s starting to coalesce into something resembling a book.
Hopefully I’ll get N4SA2e to Kickstarter this summer, along with the Twisted Presents Christmas story collection. Most of the stories exist for that one. I still need to write an exclusive Prohibition Orcs tale for it, but I’m hoping that doesn’t go horribly wrong. Last thing I need to do is accidentally write a Christmas novel about a cranky little old lady orc (no matter how much JG would like that).
Anyway, I better get back to these edits. Thank you for your support. I appreciate every one of you, especially in these troubled times.