New Prohibition Orcs tale: Yellow-Eyed War

“Yellow-Eyed War” is available at my ebookstore.

Orcish Childhood: Not For The Weak

Oscar-Tai has counted to one thousand and fifty. He knew the Alphabet Chant, the Pledge of Allegiance, and can form each of the Twenty-Six Letters. He expected to take labor hauling cargo with his father, but instead humans offered to teach him and his brother to read. But Oscar has never seen a war like reading school. Desks built to fit orcs. One failure and the human teacher expels you. And how did that lone orcess earn a place?

Can he endure? Or will he fall to the docks and live marked with failure all his days?

This is the first short story I’ve put out since my decision to make shorts exclusive to my ebookstore, as part of my “reduce administrative overhead” project. While “having all the books in all the retailers” strategy is still wise for books that sell better, the maintenance overhead overwhelms the cash I make from the stories. Some folks would tell me to sell only on Amazon. My long term strategy is to lure folks into buying direct from me, however, so becoming exclusive to my store is the better choice. I’ve also updated the “All the Chapbooks” bundle to include this tale.

The bundle of “everything available from my store” also needed updating, but I’ve made some larger changes there. The “Absolutely Everything” branding was accurate, but did not spark joy. I’ve developed a different image for that bundle.

It might not increase sales, but it amuses me. And that’s what’s important.

“Run Your Own Mail Server” technology stack

I’ve churned through much of the general stuff about email, and am about to dive into specific configurations and examples. In some ways, the protocol background is the hardest part of any book. Orienting the reader to understand the configuration examples and make their own decisions is a pain–though front-loading the hard stuff simplifies writing the rest of the book.

But this means I need to make final decisions on the book’s technology stack.

Postfix (backed with MariaDB) and Dovecot are absolutely in, period. But there are dozens of implementations of DKIM and greylisting and antivirus, of varying sizes and inclusivity. Postfix supports the milter interface, so there’s an overwhelming pool of plugins. Options, options!

I’m leaning towards rspamd, and providing antivirus and dkim through it.

One of the core Unix philosophies is “many small tools that each do a single thing well.” Rspamd is easy, but it certainly isn’t small. How much difference is there between “plug ClamAV and SpamAssassin and greylisting and SPF and OpenDKIM and RBLs into Postfix’s milter interface” and “plug ClamAV and greylisting and SPF and DKIM and RBLs into rspamd’s interface and milter rspamd into Postfix”? Not a huge amount. Either way, you can see all the connections and have source code to all the tools.

Then there’s the web IMAP client. Today’s contenders seem to be Horde and Rainloop. Horde is heavier than necessary. The free version of Rainloop is nice, but it’s commercially backed and I worry about enshittification. I’m not predicting that they will turn on their customers, but including such products in a book has burned me. Many times.

Anyway, that’s where the book is and what I’m doing. The obligatory reminder that you can still sponsor RYOMS.

Sixty Seconds of WIP, 21 June 2023

Welcome to a new intermittent feature, to be posted whenever it amuses me to do so. Here’s me, reading sixty seconds of the current work-in-progress. In this case, it’s Run Your Own Mail Server.

You should blame Allan Jude for this terrible idea. I know I do.

I considered posting these on Tiktok like the cool kids do, but you can’t complete signing up for an account in a web browser so that’s a hard no without a disposable tablet.

“Treat The Rats” updated

My ebookstore has an item where folks can buy our rats treats and supplies. A few folks wanted to know how the money would be spent, so I’ve added options where you can buy specific items.

I decided to not include the $300 “Whole Roast Pig” item, because while a video of Croghan doing his magnificent “Alien chestburster” imitation would be adorable, some of you maniacs would actually get together and buy one. Besides, I firmly believe that nobody should eat anything bigger than their own head.

“New products RSS Feed” on my ebookstore

Today, in “minor tasks completed:” The front page of tiltedwindmillpress.com now has a link to get notifications of new products via RSS. This will show you everything. Sponsorships. Tech books. Short stories. If I must destroy and recreate a product, it’ll appear. When I release something new that requires me to destroy and recreate a bundle, like adding a title to Total Mastery, you’ll see the new bundle.

But it’s a guaranteed way to not miss anything. On your own head be it.

You can subscribe to the feed here.

Tomorrow night: mug.org talk on OpenBSD Filesystems

I’ll be doing my talk about OpenBSD filesystems tomorrow night, for mug.org‘s online meeting.

I expect this will be the last time I give this talk, but MUG does a decent job of recording so you can catch it later on YouTube or wherever. But if you show up in person, you can ask inconvenient questions like “when are you going to learn to write?” or “have you considered truck driving school?”

Organized Freebies

It’s taken a while, but I finally have all (I think) of my (supposed-to-be) free stuff organized (ish) on a single page.

I use freebies the same way Costco does, in the hope that you’ll try a taste and return for more. You can get a few free titles from my e-bookstore or other, lesser retailers. If you sign up for my nonfiction mailing list, I’ll offer you a free copy of Tarsnap Mastery. The fiction list gets you seven free stories over six weeks. The email marketers call that an “onboarding sequence.” I call it “Seven stories is a lot, let’s break that up into something manageable.”

Anyway. Free stuff.

Organizing freebies isn’t just about luring people into my literary clutches, though. I’m looking at Kickstarting another short story collection this summer, in part to make some dough but mostly so I can unpublish a bunch of chapbooks. I’m seriously thinking that from now on, my short stories will be exclusive to my store. I want to publish them–one, so folks can get them, but two, so I can experiment with book design. But the maintenance overhead of publishing them on all the different stores is dreadful.

But the mental load of publicizing a short-term deal like a Kickstarter is also dreadful. I loathe asking for money. No, not hate. As Terry Pratchett said, “hate is an attracting force, just like love.” I loathe it. I don’t want anything to do with it. Promotion destabilizes my creative energy. This time around, I’m planning to end each promo piece with a link to my freebies page and a note along the lines of “If you don’t want to give me dough, please grab something for free.” I’m hoping that it let me feel better about pulling a filthy capitalism twice daily.

The pedantic will note that these books aren’t truly free. You must make an account somewhere to get them. And–yes, that’s true. I’m a business. Giving me money requires making an account somewhere. Meet me in a dark alley and slip me $20 and I’ll hand over a brown paper bag containing a book, sure, but online commerce requires accounts. For what it’s worth, my store’s privacy policy is the one I would like other retailers to use, and you can delete accounts in my store.

Anyway. Freebies. Look for the Apocalypse Moi Kickstarter later this summer.

May’s Moderate Sausage

Each month, I write a blog post for my Patronizers. I want to say it provides unique insight into my process and business, but “See the Sausage Being Made” has turned into more of a monthly summary combined with my usual on-brand ranting. With my Patronizers’ kind permission, a month after they see the posts I’ll be sharing them here. If you find this of any interest, please check out my Patronizer benefits.

Greetings and felicitations to my esteemed Patronizers.

Been working solely on “Run Your Own Mail Server.” I think I finally have an order for the content, which makes the actual writing possible. I’ll have cycle back and backfill facts, but the skeleton should hold.

This part of the process always surprises me. Who thought I would need to explain the message-id header before installing Postfix? Not me, until now.

My muse smacked me with a special edition of this book. Not as special as the Networknomicon, but nothing is. Fortunately. I can’t afford to do that again. It’ll need some special art and a bit of writing, but my focus group laughed themselves silly so I think it’ll work. It’ll only be in print, and only for print-level Patronizers, print sponsors, and high-level Kickstarter backers. I’m contemplating making the Kickstarter version maybe $120, so that the sponsors feel like they got a deal. Print-level Patronizers already know they’re getting a bad deal.

I can promise that the special edition is not a silly Mail/Male pun, however.

Fortunately, my covid aftereffects are minimal. A brush of fatigue and a touch of vertigo. I’m back at the dojo two nights a week, with occasional forms at home. I’m pretty darn sure I escaped long covid this time, but am being cautious in restarting.

A few months ago, I proposed making these posts public on my blog a few weeks after you see them. I received no negative comments and a few positive ones, so I’ll be doing that. When I remember.

Since recovering, I’ve spent a bunch of time on the book manuscript and a little organizing the free stuff on my web site and adding most of it to my e-bookstore. I didn’t bother with the freebies on my store for years, until I was working on my publishing talk for Penguicon. My first Patronizer tier says you will “See the Sausage Being Made,” so here’s a particularly solid chunk of sausage.

My goal is to spend my life doing work I enjoy. That means I’ve had to learn some things I would rather remain ignorant of, and apply them to my trade. Disintermediation is one of those concepts. I want you to pay for my books with as few middlemen as possible. How do I accomplish this? Marketing experts have a Customer Acquisition Funnel, and I have a similar Reader Acquisition Funnel.

  1. Read my free or discounted samples (articles in magazines, free first in series, sample pages in bookstore, library check-out)
  2. Buy my books through retail channels
  3. Social media follow
  4. Sign up for my mailing list
  5. Buy books directly from me
  6. Kickstarter
  7. Sponsor
  8. Regular monthly contributor (you folks!)
  9. You do all my chores so I can write more

I just realized this funnel has nine rings, exactly like a famous legendary funnel. I promise that my ninth ring is not eternally frozen. I live in Michigan, it’s only frozen for half of the year.

My goal is to make the mouth of the funnel as broad as reasonably possible. With fiction, that’s straightforward. Now that the Prohibition Orcs books are out, I’m working on making the first orc story free everywhere. If someone reads the tale, gets to the end, and wants more, they’ll see the friendly note at the end of the tale inviting them to check out the full-length books. Nonfiction is less blatant, but that’s why you’ll see articles in places like the FreeBSD Journal. I also give mailing list subscribers a copy of Tarsnap Mastery to give them a taste of what my books are like.

A business school graduate would say that the readers at the bottom of the funnel are more likely to buy more of my books. I acknowledge that’s true on the spreadsheet, but the only way I can guide people to back me the way you folks do is by providing a quality emotional and educational experience. Yes, my nonfiction is emotional as well as educational. The emotion is why certain folks hate my writing.

Anyway. Someone encounters my work, buys a few books, perhaps follows me on the fediverse, signs up for my mailing list, and eventually starts paying me to exist. Like you wonderful people do. At each stage, I gently make them aware of the next level.

I was spelling this out for my Penguicon publishing talk when it hit me: people who get my free things from my e-bookstore? They are in the funnel’s first ring, and if they like the sample are willing to immediately leap down to the River Styx — uh, my fifth ring. MY fifth ring. Not Dante’s. By providing the freebies from my store, I make that leap easy.

The lesson? If you’re wondering what to do, review the basics.

I leave for BSDCan in a few days. I enjoy BSDCan, but the reason I’m attending is one, we have a fierce mask policy, and two, I can drive. The pandemic’s still on. If you’re there, do say hello. If you’re not there, see if you’ve read my free stuff. It would be a shame if you folks down in Malebolge never visited Limbo.

And now I want to write a book on the business of publishing, themed after the Inferno. Dammit Muse, I don’t have that kind of time! This mail book needs finishing!