Gleefully Malicious Books
General publishing announcements
When I set up the FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS print and ebook sponsorships, I never considered when I should take them off sale.
Comments are due back from tech editors tomorrow, 28 March. I’ll immediately be processing them. This should take a couple days. Once I’ve made all the corrections, I’m sending the whole thing out for copyedit.
The sponsorship sale ends when the book goes for copyedit.
If you want to be a sponsor, act now.
If not, that’s perfectly cool too.
Sunday Morning Linux Review episode 184 discusses FreeBSD Mastery: Specialty Filesystems.
While SMLR is always worth listening to, if you want to cut right to the review (or, alternately, if you’re me coming back to look for good quotes to steal for publicity purposes), the review starts about 30 minutes in.
It’s about 1:11 into the unedited video.
Summary: the book does not suck. And some parts are actually interesting. Which is nice. The book did expose Mary to new ideas and sent her running for the manual and Wikipedia a few times, but learning is good for you, so that’s okay.
I should also note that while I offer free review copies to podcasters, SMLR insists on purchasing books for review. They say it keeps them unbiased. I won’t argue.
The FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS sponsors have a complete manuscript, the version that’s been sent out for tech reviewed. I therefore feel free to solicit sponsors for PAM Mastery, at print and ebook levels.
I waffled on asking for sponsors, but more than one person told me that if people want to put money in my hand, I should take it and say “thank you.” So what the heck.
While PAM has a potentially wider audience than FM:AZ, that interest isn’t as deep. I’m expecting nowhere near as many PAM sponsors. If you want to really stand out in a list of sponsors, this is your chance.
Also, I’ll be speaking at semibug tomorrow night. Don’t miss it.
I’m debugging a problem with a reader who bought books directly from me at tiltedwindmillpress.com. The link to download his books isn’t appearing in his account.
As part of this, I noticed that about a fraction of the orders were stuck in the “processing” stage. Customers could get their books by logging in, but the order isn’t really complete in the database. The problem user was among them.
As part of debugging, I told the system that all the “processing” orders were complete. Because they are.
I did not realize that this would send an email to each of the customers, saying that their order had completed.
It’s about 200 people.
Back to 2013.
All I can say is: mea culpa. I should have predicted this, but I didn’t. I apologize, I’m sorry.
I’ve also installed the Woocommerce Autocomplete Orders plugin, to hopefully prevent this from happening again.
Annoyingly, the customer who can’t download his books still can’t see the files. In an attempt to make things better, I’ve made them worse.
So… I’m a real sysadmin, I guess?
FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS went to the FreeBSD developer community and a few select folks for technical review last night.
If you bought a sponsorship, either print or ebook, the manuscript is now in your account.
FM:AZ will not be on a discount pre-order. I figure the sponsors deserve the right to satisfy their morbid curiosity over the defective, untested, uncorrected manuscript. Plus, they get a little bit of joy over their privileged status. Not to mention bragging rights.
If you’re a sponsor, I’m going to ask you to download the manuscript, go to the last page, and check the spelling of your name. While I did my best to verify them, non-English character sets might be my undoing here. Plus, I’m an idiot, which doesn’t help.
I’m thrilled and grateful with the results of the FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS sponsorship. Eighteen ebook sponsors and eight print sponsors have made my life easier. I’ll list them at the end of this blog post.
Allan and I are very close to having a completed first draft of the book–as in, we need a couple thousand more words from Allan and we’re ready to for final pre-tech-review touch up. As we’re working chapter-by-chapter in Google Docs, I’ll then have the job of pulling all the docs into a single Word doc, applying formatting, and making sure it all hangs together as a book.
Once it’s in a single doc, I’ll upload it to the Tilted Windmill Press site so ebook and print sponsors can see an early copy if they desire.
This is a complicated book. It includes, like, actual math and stuff. There’s a limited pool of people who can do the tech review, and they’re all very busy.
With any luck, though, we will have print copies in time for BSDCan 2016.
In the meantime, I’m turning my attention to PAM Mastery. I did lots of research and analysis for this beforehand, so in theory I can just spew the book out and get it out for review.
If I’m very quick, and if absolutely everything works out correctly, I could actually have print copies of the PAM book for Penguicon.
Which leads me to another question, one I’m going to rely on you lot to answer.
Should I solicit sponsors for “PAM Mastery”?
My gut reaction to holding out my hand and asking for money is “no, don’t do it. You are not only a commercial enterprise, you are a commercial exploiter of the BSD community. Provide a worthwhile product and people will buy it.” It took me about a decade to open a tip jar, and I’m still shocked when people put something in it. Seems I caught that stupid Puritan work ethic or something.
The Advanced ZFS sponsors have not received their books yet. (Although I must say, warm showers make me a much more productive writer.) I feel a certain imbalance here–while that book is solidly under way, I’m responsible for delivering good work to my sponsors. FM:AZ is rapidly approaching the “hurry up and wait” stage.
And I don’t want to be constantly putting up a sign saying “Give me money in exchange for electrons arranged in the shape of your name.”
On the other side, people… apparently want to give me money for electrons arranged in the shape of their name.
So, what do you think? Too soon? Do it? Give it all up and become a llama smuggler?
Lastly, on the fiction front: I’ve gotten the proofreading back on my crime thriller Butterfly Stomp Waltz. Proofreader is now on to Immortal Clay 2, Kipuka Blues, and that’s due back by 20 March. I should have print copies of each to take to my writing workshop in April, and you should be able to buy both before April. Shlepping BSW into production would be a couple days work, but I’m heads-down on getting PAM Mastery done, so it’ll have to wait.
And I have a couple short stories to release, I just have to snatch the time from somewhere and get them out.
EDIT: I said I’d list the FMAZ sponsors, and forgot before hitting “publish.” Typical, Lucas. Absolutely typical.
Ebook:
1. Bruce Buskill (first sponsor ever)
2. Julien Vallée
3. Wim Wauters
4. Ollivier Robert
5. Henning Kessler
6. Geoffrey Garside
7. Theodore Durst
8. Georgiy Bulygin
9. Timur Anthony
10. Earl Percival
11. Grzegorz Mrzyglod
12. Jason Plows
13. Dominique Poulain
14. Trond Endrestøl
15. Kenneth Moyer
16. David Stiévenard
17. Mark Voltz
18. Graham Hunter
Print:
1. Dan Langille
2. TransIP B.V./Johan Schuijt
3. Thomas Scott
4. Dirk Tol
5. Justin Holcomb, in memory of Mary Lou Malott
6. Adam McDougall
7. Miguel Moll
8. Dominik B. Kowal
My home is heated by a hot water boiler, a mysterious contraption of tanks and pipes all running to an aluminum-cased burner, the whole thing almost as old as I am. Boilers can last about as long as people, so the age isn’t really an issue. A few months ago, though, one of the mysterious tanks in this contraption developed a very people-like case of appendicitis. This tank was painted black to disappear into the rafters, and mounted right above a fluorescent shop light–so, also like an appendix, I had no idea the thing was there or what it was supposed to do. I discovered it only when it had to come out before it turned gangrenous and took the boiler thing down from septic shock.
The plumbing crew came in and replaced it with something half the size and a tenth as noisy.
My own appendix tried to kill me a few years ago, so I felt a certain sympathy for the boiler. Perhaps even kinship.
Less than a week ago, I announced I was falling back to the Middle Ages and soliciting patrons to support FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS. Now, don’t get me wrong: our bills are paid, and my family’s not going to get thrown out on the street. But after the boiler incident, the bank account was a little thinner than I liked.
I was surprised and touched by the number of people who responded. I’d planned post a followup and thanks a week after the announcement.
But yesterday turned into The Hot Water Strikes Back, or perhaps, Water Trek II: The Wrath of the Tank.
The hot water heater needs replacing.
I have a perfectly good hot water heater. It heats my house. Despite all I’ve done for the boiler, the ungrateful wretch stubbornly refuses to feed the shower.
The water heater came to about $50 more than I had raised in Advanced ZFS sponsorships.
Shortly after that, another print sponsorship came in. While I still owe taxes on that, I feel much better about the whole plumbing situation.
So, this post is to say three things.
1) Hot water hates me, and wants me to suffer.
2) Fixing this hot water heater will take much less time and attention than it would have a week ago. I will put that time towards watching the complete Patrick Troughton Doctor Who serials working on the book.
2) A very sincere thank you to the folks who have sponsored me.
The ebook sponsors:
The print sponsors:
This water heater is dedicated to all of you. I really must get a little brass plaque for it.
I recently put up a post musing offering sponsorships for tech books. The reaction I got, both in blog comments and private email, was overwhelmingly positive.
And people are eagerly awaiting FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS, by Allan Jude and yours truly.
So, I’ve decided to try selling sponsorships for FM:AZ.
Ebook sponsors ($20) get their name in the ebook. Print sponsors ($100) get their name in both the print and electronic versions. Other books will have other pricing levels.
Some of the emails I got after that first post let me know that some people will happily pay a few dollars to get a link to their dodgy web site in a reputable location. For that reason, I won’t be linking to sponsors in the ebook. (As usual, it’s a handful of jackasses that ruin things for the rest of us.)
You should know that the money from the sponsorships goes entirely to me. Allan both a) has a steady paycheck, and b) is too generous for his own good. (It’s, like, blatantly obvious he’s Canadian.) I intend to buy his beer at BSDCan.
I submitted several tech events to Penguicon, our local tech/SF/maker/assorted random WTF convention.
They accepted six: five talks and one panel.
So if you’re in Detroit on the weekend of 29 April-1 May, come by and see me bloviate about:
The last one, the Senior Sysadmin Panel, should be a lot of fun. I’m looking for 3-4 more people to sit on that panel. I was a pro sysadmin for 20 years at a variety of organizations. Ideally, while I’m moderating the panel, I’d like to be the junior sysadmin on it. Let me know if you’ll be at Penguicon and interested.
I’ve also expressed strong interest in being on the self-publishing panel, but I haven’t heard back on that yet. That’ll be on the lit track.
I did my year-end accounting yesterday, double-checking bank statements and receipts and credit card statements and making sure everything was in the Expenses Spreadsheet of Doom. (Doom, I say!)
My earlier financial predictions were wildly overblown, but we’re doing okay. Books take longer to write than I thought. Well, decent tech books, at least. I imagine crap books could be written pretty quickly.
More than one person has offered to support me via Patreon. The models there don’t really fit with the way I work. Some could be made to fit, but would require extra time and attention from me.
But people still want to offer me extra support. And when you’re working as a full time writer, the rule is that when someone offers you money for no good reason, you take it.
I’m pondering a per-book sponsorship, sold through my site. There would be an ebook tier and a print tier.
An ebook sponsor would get their name listed in the back of the ebook as a sponsor. They’d get a copy of the completed ebook, as well as access to in-progress drafts.
A print sponsor would get their name listed in the back of the print book and the ebook. I’d send them a copy of the ebook and a signed copy of the print book.
Sponsorship sales would remain open until the book goes to copyediting.
The question is, what would people offer as sponsorship? (The voices in my head say to charge $25 ebook and $100 print.) And are enough people interested to make it worthwhile?
I’m not entirely comfortable with this model. It shifts some risk to my sponsors. I might be attacked by a flock of rabid seagulls, or catch wheat rust, or succumb to gelato poisoning. But the sponsors know that risk.
Why post this hypothetical? I want your opinion. Would you buy some kind of sponsorship, and if so, how much would you think is fair?