Category: Nonfiction Books

In yesterday’s mail, the Japanese translation of Network Flow Analysis:

I have two copies for Japanese-reading reviewers. I’d also like to add a link to the publisher’s page for the book, but the ASCII Web site defeated me. If you know enough Japanese to figure it out, I’d appreciate it.

Translations of my books fascinate me. That’s my name on the cover, but I don’t understand the alphabet, let alone the sentences. But recognizable English words are scattered throughout the text, including neologisms I created. (Doesn’t “neologism” sound more impressive than “words Lucas made up”?) A native English speaker would have no trouble with those neologisms, but I can’t imagine what a Japanese reader would make of them.

And there’s footnotes. The narrator of NFA uses the footnotes to suggest blackmail. I wonder how well that translates?

I have two copies of Network Flow Analysis that need good homes, so I’m having a contest.

The last time I gave books away, I wasn’t able to contact several people to give them their free book. If you enter, you MUST include a way for me to contact you. If you leave a link to a web page, the web page should say “Contact” somewhere on it.

The contest? In the comments below, suggest ways to give The Great Committer the honor and respect he deserves. The funnier, the better.

I will choose one winner in each of the two categories.

1) The most outrageous, hilarious, but impossible one
2) The funniest one that could actually be done at BSDCan 2011.

Yes, I’m trading books for cheap laughs. I need cheap laughs. You do, too. Spend two minutes to make me laugh out loud, and you could get a book.

Contest ends Friday, April 29, 2011.

I’ll be in Portland, Oregon, from July 9-17, attending two consecutive Dean Wesley Smith workshops.

Pitches, Blurbs, Tags, and Promotions

How to Be a Publisher

DWS is a successful novelist who is doing quite well self-publishing. Of course, he has years of authorial experience and an existing audience, but he also built Pulphouse Publishing back in the 80s. I’m delighted for the chance to drain those decades of accumulated experience from his brain. If you have any interest in publishing independently, check these out.

As I’ve said before, I’m not dumping my publisher. But I do have ideas for nonfiction projects that aren’t suitable for them, and I’m seriously considering publishing novels independently.

The worst part of the trip? DWS is a notorious night owl, on the West Coast. I’m a morning person, from the East Coast. These workshops are going to happen in the middle of my night. Ick.

So, do I have any readers in Portland? Any BSD groups out there? Would it be worthwhile to try to schedule some sort of meetup? I expect I’ll be extremely busy, but I suspect that DWS’ workshops won’t start at the crack of dawn, and I must eat dinner some time.

There’s a new review of Absolute FreeBSD at the Java Users Group Lugano Web site. I can’t find a way to link to this particular review, so this link goes to the review page. I expect it will eventually scroll off the bottom.

I do try to batch reviews, but four years after the book hit the shelves, I think I’d have to wait quite a while for the next one.

While I’ve said that only silence or thanks is appropriate for a negative review, thanks are also appropriate for a positive review. Thank you, Celestino Bellone, for taking the time to write up your impressions.

Pop quiz: what do you do when someone releases an excoriating online review about something you’ve sweated blood over?

a) Leave a vitriolic comment questioning the reviewer’s integrity and decency.
b) Leave a bitter comment calling the reviewer an idiot.
c) Leave a vengeful comment declaring war.
d) A, B, and C, with lots and lots and lots and lots of comments
e) Give up. Never do anything again.
f) Close your browser and get on with your life.

I thought most authors understood the best answer, but then I came across a review where the author not only responded, she melted down. Spectacularly. So I thought it might be worthwhile to say something about dealing with negative reviews of your work.

Remember, reviews are not for the author. They are for prospective readers. The reviewer is not claiming you are a bad person. He is stating that your work did not meet his needs, expectations, or standards. Most negative reviews of my work amount to “I don’t like the tone and attitude of this book.” That’s OK. I deliberately use that tone and attitude, in the belief that the number of people who will appreciate it exceeds the number of people it will annoy.

Sometimes, negative criticism is actually constructive. If I don’t learn from my mistakes, who will?

The correct response to a negative review is: silence.

An even better response would be to send the reviewer a two-sentence note: Thank you for taking the time to review my book. Sorry you didn’t like it, but I appreciate your effort. Sincerely, Your-Name-Here. But I’m not that good of a human being.

Readers who don’t care about my non-technical writing should skip this post.

My friends include authors who are traditionally published, and some who are self-published. Both groups make excellent cases for their choices, and I’m not going to argue against anyone else’s decisions. Whatever works for you, live and let live, and so on.

But both sets make excellent arguments for what I should do with my career. Both sets tell me my non-technical work is good enough to make it. The traditional authors tell me to keep knocking at the doors of the Big Six publishers, and eventually I will get in. The self-publishers tell me that I have more “platform” than many traditionally published novelists, and I should leverage that to bootstrap my non-technical writing career.

It’s an emotional topic. People are very vested in their opinions. I can argue either side, and my opinion tends to vary depending on whoever I’ve spoken to most recently. The way to answer questions is with an experiment. Experiments start with a falsifiable statement. Here’s mine. “I have sufficient platform to profitably self-publish fiction on ereader platforms.”

Now, some conditions. What, exactly, is “profitable”? Here are some rough numbers that would probably make an accountant cry, but they’re adequate for this experiment.

Big Name authors sell short stories for thousands of dollars. Medium Name authors sell short stories for about $500. No-name authors sell short stories for prices from $10 to free. My first sale was for $100, but all others were for $10. I’m a no-name. So, let’s classify my writing labor as a $10 expense.

Ebooks need a cover. My graphic design skills are roughly equivalent to a badger’s. I can get an adequate cover for $25, largely due to the curiosity of my artist friend Brad McDevitt about the results.

Software to transform a document into an eBook is free. I started with Mobipocket Creator to transform a PDF into Amazon’s Kindle format, and then used Calibre to transform it into the Barnes & Noble ereader format. To reach the Apple audience, as well as a whole bunch of smaller retailers, I need to use Smashwords’ .doc file upload. I’ve experimented with each of these, and I believe that once I have a hang of them I’ll be able to upload to all three sites in about an hour. How much is my authorial time worth? Judging by the $10 price of a completed short story: not much. How about the time of a skilled software operator? That’s a little better. I’ll call it $20/hour.

I could add in a share of the computer, office space, and so on, but that’s all stuff I need for my tech writing business. I’m not going to count that. Similarly, I own a Kindle, for my own purposes, but I’ll use it to test my early ebook builds. I won’t count that, either. Should this be successful, all these would become legitimate expenses.

The expenses to publish a short story are, roughly speaking, $55.

The going price for ereader short stories is $0.99. Amazon gives authors a 35% royalty on $0.99 items, or $0.35 per sale. I must sell 157 copies of a story to break even.

One big question is, “is the work good enough to sell?” I’ll control for that by starting with stories I have previously sold, but whose rights have reverted back to me. If I have success with them, I’ll try a couple pieces that have never sold.

Time is another factor — if I sell 157 copies over 10 years, is that a win? No. How about one year? Maybe.

The first story is up on Amazon. I still need to do B&N and Smashwords.

A month or so after I have the first one up on all three sites, I’ll report my initial results.

Tuesday, 22 March, O’Reilly, No Starch Press, and Tidbits will donate all revenue, less author royalties, from Deal of the Day sales to the Japanese Red Cross. This includes all of my books available in electronic format: Absolute FreeBSD, Cisco Routers for the Desperate, and Network Flow Analysis.

If you’ve been waiting to pick up any of my books in electronic format — or any books by other NSP/O’Reilly/Tidbits authors — this is the day. Today only. You want them all. I know you do.

If you already own everything I’ve written, in both paper and electronic form, why not try something from another author? Everybody needs to know how to build Badass Lego Guns. Or you can just give directly to the Japanese Red Cross.

I’ll tweet this multiple times through the day. The O’Reilly site will be announcing totals throughout the day.

My short story Opening the Eye is now on Amazon as a $0.99 ebook. This story first appeared in Horror Library vol 2.

This story is in that hazy ground between urban fantasy and horror. If you enjoy that sort of thing, please check it out. If you like it, please leave a review. It won’t show up in most Amazon searches unless there’s a certain number of reviews.

If you don’t enjoy that sort of story, don’t read it. If you’re related to me, you don’t want to read this one. Trust me.

I’m not going to turn this blog into a plea for people to read these things, but I will briefly mention when they’re available in new places, such as the Nook or the Apple bookstore.

This is an experiment. (I have experimental conditions and everything!) But more on that later this week.

People keep asking me why I use a publisher when self-publishing has become more and more possible over the last few years. Today, 38% of Amazon’s top 100 titles are self-published. Authors with a long track record in publishing, like Bob Mayer and Joe Konrath, extol the advantages of self-publishing your work rather than going through a publisher. Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch, authors with decades of respectable mainstream publishing behind them, make solid business cases for skipping publishers and selling directly to your audience.

These authors write fiction. How well do their arguments apply to non-fiction? Well enough, if you want to do the work or pay someone to do the work. Here’s what you must do to produce a professional-quality nonfiction book. (If you want to produce an amateur, feeble book, you can skip any or all of these.)

Tech review: Someone who knows the subject has to review your work. Even if you crowdsource an initial tech review, as I’ve done for my BSD books, you still need an acknowledged subject matter expert to double-check your work. Your technical reviewer will expect paying. Most publishers pay a couple grand for tech review, or offer a cut of the royalties.

Editing: An editor is not a proofreader. An editor helps transform your manuscript from the disjointed babblings of a subject matter expert into something that can be understood by your reader. You can expect to pay $1-2/page for a decent technical editor.

Copyediting/proofreader: This is your proofreader. $1-2/page, again.

Layout: A good book is invisible. The layout disappears from the reader’s perceptions, leaving only a stream of words flowing from the book in the reader’s brain. I have never met a technical person who really had this skill. There are people who will format your manuscript for publishing on Kindle, Smashwords, and other ebook retailers, as well as paper formats for CreateSpace or Lightning Source. This runs anywhere from $100 for a novel up to $500 or more for complicated technical documents.

Publicity: Different publishers offer different levels of publicity. My publisher, the inimitable No Starch Press, publicizes every book heavily, in every appropriate channel. Other publishers just put new books in the catalog and let the author hope. Publicity can cost as much as you want to spend.

Graphics: Most authors can’t draw, even if they think they can. Publishers usually have internal artists recreate author art. You need to make sure that your own art is adequate.

Management: Your book has a project manager who keeps track of all the disparate threads of producing your book. If you self-publish, that project manager is you.

Overall, you can expect to spend a few thousand dollars self-publishing a professional-quality book, and a fair amount of extra time. Miss any step, handle any step less than perfectly, and your book will suffer.

What do you miss out on when you self-publish?

Translations: Advances for foreign language rights range from $1000-$2000, plus royalties if and when the advance is earned out. You will not be able to pursue translation rights — you don’t have the contacts or the contract expertise.

Bookstores: You will not see your self-published book at Barnes & Noble. End of discussion.

Competence: Nonfiction publishers are experts at helping non-authors produce good, readable books. A good publisher will help you make your book the best it can be. If you’re not a writer, anything you self-publish will read poorly, no matter how much outside help you have. If you think you’re a writer, but you’ve never worked with a publisher, you have a lot to learn.

Cameraderie: You’re a team with your publisher. They will work with you. You’ll make friends. Everybody wants the book to succeed, and believes that the book can succeed. It’s hard to put a price tag on that.

Nonfiction authors have some potential advantages, however. If you have a truly unique book, with no competition, you can do well self-publishing. If you want to compete in an existing, well-established topic, however, you’ll have a much harder slog. I wouldn’t recommend self-publishing a FreeBSD book, for example.

How do these affect me?

I want an editor, tech editor, and copyeditor who are interested in producing the best book possible. An editor I hire is not going to tell me “Wow, this book is horrible and pointless.” An editor who works for my publisher will voice his concerns to the publisher, and the publisher will intervene as necessary. I can honestly say that none of my publishers have ever had to have this meeting with me, but I want them to have the freedom to do so.

Publicity? I have enough trouble with the little publicity I do now. I resisted blogging, Facebook, and Twitter for years. The less I talk to people, the more people like me. (It’s not that I’m an obnoxious person, but a little bit of me goes a long way.) An outside publicity person is an excellent idea. I try to give my publisher’s publicity person everything he asks for, follow his suggestions, and get out of his way.

Bookstores: I don’t see my books in stores in Detroit, but I know that some people buy my books in bookstores. It seems that Amazon owns my publishing career.

Graphics: I am an author, not an artist. Producing the graphics for PGP & GPG took as long as writing the manuscript itself. I need outside help with art.

I don’t want to do all this for my technology books. The tech publishing industry is in much better shape than the fiction industry, and I’m confident that I will be able to find a home for my nonfiction. I might self-publish my fiction some day, just to escape the submission treadmill. But I haven’t given up on that mainstream success… yet.