Everfree Northwest 2019 and book sales 5/8/2019 · 11:59pm May 8th, 2019
Getting things all set up for my trip to Everfree Northwest next week while working on my Bronycon Bookstore books, and I got to wondering. Will anybody be at EFNW who can’t make it to Bronycon, who also wants a copy of one of the three books (thanks to Iisaw) that I’ve got set up? I think I can wedge 12 copies into my airline luggage and still have underwear space, which would be about 4 copies of each. (cont.)
Since all three books are around three hundred pages, they’re very close in price. They’re the cheap paperback printing from Lulu, 6" x 9", perfect binding, white interior paper (50# weight), black and white interior ink, white exterior paper (100# weight), full-color exterior ink. Here’s the breakdown:
$4.69 - Sisters!
$5.31 - The Traveling Tutor and the Librarian
$5.61 - The One Who Got Away/Drifting Down the Lazy River
Plus Lulu has been charging around $4 in shipping, which may go down per-unit if I’m ordering 4 each. For the next day or two, there’s a %10 discount code of LULU10 so it might be even a little less. A reminder: Fanfiction book sales are zero profit so I don’t run afoul of Hasbro lawyers. I’ll probably take a minor bath on each just to be safe (lawyers are fierce beasts, with sharp pointy teeth!)
FYI: These will be my first printings I’m doing with the “Word hates me so I have to fake it out” settings. In short, the Word to PDF conversation that Lulu does puts the gutter margin on the *outside* edge, so I had to bring the finished PDF doc into Acrobat Professional to snip out pages at the start (and some that Lulu just seems to have crammed randomly in there), which *hopefully* will make the inside margin inside. Maybe. So be aware, these ain’t perfessional-grade hardbacks that’s been picked over and detailed within an inch of their lives. They’re paperbacks. Done by Georg. That’s two strikes already.
By the way, if anybody with vision issues wants one of the previous copies of Sisters or Traveling Tutor, I have one copy each that was done at 1.5 line spacing instead of auto, so they’re a hundred fifty pages longer and spaced out on the page. Just one of the ‘OOps!’ that happens in self-publishing, but at least it’s easier on the eyes. (and more expensive, but I’ll eat that cost)
Getting these three books set up in Lulu for self-publishing has been a real experience. First and foremost, I have to thank dozens of editors who have pointed out my mistakes over the years right up to a few days ago where I found I had turned one of my characters from a Monsieur into a Monsignor. Oops and fixed. There will be others. No refunds. Second, I have to give a giant pat on the back to the artists Pen Mightier, Manifest Harmony, Tamalesyatole, and Katiepox who let me use their art as covers. Particularly Katie, who is awesomesauce. And third but not least, I have to give full credit to Iisaw, who assembled the covers and made them look good, because I have the artistic talent of an egg dropped on the sidewalk, and Lulu is picky-picky about just exactly how many pixels in each way the cover is, depending on *pagecount* which I had such issues with also.
Oddly enough, I didn’t generate the book contents out of the original source Gdoc. Getting all the BBS Code turned into italics/bold/etc, the double spaces turned single, marking chapter boundaries, etc… would have been a nightmare. I used the FimFiction ‘HTML Export’ function, dumped the contents into Word, and formatted from there. Admittedly, there were a few oddities even with that. Fimfiction seems to drop a random carriage return in every dozen pages or so, and has a particularly strange habit of putting non-breaking spaces around italics words, or skipping the post-italics space altogether. I think I got all those. Hopefully.
I’m not sure if I should be giving credit to Microsoft Word or filing a restraining order. Keeping each of the documents in the Garamond typeface was an ordeal, because Microsoft must get a dime every time something is printed with Times Roman, and getting the page numbers to line up on the *outside* edge of the pages was a complete and total bust. Thankfully, I put the page numbers in the center top, forced the dumb thing to stop counting from Page 1 every section break, deleted the footers, force-changed every template to use the right typeface, and several other little tweaks.
This brings us to the end result.
No, I don’t want cash in advance. I can think of few things that would derail my train of thought than keeping track of 12 checks/PayPal orders/stuff. I’ll just have them with me and you can pick them up then. I’ll even sign them so they’ll be worth something in twenty years when I’m a famous⁽*⁾ writer.
(*) Ha!
Also, since I’m putting in the order to Lulu tomorrow, there’s no real promise they’ll be done and in my luggage by the time I leave. But if they are here, I’ll bring them, and we’ll see you at Everfree NorthWest!
(Leave your name and the books you want in the comments. First come, first served, only first 12 count. If these turn out just the way I want, after BronyCon 2019 I should be able to turn them from Lulu’s Private Access to Direct Access, so you can order them straight from the site without my scribbles. I’m actually torn between the hopes of getting a bazillion requests and the possibility that nobody will want me to bring one, so be nice.)
Hi, Georg,
Mike Breeden (Olden Bronie) and I'd like a copy of Sisters and The Traveling Tutor and the Libraian, please.
I'd like Sisters and Traveling Tutor please!
(This is for the non-BronyCon crowd, right?)
I'm not going to any cons, so I can wait for the direct access. :D
5055324 Got it.
5055326 Either, actually. It's just easier for me to bring the books to Bronycon since I'm driving and don't have to submit them to United's gentle handling.
Not going to Everfree Northwest and still pondering BronyCon, but I'd be interested in Sisters! and The Traveling Tutor and the Librarian once you switch to direct access.
And a preemptive thank you for the hard work to get everything in hard copy.
5055350
Ah, I gotcha. I can't be at either convention, so I'm down for when we can order them! (As another person said, thank you in advance for probably annoying work getting them to us.
)
Georg, I will be at EFNW but not BC and I very much want to buy your books. Please please please sell them to me.
5055481
Which ones?
5055483
All of them.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2019/5/8/2033659.png
5055324 5055326 5055481 I put in the order, 4 of each. Shipping on a batch of them is a lot less expensive than one at a time. Looks like a tad over six bucks each, *IF* they get here before I leave on Thursday. Hope, hope, hope.
5056235
Here's hoping, but if not, I'll be at BronyCon as well. See you in Seasaddle!