Sawyer Paul's Blog, page 214
March 28, 2011
"It's a soulless lack of self-reproach that makes the predominant Perez Hilton/3am Girl/Holy Moly/TMZ..."
- Charlie Brooker (via wilwheaton)
When my book comes out, you can add Album Yukes to that list
March 24, 2011
Barnes & Noble Struggles To Find a Buyer
Barnes & Noble has struggled to find a buyer, according to a recent report. The company's stock price closed at $9.10 yesterday–half its price in February.Here's more from Business Week: 'Barnes & Noble Inc., the largest U.S. bookstore chain, is likely to end its months-long search for a buyer without a sale of the company, said five people with knowledge of the bidding process … Interest from at least seven potential buyers waned after the first round of bidding, the people said.
In February, suspended its quarterly dividend payment for stockholders and expressed concern about the 'short-term impact' of Borders' bankruptcy.
That raises two startling thoughts: 1) We all knew electronic reading would supersede analogue reading, but I don't think anyone felt it would happen this fast, and b) The clock is ticking on every single other big-box bookseller.
That's the kind of photo I keep on my desktop for three...
That's the kind of photo I keep on my desktop for three months while a write a book about a girl who could be that seductively dangerous.
Via poplipps.
"Woah. Sorry son, I don't hire designers with Macs. They're usually asses with wayfarers."
-
(via clientsfromhell)
OMFG so true. It's unfortunate that the correlation between people who like clicky keyboards and mayorships at obscure fuck-who-cares coffee places are also really really really good at making sure your precious watermark is exactly where you want it to be.
Sucks. I know.
Evil Waiter, from That Mitchell and Webb Look. Of course we all...
Evil Waiter, from That Mitchell and Webb Look. Of course we all want to be this evil sometimes.
March 17, 2011
Five pieces of Eight
1. I wake up and she's just about to leave. I get a kiss on the cheek as I lay there barely aware, and I want to say so much in that moment. I want her in my dreams, for us to escape in there and doze. And maybe I dream that she kisses me. Maybe she doesn't. She might just drink her coffee and dress and look at herself and go. I think I say I love you but I can never be sure. Even if I ask later, when we're doing the dishes from a dinner she's made, if I told her that I loved her. She might say I did, not wanting to tear away my own idea of how much I mean it. And if she lies, I hope she is only doing it for me, and not for her own heart, if I have neglected it for more sleep.
2. We are off by a little. She always wakes before me and sleeps before me. I can never seem to sync up properly. The problem grates on me. There is so much to catch up on, so I never properly catch up on sleep, until the morning, when I regret staying awake for things that are not her goodbye kiss.
3. I think we'd always like the ability to hit pause and restart. I think that function, above all else, is why men of my age are obsessed with virtual worlds. Undo is a god of a promise.
4. That's why Braid is probably the most heartbreaking game ever made. It takes that promise, the ability to affect time for your own advantage, and it shows that even with that power, we can't quite save the princess. The game is a sonnet of our failure as men to be there at the right time, doing the right thing, making her happier than we actually can. We are all fuckups, incapable of keeping our priorities in check. I am ruined, just like everyone else, because I can't figure out how to keep that goodbye kiss in my mind all the time.
5. I have been properly awake at times, but the words never come on those mornings. They only exist in the space after sleep, when I can only really see the shape of her, and she exists in the same space as my dreams. And then I can't really say them. She might not even be there, and I can't say them to an empty room, though I wonder if I did if she'd get the message anyway, in another room somewhere away from me.
March 13, 2011
How to turn an ugly PDF into a pretty Epub
I'm writing this down so a) I don't forget how, and b) so you don't have to spend entire weekends figuring this out.
So the great thing about portable digital readers is that now you can finally go through all those lengthy PDF documents you've downloaded over the years that you didn't want to read through on a glary PC screen. Great, right? Well, here's the crappy news: most readers don't read PDFs. And if they do, they often show it to you in a full-page mode with no zoom capabilities, which renders it pretty pointless.
Readers like the Sony Reader line do zooming pretty well, but even then, it's no match for some more difficult PDF files.
Now, this tutorial won't really work well with PDFs with images, but it might! I'm just not guaranteeing it, since images are a wild card in the epub game and results may vary.
1) attain some kind of PDF file. If you're like me, there's about a dozen of them in your download folder that you meant to open but never did.
2) Open this PDF in a program that will allow you to save the file as HTML. Do so.
3) Open the HTML file. Copy everything into a textedit or wordpad file. Save it as rich-text.
4) Open Calibre (you do have Calibre, right?) Convert the file to epub. You're done!
This process fixes one of the most annoying things PDFs do: force-wrap text. If you were to just copy the text from the PDF to the textedit box, you'd end up with a lot of this:
This process fixes one of the most annoying things PDFs do:
force-wrap text. If you were to just
copy the text from the PDF to the textedit
box, you'd end up with a lot of this:
It reads a lot better the first way, right? EPUB files wrap really well against any kind of screen, so you want that capability in there.
So you've written a first draft
Here's some advice I gave a while ago on the social network that I think bears repeating.Once you've got a finished first draft, you need to decide whether or not you want it to be published by a major company, a minor company, or to essentially go into business for yourself. All three options have their strengths and weaknesses, and all three can be considered at the same time if you have a little bit of juggling talent.You say you want to live off of your writing, so the first thing you should do is absolutely ignore anyone who wants to take thousands of dollars from you to publish your book. I can't go as far as call them scams, since they will do what they claim (generally), but they are certainly profiting off the public's naivety when it comes to publishing. Here's a comparison of pricing from what they charge to what it actually costs (actual cost in brackets, generated from other companies and common sense): Let's take Booksurge, a popular self publisher. For the top of the line $6000 package, (the offer is no longer valid) they gave you:
10 images (free)
cover design (varies from 200-400)
book formatting (200-300)
Online listings everywhere (tops out at 500)
book trailer (anywhere from free to 200)
Independent review (one should never pay for a review other than mailing a copy. It's dishonest and cheap)
Editing (a quality editor will do a novel for no more than 1000)
Using the top prices out of my examples, it comes to a total of 2,650. I have no idea where Booksurge gets off charges more than twice that. My advice is to stay away from any company would charge more than $2000 for a package deal. And that's if you want to go the route of having a company publish your book. By all means, send your work to agents and publishers. The only thing you will lose by doing that is postage, and the gains are unpredictable and vast if everything works out. The chances are not great. Even the J.K. Rowlings and Stephen King's of the world are rejected hundreds of times before breaking through. My advice is to never give up on major publishing, but to never bank on it working out, either. I would also suggest sending your book out to medium-to-small sized publishers as well, but make sure that if you do get an offer that they are little more than something like Booksurge. There are many small publishers out there that do not have the capabilities to edit and typeset your book and expect you to do the majority of the work. Then, there are publishers who will put the book together for you but cannot help with promotions or anything involving the web. These are not necessarily places to avoid, but they are ones you have to seriously think about. You have to decide whether it is in your best interest to give up your rights to people who may or may not be able to help you. Finally, there's simply going into business for yourself. This route definitely takes the largest amount of work, but it has the strengths of giving you complete control. Authors have the advantage of following in the footsteps of the independent music shift online this decade, and there are tons of routes to self publish and market. What becomes your responsibility is making sure your book looks and feels professional, because nobody is going to buy a book that doesn't look like a finished product. This is where publishing services like Booksurge come in. We're working here at Gredunza to create a database of these services so that new authors can compare services, which puts the power in your hand. It's important to remember that you don't have to use any of these services, as well. You can do everything in separate stages. Here's a basic checklist of what you need to do in order to hold your professional book in your hands:
A professional proofread and substantial edit.
A professional typesetting and layout job.
A printer or printing company that will make your book a physical product (if you want to still make physical books)
Someone who knows how to make electronic copies of your book (PDF is actually not good enough if you want your book in electronic stores).
Someone who can make a website for you (of course, you can always make one yourself for free if all you want is a blog).
Someone who can help you book readings and do marketing.
And that's it, really. You can actually do all this yourself with the exception of editing, because nobody should ever edit their own work (rule #1 in publishing, really).
James Patterson world's best paid author
Thriller author James Patterson has topped a Forbes.com list of the world's best paid authors with an income of $70 million US last year.
Patterson, author of more than 50 bestsellers including the Alex Cross and Maximum Ride series, recently signed a deal to write 17 more books by the end of 2012.
I wonder how much the kids writing those 17 books will make.
William Gibson on social engagement
As you publish your new novel, are you noticing a difference in the business since your last book?
I've noticed two things. One is that I'm able to observe via Twitter the global launch of the book. I'm able to simultaneously see for the first time that the English language editions, which have been exported from England into Europe and Australia, are released a week and a half before they're released to the rest of the world. I kind of vaguely knew before but didn't think about. The other thing is the number of Twitter users asking me questions that I'm usually woefully unable to answer about formats and editions.
It sounds like you're generally experiencing a greater level of fan engagement.
I am. It's much more direct and much more pleasant than I would have expected it to be.
