Gerald Dean Rice's Blog, page 69
January 3, 2013
Get Your ISBN from RR Bowker
Thanks to the fast fingers of someone from one of the forums I frequent I visited a site that resells ISBNs. As with anyone with an inkling of scrutiny in them I had a few questions. Here’s our back and forth correspondence:
GR: I need one ISBN. It’s for an ebook. How do you deliver it to me and how do I assign it to my book?
XX: Hi Gerald,
Thanks for your email. When you place your order through Paypal, I immediately send the isbn bar code to you by email. Then you can use the isbn number to get your book on Amazon, BN, or any other website, online distributor, etc.
Since the ISBN is already registered to my company, it can’t be “registered” to your ebook. (which is redundant since you are registering your own company / author information to the ebook with every online seller – for example, on Amazon, BN, etc, you will enter your own contact information, not mine).
My point is to help publishers to get isbns they need to publish their books/e-books at a reduced price. If it doesn’t end up working out for you, email me and I’ll refund your money right away.
Thanks and best of luck with your ebook!
GR: But if someone searches by the ISBN what information will they see?
XX: Just out of curiosity, have you ever personally searched for a title by ISBN…? Or do you know of anyone who does this?
Personally, I search for titles by title/author. I don’t think most people search for books by ISBN.
Also, Bowker actually charges a lot of money to do a search by ISBN. I think it costs about $1,000 to get a subscription so that someone can do a search by ISBN. So based on my experience most of your customers will probably not be doing that.
If I’m wrong about this, please let me know because I’ve simply never heard of anyone searching for a book by ISBN. Thanks.
GR: I get what you mean. If I bought it from you it would show under my book anyway. But retailers search by ISBN. Won’t they see? And what do you give me as assurance you won’t sell mine to someone else?
XX: I’m not selling the same number to anyone else because that wouldn’t be good for my business. I’m trying to help people by giving them a low-cost way to publish their book or ebook. You’re welcome to try my service anytime you are ready. Thanks.
Think he sounded a little short in that last message? I do. Even if I did go through an ISBN reseller, I wouldn’t use this guy in particular. He chose to be sensitive when that was when he should have put on his best salesman’s shoes. Hey, I have reservations, obviously. Why not go the extra mile to reassure me?
But, I was on Bowker’s website and I found this:
As the U.S. ISBN Agency, R R Bowker is the exclusive US source of publisher prefixes and accompanying ranges of ISBN numbers for eligible publishers. Bowker provides information and advice on the uses of the ISBN System to publishers and the book trade, and promotes the use of the Bookland EAN bar code format. In addition to their ISBN prefixes, publishers also register their titles with Bowker for inclusion in the Books In Print databases.
Please be aware that there are unauthorized resellers of ISBNs, and that this activity is a violation of the ISBN standard and of industry practice.
It goes on:
If you use one of these reassigned ISBNs, you will not be correctly identified as the publisher of record in Books in Print or many of the book industry databases. The result may be extensive costs to apply for a new ISBN and the application of stickers to books already printed and in circulation.
If you are a new publisher, you should apply for your own ISBN publisher prefix from the US ISBN Agency. Assigning ISBNs from your own ISBN publisher prefix will identify you as the publisher of your titles, and link your contact information to the specific publisher identifier. This will ultimately aid in circulating your books properly in the industry supply chain.
Needless to say, I don’t want anyone else’s name to show up under my ISBN. I’m trying to start something here and that seems contrary to what I’m working for. I have other things I’m planning to write, maybe I’ll just buy 10 of them and go on from there.
January 2, 2013
Hay-Zeuss is Watching, pt 5
“All right, I’ll put it all back,” DeWayne said, his voice shaking like a crap game. “Just let me go.” He turned over the sack and dumped the necklaces out. He tried to pass again and a hand slapped onto his shoulder and spun him around. The dude in the painting was looking at him out of one eye and winking with the other.
“What? I don’t have anything else. What do you want?” A hand slapped him on the back, sending him to his knees. He was eye-to-eye with the painting and the dude’s head was sort of nodding at him. “Do you want me to take you with me?”
It winked at him again.
“Okay, it’s cool. Whatever you want.” He grabbed his sack and put it over the edges of the frame. It was a tough fit and the thing tore a little, but he got it in. DeWayne made haste to the door, swinging it open and climbing out into the night. Mel was gonna be pissed, but he didn’t care if she believed him or not.
As he made his way to his car, parked a couple buildings away, the cold air tickled his nose. He sneezed.
“Bless you,” the dude said, his voice muffled from within the sack.
Liked this story? You should read the rest of Tales from an Apartment. Get it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.
How I Published My Own Novel
Dug up something else off my old blog. You’ve probably already seen my post on publishing on Kindle. This is a response to someone who asked me about self-publishing. Enjoy!
I’ll give you the steps as I know them, but by no means are they the only way to go about it. For my first novel, The Ghost Toucher, I submitted my completed manuscript (which I had redrafted) to publishers looking for books in my genre. I found them through a website called duotrope. It’s a tremendous free resource for connecting writers with publishers. I sent my novel to 3 or 4 publishers and 2 of them got back with me in short order. In fact, the publisher I eventually went with, was so enthusiastic about my story he asked to have exclusive reading writes within 2 weeks of getting it from me and I had a signed contract in about a month’s time. That’s not necessarily typical; I’ve been rejected numerous times for short stories.
After signing the contract, I asked him what I should be doing next and he told me to start my own website and begin blogging. That was for promotional purposes. I don’t know if a large publisher would ask the same thing. With a small publisher comes a smaller budget when it comes to promotion. You will play an important part in the legwork for getting the word out about your daughter’s book. I had a couple interviews with small newspapers, submitted my book for book reviews, and secured an interview on Fox 2 (just found out they don’t do them anymore unless it’s for a major publication or well-known author).
Now for my current novella, Fleshbags, I decided to become my own publisher. This is extremely easy to do—the biggest concern you should have if is your daughter’s manuscript is up to snuff. In addition to you reading it, I would recommend having someone completely independent with a keen eye to give it a once over (if she can handle an honest critique, that is). I’ve actually been able to improve things I’ve written based on critiques of my work. But after you know you have a manuscript that’s a winner the second half of your work begins. First, you need to find a cover artist. My publisher for my first novel already had someone he worked with and for my second, it was someone I found through Facebook.
Somewhere at this stage you should begin collecting reviewers. I recommend a basic Google search to find forums and blogs in your daughter’s genre to find reviewers. If you’re brave enough, contact a few national magazines like Publishers Weekly. The big boys will ask for a significant lead time, three months or so, before the book is published. And that’s if they’ll actually review it. I sent Fleshbags to them and never heard back.
But set a soft release date for all the small guys you send to, asking them to have their reviews done by then. The only places I published my novel were Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords. Smashwords can distribute to several estores, including Sony, the iTunes store, Diesel, and Kobo, amongst a few others. But by far, Kindle is the biggest. It’s also the easiest to use. You don’t have to worry about acquiring an ISBN for any of them, they will assign their own numbers if you like. Smashwords is the most particular and you will have to educate yourself on how they want your book formatted in order to get it distributed to all their channels. I recommend using this format for Barnes and Noble and Amazon just to save yourself a little time and headache.
Once you’ve followed all the steps for each respective website to electronically publish there is an initial lag time before your book will appear for purchase. Smashwords, depending on how many other eBooks are waiting to upload, could have availability in as little time as a few minutes time. But that’s for their website only. For premium distribution it could take significantly longer and you may need to make several revisions to get your eBook formatted the right way. But once that is done your book should be transferred through all their channels and depending on which particular eBook distributor it could be available for purchase through those respective websites in as little time as a day or two, but most will take about a week. Amazon and Barnes and Noble take about a day or so before your book shows available for purchase.
Warning, Smashwords will be your distributor for all the websites they distribute to. Don’t panic, they’re not stealing anything. But every time Sony sells a digital copy of your book, Smashwords will collect the money and once you reach $10 (I believe) in your SW account they will pay you. Set up all bank account information and payments will be transferred to you on whatever schedule they have (I don’t remember off-hand). You can buy an ISBN (if you want) through them or through RR Bowker, but again, it isn’t necessary. I don’t remember the payment schedule for Barnes and Noble, either, but for Amazon, they pay 60 days after the close of the month in which you reached $10 in sales.
I can’t really suggest how much you should charge for an eBook (the artist really should make the determination on the value of his or her work so long as they drank a full glass of being realistic first), but so long as you apprise yourself of the cost of other books of similar length are, you should be fine. There are even websites that can help you with this.
I hope I’ve answered all your questions. But by all means, send me another email with anything else and I’ll try to answer if I can.
If you’d like, you can check out my novella, Fleshbags, on Kindle.
January 1, 2013
Hay-Zeuss is Watching, pt 4
“What? I’m not putting them back. I’m keeping them!”
“But what if you can’t spend them?”
“Then I’ll just throw them away!”
“No. It’ll be too tempting. You’ll spend one, then two, and before you know, it the cops jump out a bowl of Frosted Flakes. Put them back.”
“Your guy can’t… I don’t know—spread ‘em out or something?”
“My guy deals with valuables at a discounted price. Nobody’s gonna walk into a store and ask to try on a bond.”
“All right. Fine.” There was a sound from outside the bedroom. “Hold on.”
“What?”
“I think I just heard something. Call you back.”
There it was again. It sounded like… like someone was clearing his throat. DeWayne took the few steps back to his pack and pulled out his sap. He silently extended it, hoping he wasn’t going to need it. Somebody was definitely out there.
DeWayne crouched as low as he could, his eyes as adjusted to the dark as they were going to get. He peeked into the hallway. Nobody there, but there was the sound again. It was close. Probably in the kitchen. He stepped out of the bedroom, holding up the sap. Once he was sure of where the sound was coming from he’d leap out and smack the guy in the head. Hopefully, that would put him out and DeWayne could get away.
He hadn’t heard the door open, though. The thought that somebody had been in here with him all along returned. His heart skipped when he looked up at the painting and saw those eyes locked onto him. He couldn’t hear the person around the corner and couldn’t concentrate.
He leapt into the opening to the kitchen and swung, the sap cleaving through air. The throat-clearing sound came again, but it was behind him! DeWayne spun around, swinging the sap into the frame of the bathroom doorway.
The bearded dude was looking at him still. Hell, it even looked like he’d turned his head some. He was somewhere on a beach, the sun setting. The waning light caught the side of his sandy brown hair.
DeWayne scratched his head. Was this some kind of trick?
He grabbed the painting by the frame and lifted it off the wall. There weren’t any electrical wires or anything else behind it. He felt the back of the painting and put his finger through the paper. Nothing underneath but canvas. DeWayne held it back up to the wall, trying to get the wire back on the hook.
And then the dude smiled at him.
DeWayne leapt back, tripping and falling onto the linoleum kitchen floor, sliding a few feet. The painting landed upright and yeah, the dude was smiling at him. It was just the lower teeth, or rather, all he could see were the lower teeth. The dude’s beard was too bushy to see the uppers.
“To hell with this!” DeWayne climbed to his feet, not wanting to approach the painting but not wanting to spend one second longer in this place. He’d grab his sack and his pack and hit the road. They could keep the bonds too.
He picked up everything in the master bathroom and walked out the bedroom. The dude’s eyes—at this angle—there was no mistaking that he was looking at DeWayne. He tried to walk past it, but felt a stiff hand press into his chest. There was nothing there, but he could feel something blocking him.
Read a New Author in the New Year
Patrick Dearen- TO HELL OR THE PECOS, a TCU Press novel, is the story of a kidnapped girl and the desperate attempt to rescue her by horseback in 1886 on the driest stretch of the Goodnight-Loving and Butterfield trail in Texas.
Tabitca Cope- In DARK WEAR, friends, academics, a peer of the realm and knights get involved with big cats,werewolves, witches ,demons and the 5th Reich in Durham UK and survive the horror tunnel to save the day and one of the world’s greatest treasures from St Cuthbert’s tomb.
December 31, 2012
Hay-Zeuss is Watching, pt 3
Mel worked with him at the kennel. She was only part time, but there was something about her that was a natural draw. Apart from the fact he wanted to bang her. It was like destiny or something for them to meet up. She had contacts with people who brokered in stolen goods and he’d done some home invasions when he was a teen. He’d only gotten caught the last time and the older kid he was with had had the record. DeWayne had come from a good home and his dad was a lawyer, so he’d gotten the lightest slap on the wrist possible and his record had been expunged when he turned eighteen.
He’d been ready to quit the kennel because the pay was crap, but one night after work Mel had told him it was the ideal place to work for someone with a good eye. They’d been slamming back shots or Jaeger and he really thought he might get in her pants. But then she’d laid it on him why she really was there and that she’d noticed how he looked at the people who brought their pets in. She’d read him like a book and before he knew it, he was breaking into somebody’s house.
They didn’t do it with everyone and not even with all the rich-looking folks. It would be too easy for the police to trace back to them if they did that. And she sometimes had contacts who fed her addresses. But occasionally, a rich white woman would waltz in with her furs and her necklaces and her diamond rings blinging all over the place and he and Mel would look at each other and just knew they were going to get it on.
They had all the information they needed right there. Where the people lived and how long they’d be gone. The most surprising thing to DeWayne had been that this particular couple lived in an apartment.
“They probably don’t live here,” Mel had explained. He hadn’t understood what she meant. “They probably live on the other side of the state or something and hubby had to relocate over here temporarily to oversee the plant or audit the books or consult on something. Why buy a house if you’re just going to be here a short while?”
That had made sense. But still, if it had been DeWayne’s money he would have sprung for something swankier than this place. A townhouse or something. But maybe this had been all they could find on short notice.
He spotted a shoebox just behind where the pictures had been and got excited. This might be something. DeWayne took it down and took off the lid.
Jackpot!
There were no fewer than two-dozen rolls in here. He took one out and slid off the rubber band. They were all hundred-dollar bonds. He guessed there were about fifty in each roll and times that by twenty-four…
That was at least ten thousand bones, by his simple math.
He called Mel back.
“lo?”
“Yo, I just found the buried treasure!”
“You dug a hole in there?”
“No, that’s just an expression. There’s a shoebox in the closet filled with bonds. It’s gotta be like ten thou at least.”
“Bonds… I don’t know about bonds. Can’t they track those?”
“I don’t know.”
“You should put those back.”
December 30, 2012
Hay-Zeuss is Watching, pt 2
She was from somewhere else and still had the slightest trace of an accent. Sometimes when she got mad, it thickened up, and man, when she rolled her Rs—
“Do you see anything?” she spat in his ear.
“Uh, no.” He had to stay on his game. Just because it looked like they were gone didn’t mean somebody wasn’t coming back. People forgot stuff all the time. He wanted to be long gone in case somebody came back for a golf bag or a make-up case.
It was even darker in the bathroom. He felt around, not wanting to grab his flashlight.
“Oof!” Something tapped DeWayne on the balls and he almost went to his knees. He managed to lean on the counter as the pain crawled up out of his sack and raked across his stomach. His head swam a moment and he closed his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Mel asked.
“My balls,” he coughed out a minute later. “Something hit me in the balls.”
“What do you mean something hit you? You’re there alone, right?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I am.” The feeling, like a vise, pinching off every blood vessel from his groin to his brain gradually subsided and he stood. He took a breath and pulled out the flashlight and skimmed the bathroom. The only thing in here not bolted down was an office chair on wheels. Unless the thing had rolled silently over, swatted him in the nuts and silently rolled back, it had been something else.
“So what do you see?”
“Nothing… just an office chair. What the hell is that doing in here anyway?”
“You really are a bachelor. That’s her make-up chair. Look at the counter. Is there an open space underneath the counter?”
DeWayne checked with the flashlight. “Yeah.”
“She sits there and does her make-up. Probably didn’t put it back after and you ran into it, boys first.”
“But I could swear—”
“Don’t start. What makes the most sense?”
Had to check himself. Mel was right. Sometimes he tended to go off on tangents, she liked to call them mini-conspiracies. DeWayne never had the evidence to support them, but believed all the same. It had to have been the chair. If he didn’t know better he would have thought there was somebody in here with him.
“All right. I’m back on the job. Call you back.” He ended the call and slid the cell back into its holster. He slid the backpack off and unzipped it. Out came the sack he would put all the goodies in and he could use the pack for heavier stuff.
A pair of eyes stared at him from the bathroom. DeWayne jumped, reaching for a weapon he didn’t have on him. Wait a minute. Was that one of those foam heads? The thing on the bathroom counter had a roughly drawn pair of eyes pointed in his direction. It had a curly-haired wig on it and someone had even gone to the trouble of giving it acne-pitted cheeks. DeWayne narrowed his glance and sidestepped. Thankfully, the eyes stayed put.
A rack of some kind with necklaces on it set next to the head-thing. He carefully removed each one and dropped them into the sack. There was a closet on the other side of the bathroom and he poked his head in. Expensive-looking clothes and shoes. On a high-up shelf there were a couple picture frames. He reached for them and scanned through with the flashlight. Nobody important. He always checked photos. DeWayne had gotten lucky on a break-in once and found a signed picture of some old guy Mel had told him was pretty rare. It had a personalized signature, so she didn’t take it, but she did kick him an extra twenty bones and told him to keep it up.
December 29, 2012
Hay-Zeuss is Watching, pt 1
DeWayne shut the door behind him quietly and got into a low crouch. This was the tricky part—making sure there really was no one home. He was ninety-nine percent certain, but he couldn’t count out the possibility they’d just dropped the dog off to have some alone time.
He made his way over to the wall directly ahead, making silent note of the flat screen television and expensive-looking leather couches. A quick check with the flashlight and he saw the thermostat was off and turned all the way down. They wouldn’t do that in the middle of winter if they were still here. DeWayne had gotten the layout of this apartment off the complex’s website. The guest bedroom was around the corner to his left, the master bedroom was around the corner and down the hall. DeWayne stepped quickly into the guest bedroom and glanced around. No one. But they had a frilly princess bed on the floor that must have been for that dog. Disgusting, but all the more reason for him to be here. These people just had too much and needed someone to take some of it off them. He turned around and crept down the hall toward the master bedroom. There was a painting on the wall just past the door to the main bathroom. He caught a glance of a smiling, bearded dude in a robe with flowing locks in an ornate frame and immediately dismissed it. It was weird, didn’t fit in with the décor. Didn’t seem to—
What the hell?
DeWayne spun and looked back at the painting. As he was passing he could have sworn the eyes of the thing were really locked onto him, swinging from right to left as he went by.
It was staring blindly ahead into the kitchen with a dumb smile on. DeWayne turned and peeked into the bedroom. Bed was made and two pairs of slippers underneath. Nobody home. He whipped out his cell and speed-dialed Mel.
“’lo?” came the gravelly feminine voice.
“I’m in,” he said.
“So?”
“Don’t know yet. Just stepped in the bedroom.” There was a silver jewelry box on the end of the dresser closest to him that looked like it could fit a bowling ball. DeWayne lifted the lid.
“Yes!” he said.
“What?”
“Mother-lode. Probably can get a couple thou in this jewelry box alone.”
“Check the bathroom,” Mel said.
“What?”
“The bathroom. Take a look.”
“Why?”
“I’m a woman, so I know things you don’t. Sometimes we keep valuables in the bathroom too. Make sure to check the bathroom closet.”
“Okay.” DeWayne would have bet she knew a lot of things he didn’t. Mel was at least fifteen years older than him, but she was still sexy as hell. She still wore her wedding ring, but her husband had died last year in prison. DeWayne’s girlfriend was two years younger than him, but she couldn’t come close to Mel. She was all skin and bones, but the older woman was… what was the word? Oh yeah, zaftig. DeWayne had never been one for big words, but when he’d learned what that one meant he’d immediately thought of the older woman.
December 28, 2012
An Ingenious New Nonprofit Proves That Maybe You CAN Buy Forgiveness
Found this as I was cruisin’ the interwebs for social media ideas:
