Michelle Proulx's Blog, page 28
June 26, 2013
Impending Nuptials Ahoy!
Greetings, my fellow bloggerites! I just wanted to check in and let you know that:
A) The book reading was a semi-success — I managed to attract 4 entire people to come listen to me ramble. Huzzah!
B) The book reading was a semi-failure — I managed to attract 4 meager people to come listen to me ramble. Booooo.
In other news, I’m off for the long weekend (Canada Day!) to attend my friend’s wedding, so if I appear to be suspiciously absent for the next few days … well, it’s because I’m not here. I’ll post more about the book reading when I get back.
Oh, and don’t forget to enter the Goodreads Giveaway for Imminent Danger And How to Fly Straight into It! No purchase necessary, much love for all who enter, and the contest ends on July 1.
In conclusion, live long and prosper, and enjoy the unrelated media.
Unrelated media of the day:
Source: http://i.imgur.com/tmuPJ.jpg
June 24, 2013
Amateur Blogging Tip: How NOT to Request a Guest Post
I received a very amusing email a few days ago. I shall now reproduce it here for your enjoyment:
Hello Sir,
I thought I would send a quick email after coming across your website earlier today and I would like to guest post on your site. My idea for the Post is about book publishing,I believe my idea for the Guest Post will suit your website. In return, I would like to have 1 backlink in the post.
Please let me know if my idea for the Guest Post suits you, and also if there are any terms and conditions about Guest Posting.
The post will be around 400-500 words and 100% unique.
Also I would like to know how soon can you publish it?
((etc.))
In the aftermath of this excellent email, I have decided to put together a quick list of tips for requesting guest posts. Actually, these rules don’t have to apply just to requesting a guest post — they really apply to whenever you’re asking anyone for anything. So, I now present to you:
How to request writing an unsolicited guest post without brutally offending the blogger in question
Get their gender right. I know that the name “Michelle” is technically a unisex name (according to , it’s used for boys 0.23% of the time). But still … if you’re going to be gender-specific in your query, take the time to find a bio or picture of the person and figure out if they’re a guy or a girl. Otherwise you run the risk of calling a woman “Sir”, which is just embarrassing for everyone involved. (Pro tip: When in doubt, just address them by name, and forego the “sir” or “madam” entirely!)
Know your audience. This person’s email reads like a hard-core business message. The email is laid out like a contract — “I will do this, in return you will do this. Here are the specifications of my offer, here is my guarantee for originality, what timeline can I expect for our deal to conclude?” And that works really well if you’re emailing, say, Microsoft. But if you’re contacting a part-time blogger whose content quite clearly indicates that they’re writing for fun and to connect with the blogging community, tone down the business-talk a little!
Capitalization Is Annoying. Capitalization is for proper nouns. “Post” and “guest post” are not proper nouns. They are normal, boring, improper nouns. Don’t capitalize them!
Run a spell check. The reasoning for this rule should be self-evident. Spelling and grammar save lives!
In other news, I’m quite excited for my book reading/signing tomorrow evening at local library. I think I convinced a few people to come, but I still suspect I’ll be babbling to a mostly-empty room. On the plus side, I talked my friend into being my “reader wrangler”, so hopefully that will up the attendance a little. Check back in a few days for my victorious/lugubrious report on the book reading!
Unrelated media of the day:
Source: http://poorlydrawnlines.com/comic/jetpack/
June 19, 2013
Publishing with iUniverse -- Yea or Nay? (an iUniverse review)
Before we get into the nitty gritty details of this topic, let's begin with establishing what exactly iUniverse is, and what makes it different from traditional publishing and self-publishing. In a nutshell, there are three types of publishing:
So there's the breakdown. iUniverse is an assisted/vanity publisher, meaning you pay them money and they publish your book for you. Assisted/vanity publishers have a God-awful reputation amongst self-published authors, due to their tendency to squeeze authors for every penny they have.
Almost forgot! I recently decided to get my act together and write up a brief review of iUniverse. Read on!
Publishing with iUniverse -- Yea or Nay?
Before we get into the nitty gritty details of this topic, let's begin with establishing what exactly iUniverse is, and what makes it different from traditional publishing and self-publishing. In a nutshell, there are three types of publishing:
So there's the breakdown. iUniverse is an assisted/vanity publisher, meaning you pay them money and they publish your book for you. Assisted/vanity publishers have a God-awful reputation amongst self-published authors, due to their tendency to squeeze authors for every penny they have.
Almost forgot! I recently decided to get my act together and write up a brief review of iUniverse. Read on!
June 17, 2013
Embracing the Flames Official Release Giveaway!
Reblogged from Candace Knoebel:
Hello once again readers!!!!
Today is the birthday of book II in the Born in Flames trilogy!!! I am so excited (hence the overuse of exclamation points)!!!!
To celebrate this wondrous occasion, I'd like to hold a giveaway exclusive to you my lovely bloggers! All you have to do is reblog this post to be entered to win a…
Massive congrats to Candace Knoebel on the birthday of book 2 of her Born in Flames trilogy! Check it out :)
Ten Things You Can Do With Short Stories
Short stories are strange little things. They are easy to write – but not so easy to sell. Unlike novels, which require a lot of time to finish, a short story can be written in a few hours and ready to submit within a week – but what do you do with them then?
Ten Things You Can Do With Short Stories…
Great short story writing/publishing tips!
June 13, 2013
VLOG #10 — Festivals & The Wheel of Imminent Danger!
Guys, I hate to say this, but … I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly. And by jelly, I am, of course, talking about my new vlog! It will feature:
My brother and I attempting to paint the Wheel of Imminent Danger
Footage from the Gathering on the Green arts festival
Footage from the For the Love of Arts street festival
To give some background, a family friend was awesome and built me a prize wheel (think Wheel of Fortune, but smaller and vertical). So Jesse (my brother) and I painted it with pretty colors, stuffed it in the car, and hauled it to assorted festivals over the last few weeks. The first festival went very well, the second very poorly — but fun was had, wheels were spun, books were sold, and candy was consumed. Watch the vlog to find out more!
Unrelated link of the day:
There’s still time to apply for the Mars One reality show! Never mind the fact that, with our current technology, you’ll probably receive a lethal dose of radiation whilst en route to Mars and subsequently die a horrible death!
Seriously though, Mars One is pretty cool. Click here to learn more about it.
June 10, 2013
Amateur Writing Tip — When World-building, Consider Population
Today’s amateur writing tip is courtesy of my little brother Jesse, who enjoys dissecting my story ideas and informing me why they make no logical sense. Think Spock, but taller and wearing glasses.
On one of our recent walks, we were chatting about a new fantasy story I’ve been working on. The basic premise (not to give too much away) is that monsters have over-run the ground, so humans have taken to the sky in a handful of floating cities to survive. There are still a bunch of humans on the ground, but they live in small, scattered tribes and rely on nature magic to repel the beasties. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong.
As Jesse explained to me, the driving force behind a large percentage of historical events is population. After all, when your population keeps growing and you’re running out of land, what can you do but expand? Conversely, if your population is shrinking, you’re going to be weaker, losing ground and resources, and slowly but surely heading for decline and failure.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that populations don’t remain stagnant. They either grow or shrink – unless there’s some sort of population-control in effect (see China’s one child policy). So what does this mean for world-building?
Population and world-building
Even if your fantasy world is full of wizards and dragons and whatnot who totally defy the laws of logic, your unwashed peasant masses still need to make sense, population-wise. Therefore, read on and be amazed!
A) Be wary of isolated villages
You can dot your fantasy landscape with small villages until the sun comes down, but the important thing to remember is that they cannot be isolated villages. Although isolated villages make great settings, they don’t actually make sense. If you’ve got a little village of 100 people who never interact with other villages and just live in their own little world, what happens? They inbreed, because there’s no outside blood. Inbreeding, for the record, is bad. So if you’re going to have a bunch of little villages, make sure there’s some system in place for inter-marriage between the villages. Unless you want your village to be full of inbred people, in which case, isolate those villages to your heart’s content, my friend.
B) Large populations require resources
By resources, I’m talking vast tracts of farmland. Now, your city doesn’t necessarily have to be right next to farmland, or even own farmland — it just needs to have access, somehow, to food. In my case, I’ve got floating cities where all the real estate is taken up by dwellings and assorted buildings. No room for farmland there. So instead I’ve created mountain-top farming communities that provide food for the skycities in exchange for the assorted goods manufactured in the cities. Go food or go home!
C) Population affects politics
Imagine your world is overrun by monsters, gobbling up everyone in their path. You flee with the few survivors to a city in the clouds. Now, as you sit up there, struggling to rebuild your society and recover from this devastating loss of life, are you going to attempt a government coup? Of course not. You’ve got more important things to worry about – such as, for example, not dying. But jump a few hundred years down the road, and now your city is thriving. Suddenly your population is booming — what do you do with all these people? You need to get rid of them, because they’re crowding up the slums and causing problems, but there’s nowhere to send them. You turn to the government for help, but they have no idea what to do with the excess populace either. And so … BAM! Civil unrest.
D) Attempts at controlling population growth rarely end well
Ever read Ender’s Game? The world is over-populated, so the government passes a law that you can only have two children — if you have a third child, they won’t get access to health care, education, etc. But guess what? Even with all the horrible consequences of having too many children, people do it anyway. So if you’re going to explain your stagnant population as a result of population control, assume that there’s going to be a lot of unrest amongst your society about it. Unless, of course, your population control is magical in nature — then you can do whatever the heck you want. I suggest creating a spell where excess children are transformed into parakeets. You can never have too many parakeets.
Basically, what I’m trying and failing to convey here is that population matters. I know most writers would rather focus on the fun stuff, like “What should I name Jeremiah’s magical talking sword?”, or “Can I get away with making Sara both the Empress of Cavortas and the high priestess of Zinzar?”. But if you’re creating a fantasy world, you absolutely have to consider the population. You don’t have to consider for long — goodness knows you have more important things to do with your life — but please, for the love of logic, just make sure you aren’t creating a world that makes absolutely no sense. Otherwise you’ll end up with a Hunger Games scenario, where the tiny population of a single city has control over the entirety of North America, and the rest of the world has either died off or, for some bizarre reason, has chosen to have no contact with North America despite the obvious and necessary benefits of international trade.
Unrelated media of the day:
Source: http://i.imgur.com/109YSB0.jpg
June 9, 2013
iUniverse Royalty Report (Jan-Mar 2013)
Ladies and gentleman, I’m pleased to announce that I have officially received my royalty report from iUniverse for the months of January-March. The report came in on June 7th … a full week after it was supposed to … but still, it’s here! Huzzah!
After cross-checking my meticulous book sales records (a Word doc bullet list), I have determined that the royalties they’ve reported are correct. So props to iUniverse for their accurate accounting department!
I shall now divulge the sales stats for my first three months of sales under iUniverse:
Softcovers sold = 68
Hardcovers sold = 56
Ebooks:
Amazon = 33
B&N = 3
Kobo = 6
Tada! My sub-par yet inspiring stats for January-March. I’m pretty sure I have you guys to thank for those ebook sales, so thank you!!!
As for the softcovers/hardcovers, I know what you’re thinking – Gosh, Michelle, over 100 sold! That’s pretty darn good! Maybe print books aren’t dead after all! Now, that would be true, except that 100 of those were bought by me, for the purposes of re-sale/giving away. On the plus side, that leaves 24 print books unaccounted for — which I think is pretty darn cool!
Are these sales amazing? Goodness, no. Compared to some of my fellow bloggers, who complain when their sales drop under 50 a day, these stats are just pathetic. But hey, that’s cool! First book, crazy fluctuating ebook prices, wrong genre classification, questionably genre-appropriate cover, overpriced print copies, no up-to-date sales records for marketing analysis … I’m quite satisfied with the results thus far. Huzzah!
It does make me wonder how my sales would be if I’d not gone with iUniverse, and instead done something like KDP through Amazon. I suppose I’ll find out soon enough, though — now that Chasing Nonconformity, the sequel to Imminent Danger, is well into the editing stages, I’m starting to make plans to self-publish the sequel, as well as re-release Imminent Danger through KDP. This will likely necessitate splitting from iUniverse, something which I’m trying to feel sad about, but … somehow the emotion just isn’t there. Hehehe …
Anyway, for anyone wondering how I was doing, sales-wise, above is all the information I have. This info can also serve as a benchmark to my fellow self-published writers — if you’re selling better than me, clearly you’re doing something right! And if you feel like letting me in on what that something is, please, by all means, feel free. Live long and prosper, blogosphere!
Semi-related image of the day:
Source: http://www.virtualadagency.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/comic-getrich.gif
Semi-related video of the day:
I present to you now, “Dirty Cash” by BigBang, who are arguably the most popular boy band in South Korea. (To KPOP fans — I said arguably! Put away your weapons!) As you will gather when they sing the chorus, they don’t want your dirty cash. They’re quite firm on this point.
