A.C. Flory's Blog, page 99
October 9, 2017
You’ve got to be kidding…!
I don’t often comment on the publishing industry, but I could not let this article from The Bookseller [thanks Passive Guy!] pass me by.
In a nutshell, Freight Books is in trouble. Authors published by the company [who haven’t been paid in months] received an email from Davindar Samrai, the co-founder of the company, about the situation. The following are snippets from that email…-laughs in disbelief-
“If you would like to buy stock of your titles, it may be prudent to act sooner rather than later”, Samrai said. “I appreciate this may cause unease but depending on quantities, I may be able to supply at a better discount than the regular author discount. If you would like to secure books – please email me your requests and I’ll do all I can to ensure you receive your books.
He [Samria] added: “If any author is owed monies by way of royalties/advances etc. it may be possible to set stock against any monies you are owed. Also, if you are owed royalties an invoice should be submitted, in order to be registered on our accounts system (even if you not interested in books as payment).”
Being Indie can be tough at times, but I’d still rather be Indie than a ‘published’ author with a company like Freight. I cannot imagine anything more demoralizing than having my dreams come true one day only to disappear down the gurgler the next.
Author beware indeed. 
October 7, 2017
Back to music!
It’s been ages since I posted anything about music because, well, I haven’t been listening to any. I’ve been completely engrossed in my technical writing for months now, and technical writing does not play well with music. Or at least it doesn’t for me because my focus has to be on clarity and precision, not creativity.
I’ve enjoyed my break from creative writing, but I’ve really missed the music, so my thanks to the Offspring for telling me about the soundtrack to the movie ‘Mongol’.
It’s like nothing I’ve ever listened to before, and the ‘throat singing’ is not exactly pretty to Western ears. And yet…and yet….I love it. It’s kind of raw and sets the nerves a-jangle, but it beats a cup of coffee when it comes to waking my brain up. See what you think:
Oh and I’m turning comments off so no one has to be polite. :p
-hugs-
Meeks
Filed under: Music Tagged: Beginning, Mongol, singing, soundtrack, throat
October 2, 2017
How to fix an error setting the bottom margin in Word 16
[image error]It’s always the little things…
If you keep getting an error message when you try to set the bottom margin of your Word document below a certain measurement… disconnect your printer.
Yes, that’s right, disconnect the printer, and not just via the cable but from Windows as well.
For those using Windows 7:
Click the Start button,
Select ‘Devices and Printers’
This will display the ‘Devices and Printers’ window. Under ‘Printers and Faxes’, you will see your printer. It will have a bright green tick next to it to show it’s the default device.
Click your printer
Select ‘Remove this Device’
[image error]
Now when you open Word and set the margins to the lowest pre-set measurement [1.27 cm or 0.5 inches], Word will do your bidding without bitching and going “Nah ah, not gonna happen.”
This may seem like a drastic ‘fix’, but printers are ‘plug and play’ so Windows will re-install them again without issue.
Now, why on earth would you need to completely disconnect the printer in the first place?
The reason is that Word takes the dimensions for the ‘printable’ area of a page from the printer.
This is not a problem for most Word documents, but it can be a huge problem if the printer you want to use is CreateSpace. Or, to be more exact, if you want to set non-standard margins for the book you want CreateSpace to print for you.
This is exactly the problem that’s been vexing me for days. Printing in colour is expensive so I didn’t want to waste precious page space on unnecessarily wide margins. But do you think Word would co-operate? It allowed me to set all the margins to 1.27 cm, except for one. For some reason I could not fathom, Word kept telling me that the bottom margin had to be a minimum of 1.68 cm. For my US friends, that’s 0.66 inches.
I have wasted hours of my life searching Google for an answer, and it was not until I remembered a problem we had with Word at DVLC [the community centre where I help teach computer literacy to adults] that I began to wonder if I was experiencing something similar. At DVLC, there are multiple printers, but the student workstations are not allowed to access all of them. If the wrong printer is specified for a given workstation, Word chucks a wobbly and won’t even show a print preview.
So, could the printer be the problem?
Step 1 was to disconnect the printer cable from the pc.
Success? No.
Step 2 was to get stubborn and uninstall the printer from the pc.
Success? YES!
So there you have it, a simple solution for a rare problem. You’re welcome.
cheers
Meeks
Filed under: How-to guides, self-publishing Tagged: 2016, colour-printing-costs, Createspace, custom-margins, error, fix, margin, printable-area, Word
October 1, 2017
Monsanto strikes again
Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready was bad enough, but Dicamba is an order of magnitude worse. It’s a form of toxic, aerial blackmail.
“It’s no surprise farmers are up in arms. Dicamba spreads death with the wind, drifting onto their crops, trees, soil, and water. Farmers are now faced with a terrible choice — switch to Monsanto GMO seeds, or watch their crops die.
It’s a greedy, dangerous scheme that will make Monsanto billions and could destroy our food system.” AVAAZ
You can read more about Dicamba here:
AVAAZ is campaigning for a million signatures to try to stop Monsanto. I’m not American so my signature won’t count, but if you live in the US and you care about food and justice, please sign the petition and ask your friends to sign too.
The petition is here:
Thanks,
Meeks
p.s. we switched over to Daylight Savings time this morning at 2am….I hate it so much.
September 28, 2017
Book 5 up on CreateSpace
My CreateSpace adventure has gone in directions I never thought it would. Only 1 of the five books is actually ‘live’ but the 3 Innerscape books are due for their final, final, final review and the latest book is getting it’s 24 hour review by CreateSpace.
The approval process [by me] won’t be quick because I’m picky, but it is happening. This is the cover of ‘How to Print Your Book with CreateSpace, a step-by-step guide for absolute beginners’:
[image error]
I know this doesn’t look like a professional, business type cover, but I wanted to convey how I felt about my books. And this is it. For now. I may change my mind though.
No comments. Literally. 
September 25, 2017
Self-Publishing with IngramSpark…or not
IngramSpark, probably the biggest print-on-demand publisher, has a facility right here in Melbourne [Australia].
“Yay! I can get copies of my books printed locally to save a huge amount on postage!”
That was me yesterday. Today I have steam coming out of my ears because the only way I can use IngramSpark is as a Sole Trader – and that involves getting an ABN. Apparently, IngramSpark does not deal with lowly self-publishers who can’t pretend to be a business.
For those not familiar with the term, ABN stands for Australian Business Number. I used to have one, about 15 years ago when I ran a micro business teaching computer skills one-on-one. In fact, apparently I still have one lurking somewhere, inactive and unusable, but still in the ‘system’. Somewhere.
I could hunt down my old ABN, but I don’t even know where to start and, bureaucracy being what it is, the process could take hours or days out of my life. That’s a lot of effort to go to just for the privilege of printing a few copies of my book here in Australia, especially when the only benefit to me is a saving on postage [Ingram’s printing costs are a lot higher than CreateSpace but postage from the US is the real killer].
Oh, and did I mention that you have to pay IngramSpark $53 AUD for the privilege of using their distribution services, even if you don’t actually intend to use them to distribute your books? Yup, that’s part of the setup process.
So if you’re an Aussie self-publisher, my advice is to give IngramSpark a miss. Unless you already have an active ABN…
-sound of teeth grinding-
Does anyone out there know of a reasonable PoD company here in Melbourne? Maybe a home-grown one that doesn’t charge the earth?
Meeks
Filed under: On Writing Tagged: ABN, Australia, Createspace, IngramSpark, Melbourne, POD, print-on-demand, self-publishing, Sole-Trader
September 23, 2017
Beautiful photos of decaying buildings
I blame Esme-‘pon-Cloud for this post. She sent me a link to the most amazing photos. If you like wandering through ruins, trying to imagine what they might have looked like, you will love these pics!
I particularly love the ones where the buildings have lost their roofs and nature has marched straight in. It feels so right.
Click the photo above to be taken to the entire set. Be warned though, once you start, it’ll be very hard to stop. :p
Happy Sunday!
Meeks
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: architecture, beauty, Cloud, decay, Esme, interiors, photos, ruins, Somni
September 19, 2017
10 things that marriage equality won’t do
A co-worker brought in a pamphlet yesterday. The heading read ‘3 ways gay marriage will change the classroom’. And I quote
‘More radical gay & lesbian sex ‘education’ programs in schools‘ like Safe Schools which ‘..already teach kids about various forms of sexual activity and encourages sexual experimentation from an early age‘.
‘Kids will be taught their gender is fluid‘…’something they choose, not something they are born with‘.
‘Loss of parents’ rights‘. ‘In other countries where gay marriage has been legalised, parents have found themselves in court after trying to pull their kids out of radical gay sex education classes‘.
We were all gobsmacked at the ignorance and blatant disregard for the truth. So here are some things that won’t happen when marriage equality is finally made law:
1. Heterosexual kids will not suddenly become gay. Homosexuality is not a choice.
2. Heterosexual kids will not suddenly become lesbian. Homosexuality is not a choice.
3. Heterosexual kids will not suddenly become trans. Being transgender is not a choice.
4. Kids in general will not be any more or less interested in sex than they are now. But kids who are taught that being gay, lesbian or trans is not ‘bad’ may become a little more tolerant. They may stop hounding kids who look or act ‘different’. And gay, lesbian or trans kids who struggle to make sense of their feelings and their place in the world may stop harming themselves and taking their own lives.
5. Parents will not lose any of the ‘rights’ they have now. They will still be free to place their children in public or private schools according to their beliefs. They will also continue to have the right to homeschool their children.
6. Religious institutions that allowed systemic child abuse to continue for decades will continue to marry or not marry people based on church dogma.
7. Adults who disliked gay, lesbian or trans people before marriage equality can continue to dislike them afterwards. Marriage equality is powerless to stop prejudice and bigotry.
8. Marriage equality will not harm any straight people.
9. Marriage equality will not take anything away from straight people.
10. Marriage equality is not the start of a slippery slope that will ruin Australia.
These are the countries that have already legalised marriage equality:
[image error]
This list includes deeply religious countries like Spain, Portugal and Ireland. The sky didn’t fall in and nothing terrible happened.
Nothing terrible will happen here either. Life will continue the way it always has, but there may come a time when kids who are different can stand tall and live happy, productive lives instead of being bullied to death like Kenneth James Weishuhn. Rest in peace.
Vote Yes
Meeks
Filed under: My soap box Tagged: Australia, bullying, gay, Kenneth-Weishuhn, lesbian, marriage-equality, transgender, Yes
September 15, 2017
In the cutting
I’ve been following Station Stories for a while because she writes well and the stories resonate with images of ‘home’. Today though, Softsenta’s post touched my heart. Sitting in my middle class world, it’s too easy to believe we don’t /really/ have a homeless problem. And then reality hits, and so does the shame.
We could do better. A lot better.
September 11, 2017
To all my friends in Florida – stay safe!
I’ve only just realised how many of my online friends live in Florida and have been sorely affected by these hurricanes.
Please stay safe and don’t do anything macho – that’s you guys, right? Let us know you’re okay when you can.
-massive hugs-
Meeks
Filed under: Uncategorized
