Changes to My List of Works

I don't know if anyone else has paid attention, but I've been having some issues with the Print-On-Demand service I've used to get two works published.

One thing I tried recently was to email XLibris and request a change on pricing to the ebook release of Last of the Grapefruit Wars, which was supposed to be covered by the agreement I had with them back in 2003. Unfortunately, the only thing they DID do was remove the ebook offering altogether from Amazon and Barnes&Noble (and likely all other retail providers). I think they changed the parameters of the deal on me (or I didn't understand it to begin with), or else didn't care. Either way, they never emailed me back about what they did. I had to see it for myself. Not a good way to handle a client.

Back when PoDs first appeared, I gave XLibris a try to see how the service would work, which ended up being a lot of work at my end and not much else. They did provide decent copies of books, the bindery has held up relatively well for more than a decade. And they did have some decent marketing materials... which have now gotten too expensive for my budget.

And the only thing I do get from them are calls from a new "agent" every six months asking me to sign up for a new marketing plan... which is essentially the same marketing plan they offered me since 2003 of spam-emailing everybody.

I'm a little bit discouraged about this.

I read up the current rules for XLibris to see if I can cancel both of my book deals with them... and it looks like I can.

So my plan is to cancel both my books with XLibris - the political book has sold... well, maybe once - and re-edit the Grapefruit Wars anthology with a few new stories. Update the collection as it were, make it bigger - at 124 pages it was pretty thin - and repackage it to a self-publishing service - Ingramspark - that might provide a better deal with both print and ebook.

(This won't include my Talents superhero stories as I want to package them differently, preferably anchored by an honest-to-God book)

Thing is, I also want to change the anthology title. I've found out Last of the Grapefruit Wars confused too many people.

So I'm brainstorming now about what a good new title for the book could be.

It's a mash-up of different genres - there's one true sci-fi, a couple of fantasy, a lot of coming-of-age - mostly from my college years and the 1990s when I tried getting into the short story market. If there's any consistent element to the stories, it's been a lot of humor (I hope). Most of the newer stories to add are humor-oriented as well. So I'm thinking that would be the way to re-brand the set of stories.

Right now, the best title I can think of is Slices of Crazy: Collected Stories.

Titles like Welcome to Florida won't cut it, that's too common. So's Out of My Mind and variants thereof.

One story I might add is "Jar of the Atlantic" but as a book title might be as confusing as Grapefruit Wars. I'm intrigued with the idea of making the subtitle to any decided title be ...And Other Personal Disasters but that's too self-deprecating.

If any of my seven blog followers got any suggestions, let me know.

NEW Book Published - Surviving the Age of Obstruction

I may have mentioned from time to time that I had purchased a publication deal with Xlibris a few years ago. Well, ten eleven years ago, actually.

Long story short, I decided to just get the contract done with, take a sampling of essays/articles I write on my political blog You Might Notice a Trend, and put it into book form. It's doable: many a newspaper or media columnist collect their works in such a way - Molly Ivins for example - to have available as a collection. Sort of like a Greatest Hits album.

So, I went and put my political rants into something I can show to my friends and enemies. Surviving the Age of Obstruction: Notes on the Obama years.

It's a look back at eight years of political madness, a pro-Obama, anti-Republican work that delves into my apostasy and my observations on how Obama - and the nation - endured it all.

I submitted the final proofing two weeks ago. The book has been available on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble's websites since last week. I just got a copy from the publisher this weekend.

There is something incredibly satisfying about holding a physical copy of your book. A tangible sensation of completion, of getting past a finish line. It's different than publishing an ebook, as there's a lack of a trophy of sorts - the printed book - to make that completion feel real.

Just to note, the process from submitting the rough draft to completed physical copy has sped up the last time I did this. Last of the Grapefruit Wars - my short story collection - took a few weeks to go through the editing and proofing process, and then took another two months for print availability (the point of Print-on-Demand is that the book is saved on file and physically printed on an order-by-order basis).

I know some of the people reading this blog may not know about my political ranting blog, but you can check that out, I have the link available above and over on the right menu lists.

Now all I need to do is ask about oh 500,000 people to buy my book. That shouldn't be too hard...

In Writing News: Realized I Need to Upgrade My XLibris Account...

...after all, I'd just moved and needed to give them updated mailing address and phone.

It's just two things:
1) Last time I checked in, XLibris had changed their Author Page login and

2) I realized my book with them, Last of the Grapefruit Wars, was no longer listed as an available ebook on Amazon.com.  Having not updated my record, obviously, the whole thing had gone into suspended mode.

So, good news, got the account reactivated, updated my info, and got the Grapefruit Wars back on the ebook list.

Now, if I can get 50,000 people to BUY MY EBOOK...!

(Also found out an account purchase I made years ago that I found myself unable to finish and just ended up losing track of... is back in XLibris' records.  Now I HAVE to finish writing a book...!)