KU changed the rules
Children’s eBooks hardest hit
Let me sell you this.

And then it occurred to me that all of the big issues sweeping the publishing world can be made better by Haiku.

Sad Puppies stuffed vote
The Hugo field was bushwhacked
Fans will still read books

See? Fun and topical. Let’s do a few more.

AU hates the ‘Zon
They’re stuck in 1900s
It’s 2015

Okay, I think I have one more in me tonight.

Harper Lee’s new book
Set new printing records
Her lawyer loves it

Your turn.

The post Haiku makes everything seem better appeared first on Meryl Yourish.

Blurb Direct Sell allows you to sell directly to your fans and friends through your own Personal Storefront at Blurb. You get to set the list price for your book and keep 100% of the markup over the book’s base price.

Wow, seems great, right? You get 70% less transfer fees from Amazon. Well, until you factor in the Paypal charges. And you have to get paid via Paypal, forget about being paid directly into your bank account.

The fee for PayPal transactions is USD $1 (or GBP £1 / EUR €1 / CAD $1 / AUD $1 depending on your preferred currency). Checks are available in U.S. funds only and have a processing fee of $5.

That seems high to me, considering so many indies make only “coffee money” per month. But it’s still not so bad, right?

And then I read the Terms of Service.

Here’s a clause that no writer, ever, should agree to:

1.6 License. In addition to the licenses granted in the Terms and Conditions, You grant Blurb a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable right and license to use, reproduce, perform, display, distribute, adapt, modify, re-format, create derivative works of, and otherwise commercially or non-commercially exploit in any manner, any and all of Your Books, and to sublicense the foregoing rights to Distributor Channels, for the sole purposes of copying, printing, distributing, and making Your Books available via the Bookstore and the Distributor Channels pursuant to this Agreement. The foregoing license is limited for the purpose of making Your Book available through the Bookstore or Distributor Channels at your request and does not provide Blurb or any Distributor Channel the right to materially modify Your Book’s content in a manner inconsistent with your request that the book be printed and distributed through the Bookstore and the Distributor Channels.

See that last bit that I italicized and bolded? It’s the clause, I think, that gives their lawyers the ability to say that they are distributing your book as you requested, so shut up about anything else they did with it. I’m not a lawyer, perhaps one can weigh in on this for me.

Just in case you think that’s not evil enough, well, look at their survival clause:

3.4 Survival. The provisions of Sections 1, 2.6, 2.7, 2.9, 2.10, 3.3, 3.4, 4, and 5 of this Agreement will survive any termination of this Agreement.

See that bit that says “Sections 1”? That means even if you cancel your agreement with them, the clause quoted above–which is included in Section 1–is still in effect. When these guys say “in perpetuity,” baby, they mean in perpetuity.

Going on the TOS alone, I would recommend that no indie ever publish with Blurb. These are terrible terms of service, and a horrible rights grab designed to screw the author.

In perpetuity.

The post This is why you should read the Terms of Service appeared first on Meryl Yourish.

The posters of the cover arrived on Monday and they are excellent. I’m going to have a friend help me mount them (translation: Sarah will mount the posters while I hand her things if she asks for them), as I am not crafty in the least.

And the big news: I sold my 200th copy earlier this week, and I know exactly who bought it, as I was speaking to her on the phone while she clicked on the order for Amazon. My cousin Randi, whose son’s bar mitzvah I will be attending next month, was my 200th sale. So in the interest of being fair, there will be no prize. Nepotism and all that.

I’m thinking of using one of the posters as the grand prize for some kind of contest, but I’ve no idea what kind of contest to run, or when to run it. Stay tuned, because I’m sure I’ll think of something. Julie Dillon’s artwork looks even better in a two foot by three foot format.

The post Business side updates appeared first on Meryl Yourish.

I spent the weekend plotting Book Two, which is a lot more complicated than I’d realized. Oh, yeah, I have the overarching plot of the series, but getting from Point A to Point Z is not as easy as reciting the alphabet. I realized a while back that I need to set up all of the major plot threads of the rest of the series in Book Two–at least, the ones that I started in Book One have to be continued and fleshed out, while the ones I have in mind for the rest of the series have to be started and pointed in the right direction. And then there are always the surprises. Like this conversation between a friend at work last week:

Jay: You know, you really should think of Biblical names for your Catmages. There are some pretty good names in there.
Me: Yes, but I don’t really want to use names like Jedediah.
Jay: Well, Methusaleh’s a pretty good name.
Me: Yes, it is, but I don’t want–hey, wait… Methusaleh… he’d have to be really old… hm…. [runs to desk to write notes]

Yep. Book Two now has a Catmage called Methusaleh (not his real name). He is crankier than Nafshi, and I like him almost as much as I like her.

Featured image for today: Miss Gracie, looking FABulous.

The post Updates, updates, where did I leave the updates? appeared first on Meryl Yourish.

Oh, sure, I could have used Word formatting and achieved basically the same thing, but Word is not a publishing program. It’s not remotely as flexible as a DTP, and the words “pre-press” and “Microsoft Word” don’t work well and play with each other. There’s no grid, no layout, no way to move objects around on a page in the fashion I learned as a desktopper. Word isn’t flexible enough to allow you to see that you need to add four points to your chapter title so that the text on the facing page aligns at the baseline with the text on the first page of a chapter with a left-facing page. (Did I mention I’m a former typesetter as well as a perfectionist?) Word won’t let you check the position of a centered chapter title with moveable grid rulers to make absolutely sure it’s centered. Word won’t give you printable crop marks so you can see physical galley proofs. Galley proofs with crop marks turn my manuscript into an actual pre-press book. They are the end of a long process.

Besides, I still have the skills. Why not use them? I could probably make a nice extra income formatting other people’s novels for print. Not that I’m going to. Those days are done. I’m a writer now. The only formatting I do is mine.

Well, time to figure out the hows and whys of drop caps and the table of contents. I have a book to publish this week.

The post Formatting the novel appeared first on Meryl Yourish.