Small Publishing: Computer

As H2NH Publishing expands, it needs a publishing platform. I do all my writing on an Asus EeePC netbook with Ubuntu using FocusWriter. I have Windows XP on the other partition, and it is from there that I do all the publishing, using Microsoft Office 2007 and GIMP, etc. I can theoretically do it all in Ubuntu, but I like Word better than LibreOffice. You can see the (mostly) current H2NH publishing workflow here.

But, as I move up the publishing ladder and contemplate going into POD, that's just getting ridiculous. It's a 10" screen, and you can't layout a book on a 10" screen. Not to mention that InDesign cannot actually run on my netbook without waiting a minute between each click. Horrifying. I need my eyes to read with, people. So, H2NH is currently in the medium-term planning for a Business computer. I'm OS agnostic, with some reservations, and I need the lifecycle to be at least five years. (I buy a netbook every two years and give the old one to a deserving case.) So, let's get into the nitty-gritty with a number:

Budget: $4500-$5000 (read: ~$1000/year)

Makes for three options. I'll put them in rough order of convenience: 

Option 1: iMac 
Software - ~$1,500
Office for Mac Home and Student 2011 - $120
Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Design Standard - $1,300
Hardware - ~$3,000
iMac 27" with a solid state hard drive, and upgraded RAM.
Thoughts - 
This has the advantage of being incredibly easy to lug around a jungle, and it doesn't take up a lot of space. The disadvantage is that there's no Apple Store or anything, and I'd prefer to support my own damn self anyways. STILL, it's pretty, well-designed, and runs cool in my tropical existence. Software-wise, I'd have InDesign and Word and everything would just work. If it didn't, I could just reinstall from a base image. The main disadvantage is that I'd have to use Mac OS. If you can't dick around with your computer, what's the point of even having one?

Option 2: Built PC running Windows 
Software - ~$1,800
Microsoft Office Home and Business 2010 - $200
Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Design Standard - $1,300
Windows 7 Ultimate - $320
Hardware - ~$3,000
A veritable beast of a machine, acquired of Newegg and assembled by myself - $2,000-$2,500
Display (touch-screen) - $500-$1000
Thoughts -
First off, yes: $320. Are you f*ckin' kidding me? I have a philosophical objection to paying that much for a mere operating system. Esp. one that isn't all that great. But, the advantage of a massive touch-screen makes this a viable option. Also, my hardware budget will go much farther than with Apple, so I could load this thing down with RAM and a sexy video card, and still have cash left over for a great display. The added benefit of knowing exactly where every component came from can't hurt for purposes of providing my own support, not to mention a robust cooling system for use in my tropical paradise. Put it all together and I'd have a beast. A sexy, sexy beast. Still...Windows...urgh.

Option 3, AKA the 'free option': Built PC running GNU/Linux
Software - $0
LibreOffice - Free
GIMP - Free
Scribus - Free
Ubuntu, some flavor thereof, or some other build entirely.
Hardware $2,500
A veritable beast of a machine, acquired of Newegg and assembled by myself - $2,000
Display - $500
Thoughts - 
If I were daring enough to go free software for this publishing adventure, this is what I'd do. It'd be the same machine as above, but without the fancy touch-screen. It'd run fast, smooth, and delicious. Like a penguin-flavored ice cream. The problem is that Scribus isn't InDesign, and LibreOffice isn't Word. Yet? I'm sure I could make it work, but do I want to?

So...yeah. At some point I'll just flip a coin. What do you use, small publishers?

-daB

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Lazy Writer Eats: Delicious Salad

What am I up to today? Eating Delicious Salad! As everybody knows, vegetables are brain food. And the working writer needs all the help he can get. (Isn't fish brain food?) Shut up.

What you'll get.

Delicious!

What you'll need. Fresh
Egg, ver' expensive due to flooding. (Chickens can't swim, I guess.) Hardboiled.
Cabbage. Remember, if there are worms on it, you know it's organic.
Onion. Lots of onion.
Corn, steamed, shucked.
Red beans, for protein.
Some weird meat substitute thing you found in the market. It's taro!
Red onion, for color.
Tomato, which is actually a berry. Supreme Court said so.
Exploded rice. I don't know the real term, but it's for texture.
Cucumber. Because why not?
A bowl, preferably one of the cool ceramic ones.
Salad dressing (not pictured), not too sweet.
A fork.
A girlfriend, for steps three and six.

Step 1. Assemble the ingredients
Step 2. Cut them up as per custom. Steam the corn, hard boil the egg.
Step 3. SEX, possibly some booze
Step 4. Place all ingredients in bowl.
Step 5. Salad dressing, to taste.
Step 6. Eat, talk about your feelings.

Total cost per bowl: ~฿25. That is, less than a can of beer.

Lazy Writer Eats series...
Lazy Writer Cooks: Boiled Chicken
Lazy Writer Cooks: Cup Mama
Lazy Writer Drinks: Thaiball
The First 200 Days, i.e the exciting saga of two-hundred straight days of blogging and learning about writing, is available at Amazon.com. It should, by now, be free. If not, find it free for all formats on Smashwords, and do me a favor and click the 'Tell us about a lower price' link on Amazon to speed up the process. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll read a blog. Also, there is business drama. It's like Moneyball without the editing. Also, no baseball.
More exciting blurb: The First 200 Days (200th post)

What food do you make?

daB

feel free to comment

Short Stories Challenge Practical

This was going to be a quick addendum to my Business: Short Stories article, but it snowballed. Think of that article as the ‘Theory’ and this one as the ‘Practical’. Apply it to your life, if you dare. 

Will this happen? Probably.

To summarize the previous article, I laid out why I wasn’t going to sell individual short stories anymore, based on the Amazon 35% Royalty on $0.99 vs. the 70% Royalty on $2.99. That point still stands so far as I’m concerned, but I left out a few nuances, craft and business.

Craft: I Like Finishing Things

Short stories get the creative juices flowing. Using scientific tracking methods, I’ve found that my word count per day on books increases if I’ve written and completed a short story in the near past. And I’ve also got a new short story to sell for everybody to admire, which is nothing to be sneezed at. I suspect I just like finishing things, and so when I do it gets the adrenaline up, but there’s also the Middle of books to be considered. That’s the most dangerous part, creatively (that is, where I tend to get bored and try to start a new book unless I chain myself to the text document)...and taking a little break to write and finish a short story reenergizes the mind. 

Business: Smashwords

My standard complaint about Smashwords is it makes my books look ugly, but it’s still a good place to sell short stories. There’s not that much formatting in a short story to mess up or for Meatgrinder to mangle, and Smashwords sends them all over the place and pays somewhere around 50% royalty. I’ve had especially good success selling short stories on Kobo via Smashwords, so I think it’s a good idea to use it as my ‘short story distributer’. This meshes well with the Theory article, because Smashwords makes it incredibly easy to make a story Free, whether via price control or via coupon. As we speak, Smashwords’ sales tracking is improving, and I suspect at some point soon they’ll work out the deal with Amazon. If I can just upload a short story DOC made from a template and watch the cash flow in from five to ten markets every quarter...well, I’d say Smashwords has earned its 10%. 

Short Stories Challenge

For business and craft reasons it’s desirable that I write and finish a short story on a regular basis. Well and good. Dean Wesley Smith declared a fancy challenge with a One Year time limit and everything, but it’s already October, and I’m too lazy to wait until January to officially challenge myself. I’ll just ask how often is the optimal regular basis? Science Says: every weekend. 

So, every weekend I’ll write a short story. Start on Saturday, finish by Sunday. Stick it up on Smashwords for free until the next story goes live, after which it’ll be a buck everywhere fine eBooks are sold (once it’s gone through the Meatgrinder). I’ll even do a little blog post about it, whynot? I’ll do this for five years, give or take. Probably. 

I’ll write books on weekdays.

Story Covers

I’d rather make my own cover than buy some ‘generic art’, but because this is a short story challenge, not a crappy-slappy cover art challenge, I made a template for my short story cover art. Remember, I’m lazy.

So lazy...

That should do it. Big author name, big title, an inconspicuous number, a logo, and clearly labelled “Short Story” so nobody can possibly be confused. As noted in the previous article, I’ll spend the big bucks on the collection covers, but whatsay for a popular short story? If it comes down to it, I’ve one idea that may or may not be reasonable.

Sketch Covers

I provide a two-sentence cover description, give an artist $50 to sketch it, add the title and author name and save it as a 600x800 jpg. I’d expect the total working time to be about an hour, so I wouldn’t expect it to be fine art or done to a deadline. Just a quick art project between big jobs, wham-bam-done: fifty bucks later, I’ve got a short story cover. Fair? Sounds fair.

Heck if I know, I’m making this up as I go.

-daB

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