POD Publishing: Mobipocket has made it so simple.

Regular readers of this blog will know that The Lords of Harbendane seemed to be under a cloud from the get-go. No matter what we did, things seldom went right, and often went wrong ... including javascript cockups at CreateSpace and other stuff that you just wouldn't believe.

The "jinx" continued when we tried to get Harbendane to the Kindle Store! We uploaded three books; two were published like greased lightning -- automatic. The third got "stuck" in the "publish process," and it's going to take customer support and a tech crew with a large screwdriver to get it unstuck, make it available to you --

And you guessed. It's The Lords of Harbendane that had to be the one to get stuck!

So, it was with a degree of healthy trepidation that we approached the Mobipocket store. And it's with the same degree of absolute relief that I can report ...

The process of publishing to Mobi is easy, simple, a breeze. Harbendane went through so easily, we were left looking at each other, waiting for the other shoe to drop! It never did. It's done.

Try this for size:
BUY THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE FROM MOBIPOCKET

Yep. You can go there right now, buy the book for your Kindle, PC or Mac, screenreader, Palm Pilot, iLiad, Blackberry, Pocket PC, smartphone, whatever ...! It was just that easy.

The Mobipocket publishing process, in a thimble, is this:

Have your book ready in HTML, DOC or PDF.
Open a Publisher account with Mobipocket.
Download the Mobipocket Creator, Publisher Edition.
"Build" your ebook on your own desktop.
Make a project, set the metadata, add your cover.
Click on "deploy," which logs you in.
Upload the file from Creator.
Set the price.
Activate the book
Get your affiliate link.

And you're done. And all the instructions for every last thing are right there on screen. You're listening to sighs of utter relief here.

And in the coming days you'll see a lot more Keegans appearing at Mobipocket ... and, end of next week, we'll have a launch. Get the champagne on ice.

Cheers,
MK

Among the 93,036 at Amazon Kindle...

Just a "service message" at the moment: you can actually go to the Kindle Store, search on "Mel Keegan," and have The Lords of Harbendane pop up. It's still in the "publishing" process, meaning it's starting to filter its way into the global engine, but you can already "sign up to be notified when the item becomes available" :

And as of a few days ago, you can get the Kindle reader application for your iPhone. Cool stuff, this. We'll keep you posted. (And yes, Harbendane is probably title number 93,036 at the Kindle Store ... that being the number of titles quotes as being inthe catalog, with Harbendane still working its way in.)

Cheers,
MK

Sneaking in via the backdoor

Some of you will have been waiting for this news for several weeks now, and I'm delighted to be able to deliver it! We did indeed find a way in through the back door, and we've snuck into Kindle. The Lords of Harbendane will be the first title to show up in the engine -- in "12 to 72 hours," according to the system. Could be later today, could be Wednesday, but certainly by the middle of the week you will be able to read Keegan on your Kindle.

Next books on their way: Dangerous Moonlight, Fortunes of War, Nocturne, Twilight and Swordsman. These ought to be showing up in the next ten days.

We've left the price the same as you'd pay over on Payloadz -- $9.99 -- which seems fair for the books. Amazon keeps 65% of that price, and DreamCraft and Keegan will split the rest. The theory is that you may earn less from the sale, but you get a lot more sales. So here's the grand experiment ... let's take this for a spin!

We're also working to get the same books up to Mobipocket, in the same time frame, and I only just discovered that if you need to read on a smartphone (though not YET yet iPhone), you can get a Mobipocker Reader (free download) for your device.

I have no idea if Mobi is going to be available for the iPhone anytime soon, but I know that Kindle is already available for the Apple gadget, and since (!) Amazon owns Mobipocket, one suspects that compatibility can't be far behind.

You might find this interesting and useful: http://www.teddypig.com/2008/10/stanza-mobipocket-on-mac-osx-and-so-much-more/ ... if you need to juggle formats. What won't they be doing next?!

And here is the homepage of the company behind the Stanza format which is about to put Keegan on your phone: http://www.lexcycle.com/.

But if you're into both Kindle and iPhone, it's as simple as this:
Amazon's Kindle for iPhone hits the App Store. "Sure, Amazon could pit the Kindle squarely against phone- and PDA-based e-book apps, but why not play both sides? The company had previously mentioned its desire to embrace non-Kindle devices in its digital delivery ecosystem, and the first fruits of that labor have now hit the iPhone App Store. The uncreatively-named Kindle for iPhone allows you access to all of your Kindle content right from the comfort of your iPhone or iPod touch ..."

...and so on, and so forth, and such like.

Meaning, any time around about now (that story started to run a few days ago), the iPhone fraternity and sorority will be looking to the Kindle Store for readable goodies.

Time to get on board before the bus leaves! Hence, we're working very hard to get popular titles online, and into the "global catalogs."

Speaking of popular titles, the proof of NARC: Aphelion should be in the mail, tomorrow or Wednesday, latest -- so look for a newsletter from us later in the week, when the whole series launches in paperback at Amazon. And yes, the Kindle launch will be about a week later.

Chapter Fourteen is up at Legends...

Otherwise the long weekend (Adelaide Cup Day -- a horseracing carnival) is all about work. I'll be taking a day off next week -- and if not, then I'll seize a couple of days the week following. By then, I'll need the break, big time.

And now, back to work.

Cheers,
MK

THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE: welcome to the book launch!

Launching THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE

Many readers have been following the misadventures of this novel as it battled to make it through the process of publication and debut at Amazon. The fracas has involved javascript snarls (at CreateSpace), harddrive crashes (at my end), mis-shipment from the States, and USPS highjinx, but -- we're there at last.

Click on the cover art to pull up a 1000 pixel wide copy, so clear that you can almost read the cover burb. But don't strain your eyes -- here it is:

There are seasons for peace
and seasons for war.
This is a season for sheer survival.

Rogan Dahl and Tristan Carlin meet by chance on a rainy night, and are soon caught up in the storm of events leading to the greatest battlefield of their time. Their accidental encounter is the pivot-point around which the future revolves, for the great land of Harbendane — and for their own lives.

The fortified city of Althea is treasured as the living, beating heart of Harbendane ... and the plans have been meticulously drawn for its downfall. The wild, savage tribes of the far north are in league with the cruel, ambitious warlord of Galshorros, and Althea lies almost undefended before massed armies.

In the midst of this, Rogan and Tristan are caught up in an illicit love affair that could be death for them both.

The book is a 6" x 9" trade size paperback, of 298pp, with a text of 155,000 words, and in your hands it looks like this:





The next thing you're going to want is to open the book are read part of the novel, and you can do this right here!

Have the first couple of chapters (the first 31pp of the novel) absolutely for free:

http://www.dream-craft.com/melkeegan/harbendane-samp.pdf
Caveat: this is a gay (m/m) book, with frank depictions of the relations between adults. Do not order if you're disturbed or offended by gay materials.

And you'll almost certainly want to consult the map, because this novel covers some distance as well as being as amazingly detailed as you've come to expect from Mel Keegan. So here's the map, to guide your travels:
(The map has been uploaded at 200dpi to do justice to the fine detail -- click on the thumbnail for the large view)

So ... what's it to be? The ebook (as a PDF for PC and Mac, or for the screenreaders), or the paperback, direct from Amazon?

Don't forget that you can combine postage on the new-edition Mel Keegan books when ordering from Amazon. Choose from...

Fortunes of War
Nocturne
Twilight
Dangerous Moonlight
The Swordsman
Aquamarine
and -- of course --
The Lords of Harbendane

Shipping costs to Australia and New Zealand are a tad bit expensive, so combining postage lets you save considerably. Amazon shipping costs work like this: US$16.04 for the first book, plus US$8.04 for each book thereafter.

Or will it be the ebook? You'll be downloading from Payloadz, and please choose the right PDF for your system -- or opt for Mobipocket, which covers almost everything, from your Blackberry to your Palm Pilot!

PC and Mac readers, choose this version:
$9.95 -- and identical in every way to the paperback.298pp. (Permissions: no editing, printing, text or image copy/paste.)


Screenreader users (Palm, Pocket PC, iLiad etc.) choose this version:
US$9.95 -- properly formatted, complete with cover art and map; over 430pp.(Permissions: no editing, printing, text or image copy/paste.)

Get the Stanza version for your iPhone, and the PDB for your Palm Pilot, plus the Mobi version for your Kindle:

US$10.95 for iPhone, Palm Pilot, Kindle, Mobi and more!

Do you need to download wirelessly, to your Kindle? Go for it!

BUY THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE FROM MOBIPOCKET

Reader reviews of THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE are solicited for the Mel Keegan OnLine website -- and remember that all reviews submitted go into a draw for a prize: the ebook of your choice, or a custom-built screensaver!

Wishing everyone a Good Read,
Mel Keegan

Gay novelist, battered and fried

First: thanks to Jade for posting for me yesterday. Sure, I had to fudge it, but I managed to keep my perfect record of posting every day since I went online. I'm, uh, back -- after my misadventures with a carriage lamp. What idiot bolted it to the wall right THERE, at exactly the right height for someone to walk into it? Anyway, that's what I did, and almost laid myself out. The bells rang; the vision split; the world spun. Next day, I have a stiff neck on one side -- a small case of whiplash -- as well as a place on my skull where you could tap me with a feather and hear screams.

With that little story out of the way, let's get to the day's good news! The final proof of THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE has been delivered and the book is actually available -- on Amazon -- right now, even as I type.

The actual book launch is tomorrow (it was supposed to be today; bear with me, I'll tell why it's been delayed yet again), but if you're absolutely keen to get the wheels moving on your copy, check this out:



Its there -- honest engine!

And in your hands it looks like this:


Anyway! The book launch will be up tomorrow -- we're doing it on the blog here, and then the novel will slide on into the website. We'll also be doing a hardcover edition in a little while -- hardcovers are a lot more expensive, I know, but you'd be surprised how many people drool over them (myself included). I think they represent "last ditch gifts," where you have no idea what to get someone for birthday and Christmas, and because it's a major gift you don't call the extra $10 too bad ... and the hardcover just looks so good.

As I said above, the book launch was supposed to be today, but HARBENDANE has been kicked back just one more time: computer problems. Again. This time around it was software that seems to have corrupted itself (Acrobat writer; reader is OK). I'd love to say that Foxit would do the job, but the (free!) version I have at this point doesn't have the muscles.

It took about six hours to figure out a way through the problems, but in the end I found a solution ... by which time I was ready to fall face-down: it's HOT. It's 110 degrees again ... it's so hot, large numbers of people are dropping dead in this state, and trees are dying. Pets are dying. It's ... bad. You might have heard that the morgue is as capacity, and the coroner's department is now using freezer trucks. No joke, no exaggeration.

The good news is that a cool change comes through late tomorrow and then we get a week of respite. By Sunday it'll be 24C (somewhere in the environs of 75F), and a collective sigh of relief will be breathed by all ... people, animal, trees. However, there's no rain it it. Not a drop. What does the place look like: I uploaded this to Digital Kosmos a week or so ago:

http://photographyfan.blogspot.com/2009/02/drought-scourged-panorama.html

It's getting deadly serious. I'll blog more about this on Sunday -- tomorrow is book launch day. at lasy, only about ten weeks late! Best laid plans of mice, men and gay novelists...

And on that note, I'm going to call it a day. I've had just about enough of this computer for the moment! As I look at the CPU, it morphs into a boat anchor.

Ciao for now,
MK

LORDS OF HARBENDANE: it's here!!

Later that same day (in other words, a second post) -- Happy, happy, joy joy! The postman just rode by (and you gotta tip your hat to a guy who's riding a roasting-hot motorcycle at 5km per hour, on a day when it's 113F in the shade ... and he's NOT in anything remotely like shade). Postmen deserve medals.

This one just delivered a parcel, and whaddaya know? Check this out:

We just went through the whole thing, making sure the proof is perfect:


The whole printing job is beautiful; the covers are absolutely glorious...


(This is the best cover we've ever done yet; I'm absolutely thrilled with the whole thing, and the book has already started its 14-working-day journey into the Amazon engine. Cheers to CreateSpace for the quality of the print job. Beautiful.)

There's one tiny flaw in the whole thing -- you might not even notice it (we certaintly didn't till about five minutes ago), so we're putting the book on "hold" while we correct this. It'll be flawless when it goes to Amazon...

Now -- we'll be having the book launch for Harbendane when the book shows up in the Amazon engine, but as I just said, it'll take 14 working days -- means closer to three weeks -- to get there. Be on the mailing list, and we'll keep you posted!

Ciao for now,
MK

Not quite the perfect vacuum

Just flotsam and jetsam today: the vacuum goes on! The wait continues for any action on any front whatever, save that involving air conditioning. The split system is INSTALLED. And what's more, it WORKS. In fact, it's so bloody cold, I keep turning it off because otherwise I'll have to go put on a sweater. In summer. Woah.

Allow me to pause for one moment, pop a photo and paste it in here:

...just what you needed, right? A closeup look at the two square meters from which all of the Mel Keegan extravaganzas are launched. You were expecting a suave, sophisticated office? You were expecting, maybe, neat and tidy?! Where there's Keegan, there's usually kaos, as any reader of this blog over the last seven months or so will attest!

The ongoing vacuum makes me look beyond the norm and seek other items of interest to inject a spark into the day. This one's good -- in fact, it's utterly priceless. Apparently it's been doing the rounds in the last week or so, and I caught up with it on an Alaskan blog (I'll give you the link in a moment):

Dear World,

The United States of America, your quality supplier of ideals of liberty and democracy, would like to apologize for its 2001-2008 service outage. The technical fault that led to this eight-year service interruption has been located, and the parts responsible for it were replaced Tuesday night, November 4th.

Early tests of the newly-installed equipment indicate that it is functioning correctly, and we expect it to be fully functional by January 20th. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage, and we look forward to resuming full service --- and hopefully even to improving it in the years to come.

Thank you for your patience and understanding,
*The USA*

And here's the blog where I caught up with it: Attention: Service Has Been Restored, on the Esther Republic. That is so cool.

Another item of exceeding great coolness is this interview with Ewan MacGregor and Jim Carrey at Sundance:



Some idiot, somewhere, in a ridiculous comment on one of the news stories (LA Times??) said something about "Jim Carrey looks too old." Excuse me? Where is it written that you have to look juvenile to be attractive? You track down the place where that snippet of "wisdom" is inscribed, and I shall personally go around there with a bucket of industrial grade ammonia and erase it.

Incidentally, I Love You, Phillip Morris is being downloaded by the torrent already. No, I don't have a copy, but I've no doubt some of you do! You can see the trailer on YouTube, and a clip. Looks like a great time was had by all while they were making it, and I expect to enjoy the movie muchly.

What is massively refreshing is that neither McGregor nor Carrey is carping and whining about how hard it was to smooch another guy for the movie -- unlike both numerous other actors who couldn't wait to do just that. Far from it: both Ewan and Jim have (!) only good things to say about doing the romantic scenes. Like I said, refreshing.

Digital Kosmos continues to grow, with over 50 photos online now, of which I think about 15 or so are mine. My latest contributions have been goodies like...

Colors blaze on Stampede Trail
Storm light
Noon on the dunes
Tribute to the pioneers in Fairbanks, Alaska
Still life, with wine casks
Windows onto pure color

...I have to admit, it's a lot of fun. We could have been doing this for months.

Still waiting for a response from Google; still waiting for the proof of The Lords of Harbendane ... getting very tired of waiting for both. Working on LEGENDS -- getting the new blog in place and stockpiling posts/chapters so that real life can shove its nose in, as it always does, everything can go haywire, and the book will continue to appear on time ... there's nothing worse than a serial that keeps putting itself on hiatus.

Cheers,
MK

...and then the power came back on, and --

Just an eleventh-hour post right now -- on the fly, literally. The power has been turned off all day for (drum roll: ta-da!!) the installation of the new air conditioning. No power = no computer. No computer = no blogging. Or ... a quick post squeezed in between the new split system being installed, the power being turned back on here, and Keegan saying, "Feed me before I do a face plant!"

Beyond the new a/c, the rest of the Mel-o-sphere has been in close-to-perfect vacuum. We are STILL waiting for the proof of The Lords of Harbendane I am STILL waiting for Google to have a quick peek at this blog and see that it violates none of their rules, and doesn't deserve to have zeroed out page rankings. Getting tired of waiting, and making plans...

A swift business meet took place late in the afternoon and (though I shiver to say this, because I've said it so often before, and this particular vine has never borne flower, let alone fruit!) we came up with an advertising package that includes Wikipedia, Smashwords, Kindle, press releases, review copies being shipped in ten directions -- plus, this blog having a complete facelift and overhaul. And a lot more.

Work begins on the above, uh, tomorrow. I'll keep you posted on our progress!

Work continues on LEGENDS, but in the last week it's been slooooow because of the heat, and today ...? Absent. No power. I even discovered that the laptop's battery was flat. Hunh.

So here I am on the fly, and you could call this "the post you write when you're not writing a post." Well, it's a post all right ... explaining why there isn't a proper post! Joy.

Keegan will return, more like the proverbial bad penny than like 007.
Tomorrow.

Ciao for now,
MK








Above: This is not Mel Keegan.

HARBENDANE: the saga continues -- or, CreateSpace Strikes Again

CreateSpace strikes again.

I'm starting to think THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE must have been conceived under a black cloud and born during an evil conjunction --

The proof copy arrived at loooong last. This is the proof that was shipped on December 29th without an international shipping label, kept for fifteen days by USPS, sent back to CreateSpace, and shipped again by extra-fast priority mail. Right, so far?

Well, the re-shipment arrived in great time. They just shipped the wrong book.

We have to SEE and APPROVE the proof of THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE before it can start the long road to Amazon ... so, it doesn't help us that they sent another copy of AQUAMARINE instead.

Find me a wall, and I shall bash my head against it. Just two days ago I was saying that CreateSpace is known to make booboos, and this would be one of them.

So right now it's back to the drawing board. They have no phone support service; you go online and send a message to Customer Support from their own internal messaging page. Allow two days for this to be read; another one or two for the book to be printed and shipped; 10 days for it to be delivered to Australia, minimum; up to 14 days for Amazon to process it through into the online engine.

That makes another month. In other words, THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE will be appearing in the Amazon.com engine in mid-February at the earliest ... and there's nothing anyone here can do to make the process go faster.

Sorry, guys.

Other than this, the Mel-o-Sphere is something of a vacuum. I'm working on LEGENDS, and I've made several contributions to the Digital Kosmos photoblog:



Where the ice meets the sea;
Smuggler's Cove;
Fall comes to the Fairbanks hills;
Million dollar legs;
Living rock;
The Greek Islands? Looks are deceiving!;
The view from the Giant's Cave;
Alpenglow on the Chugach.

The photoblog is a lot of fun. It's a great opportunity to talk about photography, and to haul out some pictures which are eons old but still deserve to be shared. This was a great idea, for which Jade deserves the credit.

And now, if you'll excuse me -- got to work!

Ciao for now,
MK

Time Dilation Zones ... or, Gravity Sucks

We must be living and doing business on the lip of the gravity well of a massive black hole. It's the only thing that would even halfway explain what's happening with virtually everything we're trying to do at this time --


LORDS OF HARBENDANE, right? Keegan's earth-shattering new work that was supposed to be out and at Amazon in time for Christmas 2008 ... and it's now January 14th on this side of the dateline, and the proof copy still hasn't shown up here.

And as of this morning, we know why.

It was shipped by USPS priority on Dec 29th. Some bright spark in the packing department forgot to slap an international shipping label on it. USPS took FIFTEEN DAYS to figure this out and return it to CreateSpace...

It has just been re-shipped.

What can you say? Time dilation works in mysterious ways -- and it's hit us again, same day: we just had notification from iPower that the DreamCraft domain can't be moved away from the old InterNic dinosaur setup, into the Tucows zone, where the guys at DC can properly control things ... not for 60 days starting on January 8. The old registrar (the one that took 48 hours to bring the renewed domain back online) won't let go of it for -- you guessed -- two months.

Why? Your guess is as good as mine. Probably better. So ... we wait for the proof of HARBENDANE, and for DreamCraft to be released from its strange bondage.

Right now, we're waiting for a/c to be installed. The plant was purchased about a month ago and has been sitting under a tarp. The installation company FORGOT to schedule the installation. It was 110.6 F in the SHADE, in this neck of the woods yesterday. Time dilation strikes again!

It's also a month since I wrote a very nice letter to Google, to make nice and get my Google page rankings restored, since I'd swear to god(s) I haven't done anything to get myself on their $hit list. I'm (yes!) still waiting. They warned of a wait of "several weeks," and they weren't kidding. It's been two months, now, since anyone in the US found MK via a Google blog or web search. The Googlebot stopping indexing this blog about six weeks ago. (The fences are rusting, the weeds are feet higher, the rafters are full of cobwebs and vultures...)

What are my plans?! Fire up the engines, turn the stern to the event horizon, see if we can pull our way out of the gravity well!

Seriously ... the a/c ought to be on and working by evening today ... HARBENDANE ought to be delivered some time next week ... DC can shift its domain in March, and as for this blog --

If Google won't redress the problem, I'll delete the whole thing, strike a new blog and upload the majority of these posts, maybe two or three at a time. Of course, the time-sensitive posts will be lost (Prop 8 before 11/1/08 ... Christmas ... New Year), but I'll salvage what I can.

At that point, I'll also be asking regular readers for a bit of help: the more people who link to you, the more The Goog notices you. If maybe a dozen readers would link direct to the new blog, we'd be back up and running in no time.

Still -- it hasn't happened yet. Maybe someone nice at Goog HQ is, even as I type this, looking at this blog and saying, "What a great blog! Which nong shuffled this onto the $hit list? Let's just fix this problem, right now."

Time dilation is a curious thing. I know intellectually that most of the delays have only been in the order of 2 or 3 weeks, but to my frazzled brain cells it's been several years -- hence the rusting fences and gathering vultures!

And of course the final thing we're waiting for is to see the impact of the Internet filtering, which was SUPPOSED to be starting in a few days -- this being mid-January.

As per the impending filtering, the Rudd government is starting to revolve in shrinking circles are contradict itself. There's a feature running on iTWire right now: http://www.itwire.com/content/view/22623/127/ ...Conroy Cans Coonan's Free Net Filtering Scheme.

The title there references this: "The Australian Labor Government has closed the programme established by the previous Coalition Government which gave all Australian families access to a free PC-based Internet content filter under its NetAlert initiative. The filters were available through the NetAlert web site either by download or delivery on CD-Rom. The site now says simply that "The free availability of internet content filters from this website under the National Filter Scheme ended on 31 December 2008." However, free technical support for filters previously obtained under the scheme is available until 30 June 2010. Shadow minister, Nick Minchin claimed that the Rudd Government had "quietly closed the programme...under the cover of the festive season on 31 December." However, a spokesman for communications minister, Stephen Conroy, told iTWire that plans to close the scheme had been revealed in the May 2008 budget. He said that free filters were now widely available from ISPs so provision by the Government was unnecessary."

And the rub is in the last sentence. Read it again!!! Free filters are available from ISPs, so the government's meddling is not necessary!

And yet blanket, nation-wide filtering is? Hunh? Say what?


There's more. This is the next paragraph from the same feature in iTWire: "The spokesman also claimed that the scheme had been a huge waste of money. "The previous government spent $15.5 million on promoting PC filters. 163,000 filter licences were issued, and as at end of November 2008 only approximately 26,000 of these were still in use. Extrapolated, that means that only about two percent of households with dependent age children and an internet connection are using the filter."

Bottom line: parents don't care. If they cared, they would protect their kids. The means of protection are not just cheap, they're free. But 98% of kids have parents who don't give the proverbial stuff what their ofspring are seeing on the WWW --

Which leaves Stephen Conroy out there watchdogging the web on behalf of these "Couldn't care less" parents, and crippling the Internet for the whole country with mandatory filters that are largely ineffective. Woah.

In the current feature running in iTWire, there is also a throwaway remark that "Conroy's preferred option - mandatory ISP level filtering - is months away from being implemented."

It was supposed to all be in place and running before Christmas. Well, now we're looking at mid-2009 or so, are we?? I've said it so often before, I'm sheepish about saying it again: make the parents responsible. Make it illegal to expose kids to porn. Put a $5,000 fine on the crime of running unfiltered Internet connections in houses where there are kids. Then enforce the law, and use the revenues to pay for free filters supplied to every parent. Problem solved.

Turns out, time dilation seems to be affecting Stephen Conroy's neck of the woods too! All by itself, December '08 turns into mid-09. Which is a neat trick.

For Keegan, most of the things that should have been happening four and six weeks ago are going to be happening in the next 1 - 3 weeks, and it's weird. Seriously weird. I'll give you odds, Conroy would say the same.

Anyway ... the other side to time dilation (the point which physicists never remember to make) is, better late than never.

Want to know a bit more about how nutso Oz has become since Kevin Rudd took the reins? Go here: http://www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com/australia-signs-onto-free-net-forgets-filtering-plan/

...that little lot was racked up in one single year! Ouch!

Back to work, guys!

Cheers,
MK

Odds, ends, the new Doctor, and where's Jack?!

Life is a process of waiting, before you rush maniacally through some vital chore so that you can get back to waiting again. And then waiting some more.

You guessed: I'm watching the mailbox for the proof copy of THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE. Our postman has recently discovered that he can actually shove a book parcel from CreatSpace into the mailbox, if he pushes hard enough, so the proofs aren't up on the porch anymore; they're sticking up out of the mailbox, down on the road.

Except HARBENDANE isn't -- not yet. And yes, I knooooow the Christmas mails are slow. I know I have to be patient. I know I won't see the proof for a week yet, and even when I do have it in my hand, it'll take another 10 days or so before it shows up in the engine at Amazon. But still ... one is keenly aware of all the WAITING.

The browser page for the book is done and also (!) waiting to upload, but there's little point putting it out there till the Amazon engine actually knows what the blithering hell everyone is talking about. Harbendane? Where's that, somewere in Denmark?

Otherwise, work continues slowly, as usual. The good news is that Amazon sales are very promising indeed. How about two per day in the period since the New Year break, without a shred of advertising being done yet?! Keep this up, and the numbers soon turn very, very "friendly" indeed. I'm guardedly optimistic, especially since soon -- I swear by any deity you care to nominate, including Marduk, the Babylonian god of war, if you like! -- I'm going to start some bloody advertising. You're supposed to market your books: I know, I know. The real world, however, is about TIME, or the lack of it. (In other words, I can blog, or I can write a new story, or I can edit/polish an existing story, or I can do marketing work ... or I can go to work and pay some bills, buy some groceries. Right now I'm juggling all these things, which is why work progresses slooooowly.)

A couple of things of interest: the latest version of my favorite imaging program, Irfanview, has been released. Get the free download here: http://www.irfanview.net/. Wouldn't know what to do without this program -- best on the market, except it isn't on the market, it's free. You can help development of further versions with a $12 donation (or set your own amount). Best program of its kind.

Cheers to Aricia on the new blog, which is the featured blog right now at The Book Bloggers. AG put me onto this site back at Christmas -- it's a great innovation which should help a great many writers both old and new. Go here: http://breenibooks.today.com/. Also, thanks to AG for the excellent reviews of my vampyre novels, which were just uploaded. Much appreciated.

Peripheral to Torchwood, the, uh, part of the Doctor has at last been recast. We've known for some time that David Tennant is departing after some impending movies; but which face would he be regenerating into? Here it is, plastered on the Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/4124591/Doctor-Who-Introducing-Matt-Smith-the-26-year-old-Time-Lord.html

This will be the youngest Doctor yet ... and one has to speculate about a Doctor in his tender mid-twenties, and, uh, Jack. Nudge, wink, and so forth. I guess they know where they're going with this!

It's certainly going to make the next season or two of DW interesting. Personally, I'll miss David Tennant, who is responsible in large part for making the Doctor "the role in UK television."

Not bad for a show that started about 45 years ago and had the cheesiest scripts, effects and sets ever seen on the tube. David T. was certainly the best doctor, though I must admit, there was a flirty sense of fun between John Barrowman and Christopher Eccleston's delightfully goofy/angsty Doctor ... there, you felt that "something could happen."

And on that note, I'll leave you and head back to work!

Cheers,
MK

The blogger, the vacuum and the backpack

It's that singular anomaly, Keegan's Day Off, so this will be "on the fly," and a little short ... and with a bit of luck I'll be able to post again later in the day. Not that there's anything special to blog about ... the Mel-o-Sphere is quiet as the crypt.

We're still working on the newsletter: still trying to figure out what went wrong at the software level. It's quite a mystery -- bear with us! DreamCraft uses a list manager called SendBlaster, and it's normally error free. This time? Spode's Law. If it can go wrong, it will.

In fact, it's been amazing how much has gone wrong in the last couple of months! This is the reason THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE has been delayed till January, at least as far as the paperback is concerned. It'll be going to Amazon directly. It's been problems all the way -- even right up to the way the CreateSpace account jammed itself in neutral for over two weeks, which meant we couldn't do a darned thing until a human being realized what the problem was, and fixed it!

No response from Google yet as per the page ranking debacle -- as you'd expect. I shouldn't think the problem will be sorted till end end of January.

So -- I'd like to thank all the people who have assisted by emailing the urls of interesting and useful posts ... you have no idea how much this helps! I'll be asking for the same kind of help when I launch the digital novels next month ... I'd expected to be able to launch them from this blog, but Google has sunk that idea for the time being. So: when the online novels go, uh, online, I'll be putting out a plea for "same again, please." They call it "viral information." If everyone who finds out about the digital novels -- online and free -- tells just two other people, and you start with only 100 people, you get up to 5,000 people pretty fast. Crunch the numbers yourself, and see. This is what I'm hoping.

There's little more to blog about -- seriously! For the moment, let me sign off here and go do something clever with a backpack and a cooler chest...

Ciao for now,
MK

The LORDS OF HARBENDANE ebook: online and open for orders!

Welcome to the launch of the ebook for
THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE!

The paperback will be available via Amazon.com in the new year, but we're making the ebook available in good time for Christmas. It's a good, solid read, at 350pp, with a glorious color cover by Jade. The text length is around 150,000 words.

Have the first couple of chapters (the first 31pp of the novel) for free:
http://www.dream-craft.com/melkeegan/harbendane-samp.pdf

Caveat: this is a gay (m/m) book, with frank depictions of the relations between adults. Do not order if you're disturbed or offended by gay materials.

The story follows two characters from a chance meeting on a rainy night, to the greatest battlefield of their time. Rogan Dahl and Tris Carlin find themselves caught up in a storm of events, where an accidental encounter turns out to be the pivot-point around which the future revolves. The great fortified city of Althea is known as the living, beating heart of Harbendane ... and the plans have been meticulously drawn for its downfall. The wild, savage tribes of the far north are somehow in league with the cruel, dangerous warlord from Galshorros, leaving Althea almost undefended before massed armies. In the midst of this, Rogan and Tristan are caught up in an illicit love affair that could easily end in the death of one of them.

See the fantasy map, and the full wraparound cover here:
A Tourist's Guide to Harbendane.

Order the ebook ONLY from this blog page at this time! The download is 1.6MB; the ebook is formatted for PC and Mac users. You're downloading a ZIP file which includes a PDF document plus your user license. No password is required to open the PDF, but copying and printing are disabled (in other words, if you lust for a paper copy, just buy the paperback in a few weeks).

Download from Payloadz ... 100% secure transactions, and only $9.95!

More news and views from Mel Keegan shortly, but for now --

Cheers,
MK

Lords of Harbendane - sample readings online...!

Here's the best news I've had to giv all week: sample readings for THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE are up, right here, and the book will be available in 'e' form next week!

You've previewed the cover on the blog here, and seen the map. The ISBN was awarded last week, and the first two chapters are yours for the clicking.

Just a brief disclaimer: be aware that THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE is a gay fantasy novel. The first couple of chapters are not in any way explicit, but they're specific about gay relationships, and you know it's going to get steamy later on. So ... consider youreself warned, and if you'll be PO'd in any way, don't download. Right. Nuff said -- let's get to the goodies:


Download the first 31pp of the book -- including cover set-up pages and map! (PDF document; file size is 1600kb, due to the cover and map graphics.)

Enjoy!

MK

Tuesday morning blues

Good news and -- well, not "bad" but "very ordinary" news, today.

The good news first: NOCTURNE has been reviewed at Rainbow Reviews, which rated the book at five stars: http://rainbow-reviews.com/?p=722. Many thanks to RR for the review and the recommendation: greatly appreciated! If you don't know the site, do visit, when you get a chance to surf. Loads of fun, very informative, and also a most attractive site.

The "very ordinary news" is that after waiting five days for a response from Create Space about their gridlocked, jammed shopping cart and the order for a proof copy that got lost in the cracks between here and there (credit card having been billed, but no sign of the order in the system!) we got a response back today ... and the customer service guy hadn't read enough of our message to know what the problem was. His advice: go back and check out properly.

Sound of head bashing on wall and high-pressure steam blasting out of ears.

Yes, we -- pleasantly and politely -- messaged again. now, we wait some more. An actual human being is going to have to track down the order and re-set the cart before the system is going to work again ... and when it's finally been sorted out, I'll keep you updated. I know several folks at least are watching this process, because -- frankly, you learn more when things go wrong that you learn when everything is smooth and silky. Which is why I never mind a few problems -- so long as they do get fixed in a timely manner.

Anyway -- LORDS OF HARBENDANE is "on hold," waiting for problems to be solved. And the truth is, it's already crossed the critical threshold, beyond which it can't possibly make it to Amazon.com for Christmas.

See also:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/11/hiccups-in-create-space-process.html

So, this is where we are on Tuesday morning ... also waiting for a guy to come and service the dishwasher, which is doing disgusting things ... and waiting (hoping) for rain. There's supposed to be a shower or two this afternoon, which will be fantastic, if it happens... http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDS10034.shtml

Other than all this, I'm blogging in a complete vacuum, so we'll keep it short and sweet (the way lemons are sweet, right?) today -- and if something great happens this afternoon, I might blog a second time.

Cheers,
MK

Independent publishing: USPS rates will hurt foreign sales

This time last year, you could ship a book -- say, a copy of The Swordsman, or Fortunes of War, or The Deceivers -- from an American POD printer (namely, Lulu.com) to a client in Australia or New Zealand for US$8.50. And also, this time last year, the exchange rate was US$1 = .93c, or thereabouts. Costs were close to one-to-one, and shipping was affordable.

Recently, however, this has changed, and it's all down to rising oil prices and crashing markets!

Aussie and Kiwi readers: have you bought a book from Amazon.com lately? Have you noticed that it costs about US$15 to ship virtually anything? Have you run the conversion to get this into local currency?! That's about A$21 to ship a skinny little paperback. Ouch.

When you're an indie publisher concentrating on the Internet as your marketplace, you're extremely sensitive to changes in postage rates -- and horrifically vulnerable in this area. Your e-store is the place you do business, an all the "hard goods" shipping out of that store are going to be carried by USPS, Royal Mail, Australia Post and so forth.

So, when postage rates rise, the impact on your prices is a hefty wallop. And when postage rates rise enormously -- as they have in the last year -- all you can do is whimper quietly and lick your wounds in private.

With THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE coming out next week, we're looking at ways to get copies into the hands of Australian readers at a decent price, and it's not possible. The book will be US$22.50 ... it's a big book. The font is NOT large, you're NOT paying for white space. There's no way to compress the book into less pages. You're stuck with a big book -- which is fine and dandy ... until you come to ship it.

Earlier in 2008, Lulu.com offered several different options for international shipping. They now offer two. US$14.91 is their "economy" rate for shipping to Australia (!), and it's a few dollars more for their priority rate.

We went to the USPS website and looked at prices ... and y'now what? Postage, packaging, and about a dollar for "handling," and -- yep, that's what it costs. The kneejerk was to say that Lulu is getting into the old "postage ripoff" game, which is way too popular with any number of eBay shippers. However, for US/Canada readers, they're not. BUT --

Dont blame Lance Armstrong: he no longer rides for USPS. His parcel-delivering days are long behind him. Which is probably a good thing. Delivering big parcels on a racing bike must have been hell.


Here's the rub: Lulu.com signed with a digital printshop in Victoria, Australia (not Canada), and books ordered in Aus and NZ are printed down here ...

And the whole thing gets nasty when you realize they're hitting you up for international shipping, at US$14.91 = around A$20, on a book that's going to be shipped out of MELBOURNE.
If you happen to reside inside the state of Victoria, as a helluva lot of people do, the 750g package should go, intrastate, for something like A$10 -- including the padded bag and the buck for someone to pack it and do a post office run! We went to AustraliaPost.com and checked.

We're contacting Lulu.com about this, but we've talked to them before about it, and no one had an answer, months ago. That time, the discrepancy cost us something like A$75 on a bulk shipment! You just grind your teeth and pay. The argument at the time was that we had been caught in the transition between shipping ex-USA and shipping out of a digital printshop in Australia. Uh huh. Well, the system is well worn-in now; there's no transition to get caught in. American postage rates have shot up -- and there is no excuse we can think of for billing Australian customers for a round-the-world service they don't get.

If or when we get an answer about this, you'll read it on this blog!

Till then, I seriously advise Aussie and Kiwi readers against ordering from Lulu.com -- because you're paying for postage you're not getting.

Your alternatives -- and this is especially important as THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE is published -- are:

* ebooks, which will set you back only US$10 ... no delivery fee and instant gratification. You can be reading the book five minutes after shunting some dollars over from your PayPal account. (You can also use any credit card.)
* Amazon.com, where the price is actually the same ... but at least they'll ship it around the world for you, so you get what you pay for -- and also, you get the US-printing quality, which is higher than the quality of the product issuing from the Australian digital printshop. (The Aussie printer uses paper which is too light, and the strikethrough is very noticeable. Strikethrough is where you can see materials printed on the other side of the paper. Thicker paper minimizes this, but the Aussie printshop doesn't use it. One wonders why.)

One thing we do NOT recommend for Aussie and Kiwi readers is that they shop at the CreateSpace e-store -- because CreateSpace's idea of overseas postage is (!) US$26 for economy, and US$40 for regular!! In fact, their 'economy' is the USPS Priority service, and $40 is something like FedEx. Sure, you'll get your book faster (ten days on average), but it'll be costing you US$48.50 = A$75, which is utterly absurd.

Once again, we'll be contacting CreateSpace about this -- making them aware of the fact that they're locking out foreign sales -- but what can be done about it, who knows? It all depends if CreateSpace is willing to negotiate. If Aussie and Kiwi sales represent about .05% of their overall trade, they probably don't give the proverbial stuff.

Once again, when we learn something (if we ever do), I'll report on it here.


The classic Aussie postman -- "postie" on his postie bike. Don't blame the postman for the price of postage. It might have something to do with George W. ...


In the meantime ... Aussie and New Zealand readers, I really do suggest you look at ebooks as an alternative. You'll be able to order THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE on paper from Amazon.com in January (the process takes too long for it to be available for Christmas, sorry; we only found out about this relatively recently, with too little time for us to do anything about it). But you need to be aware of what ordering via Amazon, from downunder, will cost. $22.50 for the book ... $15 postage. US$37.50 is going to convert out to something like A$57.50 -- and again, this is utterly absurd.

The ebook will be US$10, which is about A$13.50.

What's to be done about all of the above? I have no idea. Barack Obama probably has no idea. Having Superdude deliver the mail would be an option, but he might not go for it...


The price of foreign postage is directly related to the cost of jet fuel, and the price of oil ... and you also have the carbon taxes that are being slapped on, in the interests of the environment. Things are going to get expensive -- it's already happening. Luxury goods and imported goods are going to slither out of the reach of most people -- this also is happening.

A little while ago I blogged about how the global financial meltdown is affecting sales not only for me but for everyone, everywhere:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/11/pod-publishing-online-sales-and-2009.html

...and what's happening with shipping costs certainly plays a major role in this picture.

If Nostrakeeganus were to make a prediction as per where we'll be in 2010, I'd say -- reading ebooks. There's a ten billion dollar fortune in it, for some Chinese entrepreneur who can come out with the equivalent of a Pocket PC for A$250, something that reads ebooks just fine, and where you only have to buy the gizmo one time. I'd buy one ... and don't get me wrong, I love real books. I love hardcovers. But I can afford to buy maybe two or three in a year, and the rest are going to wind up being an assortment of electrons, pixels and push-buttons.

If anyone were asking me, I'd say it's unavoidable, and my serious, sober recommendation to Australian and New Zealand readers is to embrace the technology ... learn to like it. Get an ebook reader -- always supposing our hypothetical Chinese entrepreneur can come up with something for a nice, comfy price we can afford. At A$250, I'd buy one today, and promptly stock up on all the reading I've skipped for the last few years because books, in this country, are so expensive, it's foolish.

Sorry to be the bearer of ill tidings this morning. I'll be back with something humorous tomorrow!

Cheers,
MK

A tourist's guide to Harbendane!

A quick second post for today, because I want to share this ... the map was just finished for THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE -- and it's quite a piece of work. Incidentally, this also was done with Serif. (See this morning's post for more about the software: http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/11/pod-publishing-how-to-get-your-book.html), and right now, take a look at this:

(It's uploaded at 200dpi -- click for the large view)

And of course, I shared the cover with you last week -- or was it the week before?

You'll be reading the first chapter on the blog here in a few days. All, uh, very exciting. Stay tuned...

Ciao for now,
MK

Sunday morning ends and odds

Odds and ends today, and we'll open with a joke:

One sunny day in 2009 an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Avenue , where he'd been sitting on a park bench.
He spoke to the U.S. Marine standing guard and said, "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush."
The Marine looked at the man and said, "Sir, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here."
The old man said, "Okay," and walked away.
The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush."
The Marine again told the man, "Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here."
The man thanked him and, again, just walked away.
The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same U. S. Marine, saying, "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush."
The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, "Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mr. Bush. I've told you already that Mr. Bush is no longer the president and no longer resides here. Don't you understand?"
The old man looked at the Marine and said, "Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it."
The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said, "See you tomorrow, sir!"

...I can't credit the source, because this one has been doing the rounds via email, and I got it at third of fourth hand, but -- whoever came up with this ... GOOD ONE!

A couple of days ago I was talking about the movie Australia, and mentioned that Hugh Jackman would be a sight for sore eyes. (http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/11/mel-at-movies-australia.html) Thanks to the folks who sent me these (click on the thumbnails for a large image and, uh, enjoy):





My political post today is in the form of a reply to a very good comment on yesterday's post: http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/11/prop-8-racial-vote-and-anger.html ...
I did indeed need to be much more specific about the religious rights I was talking about, and I've taken this opportunity to set out what I honestly do believe. Please take a few minutes to read this additional material ... and thanks to Adam for commenting. Much appreciated.

Anyone remember the name of Ron Cobb, back in the days when he was a political cartoonist, and before he went on to design major motion pictures? Remember this:

Nothing ever changes. That cartoon was drawn about 30 years ago. Gotta make you wonder.

Nice piece of news from Keegan Country: The Swordsman actually went "live" at Amazon.com last week, and we were thinking we would have to start some serious advertising to get sales ... turns out, sales have started all on their own. Nice. very.

The Lords of Harbendane progresses smoothly. Expect the ebook at PayLoads at the end of the month; expect the Lulu.com version (best for Aussies and Kiwis) about five days later; expect the CreateSpace version (best for the US and Canada) about five days after this; expect it to put in an appearance at Amazon about ten days later. (To your right as you read this is a wee small version of the character study of Rogan, the character around whom Harbendane revolves. It's a beautiful piece of work, by Jade as always on my book covers these days. Thank gods for digital artwork.)

What's next for Keegan, after Harbendane? A couple of short stories -- which is unusual for me. I rarely get ideas that lend themselves to short works. Then the haunted house novel I had promised for Christmas '08, and then swapped for Harbendane on account of a minor plotting snafu. Then ... HELLGATE. All of it. Right to the end, by the end of 2009. This time next year, you'll be able to get the whole series either as a sex of six paperbacks or three monster hardcovers. Make a nice Christmas pressie ... tell someone you love what to get you when the silly season comes around!

Ciao for now,
MK

The Lords of Harbendane cover proof...!

Yet again, a second post (I seem to be making a habit of this lately), because there's something very exciting to share. The cover proof for THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE was just finished, and I have to say, I'm thrilled. Check this out:

I think this is probably our best cover yet ... and I know I say that every couple of books. Kudos to the artist, Jade. This one has a "wow factor" off the scale.

Apparently the foreground is someplace in Scandinavia; the mountain range and lake is in Denali National park, Alaska; the sky was repainted from a shot captured in the backyard. The character (Rogan Dahl, the Zhenander) is a composite of three faces, so if he reminds you of someone -- it could be three someones. I'm not telling who, but you'll almost certainly going to be guessing [snicker, snort, grin].

Stay tuned for the first chapter online, on the blog here!

POD Publishing: good news for independent publishers

For those of us who use Lulu.com as well as CreateSpace, there's been some great news recently. The only problem with Lulu has been the price to manufacture an individual book -- they were a LOT more expensive than CreateSpace, which made it utterly impossible for a Lulu book to get onto Amazon.com at a price where you could 1) expect to sell any copies, and 2) make anything out of the sale, or indeed, the venture as a whole.

Lulu calculate their prices at (for a normal 6" x 9" trade size paperback) .02c per page plus $4.50 for the standard price of printing the full-color cover and perfect (glued spine) binding the book. So a 300pp book will be $6.00 + $4.50 ... $10.50. Dead simple. Change the numbers around to suit your book, to a maximum of around 700pp. (I think it's actually 740pp.)

Now, CreateSpace has a much more baroque method of calculating prices, especially when the book is going to go to Amazon. To say it's complicated is putting it mildly:
https://www.createspace.com/Products/BooksPrices.jsp

However, if you just plug in the numbers and let the calculator do it for you ... and if you do the upgrade to the "pro" package for a POD title, you get a price of $4.45 for the same item. This is so low a "price to manufacture" that you, the indie publisher, end up with enough elbow space to actually get the book onto Amazon at a realistic price.

Now, CreateSpace only buddied up with Amazon in the last half year, after Amazon really set the cat among the pigeons with its attempt to monopolize the POD industry. I've already blogged about this, and instead of reiterating, I'll just give you the link to the other post:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/10/pod-publishing-amazon-and-gay-books.html ...

...and, if you want to go directly to the absolute nitty-gritty of this story:
http://writersweekly.com/the_latest_from_angelahoycom/004597_03272008.html

...where Angela Hoy's article outlines the situation which prompted Amazon to buddy up with a real, genuine POD printshop -- CreateSpace.

All well and good ... unless you were Lulu.com. Until the Amazon/CS partnership, Lulu was the best deal in town. Suddenly, though, there were more attractive ways to go -- and like any healthy animal with a desire to survive, Lulu checked out its options and decided to compete.

Well, they're not 100% percent competitive (yet?) with the Amazon/CS deal, but they're not far off, and they just offered a package which is extremely attractive:



Now, the Publisher Grade paper is only available at this point in US Letter and Half-Letter (something similar to A4 and A5), so the formatting for the book interiors will be a tad bit different, but the tradeoff is this:
http://www.lulu.com/en/products/paperback/

...there's a price calculator on that page; plug in your numbers, select half-letter and prepare to have your chin hit your knees. At 6" x 9" on the normal creme paper stock, a 300pp book costs US$10.50 to manufacture, as I explained above. Drop the size to half-letter (a half inch smaller than 6" x 9" in both axes) and select the "publisher grade paper", and the same book can be made for (!) US$7.00.

In other words, you're US$3.50 more profitable on any one item -- and with the bottom dropping out of the Aussie dollar, that could easily amount to A$7 better per sale -- which is a relief.


(Contrary to what you might think, it takes between 150 and 300 sales to break even on the set-up work for a POD book, even though you only print them one at a time. Before selling them, not being Michelangelo yourself, you'll need to pay a cover artist; you might also have paid an editor to do a final check on the finished work; you'll have printed out no fewer than three copies of a 300pp manuscript; you might have mailed copies to your "proofies" intra- or interstate. You'll need to order at least one if not several pilot, or proof copies of the book to make sure it's good to go (Lulu can be fraught with font issues, since they use EPS printers ... makes like interesting.) You'll need to pay your proofies in copies, and then send out up to 20 review copies. You'll need a website, and unless you're skilled, you'll have to pay someone to build it. You'll also need to buy advertising in order to be visible in a world wide web which has swelled to incredible proportions... In other words, if you slap $10 per copy onto the book as your (ha!) profit margin, somewhere between sale #150 and sale #300 ... you finally, finally, finally, see black ink.)

So this new option from Lulu.com comes as a tremendous boost to indie publishers. It's not quite enough to get the Lulu product onto Amazon at good prices, but it's close. (If you're interested, a book printed via Lulu's new offer would result in a list price of US$22.40 (about A$40) with US$5.00 or so leftover as the (ha!) profit margin for the publisher. At this price, you will sell copies if people want the book enough ... but Aussie and Kiwi readers won't be able to afford you, because it costs another US$12.50/A$20 to get the book shipped down here. Very few Aussies can afford $60 for one book these days ... if, indeed, they ever could.

However, since most of your sales will always be made in the US -- it's not too bad at all. You're close to being competitive, and if Amazon decided to offer your book at a discount price, they take said discount out of their 60 share of the list price, not yours. Nice.

Speaking of books, publishing and Amazon --



THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE is going to Lulu first, and then CreateSpace/Amazin ... and very soon. The cover is almost finished right now, and I'll be able to show it to you, and let you read the first chapter, right on the blog here.

THE SWORDSMAN -- available at the CreateSpace estore, STILL waiting for it to show up on the Amazon engine. Remember this post: http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/10/pod-publishing-and-amazon-patience-is.html

NOCTURNE and TWILIGHT -- manufactured by CreateSpace in three days, and shipped out ... still waiting for delivery to Aus; could be another week or two.

FORTUNES OF WAR: going up to CreateSpace today; the month-long process of getting a book to Amazon commences. Take a deep breath and cultivate patience!