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I will be at Borders locations in Columbus, Cincinnati and Crestview Hills, Ky., this weekend to discuss and sign "The Developers." Here are the specifics:
2 p.m. August 12
Borders, 4545 Kenny Road, Columbus, Ohio
7 p.m. August 12
Borders, Princeton Plaza Shopping Center, Cincinnati
2 p.m. August 13
Borders, 2785 Dixie Highway, Crestview Hills, Ky.
My brother, Chris, recently recounted a tulmultuous occurrence in our lives. Here's the text of that fateful day.
While there are many things to consider when writing, one of the most important items has to be the audience. If I write the greatest story in the history of literature, and it's a war story, there's a good chance that people who aren't interested in war won't like it.
"The Developers" isn't about war, and it's not the greatest story in the history of literature. Maybe the top 10, but not the greatest. Ha! Even when you anticipate that you know your audience, there's still something that just doesn't fit.
Authors who are either self-published or with small publishers have an extremely difficult time getting the word out about their novels. Most large publishing houses have money devoted to advertising, and well-known authors usually have their own publicists to handle marketing.
You receive a lot of spam, right? Apparently, so does everyone else.
In a recent report compiled by SoftScan, close to 90 percent of emails sent in July were spam. It should be noted that SoftScan is a company that offers anti-spam software, and that it also acknowledges that fewer actual emails were sent in July because of the holiday, according to vnunet.com.
Sometimes keeping computer terminology straight is difficult. There are so many definitions, words and acronyms that it is easy to confuse one for the other. For instance, I was talking to my mom the other day about a keyboard, and she thought I meant a music keyboard. Needless to say, she spent hours looking for a delete and escape key on her piano.
My workplace humor fiction book, "The Developers," has been out for nearly two years now. As a self-published book that's now available through national distribution chains, it's definitely difficult to expect everyone to read the book at once. I've found that it's more like the five-year plan of trying to get the word out. With the release of my new book next year, hopefully I can discuss them somewhat in tandem.
Anyway, here are a few of the newest comments about the book:
I remember reading or hearing something a few years ago that said only 10 percent of all books published ever sell 1,000 copies or more. I cannot seem to find exact numbers anywhere, however, I found a boatload of other statistics on the Para Publishing website. The self-publishing numbers are pretty low ... only 3.4 percent of Xlibris copies have sold more than 500 copies, for example.
There are numerous ways to make people work. Some bosses like to give incentives, like days off, bonuses and pony rides. Others like to drive fear into their employees, perhaps with threats of being fired or a whip.
As people are constantly complaining about whether or not MySpace is a good community building site or detrimental to the youth of today, there's little doubt that a ridiculous number of people have created profiles on the popular social networking site.
Now, instead of just going to pimp your profile or watch videos of animals doing strange things, there's a legitimate reason to visit the site, or at least, MySpace Impact.