Apple and the Status Quo in ePublishing

Bad Apple...

Cupertino, we have a problem. The worst part of it is that it’s preventable. One of two things is happening: either the folks at Apple are dull (not likely) or they’re doing this on purpose. Let’s get right to it: if you want to distribute your eBook content through the iBookstore via Apple, you have to own a Mac. Period. Really.

Okay, maybe there are technically some loopholes—one can always go through one of their recommended third party epub converters, but that takes quality control out of the hands of the average indie publisher. Strike that option then, at least for my company, because I like to be able to control my final product (Apple understandably does not guarantee the quality of work from these guys). Another option that’s a little gray market, and would probably be frowned upon by the Apple cognoscenti, is the idea of borrowing a friend’s Mac in order to shoulder one’s way into the iBookstore. But I don’t like that either, because again, I like to do things in-house and I like to run my business with integrity. So there’s no other way than to just buy a Mac.

And I love Macs. I have one that’s too old to matter and doesn’t work. I want a new one, and I plan on buying one soon. It’s just the principle of the thing. Why, when I have a perfectly awesome epub file on my Windows hard drive, a conversion I have performed personally and carefully, does Apple require that it be uploaded to their eStore through iTunes Producer—an application that’s, you guessed it, Mac only. It’s not even available for iPhone or iPad, at least as far as I could find out (though I recall seeing some faint rumors about an iPad version, but I couldn’t find one). Really, Apple? This kind of eTyranny is something I would have expected from Microsoft, not you—if I didn’t know better. But I’m an iPhone user, and I’ve learned a little about how there are some things We the End User are not permitted to question. Or change. Or customize. It’s officially ridiculous as far as I’m concerned.

My experience? I’m glad you asked. First, I’m a bit stupefied as to why iTunes hasn’t had a name change yet, because, hello, iTunes is more like iMedia or iGateway, at least the way Apple uses it. But anyway if you want to publish your work to the iBookstore, you first must have an iTunes account, which seems a little diversionary. You must give them a credit card too, and when they have that information they will charge you a dollar as a nice little thank you. Wow. Mind you, they don’t give you a heads up about it, they just do it. It’s only a buck, but what the hell. I mean, it’s a buck, you know? Anyway, when you have an iTunes account (oh by the way, in order to set that up you have to download and install iTunes), then you can Google around and try to find the link that directs you to Apple’s application to become an affiliate, whereupon you must fill out some blanks and then wait for Apple to approve you from on high. Once that’s done, you must then give them your contact information, banking information, tax information, and then “request” a contract (which also must be approved) and accept the terms and conditions before moving forward as a publisher. Only then, at the end of about a week of back and forth, do you discover to your dismay that if you’re a Windows-based indie publisher, you’re totally screwed. Why? Because in order to upload your epub files to the iBookstore, you must download and install iTunes Producer, an OSX-only app. So you have to have iTunes and you have to have iTunes Producer and you have to have a Mac. But they disclose none of this up front. I’ve also heard tell, on some forum sites, that after all that nonsense the indie publisher must also run the gauntlet of Apple’s “quality assurance” process (whereupon they vet your work for spurious content, probably), which can take a very long time. One user reported that he had been waiting six weeks for Apple to approve his work, without so much as an email to let him know they were still working on it, they apologize for the delay, yadayada. Hey, Apple. I can upload and my eBooks to Amazon and Barnes & Noble with Web-based software that works on any device, and it goes live usually in less than 24 hours. What’s so hard about that?

I can only conclude that Apple is attempting to force the market to do things it does not want to do, which is a bit like China being communistical and yet enjoying all the benefits of capitalism that they learned from the British back when Hong Kong was still the center of wealth in their world. Isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think? A little too ironic. If I buy a Mac, it won’t be because of this publishing issue. It won’t be because I’ve been forced into it by the iTunes Producer snafu; I won’t permit them to force my hand like that. It will be because I need a professional tool, and because Mac is the gold standard of computing, pure and simple. Unfortunately, the fools in the control room continue to place the Cupertino farm in jeopardy by marginalizing its true potential, attempting to strangle the market into doing unnatural things. I think eventually, and ironically, if Apple is going to be a major player in eBooks (like, ahem, Amazon), they’re going to have to do the exact opposite of what they're doing now and acquiesce to We the End Users and get with the program. Until then, we suffer through mild tyranny because of how frankly excellent the other parts of the biz are. But if Apple had to stake its entire biz on its approach to eBooks, you’d better kiss it goodbye.

The Marsburg Diary, Second Edition

One of the things I love most about eBooks, and about being a published eBook author, is that things are easy to change if they need spicing up. I enlisted the help of my friend Joey, who is the man behind the Great Jammy Adventures illustrations, to scribble a little on some ideas I've wanted to incorporate into the cover for Book One of the Airel Saga Diary Series: The Marsburg Diary [the link won't update with the new cover until Friday].

I've made a few little changes in the text, but nothing substantive; mostly it's on the copyright page. I'm very pleased to reveal the new cover art. This format will carry across the Diary Series line. You'll see what I mean when Book Two, The Wagner Diary, reveals next month. There's been a lot of work going on behind the scenes on this, and things are going to start moving quickly as we get closer to fall and Christmas. The best part? My work will gradually be migrating across to all your favorite platforms... like the Barnes & Noble Nook and Nook Color, and the iPad and iPhone iBooks app. It's all coming soon. Stay tuned to this space.

Scene & Structure, by Jack M. Bickham

I found out about this book in the process of reading another eTome; Hooked, by Les Edgerton. Edgerton’s is an instruction manual for the modern author that induces a lot of #facepalm action, to say the least, and Bickham’s Scene & Structure is the same (More on Hooked in another post). In other words, if you’re an author or writer, or even an aspiring wannabe with good intentions and several partial chapter ones lying around, these books ought to be on your reference shelf. Period.

I edit manuscripts. I’m quite good at it, but this book has been a godsend, allowing me to refine my craft. Mostly what I’ve done in the past has been to follow my gut and play devil’s advocate, asking questions the author hasn’t thought of. I drop comments like this into the middle of everything: “If Jack is so smart, how come I figured Jill out three chapters ago? ARGH.” I also have an eye for spelling and grammar, which has served me well. But Scene & Structure goes well beyond all that, and it’s going to help me provide much more value for money to my clientele, as well as an increase in my rates.

On with it, then. Bickham starts small and simple by giving us the big picture. He outlines the structure of modern fiction, tells us how to begin a story and what’s essential—and furthermore, what needs to get deleted from or changed in our manuscripts (which in most cases will be a quite a lot).

What really hooked me, though, was his detailed analysis of the scene.

Scenes are where the action is. We see the characters on the stage of the mind’s eye, which isn’t a stage—it feels real. Edgerton calls it the “fictive dream,” which is apt. That’s why it’s so electric when it’s written well—and so awful when it’s total crap. Bickham’s book will illustrate for you quite profoundly if your work is in one camp or the other, because if you don’t have a story question that the protag has to answer, if you don’t have a scene question he’s also trying to answer, if you don’t have a scene goal he’s trying to attain, and if the scene doesn’t end in some kind of disaster—a setback—for the hero, you’ve got milquetoast on your hard drive. And miles of rewriting before you’re home.

Contrast that with sequel, which is really the antidote to scene, and you’ve got something with a pattern, a pace, an ebb and flow. Scenes drive the story forward. They contain problems and cause-and-effect stimuli. They’ve got guns and daggers and car chases. They goad us into turning the page. But sequel allows the characters to take a step back and internalize. Sequels read slower, so they’re usually more effective when they’re shorter. In a sequel, we get to see more of what the protag (or the villain) is thinking, what makes her tick; we get the backstory. We understand more of the why behind a character’s actions, and the author gets to set up the next scene for us. But in order to do this well, Brave Author needs to write effectively for Dear Reader. As “they” say, if you’re gonna break the rules, first you gotta learn ‘em. I would add that one ought to add a dash of reverence as well, because the greats are great for a reason.

The biggest danger to the indie author, who nine times out of ten is ignorant and uneducated about these things, is that most of us can “feel” our way through what makes a story compelling. But just because we can write by gut feeling doesn’t mean we should. It’s dangerous to guess your way through the disarming of a bomb. Maybe it will be the red wire that needs to be cut, but maybe it won’t. This plays into Booker’s SevenBasic Plots, too, because all of us have a hard wired intuition about story. We may not be aware of the precise nomenclature or structure of what makes a story work, but we know when it rocks and when it’s a dud. Bickham demystifies all that and reveals to the reader (the aspiring author) whether or not he’s been trading on hard-won skill and understanding or just raw talent. Ouch.

I cannot stress to you enough how important this book is. If you’re trying to make a hobby out of writing, it’s a stimulating read. If you’re at all serious about making a career as a published author, this book is required reading. As for me, I’m going to incorporate these lessons into my writing and editing. I’ll soon finish Edgerton’s book, too, and post up my thoughts on that. These two books are changing everything about my writing—and that’s a good thing.

The Writing Shed, Part Five

My brother and I have decided that close not only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, but that it also counts in regard to framing. Especially when it comes to sheds. Granted, lots of guys are precise to about an eighth of an inch. My brother is far more picky, so a job done in the slovenly midlander fashion for him is about par for the rest of the world.

We started in the morning pretty early. I don’t know what it is about Idaho weather, but as soon as one thinks about installing a roof, it will rain. It did that day, but only briefly, as if to say, “Ha ha hurl.” Anyway, the first truss is the most important because everything else depends on it for layout, plumb, and square; and also because of global warming. As such, naturally, you’ll want to consult your guidebook of sailormouth expletives because the first truss will also probably be a cast iron Mongolian cluster flock. It wasn’t so bad. It only took about an hour to fix all the mistakes I had made on the walls that translated quite logically into the roof. See, this is why I have help. And he pays off in cheap beers, which is even better.

It wasn’t long before we had installed two or three of the trusses, and things were going right along. Note the bracing. The tails of the trusses were allowed to run “wild.” We would cut them off later. Twice. Really. You’ll notice at some point in the perusal of these images that the roof has a certain asymmetrical stance to it. This is one hundred percent intentional and not in any way the result of a mistake of any kind by anyone involved on the job. It is also not similar to an episode of ancient history involving two men, one of whom was helping with this roof, who at one point were replacing the starter on my old Euro-Ford whilst drinking beer and then proceeded to catch the car on fire.

Adding to the hilarity and all around enjoyable nature of the day, we had “help” from two small children who happened to be walking by and spontaneously began climbing ladders, brandishing hammers and saws, and mostly saying, “Hey dad! Watch this!” So we had no excuse, therefore, to not build the best damn shed roof you ever saw.

We eventually built ourselves right out of materials and had to run to Home Depot, where we parked in the PRO CUSTOMER parking, which I think is self-explanatory, obviously. We brought home a bag of H clips (which are officially called something else in order to be as confusing as possible), some tiko nails, and lots of sheathing. Either my neighbors love me and prefer generosity, or I have angered them and provoked them to rummaging around in their spare parts bin and giving me various tidbits to hurry the project along. I prefer to think it’s the former, with gifts like this. My Dutch neighbor from across the street gave me this gable end vent, which is precisely what I need in order to make the winter season cigar ventilation device work properly. More on that some other time.

Once all the trusses were set, we had lunch. There was some homemade lasagna from the night before. It tasted even better the next day. The sauce was homemade from Italian sausage, pepperoni, crushed tomatoes, basil, garlic, sun dried tomatoes, sherry, and salt. I never knew they had those oven-ready lasagna noodles; boy howdy. What a time saver. I also found whole milk ricotta and mozzarella. That really made it. But it has almost nothing to do with building a shed, so on with the subject matter. But note the asymmetry. Again, this has nothing to do with beer. The longer eaves on the west side will create a safe place to hang my rakes and shovels while also keeping them handy. It’s intentional. I told my brother, “My wife will hate it. But I love it because it’s just slightly eccentric. Make it so.”

We started nailing the sheathing down after lunch. We let the ends run wild because, after we determined the length of the overhang for the gables (we’re basically freehanding this; there are no plans), we would only have to make one cut. Smart! Even with beer. The H clips install on the top edge of the sheathing in between the trusses, adding strength, and for cheap. They serve to tie the sheathing together top to bottom on their horizontal edge.

After what felt like a wrestling match with a cougar (not the sultry sophisticated kind), we were pretty much done. The incredulous look my brother had given me at the beginning of the day, when he had discovered that I had built the trusses to an 8/12 pitch, was now understandable. My body hurt from fingertip to toenail. As a matter of fact, I can still feel it, and it’s not nice. But we did good work, and I’m proud of it. Now I can fill in my gable ends and complete some of the framing on the inside (for finish work like sheetrock). I can do that all by myself. Which probably means it will be asymmetrical, and that will be intentional. Duh.

The Ongoing Saga of YES!

This is weird, but I was driving home from my AM writing session at my local coffee shop when I saw a car driving erratically on my street. The connection was quickly made that it was the same one I usually see whenever the YES! pink poobag drops on my lawn twice a week. Now, remember: I already called the Idaho Statesman about cancelling my subscription to their direct delivery junkmail paper. I was told that I would be unsusbscribed. But I didn’t hold my breath. Good thing.

I watched as the erratic driver slowed in front of my house. A pink bomb was hurled from the car and the driver moved on to the next “customer”.

“Oh no, you dit-n’t,” I said as I nailed the throttle in hot pursuit of liberty and justice. I tracked my friendly neighborhood carrier down posthaste and politely informed her that I had unsubscribed last week from the product she had just delivered. She told me she’d had a family emergency and hadn’t updated her manifest yet. I said I was sorry for her loss, but again reminded her of my address and asked her for a discontinuance of the service. She thanked me for the reminder and then I drove off.

It was fortuitous that I just happened to be a block or two behind her when the coupons were delivered. I was able to defend my hearth and home against the unsolicited pink menace of the Statesman’s YES! scourge. We’ll see if I get the results I want. If I don’t, I’m open to suggestions from the peanut gallery as to how I ought to solve it—so long as they’re legal, natch.

Why You Need Dun & Bradstreet

Ya know, for all the hype about college degrees out there, one would think they’d provide some kind of real world benefit. In my case, I hold a bachelor of science in Business/e-Business from the University of Phoenix and it’s pretty in its little frame on my wall, but that’s about it. No college is perfect, but most of what I learned from college is how to persevere and complete things, how to work online across big distances and how to reach my goals. Beyond that, the subject material wasn’t very pragmatic, in my opinion.

I wish there was a do-it-all college program out there for entrepreneurs. But then again, I don’t, because the best school for entrepreneurism has been and continues to be the real world. What the small business owner does on a daily basis is so opposite from the ivory tower of academia it’s not even funny. And now that I’m done whining about things, I can move on.

Still, a list of do’s and don’ts would have been nice. I do wish somebody would have told me about Dun & Bradstreet friggin years ago. You can get some info on them from the SBA, which is where my journey started off recently. My business is growing. It’s getting to the point where I have to start thinking differently about how it operates. One of the more important operational building blocks is how my business appears in the eyes of potential clients and creditors. The only way to manage that is to get a DUNS number.

Wikipedia has more: “The Data Universal Numbering System, abbreviated as DUNS® or D-U-N-S®, is a system developed and regulated by Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) that assigns a unique numeric identifier, referred to as a "DUNS number" to a single business entity. It was introduced in 1963 to support D&B's credit reporting practice. It is a common standard worldwide. DUNS users include the European Commission, the United Nations and the United States government. More than 50 global, industry, and trade associations recognize, recommend, or require DUNS. The DUNS database contains over 100 million entries for businesses throughout the world.”

This isn’t about getting credit for my business. It’s mostly about being intentional and proactive about managing what’s there. It would be a pity to lose a client based on false, bad, or missing information from D&B. When I searched my company on their Web site, they popped up an older sole proprietorship that has nothing to do with my current venture, so I knew I needed to take action. I tried changing the info on the Web site, but had difficulty.

That’s the one caveat I have to share with you. The iupdater page on the D&B Web site is a bit clunky and frustrating—at least in my case. I was using Chrome and thought seriously about changing browsers for this task, but eventually I just threw up my hands and called in. The D&B staff were extremely helpful and polite and got me all properly sorted in about fifteen minutes with a few questions as to the details of my biz. I recommend that you look into getting a DUNS number if you’re at all serious about running your own business more seriously.

When I incorporated, I filed with the Idaho Secretary of State and then dutifully popped over to the IRS Web site to get my EIN so I could open a business account at my bank. But as far as business credit was concerned, I wasn’t. Happily, as soon as D&B is finished with my report, I will be able to get the detailed picture (or so they say) on how my little LLC appears to the world at large, inside and outside of my industry. It’s not free, but there’s a cost to doing business. For about thirty bucks a month, I can stay on top of things in regard to this side of my operations.

I’ll have more to report when I get my report, and, naturally, as time goes by. My question to you is this: if you have Lifelock or some other personal credit monitoring service watching out for your personal details, why would you not also be mindful of your business’ credit picture? For me, it’s my livelihood. It’s a no brainer. I’ll let you know soon if it seems like the D&B folks have helped or hindered me.

I Built My Business, Mr. President (No Thanks To You)

Entrepreneurs don’t ever stop. We never take vacations. When a man or woman is building a business from the ground up, he or she doesn’t have the luxury of taking anything for granted. It’s one hundred percent all the time; the plucky small businessman goes everywhere with the burden of his company on his shoulders. The entrepreneur doesn’t take time off, she has no “down time;” even if she’s sitting in front of the television she’s working, thinking of how to expand her biz, how to add more income streams, how to better serve her clientele, how to expand her product and service portfolio.

Contrast this picture with the following: A national organization that shall remain nameless gets the meals it provides funded by the federal government. If one were to travel through the line for one of those said meals, getting a dollop of slop plopped on one’s plate, and if one were to attempt to bypass, say, the milk, one would be told, “You have to take the milk. If you don’t, we won’t get credit for using our allotment and our federal funding will drop. Take it, and if you don’t want it, drop it in the box at the end of the line and we’ll re-use it.” I shouldn’t have to belabor this illustration, but this is where backward federal baseline budgets have taken us. If you don’t see how this is dishonest at its best—and theft in truth—you might as well stop reading this, because your mind is dead. But baseline budgets are de rigeur in the house that capitalism built (and socialism is actively eating).

At no time does the thought I feel secure because I know the government is helping me enter the mind of the bootstrapper. If anything, anyone who has ever tried to start up their own business feels the government is antagonistic to everything he is trying to do. The entrepreneur must beware of all kinds of tax regulations—some of which are written to be ambiguous on purpose, like the weird way the Idaho State Tax Commission allows businesses to “voluntarily” (you’ve gotta read the fine print to discover this) pay more taxes on internet-based sales. Does the ISTC not know that taxes are kryptonite to prosperity? Why on earth would any sane person volunteer to pay more taxes? But now the leftist brainiacs are spouting the lie that somehow paying higher taxes is morally superior. The Catholic church had a similar program (the paying of indulgences for the forgiveness of sin) before the Reformation. There’s nothing new under the sun. How ironic that those who proselytize us about the religion of recycling are themselves recycling a concept that’s a thousand years old: guilt as a motivator. My wicked step mother tried raising me like that, and I hate her to this day. Almost as much as I hate how the Obama government operates. But I digress.

The entrepreneur must beware of producing too much, lest he commit the sin of moving into a higher tax bracket and thereby suffer the sting of the long arm of the tax law, which punishes production. I know a guy who was forced by logic at the end of his fiscal year to plunk down a large amount of money on office equipment he didn’t need—because, the way the income tax brackets work, he could either spend money on something functional or write a check to the IRS for the same amount. That was a no-brainer. The government has too much already, and they don’t deploy it efficiently. Exhibit A would be the story about the milk above.

I know another couple that had a great year working their butts off only to find that it was all for naught—their tax bill went through the roof. They decided the subsequent year to reduce their production so they could make more money, which is backward as hell. This is how things are in the real world right now, and worse. Question: if we live in a consumer economy, why do we not then tax consumption, instead of doing things backwards? But still, I digress.

I’ve lately been brainstorming ways to better build my business. Being that I live and breathe by Web-based sales, I don’t have to volunteer to pay the Idaho sales tax, which is six percent. And trust me, I minimize my tax obligations ruthlessly. That’s the American way. The government ought to earn the right to take my money, but instead it’s the other way around: I have to earn the right to keep it; the onus is upon the business owner to navigate the treacherous bevy of legislation, regulation, and taxation that assaults us from all quarters. No wonder so many of us were outraged by what our sitting president said about all our work being nullified by the very presence of infrastructure in our lives—a crazy ass thing to say. It’s clear what our president believes in: government, not God. Marxist redistribution, not hard work being its own reward. But again, I digress.

Trust me, if you’re a hard working entrepreneur (is there any other kind?) you’re not alone. We are the majority in America today. With the uncertainty in the workplace, why not strike out on your own and take the risks of being self-employed? At least then if you’re downsized out of a job you’ll know who to blame (you). With the volatility in real estate and on Wall Street, why not make your primary investment in you, rather than sending your 401(k) to the gamblers in NYC? At least then if you utterly fail and your retirement is wiped out, you’ll know who to blame (you). As it stands, with the government engaging in a hostile takeover of the entire world, the central planners amongst us just might be unwittingly stoking the fires of an enormous backfire—that will explode in their faces—because if the government is responsible  for everything, guess who gets blamed when everything goes wrong? Bingo: BHO is his name-o (and friends, Republican and Democrat).

This is not an endorsement of Obama’s opponent, in November, Romney. Far from it. As one of my friends might say, we really have no options anymore. The powers that be have propped up the candidates they want us to choose from, and frankly neither one of them is what I want. We are being told who to vote for. For me, Romney is milquetoast. I don’t know him from Adam. I do know to a certainty that I do not want Obama to win a second term. Hint: it has absolutely nothing to do with race. He is a known quantity that has been measured and found wanting. He’s more of a punishment than anything else. His tenure in office is like God’s judgment against a wayward nation. Will we wake up? Who knows. Obama has told us who he is and we know what he wants to accomplish. Basically that is the castration of America. And it’s nothing new; the French invented revanchist politics hundreds of years ago (which begs the question of why Barack Obama is so angry, and what he wants revenge for—I leave that to you).

In the end, the entrepreneur has enough opposition working against him. We don’t need the government lecturing us, acting morally superior (which irritates the hell out of me). Federal bureaucrats haven’t the slightest clue about the real world. I know of a couple who both work for the federal government—they live in a $500k house and drive Cadillac Escalades. This guy’s home theatre is like his own personal IMAX—and they do it all with my money, your money. They don’t live in the real world. They live in a fairy tale, and nothing is real to them—especially the price we pay in order to pay them. Are they grateful? I can’t say. But I don’t see them volunteering to pay higher taxes. If that’s the measure of holiness these days, these federal employees have fallen short of the goal. But sadly, we the people who are paying their salaries are encrusted with ambivalence. “Meh,” we say. It’s sad. Because things could still change. America could still heal; it’s not too late. But it won’t—not, at least, with people like Obama in power.