Reading, reading, reading.

by Louis Bertrand Shalako

c2010

All Rights Reserved


On Lulu.com recently, I revised my POD project of 'The Case of the Curious Killers.' The site must have been plagued by glitches that night. As I recall, the thing wouldn't go in if it was over 411 pages.

This bothered me for some reason. In re-reading, it clearly states in Lulu data somewhere, 'Max size 740 pages' in the 4x7" class of pocket book.

I also noticed something in there somewhere about half inch margins being the minimum. My margins were set at .38 left and right. After making this change, my book was 435 pages overall.

The file uploaded just fine...now that that worked, I'm considering a couple more blank pages in the front matter. The whole process seems very organic, but then my brain is organic, and so are my eyes. So far, no one has bought that paperback, and I guess no harm has been done!

***

Speaking of organic processes, I have set the goal of learning more about social media, and Twitter in particular. One of my challenges is to identify some specific demographic group and write and I suppose tweet for them.

In the writing, it's fine to try a young adult science fiction story, or a raunchy humour story, or a fantasy, or a horror story.

How do people know what to expect? This whole notion of branding is intriguing, because it is so important.

Tagging is another one: my Amazon Kindle Platform account was tagged lackadaisically, and I went in there and added some more key words, and checked all the other accounts I could think of.

***

In the past few days, I have combed through my folder and made a few more subs to pro markets, semi-pro markets, and people who pay good money for stories. One commonly-accepted theory is that every story will eventually find a market. I suspect that only holds true for the really top-ranked professionals, but there's no reason not to submit a story...anywhere one can think of.

***

I read an article called, 'Fifty ways to improve your results on twitter,' or whatever. That link is stuck in a document file, and I plan on reading that one about ten times! It's a lot to take in all at once, but I have already implemented five or six of the suggestions. We'll see what works. Not all of the suggestions are practical to someone with a crap camera, or no cell-phone! Yet anything you can do with a phone can probably be done with a home PC.

That one bears some deep thought, but I think I am actually signed up for tweetdeck. I have never been back there, but I am signed up!

Interestingly enough, there may be room for some informal teamwork on Twitter and other social media as well.

Should I capitalize 'tweetdeck,' and not capitalize 'Facebook?'

Who cares. I'm tired and the day is not over.

Update: Going into my new Lulu POD file, I checked three very specific revisions of a scientific nature, and yes, I did indeed upload the correct file! 'Version Control.' (And if I catch any dumb little mistake, I'll fix it and do it again.)

Also, the last time I checked into Google books, I still had two ebooks 'processing.' This should not take three weeks as books one and four uploaded sucessfully. The problem here is no 'action required' reports, so no feedback. At some point I will try to re-upload, but for an unknown author, the revenue to be generated by free reads and page-impressions is ludicrous anyway. When Google Ebooks Canada gets up and running, (reportedly by this summer,) then I want to be in there...right? For the time being, two free reads on there is fine.

A man with a plan is better off than a man with no plan at all.

Let's see here...yes. A useful tip: sites that are well edited are more sucessful than ones that are not edited at all.

On twitter, I was thinking some of my little 'three-liners,' a kind of fairly structrured free verse might go well. The last thing you want to do on twitter is get too edgy, and that might include being a little too cryptic or even enigmatic. Sometimes a person on a social network might make a person kind of creeped out. While a friend might have a bad day, this sort of thing is best avoided in your own presentation. As for the aura coming off of another; trust your instincts first and foremost.

You can block, remove, report, whatever. At some point I became a little more discriminating about clicking on any particular potential friend. No doubt facebook would like to know what makes a person pass up a pretty girl to click on some fat old lady with blue hair, or maybe go for a book cover with a big green toad and a bright red rose...but that's another story.

I must be learning a lot because I have so many more questions.