Moving On to the Next Phase. Louis Shalako.

This is an Ootek boat.

Louis Shalako

I am moving on to a new phase of my life.

It's about time, too.

After almost thirty years, my life on ODSP, the Ontario Disability Support Program pension, will end. I will have my freedom from restrictive guidelines, and never have to report my income, mileage and expenses, insofar as it relates to employment or business or any other form of income, ever again. I will still have to do income tax returns, but I am doing that now—and they don’t ask to look into your bank account each and every month, either.

As far as that goes, I have some basic skills in book-keeping and accounting, hanging onto all relevant receipts and stuff like that. I was already running it like a business.

Within a month of my 64^th birthday, an envelope landed in the mailbox. It was a handful of forms and a few sheets of instructions. It was not real dense and there was minimal fine print. The social workers downtown had the forms mostly filled out—there were some options, a few questions, and a date and a signature.

...yes, I am sure they'll be glad to see me go.

I have applied for the Canada Pension Plan. Over the years, I did make contributions, although not so much while on disability. I applied for Old Age Security, and then there is GIS, the Guaranteed Income Supplement. There is also ‘GAINS’, which I take to be the Guaranteed Annual Income Supplement, which you do not have to actually apply for.

Okay, I already get the Trillium Benefit, a provincial benefit. I already get the HST rebate, a combined federal/provincial sales tax rebate. I am already getting the Climate Action Incentive benefit. Last year I got a one-time housing top-up benefit of $500.00. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of that from any and all levels of government. There is some kind of Canadian Workers Benefit, but so far I haven’t seen anything from that. The government has at least been talking about dental benefits for seniors, I don't know too much about that, but almost anything is good, right...

I do still have a part-time job, making pizza dough, and the minimum wage will rise up to $16.65 per hour on October 1, 2023.

There is a labour shortage, and I do have other skills, including construction and demolition, stuff like that. A person could drive cab or work private security, where the wages and benefits are not that good, but having some kind of existing base income is very helpful in this regard.

If I’m not careful, I’ll end up making twenty-five bucks an hour, making myself indispensable in pretty short order, and probably running the place before long…a local weekly news outlet recently advertised for a full-time journalist. I have to admit I thought about it, but I did not apply.

The family business comes first, essentially, whether it's much of a choice, that is a good question which I cannot really answer, not even to my own satisfaction sometimes.

***

I suppose I have a few options and that is always good—my mother just bought an old camper trailer for what, six grand or so. Her and the step-dad have already taken it camping up at the Pinery, although I don’t know about living in such a thing year-round.

For that, you might be better off to consider Florida…as far as all these pensions and supplements go, we will find out in due time.

There is some uncertainty, and no one knows when the landlord will get a brainstorm and try and get a few of us out of here due to rent control and their own natural inclinations.

I have no control over that, but running out and buying a new car, a trip to Mexico, or buying a fucking sea kayak or something dumb like that, will just have to wait for a while…right? Let’s see what happens first. Okay, so the plan is to do nothing...just sit and wait and see what happens for a while.

We're not making any sudden moves here, ladies and gentlemen.

Odds are, it will all add up to roughly the same as the ODSP pension, and in that sense it represents a basic income, in terms of myself and other senior citizens, who presumably have earned it in some way, shape or form.

I figure I have, that is for sure.

 

END

Louis Shalako has books, stories and audiobooks on Google Play.

See his art on ArtPal.

Check out this other story here.

 

Thank you for reading.

 

 

 

 

 

Exponential Growth.

Louis Shalako

Setting a rational sales goal, month to month, isn’t all that difficult. Making it happen isn’t all that difficult either, since it’s a rational goal. Here at Long Cool One Books, over the last three months, we’ve seen sales increases of ten percent or greater. It’s a kind of exponential growth, but like interest rates, whether you owe money, or you`re earning money on an investment, sales increases are compounded upon the previous month’s sales increase.

It is analogous and so the math works just fine.

Let’s assume you sold 100 books in December 2014. A ten percent increase would translate into 110 books as of January 31. That`s a straightforward, ten percent sales increase. By the end of February, you should be up to 121. It’s not ten more books a month, but ten percent more books per month. This results in sales of 132-point-something by March. There is a factor, and you can multiply Month One sales by that factor to project what sales might be in Month Twelve, if in fact you meet your sales goals, month-by-month, for an entire year.

The factor, using simple interest compounding techniques as a substitute for sales compounding, is 2.138428377. Simply put, if you can meet your ten percent sales-increase goal, month on month for twelve months, then you will be selling 213.8 books the next January for every 100 books you are selling this January. Ten percent increases are a form of exponential growth.

The math is pretty simple and here`s another link.

Beating Your Personal Best.

“Each week, her goal was to drop time in her races--not win, but beat her own personal best. Sometimes she only cut one-tenth of a second from her previous performance, but it was an improvement nonetheless and worth celebrating.”

This is exactly what we`re trying to do. This is why I go swimming, and try to see how far I can go. This is also why by the end of the season I can go farther than in the beginning of the season—I`m in training, and I`m keeping track accurately, and I`m trying to beat my personal best.

So our goal here for the month of September isn`t so much to attract a literary agent. Our goal here is not to make the New York Times Bestseller List. We know very well we`re not likely to release a novel and sell 100,000 copies. We`re unknown, but we`re also independent.

It is our greatest strength.

We don`t give a shit about any of that. What we want to do is to take last month`s (August, 2015), sales total and increase it by ten percent. That`s all, ladies and gentlemen. That`s all, ladies and gentlemen, month after month. We just have to keep going—that`s all.

In July, we sold 362 books. In August, 395 books. For September, we`re hoping for about 450 book sales across a bunch of platforms, all of which have strengths and weaknesses, and which must be treated on an individual basis. It is true, that a traditional publisher wouldn`t be interested in these kinds of numbers. They have a long tooth-to-tail ratio. For every book I sell, they would have to sell a thousand, maybe even ten thousand books just to break even.

They are no better at business than you or I.

The thing is, after twenty years on a disability pension, I really can`t succumb to that sense of entitlement and turn my nose up at a couple of hundred books a month. Especially since I`ve been seeing sales grow lately, when everyone else is blogging doom and gloom, everyone else is writing about the Top Ten Thousand Mistakes You Amateur Newbie Author`s Make, and WHY YOU`RE NEVER GOING TO BE VALIDATED BY SOMEONE IMPORTANT.

(There really shouldn`t be an apostrophe there in authors, Louis. – ed.)

(Point taken. P. S. Fuck off. Louis.)

So, you`re no doubt thinking, how do we achieve these ten percent increases in sales.

The simple answer is that we work ten percent harder, or for ten percent longer, or do our jobs ten percent better. WE WRITE TEN PERCENT MORE BOOKS. These are our own personal algorithms that we are gaming, which is a perfectly legitimate thing to do.

Here at Long Cool One Books, we could write our product descriptions ten percent better. 

We could make our book covers ten percent better, okay, that sounds silly when all of art is so subjective. But merely working, pushing ahead at a constant rate, becoming better-skilled and more professional every day, probably helps.

Producing more products, each and every month, probably helps.

Becoming a better writer, and learning more about what people read, probably helps. Writing the sort of books that people want to read, might not actually help—that`s because those product categories are already extremely crowded by people following a trend. Finding a niche that is underserved, or badly-served, might help quite a bit.

Here at Long Cool One Books, reading the rules set down from on high for other people has been very illuminating for us. They`re the ones that told us to raise our prices to where we can make a living at it—which would price our books at about a hundred and eighty-five bucks each; and no one would ever buy one. They`re the ones that told us not to check our accounts, when that is a wonderful source of data and feedback. It will just depress you, or so they said.

They forgot to mention just how much it will empower you.

(They`re the ones that told us never to use a semi-colon. – ed.)

(Point taken. Now fuck off again. Louis.)

Here`s an interesting point. Let`s say you are lucky enough to land a traditional publishing contract, signing up, in your very first contract, with a small press. It looks like a lucky break. 

Someone else believes in you. They believe they can make money off of your work, the only question is why you don't. But how big is that advance. A couple of grand, five or ten grand tops. They`ll print up anywhere from 750 copies, (selling at forty bucks in an independent, brick-and-mortar store) to maybe, if you`re lucky, 2,000. You will never earn out your advance. You will likely never see a royalty cheque, and it takes years for the contract to revert. And you`ve sold somewhere between 750 and 2,000 books. The only street credibility you get is that you`ve been published.

This is the way to attract an agent. Or so they say. This is the way to make the bestseller lists—or so they say.

We`re going to continue to buck that trend, to reject all such advice, and just keep on doing what we`re already doing well. For one thing, we`ve distributed well over a hundred thousand books in five years. It`s taken that long to get where we are now. But you could submit books forever, without actually getting anywhere. That`s why so many people talk about luck in this business, when it`s really art and science that will get you to where you need to go.

Fuck them, anyways. I don`t have time for that shit.

To hell with the rest of the industry. But I will promise you this: guys like me are going to take a billion-dollar bite out of this industry in 2015. And next year, at least one-point-one billion. Maybe even one-point-one-one billion.

It`s called thinking outside the box, and they`ll lecture you on that too.

If you don`t believe it, just sit back and watch. Sit back and listen to them bitch, and whine, and piss and moan.

You will see, ladies and gentlemen.

End

Another article.

http://shalakopublishing.blogspot.ca/2013/09/production-goals.html