The Bright Side

Okay, things have improved some. I've taken the opportunity afforded by the screwup to improve the book. The tab spacing is better, I fixed up the colors on the cover and I even caught a few typos. All pretty good stuff. And the printer is being really good. They are doing the reprint at cost and in a hurry. They expect to have printing done July 6th, which is 2 weeks flat from when I got them the new version of the book. That is quite good.

So, all in all, things are progressing well. I will lose even more money on the book (I cut the bleeding some by doing a shorter run this time, and the print shop managed to stop the first shipment in transit saving me like $700), but there is a price for pursuing one's dreams. Or else everybody would do it :)

The book is looking a lot better.

Happiness,

Joseph

AGONY!

It was a good day (I got sample books) and a TERRIBLE day - the books were missing all quotes, dashes and apostrophes. In other words, they were useless. To make things just a touch worse, I had them shipped - at a cost of just under $1000 - before catching the problem. So, now I will be reprinting the books. Thankfully, despite it being my mistake, the printer is doing the next batch at cost. I feel very stupid (and poor). Perhaps the biggest cost is time. I now don't have time to do a book tour this summer - because I won't get the books until too late.

What can you do?

It is a good product, eventually I will make enough mistakes to do it right :) I just want to get books to those who bought them as quickly as possible.

Happiness,

Joseph

Fun Day

Another fun day. The book is now in Ingram, so it has shown up on Amazon in Germany, France etc... Also, the book printing was completed yesterday with sample copies being sent to me today.

Lots of work to get ready for their arrival, but I am looking forward to it.

Going to Market

I put the book up on Bowker a little while ago. On May 19th, it showed up on BarnesandNoble.com. I'd been planning to use Amazon, but B&N picked up the book first - so I used them. I added a link from my website (as well as doing some final modification as discussed before) and got ready. And then, over Memorial Day weekend (Sunday morning actually), I fired out an email to everybody I knew. The text is below:

"Hello all (and sorry for the mass email)!

So, there's a long and a short message in here.

The short message? BUY MY BOOK!

Just visit www.ShortEddy.com to order a pre-sale copy of my international thriller for children aged 9-90. From the leafy parks of Lakedale USA, to the mountain hidaways of Colombian druglords, to the backstreets of Mogadishu, Short Eddy, a 4th grade nerd, finds himself swept up into PENGUIN's efforts to stop Grobar the Goat from taking over the world.

The book is only $8.95 if you're a Barnes and Noble member.

The long message?

If you know me, you may have heard about PENGUIN, the world's foremost spy agency? You may even know some of their history: how Napoleon was a rogue PENGUIN commander who forgot that his human soldiers couldn't survive a Russian winter; how PENGUIN helped stop Hitler; and even how they faced down one of the greatest threats the world has ever seen: Grobar the Goat.

If you've never heard of Grobar the Goat, don't worry. PENGUIN hadn't either. But he was a grave threat nonetheless. He had discovered a mind control potion that, when mixed with ordinary caffeine, would deliver the drinker into his total control. He had plans to manufacture and distribute millions of tons of the stuff. He would control the minds of caffeine consumers - and use them to liquidate just about everybody else.

In other words, he wasn't a very nice guy.

Well, his story, and the story of those who stopped him, is finally being published. This was a job PENGUIN couldn't do alone. They needed help from heroes like Sam the Elephant, Bartholomew the Frog with Precision Hopping Ability, and, of course, Short Eddy.

The story is one of intrigue, humor and daring. And now, it is available to you (or your kids and grandkids!).

Just visit www.ShortEddy.com and follow the links to buy your own copy of Grobar and the Mind Control Potion. There's no need to stop at just one. Buy copies for your children, grandchildren, the children in you, and all your various friends!

Of course, being as you're my friends and all, I'd love you to pass this message along to as many people as you can. The more people read it, the more people order the book, the better the book looks to buyers (higher on the B&N sales rank), and the better the chance for PENGUIN, Sam, Bartholomew and Eddy to get the recognition they deserve.

Oh, and if you'd like me to do a reading in your city, just email me at jcox@shorteddy.com.

Happiness!

Joseph Cox
p.s. Don't be shy about forwarding this ;)
p.p.s. The book will ship earlier than Barnes and Noble says it will, they are just playing it safe."

I had been ranked 137,000. It got up to 89,000 on Monday. I woke up Tuesday at it was 813. EIGHT HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN. That day, it got up to 137. There are millions of books at it made it to 137. I still don't know what this means in terms of sales, but it got even higher, to 135 before it began to fall back. I had 3 days almost totally in the top 500, and then I fell back to about 1000 and then about 10,000. I sent out over a thousand flip cards to friends and family and I've been hovering about 10,000. I got mentioned on FoxNews.com as a SLD (Stupid Little Dreamer) (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,158971,00.html). It is a complement. Two authors emailed me asking me for advice. I imagine I sold a few units. We'll see. It was great publicity. More importantly, I can now send a quote from a major news source when pursuing other publicity.

I'm trying to figure out how I'm doing. Currently, an author from my alma mater is touring. He'll be in Portland June 20th. He got published by a major publishing house and is doing a big-time tour. He's ranked lower than I am. He's sold 940 copies. Another book, being published in June by a major house, which my neice and nephew had heard about, has also been ranked lower. It is being featured prominently on B&N. They've sold just over 1000 copies. That is scary, but it also sets a benchmark. It is unusual to move a lot of copies, and you can make some real waves with 1000. I really want 1000 pre-sales. I probably have 150, but I can dream.

Today, Ingram (the national distributor), started carrying my book. At some point, the BarnesandNoble and Amazon systems will point to them and I'll be able to figure out my sales to date. Needless to say, I am seriously interested in the results.

As an aside, the night before last, I got my Masters in Finance. It has also been a good business day in the real world :)

I hope I can build from what I think has been a good kick-off.

Printing

When you deal in books, you have to actually have books. Terrible, isn't it. Well, let me run through this story. First, the artist (the wonderful Rebecca Becker) came to me and made individual chapter headings for every chapter. STUNNING stuff. If you're reading this and haven't bought the book, do so. Just the pictures are worth it. So, we moved towards printing. I kept making little changes in the QuarkExpress files to keep things up to spec for printing, as I understood it. Now I understand it a lot better and I could do a much faster job. So I used print-industry.com to get quotes. I got about 20 back - running from about 70 cents/copy including shipping to about $2.20. I didn't use the cheapest bidder. I used the cheapest who was a mainline book printer in the US. I don't know enough to work with Asian producers who can't speak or read English yet. So, I paid about 80 cents for my 168-page book. My print shop is Data Reproductions. They have been great so far. We'll see how the books come out. When I see them, I will be sure to update this page!

Distribution

One of the big issues in books is distribution. You need a distributor to sell in stores. I guess in theory you might not need one, but then you'd need to sign a contract with every book store you want to sell in - and that is a major problem. Sure, you could sign the standard contracts for a Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com, but it gets dicey after that. It is very hard to sell to new people if the books can't at least be ordered through bookstores. So I sent off marketing kits to 8 distributors that specialize in small publishers. I got rejected or ignored by 7. Guess who I'm using :) Just to be sure, I tracked down some of their publishers and asked how their experiences had been. Yes, this place seemed to have some weakness in presentation - but people said they'd done well and we're cheap nickel and dimers. I signed the contract and we were off. I was very very happy to have cleared this bar. Without distribution, nobody in the business (book stores, reviewers etc...) will take you seriously. They'll just think you're a self-publisher. And with 175,000 books published a year, they don't need a self-publisher.

So, what do you send these guys? The answer is a marketing plan. I've talked about that some already.

Catching Up

First off. It has been a long time since I sent an update. In hindsight that was a mistake. Lots of fun stuff has been going on and it is good to record it one way or another.

So, where shall I start? I will try to do this chronologically, but I'm not terribly good at that, so it will only be a try - not a success.

Let's start with the web page. I reworked the webpage - www.shorteddy.com - about 5 times. The first time was pretty basic and ugly. The second time I'd gotten some art from the artist and made a really cool page that moved around, had pop-up menus etc... The problem was, it didn't work too well. So I used the same design concept (the logo splits open), without the moving bits and made a more static page. And then I decided I wanted a few more areas on the page and more flexibility to modify it. I also wanted things to look far more professional. So I made graphical headers for everything, made my buttons graphical, got rid of my pop-up menu (made a static one) and redid the content so it could be served in two formats (simple and javascript enhanced) without actually having to modify it in two places. I also added a few features. I added a Forum. At this point it isn't terribly effective, so I may delete it. But I'll wait a bit more. I also added merchandise. I found in a Wall Street Journal article a reference to a POD (Print-On-Demand) shirt printer (CafePress). I set up an account and they let me customize the selection and the apperance and everything. Now you can order T-shirts, mugs, posters, bags etc... for the PENGUIN logo. It is pretty cool and their stuff is very high quality. I am extremely satisfied with this company. If you get a chance, check out the page, it is pretty cool.