Vinyl Valhalla #1 – The Formative Years

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, vinyl without end. Amen.

 

My first post on stereos and music, “Sanctuary For The Restless Male Mind,” was a brief heads-up for a series of posts on a topic that will be of interest to many people: music, and especially the stereos that most of us reproduce that music with. With that in mind, here we go:

My first encounter with stereos was with Mom’s Philco console stereo, which looked something like this:

 

Source: http://midcenturymodernfreak.tumblr.com/post/62723868354/1960s-sylvania-walnut-am-fm-stereo-record-player

 

Mom had come from a humble French-Canadian background, and becoming an administration Flying Officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) back in the 60’s saw her receive a meaningful pay check for the first time in her life. Quite reasonably, she treated herself to the Philco—turntable, AM/FM, amplifier, and speakers, all in one convenient and handsome cabinet.

Dad was (and remains) a Johnny Cash fan—how many of you have a parent who’s seen both Cash and Buddy Holly, live? Mom had Elvis and Edith Piaf albums. So I have fond recollections of hearing albums like these:

 

It takes so little spirits for Nav to “Walk The Line.” This tends to lead to a “Burning Ring of Fire” the ensuing day.

 

When I was around 10, I received a plastic Sears turntable as a Christmas gift. I haven’t been able to find any photos of it, but this will give you an idea of the sort of thing that I had:

 

Close enough

 

I remember listening to my Elton John’s Greatest Hits album on it. “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” and “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting” and “Benny & The Jets” were part of my cultural upbringing. I also had a fantastic used Guess Who album that an Uncle had given me. “No Sugar Tonight” and “American Woman” were also staples. Yes, there was a time before Lenny Kravitz, way, way back in the distant past.

 

10 year old Nav didn’t know that “greatest hits” albums were gauche. He just loved the music.

“No Sugar Tonight” Trumps “American Woman,” IMO. Feel free to disagree.

 

My broader exposure to music, though, really began as a kid of just 13. Remember this made-for-TV movie?:

 

So unbelievably cool to a 13 year old boy living in at C.F.B. Nowhere.

 

Yes, Kiss Meets The Phantom of the Park was an incredible experience for a young 13 year old lad in the not-cosmopolitan locale of Canadian Forces Base Summerside, Prince Edward Island, back in ’78. And, sure enough, didn’t one awesome S. Claus leave this album for me under the tree that Christmas morning?:

 

Japanese audiophile re-issue. WARNING: Do not play under the influence of alcohol. May result in Nav spandex-clad karaoke episodes. Listen to with caution.

 

I was into skateboarding, back in the late 70’s. After Summerside, Dad was posted for a year to the even more not-cosmopolitan U.S. Navy Facility in Argentia, Newfoundland, Canada. It was actually a great place for a kid my age, and with my subscription to Skateboarder Magazine, I was introduced to aspects of skateboarder culture, which included picking up Blondie and Nazareth albums after reading reviews of them.

 

Ah, the joys of exploring music.

 

1980 saw us move to the outskirts of broader metropolitan Halifax, Nova Scotia, at Canadian Forces Base Shearwater. By working a few part-time jobs, I saved enough to buy a Lloyd’s all-in-one stereo, just like this:

 

Better than a plastic kids’ stereo, but still a long way away from true hi-fi

 

Not only did it have an automatic turntable (which would shut itself off after playing an album) and AM/FM receiver, it also had an 8-track player. You haven’t heard music until it’s been interrupted by the massive KA-CHUNK of a mid-song track change. As I began working at a variety of jobs in my spare time, I could afford to explore music a little more. I was also going to concerts with high school friends, when major acts would condescend to play Halifax: Ted Nugent, Van Halen, etc. I’d normally go to bed after throwing a final album on, and fall asleep listening to Led Zeppelin or Queen.

Any of these seem familiar?

 

British rock import albums!

Biting social commentary.

LOVE early Purple.

Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here were great. The Wall was monumental.

Everything up to The Game was genius. Freddie and Brian May…

Violin bow and double-neck electric guitar, courtesy of the amazing Jimmy Page.

 

Little did I know that these formative music-stereo years were to stay with me for the rest of my life, as my tastes and experience and knowledge grew. It wasn’t until around 2000, however, with the discovery of one unselfish and dedicated audiophile’s website that I learned what true high-fidelity audio was really about. Forget all about the fancy magazine adds and the “amazing” 1,000 watt amplifiers at your local electronics shop. You’d be amazed at just how much musical information and emotion are actually hidden in those mysterious vinyl grooves. You just have to know how to coax those delicate little musical bits out.

 

Stay tuned for the true story behind what are probably the greatest turntables to have ever existed.

 

Musical genius. Words escape me.

 

TO BE CONTINUED…

 

P.S. I listened to an audiophile re-issue of The Wall last night, for the first time since high school. Wow. It was spiritual in a cerebral sort of way. For those of you who’ve had an advance read of my book The Mirror, I think you’ll see some of the lyrics from The Wall in a whole new light, especially the parts dealing with “mother.” I’ll have to write a post about this, someday. Fascinating.

P.P.S. Look what I’ve just found on 180g vinyl and ordered! Eva Cassidy on vinyl! Her singing is so beautiful, it can bring tears to my eyes, may God rest her gentle soul.

The voice of an angel

Chef Nav’s Culinary Crime Against Humanity

Oh, my aching guts.

WARNING! THIS POST CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE

Those who’ve followed this blog and especially those who have read my book (pre-release) will know that I am a most serious fellow who both never jokes and is somewhat adept at identifying abstract patterns. Often this works to my advantage.

Other times, it doesn’t.

It appears as if I am afflicted with a certain cognitive asymmetry. This is a very clever way of saying that I can be very not clever in certain regards, haut cuisine being one of the better examples. Indeed, The Nameless One, who is so named as she must not be named, once looked on in astonished horror as I attempted to make a delicious meal in which I mixed canned tuna and canned baked beans. At least, it was supposed to be a delicious meal, in the same spirit as the two people who bumped into one another and mixed chocolate with peanut butter. It proved to be a serendipitously delicious and accidental culinary discovery, or at least it was in the 1970’s commercials.

Fairy tales don’t happen in Nav’s kitchen

How was I to know baked beans and tuna would taste like crap and turn my guts into knots for an entire day? Tuna comes in cans. Baked beans come in cans. There was a pattern there; I just bloody knew it. Not all patterns are good ones, I suppose.

Where the hell is the cautionary labelling?: NOT FOR USE WITH CANNED TUNA!

This morning, The Nameless One left me with idiot-proof instructions regarding a delicious and healthy meal that was to be made with the F@#!ing Vitamix superblender. This blender is so powerful that some 3rd world nations use it for tire recycling. With this monstrosity of unrestrained kitchen torque as my mystic culinary temple, and much like the mystic Egyptian Book of the Dead, The Nameless One left me her cryptic and timeless message on the kitchen blackboard: beets; carrots; dates; coconut; almonds. There. The mystery of the universe, solved. Whatever the bloody hell could ever go wrong with just five ingredients?

Plenty.

The first thing that a man must do–and when mustn’t a man do what a man must do?–when confronted with such a righteous quest is to pull out Excaliber or some other holy and +3 magic sword. Not having one lying around, I whipped out the next best thing: the 10″ Shun Classic chef’s knife / Bilbo Baggins’ special.

I’m compensating for what?!

Having scrubbed and chopped both red AND orange beets, as two colours surely must be healthier than one, I then pondered the stupid coconut. The goal was to get the uber-fresh coconut milk from inside the coconut AND into the destroyer of vegetables that I so dearly love.

We couldn’t have canned coconut milk. No. That wouldn’t be cricket. So, having left my light sabre at the office and not wanting to provoke a 911 call for having attacked an unarmed coconut with a reciprocating saw, I decided to use our U.N. Human Rights Commission-Approved Guantanamo Bay  Ethical Restraining Device, to keep the coconut from hurting itself while I punctured the bloody life out of it.

Respecting the dignity of all mankind.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, the cognitive stress of solving the Mystery of the Sealed Coconut so taxed my poor asymmetric brain that I forgot all about the bloody dates. Might as well try to re-start the warp core without di-lithium crystals. Otherwise, all the ingredients went into the F@#!ing Vitamix. I followed the proper VM ignition sequence protocol, just like they teach at NASA.

The lid was sealed. Low power, minimum speed. Slowly increase the speed via the correct rotary dial control knob as the tire recycler chomped through the hard bits of beets and carrots and almonds like a pit bull going through prime rib. Just when you think you’ve reached the point of maximum vegetable violence (MVV), throw ‘er into high gear, and stand back as time and space warp under the awesome power of the F@#!ing Vitamix.

A bowl of rotten Pepto-friggin’-Bismol and cheap port would have tasted better than this Tinkerbell-pink healthy crap. I’m so glad I added the hairy-assed coconut milk; what a disaster it would have been had I forgotten that, too. I had a Campbell’s Chunky Soup moment upon first tasting it: maybe God is punishing me, so I should use a spoon, to get every friggin’ drop. “Jeez, all that’s missing is a touch of dates,” Nav said to himself. \

Who needs hot yoga or Pilates to strengthen my core, when I can just drink this crap and  send my guts to the digestive olympics decathlon? No colon cancer for this culinary cowboy, no ma’am. There’s fibre, and then there’s Vitamix! Might make the U.S. Navy super gun R&D team green with envy, which is preferable to being internally pink and gurgling with my concoction.

Whatever reason God put me on this Earth, I can with great confidence say this one thing about it: it surely wasn’t to make food.

Copyright (c) and Pseudonyms: What Every Author Should Know

The cover I didn’t choose

There can be a number of reasons why an author would want to write under another name. For example, horror master Stephen King also wrote under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman, so he could publish more often without saturating the Stephen King brand. More recently, Harry Potter author Joanne Rowling wrote for an adult audience as Robert Galbraith, to escape the Harry Potter hype.

These are examples from fiction. I am a non-fiction writer (well, for the moment, at least) who is writing as “Michael M. McConaughey.” Who I really am must remain an eternal mystery, just like the Bruce Wayne – Batman thing. Besides wanting privacy due to the rather controversial nature of my true story, there is actually a legal requirement that I not be publicly identified in association with my case. Ontario’s Child and Family Services Act s. 45.(8), under “Hearings and Orders,” is quite explicit:

Prohibition: identifying child
(8)  No person shall publish or make public information that has the effect of identifying a child who is a witness at or a participant in a hearing or the subject of a proceeding, or the child’s parent or foster parent or a member of the child’s family. R.S.O. 1990, c. C.11, s. 45 (8).

I have a little bit of a problem, don’t I? My account manager at FriesenPress.com has informed me that we are now at the stage where she must submit the application for copyright to the U.S. Copyright Office on my behalf. I can’t very well have “Copyright (c) 2014 [INSERT MyRealName]” printed in the book, can I? As it turns out, I can’t use “Copyright (c) 2014 MYPRIVATECORPORATION INC,” either. All someone would have to do is Google the corporation name, and my real name would come up as a director (if I had one), as this is a matter of public record.

However, I can register the copyright of my book under my pseudonym. Here’s what the guidance says:

An author of a copyrighted work can use a pseudonym or pen name. A work is pseudonymous if the author is identified on copies or phonorecords of the work by a fictitious name. Nicknames and other diminutive forms of legal names are not considered fictitious. Copyright does not protect pseudonyms or other names.

If you write under a pseudonym but want to be identified by your legal name in the Copyright Office’s records, give your legal name and your pseudonym on your application for copyright registration. Check “pseudonymous” on the application if the author is identified on copies of the work only under a fictitious name and if the work is not made for hire. Give the pseudonym where indicated.

If you write under a pseudonym and do not want to have your identity revealed in the Copyright Office’s records, give your pseudonym and identify it as such on your application. You can leave blank the space for the name of the author. If an author’s name is given, it will become part of the Office’s online public records, which are accessible by Internet. The information cannot later be removed from the public records. You must identify your citizenship or domicile.

In no case should you omit the name of the copyright claimant. You can use a pseudonym for the claimant name. But be aware that if a copyright is held under a fictitious name, business dealings involving the copyrighted property may raise questions about its ownership. Consult an attorney for legal advice on this matter.

Works distributed under a pseudonym enjoy a term of copyright protection that is the earlier of 95 years from publication of the work or 120 years from its creation. However, if the author’s identity is revealed in the registration records of the Copyright Office, including in any other registrations made before that term has expired, the term then becomes the author’s life plus 70 years.

So, in my case, here’s what I have to do:

1 – Get my FriesenPress.com Case Manager to put my pseudonym of Matthew M. McConaughey on the copyright application, and identify it as such.
2 – Leave the space for the real name blank. DO NOT PUT MY REAL NAME ON THE APPLICATION!!!
3 – Recognize the difference in the duration of copyright by doing this (not a big deal, for me).
4 – Make certain that I can prove that it’s my work, in case some clown tries to claim that he or she wrote the book and is “Michael M. McConaughey.”
5 – Consult an attorney.

In my case, 1 and 2 will be taken care of by FriesenPress.com on my behalf, as this is part of the package that was paid for. 3 is really not an issue for me, at the tender age of 48. For 4, I have my correspondence with FriesenPress.com as evidence that I wrote my book. I could also show the manuscript to a lawyer before it is published, as such a lawyer would make for a credible witness. I can also mail myself a copy of the manuscript before it is published, but not open it (i.e., leave it sealed) when it arrives. This allows me to prove that I wrote the manuscript before I published it, as the mail would have a date stamp (hopefully).

For 5 (don’t skip this!), I would look for an honourable and competent attorney with expertise in defamation and copyright law, such as Toronto’s Mr. Gil Zvulony.

Mr. Gil Zvulony, Toronto Attorney (http://zvulony.ca/wp-content/uploads/Gil-Zvulony.jpg)

 

If you’ve done your homework, all it might take is a 15 to 30 minute telephone call with such an attorney to confirm that this applies in your legal jurisdiction (mine is the Holy Feminist Matriarchy of Canada). Being a little older and wiser, my book The Mirror, Book One – Welcome to the Evil Sisterhood will be Copyright (c) 2014 Michael M. McConaughey.

Thus, I shall remain the most mysterious Michael M. McConaughey, Scourge of the Matriarchy.

[CAVEAT: This post is not to be construed as legal advice. It is for educational purposes only, to prepare you for discussion with a licensed attorney.]

Children’s Aid Society (CAS) Feminist Social Workers Still At It

Justice is blind, or, at least, it should be. (Source: http://www.photo-dictionary.com/photofiles/list/7606/10212statue_of_justice.jpg)

Those who’ve followed this blog (and especially those who’ve read the manuscript for my forthcoming book) know my feelings about feminist child “protection” social workers. In the jurisdiction where I live—Ontario, Canada—, child protection agencies are officially known as Children’s Aid Societies, or CAS for short. These odious feminist entities are borderline above the law, and they know it.

As I discovered to my horror back in 2008, feminists have rigged key definitions and practices in the mandatory Child Protection Standards in Ontario regulatory document. Since 2007, if a mother does not win custody of the kids in divorce (and hence the child support payments), then it is considered child ‘abuse,’ especially if mother is a child abuser. This is to rationalize malicious feminist interference in divorce custody on mothers’ behalf via fraudulent child ‘protection’ action on a province-wide scale.

For those who might be inclined to think that I exaggerate in my analysis of Ontario’s Matriarchal feminist child protection system, consider this recent column by the National Post’s Barb Kay entitled “Children’s Aid Societies gone rogue.”

Here are the highlights of this 154 day case:

– In 2010, the London-Middlesex CAS applied to protect three boys (5, 12, and 15) after a parental separation.

– Mother vilified Father, claiming: he had emotionally abused her; that he was a sexual abuser; and that he was a murderer who tried to exploit the kids to try and kill the mother.

– Mother, no surprise, turned out to be unreliable and manipulative. [Nav: Probably covert narcissist or borderline personality disorder]

– The CAS ignored the boys’ repeated reports of Mother’s “… violence, alcoholism and sexual indiscretions.”

– The mother eventually resorted to alleging that the oldest son tried to kill her, which brought the matter to criminal court.

– Luckily, there was a good judge on the case, Mr. Justice Harper (Where were you in 2008!). Justice Harper slammed the CAS as being the driving force behind the trial and being an advocate for mother (remember, a CAS is only supposed to protect children). He stuck the CAS with 2/3’s of the record $1.4M court costs, and assigned mother the other 1/3 ($604,500).

– The London-Middlesex CAS’s notes referred to Mother as their “client.”

– Mandatory CAS document sharing for court was discovered to be running a year late.

– One CAS supervisor, tasked with providing documents to lawyers, removed 475 pages of notes, emails, records, and summaries from the file. This should be a criminal offence.

– Justice Harper felt that the kids were permanently scarred by all of this, and that “This was exacerbated by the actions of the Society, some police officers, some women’s groups, a school board and her employers … many of whom accepted without any level of scrutiny the (woman’s) self-reports.”

– Justice Harper noted that the CAS had acted in bad faith. This means that the CAS workers involved in this case do not necessarily enjoy the “Good Samaritan” clause protection of Ontario’s Child and Family Services Act. [My opinion.]

– Barb Kay gets, on average, one CAS horror story a week.

It is this systemic and fraudulent feminist child “protection” scam that The Mirror, Book One – Welcome to the Evil Sisterhood will be exposing. I suspect that it is going to make for an interesting if unpleasant read for good judges like Justice Harper. God as my Witness, I will expose this heinous practice for all the world to see.

Scrivener! The Writer’s Best Friend

Image source: http://literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php

I suppose one of the advantages to the new reality of first-time authors having to self-publish is that it forces us to learn so much about writing and publishing in general. For example, to learn more about marketing self-published books, I turned to Michael Hyatt’s modern classic PLATFORM – Get Noticed in a Noisy World. I learned that Mr. Hyatt uses Scrivener as his exclusive writing software / app.

Mr. Hyatt lists five reasons as to why he made the switch to Scrivener:

1. It provides a hierarchical file structure. I like this aspect of Scrivener, too, as I naturally tend to organize documents this way. For a simple example, think of a book, with its underlying chapters forming a hierarchy. The file structure of Scrivener can be exactly matched to your book’s structure, which, hopefully, has already been flushed out in the process of writing your book proposal. I’ve done this with Scrivener for my nascent Book Two:

My 2nd “child,” in utereo

2. It has a distraction-free composition mode. Ultimately, a writer has to write. Scrivener’s composition mode is about as close to having nothing but a blank sheet of paper in front of you as you can get:

No distractions, so just write

3. It was created with writers in mind. Scrivener has so many useful features, and you can use as few or as many as you would like. Some of these are:

– It organizes each project (i.e., a book) as a separate binder.
– It has helpful views besides basic writing, such as a cork board with file summary notes or an outline view.
– You can keep research articles (text, photos, etc.) together in a binder. For a non-fiction writer such as I, this is a significant feature.
– You can split your screen. Thus, I can view a research article (maybe a newspaper article, for example) while I am writing about it in the other half of the screen. Or, I can view footnotes in the 2nd screen as I peruse the main document.
– It has the stats a writer would want access to (e.g., word counts).
– It has an “inspector window where I can keep notes, track status, link to articles, or even create custom meta data.” (Hyatt)

What a great way to organize your writing

4. It supports multi-markdown. According to Hyatt, this feature allows us as writers to separate the content creation phase (i.e., the writing) from the formatting, with Scrivener doing much of the work for us.

5. It allows for a variety of export options. This is potentially exciting for self-published authors, as Scrivener allows you to export directly to Kindle, iBooks Author, ePub, or PDF formats. This alone might make Scrivener worth its price of admission.

Hyatt mentions that he still uses Evernote as his main information warehouse, but that he does all his writing with Scrivener. I use both Evernote and Pocket for writing-relating information storage, and, as I am still relatively new to Scrivener, I am going to have to see how to work the relationship between these apps.

Think you might be interested in Scrivener? Check out the 10 minute An Introduction To Scrivener video.

If you’re interested, also note that Hyatt’s article says you can get a 20% discount by using his affiliate code MICHAELHYATT when purchasing it. Since it is now on sale for $45, the MICHAELHYATT discount code would reduce the price by $9, for a cost of $36. My preliminary use of Scrivener suggests that it is the real deal for serious writers, and I think that $36 is a fair price for a useful piece of software.

I’ve heard of other writings apps, such as the $100 Snowflake for the Snowflake Method, but have not used them.

From what I’ve seen so far, I wish I had had Scrivener to write Book One with, and I am certainly glad that I have it for Book Two. I’ll keep you updated as I get more familiar with Scrivener. For the record, I have no commercial interest with Scrivener; I bought my copy. (Scrivener is available for both Mac and Windows.)

The Superiority Of Patriarchy

Another winner by Violet. If she keeps this up, I may switch from a blogger to a reblogger. Please note her disclaimer at the start.

Serendipity

(Disclaimer: Please don’t take this too seriously, this is not a serious argument against feminism. It’s just funny.)

Quite a few years ago, I had the pleasure of watching the Dutch version of Survivor with my feminist roommate. That particular season would have two islands, one populated by men and one populated by women. My roommate had been promoting that particular series to me and the other students in the house for weeks because it would show us, according to her, what a society run by women – free from the evils of patriarchy – would be like.

And it did. Oh it did.

Here is what happened: initially both groups were dropped on their respective islands, given some supplies to get started and left to fend for themselves. In both groups there was some initial squabbling as people tried to figure out a local hierarchy. The men pretty much did…

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The Big Lie of a “Rape Culture” by Wendy McElroy

A rampant “Rape Culture” crisis on Canadian university campuses is the latest women-victim cause célèbre du jour for Canadian feminists and their toadies. This brilliant post by Violet at her blog Serendipity spells it out rather nicely:

Sanctuary for the Restless Male Mind

Sublimely beautiful

Made by the modern day Stradivarius

This is a short post to introduce a new series of posts on music and its reproduction: audio.

Genius

Which one is navigator1965? The chap in the middle?

Stradivarius performs Hendrix

Announcement: Legends of Windemere: Family of the Tri-Rune is available now!

Cover Art by Jason Pedersen

Legends of Windemere: Family of the Tri-Rune has Arrived!!!

Buy it Here for $2.99!

Book Blurb:

The magical adventure continues after Luke Callindor and his friends recover from their battles in Haven.

Nyx still has nightmares about casting the genocide spell in Hero’s Gate. Every night her heart is gripped by the sensation of hundreds of goblins dying by her magic. By the request of Lord Highrider and Duke Solomon, she is returning to fix the damage she caused. With Luke Callindor and Sari by her side, Nyx is ready to face the vengeful goblins and opportunistic thieves that plague Hero’s Gate. Yet, there is a darker threat that was born from her violated magic: The Krypters.

It is another action-packed, character driven story that will reveal one of our heroes has been lied to for their entire life.

Wondering what you’re in for? Check out the praise earned by the first three installments of this high fantasy series.

Cover Art by Jason Pedersen

Review Excerpts for Legends of Windemere: Beginning of a Hero:

“I greatly enjoyed the vivid characters, the gripping plot, and the refreshingly unique writing style (present tense). ” – kdillmanjones

“One of the things that won me over was the bouts of humor. Especially in the beginning. “This is not possible! I am a Paladin!” I thought I was going to die with delight.” – C.N. Faust

Cover Art by Jason Pedersen

Review Excerpts for Legends of Windemere: Prodigy of Rainbow Tower:

“Nyx is such a strong personality. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know her and more of the other characters, new and already known, with the rich tapestry of Windemere unfolding in between intense actions scenes and moments of kindness and budding friendships.” – Danielle Taylor

“Almost like the Harry Potter series. The books start out so young and innocent, but by the last book – watch out!” — Momto4Booklover

Cover by Jason Pedersen

Review Excerpts for Legends of Windemere: Allure of the Gypsies:

“One of the things I love most about this series are all the characters! They are developed so well that I feel like I know them personally. Even the newly introduced characters fit in immediately.” – BarbBookWorm

“Let’s talk about action. The author creates interesting action sequences with believable use of fantasy elements. He is very creative. There are also good sections where the characters stretch out and we get to know them better.” – Donald L. Mitchell “Music Lover”

Author Biography:

Charles Yallowitz was born and raised on Long Island, NY, but he has spent most of his life wandering his own imagination in a blissful haze. Occasionally, he would return from this world for the necessities such as food, showers, and Saturday morning cartoons. One day he returned from his imagination and decided he would share his stories with the world. After his wife decided that she was tired of hearing the same stories repeatedly, she convinced him that it would make more sense to follow his dream of being a fantasy author. So, locked within the house under orders to shut up and get to work, Charles brings you Legends of Windemere. He looks forward to sharing all of his stories with you and his wife is happy he finally has someone else to play with.

Contact:

Blog- www.legendsofwindemere.com
Twitter- @cyallowitz
Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/CharlesYallowitz

How Should I Price My New Book?

Gare Metz. Credit: Archimatth, Wikipedia.org (“book store”)

 

For better or for worse, revisions to The Mirror, Book One – Welcome to the Evil Sisterhood are done. I doubt that the text is 100% error-free, but if it’s 99% or, better, 99.5%, that’s good enough for this first-time independent author. My friesenpress.com account manager has informed me that the next step is to identify the prices for the hardcover, paperback, and e-book formats. This sounds like a great topic for a post.

My ultimate goal with the book is to maximize sales, and thus maximize the book’s social impact. Having said this, I am not immune to author royalties, as I’d like to recover at least the ~ $10,000 investment in the book. Even better would be getting out of the rather significant personal debt hole that fighting court-ordered child abuse has put me in.

For those not familiar with my forthcoming book, it is a non-fiction work that is consistently reported to be a gripping read that compares favourably to quality fiction. It has strong elements of: autobiography, human interest, abnormal human psychology, scandal, cover up, intrigue, and fascinating new ideas. You can read more about it here, including what test readers are saying.

Having done some preliminary background digging, I’ve come up with some interesting information. First, however, this is what the default recommendations (based on page count) are on my author account page at the friesenpress.com website:

e-book: Recommended “Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price” (MSRP) was $2.99, which would net me a generous royalty of $2.10, if purchased from the friesenpress online bookstore. Any price above this at the FP bookstore nets me 70% royalties. For other online sellers, this would vary from 30% to 55% royalties. (See this link for some detailed information on e-book pricing and royalties. Generally, $2.99 appears to be the floor for the highest rates.)

paperback: Recommended MSRP is $21.99. For sales at the FP bookstore, this would net me a tidy $11.81 in royalty for each book. For normal distribution channels, this would net me a $1.76 royalty for each book sold, an order of magnitude less! The minimum MSRP is $20.49, at which my regular distribution channels sales would net me $0.00 in per-book royalty.

hard cover: Recommended MSRP is $35.99, which would net me a handsome $19.79 royalty if bought from the FP online bookstore. I feel like I am going to swoon at the very thought of such a sum! Through normal distribution channels, this drops to a $3.60 royalty per book sold. The minimum price is $32.02, at which I make a $0.00 royalty through normal distribution channels sales.

Since I make killer good royalty rates via the FP online bookstore, I can discount the price of the physical books there and still make a buck or two. However, before identifying actual prices, there is still more to consider. As it turns out, physical books don’t really matter that much for the independent author.

Kudos to blogger LindaGHill for bringing this one to my attention. Authorearnings.com describes its purpose being as “… to gather and share information so that writers can make informed decisions. Our secondary mission is to call for change within the publishing community for better pay and fairer terms in all contracts. This is a website by authors and for authors.” From their superb “The 7k Report” post, I pulled the following information:

Source: http://authorearnings.com/the-report/

Wow. E-book is, by far, the dominate format of Amazon.com bestseller sales. Watch what happens when we look at only the top 100:

Source: http://authorearnings.com/the-report/

Even more Wow. The dominance of the e-book format becomes more pronounced. It was this information that lead me to conclude that physical book sales and pricing are relatively unimportant for me as a new independent author.

I should note that these data are for fiction, whereas I have written non-fiction. I suspect that physical books are more important in non-fiction, especially if the books can be reused often (e.g., cookbook), will be a frequent reference to other works, or it has some emotional / sentiment value to the reader. Thus, I temper my expectations of the e-book format a bit.

However, given such dominance, I suspect that e-book will still be the most important format for my book, but not quite to the degree of significance shown here.

For the hardcover and paperback, then, it’s a no-brainer: I’ll go with FriesenPress.com’s recommended MSRPs. I might ask for their recommendations as to the discount offered at the FP online bookstore–25%, 33%, 45%, etc.–, but this too is nothing to lose sleep over. To be honest, I do like the idea that my book will be available in physical form. Perhaps I am old-fashioned.

Next, let’s consider the Forbes online article “Mark Coker: Indie Authors Are Underpricing Their Books.” These are the main points I pulled from this article on self-published e-books:

– Free e-books “sell” the most copies (not surprisingly).

– We sell fewer e-books as the price climbs: $.99 sells more e-books than $1.99, $1.99 sells more e-books than $2.99, etc. However, absolute $$$ per book author royalty goes up with price.

– $2.99 to $5.99 is the “sweet spot” band that produces optimal indie (i.e., independent) author income.

– Lower prices have the advantage that more readers, due to greater sales volume, will get to know you and your work (i.e., may help for future books’ sales or greater social impact if that is a goal, which it is in this case).

– Best selling e-books tend to be longer ones (e.g., 120,000 words or more), contrary to “conventional” book wisdom (mine is 94,000 words, with a sequel in progress).

– Top 30 selling e-books worked out to price at between 3¢/1000 words and 5¢/1000 words. (With my 94,000 words, this would range from $2.82 to $4.70, or $2.99 to $4.99 with standard $.99 price rounding.)

– One exception was a popular novella, which, at ~40,000 words and $2.99, worked out to 8¢ to 9¢/1000

Thus, The Mirror, Book One would seem to naturally fall into the “sweet spot” band, somewhere between $2.99 and $4.99. If it’s as good as the test readers seem to be saying, then it might be able to command 9¢/1000 words, or $8.49, rounded up a few cents.

This might be feasible were I a known author. However, I suspect that, as a new author, the e-book wouldn’t necessarily sell well at that high a price. Thus, $8.49 appears to constitute a price ceiling for the e-book form of The Mirror, Book One.

Successful author Tim Ferriss recommends 99¢ to $2.99 for e-book pricing. Even more interesting is his recommendation to initially set the price to $0, to drive “sales” and build a following with feedback for the book.

Let’s say that I follow Tim’s advice and initially give away the e-book as a marketing strategy. The hardcover and paperback prices will be as per FriesenPress’s recommendations, as they won’t be driving the book’s success bus, so to speak. After the free book giveaway period, assuming that it has the desired effect, what do you think the e-book price should be set to?