Tirial&Error Blog

Ereaders and updates

2012-01-25T12:13:00.000Z

I haven't been blogging recently because I've been too busy coding. My major project has been a lightweight php e-reader that takes Smashwords samples and displays them.

It's now up and running and I've got feedback, ranging from " cool!" to "I can't fault this."

The tricky bit was the launcher - since I wanted it to open from a link and run whethre or not the user had javascript, be useable by Wordpress users and others whose hosts were locked down, and run at a reasonable speed. And it had to be code easily used by non-coders. Let's just say there's a lot that goes on in the background, and leave it at that.

The real problem, and the reason another coder is building a java version is bandwidth. Parsing and sending the sample is almost 250K or our bandwidth each time it is hit - careful coding reduces the impact on the viewer, and the host offering it uses virtually none - but it's still costly. We've got the affiliate link hard coded in, which should help to offset the costs.

On the other hand I mght try and convert it to a desktop app which can read in files. It is already capable of reading in full (free) ebooks from Smashwords, the bandwidth becomes prohibitive. If it's a desktop app then anyone who wants to can run DRM-free epubs in it. It just wouldn't have a library or anything like that.

Right now I'm working on another coding project, this one at the exciting stage where all the variables are being written out on screen when it runs so I can see what the program is doing - or isn't. The problem for that project is going to be artwork and design - I can code and write, but my drawing? Not so good.

Talking Money

2012-01-17T14:15:00.000Z

This is ridiculous. I hadn't realised this until it came to the crunch, but I have a complete aversion to discussing monetary figures. I may have to ask someone else to write the sanitised (and more detailed) version of this for the Smashwords Tools blog.

The issue is the referral links on the Smashwords widgets. It's actually causing a few disagreements on the team, and some users wanting to know why they can't add their own - with varying degrees of politeness.

The hard truth: 500Mbs of bandwidth per day costs money.

While the developers are volunteers and donate dev time, and the processing power and server space are provided by a publisher, the bandwidth is an ongoing cost. And the tools aren't even out of beta yet.

Since we want the widgets to be free to use, we can a) put an ad on the website (which doesn't cover the costs) b) ask for donations (creating legal and tax issues) or c) add a referral link. At least with a referral link a user only contributes when the widget actually gains them a sale.

The worst current offender is the store - which doesn't take a referral link - but some of the widgets in the pipeline are larger (and fortunately faster). They are going to have to have hardcoded referral links, because otherwise the hosting cost will be prohibitive.

Oh well, away from these depressing thoughts and back to work on a search box for users who have webhosts who only take basic HTML - links and images only. I love a challenge.

You know you're a little geeky when...

2012-01-13T07:19:00.000Z

...after a day of PHP coding and trying to get putty and ssh to work together despite two networks that don't want to talk (for a closer analogy, doing the PC equivalent of two computers standing in the corner with their fingers in their ears shouting la-la I can't hear you) you relax by looking at chess problems.

And then wonder what it would be like if you played a video of the 1851 Immortal Game to the theme song of Mortal Kombat.

The answer?

In a techy kind of way, very cool indeed.

The Game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoJkiz4f2p0
The Music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAwWPadFsOA

Start the music first, the game immediately afterwards, and enjoy. If you get it right the moves in the video are pretty much on the beat.

And now back to digging up imagemagic from wherever the shell put it.

Tools - an unexpected level of interest

2012-01-09T07:28:00.000Z

Last night I checked the usage stats on those tools. Then I checked again. Then I dropped an email to a friend asking if they saw the 500% upswing too. And then google produced this:

http://www.smashwords.com/about/beta

We're in the status update on the front of Smashwords itself.

The only thing I would like to mention is that this isn't the sole work of one independent developer. This is more because of the owner of an independant publisher (who happens to also be a technical consultant) bemoaning the lack of smashwords widgets, and grabbing a few friends in the same field to correct this - and then making the widgets available to other people with Smashwords' permission.

This isn't, from our point of view, a money-making exercise due to hosting costs and supporting the backend engine. If someone else wants to use that engine to produce a widget with their own referral link embedded that would be fine with us.

The other thing this has given me is a rather extensive list of fixes and suggestions to deal with today, among the work on my own projects and this bits that pay the bills. But, after that update my most nerve-wracking job today is definitely going to be a scheduled and major upgrade to that back-end engine.

Wish me luck!

Smashwords blog

2012-01-08T07:48:00.000Z

A blog for the Smashwords tools is up, at http://smashwords-tools.blogspot.com/. This is partly to record our dev work, but also to give a single place where users can leave feedback.

Over the next few days I'll be adding posts for each of the gadgets as a place to leave comments, and possibly tying those posts in to the website through a feedback button.

Meanwhile what started as an online link directory for Smashwords books has grown into something more after we got feedback on the site that indicated it might be a useful tool for authors. It's now something between a bookstore, an author's personal site, and a link directory. Submission? Stick your Smashwords book number in.

We're looking for other authors who might be interested in an alpha, although the site's backend is still under development. No explicit content - this is strictly UK 15/PG-13.

More work done...

2012-01-06T11:52:00.002Z

The database problem is fixed, so I should be going back to the front end to get the rest of the functionality built. Here's an ethical issue - when there's less than 10% of the original code left, can I change the licence information to read "based on"? After all, anyone downloading the original package expecting the custom work we've just done is going to get a nasty shock.

And a new wizzley page: Since the hatchery gained a twitter account and a Unicreatures hatchery over the last few days, I thought I'd also add it to wizzley for a few more hits.

http://wizzley.com/pet-hatchery-a-hatchery-for-virtual-pets/

My next project? Tweaking the blog templates to swap the Adsense under each post for a Project Wonderful ad - it's a better position for advertisers, so it's only fair it goes to the advertisers who support the blog.

ETA: Adding the Project Wonderful banner was surprising painless - all I need to do now is work out how on the template how to count how many times it shows on the page and cut it down by a few so it isn't so overpowering.

This blog is being used as my live testbed, so apologies if it looks a bit odd during testing today.

ETA AGAIN: YES! There is a tag for it! Now I just have the other four blogs to do. It won't improve revenue, but hopefully it will give the advertisers a bit more exposure.

Coding and more Coding

2012-01-05T15:30:00.000Z

It's odd. Last year my resolution was to eat healthily, clean up my lifestyle and so on. This year, I'm back on the sugar and caffiene and I've probably got more done in the first few days than most of 2011. It seems nature doesn't think I'm naturally a health nut.

On the other hand, I've spent this morning wrestling with a directory - only to find the underlying database (which isn't my area and I can't access it) is fragged. Did I mention how glad I am that this isn't my problem :) ? On the other hand, the twin site's PHP, front end and basic non-database operations are all done.

The hatchery's going great guns - I've just had to refine the adult remove because too many creatures were growing up too quickly. Magistream is definitely gettinmg more use than DC. A full-scale DC rotator is in the works, but at the moment we don't have enough dragons to merit it and the mini rotator works fine.

And I spent the last five minutes creating a small scratch-off image game.

I can't believe it's only half-three. What do I tackle next?

When purely positive feedback isn't always good...

2012-01-04T15:50:00.000Z

Yes, this is about the Smashwords Tools again with an update.

Over Christmas, the tools went into open beta. The feedback on the tools has so far been either dead silence or positive (I'm ignoring the website, since it's a glorified link collection right now).

While we don't track useage in anyway, our bandwidth stats do show us when someone is using the tools. We have significantly more users than we've had feedback - including a few using multiple copies, so I think that means they are happy with it (?). The same just happened with the alpha we made available two days ago.

The problem is that without feedback we don't know whether to continue development, what direction to take the tools in, whether to create generators or if people are happy with them as they are.

Please, if you are using these, let us know. Even if it's "I've been using this for six weeks without problems" or "I can't make it work for my account." Sure, tell your friends, but please also tell us. What we don't know, we can't fix.

(And if you're waiting for the production version, we can't take the tools out of beta until we've had feedback. That would be irresponsible.)

One very good piece of feedback however came from our error log: without going into details the system fails very safe - unexpected in a beta version.

Embeddable stores
The embeddable version of the mini-site is now available in alpha. This means if you use it live, tell us so we don't start developing on that version!

A demo

Areas which we really need feedback on include: third party links, author data, the myspace link (none of us have profiles to check it works), general useability etc. It's good from about 350px to 650px so it should embed cleanly in most blogs. It's packaged here as an iframe.

Here's the link to find the code:

- http://www.raggedangel.net/smashwords-tools/booksite/index.php

Future plans:
Depends on feedback, literally. Our java coder is stalled because until we know if these are useful there's no point in rolling out an AWT applet. We are wondering about amending the generators to have the "About this widget" link to get more feedback.

If the widgets are useful, then we'll probably wrap them in an "addThis" wrapper to make them easily shareable.

Other projects
Now I'm back to looking at another project, which would be a manually-curated e-book directory, and checking on the Project Wonderful Network Ad I'm trying out.

Embeddable Stores - First Alpha of 2012

2012-01-02T16:11:00.001Z

Part of the joy of having a blog is gratitously testing alpha code, and then sometimes inflicting it on my readers.

Like this: Mini-site and bundle of joy.

Ok, my thought processes weren't exactly enlightened (along the lines of "Why does Amazon have embeddable stores and not Smashwords?") but the end result looks kind of OK.

Why is it an alpha? The print and audio book links don't work. The Amazon links are dead, and may be removed - I'm not sure how Smashwords feels about Amazon at the moment. There needs to be a version for Smashwords users who don't apply for premium distribution. The site doesn't collapse width-wise gracefully for smaller blogs...

The version here is the minisite, not the embeddable version. Firefox, for example, will break it where it is embedded in this blog, due to width.

On the other hand, it looks pretty cool. And there isn't currently an alternative.

Why do I think it's needed?
- To stop authors losing sales from readers who aren't smashwords users, but are on Sony/B&N etc.
- Because not everyone is web savvy enough to have a homepage, or webspace.
- To give an alternate URL. I'll probably get shot for this one, but Smashwords adult content means it is blocked at many of the places I've worked, and through child-safe filters. This is a problem for children's and YA authors, as well as anyone after sales from lunchbreak readers. In the US this stuff may be deemed OK for 13-year-olds, but in the UK it's strictly eighteen-plus and the responsibility is on the provider to enforce it. Yes, this would mean registering a family-friendly URL for the minisites. (Our hoster's rules are equally strict on this, so we don't have a lot of choice.)

In practice if there is a lot of interest, this would be more likely to become a directory of family-friendly Smashwords books rather than an ecommerce store. All this depends entirely on whether anyone else wants to use it, and if anyone is interested.

Testing, feedback, or general comments on the alpha all very welcome here.

Project Wonderful and Networked Ads

2011-12-31T08:12:00.001Z

Since the last post was a bit of a downer I thought I'd close on an up-note for 2011.

A quick update on the spammer: We reported them to our hoster for DOS who took a look at the logs and banned him. I was very impressed with the speed this occurred: many virtual jaffas to the tech team at Hostingzoom.

So with that good news, on to the subject of this blog. I tried to switch from Google Adsense to Project Wonderful on a few of my blogs (and a couple I admin) earlier this year. I made a basic mistake and believed that each domain and sub-site had to have it's own ad, which broke the traffic down to a level where no individual site could get enough to keep the ad box active.

Project Wonderful has a solution to this: creating a networked ad. You can set your ad in an iframe and then add the iframe to the sites they have approved. This requires a few tweaks at the PW backend, including submitting the iframe URL for their robot.

As far as I can tell the process is:
1) Get your site approved
2) Create the ad. Don't activate it.
3) Create an iframe holding page on one of the approved websites.
4) On the edit screen, under Name and Location look at the box at the bottom("URL to ad box code") and out the iframe URL in it.
5) Put the ad code on the iframe, and the iframe on the websites.
6) Activate your adbox.

The only drawback using this method is that the stats only shown which of your pages called the iframe, not where a user visited from. If you have stat tracking of your own on these sites anyway (e.g. statcounter), that's not a problem. It also makes it easy to see if any sites start staying above the limit on their own, so you can customise advertising for them.

I'm testing this with a 468 banner on four sites, but might add more sites to the network if it takes off - or more adboxes to the range. Since all the sites were under by one or two unique visitors on average, this should aggregate the visitors, making bids more valuable, and keep the ad visible.

It's early stages yet, but initial indications are promising, and the agreggate traffic is over the required level. It seems like a good way to make some ad revenue from newer sites, ones with niche markets, or fluctuating traffic.

Overall I am optimistic. If it works, it will be a very good way to start the New Year!

Pet Hatchery and spam

2011-12-30T09:36:00.000Z

http://www.pethatchery.co.uk is one of our new sites.

The hatchery was live two days when it was hit by a Ukrainian auto-spammer. He got IP-blocked but hasn't taken the hint - he's still visiting every minute even though all he can see of the site is a 403 refuse page.

So after 24 hours, in which serving the fail pages was still using up our bandwidth, we decided we could put him on silent blocking. On the other hand this is a hatchery and meant to get views...

His fail page now has dragon eggs on it. Merry Christmas!

Smashwords Tools

2011-12-28T17:07:00.001Z

My latest coding project:
http://www.raggedangel.net/smashwords-tools

A set of smashwords widgets to help authors promote themselves and their books. They've passed a closed alpha (with no website) a closed beta (with no website) and are now in open beta with a website and simple links. The install scripts are down to one line of code and take one piece of user supplied data (a book or author name).

No, the website isn't pretty - nor will we be wasting dev time on it until the beta is over. It's only there to hide an industrial strength datafeed production system, scrape and RSS generator with the homebrew PHP library that runs it all, and make sure that testers can a) see the things running and b) get the URLs to get their own.

Can I guarantee these work everywhere? Hell no. The applet set that are in development might, but the current javascript ones are subject to the several hundred browsers, javascript installs, user settings, even Greasemonkey and personal user scripts that people have which can break things. This is why iframes are offered...

Personal experiences? I've the javascript one on some of my blogs. One of my blogs won't run the javascript widget, so I use the iframe one - with a resulting increase in downloads. The Squidoo one works a charm and looks better than the HTML links that were there. The RSS is on one of my lenses and works fine. The fan button is blocked (like all dynamic or animated images) on one of the messageboards I use so I saved it locally and uploaded it.

Effect on downloads? Significant. There's certainly been a recordable increase in clickthrus.

All I can suggest is try them and see - but let us know if they break or what tweaks you need to make. This is after all a beta test.

Whether we roll out applets and flash which involve much more complex development will depend on whether there's any interest in these.

Thoughts on comments

2011-12-23T06:59:00.000Z

I have my guestbooks and comments on full moderation and it is just as well.

So far in 2011 I've had to moderate comments from some charming individuals. So far ones that never went live included details on where to get pirate books, some outright racist comments (on a thread about children's games? Where do these people come from) and the grand prize, a person who mistook my fan page for the official company website and tried to score free giftcards.

So why have guestbooks at all? Because sometimes the comments make it worthwhile. The Lancastria guestbook is an excellent example, where survivors and their relatives have got back in touch, or found the official organsation.

And yesterday, this went live on the Jervis Bay guestbook Dec 22nd

Merry Christmas!

A new Lens - Sample Sunday

2011-12-18T06:51:00.001Z

A new lens, focusing on a hashtag. SampleSunday is a weekly hashtag focusing on authors providing samples, free downloads and exerpts from their books.

Each Sunday, the tweets can be found under #SampleSunday, and they often have a second hashtag for format e.g. #ebook, #print etc, and another for genre e.g. #thriller, #kids. and provide a few details and a link to the sample.

Since it is such a busy hashtag, a lot of samples go by too fast to read, so I've split it down by genre. I look forward to seeing how it does today.

http://www.squidoo.com/samplesunday

Smashwords widgets

2011-12-17T06:46:00.012Z

I'm busy coding again. A few widgets for Smashwords to display books etc, which are now in closed beta. I'd forgotten what a pain cross-browser issues could be , but on the bright side Smashwords have been very helpful indeed.

For anyone wondering about the API issue with accessing the data, I can confirm that the API is not currently in use. However I have built my own feeds, and if you want to do any dev work of your own with them, drop me a line. For example I don't code Python or Flash, but if someone wanted to build a Google App or Flash widget using the RSS, I'll happily throw it open. Just let me know, since it is currently on a test server, so too much load is not a good idea...

There's a fan button also available, and some more tools coming shortly.

Pethatchery

2011-12-15T06:23:00.000Z

I got an early christmas present. It's a URL. I think that makes me a techie (certainly a happy techie!).

http://www.pethatchery.co.uk

My little pet hatchery appears to be taking off, to the extent that it used up unacceptable amounts of my test server bandwidth. This despite the fact it is still in testing.

So now there is my little test version behind a wall for me to work on, and this one live, publicly available and incubating nicely.

This also means I need to fix things for robustness, get the RSS egg feeds up and running, and have a lot of work to do before christmas. It's nice to be busy!

Smashwords project

2011-12-13T06:23:00.001Z

A fairly major project now is Smashwords. I couldn't find an API or RSS that supplied what I wanted for a widget, so I haven't yet got to the widget bits. Instead I ended up building a supporting package - three types of XML file and a lightweight PHP library to expose the data in a convenient array.

This is all still in testing, so there may be minor changes, but it is working well enough to support flat html widgets and php-generated banners.

While Smashwords offers general banners for the site, I'm working on ones specific to authors, individual books and searches.

Once I'm confident I'm not dumping broken code out there, I'll throw it open for anyone else who wants to promote their books or Smashwords in general. The RSS and PHP libraries are also going to be publicly available, since there seem to be a few people I know trying to build for them.

If you want the link, leave a comment here.

Christmas changes and teddy bears

2011-12-08T08:14:00.000Z

It seems to be the week that web companies annoy me enough to do things I should have done ages ago.

The Regretsy debacle finally got me closing my Paypal account. There's been nothing in it since someone sent me money by mistake and Paypal charged me the money I'd saved in it to return the transaction to the legal owner.

I've advised a couple of businesses to look at Amazon checkout as an alternative now it's available in the UK, and I think that is now going to be a long-term policy change for me. The paypal-only accounts have been thrown in with a local business who handle transactions and disbursements.

The only good thing? Paypal just caved and gave the Regretsy charity money across (see here).

And now Gmail's new look, which is unfortunately unreadable (half the mail message disappears off the edge of my screen on a 17" monitor, and I can't tell where the mail message ends and the ads begin) has driven me to get a personal account against my own domain name - something I've planned for the last six months and never quite got round to.

On a bright note, heres a new lens. Nick Davis, former White Dwarf writer, has come out with a children's book, A Teddy Bear Tale. It is Tristan the Teddy's last night guarding his child from the monsters under the bed before the boy grows up. Unfortunately the monsters know this too and tonight they have big plans...

http://www.squidoo.com/a-teddy-bears-tale

A new lens: Indie Firsts

2011-12-07T07:12:00.000Z

Another new lens, this one about an Indie Magazine. Indie Firsts offers first chapters from books by indie (small press and self-published) authors.

Published by an imprint of Bards and Sages publishing, this is a good place to find new authors among the huge tide of ebooks and print books coming out.

http://www.squidoo.com/indie-firsts

Loveblinks.com - a backlinks site

2011-12-06T16:37:00.001Z

No, I haven't gone soft and fluffy on my readers despite the name. This is a very useful site.Would it make things clearer if I said Loveblincks is short for Love Backlinks?

With shetoldme going commercial, many of the major sites now being nofollow, and link directories being deprecated by search engines, Loveblinks fills a very useful gap. It's free, it is dofollow, and it is easy to use. That said, they are very new, so I don't know how much traffic they get.

LoveBlinks works by allowing users to write articles along a theme which include a number of their links. This extra unique content makes the links more valuable to search engines.

Here's my first blink, 4 Famous Steam Engines which links to four of my squidoo lenses.

There is an affiliate scheme, but as I only signed up yesterday I don't know much about that yet.

On top of all this, it also allows revenue sharing through google Adsense, so it can produce funds in its own right. About the only thing you can't do is link directly to products, so no affiliate link stuffing, but if you are just after backlinks it looks like this might be a very useful site.

Have a look at loveblinks below:

More coding work

2011-11-30T09:39:00.001Z

After the furor over users who found lenses on squidoo about how to make pipe bombs (more here) I'm stepping back from lenses to work on other projects for a few days.

The hatchery code is nearly there. Magistream is pretty much complete and I've thrown it out for an open test.

DragonCave is proving trickier, as "check all" options aren't going to be as simple as I thought. The Javascript doesn't like picking up the checkbox, due to the PHP array code linked to it, so I'm looking at work arounds. Multiple pages for the hatchery are still in development - the database can handle it but the PHP doesn't want to.

I've also had a tester ask what happens if bandwidth starts getting expensive. Well, that's when adverts start appearing in footers. Sorry, but I'm not paying to hatch other people's creatures!

Otherwise I've got several blogs, a set of articles and an ebook to update, so it isn't as if I'm not busy.

Update - 10:37. Dragon Cave: Fixed check all, added a "find by scroll", added images, and still need to fix that dratted pagination!

And all of this without counting the 5,000 words I feel I owe Nano.

Nano...Over...?

2011-11-29T15:02:00.000Z

This was not expected: apparently I just won NanoWriMo. My word count says I'm only on 40,000 words, so I think their count is off. Still, I haven't finished the story, so I will keep writing and see if I can get my count to the target level.

More coding

2011-11-28T10:55:00.000Z

Some more writing done, although Nano looks like it's turning into a set of linked short stories more than a novel. Trying to code and write at the same time is really cutting into my time.

The hatchery now has a manual "remove creatures" option for both magistream and Dragon Cave, and a check for Dragon Cave's little trees. There are a few changes under the hood to give it a few more automatic admin features (validation mostly), and I have a very long list of changes and nice-to-haves to add in from my testers.

I also need to add a thank you page for them - without them it would not be at a point where I could add it to my lenses...

Coding a hatchery

2011-11-27T14:11:00.002Z

Not much writing done today. Instead I was polishing up some work on a hatchery for the Magistream and Dragon Cave lenses. It's in alpha, but you can put creatures in and click on them, which means it can be used.

There are a few things to work on, like integration with lenses which will probably be handled with RSS, and badges/banners etc. Then there are advanced features, an emergency room, manually removing creatures before they are adult etc.

Still it's halfway working so hopefully I'll have some tests on the way shortly.

Should v Will

2011-11-25T09:26:00.003Z

I should
- be keeping traffic numbers up for the blogs for Project Wonderful
- be writing more squidoo lenses
- be building backlinks to promote my pages
- be writing more Wizzley pages.

Instead, since I got very little writing done recently, I will be doing Nano.

50,000 words. 5 days left. Tight deadline...

Time to type!

Updates:
10:49 am, 1,200 Words.
11:30 am, 2,130 Words

Smashwords

2011-11-24T04:44:00.002Z

A new lens, largely because I spotted a URL free that was too good to pass up.

http://www.squidoo.com/smashwords

A review of my currently preferred publishing plaform, ways to use it, what's in it for readers and more - including their affiliate scheme. I was rather stunned to find the URL available, as it had been "Under Construction" the last few times I looked.

With a search engine friendly title, a good UR, and hopefully useful original content, I'm pretty happy about this lens.

What I did find today were a few typos in the added content for Great Western Railway. Unfortunately, as I am going to be rather busy today, they won't get fixed until Friday.

The other thing I need to ask - would anyone be interested in a print version of these? It would probably have to be Lulu again since I'm not made of funds, but it is doable. What I need to know is, would it be useful?

A new lens, a book launch, a new ebook and a busy week

2011-11-23T09:51:00.000Z

A new lens went up:

History ebooks

This is a reworking of the 2009 lens about Lens Companions. After I looked at the lens companions lens I realised just how out of date it was, and that the URL was no longer appropriate either. So I created a new lens for these ebooks. It has also replaced the blog as the Ciamar Price homepage on Smashwords, as squidoo has a higher pagerank so will send more visitors to the ebooks, but also because any visitors to the lens mean that I get a small share of royalties. It also has a Paypal "coffee jar", largely because a few readers get very suspicious about anything free and want to know the catch.

For the original lens I plan to write an ebook about lens creation and tips and use the lens for that, along with a few other people's titles, rather than waste the work and URL.

To celebrate the new lens, and as if I didn't have enough on with a book launch tomorrow (just in case you'd somehow managed to avoid hearing about it), I've just released another ebook.

The Great Western Railway is a rewrite of the original lulu title. It is currently working its way through Smashwords processing and distribution to flag up any formatting issues that I need to correct.

If you want an advance look, the ebook can be found here:

The Great Western Railway

I'm also investigating an issue with Project Wonderful that will affect blogs that have erratic traffic, like some of mine, but I want one more piece of test data before blogging that.

Squidoo referrals button in a module.

2011-11-22T04:16:00.000Z

I've made a change across all the squidoo LensLove modules, adding a Join Squidoo button. Most of my lenses have no sign up button, but the ones that do get a lot of referrals, so it seemed a good (and unobtrusive) place to put one across all my titles. I also added a Digg button, although at the moment that does little more than open Digg in a new window.

I'm looking at adding a few distinct buttons to the bookmark module, including Tweet, just to make things easier for users. After all if I had to click through three times just to get to the bookmark site I want to use, I wouldn't, so why ask my users to?
Regarding ebooks, Early Railways just had its 500th Smashwords download. The story of Brunel's Atmospheric Railway, the Surrey Iron Railway and a few others it is my second most popular lens companion.

Early Railways

I'm still working on the Great Western re-release. Every time I get down to it, something else comes up.

Mini sinks and Basins

2011-11-19T07:15:00.002Z

That's right, a wizzley page on DIY. I'm not sure why I did this one on Wizzley rather than squidoo, except that it just seemed to fit the layout better.

Micro sinks and basins - all about tiny sinks for cloackrooms, half baths and converting waterclosets into either. These are sinks with less than 9 inches projection from the wall, but which are still useable by most people.

Micro sinks and basins

Squidoo lenses and OpenGraph

2011-11-18T07:52:00.002Z

The first thing to mention is that Squidoo have tried to tie up with Facebook's Opengraph. We are all meant to classify our lenses to make it easier for Facebook to learn about the type of people who visit out lenses. If you do classify them, you can't go back and remove the tag, and it seems this gets you no extra traffic.

It hasn't been greeted with overwhelming joy by lensmasters. There was initial scepticism followed by a disturbing update that lensmasterswho used it actually saw their traffic drop.

I haven't used it. I'm not going to. I'm not a fan of facebook.

On a brighter note, here's a revamped and newly-live lens. I do feel rather like I was conned into making this one: It had been carefully run down, lensrank around 700K, I was geting ready to delete it, when I got told it had been selected for the winter magazine. I spent two hours revamping it instead of fixing the bust "Like" module on my lenses. Then I found out it wouldn't show up anyway because it's rank was too low.

It was certainly more fun looking at cat pictures then wading through code, though!

Since there was a debate going on about how good the magazines are for promotion I also fixed up the lens below it that wasn't selected for the magazine, Madeira for Christmas. Comparing the traffic patterns for these two could be very interesting.

A new page on Wizzley - A redgage review

2011-11-17T07:47:00.001Z

I wasn't exactly going to review Redgage on Redgage, and Squidoo has a lot of lenses on the social bookmarking site already, so I found another use for Wizzley. For all those articles I wanted to write on crowded topics elsewhere, as a new site it is a pretty ideal home.

I will point out that these are only my personal views, which can be summed up as great for promotion but you can have serious problems outside the US if you actually expect to get paid:

Redgage Review

One IP != One computer

2011-11-16T07:17:00.003Z

Not so much a rant as an observation.

I don't know if this works differently in the UK to the US, but IP tracking on many pieces of software need to be fixed - badly.

The example I am going to use is an office building in London with six hundred people and about the same number of PCs. Because of the firewall it will display one IP (cloaked) to the outside world.

And everytime you log in, google tries to amalgamate the accounts of every user in the building. A notable vBulletin mess-up meant that if one person forgot their password and locked themselves out of their account, the forum locked the entire company out - including people who were already logged in and currently using it. Nabble was a lot of fun, if by fun you mean all posts from that address showing up as the last user from that IP...the forum certainly made it look as though there was one incredibly prolific user talking to themself a lot (we're talking six or seven simul-posts).

One competition, run by the a US individual, accused me of cheating for getting fourteen votes from one IP. When I mentioned that was the local college, they shut up. (The computer lab had 30 PCs - it was easy to prove the cookies were set by different user profiles on different machines...)

This idea that one IP equals one computer isn't true - at least for any company or individual with decent security. It might equal one gateway or one network hub, but you won't see past that.

Then you encounter the idea that one computer equals one person, and so all accounts on it can be combined, which is so wrong I am baffled. Families. Libraries. Web Cafes. Many users on each machine.

On the technical side it can also go the other way: Multiple network cards and backup ISPs mean that one machine can have multiple IP addresses. User profiles and browsers can be split down easily. It's how I finally stopped certain parties trying to combine my personal account with the ones I manage for third parties.

There used to be an option to mark a machine "shared" or "public". Many websites seem to have removed this, assuming that nowadays all the data they capture from an IP is specific to a user.

Could I suggest that they go back to the old sensible method of using what their users actually tell them? If you are logged in, then they know it's you. Otherwise it could be the janitor or the CEO at your place of work, any of a thousand college students, or anyone who uses the same webcafe. Otherwise companies are just making assumptions, and there's an old saying about people who assume...

The fine line between syndication and stealing

2011-11-12T09:20:00.004Z

I am absolutely furious.

One of my articles is on the second page of search results of google. It hasn't had a hit in months. The first page of search results are "syndicated" versions. This shouldn't annoy me, after all it is available through creative commons.

What does annoy me is that the licence the article is available under only allows reprints if it is attributed and backlinked. Half of them don't mention I am the author. The other half do, but don't link to any of my profiles or the original - they link to their own. They copied it, pasted it, killed my links and then couldn't even follow the licence on a free article.

Filing DMCA would be difficult. People like this rely on the fact that if you file DMCA through Google your name and address will promptly be given out publicly online. All the data serious crooks actually need to make someone's life difficult, neatly up there on one downloadable form. The article thieves don't have to do anything - the identity thieves pounce in seconds. (Proof that governments are way behind on online crime)

On the other hand, the article that's been "syndicated" is under licence by the host who initially displayed it. Therefore they can take action, without this issue, and have just been kicked in that direction. Failure to defend your IP is a good way for an article site to die, since no one puts content on places that don't look after it.

And if they don't take action? I'l be rather public and very loud about the fact they don't defend their IP.

The article is here: An Evolution of Diving Games

Valid attribution links are this,
An Evolution of Diving Games written by tirial on bukisa

or this:
Written by tirial

Non valid:
"Written by Tirial" and linked to someone else's profile on your own site!

Here's an example of a site with a valid attribution:
An Evolution of Diving Games on Wizzley

Excuse the frothing. When something is free to share anyway, and you have to go out of your way to breach the licence deliberately, that's someone trying to hurt an author and deceive their readers, not someone after something for free.

So if you are one of the people hosting this, whether you removed the attribution or you didn't know where the original was from, consider this fair warning to add the backlink. One line (that was in the original) is all you have to add to be inside the licence.

But, bloody hell guys, even book pirates usually manage to get the author right!

Lest we forget

2011-11-11T09:47:00.002Z

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year of the twenty-first century.

The ninetieth anniversary of the Royal British Legion.

Wear your poppy with pride.

Google, Bing and a song

2011-11-10T22:02:00.002Z

I am not a happy person right now, after finding one of my articles pushed to the third page of search results - by stolen copies of itself.

Now I have already had problems with the massively inappropriate ad content google have served on my blogs, so my patience was stretched. My current feelings towards Google are difficult to sum up - but after their last set of Adsense tokens arrived right after they failed to act on copyright over this, I've got MacAlmont and Butler's "Yes" playing in the background.

Yes I do feel better

After all, Google may have asked me to publicly disclose my name, address and all those details that identity thieves love so Google can put them online(?!) before they will act on copyright. This seems rather like if your wallet is stolen, the police insisting that you have to hand the thief your name and address and display them on a billboard in the town square before the authorities will take action and return your goods.

Yes I do, I feel alright

And it's not as if Bing took a look at the comparable article dates and licence, and nuked the offending sites from their search results - oh wait... Well it would have been nice if Google did the same, since they are making so much noise about their new algorhythm being able to detect content freshness, which would logically let it detect the earliest occurrance of an article and therefore a have good idea of its originating source...

Anyway excuse me, I hear a refrain.

I feel well enough to tell you what you can do with what you've got to offer...

*Lyrics from McAlmont and Butler's Yes (Full Version) which I have on repeat right now. It's soothing.

Redgage - an update, earnings and backlinks

2011-11-07T08:03:00.000Z

Anyone who follows me on redgage might have noticed that I am currently putting all my lenses up. This is because of a change of approach, because of some information I received at the weekend that does change the site's value to me.

Initially I was spacing these out to ensure I got decent earnings and exposure to each. After I got my first Redgage card (and all the fun with that) I kept doing this because I thought it was a problem that could be solved. In summary: it can't. Visa US doesn't recognise my UK address so the card can't validate, unless I want to make a fifteen minute phone call to the US at about $5 per minute, every time I withdrew money...

The earnings just became worthless. The backlinks aren't, so I'm putting all my lenses on there now to get the boost before Christmas.

More thoughts on Wizzley

2011-11-03T15:58:00.001Z

A second Wizzley page, this time about a certain set of free non-fiction ebooks:

Ciamar Price's ebooks

My general thoughts are that the interface is easy to use. It reminds me more of hubpages than squidoo, particularly with positioning. The modules are not as flexible as the squidoo versions, but it has a better range of options than hubpages. It takes European affiliates as well as US, which is a big advantage to me since I'm UK-based.

That said, the Ciamar Price page is up mainly for backlinks. If you have a site that pays you credit for some of your affiliate sales against a site that pays 50% of all sales and a percentage for traffic, it is basic business sense to put the serious content on the latter.

The other good reason to put Wizzley pages up? There's one thing squidoo can't do: spread your risk. If Squidoo goes down or is bought out, you could lose your sites. It's as well to have an established presence on another site as a fallback.

However for now I'm back working on Squidoo. It turns out that Google no longer reads the "About me" module, which means a lot of my backlinks have vanished. I built a handcoded alternative, put it live on 70+ lenses this morning, and republished them. Now I have to do the rest. This is the problem with having a lot of lenses: the time it takes to do manual updates to all of them.

Other things done since yesterday? Added a Magistream Image-free Mine to the Cat Blog. Although the charity mine works well, some users can't deal with issues squidoo throws up so after discovering I can't really fix them, I mirrored the mine on a page where I had more control. I've got a few ideas for converting my "Translate Lens" module into a real module, which are underway.

And I'm still planning events, writing new stuff and other tings, including a new project in the planning stages since last night. The only problem with the idea is whether our servers could handle the potential load, or if we'd have to move to a larger dedicated server. The technie in me likes the idea of new hardware anyway, it's just my business sense that objects.

Wizzley - an alternative to squidoo?

2011-11-02T08:50:00.001Z

I've been looking at this for a while. Squidoo provides a regular income, while Hubpages has fallen straight down the ranks and has no traffic. Bukisa no longer works for users outside the US, so I need to find an alternative. At first site, Wizzley, another "write articles and share the revenue" site looks ideal. It's easy to use, has multiple affiliate set ups and can be picked up in no time. I even have an account on there.

However there is one reason I am doubtful about Wizzley, and it is their revenue share model. You input your afiliate codes and 40-50% of the time Wizzley subsitutes their own. If, like me, probability tends to work against you you can probably understand why I won't use sites that use this model.

This isn't to say this model is a scam. However it can easily be broken in the hosting site's favour - if it's a 50% share on time and their codes are put in at periods of high traffic, if there's a glitch that means their affiliate overrides yours (e.g. if they've used a HTTP_Referrer model for an affiliate site it wouldn't matter whose code was showing, they get the sale), if it's not a random 50% and they take the customers most likely to purchase...

My main reason however is more personal. Chance does not work in my favour e.g. I don't win raffles, lotteries or even tombolas. It's something of a talking point among friends. It even stretches to affiliate marketing.

I tried this model before and, being cynical, used products where I could access click and sales records. What happened was interesting, specifically that I did not get a single clickthru in the entire 3 month period. However, there were nine clickthrus from the link and seven purchases - all credited to the site in question. With another example, the Amazon.co.uk solution I used was supposed to swap my links out 25% of the time - in practice the sales and clicks I got were credited solely to them. When I switched to my own links I suddenly got a healthy amount of traffic and sales. There was no fraud in either case, and believe me I looked!

Given all this, I will happily work with sites that split revenue 50/50. That gives us both an incentive to maximise revenue. Splitting views 50/50? I'm less keen.

Now I could put the Bukisa articles up without affiliate links, for backlinks and traffic. However there are more popular sites for both at the moment. I'm moving away from a site that offers 100% revenue to the author, and I don't think Wizzley's 60% of clicks is a reasonable alternative. Other sites I should be looking at include Helium and others, but at this point I'm more tempted to move the Bukisa articles to Associated Content with links to my other pages embedded in them. The articles might be syndicated for free, but the traffic boost and the backlinks would help, and Associated Content still gets the most hits on the web for that.

Even allowing for all this, there is one other way to use sites with this model that does work, and can provide revenue, and that is for promotion of your other sites. If it is your product you are discussing or linking to, then whoever gets the affiliate sale, you still benefit. And, of course, these articles are all worth backlinks and hopefully traffic.

This is why I've just put my first Wizzley article up, and will be watching its performance carefully. Depending on how well it does, I'll put up an assessment of how easy it was to use (definitely more like Hubpages than Squidoo), but my initial thoughts so far sum up roughly as: Squidoo for revenue, Wizzley for adverts.

Using Project Wonderful

A few more lenses

2011-10-31T07:16:00.001Z

Since "the work on lots and then republish everything" approach is working so well I actually have the time to create more lenses. The half-finished "make your own jewellery" series has picked up two more entries:

To complete the series I have two (possibly three) methods of gem setting to cover, a few more loose stone lenses to do, and some more pre-made jewellery lenses to create.

I did have one shock: it may have be struggling around the 190,000 in lenserank but a lens I haven't updated since 2009 was still live. Good for English Electric Lightning artwork!

(ETA: By the way, ads might be reappearing on this blog: I've submitted it to Project Wonderful, which has already done wonders for my cat blog.)

A new lens

2011-10-29T10:41:00.001+01:00

My first for a while:

- http://www.squidoo.com/setting-gems

Meant to be a lensography of my gem-making lenses it turned into a bit more than that. I might actually add a few more lenses to that series, since people are finding them useful. I'm not sure how many people need help with the wire and glue method (although if, like me, you have cats that want to help it can be surprisingly tricky!)

The worst thing about doing this lens? Finding a URL that wasn't taken. Most didn't even have live lenses attached, they had just been sitting there for years untouched (2006 in one case).

And now back to organising a book launch...

Translating Squidoo lenses

2011-10-28T07:44:00.000+01:00

Under the terms of the T&Cs Squidoo lenses can now only be in English. People used to create them in a variety of languages but these were harder to moderate. The problem is that this restricts your audience to english speakers only, which really limits the reach of your lens.

To get round this there have been a variety of methods, from my old clearspring translate module which is now disabled, to translating your lens in Babelfish and saving the contents off-site, which has a huge overhead on updating.

I've had another go at it. My new solution requires you to know how to use copy and paste, and a text module. That's it.

http://www.squidoo.com/translate-lens

My old translate-lens lens above has been updated with details. The solution is still in beta and doesn't look very pretty, but the functionality is there and the output it generates works.

Once embedded it translates the lens on the fly, so there is no need for lensmaster to retranslate everytime they update. It uses Babelfish, so the translation quality may be a bit patchy, but will improve as Babelfish improves. And finally it's easy to use.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

If any squidoo experts out there want to convert this into a custom module it would be pretty easy using the existing BlackBox functionality, it has one $path variable and doesn't need to make a database call, and I'd love a dedicated translate module. (Give me a way to code it in Notepad and I'll build it myself, but I find squidoo's IDE unapproachable).

Squidoo Part Two

2011-10-24T12:37:00.000+01:00

The new approach is definitely working - traffic is up slightly and I can get a lot of dead links fixed without worrying about waiting long periods for lenses to publish.

The major problem with the new approach is the republish. It's certainly faster to save everthing and then do them all in one pass, but re-publishing 250 lenses takes time. The first time I did this, it took two hours. The second time was longer since squidoo didn't want to stay up. Today, it's taken forty minutes.

I have made a few refinements. Using multiple tabs simultaneously in strict rotation mean that you don't need to wait for things to load. I also put my dashboard on a hotkey, so I have fewer mistaken clicks. A minimal browser set-up for the publish run (no images, no ads) makes it faster to publish, although I wouldn't suggest trying to build a lens in it.

The only problems left? I sometimes get out of step in the dashboard/edit/publish/close routine or hit the wrong tab, and towards the end I'm flagging from all the scrolling down. And then after I finish I have to go and do the ones I missed...

Overall, the results on traffic and search rankings are strongly positive, so I might keep on with this for a while.

Changing an approach to squidoo

2011-10-23T06:54:00.002+01:00

Recently, with the changes to google and the changes to squidoo itself, it has felt as though I've been running a Red Queen's Race to try to keep my lenses updated.

This is partly because it now gives huge amounts of weight to new lenses (over traffic and sales), so the monthly update schedule I was using is now not enough to keep lenses high. As an example I have lenses with over 100 views/week and sales against them rating lower than lenses with less traffic and no sales that are new that week. The second problem is that publishing a lens - literally every time I click "Publish" - now takes five minutes to go through, making tweaks for things like spelling errors extremely time consuming.

I'm trying a new approach. Make a few edits, save the lenses as draft, and then republish all my lenses a couple of times a week, so I know any changes I made have gone live. That way I don't need to worry about republish for tabs, republish for typos, worry if I've got changes unpublished on a lens...

I timed myself two nights ago when I did the first republish and it takes me about two hours. I also found out that I need to do other things like blog writing at the same time. It might be slower, but it helps me avoid climbing the walls.

I'll be trying this out for a month and see if it works for me. If so, I may start doing new lenses again. To be honest, with hubpages very low on traffic and bukisa dead enough that I am migrating my content off them, I hope it works.

ETA: And the second time I try this Squidoo crashes and I lose my place... Also the delay in publishing seems to be caused by something called s.ytimg.com. Each publish, timed, is taking over a minute in total. I can't find any calls or references to that in my code, so I am wondering if it is integral to squidoo.

And a second update? Squidoo just went down.

Project Wonderful - commercial product effect

2011-10-18T07:15:00.000+01:00

I put a button ad live for a commercial ebook to see what effect that would have. This is only the result from the first test. I need to run it a few more times to get more data.

On the page it was linked to, the number of page views went up. On Amazon, which is not connected to that page, I got a small but statistically significant number of extra sales over the duration of the trial. The button tracker says that no one clicked the ad, and referrers on the linked page bear this out.

I will try this again, but at the moment it seems that ads are raising awareness of the product and contributing to sales indirectly, but not directly.

For anyone curious about economics, the total cost of my trials so far? $5. If the extra Amazon sales can be attributed to this test, it has already paid for itself.

My next test is trying this with a static button.

Project Wonderful Part 2

2011-10-15T07:34:00.004+01:00

Assessing the effects of advertising on Project Wonderful. If you've been following the blog you might remember my odd results from last time. I've run the test for more times. Each time my page views stayed static, but the number of downloads? See for yourself:

You can click for a larger image. Yellow indicates the period an ad was live. The blue line shows the page the ad links directly to. The others show linked products.

Exactly the same number of people hit the page, but in each case they were statistically more likely to download. Also, following shortly after the main bump, there was a smaller rise in the number of people who downloaded associated products. The two middle increases are smaller. These two tests were run with button ads (117px x 30px), while the others used banners. I'd need to run a few more tests before I can see if there is a correlation between ad size and likelihood of downloads, but right now it looks like it.

This was with a free ebook on Smashwords, so the next test is to try this again with a commercial product.

The other thing I have done is to try it as a publisher. The Stephen and Matilda blog now has ads served by Project Wonderful. My assessment? It's easy to set up and editing your ad is simple. They also take Paypal. It takes a few days to get approved, unlike the signup for adsense, but then they are more selective.

A small side benefit I didn't expect is the metrics. Tracking how many people view an adbox, and where in the world they come from, also means tracking site visitors. One of its best features is that you can display your own ads in the adbox if no one else bids, making it easy to co-ordinate a campaign across multiple sites.

We've submitted a second blog to them and, if the results are promising, you might find them serving the ads on here.

A lot going on

2011-10-06T15:41:00.000+01:00

So right now I am:
- organising a book launch
- finishing a webpage
- trying to get the Great Western content together into another non-fiction ebook
- writing a follow up to Fire Season
- going back to work on mossie, a stand alone novel (or two)
- writing four more Harry stories, all currently in note form
- trying to manage promotion for all my books
- Getting a book into print-ready format...

...and down with another stinking cold.

Coffee keeps me busy until
it's time to be drunk by bluntcard
Browse other Coffee Magnets

The timing is wonderful. I promise I will get back to updating my lenses, eventually, when I get some free time, and am less likely to write absolute rubbish or delete the wrong modules.

And I've put one of my other blogs in to have its ads provided by Project Wonderful. If it is accepted and works out, this one might change over as well.

Right now I want sleep.

Project Wonderful and odd results

2011-10-03T06:41:00.000+01:00

Recently (Ok for the last couple of weeks) I've been experimenting with Project Wonderful for ads. The cost for Google ads is prohibitive for smaller advertisers, and from a content providers some sites that use ad-sharing then fail to accept Adsense codes from users outside the US. My personal feelings towards Google Ads are also not rainbows and fairies right now.

Project Wonderful offers ads on sites which apply. Advertisers bid on the sites per day and can either select the site or personally bid. First impressions from me are favourable: the tracking and reports are easy, so is setting up the ads and making bids. The cost is far lower than GoogleAds - I've sent a whole $3 for 60K views and a lot of clicks in two weeks.

However there was a very interest effect in the results of the ads. As one of my tests I put up some free advertising for free ebooks. Free adverts only have a two day run, so it was very short, but it brought a few hundred hits and no clicks. That's when I noticed the odd result and ran it again.

Both times my number of downloads went up for the second day the ad was live, and for a few days after that. It tailed off fairly quickly. The increase wasn't great, but was measurable (about triple the daily downloads I would expect). I'm not sure of the cause, since there were no clicks. Users may be googling the ad, or clicking on it to grab the URL and pasting into their own browser or a preview tool.

This isn't the real issue. What caught my interest was that the number of page views during the period remained static. Effectively I had the same number of visitors but those visitors were massively more likely to download the book. For every ten visitors, eight downloaded the ebook.

This is something I will be looking into, with another control test. This advert is live again for a third run, but I will be trying a different advert for another free ebook and seeing if the same thing happens.

Overall though, I'd have to say my opinions are favourable - I might sign some of my sites up as hosts. The final big point in their favour? They use paypal.

Blogs, marketing, and misfires

2011-09-21T08:37:00.001+01:00

With the current drive to "personalise" things - readers buying a book because they liked the author's blog/photo I suppose I should admit something:

I've never bought a book because of an author's blog. However I have not bought books because of an author's blog.

If the blog is simply life, the universe, and everything then unless they have an interesting and unusual job (and I don't mean writing) it isn't going to hold my interest. Since most people's lives are very similar, just blogging about your own life won't pull people. This is especially true if you write about something outside your normal field. It's one reason why I keep my writing and books seperate from my job/work/life/cats blog. Just as celebrities resort to desperate tactics to stay in the headlines, writers resort to more desperate tactics to gain blog readers and problems start to occur.

A few years ago I was following a blog, from someone with an extremely unusual career and a good writing style. Like many people, I followed it, gave advice and help. The writer wanted to change jobs, so they were even negotiating a publishing deal through another readers' connection. About eighteen months into this the writer came clean: they didn't have the job, they had lied about the events and had in fact done it as a creative writing exercise to prove they could write.

The result was not readers praising them as a good writer: it was the total loss of their fanbase. The blog never recovered, and the publishing deal evaporated. I, like most of their other readers, were completely stunned.

I checked recently. The blog has gone and so has the confessional post and everything before it. The person is now back to writing on their first book, and trying to get another publishing deal. Six years lost for one lie. It was one of the most spectacular marketing misfires I have ever seen.

(No I'm not naming the writer. With any luck their life is back on track and they are older and a bit wiser. Teens are meant to make mistakes - it's just that when they do them online the results don't ever really go away.)

The moral? You can lose friends and reputation a lot more quickly than you can make them.

Be honest with your readers.

You only have to check the google rankings, however, to see that a targeted and focused blog will do better in search results and click through traffic, which is why I also run those. So why do I keep this blog going, when I have targetted blogs available? Because I can be a lot more abrasive, accurate in my views, and cover a much wider range of subjects here than on other blogs where I should be worrying about marketing, trying to make everything fit a focused and targeted blog, and work with SEO.

The other reason? On a marketing blog you shouldn't say anything negative or burn bridges. As anyone who has followed this blog knows, in some areas (usually to do with fraud, criminal behaviour, or incompetency) my policy is closer to "Hand me the matches and the petrol and stand well back." Not the best marketing and sales policy in the world.

An update

2011-09-19T10:39:00.002+01:00

I haven't blogged for a while since Google's cookie set-up made it difficult to log into my account without having google try to link it to the work account I manage for an employer. (This frantic urge by certain companies to link everything up online is irritating. I hear Facebook is worse.)

Rant for the day: Tailored advertising has resulted in my finally cracking on my desire to not block ads and downloading Adblocker. After all, if I'm not interested in the ad the first time, show me something different on the next page, not the same blasted thing 600 times! I'm not going to click on it, but I may start to think your company are a) annoying and b) rude. Rant over.

Some changes here: I have split my fiction writing into another blog/Squidoo account to make it easier to manage, not least because I've got two more titles out. Currently I'm rather busy with three more books being worked on.

I'm slowing withdrawing my content from Bukisa, after finding some of it on a PLR site (now pulled) and included in a for-profit ebook with someone else's name on it (now pulled). Their switch to shared-advertising revenue has killed any earnings since they won't accept my adsense account, as I'm outside the US and don't have a zip code. It's either going in free e-books online or on lenses. Some may yet end up on Associated Content, but I'd have to check their licencing.

I'm moving my ebooks from Lulu to Smashwords, giving them a re-edit in the process. The result has been a success: The Three Great Ships of Isambard Kingdom Brunel is now their most downloaded non-fiction history title. Rather anxiously, I've turned on premium distribution, so these things should start turning up on B&N, Apple etc. over the next few months.

The cats are still cats. Some things don't change.

Disgo 3000

2010-09-21T06:56:00.000+01:00

Yes I am eyeing this up - it's small neat, useful, and if underpowered can still be converted to a great e-reader/wordprocessor.

And combined with a DSL Linux key that runs inside Windows CE? A clean install everytime if you want. The techie in me is drooling.

Powerline networking

2010-09-02T07:41:00.000+01:00

Networking without wires? This is certainly old news to most, not particularly secure and has some interesting range issues.

Falling in between wireless and old style wired is th new technology that lets you network your PC over your power cables, using the electrical cables already embedded in the walls to run a network. Not surprisingly, as a true techie, I had to try this.

We've got issues using wireless thanks to interference and location, so when we want to run a PC outside the office it has always involved running a long network cable round to where we want to work. Not ideal, particularly with two cats who view cables as long lengths of string. We bought the version with built-in AES, and set up a stand alone network.

The bad? It can't be plugged in to an extension lead. The good? Plugged into a wall it took about 5 seconds to set up. You literally plug an adaptor in to the socket, plug an RJ45 cable into it, and into your network hub/switch/router, plug another one in where you want to run the PC, and put an RJ45 cables from the socket to the PC. Effectively every power outlet in the house is now a network port.

A moment's thought reveals security issues, particularly if you have exterior power sockets or have ring networks shared with another flat*, but these are less than wireless would suffer, and it doesn't replace the need for antivirus and firewalls on the PC. However it removes the need for cables, is slightly more secure than wireless, and is very easy to use.

We're planning on setting it up as a second network, not linked to our main one, for light/fun use on gadgets like consoles which we can't use on the commercial network.

The only problem a real techie may have? Running out of power sockets...We may be doing some more DIY this weekend.

*We checked with one adaptor plugged into the PC first to see if it picked up any other networks. If you think it might, you may want to try this.

Dragon Cave

2010-08-31T07:36:00.000+01:00

A quick apology for the number of dead eggs currently on my scroll - I'm trying to breed a female vampire dragon and it keeps failing!

A flawed business method

2010-08-13T07:52:00.000+01:00

An interesting example of a potentially backfiring business method just came up, so I thought I'd run through it. I'm not sure whether it's ironic, or just downright funny.

We were phoning round second hand bookshops to get rid of some books (I've got too many and they've taken over the house).

When we phoned one of the nearer ones we had a very interesting conversation. Apparently, they are having trouble competing with charity shops, so they will only take the best quality books. They only wanted as-new books - which they stated included no signs it had ever been read and no page browning. I did ask how a ten year old book was supposed to avoid page browning: apparently they don't want ten year old books no matter how pristine or rare. Likewise any new books printed on creme, no-go. Unfortunately most people selling books are trying to clear space, not make money.

One big problem with their method: the number of people who go into the store, sell what books they can, and then drop the rest off at the nearest charity shop.

Why am I not surprised the charity shops have a better range of stock? On the bright side, I suppose they must be grateful for the steady supply of good reading copies and brand-new-but-printed-on-creme books that keep coming through their door courtesy of their competition.

Mturk - surprisingly good!

2010-08-04T08:33:00.001+01:00

At the weekend a friend introduced me to Mturk, Amazon.com's method of taking automation out of simply routine tasks. Effectively you sign in, grab a task off the pile, like "rewrite a sentence" "find a url" etc. do the task and get a couple of cents for it. I haven't blogged because quite simply I've been doing this.

It's easy to use, but you need to have an Amazon.com account. For people outside the US, another issue is that they only pay in US$ Amazon gift cerificates that only work on Amazon.com. As my company sometimes works with partners or clients in the US, these are easy enough to swap (and use to buy hospitality etc) but it might be a problem for people without those links.

On the other hand, it is very easy to use and srprisingly addictive. The pay rate is pitifully low in terms of money/time and it can't support you full time, but its so easy to grab an item off the stack during a lunch hour or a spare moment for a bit extra.

I'll be sticking with this one for a while, I think. And since they don't do referrals you know this is an honest endorsement.

Mturk

UPDATE: Seriously, change my comment about the amount of money you make from pitiful to pitifully infintesimal. To be quite blunt, four hours work on this makes me less than one of my bukisa articles does every month.... So, if writing a few hundred words, uploading and leaving it earns you more every month than four hours and severeal thousand words of data entry, I know which I'd rather do.

Visa Update

2010-08-01T20:27:00.000+01:00

A quick update on the Visa giftcard issue: after four days of searching Amazon.co.uk finally accepted it, so my book is on the way!

Anatomy of Visa giftcards

2010-07-28T09:39:00.002+01:00

Since I got a Visa giftcard from a competition I finally got around to ordering this.

Unfortunately Visa giftcards seem to be a right royal nuisance. Paypal won't take them, the stores here won't touch them because they aren't chip and pin, so now I'm left hoping that Amazon.co.uk will actually accept them. Just to make things even more confusing there's no way to check the balance on it without phoning the states.

All in all, it's rather annoying.

Articles, comments, and respect

2010-07-26T08:50:00.000+01:00

Over the last few weeks I've had two comments that stood out on my articles. Both of them exemplify why you need to be careful to handle the content with respect, no matter what you are writing about.

The first was a comment by the author on the Michael Jecks lens. As far as I can verify it is genuine, and very flattering. The other is more sombre, on the lens about the Jervis Bay and HX-84.

I think I normally treat my subjects with a great deal of respect, but this was rather a surprise. I knew I was writing about real events and real people, but for some reason I didn't think the subjects of my lenses would ever actually notice them. Since no one has taken offence, I think I have handled the subjects appropriately.

Actually, when I said the subjects of the lenses would never notice them, there is one notable exception: The Lancastria lens. The lens is unaffiliated with the official memorial campaign, but ever since it went up I have got requests from survivors' relatives for contact details for the organisation and ways to trace their family. All you can do in that situation is to pass them on to the official resources who may be able to help.

But it is a reminder, if you are writing online, to remember that the subject of your article, comment or rant may well see it, and why you should treat subjects (especially controversial ones) with respect.

Charities who get it wrong

2010-07-21T17:55:00.003+01:00

When you get to my age, birthdays tend to pass unremarked. After all, I'm a bit old for cake and balloons (well, balloons at least). It was a bit of a shock to find that there is one group who certainly don't think I'm passed the age where a birthday needs to be marked.

A card from family, a couple of phone calls which were nice and otherwise nothing, much as I expected. Then I checked my email.

Nineteen "Happy Birthday" messages from charities, all of which boiled down to "It's your special day - now give us money!" I thought on birthdays people were supposed to give you things, not the other way round?

Instead of ranting about the culprits, I'm going to take the positive step of requesting donations for a charity that didn't spam me and who I do support:

Donate here

A busy day yesterday

2010-07-19T07:18:00.000+01:00

A very busy day doing bits and bobs. There were a few highlights.

Going through boxes from our house move, we found the old mobiles to trade. It was a surprise to find that our local CEX is not only a lot simpler to use than envirophone, they pay more. We also cleared a lot more space.

We also took the chance to visit a market and street fair for a day out, which was fun, but did result in an slightly awkward moment. One of my friends through it would be a good idea to buy these: Giggly Pigs WowWow Sausages. Now, I've tried samples before and they've been hot but managable, so after they got home and cooked, I took a small bite from the offered portion.

OK. The ones in the packet, sealed and wrapped, are several times hotter then I remembered. A few pints of milk and a couple of hours later and my eyes were still watering. That's when we looked up the ingredients: chilli, chilli, and even hotter chilli. And some pork. He's taking a sample into work for a colleague who claims he's neverfound anything hot enough. I'm awaiting the report this evening.

They are nice, if you like hot food, but make sure you have water on hand. Even my Thai-food loving husband had to eat these sparingly!

Twitter galore! - Twiends & Tweetdeck

2010-07-12T09:56:00.001+01:00

I've signed up with Twiends, a system that is supposed to give you a chance to find people who share your interests on Twitter and get "credits" for following them. Fortunately credits are free (and given my experience I would not suggest paying for them!).

My first attempt at using it left me with a lot of marketers who signed up quickly to get my credits, so I turned it off for a while while I browsed and signed up to follow people I was interested in and blocked or reported most of the rest. I was also slightly concerned about the logistics of following that many people back, since a lot of useful posts can get lost in the noise.

This morning I ran into Twiends again. I set up an account for a client, set up one for me, and turned my other one back on. The results were interesting, to say the least. Basically, whole sets of people are using the "follow everyone" option (easily detected as they all signed up for the three accounts simultaneously).

Since huge chunks of people obviously just want a follow-back and credits (I'll point out I'm not involved in Alaskan oil, and leave it at that), instead of wading through all the people following me to see who to follow, I'll leave it a day, see who unfollows because they've already got the credits for signing up, and then go through the remainder to see who I should follow. Since many of these multiple-sign-ups are using systems that automatically unsubscribe people who don't follow back in 24 hours, it should clear a lot of the spam before I have to deal with it.

I don't use auto-unsubscribe, by the way. If I'm following you, it's because I want to hear what you're saying, not because I expect a followback. I wish more people would extend the same courtesy.

My opinion of Twiends? Well, it defintely does what it says, and gets you followers. How interested those followers are in your topics? That varies. So far I have blocked ten, but have left two and followed two more.

And a very big recommendation to Tweetdeck as the best bit of free software I've found this year. Scheduled Tweets, managing multiple accounts simultaneously, and making it really easy to detect spammers. It will get its own entry shortly, but I've been playing with it for a week now and I'm still finding new ways to shamelessly exploit it.

Opinion of Tweetdeck? Get this one: It's free, it does exactly what it says on the tin, and then more.

Today bites

2010-07-06T14:26:00.000+01:00

Literally. As if I didn't have enough to worry about with the flat sale and the book deal, my cat just learned to open deadbolts.

The deadbolt he was trying on was too stiff to move fortunately. However when he tried it again he got so frustrated he walked up, rubbed his face on my arm and bit me!

The only time that's happened before I had catnip on my fingers. This time I have no clue, but it got him a tap on the nose and my arm in TCP. Looks like he hasn't broken the skin, but to be honest I'm still rather shocked. It's just so out of character for him.

Going a bit mad

2010-07-05T06:20:00.001+01:00

My nerves are killing me. No matter how many distractions I plan or how hard I work in the garden, I still keep dreaming about rejection letters. My waking moments are filled with worry that the manuscript:

has been lost in the post
is stuck in the slushpile
gets an auto-reject from someone who doesn't realise it was requested
isn't what they are looking for

I think this is called going a bit mad.

We also hear back today about the flat sale, which is not helping my state of mind. We're at the point of actually pulling out, and that's not something we thought we'd ever say. When the management company, having met the new buyer, requests that we don't sell and let the place ourselves you know it's not just us who think the buyer's being unreasonable. Before we jump through any more hoops there will need to be a show of good faith on their side. I'm even getting money out of savings in case we do wind up having to redo and let it ourselves.

And all of this blows up at 11:00 today.

Update: Oh who didn't see this coming? The flat buyer has now decided that he wants the electrical survey done after all - and while a neutral electrician works on the place and the owners are at work, he and his plasterer can have a look round to price up the redecoration.

No. Not until he buys the flat. It's been gas-checked, damp-checked, prodded, poked and everything else. We've done more than we needed to or were required to. If he wants to redecorate, he can buy it first.

Another interesting day - and a reminder

2010-07-01T15:51:00.003+01:00

The reminder first, to the person who hooked my twitter and blog up to his jobs feed: I'm off the clock here. Here's a hint: I don't talk about sacrificial ritual, horror, steam engines, aircraft, writing articles, games or publishing at work - I get paid to do work, not fun. Don't expect me to talk security, network set up, user experience or browser issues on here or twitter - I don't work for free. My Twitter doesn't have my name and isn't linked to my email to avoid this conflict of interest, so congratulations on your detective work: it got you blocked and reported, as did your Facebook spam (By the way, I'm not on it).

I would have been less annoyed, but today has not been good.

The boiler's fixed, despite the cats frantically trying to get into the cupboard or up the loft ladder, or investigate the plumbing equipment. Once they started double teaming me I ended up shutting them outside - quite tricky since one can open doors.

Flat buyer discovered that, while my husband may be the type to let him bring his own plumber into the flat unsupervised to perform a "check" I am not. I am not being awkward for the sake of it: one of the easiest scams in the world is for someone with a tame plumber to get them to hit a couple of valves with a wrench and claim it needs repair. It costs them nothing since either the seller repairs it, or the seller knocks the "repair cost" they quote off the price. If the seller pulls out, the buyer looses nothing. I don't think this was the buyer's intent or we would not be proceeding with the sale, but it's an easy one to fall prey to so I am taking the line that his plumber gets access to the flat once he's bought it, not before.

My suggestion was that the estate agent finds a "neutral" third party and accompany them into the flat to perform the checks, while we split the cost. The buyer's request for one check has already been dropped, so now it hinges on the second.

Wedding aniversary coming up and no ideas whatsoever what to do, since all my efforts have been tied up in resolving the above issues.

And finally preorders for the book are slowly picking up. Every time I wonder if I did the right thing, that simple fact makes it clear I did, as did the fact that my existing article royalties can pay the bills.

What a day!

2010-06-30T18:32:00.001+01:00

Today has not been good:

Routine boiler check: Several hundred pounds in repairs and the plumber coming back tomorrow.
Flat sale: After all the paperwork & legal checks were done, and the buyer was supposed to sign yesterday, he now wants to ask even more questions. This comes after we've had a trickle of questions one at a time from his solicitor over the last few weeks, and after saying they want a fast sale.We've been ready since end of May - can they get a move on please?
Garage damage due to broken nails: when we went to repair it the hammer broke.

Please let tomorrow be better.

This week.

2010-06-29T19:26:00.000+01:00

If last week was a rollercoaster, this week can be summed up as worry. I find myself second guessing everything I did last week: Did I address it to the right department? Is it sitting lost forever in a slushpile somewhere? Are they going to be interested? Is it really what they are looking for?

It's ridiculous of course, but knowing that does not make it any easier.

I've done the basic housekeeping, putting a promotion plan in black and white in case they ask, getting twitter and other infrastructure ready for a launch, looking into self publishing and distribution. The fact remains all this work doesn't actually achieve anything until I know where I stand with the book.

They said I'd know in four weeks. I'm hoping it's a yes. I'm also hoping they can make it sooner, since my nerves are shot.

The week in summary

2010-06-25T14:22:00.001+01:00

As of Monday I had a book deal, at final galley stage. The week in summary:

Monday - Suggestion that they would not be able to exploit publicity/distribution. Offered a release.
Tuesday - Accepted the release. Back to submitting to agents. Arranged a fallback to self-pub just in case.
Wednesday - Contacted an established UK house for permission to submit unagented. Came away with a request for the full*.
Thursday - Checked manuscript, dotted i's crossed t's made sure it was as perfect as possible. Posted it.
Friday - Reading writing forums, extremely frazzled and biting fingernails.

*there are no words to discribe the mix of elation and sheer stark terror experienced at this point.

All I can think now is, please let this work out.

An interesting week.

2010-06-24T19:18:00.000+01:00

If you'd told me the Monday before last about this week, I'd never have believed you. Try "Rollercoaster" for an example of how I feel right now.

You see my book was let go, not because it got too little interest, but because it got too much. Apparently since the publisher had switched to POD and ebook, they usually do a soft launch and let it build.

Enter me, with experience of marketing my own books, links to distributors, and a lot of media experience, who started gearing up on promo at the start of the week...

There was a bit of a mismatch, to be blunt. On Tuesday my book was released by mutual consent, with the advice that I really needed a print house because of the demand for ARCs and similar.

On Wednesday the manuscript went back out to agents and I got a lead on a publisher. Today I spent getting the whole thing into the publisher's in-house format and submitted it.

Frankly I'm still a bit stunned. Monday morning I was booking promos, now I'm hunting publishers.

But the book, will be coming out, even if I have to self-publish. I've put too much effort into this one to let it sink!

Cats and targets

2010-06-17T08:35:00.000+01:00

The cats are at the vets, and not happy about it. We get them back this afternoon, fully recovered hopefully.

Meanwhile I'm back to working on the writing. My sales target for Year 1: 5,000.

It's going to be tricky. Because of the way Bewrite works my access to my standard distribution channels (which got the self-published works sales up into the thousands) is restricted. Therefore it is going to be promotion and marketing that matter.

At the moment I am simply at the stage of telling everyone I know that a book is coming out. The problem is that I find myself running into issues with endorsements and similar because the publisher is in Canada and I am UK based - sending out galleys and such is proving complicated.

On the other hand I have been asked for ideas about the cover, which is also a problem as I frankly have no idea. I'd like to avoid the formulaic aircraft-and-big flame approach.

Testimonials and endorsements.

2010-06-15T14:01:00.001+01:00

And now I am on the road, hunting for endorsements and testimonials which can make or break a book. The problem I have is that I got a number of subject matter experts to contibute (and they were extremely helpful, so thank you very much for handling all my endless queries), but these are not necessarily the people you can ask for endorsements.

Very few have a profile in Canada, or even outside aviation in the UK. The one that does has a policy of not endorsing products, after being badly burned some years back. I got the help and sanity check in return for not asking.

So now I’m digging back through my address book to find anyone I know who might be able to help. And on top of this my nerves are kicking in, and the little voice of sanity is busy telling me that I can’t possibly bother anyone important about my little book.

I’m going to, of course. Ater all, all they can say is no, and to get this far towards publication, believe me you get used to hearing “no”. You just can’t let it stop you.

(On the practical side, if you can think of anyone who might be interested, please drop me a note. Bound manuscripts can be supplied if required.)

And don't forget the Gatwick Aviation Museum Open day this weekend! I don't know how I can be thinking about endsorsements, when I'm so nervous I just checked they actually wanted to be mentioned in the thanks.

Different markets and promo nerves

2010-06-14T12:42:00.003+01:00

With my first publication, it was a small, specialised and generally friendly market: one where even reviewers who slate your work are likely to run into you at the next convention and give some decent feedback, and you spend you time chatting to competitors about joint ventures, successes and ways to promote the entire market. Out in the open market things are less friendly and more competitive. My book is going to be one of thousands published this year, and that means I need to promote it.

As the sort of person who, if I got a chance to shout my name from the rooftops would rather whisper it while hiding behind the chimney, I find self-promotion challenging. It is very difficult to fight the urge to let the book be released, do very little promotion and just say that if it is good, it will sell.

This is how you guarantee a flop. To be honest I suspect that is partly why it is tempting: if anything goes wrong, if my research has failed me, if there is a huge clanger in the plot, if the book is actually horribly written, not many people will see it. Unfortunately it is also how you can guarantee you won't get another book published.

To counter this I keep telling myself that the book deserves better than me hiding under a blanket and pretending it didn't get published. The publisher has sunk significant funds and time into it, in the belief it is a good book and they are counting on it to sell. People don't buy books they've never heard of, and with the book publisher being Canadian that gives me another obstacle to overcome - people in Britain can't order a book they've never heard of.

So I'm compromising: hiding behind my PC screen for the illusion of privacy and meanwhile setting up as much of a web presence as I can and telling everyone I've ever met on any forum that I've written a book. Doing all these wonderful things they keep talking about: book trailers and banners and buttons and blurbs. I can only hope that will be enough.

And here's my gratuitious ad for today: http://www.squidoo.com/Firestorm.
It's my book. It's hopefully great. Please buy it when it comes out.

(Doesn't that sound like a confident, driven, self-promoting author? No? Oh well...)

First Novel Nerves

2010-06-13T09:44:00.001+01:00

Oh dear. At the moment my brain is working in fits and starts at best. The final version went back to the editor yesterday, and now I am left extremely nervous.

Instead of working on my other novels, I find myself torn between frantic promotion setup and reassuring my cat that he is in fact furry and can purr while trying to relax. I think he thinks I have gone crazy.

The issue is that because I used to write horror, and have a range of non-fiction article out under my name I've used a pen name to avoid confusion. Now I need to consider whether to link all the blogs, videos, twitter etc to a new set of accounts under that name, or whether to add it to my own feeds. Frankly, if I put it solely under my own accounts it will get lost in the traffic very quickly, so I'm currently working on a "best of both worlds" set up.

If my nerves will let me...

Writing presence for now

Also a Youtube, Google site (until the website is set up), and forum are present, although content is limited at this stage.

Dueling expert syndrome

2010-06-04T08:25:00.000+01:00

Something I have learned and want to pass on to budding novelists: Once you've done your research and written the book, don't ever, ever, go back for a second opinion. They won't agree. Put two experts and a room and get three opinions (actually about five and a lively ongoing debate in my case).

On the other hand, there is a certain black humour in saying "I just torched a house because it was the only way to make the firefighters happy."

And back it goes...

2010-05-27T13:53:00.000+01:00

Edits done to the manuscript, and back it goes to the publisher. That was a fairly fast turnaround, but to be honest I've had trouble sleeping since it got back to me, so I've had my head down over the word processor (which promptly broke - thanks Word 2003 for corrupting your template file at just the wrong moment).

I can however reccomend Open Office as a good method of bacon-saving with its useful .odt format. Luckily, the publisher uses it too. Here's a hefty plug for OO - it's easy to use, I picked it up in five minutes, and the XP .doc format option actually keeps the comments and track changes correct when opened in Word.

My thanks also go to Gatwick Aviation Museum for a sanity check on some of the details - I'd got them right, so there wasn't the need for an extensive re-write that I had feared, but the confirmation has saved me a lot of worry.

A harsh review

2010-05-26T09:34:00.001+01:00

In a change of topic, after a gentleman on a forum decided to shread some of my other work, I was asked why I took my work being picked apart so calmly. I replied that some of what they say is useful, and feedback whether good or bad is something to learn from.

That's not the whole story. In fact, I've been here before. My first small press book got effectively two sets of reviews. The first type (and there were very few of these) were raving about great ideas. The second set paid attention to editing, layout etc. and were, shall we say, less kind. It was quite a shock, but it was good to get it out of the way early on and get a thicker skin.

And over several books I went from reviews at 2/5 reading "not all the ideas are brilliant." and "a small press book, with small press composition" to 5 star "a superb story, as well as an example of how good this could be." and "truly one of the best in its class."

Now I'm moving into a new area of writing and to be blunt, I expect the same thing. It helps to be prepared to be slated, and it always takes time to build a name. What matters is that I am making the move, and if I let a few harsh critics put me off then I really would not be cut out for writing.

(And if the worst comes to the worst, there's always madeira or sherry to drown the pain.)

And the manuscript returns

2010-05-25T08:09:00.001+01:00

The first set of edits has come back. To my complete surprise and relief it wasn't one huge block of red ink either. Better yet I agree with most of the changes, or at least can see why they were suggested.

The corrections should be easily made. In general it is punctuation, but there are a few places where it seems I have made a few assumptions based on my own knowledge that readers would not know. A little bit more explanation is called for to clarify these issues.

Hopefully I can get them all done this week and get it returned for a new round of edits.

exploding lightbulbs

2010-05-19T13:01:00.000+01:00

Last night, at 3 am, we had a power surge. We know we had a power surge due to tell-tale clues, like exploding lightbulbs, fuse box shutting down completely and every circuit breaker and surge protector in the house tripping.

If I sound not particularly upset it's because my night then involved cleaning up, getting the power back, restoring circuit breakers and in general not geting any sleep. Despite cats, a mess, pitch darkness, and other issues the cause was discovered. This morning at 8am I was at the shops to change every lightbulb we had, since the bad batch had been a boxed set. It seems that when they heated up, they shed the glass component and let the filament explode in the air.

Unfortunately, we have also confirmed that one of the cats does have poor eyesight and is genuinely afraid of the dark. When the lights went out, one was running round enjoying the new experience, ambushing feet and playing with her toys. The other one was huddled on the bed until the torch lit, when he carefully stayed inside the small patch of light right by my feet until we got one of the lighting rings back. Poor little beggar.

Progress on promos

2010-05-18T11:07:00.004+01:00

A very fast response, and I have a demo of a book trailer to review. At 20 seconds it's not long, the concept is very simple, and it's made with stock footage/audio so it's cheap. We've got some time to revise it before the book comes out, but the basics are there. Best of all, it's got the right aircraft in it, and the sounds are close if not completely accurate. (You'd need to be a pedant like me to spot the problem, and after compression it's not going to be audible.)

I'm still investigating review options, and have a few on the table.

Update: Real life gets in the way again, so I'm setting up contacts and listing places at 2am since I can't sleep. Then I'll send them in the morning so that the timestamp shows a more usual hour...

What's really getting to me right now is that I sent off the signed contracts last wek and so far have had no feedback. I know, I'm using Royal Mail, the Atlantic is in the way, volcanic ash has played havoc with airmail, etc. but at the same time until I get either the signed contract back or an email saying they've received it, I don't think I'll quite believe I'm actually going to be published.

Marketing plan

2010-05-17T08:11:00.000+01:00

While I wait for the publisher to dot the i's and cross the t's so we can push ahead, I have a few things on the go:

1) Finish another book - manuscript #4, although I have a few ideas drifting around for revisions to manuscript #2.
2) Promotion.

It's a little early to start marketing the book itself, but what I am doing is assessing the best places to send out review copies, gathering media packs and contact details. In general I'm looking less at the book trade and review sites (since the publisher knows what they are doing with those) and more at interest and online groups that would be related to the subject. Since sending out review copies is costly I need to make sure the review copies are carefully targeted.

E-books are easier to send out and remove print and shipping costs, so they do open up other options. Unfortunately they are easily pirated, so it is a case of making sure they go to reputable sites.

Book trailers are useful but costly ($350 for a basic thirty second trailer) so I'm having a word with a few friends in media to see about other options after identifying the best online and offline networks to send it to. There are several media networks and portals I can get banners and buttons onto at low cost, which would also be targeted.

I identified most of these before I submitted the manuscript - now it's just a case of firming up figures and working out which are the best ones to use that will be the most effective with an overseas publisher.

It's worth mentioning that the obvious free promotion areas I have available (forums, websites, personal connections) have already been identified and all I really need is a book to promote on them.

Typical timing

2010-05-13T08:22:00.000+01:00

Since the company and publishing contract checks out, I'm taking the deal.

The only problem is that, with typical terrible tirial timing, the printer died right after printing two copies of the contract meaning that I have no cover letter. It will take at least two days to get it fixed, so I'm sending the contracts without one, and dropping an email to let them know.

I'm also starting to get things set up on the marketing side. Until the book's release title is confirmed my options are limited, but I can get blogs and URLs registered for a pen name. I'm also working on a bio, which will be completely accurate to my experience, just with another name on it.

And after having to drop my planned pen name for being too close to another authors, I actually prefer the new one. So far I've counted five aviation shout-outs in it, and I am sure there are more - quite appropriate given what I write.

Better late than never

2010-05-12T10:59:00.000+01:00

I had a nicely handwritten note from an agent arrive on my doorstep this morning.

Now before you say that I should not have sent to a publisher until I had heard from all the agents I sent it out to, I will point out I sent the manuscript to this one in August 2009 and they say that if you have not heard from them in three months it's a no.

It was a rejection anyway, so it changes very little. They expressed their regrets that despite "strong writing and a good voice" "they could not see a market for my work."

I'm afraid I'm only human. I cast a glance at the publishing contract I'd been about to sign. I looked back at the note. Then I indulged in a quiet snigger.

On a more serious note, thank you to the agent for your time considering the manuscript, for taking the time to write a personal rejection, and for your kind words about my writing. Very few agents do take the time to do this, and it is this sort of consideration that keeps aspiring writers going despite the increasing piles of "no". Unfortunately it does tend to invite more submissions - guess where my next manuscript is going...

Plants and flat sales and cats - oh my!

2010-05-11T08:21:00.005+01:00

Over Worked, Under Paid - Giclee Print
Patterson, Gary
18 in. x 24 in.
Buy at AllPosters.com
Framed Mounted
(I couldn't find one for busy, but this seemed appropriate)

Part of yesterday was spent retrieving one moggie from a tree. It was her first time climbing one, and typically she got stuck. Even more typically, once the ladder was set up and she knew she could be rescued, she decided this was a good time to explore the rest of the tree.

The property sale proceeds apace, and we are hoping to get it done by the end of the month. If we do, it will make things a lot simpler and get another issue out of the way.

Then there are the plants. Oh dear. Once again, the problem is that I know where to start growing things, but not where to stop. In the flat I was limited to windowsills. Here, thanks to foxes and squirrels, I'm still limited to windowsills, but there are more of them and they are bigger. Unfortunately, between lettuces, cauliflowers, broccoli, onions and carrots (and mustard and cress), all the sunfacing ones are already full. I'm trying to persude the other half that a 4 tier indoor greenhouse to get the rest off the floor would be a good idea. We need an enclosed one because the cats decided to climb the shelves.

I have done somehing wrong with the dwarf beans. I planted six which were supposed to grow 15 inches high. Instead I now have eight plants (was nine until Matilda ate one), and the largest is two feet and still growing.

And the book contract? They've come back and said the changes I requested will not be an issue. The problem is I'm not sure how to proceed next - do they amend the contract and resend it? Is the boilerplate signed with an allowance for agreed changes? Do I sign it with my amendments and return it?

In an IT negotiation the agent would handle it, or the party offering the contract, and you'd swap it back and forth. However, I am not familiar with literary contracts or Canadian law, which leaves me at something of a loss.

While I figure out the next move, I'm now costing the marketing plan. The free components are done, but there are always a few pay channels that are worth going down. The only real issue, as always, is making sure you don't spent more on marketing than you would make from sales.

But before I do anything else, step one is definitely going to be "clear anything else that remains in flat".

Contract update

2010-05-09T08:53:00.003+01:00

I heard back about the publishing contract. There are issues that the Society of Authors check flagged up, a few of which I'd already spotted and several of which I hadn't. Now I need to carefully compose a letter to go back to the publisher asking about these and suggesting a few alternatives.

The secondary issue is the pseudonym. They prefer authors to use their actual names. Unfortunately as I've already mentioned, I keep my personal and professional lives very seperate. Market the book? Fine. Market the psuedonym as a brand? Fine. Market me? Not fine. To be honest it would actually hinder booksales since that brand already exists and is in a completely different field.

The real issue for me isn't a standard one. Their contract blocks several avenues of marketing I've already identified (which go directly to the book's target audience), and cuts off two routes to market that I've used before successfully. If I'm not careful, it's going to be a case of choosing between a publishing credit or high sales.

Update:
I just checked several other midlist publishers for their method of publication. What is scary is that in many cases I have higher sales with my self published books. The publisher I am looking at actually is one of the better ones for distribution, which is a genuine shock. It seems that we had better distribution for the self-published book than many of the professional houses managed. Seriously, if my self-published book could get onto shelves at two large book chainstores why can't the midlist publishers?

I've sent a few questions back about the contract, but the problem is hitting the right tone. I don't want to be awkward or hard to work with, but I really don't want to get screwed.

The joys of editing

2010-05-07T11:08:00.000+01:00

That's right, my word count for #4 just dropped. I've worked in two more sections, revised a few for better reading, and my goal is actually further away.

And that's without the complete re-write of the ending a hung parliament requires. Writing is frustrating sometimes.

Steady progress

2010-05-06T10:39:00.001+01:00

Public Service message: It's election day, please get out and vote. We just did, and the polls were rather busy. If you want reasons try http://www.squidoo.com/why-vote for a non-partisan look at the best reasons to vote (and why spoiling your ballot isn't a protest)

On the publishing front I've got five days until I hear back from the contract check service from the Society of Authors. I still can't believe it was only Monday I got the contract offer through, and Tuesday I spent trying to get a contract check set up.

I now have another finished manuscript and need to decide whether to ship it round or let it sit for a few more months and try and work on something else - like not chewing my nails down to the bone. You may have guessed that waiting on this type of contract is quite stressful.

This close to the finishing post, all I want to do is sign the contract, close the deal and get the book published. Don't worry, I know better than to sign anything without legal review. Even so, believe me I really, really, want to.

Rather stunned - in a good way

2010-05-03T07:48:00.000+01:00

I just got a contract through by email. A publishing contract. For novel no 3.

The publisher's assessment is that it has issues (mainly dialog punctuation and a few typos), but a strong story.

Now the good thing about email is that the publisher can't see your immediate reaction (an embarrassingly girly squeal). The other thing is that it allows me a cooling off period to review the contract once the initial flush has worn off.

However things turn out, I now know that I can write something that is on the level to be professionally published. And that is a damn good feeling.

Slow progress

2010-04-28T14:43:00.002+01:00

I've spent the morning trying to move books around, get shelves up, repot plants and tidy up - which means I have got nothing done this week on my novel.

The problem is, I look round at what I have done and it isn't as if I haven't accomplished anything. I just haven't accomplished what I wanted to!

So, here's my new counter and may it guilt me into getting the right work done:

I've also just realised that my numbering is out on the blog, so here's the details:

#1 - complete in drawer 90,000 words
#2 - half finished at 62,000 words
#3 - full with publisher (and that makes me grin like an idiot)
#4 - started for Nanowrimo, now at 64,000 words out of 90,000

A new unicreature...

2010-04-23T09:12:00.002+01:00

I have to say, when I first got the newly released Silver and fully evolved it, I laughed. Some of you can guess why:

Cute isn't he? And his ground crew aren't bad either

And more words

2010-04-22T12:27:00.000+01:00

So, while I wait for feedback on No 3, Novel #4 just reached 64,000 words.

I'm trying to do 1,000 words a day. It may not sound like much but it's now at the stage of going through writing linking sections, rearranging events, checking continuity and so on, to make a working first draft. I find myself worried about something I had not considered earlier; the prospect of it going over the 90,000 target.

I also have an interesting problem with the ending, prompted by real events: the election. Large chunks of the book are political satire, taking an even handed swipe at most things. The historical precedent my current ending is based on may become irrelevant on 6th May (the joys of a possible hung parliament). Do I want to write something that could be a period piece before release?

Despite this, the query letter is written and ready for it, but I want to get the mauscript into final shape before I start revising query letters.

Having learned from my last set of submissions, I will probably just send this one straight overseas and see what happens.

Another rejection

2010-04-16T12:26:00.000+01:00

I have another rejection from an agency. This is a form rejection, so it isn't worth trying to decypher hidden meanings about plot, characterisation etc.

Meanwhile the full manuscript is still across in Canada, with the publisher, hopefully being read and enjoyed. What I really wish I had not read was that it can take three months for editors to get back to authors about manuscripts. I won't have any fingenails left by then!

However novel #3 got a re-edit and a lot of extra writing and is now on 61K. I honestly think it will top out at 90K, but I really am not sure what genre it fits into.

A manuscript request

2010-04-09T13:41:00.001+01:00

And finally we seem to have progress on the writing front!

Yesterday I got a request for a full manuscript from the publisher looking at one of my novels. After a few moments of complete shock, I sat down to write back. This proved harder than I thought, since the instinctive response is to agree to anything to get one step further towards publication.

Still after some work I think I had a few lines that did not make me look completely insane, and a copy of the manuscript all ready in their house format. It's gone now, out into the ether, and now I just have to wait to hear. And as many authors already know and I just found out: waiting on a response to a full is actually worse than waiting on a query.

Unfortunately I have to admit, after being told repeatedly by various UK agents that there was no market in the UK for the adventure genre, it seems going outside Britain was the right choice. One thing I would be interested in finding out is whether the decline of young men reading and the decline in publishing adventure books (usually targeted towards them) corralates. After all if it does, would that be cause and effect by one upon the other, or a vicious circle?

Hubpages - to write or not...?

2010-04-07T09:53:00.002+01:00

I used my old hubpages account at the weekend and set up my first live hub, about USB Cell batteries. This was very much a test to see how it would work.

The good.
It's quick and easy to use - in some ways easier than Squidoo.

The bad.
It's less flexible, with a smaller range of modules and a limited amount of embedding allowed.

The issues
Now to get down to the problem: I do these pages to raise money for charities I support.

Squidoo gives a payment for lenses that attract visitors and a share of affiliate income and the chance to embed donate modules or your own affiliate, while Bukisa gives a straight payment-per-visit for articles. Hubpages does neither - any revenue raised must be raised through membership of affiliate schemes or advertising by the owner. To me this means there's no real benefit to writing good content, particularly as you then have to stuff it full of distracting ads and hope someone clicks on them. If you've been following the blog you know my opinions of Infolinks when they turned up on Squidoo...

more »
HubPages

For anyone doing this for income, there's a bigger problem: Their affiliate setup only works if you are a US citizen - the UK Amazon account I tried to link does not work as the tags aren't acknowledged. I tried embedding links directly, but apparently that is not allowed by their HTML editor. So far the only one I've got working is Kontera, and that's too similar to Infolinks for my liking.

Would I continue doing Hubpages? To be honest, my initial impression is not entirely positive. I'll probably do a few to promote my articles and lenses from bukisa or elsewhere. They are quick and easy to create but the failure to embed affiliates means they produce no income or charity donation, and I get more traffic elsewhere.

And progress is made slowly...

2010-04-06T11:05:00.001+01:00

Over Easter I got two more rejections - one at 1am Easter Sunday. Both were form rejections, so no useful information or advice unfortunately. On the other hand that is the last of the UK ones for that manuscript, so hopefully the genre's not as dead overseas.

I've had the book on the left recommended to me, and when I checked out whether it was good as claimed, I found it was also highlighted on the howpublishingreallyworks blog. Hopefully that's a ringing endorsement.

On the garden front the cress and mustard I grew have gone, and the lettuce is now seriously taking route. I also have seven dwarf bean plants taking over the kitchen.

And on the article front? I've just added another article to Bukisa, and am looking forward to them getting the bugs out of their topic pages, since one of their topics is the GWR. I have also published my first hub on hubpages, but may well not do another one. I'll blog here once I've got my thoughts together on it, but it's another US/non-US issue.

And a happy easter to my readers...

2010-04-01T17:40:00.000+01:00

And that's it really. The house sale is progressing slowly, as these things do. I'm still waiting on hearing about the manuscript, and the plants are growing fine. Although the problem with growing cauliflower on a window sill just became apparent - I had forgotten how big they get.

I need a larger windowsill, and someone to eat the cress forest I accidentally grew.

It's the waiting that's a killer...

2010-03-26T12:32:00.001Z

Everything on my life right now seems to depend on waiting. To give you an idea, I am selling a flat and waiting to hear from potential buyers after viewing, waiting to hear interview results, and on top of that I have two novels currently sitting with publishers and agents. So as I checked my email for the third (probably closer to thirtieth) time today, I realised this is getting ridiculous. It's very difficult to work on another novel, when every time the door goes, the phone rings or you even think that someone might have emailed you, you immediately check and *poof* there goes your train of thought.

Since I've now get 42 items on Bukisa and need a break from rewrites, I took some time away from the PC and spent the morning clearing stinging nettles to get the vegetable patch ready for this year. Both because it needed to be done, and because its the furthest away from house and PC I can get without going out. Unfortunately, since I'm waiting on the plants I put in last week to sprout, even gardening now involves waiting!

On the short story front, since a Perfect Set-Up did so well (34 views on Redgage in the first hour) I've starting promoting Escape - Part One.

I just hope I hear something soon on at least one of these fronts as the silence is very hard to bear.

Articles and More

2010-03-25T11:40:00.000Z

After real life got in the way yesterday, I'm now back to writing articles on Bukisa. Porting my old game reviews is taking longer than I thought - not least because my writing style and voice has changed over the years so instead of a direct port, I am re-writing them. Great for search engine rankings and traffic, but not so good for my schedule!

I've also taken a chance and put one of my short stories up. Originally written for a messageboard writing section I thought I might as well see if anyone liked it. In addition, the first part of "Escape" is up - after all if I can use lulu preview and let people read it for free, I might as well let them read it for free on Bukisa and get paid for the views. If enough people ask I'll put the other two parts up there as well, and leave the e-book version for die-hard fans if I have any. (Let's be honest. The way I'm feeling now "Enough people" would probably be one.)

I am still waiting for any more feedback on the novel, although between the article writing, a few real life complications and gardening work I'm not really thinking about it at the moment.

A Perfect Set Up - short story on Bukisa

A feline opinion...

2010-03-23T15:19:00.001Z

Well after all the rejections I took the plunge and went overseas with no.3. Now I'm just waiting to hear back, which is not good for my nerves. The temptation to just stop writing and snuggle in front of the TV with icecream is very, very, strong. However I can't.

I am currently facing a huge clean up job scrubbing the hall clean, and trying not to laugh every time I look at it. This is unusual for me when faced with a huge mess caused-by-cat, but I'm not going mad, honest. Put quite simply:

My cat's just been sick on my latest form rejection letter.

I think she has great taste.

A small problem and an injury

2010-03-22T16:33:00.002Z

I've been feeling a bit light headed all day. Despite that I got everything done and finally slumped in front of my PC about half an hour ago. Which was when I touched my head and pulled away a red hand. And then I remembered what I'd done at the weekend and that there was a reason I should be taking it easy.

Hearing what I thought was one of the cats getting into a fight, I dashed off to retrieve him. The retrieval was successful, but as I straightened up, hampered by a twenty *ahem* pound cat, I stepped back to keep my balance. Which was when the chestnut tree walloped me in the head as the other cat jumped out of it.

I have a nice raised red line across my forehead, an onimous grey shadow behind it, and apparently scrapes to the scalp which I just found the messy way. The last time I felt this bad I was concussed, and that's still a possibility. In the future I should probably avoid cats and gardens.

What really worries me is that I sent out another submission this morning, and the way I'm feeling I don't think there's any guarantee it's particularly lucid. So to the poor agent out there, if you get an oddly disjointed and outright weird query letter, I apologise.

Frustrations of writing

2010-03-20T06:23:00.002Z

There's an issue with novel #3.

I have a complete manuscript.
My writing group loved it.
An editor said that he was having trouble editing it because he kept reading it.
A fan club and regular article readers who liked the concept and signed up to be notified if it was published.
I have a marketing plan, distribution conections, and links to areas the publishers usually cannot access to promote it.
I even have people asking about the one to follow it.

And after six months I have an ever growing stack of form rejections. Two more this morning.

And I really don't get it. I'd say it was the writing, but if a professional editor I paid to tear it apart says there's nothing wrong with it (losing himself more work in the process) then it probably isn't. The concept is old fashioned, but then so are adventure stories/thrillers themselves, and no agents have checked whether there is a spin on it.

I'm probably not going to send this out again to another agent, and just let the remaining no's trickle in.

So am I giving up? Not a chance. An agent and a large publishing house would be nice, but there are always other options, and I need to take some time to prioritise those.

On the good side, we just shipped a pile of my earlier books off to the US, so at least I've still got distribution over there.

New lenses and updates

2010-03-19T09:37:00.004Z

I've completed two more lenses, on the Hawker Hunter and Folland Gnat, but have also been having a look at Squidoo's new options for the sidebar.

My Hammond Innes lens have just got a full revamp, including these modules. Overall I'd have to say I like them, although having them show up in the Table of Contents is a little distracting.

Finally I've sent a query off to a US agent. After all, the worst they can say is no. So, fingers crossed. Again.