Tonight's humble dinner fare: French dip sandwiches (insert your own French dip joke here), sauteed white potatoes (just a bit of fresh ground black pepper to make them interesting), and broccoli.
Geoffrey tipped me off to the fact that Food TV is now offering the Good Eats episodes on DVD. It's about freakin' time. No way was I going to buy those on tape. How primitive! Which reminds me, I need to call Borders in Atlanta and make sure they hold a copy of AB's book for me at the signing. Apparently (and I was reading an author's complaints about this just today) no one in the publishing industry has figured out how to get an author's books into the store where he is signing them. So I want to make sure I have spoken for whatever stock they already have.
In response to a query or two, the only other show on Food TV I watch with any regularity is Iron Chef. Even that is a rarity. I think I've seen most of the episodes and I wouldn't cook any of that stuff anyway. Call me when they have the cheddar cheese battle or the carrot battle. Even then, all bets are off. Have you seen what those guys did to perfectly good potatoes?
More boring book talk
The thing that scares me most about this self-publishing deal is not the prospect of having a bunch of books rotting in storage. It's the idea of having the money we do make from book sales eaten away by things like shipping charges from distributors. Somehow in this crazy world of publishing, the booksellers and distributors have the freedom to return anything they buy. And the publisher pays the freight both ways.
This, my friends, is nuts.
I have myself mostly convinced not to sign on with any distributor (the big two are Ingram and Baker & Taylor, who apparently rule the industry with iron fists) who wants such a liberal return policy in addition to the standard 55% distributor's discount off the retail price. I just don't see how we could survive the punishment, especially with the horror stories I've heard of onesie-twosie returns from distributors. I'd rather sell books exclusively through the web site and only ever sell our initial print run than see our "publishing company" die on the vine because of stupid business practices. I don't care what the standards are.
If you have any stories from the world of publishing, especially as related to Ingram, B&T, or other distributors, I'd love to hear them. I realize that I've shared my angst over this topic before, but it's tough not to get caught up in grandiose dreams of having your book on the shelf down at Borders. Maybe I'll slip a copy onto the shelf at the local Borders store just to make myself feel better.
Geoffrey tipped me off to the fact that Food TV is now offering the Good Eats episodes on DVD. It's about freakin' time. No way was I going to buy those on tape. How primitive! Which reminds me, I need to call Borders in Atlanta and make sure they hold a copy of AB's book for me at the signing. Apparently (and I was reading an author's complaints about this just today) no one in the publishing industry has figured out how to get an author's books into the store where he is signing them. So I want to make sure I have spoken for whatever stock they already have.
In response to a query or two, the only other show on Food TV I watch with any regularity is Iron Chef. Even that is a rarity. I think I've seen most of the episodes and I wouldn't cook any of that stuff anyway. Call me when they have the cheddar cheese battle or the carrot battle. Even then, all bets are off. Have you seen what those guys did to perfectly good potatoes?
More boring book talk
The thing that scares me most about this self-publishing deal is not the prospect of having a bunch of books rotting in storage. It's the idea of having the money we do make from book sales eaten away by things like shipping charges from distributors. Somehow in this crazy world of publishing, the booksellers and distributors have the freedom to return anything they buy. And the publisher pays the freight both ways.
This, my friends, is nuts.
I have myself mostly convinced not to sign on with any distributor (the big two are Ingram and Baker & Taylor, who apparently rule the industry with iron fists) who wants such a liberal return policy in addition to the standard 55% distributor's discount off the retail price. I just don't see how we could survive the punishment, especially with the horror stories I've heard of onesie-twosie returns from distributors. I'd rather sell books exclusively through the web site and only ever sell our initial print run than see our "publishing company" die on the vine because of stupid business practices. I don't care what the standards are.
If you have any stories from the world of publishing, especially as related to Ingram, B&T, or other distributors, I'd love to hear them. I realize that I've shared my angst over this topic before, but it's tough not to get caught up in grandiose dreams of having your book on the shelf down at Borders. Maybe I'll slip a copy onto the shelf at the local Borders store just to make myself feel better.
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