That'll Dent It

 

Wow, been spending money like a madman recently. Not enough that I'm basically paying ALL the bills in the house--the wife's been filling in a lot of gaps for her mom since they don't get her father's money from social security any more since he died.

On top of that though, I get a notice in the mail that I need to renew my license plates...but I can't because I have some outstanding bill with the state. A tax thing, it says.

I'm thinking...I've paid my owed taxes the last couple of years. So I have to call the c'troller--and they say we've got this debt from 2013-2014 that's not paid. We'd started a payment plan WAY back when, but unbeknownst to me, my wife had stopped paying it.

Bottom line, we owe...wait for it...$7K.

Fucking hell. I pay a grand on the spot as a downpayment, and start a new installment plan to come out of my money.

That was not in the plans...after spending $13K on this book, another $2K on our trip to Sleepy Hollow coming up, plus other various things I've been contemplating.

Life is expensive, man. We'd be drowning right now if I didn't have this job...

---

Bookfront: Got to #3 at one point, but no higher. We'll see. I'm running targeted ads, but fuck if that's not confusing. The data it's giving back seems ridiculous. At this point I think it's saying I've spent $50 to make $8.99, which seems like a terrible ad strategy.

I'm using the right keywords. There's clearly engagement, but according to its chart, isn't resulting in sales.

The first week, book looks to have sold around 520 copies. That's not great considering the preorders were about 500. Other people who have published stuff say that's a great number, though, so what do I know?

I think I have to sell about 3600 to break even, though that's an approximation because we get paid less for sales from Ingram than Azon. 

Other thing is, this is on Kindle Unlimited, and it's been doing decent there--Almost 9,000 pages read in a week, but that only translates to $36. That's right, the book was read 21 times and I get about the cost of two books sold.

Also, finished sending everyone(other than that dickhead author) their comp copies--the final 3 boxes went out yesterday. They were the foreign ones, and fuck if that didn't hurt. One went to UK and cost $59, and another went to Australia and cost $70. Youch.

Dunno if this publishing thing is for me, but I'm at least happy with how the book turned out.

 

 

Book Updates

 

Good or bad first? Let's go bad.

We didn't hit #1--hell, didn't even break #10. I still think we have a good shot--most of my advertising is for October, which is when the Halloween books start smashing it anyway.

What's annoying is what IS in the top spots. It's some antho horror book featuring a bunch of authors I've never heard of. Hell, showed it to Malf and HE'D never heard of any of them other than the guy doing the intro(that I also know of). 

But how this book is doing that well? No idea. And the audio version of it is at the #3 spot and it costs $27...insane.

Also annoying, a couple of the big authors in the book haven't tweeted about it once. One of them is an old guy who may not understand the internet very well, so I'll excuse him a bit. (he did tweet the book trailer a while back)

The OTHER guy though...man, fuck that guy. I know he's on a book tour right now, so I'd be willing to dismiss it if he was posting nothing BUT that tour shit. However, he retweeted some other dude's book, and this author's not even INVOLVED in that book in any way.

To top it off, I actually ended up paying this author more than I'd originally offered because I really wanted him in the book. I could tell he was blowing up as a name, so figured he'd really help the book. You figure maybe he'd return the favor by retweeting one of the tweets where I specifically tagged him on Tuesday.

You(and I) would be wrong on that count.

Last bad--turns out, one of the last-minute typos that was caught still made it into the HC edition of the book. Kinda sucks. I think I can get it fixed, but with the way this distributor works, all the copies currently ordered will have the error. It's minor--hell, none of us including the author on the last looks saw it--so I'm not sweating it, but apparently the author had a friend catch it.

I'm dubious that it's just the author herself since we told her about it back when we caught it so we could see what she wanted to do. (it's a case of the phrase "would've have" being there, so we didn't know if she wanted it to read "would have" or "would've")

The good news is that the first review came in and was excellent. They really dug the book, and the cherry on top is that they listed their top 7 favorite stories and mine was one of them.

You can read the review here: https://bit.ly/3t8YiDz

 ---

It was a high-stress week. All of this book stuff, the bday, the 12 straight days working...

And then to add more work, I gotta pack up 26 packages for the authors of their copies of the book. Strike that--25 copies, cuz that one dickhead author isn't getting his for a LOOOOONG time.

Fuck, another reason not to include a billion authors in the book.

Dunno, it's all a little overwhelming.

 

 

Release Day

 

I wish I could convey how much work this has been. So much paperwork, email, reading, documentation, changes, resubmissions...

Juggling people's issues. Really tiresome sometimes, especially when you're paying them.

But it's finally out today. Lot of people are spreading the news, which is cool. The charts are all weird though, so I don't know how long it truly takes to reflect stats.

Preorder wise, we had about 450 copies ordered. Feels like a good amount. I'm not sure when it factors those pre-orders into the ranks.

People are wondering whether I'm going to do a second volume or some other book. At this point, I definitely don't feel like it. It's just like when you shoot a movie--you don't want anything to do with them any more. 

After a while maybe I'll forget about how tough this was.

But it's really starting to feel like Halloween though, and it's only 9/19 so I feel good about that.

---

Bday happened. Wife made me a banana cream pie. I hadn't had a real one in like 15 years. Those store-bought ones are garbage.

She'd never made one, and it turned out great. That was about the high point.

Saw the new Haunting in Venice movie, based on Agatha Christie's book Hallowe'en Party. It's VERY loosely based. Like, both have Poirot in them and involve a murder, and a Halloween party. That's about the only similarities, but I don't blame them.

The book is a pretty small-scale affair, Takes place in a regular neighborhood house. Wouldn't make for much of a movie with big stars.

 

 

 

October Plans

 

Making some plans for October. First: Sleepy Hollow return.

But holy fuck, has shit gotten expensive. I know, I know, we've all seen it in everything we buy, but I'm looking at last year's tickets for some things and they're like $25--this year they're like $44. That's a big jump in one year.

Now, we haven't been there in like 5 years. And it was just me, the wife and kid, so we had one room. I invited my brother this time, cuz I know he wants to take some photos, so I got two rooms. That way, he can be my kid's buddy, and I can get some action in the hollow, and I'm not talking the town.

 And we're going to do a couple of different things this time--the cemetery walk at night would have been cool, but it's completely sold out. So I got tickets to some special magic show they do near Halloween, but it's nearly $100 a ticket...

Gonna be expensive.

Also saw that they're playing Lost Boys at that drive in I've been meaning to go to in PA--it was in a documentary I watched, and they're always having fun events. The sax player's gonna be there, and he's gonna put on a concert by a bonfire, so that'll be cool. (I've seen his show twice, and it's been great both times)

---

Found out crazy news--the hotel that usually hosts all the great conventions, the hotel I have gone to approximately 50 times in the past 30 years, is closing. There's one big MM show coming up there, and I tried to get a hotel room in August like I usually do, but it was sold out for the first time EVER. 

I had to basically bribe someone $100 to get them to give me their room. So at least I can have one last hurrah there, but man, it's pretty sucky. I hate change. 

I have a full page ad in the program for that convention, so I hope it's well attended.

---

My dentist woes continue. Still haven't pulled the tooth that's mostly missing now. I have pain on the OTHER side of my mouth, so now it's basically hard to chew on either side of my mouth. I went back in and they referred me to an endodontis.

Went there today--they're not sure what's going on. Turns out it wasn't even the tooth I thought, but if I eat something cold, I will be in agony for the next half hour. They used a cold thing to figure it out, touching my teeth until they got the reaction.

Then I was in pain for the next half hour.. Gotta go back and they're going to see if they can re-root canal it. Other problem is, the tooth right behind it has some sort of infection below where the roots used to be. So after I get the one tooth ironed out, gonna have to go back in and try to get the other tooth ironed out, and hope it doesn't mean that I have to get THAT tooth pulled.

I'm making good money, but not so much I wanna drop $1100 on multiple tooth replacements...

 

Life is at it again...

 

Wife got a late night phone call Thursday--her mom had fallen at the house. Said she hit her head on the trashcan and her hip hurt. My kid's over there, so he heard the crash and then found her in kitchen, helped her to her bed.

She didn't want my wife to worry or come over. Said she was okay, but the wife was concerned about a concussion. Her mom didn't want her to skip work, so my wife went to work at 3am but said to call her if it got worse.

Apparently it did, as I got up to news that my wife had left work early and gone to see her mom, who couldn't even get up to go the bathroom. They called 911 and had her taken to the emergency room. They did the run of stuff and discovered she'd broken her pelvis. 

It's extremely painful, but the only good news is that it's in a place where they don't have to do surgery. It will heal on its own eventually, but until then it's gonna be miserable. Lot of pain. 

There was no concussion. My wife will be spending the night over there for the next week at least, since her mom still can't walk on her own and needs help getting to the bathroom, getting fed.

---

Took my kid and brother to see a movie Thursday night. Was bored, hadn't seen a flick in a while. Didn't wanna fight the crowds or shit audiences for the Nun2, so saw there was some movie from RL Stine. My kid likes his Gbumps stuff.

Oddly I hadn't heard of this movie. No commercials, no online ads, nothing. So I figure, probably nobody I know in it. Turns out it has Chevy Chase and Dan Ackroyd in it. Uhhhhh...

The movie was fucking bad, man. It's rated PG13, but should be G. Clearly a kid's movie. My kid liked it, but both my brother and I were like...youch.

---

This coming week I've got a dentist visit, a zoom meeting with the CEO of that place that's distributing my movies--if you read my piece, you know I've been pretty vocal online about how bad they've gotten, and apparently it's gotten back to them. They wanna have a chat. Good. 

Then Thursday I wanted to go to the local premiere of a movie partially shot by friends, but forgot I'd agreed to do a podcast months ago. Don't really wanna, but whatcha gonna do?

Next week things get nuts with the book release. Gotta lot to do to try to push it to #1, including setting up Azon ads. I can't set them up until the book is active THROUGH Azon--it's complicated, because the book is IN the Azon system, but it came from IngSpark so Azon doesn't even acknowledge it in their ads system.

 

 

 

Just When I Thought I Was Out...

 

I had told the auction company I wasn't doing any auctions in Sept/October. 

On the couple of times I did Wednesday auctions in July/August, they were practically begging me to do the September one. They had nobody, etc. I said no, couldn't do it.

They continued to beg. 

Last Wednesday had another auction, and the lady who owns the company came out and said, "Okay, just hear me out..."

"Nope," I say with a smile. "Not doing it."

She says, "Wait until you hear what I have to say."

"You could offer me five thousand dollars for that weekend, and I'd say no."

She says, "Well, I wasn't going to offer you that much, but I was going to offer you $1500..."

I shake my head.

"--BUT," she adds, "It'll be a short auction on each day and X won't be there." X is the name I've omitted of the main auction guy that nobody likes. He's always such a busybody, and if I have to pause an auction for literally 10 seconds to answer someone's question or troubleshoot something, he's always asking, "What's going on? We're not on the right lot."

Even though he knows I'm doing my job. He's just an asshole, basically. 

I don't say anything, but I AM now thinking about it. Basically, a five hour day and then a four hour day, and $1500? Sure, I don't technically need it. Sort of hard to turn down, though.

So on Monday I told her I'd do it. She's overjoyed, cuz they were really screwed on their options. I let her know, though, that if X showed up, I would literally walk out unless they handed me $5K in cash on the spot, and also there is ZERO chance of me doing the October auction, no matter what they say.

----

Wrote a little short I'm thinking about shooting at my house. No idea what I'd do with it. It's sort of based around an idea I had for a screenplay, so I guess if it got enough interest I could expand it into the full feature.

Would I shoot it? Not sure.

Distribution has gone back to abysmal. The company I used to get my films all over the various channels like Tubi and Roku and whatnot has been going downhill. You can read my account of that here if you want:

https://indyfilmmakeradvs.blogspot.com/

So who knows?

----

Release date on the book approaches. Lot of weird technical things, and I'm lining up advertising stuff. I know a lot of other authors/publishers do these tiny podcasts that get like 100 views. 

No way am I doing that. Too much work, too little payoff.