Sunday 11 July 2010

A greenhouse and a book.

The greenhouse frame is up, weighted in place with bags of sand because it can't be fixed down until the glazing is in. It's too windy for glazing today.

I'm amazed at the lightness of the structure. No wonder it has to be bolted to its base, which has to be fixed to the ground. Never mind windy weather, two people could lift and steal the whole thing intact! Not to worry, it's guarded by the compost bin which, this year, has a nest of bumble bees in residence. I can't get at the compost, but my fruit trees are doing very well.

I have also put nineteen short stories into a book on Lulu. It costs me nothing but of course, there'll be nobody doing any marketing for it. Most of those stories have already been printed elsewhere anyway so I'd be unlikely to be able to sell them again. It's just handy to have a non-digital storage medium for them.

I could have put in more but the book's going to cost £4.50 as it is so I'd be better to put up several small ones rather than one huge and ridiculously expensive one. The bigger it gets, the more they charge.

It's not available to anyone but me as yet. I've ordered one to check the quality first. When I make it available, it'll be as a printed book or as a free download. For some reason, the minimum price for downloads is £1.17 unless you make it free - and you don't make any money if you charge for it at that price so there's no point. So you can read it onscreen for free and only cough up cash if you want it in print.

It might be useful as a sort of practice marketing book. Some small publishers, who are currently looking at novel submissions from me, expect the author to do something to actively promote their own books. I have absolutely no idea how to go about this so I'll use this one to practice on. Better to make mistakes on the book that won't make me rich than on the ones that might!

If only there was a way to get free publicity as brilliant as this.

Count Mandelstein is no fool. He knows Labour are likely to be out of power for some time so he's written his memoirs and cajoled the rest of Labour into advertising his book - in every paper, most probably for days. That sort of publicity would cost a fortune if you had to pay for advertising.

So, how do I go about annoying Charlie Whelan? There's nothing political in the book, really.

Perhaps, if the smoking bloggers all got together and wrote a book called 'How to get the best out of smoking', the government would ban it. Furious Righteous would queue up to denounce us on every media outlet, every day.

Then we'd make a fortune.

11 comments:

Mr Angry said...

I've loved all of your short stories, LegIron! Fab stuff!

JuliaM said...

Congrats on your greenhouse.

Good job you aren't down south; in the current heatwave, putting anything but cacti in there would guarentee you a nice pile of ash...

Mrs Rigby said...

Greenhouses are interesting things, always wanted one but somehow never quite got round to it. Good luck with the glazing, hope it all fits.

As for advertising the book, getting somebody who thinks they're famous to sue (or threaten to sue) would probably work. It's sometimes called teamwork!

Billy The Fish said...

Leggy, we have not always agreed on the smoking front, but I cannot deny you scribe a mean short story.
Have you not thought of scripting a tale for 2000AD?
You could find yourself as the next Alan Moore!

Leg-iron said...

Mr. Angry - that free download will be available as soon as I've checked their print quality. Just in case someone wants a print copy because Lulu books are not cheap!

They print on demand, ie they carry no stock at all. When someone orders a book, they print and bind one copy and send it. It makes the books expensive but it makes the operation cheap.

Leg-iron said...

JuliaM - what I'm planning is likely to end up as ash anyway ;).

Here, it's moderately warm but there's no danger of heatstroke. We know it's summer because the rain doesn't freeze on the ground and the sky is light grey, mostly. Sometimes a big yellow thing appears and everyone panics.

Solar power companies don't do well here.

Leg-iron said...

Mrs R, mine has polycarbonate glazing which is very light and more flexible than glass so won't crack when the wind bends it.

It does mean the whole thing has to be fixed into concrete blocks because it is perfectly possible for the wind to just blow it away.

Leg-iron said...

Billy the fish - the next Alan Moore? You mean a reclusive nutter?

What the hell, I'm halfway there already.

check out Mark Frankland said...

Are you aware of Mark Frankland ?
He writes similar stuff to yourself and sells direct to the public. He also runs a charity in Dumfries.
Excellent storyteller....

http://www.thecull.com/


http://www.first-base.org/

Leg-iron said...

Ah, but that only works if you know how to market your own books - which I don't.

I could use this one as a practice run, of course.

Henry North London 2.0 said...

Ah but I know someone who does market their own book.

The contents of the greenhouse turning to ash, mmm I shall be in touch

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