This is a great little video on why publishing should be open (variously: DRM-free, cost-free, copyright-free, using open standards) and how that doesn’t have to mean you can’t make it a business. One of the best videos I’ve seen come out of Tools of Change so far, and well produced. Definitely worth your four minutes:
Tim O’Reilly makes the argument for Open Publishing @ TOC 2009 from Open Publishing Lab @ RIT on Vimeo.
eBooks are still a bit of a headache for me. Smashwords helps. Last year I had to manually convert my books into 8 different formats (each) by hand. Actually, I just quit after I hit 8 formats. There are a few other formats I couldn’t manage to get my books converted to for free. Now, I’m thinking maybe I only have to re-create each book 3 times: I take the paperback (which gives me 1 PDF), convert it once to make a printable PDF, once for the kindle, and once more for Smashwords, which will then give me my book back in eight more formats. (All DRM-free, of course!)
The PDFs are easy. I already have to do the work in InDesign to create the paperback, and Adobe software loves to output nice PDFs. Adobe recently announced that they’re updating their software soon to create epub files easily, which would be nice, but Smashwords seems to do a better job, right now. Note to people not in publishing: epub is the future of eBooks.
Making a well-formatted document for the kindle is … well, I’m getting better at it. Luckily I’m not doing anything fancy with my books. No charts, no pictures, no tables, no complex layouts… well, not in the books I’ve been putting in, so far. My poetry can wait. Because it’s going to be a headache, and probably won’t ever sell in volume sufficient to cover the value of the time I’ll have to spend to get it looking right on the kindle (and will never look good in most other eBook formats). I’m just putting novels in. Still, I have to go through each book line by line manually marking it up. Then, because the kindle has a limited range of fonts and doesn’t support extended characters, I have to go through basically character by character and -in some cases- not only change to characters without diacritical marks where I’d used them in the original text, but also rewrite entire sections where the use of specialized fonts and unsupported characters are actually integral to the text.
bleh.
Last year, before Smashwords, I would have had a similarly frustrating process to go through six more times, once for each of the other formats’ idiosyncratic proprietary requirements. Now, by simply doing a quick find-and-replace of Amazon’s proprietary page break tags with a few line break tags, I can upload the well-formatted HTML file I created for the kindle version to Smashwords and -pretty much- get a good output within a few minutes. It’s still lacking the extended characters and custom fonts of the original/paperback version, but most of the eBook formats don’t support that stuff, either.
I’m still developing a “workflow” for eBooks, probably go through and do the main markup in one pass, then save it out as two files & add the kindle markup to one (& remove special characters) and the Smashwords markup to the other. I’m not really much for “workflows” but its something I’ve been thinking a bit about, lately. At Tools of Change 2009, there were multiple, competing products in the exhibition hall & various presentations trying to help publishers manage their “workflows.” At the upcoming ABPA conference (which I don’t plan on attending), one of the six sessions (the rest of which are trying to address the future of publishing via subjects like: alternative and online sales channels, online and social marketing, et cetera) is about creating and managing production workflows. Apparently this is a problem area for publishers. Apparently, solving the “workflow” problem is a very cutting edge, future-of-publishing sort of issue.
So I’m thinking about it. Workflow. Huh. I’ve got some notes. Maybe if I “plan” a “workflow” for my next book, it’ll go more smoothly?
What am I talking about? The main hiccups in my last two books’ production were 1) Lightning Source not meeting their contractually stated production schedules and 2) volunteer, unpaid proofreaders taking unpredictable periods of time to get back to me. One of these things I can’t effect, and the other I can only fix by spending money I can’t afford to spend. Maybe I should add “wait an indefinite period for proofreaders” to my workflow. Or maybe I’ll research reasonable time periods professional, freelance proofreaders take and how much they charge and negotiate expectations and/or my budget to find a reasonable solution. Otherwise, my production of books works pretty smoothly.
I seem to have gone off topic. Sorry, it’s late. Maybe I’ll go to bed. Ooh, but first I should link to my latest eBooks. The eBook of Forget What You Can’t Remember is available in the Kindle Store for less than $8.99, at Smashwords for $3.99, and for those of you who can’t afford that price or don’t have a credit card, as a free eBook in a whole mess of formats. The eBook of More Lost Memories, a companion collection of short stories, is available in the Kindle Store for less than $8.35, at Smashwords for $3.99, and if you can’t afford that price or don’t have a credit card you can email me for a free copy. Enjoy:
I’ll be re-working all the eBooks I did last year soon, too, to get them on Smashwords. I’m excited about Smashwords largely because of their partnership with Lexcycle – which is to say, because it makes my eBooks available for sale to iPhone users, in an iPhone-compatible format, and through an increasingly easy-to-use iPhone app-based storefront. If you have an iPhone, download Stanza and take a look for yourself!
Last week I was in New York, NY for the first time in my life. I won a free conference pass to O’Reilly’s Tools of Change for Publishing conference from Booksquare, managed to afford the airfare and hotel (Would you believe I flew to NYC, stayed for 3 nights within 1.0mi of the conference at Times Square, was fed the entire time, and flew home for under $550?), and had a great time. I have tweeted a bit about it, from the conference, and I have many, many pages of hand-written notes I took over the two days of the conference I attended, but this post is not about Tools of Change. I may (or may not – but probably will) blog extensively about it later. There’s a good chance I’ll write a thousand words or more per page of notes, not to mention anecdotes about everything that happened between sessions and at night. This is not one of those posts.
This post is about everything else. This post is about how, in between the last two First Friday Art Walks (ie: basically in January), I painted 6 new paintings, recorded the audio for the podcast version of FWYCR (inlcuding 6 chapters ahead of where I needed to be), wrote 5 (mostly long) blog posts, did my taxes, et cetera, et cetera. This post is about how, since the February First Friday Art Walk I haven’t painted anything new, have only written this blog post, and have only finished the single chapter of MEPod that was due today. This post is about how I don’t know when my next book will be ready for publication, or what book it will be. This post is about how I occasionally notice that I don’t have a “marketing strategy.” This post is about feeling insignificant, helpless.
After this month’s First Friday Art Walk in downtown Phoenix (I show among the vendors known as “Roosevelt Row” – the booths in the blocked off streets of Garfield between 4th & 6th, on 5th between Garfield & McKinley, and starting next month on 6th as well – I’m there every month, I pre-paid for all of 2009, and you can see/buy my art and/or books in person there for cash), I sold two paintings. Did not sell them at the Art Walk, one because I don’t take credit cards on site, the other because there wasn’t a convenient ATM, but sold them after being seen there. Gladly drove across town on Saturday to deliver one (after processing the payment through Google Checkout) and to a different part of town on Sunday to deliver the other. I’m always glad to put my creations into the hands of people who appreciate them. People who love them. People who are excited to be able to see them again and again. These kind of sales are awesome.
Very early Monday morning I left for NY. Thursday evening I returned to Phoenix. Friday I did laundry and tried to recover from the conference & the trip.
Saturday I had another Art Walk / Art Fair, this time at Angel’s Serenity in North Phoenix/Scottsdale. The Angel’s Serenity Art Fair is a Saturday, daytime event. It had better turnout when the economy was in better shape (and when there was an open coffee shop involved – since gone out of business), but I still feel it’s worthwhile to show there. It certainly doesn’t cost anything but my time and effort. Sold a few books (You’ve seen the new books, right?), about half to returning customers. That’s my favorite and most reassuring sort of customer, the ones who have bought my books before, read them, and want to buy the new books, too. That’s the basis for my publishing model; to build an audience of people who will continue buying my books as I continue to write them. Didn’t move any art at the Art Fair, but a past customer and I spent a lot of time discussing the 5 or 6 pieces he wants to buy – if only I catch him at the right time of the month. I’ll follow up with him after the first of the month.
Writing it out, I know it hasn’t been a lot of time – especially since the conference was actually work. Yet I feel unaccomplished, so far. Dilligent, yes. I recorded three more chapters of FWYCR yesterday, and worked on trying to figure out what to do about the final main character’s voice – it needs to be distinct, striking, but not distracting or confusing. I edited, mixed, compressed & posted chapter 15 today, went to two banks and a book store, and am writing this blog post. I’ve been working on some other ideas (more below) as well. Still, I feel I haven’t done enough. On the other hand, a big part of why I chose not to buy the big TV was so that I would be able to work longer without stress and worry – so that I would be able to go at my own pace without having to freak out about whether my art & writing were bringing in enough money on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis. So I’m trying not to freak out.
I’m also looking at some new projects. I’m considering designing a deck of cards – you can think of them like tarot cards or fortune telling cards, though I’m developing them largely from scratch. I’m working out some planning and manufacturing ideas already, starting work on basic artwork & meanings. Probably a set of 50 cards – thinking of maybe putting it out as a “deck” of moo business cards, actually, though I haven’t fully considered all the different custom card-deck printing options out there yet. Feel free to suggest someone in the comments. Then, in parallel with developing the deck, write a book explaining the cards, their meanings, and how to do a “reading” from them. Publish the book & make the cards available – because I can, and it interests me to do so. Not sure how to market such a thing, and certainly can’t bundle the cards with the book via Lightning Source, but it’s an idea. If I decide to paint the images for the cards, that could mean up to 50 new Mini-Paintings – I’d want to do them at a size I could scan with the equipment I have, so probably 8×10″ or smaller canvas or canvas boards. Or perhaps illustrations on paper, but then I’d have to mount/mat/frame them. bleh. But either way, that could be a gallery show I could shop around. Hang the originals on the walls, sell the cards & books (& originals), and have me (someone) do readings for guests all night/nights.
I’m also increasingly thinking of trying to put together a music “album.” Probably a “Christian music album,” at that. I keep having to compose my own music for the podcasts (because I’m quite stubborn and independent) and thus to think about music, to design music, and to practice with its creation. I’ve been vaguely thinking about creating music since middle or high school, but have rarely stuck with any physical instrument for more than a few weeks at a time & have never studied musical composition. Having Garageband in front of me several hours a week, listening to music I’ve composed play behind my audiobooks, it’s been pushing me more and more toward writing songs & putting together an album. That, I don’t have outlines or plans or marketing plans for (yet), unlike the cards/book thing above, but it’s rolling around in my head, closer and closer to the front all the time.
Which brings me around to what may be a lack of focus. If I’m writing/composing/recording/producing an album of Christian music, am I focused on art? On writing? On publishing? I’ve squeezed the designing of a deck of fortune cards (did you know the Old Testament condemns divination?) into the art/publishing worlds with the hand-painting of the art & the writing/publishing of a companion book, but has my focus slipped? What happened to the anthology of short stories I was working on last year? When is UTFBF-RoaAP: Book Four going to be written? Will I paint anything other than these cards any time soon? What about my next podcast novel (due in April)? What about marketing?
Marketing? Fuck. I knew I was forgetting something. I still haven’t figured out how to do marketing. Sigh.
In other news, since my books are increasingly apparent as some sort of idealized-communist propaganda, I’ve begun slogging my way through Atlas Shrugged. The Fountainhead is next. Then probably the Communist Manifesto, Wealth of Nations and Mein Kampf. I’ve never read any of these, but time for reading is part of what I bought myself when I didn’t buy a 73″ HDTV. Speaking of which, I’m going to go work on Atlas Shrugged right now.
This is a post about money. Over the years I’ve discovered that generally the “haves,” the people who have money, do not like to talk about it, not in any meaningful or personal way. They find discussions of one’s own money to be distasteful, perhaps even vulgar. The “have nots,” on the other hand, are not subject to this problem. Perhaps there is some distinction we (the people who don’t have enough money) can’t yet see between talking about our own money and talking about other people’s money – because the “haves” have no problem talking about other people’s money and what they think should be done with it. If you are among those who will experience a bad taste in your mouth reading me writing about my own money, either go away or become a benefactor/patron-of-the-arts so I can get out of this “have not” situation and stop bothering you by mentioning money.
Note: this post is over 2600 words long.
Not that I’m especially unhappy with the art I’ve been creating lately, as compared with how much I’m unhappy with the art I used to make (with an exception I may not get into, but let’s just say Winter ’00 / ’01 was a unique period of creation for me), but that lately I’ve been feeling unhappy with all the art I make. Lately, I’ve been trying to figure out what’s been nagging me about it all.
I think I figured it out. I think Mandy helped me figure it out. ((ie: I blame her. I blame her for making me hate myself in a new way. For making me see just what’s wrong with me.)) How we got there:
Among other things, primarily I am an artist and I am an author. Every year in November, for the last seven Novembers, I have participated in National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo is pretty all-consuming, most years, so psychologically there’s an entire month where I’m not doing anything but writing and thinking about writing from day one to day thirty. Then in December, suddenly I’m not writing and all the pent-up everything else gets a chance to gush because (especially after such intense writing every day, all the time) I don’t even really want to be writing. In several years I’ve done more new paintings in the last two weeks of December and/or the first two weeks of January than the entire remainders of the years. I’d hoped to be able to continue that tradition this year, because I’d also been working on a novel from about July through October and hadn’t done much painting after September. I really wanted to get some new painting done. And then for the first 2-3 weeks of December I was editing and otherwise preparing for print two new books (the novel and the NaNoWriMo project, More Lost Memories), so I didn’t really have time for painting (or for the mental space to allow for it).
Over Christmas break (my wife is a high school English teacher, for those of you who don’t know her), I’d intended to try painting something with Mandy. This was part of my hope to be able to get some painting done. I’d be able to finally get back to painting (I have a couple of unfinished pieces from last Autumn staring at me all the time, right now), I’d be churning out new work on some of the dozens of new canvases I’d bought on Black Friday, and maybe Mandy and I could work together on one or two of them. Except that didn’t happen. I didn’t much paint over Christmas break. A couple of mini-paintings at the beginning of the month that didn’t sell at First Friday (well, not that month, which was what I’d made them for – they both sold at this month’s First Friday), and some godawful yellow thing. Then, in January, after she’d already started back at school again, I started painting something new. Mandy came home from school one day, saw me painting this, and reminded me I’d said we would paint together.
So that night I set aside my painting, set up the table and got out some materials and asked her to paint a background with the extra blue and green paint I had still-wet from the piece I was working on, while I cooked dinner. After dinner, when the background was dry, I asked her to pick a color and a shape (this is a method I’d used several times in the past to get paintings started when I didn’t have ideas, I’d call people up out of the blue and ask them for a color and a shape and just start from there. For this project to be collaborative, I’d fully intended, when I asked, to go back and forth with her, for me to paint whatever she suggested and then let her paint and then me and so on) and she picked orange and oval/egg-shaped. And I went and got orange paint and promptly remembered I was supposed to be heading out the door for a vendor meeting with the Roosevelt Row people, so I gave her a couple of brushes, the paint, and told her to paint her orange egg. I came home and immediately felt terrible.
My wife, who has no prior painting experience and no formal training, who insists she can’t draw and isn’t and artist and is terrible, had surpassed me on her first attempt. There were things about how she had painted it that I have been looking at in other people’s art for decades and wishing I knew how they did that. She’d actually gone through my paints and … well, her grasp of color and of how to use and mix paints to create the desired colors surpass most first-year art students I’ve met. Except she did it unconsciously. It wasn’t a master work, it probably wouldn’t have won any awards, but the moment I saw it, my heart dropped. Almost as much as it did when I saw his first 2 paintings. (Come to think of it, that’s around when I’d stopped painting much, last year…) I’ve been painting off and on my whole life, and increasingly over the last 12 years, and my wife’s first nothing of a painting crushed me.
I stared at it. I tried to talk her into telling me what else should be in the image. More insistently, I tried to talk her into painting whatever else should be there. I didn’t want to touch it. I didn’t know what to do with it. (That’s not entirely true – that first night, the only thing that occurred to me is pretty much what I did with it, but I pretty much don’t like it or think it’s a good idea.) I stared at it for hours. I stared at it for days. Day after day it stood there, in the living room, taunting me, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. Finally, finally, a week later, I set to work on it. It took me several hours, and I really feel it’s pretty much just derivative of the other painting (which I’d finished after another few days), and I’m not sure if it’s done. You can take a look at it. I’ve been looking at it for most of a week, trying to figure out what to do with it, whether it’s done, whether it needs anything, et cetera.
Tonight, staring at it frustratedly, feeling awful and wanting to go to bed and wanting to be painting or otherwise getting something done, I think I figured out the problem. I think I figured out what, about my art, has been making me so unhappy lately:
All my art is flat. As I said earlier on Plurk at the moment I figured it out: “It’s all flat. There’s no light. No depth. No space, just the plane. Not just 2D in medium, but in conception as well.” I thought about my art. I looked at the art in the room (about a dozen of my finished paintings are in my living room right now). I walked around the house looking at my art. I went to wretchedcreature.com and looked at the art I’ve since sold. All of it. Flat.
Sure, yes, most of it isn’t “figurative” as such. You could even go so far as to say that’s my “style” of artwork. But it doesn’t change the fact that the difference between what Mandy painted and what I painted is that it created the illusion of depth, of light interacting with something. Yes, something floating strangely in a color field without a shadow, fine, but have you seen what I paint? Even when I do something semi-figurative (EX: ‘audacity of hope’, ‘eat to fill the void’, ‘low moan, wide hat’, ‘darkness looming’), it’s completely two-dimensional. No light, no shadow, no depth, no weight. Just color. Just line. Just image; no thing. I paint nothing.
Lately a lot of my work has been consumed with words. With painting excessively stylized representations of words. Taking the lines of the letters, stretching them, distorting them, aligning and mis-aligning them, transforming the lines into borders and the borders into shapes and the shapes into maps of color. Geometric, sure, fine, and simple, yes. Not just the old ideas of ‘pussy___’ and ‘puppy___’ or the actually conceptually interesting ‘SEX&LOVE’, but something more pure (more purely simplistic) with pieces like ‘bleh’, ‘begin’, ‘cold’, ‘gaping’, ‘red joy’, and ‘big kiss’. I’m no Rothko. Yet somehow I’ve basically just been painting color fields.
I don’t know what I want to do. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know.
But I’m unhappy with this, right now.