I got my ISBNs

My publisher code is 0-9745056. Isn't that a great number? I love it. DISPLACED is now 0-9745056-0-9 and WALLOW is 0-9745056-1-7. The real test will be to wait until my Bowker's list submission has cleared, and then to walk into a Barnes and Noble and ask them about an author named Rick Pryll, if they have any of his books. I wonder how often Bowker's goes out to the book stores, or if they have a real-time system.

the world just opens up

I just found this resource called MidWest Book Review. From there I found the Book Clearing House that will perhaps (hopefully) agree to distribute my books. For a hefty fee (Out of the cover price of $10, I get $3.10...) of course, but it's better than having the books sit in boxes at the studio. Well, careful now, I can't just give them away.

I also found information about the Amazon Advantage program. They pay only 45% of the cover price. I guess the only advantage they are talking about is theirs.

places to publish stories

Okay, some of the marketing that goes into selling a book is really marketing the author. And that means getting people to read some stories. Once they read a story, hopefully they'll want more.

In the interest of getting some stories out there, here is one place: Espresso Fiction. I also sent an email to Blue Mountain Arts, I want to write cards for them. Wouldn't that be cool? now that isn't really marketing for books, because who ever finds out who wrote a card. but I can write cards - I'm good at it.

More places to submit articles: writing-world.com.

minor hiatus

I am starting a new job. You can expect posts here to be infrequent for the next couple of weeks while I get my schedule figured out.

new site to check out

there is a certain amount of this that has made me feel like I am chasing my tail. I mean, wrodthunder seems closely associated with writer's manual, and I can't tell the difference between writer's manual, wrtier's gazette and ebooks.com - they seem like they are all just offshoots of the same site.

Today I found something new. It's called BooksandAuthors.net and it seems like it is a little more established. I guess that's the word I'm looking for. There is no place to send in your own interview or to promote or review your own book. Right away that seems a little more legit to me. In addition, they have a list of links to a bunch of other sites that I didn't know about. I will use this as my jumping off point for the next couple days if not weeks.

banner exchange

Earlier in this blog I question whether or not I would go so far as to add all these crazy banners to my site. The answer I have decided upon is that yes, but only to certain sections of the site. My press/reviews page is the perfect place for things like this. I have registered with the BestBookLinks Banner Exchange program. Hopefully my mysterious banner ad will draw some attention.

updated er-ra-ta page

I write it like that because I included on the page the definition of errata. I di it mostly because I wanted to know the singular for errata, which Merriam-Webster tells me is erratum. By the way, the best dictionary online, in my opinion is Merriam-Webster. I use it all the time. But the definition of errata includes another word I never saw before: corrigenda. So I included that definition on the errata page as well. It looks good on the page, it provides me with the little extra contant I needed for that page, and I just like to educate as I serve.

more promotion

I added both WALLOW and displaced to bestbooklinks.com. I need to add a reciprocal link on my Press/Reviews page in the WALLOW web site.

I also posted a message on myshelf.com for readers/reviewers to contact me. I am really desperate for someone to review my book. Review and help me promote I should say.

BIO page and PRESS/REVIEWS page updated

See, now these pages were getting a little text heavy. So I went and added thumbnails (not true thumbnails, but just images scaled down, I know it's not the best way, but it's the way for now) to both the BIO page and the PRESS/REVIEWS page. It sure punches them up a little bit.

I have put countless hours into this site already. Today alone, I would have to say it has been about 6 hours. My goodness. I sure hope I sell some books soon.

New BOOK LAUNCH pages added

Here they are. I used a simple JavaScript utility to create the pages, and then I just customized the page myself. Unfortunately, the thumbnails are not true thumbnails, and only images scalled down, so they don't look great. But at least there is something up there now.

Updates to the WALLOW site design

I realized on Saturday, while trolling in the waters of other authors out there, that my web site didn't seem very professional. The thing that most professional web sites have is a footer bar with contact information. So I added it. To all the pages.

On Sunday, I uploaded a ton of pictures: first, a couple of portraits to be used on the author bio page, and then a bunch of pictures from the launch party to be used on the launch party pages when I actually get them designed.

I also took the time to upload my latest Books Read update. I will redesign the page and make it something I update on a regular basis. The next logical step would be to have a "What I'm reading right now" page, but that sounds like future development to me.

Yet more updates

Most of them to the new index page. You'll see that 1) I changed the picture; I went with the one that most makes you feel like you are in a place where you can buy a book, and 2) I made the quotes random. I added to the Shit To Do list that I need to add more quotes too, and 3) I fixed the link to the TAF functionality. The thing still doesn't acknowledge that you have sent a TAF, but I will fix that soon enough.

I think that's about it for today.

More updates to the WALLOW site

Yesterday, I beat my head against the "Tell a Friend" wall. I figured out that while PHP will not run on the Volny server, where the WALLOW site resides, it will run on the RCN server, where my home site resides. So I put it there instead. You can see what I came up with here, but be careful: it actually works. At least most of the time (it's a long story I'll spare you for now.)

Today, I created the "Shit To Do" list for WALLOW. It just got to the point where what I had to do next wasn't exactly clear. I will update this list as I go.

As you can see from the list, I have already knocked a few action items off. I created the Errata page, although it needs to be populated. I also created the footer buttons that will allow a user to jump to any place in the site from any other. If you look at the Errata page, you can see I already incorporated them there.

Updating the WALLOW site

You wouldn't have thunk it would take this long, but it has. I have just now uploaded the Press and Reviews page, the Excerpts page (there is only one excerpt so far) and the Bio page. The design is not yet perfect, but at least the content is there.

Found the Fiction Forum

Using my old technique of looking at other self-published authors web sites, I found the Fiction Forum. I can't seem to fingure out how to get myself listed there, except to either have my book reviewed (they will do it, they only publish reviews from one of their staff) or to submit to an author interview. Since they aren't accepting books for review right now (I signed up for their email list so I would know when they will start accepting books to be reviewed again) and since I had so much fun with the last interview, I figured I would submit to the interview. I had to give them a 100-word bio, and here it is:

Rick Pryll is the author of two books, a widely-renowned hyperfiction short story called LIES, and award-winning short stories and poems. His work has appeared in THINK, Optimism and SHIFT magazines. Currently living in Charlotte, North Carolina, Rick spent six years living in, and writing about, the American expatriate community in Prague, the Czech Republic.

Created Press and Reviews Page

Ran out of time to:

1) add all the links to all the work I have done here,
2) upload my work to the Volny server.

I'll have to pick it up from here tomorrow.

Progress by fits and starts

I just created a banner ad for WALLOW. I added it to my personal home page as well as to my LIES page. Now, I had already created a banner ad for these pages, with the hope of catching some of the traffic these pages get, but that banner got lost in the shuffle of servers I had been using at the time. But now the banner ad is back.

The banner is sort of mysterious. I like it that way. but the truth of the matter is that the photo editting software I have here at work won't allow me to add text to the graphic. So I just left it off. I can always add it later.

The next thing that I should get to working on is the other pages within WALLOW the web site to promote the book. I already have a good list of what they should be, it is just a matter of actually creating the pages. Keep it simple in the beginning, I can always add craziness later.

I wonder...

Now here's a thought - is there such a thing as over-promoting your web site? I mean, you know how some of these places have all these banners, stickers, and crap all over their pages? Ugly and annoying if you ask me. Isn't the whole point to remian as uncluttered by these things as possible? I think it is. I will put them all in one page at the back of the web site. That should be enough.

created META tags for DISPLACED...

I added them to the DISPLACED home page. Then I went and submitted both FOOLISHNESS PRESS and DISPLACED to SubmitExpress. It seems to have worked. Now if you search for FOOLISHNESS PRESS on Google, you get my web site. not that anyone will actually type in Foolishness Press. But at least I'm there now.

Finally submitted the interview...

Now who knows when it is going to come up on the site. You'll know when I do.

After writing 3 separate sets of answers (sincere, funny and glib) I had Holly choose her favorites. Then I compiled the favorites, and chose the responses that I felt had the best chance of working together. I printed out that interview yesterday, and Holly approved it. There was only one question that I still didn't have an acceptable answer to, so I wrote yet another one. Not sure it is the strongest part of the interview even still, but there are some very strong parts. So today I submitted it.

Funny little aside here: as I was logging in to check my email today, so I could submit the interview, I received in my email box a query from a corporate recruiter for a position in Charleston, SC. The ironic part is that she included 8 questions for me to answer - not unlike the interview I had just completed for Writers Manual. Crazy, right? I think my answering the interview questions with Holly's help helped me significantly on this job interview as well.

You thought I forgot about you...

I didn't. I have spent the last three days working on my interview for Writer's Manual. I know, sounds crazy, but here's what I did and am doing to get this thing done right.

1. I wrote three distinct responses to the questions: sincere, funny, and glib.
2. I had Holly read them and tell me which responses she liked.
3. I compiled the responses that she liked for a final review.

You can read the compiled responses she liked here. I went one step further and tried to make one finished interview for her to approve as well. I think it helps to narrow down what works and what doesn't. The suggested final responses are here.

I am finding out very quickly that to be funny, you have to bounce it off someone first, to see if what you think is funny as you write is actually funny when someone reads it. This is very helpful: when I go to write a funny story, it will be very important to bounce it off people.

META tags for Foolishness, Wallow and Displaced...

A site called SubmitExpress will submit your listing to a bunch of the big search engines for free. The site also features a META tag generator which reminded me that I hadn't included META tags in any of my pages, meaning that search engines are going to have a hard time finding my books, which means the general public is going to have a hard time finding my books. We wouldn't want that now would we? I have already included the META tags in the index pages for both Foolishness and Wallow. I have yet to do it for Displaced.

I need to remember to make the META tags for Displaced.

Both books to be listed on Published.com

My listings for both books are pending. I will of course let you know when I know. It should take about a week. So far I am pretty impressed with Published.com, they seem to be a more established WordThunder...

If you look a little more closely at each of these sites, they were all started by self-publishers just looking to sell books online. Now, I don't think I'll go so far as to build a whole site where other people can list their books, but maybe that's what it takes. Seems to be a formula that more than one person is trying out.

Tough decision...

Okay. Speaking of selling out. Right now, my web sites are free from all the muck that some websites get bogged down in. But in order to be a part of Publsihed.com, they ask that I put a link back to their website on my web pages. I'm just not sure I want to do that... We'll see. If I get tons of response from them, yeah, then surely I'll list them. But if not, I don't know.

Here's the code, anyway:

For light backgrounds:


For dark backgrounds:

How to Find More Directories...

Remember how I found BooksXYZ in the first place? I went to the site of Angela Henry, an author whose interview I found on the Writer's Manual site. Well, I've done it again. This time I found the Published.com site from reading the interview with Lorie Ham. I am currently registering with them and will list both of my books there.

WALLOW now listed on BooksXYZ...

I just went back there to make sure that my listing made it. It did. They didn't bother to send me an email or anything. I also just completed the listing for DISPLACED. If you want to see the WALLOW listing go here and search for the title or for the keyword "Prague". To see the DISPLACED listing, go to the same place and search on the title or "divorce".

Here's the thing about BooksXYZ - they will list your book, but they only make money if you sign up for their affinity program. So you get a more prominent listing with the affinity thing. I could do that and just bump the price up a little bit... No, not yet. Not selling out just yet. Even though calling an afinity prgram "selling out" is a little harsh...

Have I lost my mind?

I don't have enough time to work on my own crap, and I suddenly decided to list myself on WordThunder as a Web Site Designer for publishers and authors. You can see my ad here.

I have been thinking about getting back into the freelance web design game, and now, I guess I've done it. We'll just have to see how it goes. If I get some interest, then sure, I'll have to think about doing it.

DISPLACED is now on WordThunder...

You can see it here. Once again, I took the liberty of reviewing it in Holly's name. You can see the review here.

You know, I never linked the reviews of Wallow on Word Thunder to this page. Well, now I did: here is it.

DISPLACED entered into AllReaders.com

I had Jack do the review thing for this book. Now on to the next follow up...

eBooks is only free for a month...

Let me be very clear here: There are a million ways to market on the web, some of them are free, some of them are not. I will choose the free ones over the pay-for ones 9 times out of ten because usually if you have to pay for it, it ain't worth it. Whereas, sure, I mean not all of the free ones work, BUT SOME OF THEM DO.

That said, I think I found a good opportunity here to advertize to 350,000 people who read eZines. Check it out here. Now it's going to cost me 21USD, so I better get something out of it. How about this? If I haven't at least reached one person in the next 2 weeks (that would be August 4, 2003) I will take a chance and spend the money.

If nothing else it gives me the impetus to get out there and try to get a response from at least one person.

Today, I am trying to follow up on all the stuff I said I was going to follow up on in here.

Review accepted by AllReaders.com

Yes. It's amazing news. I spoofed myself as Jack Ganzler to get the review entered. Want to see the review? It's right here.

The next thing to do is to have Jack review DISPLACED as well.

Updates to the DISPLACED site

I spent the whole day on it, but that's okay because now it's done. Or almost done. You can see what I came up with here.

The idea is this: there is no point in marketing anything until you are ready to sell it. That means your web site has to be in decent shape. Which means you might have to spend a day getting it back on track.

The funny thing is that I just started out to see if I could get the "BUY NOW" button on the site. Then, once I had accomplished that, I very quickly realized that I had a ton of work to do to make the thing useable at all. I built that site back when Netscape had instituted the tag. I was a sucker and used it all over the place, only to have it go out of favor with the standards committee. That's life on the bleeding edge, I suppose.

I also made the awful mistake of mucking with the code for the "BUY NOW" button in an attempt to make it look a little more professional - big ouch. I had to go back and undo all my changes on 4 different pages. It helps to thoroughly check your sites as they go up...

But now, I have the books out there and ready to sell. Now I can get back to the marketing side of things. Maybe on Monday. Until then...

Updates to the Foolishness Home Page

You know, getting out there and marketing is of course an important step to take if you want to sell books. No doubt. But what if your web pages suck? Then people are going to come to see your site, see that it sucks, and go someplace else, never to return. So today I started to work on my Foolishness home page.

I think it looks pretty good. You be the judge.

I also built the redirect page for when I move the pages. You can check it out here. Although, I don't know how much good that link there will do you since you will simply be redirected.

PayPal buttons for buying my book DISPLACED

Here is the necessary HTML:

And here is the necessary text for adding the ability to buy my book to an email:

https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=rick%40interport.net&undefined_quantity=1&item_name=DISPLACED+by+Rick+Pryll+from+Foolishness+Press&item_number=980605-001&amount=2.00¤cy_code=USD

Now the only problem is how to add this button to the DISPLACED web site. Which needs some work, believe you me.

I also need to creat a pretty simple home page for Foolishness Press that includes these two buttons. I should do that right now.

Danny Yee responds...

Here is the full text of his response. At least I tried.

>I'm afraid I have way, way too much to read at the moment -- my
>most likely cause of death is probably one of the piles of books
>on my desk falling on me.
>
>But good luck with the book.
>
>Danny.

Oh well. Gotta keep right on trying.

I was thinking this morning that some of these web sites have promised to "promote" my book if I write a short article on writing for them. I have some ideas about articles I could write that writers might like. Here are some of the ideas:

- Transitions
- Complicity between characters
- Flashbacks

These are just a few and I'm sure I'll think of more as the day goes on. I'll probably do some of the writing for these things here, so stay tuned.

I thought I was done for today...

I was wrong.

I just found another couple of interesting things. The first is a place called Writer's Manual. They give you the opportunity to submit to an "Author Interview". All you have to do is copy-and-paste a long list of questions, answer them in an email and send it back. I'm guessing that as long as the answers aren't too stupid they publish the interview. Sounds pretty okay to me.

I just went through and read one of the interviews. Lame. I guess if you are able to achieve a voice through the interview, it would be worth submitting the interview. It will just take a little work to get the voice going. You know, and not sound like a complete moron, or a complete ass. Or half an ass. Then again, I am a writer, and I should be able to write something that's catchy. Right?

It's funny how this learning process comes to me. I click on the interview to read an example, a woman called Angela Henry. I don't believe that I'll ever read one of her books (unless I fall and hit my head or get stuck in a friend's bathroom for weeks and have gone through all the Cosmos and National Geographics and her book is the last thing I have to keep me from completely losing my mind) but I followed the link back to her home page, and sure enough, there she has listed a few more book sites to check out. Right now I'm looking at BooksXYZ.

I am now registered at BooksXYZ and Wallow is listed there, but it has Wallow listed in a status of "On Hold." That can't be good. I think it is because I don't have an ISBN for Wallow yet.

The next place that says it will ist my book for free is eBooksCafe. I'll believe it when I see and I won't see it until tomorrow, because right now I am way too tired to be doing this.

Check back with me tomorrow.

And then there's Kirkus Reviews: they only do pre-press reviews. Snobs.

Just so you know, I am now using Writer's Digest to find other places that will allow me to submit my book for review. Using this resource, I just found WordThunder and they let me list my book. You can see my listing here. I also took the liberty of reviewing my book in my wife's name. I am sure she won't mind...!

Oh, here's a funny story:
I was reading somewhere that if you want to find an agent, just go to your favorite books and look in the Acknowledgements section to see who your favorite author thanks. This is a good example of what I would call just straight-forward get-it-done kind of advice that I love. So I was reading Cherry by Mary Karr at the time so I figured, what the heck. Mary Karr's agent is named Amanda Urban. I ran a google on Amanda Urban and discovered that she is probably one of the biggest and best-known agents in New York City. Ha! Nothing like going right for the jugular. But along the way, I discovered one of the best sites (in terms of writing resources) I have ever been lucky enough to find. It is called Everyone Who's Anyone in Adult Trade Publishing by Gerard Jones and it is funny. Like the kind of advice that I like, I also like people who are straight-forward and blunt - Mr. Jones is no phony. His emails are a joy to read, and the banter back and forth between a would-be author and potential agents and editors is priceless. Aside from being immensely entertaining, Mr. Jones's site is also very informative. From it, I learned that 1) you can and should say exactly what you want to say to people in the publishing business (I have the unfortunate tendency to get very formal, as if I was immediately being inducted into the Literary Hall of Fame or something) and 2) that it is possible to accept donations through PayPal. I use PayPal whenever I buy anything from eBay, but I did not know that I could accept donations this way. Well, that changed everything.

In fact, I wouldn't be here right now. See, the first thing you need to be able to do is sell you books. Up until just a few days ago, I had no way, other than people handing me money or checks, to accept money in exchange for my books. At one point I was able to sell books through Amazon, but that's a long time ago and a long story, and I can't sell books through Amazon right now. So. I discovered I could do it through PayPal. Now that I have a way to sell my books, I need to get some press, some advertizing, some links. That's why I started this blog right here. To keep track of all my efforts in this regard, and to leave something behind that might be helpful to writers and self-publishers in the future.

I just took a look at the BookReporter and no, it is not a place to have your third grader go so he can buy a book report instead of actually reading the book and writing a report. But it doesn't seem to me like a place where an independent book publisher can get his book reviewed either.

I also found Danny Yee's Reviews. This one looks a little more promising. I sent Danny a query email to see if he'll agree to review my book.

Allreaders. com

This place is pretty cool. I was able to review my own book, and hoopefully the editor of the site will approve my review and post it.

The neat thing about this site is that is helps to break down what it is that makes plots and characters. The whole time I was writing my book, I didn't think, for example, about who the main adversary was, or of the different kinds of sex that I might include. I simply wrote the story. It would be good to try and pick out what kind of book you want to write simply by defining it first. I guess some people already probably do that, don't they? Nonetheless, it seems to me that this is a great place for writers to find readers... I'll let you know how it goes.

Okay, here it is. Day One.

So, you want to know what book I am trying to sell? Find out about it here.

The first thing I want to do is to follow up on some leads for places that might want to review my book. They are Allreaders.com and the Book Report Network. Let me give those places a look and I'll get right back to you.