The SLUSHPILE Blog

January is fast coming to a close, but I’m feeling a immense sense of satisfaction and relief. It appears as though I will finish out the month nearly caught up and back on schedule (darn that internal mental image I have of where I should be versus where I am. Rarely do the two correspond, but when they do, it brings on a feeling of near euphoria. Can you say the words work-aholic?)

So, where am I?

• 1099’s done, filed and mailed. Back around the fifteenth, I believe. No authors or merchants waiting on that one last tax form before being able to file. Not from me, at any rate. (And if you are an author or a merchant that hasn’t received a 1099 from DEP, go ahead and file without it. The amounts in your instance fell outside the guidelines of 1099 filings.)
•  Transferring Hummingbird World Media from one sales platform to another: 90% complete. All of Martha Dougherty’s pictures are now availabe (and at new, reduced pricing!). Considering that she added well over 400 new pictures during the process to the over 1400 pictures that were already on the old site, and you get an understanding of the immense tast this was to have her again set up and running on a new sales platform. The first thousand of her pictures can be found here (the site cuts off at 1,000 results in a single ’search’) but I recommend viewing by category, which can be found on the left side of the page.
• With Martha’s pictures in place, that leaves only two vendors to move, whose catalogs are only in the hundreds rather than in the thousands. I won’t say that it will be a snap, even comparatively, but I foresee having them done in the next week to ten days.
• Probably of more interest to many of you reading this blog (and who have hung in this long), is the progress of those writers who submitted via the Florida Writers Association Conference in October. The first batch of response letters were mailed this morning. Some letters are inviations for the writer to submit the entire work for a final decision on publication. Others, sadly, are ones expressing my regret that I don’t foresee a place in the Double Edge Press catalog for them at this time. Some of these decision were extremely hard to make and have to do more with budget and time constraints than quality and story premise. EVERYONE turned in such good works, and I distinctly remember praying as I finished out the conference, my booty in the form of multiple submissions in hand, that if I were going to publish all of these that God would need to provide a way in the form of more money and more time.
• Which brings us to the Silver Bullet. Yes, I’m still working on that. No, I haven’t impletmented it yet (see third bullet point of needing to move two more vendors to the sales platform). Yes, I will update you as it progresses, but if it succeeds to the extent of my wildest imaginings, you’ll be aware of it sooner or later even if I don’t. I’ll leave it there for now.
• The last and final thing to be done this month are royalty statements and checks to be mailed by the 31st. I’ll be working on those this week and expect to have them in the mail by Saturday.

After that, it will be February. The second batch of submission responses will go out, leaving only a few that will need attending to that were late comers or ones that I put aside for a second look. By then, the full manuscripts should be trickling in and I’ll be busy going through the entire works of those selected, offering contracts and setting a publishig schedule for the next year to eighteen months.

BTW–Double Edge Press will be celebrating its five year anniversary April 15 of this year. They say (whoever ‘they’ are) that it takes five years before you can expect a business to be profitable. I can agree with that. But we’re close, and by year’s end, we may just hit that milestone. Regardless, in looking back, all I can say is the old and trite, “We’ve come a  long ways, baby!” And we’re just getting started.

Last year, in looking back at it from the vantage of 2010, was every bit as awful as it seemed while enduring it. Not from a business pov, thank heavens, but from a personal one. No one was more relieved than myself to ring out the old and ring in the new.

And the new year, 2010, is so full of promise and expectations it seems impossible that it can possibly live up to them. But I think it will.

I left 2009 hanging on a suspenseful note, the first inkling that I may have discovered the elusive silver bullet of marketing. A new silver bullet, all sparkly and shiny, ready to be loaded and the trigger pulled. I’m finding the loading to be more time consuming than I first optimistically forecasted (several days, I remember writing, when several weeks is now beginning to look like a rosy prediction. Dare I try for a month?) Why is this taking so long? Because this shiny silver bullet shouldn’t only benefit our publishing offerings, but also all those products by various vendors offered through Hummingbird World Media. Which means that the entire Hummingbird World Media Conglomerate house has to be in order, not just the Double Edge Press part of it.

I view it as thus, “Get ready folks, company’s coming.” That means cleaning, renovating, polishing. That menas a lot of behind the scenes work. As I am in the midst of moving the entire conglomerate from one sales platform to another, it means time.

Then throw into the mix the new year arriving (which I have already established as being a welcome event) and several must do things that need to be done prior to the end of the month of January: 1099’s need to be prepared and sent out for authors and vendors alike. The sales period also ended on December 31, which means author royalty statements and accomapnying checks.

And finally, there is the item of what books are being scheduled for the new year. I had intended to contact those authors who submitted manuscripts by now. Instead I am still determining who I want to contact with good news, and who needs to be placed on a back burner for later consideration (although the game plan is pretty much settled in my mind, it’s just the pesky business of getting it on paper and making it official).

As busy as January is, I’m suspecting, hoping that February will be much, much busier. By then, we will be in the midst of the grand silver bullet marketing strategy and I’m expecting results.

For those who have patiently waited through this unprecedented dry spell of non-blogging, thank you for your understanding. I hope that it will be worth your while. . . soon.

Anyone who has followed my blog knows that I have chased the elusive ‘Silver Bullet’ of marketing for years, ever since the inception of our business in 2005. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t have a realistic expectation of ‘real’ marketing, which is an ongoing effort with little measurable results in the short term but with clear inroads over the long term. Also, I was always aware that in the beginning phases of our business, when our offerings of books were few, that there was little that was going to help. Only time and more books would solve that issue.

Still, in the back of my mind, there was the thought that the difference between being mildly successful and wildly successful had to come down to something more than luck (and good works, never let that fact be discounted, because no amount of luck is going to help in the long-run if the books you put out stink).

Lately, I’ve had a thought that may in fact turn into that elusive Silver Bullet. It first occurred while beginning the process of building the new website and accompanying store where customers check out (which is still in progress). It was reinforced by a discussion on a publishers group that I’m a member of but from quite a different direction.

Why do I think this idea may be ‘the one’? It’s radical. It’s large in scope, meaning that it could easily be applied to any product offered on the web, not just books. It’s incredibly simple.

Am I going to share what it is? Not without a test run, which will be at least several more days in the making.

Stay tuned.

Gail MacMillan emailed me this morning that her latest title, “Yuletide Yarns” is now printing and available for pre-order on Amazon. I had the distinct pleasure of being asked to write a review for the book to be included on the back page blurbage, and although I don’t recall my review word for word, I remember rightfully comparing her stories to those of Laura Ingalls Wilder. It is a beautiful little volume and I’m looking forward to reading and cherishing the autographed copy she has promised me.

If you’re looking for a fine Christmas gift, I heartily recommend it:

http://www.amazon.com/Yuletide-Yarns-Gail-MacMillan/dp/0981072143/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259672412&sr=1-6

In other news: the conversion of Double Edge Press from one service provider to another is now complete. All titles are now on a single provider, and so are all the sales. The old site remains for the time being to accomodate those who have links saved in their favorites. The next task is moving Hummingbird World Media, and that one will take a front loader and several dump trucks to move (Martha Dougherty, one of the Hummingbird World Media vendors, has over 1400 images if you recall, and she is just one of three artisans on site). Ah, I can see my days being filled for some weeks to come.

I had the happy pleasure of calling Jerry Cypher this morning to give him a heads up that his first shipment of books is arriving on the morrow. It will be his first look at them and I hope he likes what he finds. For those who have missed out on the new book, here, finally is the front cover:

Martha Dougherty’s first print run is underway for her fourth title with us. It looks like this:

She was able to see the new title over Thanksgiving and she was very please with it, as I am myself.

Everyone have a great Tuesday!

I’ve blogged sporadically before of the current rift of problems we’ve been experiencing with the Double Edge Press website and its counterpart website for Hummingbird World Media. To recap, I’ve been unable to upload any new images since before the beginning of this year. It was possible to place Skylar Hamilton Burris’ book on the site only because I had previously uploaded the image so to present it here on this blog prior to its publication. By the time the pub date rolled around, the website platform produced only an error message with any image uploads.

I cobbled together a replacement home page on a different website provider and was able to do this for free because of the very limited amount of pages I was using. Still, when it came time for Jim Spurr’s third book, Reflections in the Wake, the lack of our normal info page for his title was a sore spot. Still, I held off, as I simply didn’t have the time to truly think about how I wanted to revamp the site (and since I had just put some considerable time and effort into completely revamping it last year, I was no where near eager to go through that process again already).

Now, with two additional titles being released, that makes a total of three books that are getting short-shrifted in the info department. The time has come to seriously begin revamping how the web-site works and to begin shedding of the old site in favor of the new.

I’ve dipped a small toe in the water already with the addition of this page:

Buy Books 

which can be accessed from the main Double Edge Press page by clicking the button on the right side of the main navigation bar at the top of the page, named, aptly enough, Buy Books. Despite the ease of this handy-dandy feature, there are several things I don’t like about it. One is that the descriptions will not accept apostraphes, making for some awkward spaces in place of it. Second is that I’m unable to dictate any type of shipping charges, which seem to be based on a percentage of the sale rather than on the actual weight of the books. Third, I’m not seeing at this point any way to charge for shipments going outside of the U.S. Fourth, I’m not able to communicate with customers basic information such as when they can expect their order to ship, when it has shipped, and shipping tracking numbers so that they can not only see when it went out but can track its progress and know when to expect it to arrive.

In other words, compared to what I’m used to working with, its rather primitive. Still, I’m early into how the new stie works and their may be some good alternatives once I really start poking around. In the meantime, sales will be possible through the old links as well as the Buy Books button on the nav bar.

The other thing that will take some thought and implementation is exactly how I want to format the new site. I love the smooth transition of pages of the old site with their neato-coolo page fades and sweeps, but I knew even when I was building them that it would be problematic for the long-term future. As we grow in titles, the thumbnails of each book on the right hand side becomes impractical. We’re getting to the point where we need to categorize titles. Which leads me to thinking about what categories I want to add and fill with upcoming releases. The addition of Jerry Cypher’s new book is the first in a ’self-help/inspirational’ category, and I foresee his coming books as fitting into ’self-help/Christian resources’ category, along with one or two other titles I was presented with in Florida.

So as I move forward, don’t be surprised if one day you stop in to check out DEP and the old look is simply gone and replaced with the new. How it will all come together in the end, I’m still not certain, but it is one of the things that I will be working on behind the scenes in the coming days.

Everyone have a good Thanksgiving (and I know I blogged that on my last post, but I’m fairly certain that this time I won’t be back in before the holiday).

First, because the emails are becoming more regular, and there’s been a phone call or two, here’s the official schedule for those writers that submitted via the Florida Writers Conference in late October: Expect a response the first week of January.

I know I hear groaning with that announcement, but allow me to, hopefully, beat back some of that groaning with an announcement that we are working on a restructuring of how we bring new authors on board. If this restructuring is feasible, I hope to be able to double the amount of new works we put out next year from our normal 3 – 5 books a year to a more ambitious 8 – 10. As much restructuring as we can do here, ultimately the deciding factor will be the quality of the works we choose to carry, and how close to publishable they are now (vs. months of editing).

The short story, at this time, is bear with me. I hope to be contacting more than one or two of you with good news.

If it seems as though I’ve been MIA, it is because I’ve been busy reviewing the proofs I received on Friday of our two newest titles, both of which came out spectacularly well, and then crunching numbes on that first print run for each, both of which will be going to press this week.

IF I don’t manage to poke my head back in before the holiday, EVERYONE have a good and safe Thanksgiving! And for you writers waiting on the yea or nay, relax in the interim between now and the new year, knowing that  I’m working to bring as many on board as I can. Yes. Some of the works, many of the works, are that good.

I was going to blog yesterday that the second book we had due out by Christmas was done and uploaded to the printers, or effectively in the can. Alas, the web-site was in the midst of a second major flicker, with part of the pages available, part of them not, including the blog.

Today, as I went to again call the site host provider, I’m surprised to find that the web is up and running again. But this sudden flickering of on again and off again has the ominous overtones of a major power outage. I’m exploring my other options.

But back to the good news: I uploaded Martha Dougherty’s fourth book with us to the printer on November 12, and had word yesterday that the proof was ready and being shipped out tomorrow, which means I should have it in hand by Friday. I can’t express adequately my relief at this relatively quick turn around time, as it is a full color photography book and the specs are unbelievably precise. Getting it right the first time around is always an accomplishment.

I finished and uploaded Jerry Cypher’s first book with us on November 16, and had word just today that it also is ready and the proof being shipped out (I imagine also tomorrow), which means that I should receive both proofs on the same day.

All this adds up the the REALLY good news: with the completion of these two titles, I can officially move out of production mode and into the other aspects of the business: monitoring orders, marketing, submissions reading (haven’t forgotten those Florida writers), and web hosting alternatives. In other words, I can finally relax. Relatively speaking.

Double Edge Press web-site came up about 24 hours after going down.

One book scheduled for Christmas, Martha Dougherty’s If Only I Could Talk, Vol 2 is done and ready to go the printer.

Kindle editions are still selling well. I think I’m going to really, really like Kindle.

Back to work here, I’m smelling the finish line of our second title due out by Christmas.

Just a quick post to say that, yes, I’m aware that the Double Edge Press site is down (thanks to a quick email sent me from someone trying to access it with no luck), and that after investigating I have found that it is a platform provider issue. Apparently, the entire Intuit platform (which services this particualr page, which just happens to be the ‘hub’ of DEP) is down. They’re working on it.

If unable to access it, try a little later today, as I have been assured they are working hard to rectify the problem.

Everyone have a great day!

My second eye surgery was on Thursday of this week, three days ago. It went smashingly well, as I expected (having been through one eye surgery already) and I am recovering nicely (thank you for asking!)

The downside, of course, is that it also knocked me out of commission for several days, which anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that I am always, always crunched for time. I have no time to spare for eye surgery and other ‘trivial’ matters. Alas, I had no choice, as everything I do depends upon  a little thing called sight.

Considering I am now in the midst of producing two titles, both of which I want or need out by Christmas (one HAS to be out as the author already has appearances lined up, pre-orders coming in, and a delivery date set, the other isn’t that locked in, but it would certainly be nice), I’m sure you can imagine my frustration at having to take time out for medical issues. However, now that said medical issues are taken care of, I find that I can produce much more rapidly. It’s nice to see what you’re doing.

Will I make my deadline. Undoubtedly. Both are close to being done.

Unfortunately, what suffered was my reviewing of the works presented to me at the Florida Writers Conference. So if you submitted, I haven’t forgotten about you. Hang tight.

Kindle has continued its promising start with outselling other diestribution roughly two to one at the moment. This is the first week of our titles being available on Kindle, but I must say I am most pleased with the results thus far. I’m hoping for an even bigger surge after Christmas where I am foreseeing that the Kindle reader may prove to be a good seller this Christmas season and all those happy new Kindle owners  eagerly download titles to fill theit new electronics. Preferably our titles.

Everyone have a great day!