Of course, Double Edge Press still continues to exist in it’s new home, on Intuit – Homestead. But the amount of work I placed in building the original storefront and to see it disappear in the course of a few hours was significant. It reminds me most poignantly that we have set a new course. Implementing the new and deleting the old is a mixture of relief, nostalgia, exhilaration, and terror. I feel like an acrobat who has just let go of one trapeze and who is floating in mid-air for that brief second, hoping the other trapeze will be there as I reach out my hand to grasp it.

 With the grasping of that second trapeze and getting the final work done on the new store front comes the unveiling of the ‘Silver Bullet’. Longer on the drawing board than expected, but I doubt if anyone, especially not me, foresaw an unusually brutal February wherein I feel as though we have been living the last few weeks on mere survival mode more than in production mode. The three and a half day power outage left us with broken water pipes which needed replaced. Now we have ominous water marks on the ceiling of our bathroom, which is a single story addition to the main house with a roof that is flatter than the rest of the home’s roof. We find that we can’t turn on the light without the breaker flipping in the fuse box. There is also water marks coming out of the electrical outlet by the sink, and the light switch above it. As there has been probably a dozen buildings that have collapsed from the weight of the snow in the news over the past week, you’ll understand my trepidation while taking a shower.

But that’s not what I wanted to blog about.

Despite all of this, I am making progress with the pubishing and the grand ’silver bullet’. Today, I hope to finish adding the last two artisans on site for the store, which will leave my schedule open for beginning to send out contracts to those writers with writing I see as a welcome addition to DEP. By this time next week, I hope to have a pub schedule finalized for the coming year, and be clear to begin the work on the first book. I also hope that the coming storm being predicted for Monday, including up to 30 more inches of snow will have dissipated into a false alarm, or at least a near miss. In other words, I hope that our electric is on and I’m able to update everyone on where I am in the process, and not reliving the last two weeks of survival mode.

Everyone have a great day. Spring is but a month away.

We did not escape. But in a way, we did.

Our electric went out at a quarter to eleven Friday night (February 5th). We are fortunate in that we live in a 100 year old farm house which was built before power lines and modern conveniences. Hence, we have a fire place in the living room, and in one upstairs bedroom. The previous owners, two old sisters who had been spinster school teachers, had bowed to progress to the degree that they had boarded over the one fire place in the bedroom, but had upgraded the living room fireplace to a gas burner. They also installed a gas burner in the dining room, on the other side of the house (which, interestingly enough, the gas line continues on up through the floor into mine and my husband’s bedroom above it, and provides a gas lamp above our bed. I’ve never tried working the gas lamp). The upshot was that we had two sources of heat in our home with no more effort than turning a knob and lighting them.

Were we cozy warm? Not always. But we had heat, and we didn’t have to babysit a generator nor worry about kerosene heater fumes (although if our house were better insulated, gas fumes would have been a concern at some point. But true to its heritage, our house is not only old, but drafty. Asphixiation seemed remote.) We continued without electricity all day Saturday, all day Sunday, and did not see it return until ten minutes to six in the evening on Monday (February 8).  We were lucky. Even as I type this onto the glow of my electric powered computer screen, many of our neighbors in the area are still without power, and can not expect it to be on until sometime tomorrow (Thursday).

The coldest our house got was 53 degrees (F) on Saturday morning, when the outside temperature read 3.  We had the ability to cook, as our stove is gas and I eschewed the fancy electronic conveniences offered when last purchasing a new stove about five years ago. “What if the power goes out?” I reasoned at the time. “I want something with knobs that I can still light and get a flame on the burner”. My foresight was appreciated as we served up hot meals and ate by candlelight around the dining room table. It provided a sense of normalcy in an otherwise dark world. The only thing we couldn’t provide normalcy to was our water situation. We have a cistern. A cistern low on water to begin with because the water hauler never got us water before the storm started despite my putting the order in two days prior to the coming storm. A cistern that won’t pump water without electricity anyways.

All day Saturday, we hated life. We played monopoly and waited for the electric to come on. We melted and boiled snow on the stove to wash dishes in. (Little known trivia: it takes twenty-five gallons of snow to get barely enough water to wash and rinse dishes). We brought more snow in and let it melt to flush the toilet with.

All day Sunday, we hated life. We dug out the cars, cleared the sidewalk, the mailbox and the garbage bin. We played more monoply.  We waited for the electric to come on. The phone was dead and the cell phones had used all their batteries. We cooked more meals, melted more snow, washed more dishes. We mourned being unable to watch the Superbowl.

Then on Monday, something funny happened. We woke up to an electronic-less world, but it seemed normal. We had established a routine and we did our chores of melting and clearing snow. Then we played monopoly some more, with a game of Risk and Clue thrown in for good measure. We no longer complained about the chill of the house, the lack of t.v. , computer or video games. We had found a different way of life, one consisting strictly of the necessities of the day: Food, Water, Shelter.

Ironic that as we sat at the table, eating leisurely instead of in a rush, and as I was saying the words: “You know, I don’t think I would exchange the last couple of days for a million dollars. . .” was when the electric came on. The sudden noise of the refrigerator coming on, the water pump running and the furnace kicking in was so deafening after our three days of silence that we initially could not compute what had just happened. “Is that the snow plow?”, “Is that the water guy?”, “What’s that noise?” we all asked each other, nearly in a panic. Then we heard the microwave beeping and we all realized that our exhile was over.

One of our sons rose and flipped on the light. We all stared at it for a moment and then my husband said, “Turn it off,” of which our son did. We finished our meal by candlelight, staving off the real world until the end of our meal. But we had to reflect on which was the real world, the one we were now returned to with the return of our electricity, or the one we were leaving?

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.

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.

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.

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 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).

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.

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.

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.