{"id":31,"date":"2003-07-29T21:21:00","date_gmt":"2003-07-30T01:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vmalt\/?p=31"},"modified":"2005-12-04T08:19:06","modified_gmt":"2005-12-04T13:19:06","slug":"unpleasant-living","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unpleasant-living","title":{"rendered":"Unpleasant Living"},"content":{"rendered":"

Too tired to write about San Diego last night, and too pissed off this evening. After budgeting The Immensity of the Here and Now<\/a><\/strong>, setting print runs and prices, planning marketing, etc., I discovered that my printer<\/a> forgot to factor in the costs of the book’s dust-jacket. I guess my sales rep thought that hardcover novels come out without dust-jackets all the time. He probably thought this even when he was faxing over the specs and dimensions for the dust-jacket a few weeks ago. Good thing his estimator thought of it now, since I’ve already sent a check for half the production money and the book is in prepress (with no time to shift it to another printer if I plan on having the book by September). GodDAMN am I pissed off right now…<\/p>\n

So now the book is going to cost me $750 more than I had planned, which means I have to make a much more significant leap of faith regarding potential sales of the hardcover edition. My initial plan of printing 1000 hardcover and 2000 paperback is useless, since I’d have to sell nearly 100% of the hardcover run to cover its portion of the costs. So now I have to decide among 1500HC\/1500PB, or 2000HC\/1000PB or just 3000HC (which is actually cheaper than going with the other two options, but carries a greater risk of unsold copies), with accusatory spreadsheets looking me in the eye.<\/p>\n

Do I believe the book can sell? It’s the best book I’ve published, in some respects (I’ll have a soft spot for our first book, Adrift in a Vanishing City<\/strong><\/a>). I’m receiving good blurbs from critics and writers, and there are reviews coming in a bunch of venues.<\/p>\n

But I don’t have a sales network to help sell the book into stores. I’m going to have to rely on mailings to bookstores (as well as personal visits in any areas that I happen to be around). Fortunately, I do have national wholesalers that will stock it, but they don’t actively sell the book. And if it’s not sitting on a table or shelf, with that wonderfully eerie cover on display, it’s not going to sell.<\/p>\n

And after getting this news, and laying out the aforementioned spreadsheets with the revised numbers, what was my (entirely wrong) reaction? Why, pouring myself a gin & tonic, putting on one of my favorite records<\/a>, and sitting on the back porch to watch the golden light over the mountains as the sun called it quits for the day.<\/p>\n

Didn’t relax me as much as I’d hoped. So it’s time to sit back, blog, and watch Tuesday Night Fights<\/a> on ESPN2. Not my usual practice, but hey.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow, I’ll figure out how many copies of this book to print. I’ll keep you informed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Too tired to write about San Diego last night, and too pissed off this evening. After budgeting The Immensity of the Here and Now, setting print runs and prices, planning marketing, etc., I discovered that my printer forgot to factor in the costs of the book’s dust-jacket. I guess my sales rep thought that hardcover … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Unpleasant Living”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-v","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":50,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/see-you-in-the-funnies","url_meta":{"origin":31,"position":0},"title":"See You in the Funnies","author":"Gil","date":"August 7, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Sorry I haven't written. Been busy with the magazine, the book, housekeeping, and the barest vestiges of a social life.Things are mostly squared away with my printer. My rep is trying to get me 5,000 color postcards of the cover as a make-good for messing up on the cost of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1681,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/the-phantom-carrier","url_meta":{"origin":31,"position":1},"title":"The Phantom Carrier","author":"Gil","date":"October 2, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Monday morning, I headed over to the conference center to make sure our boxes of magazines had arrived. They hadn't. Since the conference was set to begin on Tuesday, I thought it would be a good time to visit the show's courier service to find out where our 34 boxes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4140,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/last-day","url_meta":{"origin":31,"position":2},"title":"Last day!","author":"Gil","date":"July 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The production schedule read, \"Final Materials to Printer - July 2,\" and I'm gonna get those final materials to the printer by July 2! 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With today's column, it looks like Balko underestimated how pissed off Will is at the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (explicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (explicit)","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-explicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":76,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/why-its-good-that-i-dont-have-kids","url_meta":{"origin":31,"position":4},"title":"Why It’s Good That I Don’t Have Kids","author":"Gil","date":"October 3, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"This morning, I helped change the fuser kit on the color laser printer at the office. The new one emitted this terrible burnt-plastic smell.\"Wow!\" I said. \"It smells like an action figure just farted!\"That is all.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14742,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-453-nadine-sergejeff","url_meta":{"origin":31,"position":5},"title":"Episode 453 – Nadine Sergejeff","author":"Gil","date":"September 28, 2021","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 453: Nadine Sergejeff \"What you see when you enter the Philip Roth Personal Library are about three-thousand, seven hundred and twenty books* that have marginalia, are presentation copies, or are otherwise special.\" [* Librarians are very exact] It's part 2 of a 2-part show about the new\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/sergejeffcomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C494&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/sergejeffcomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C494&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/sergejeffcomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C494&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/sergejeffcomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C494&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/sergejeffcomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C494&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}