Stupid Things I Shouldn't Have To Do And Why Am I Not Rich Yet

OK so here I was thinking my five books were online and I was pretty much OK with that. They were not on every single site but they were on enough of them, and since I'm kind of a lazy person by nature, "enough" is frequently enough for me.

But then a really stupid big book retailer (who I don't want to offend so I won't name but their book has a & in their name, so I'll just call them &) suddenly changed how they were doing paperbacks and the indie ones that had been done and floated over from Amazon suddenly were POOF gone, mine and everyone else's, and & said surprise now we do print on demand and we also demand you use our template not anyone else's and you need a new file and a new ISBN. For each book.

WHAT'S AN ISBN? THIS IS AN ISBN. 

So at first I cursed a little bit and then thought well OK whatever I guess I have to do this, but when I went onto their site and created a vendor account, things got wacko.

WACKO THING #1: They asked me to confirm that my book does not contain "anything that could be considered upsetting or controversial." Well I don't know what that means but I think it's a stupid question so I checked the box YES

WACKO THING #2: You have to pick one of two categories for your book to go in. Category one is: 18 and older only, contains adult themes. Category Two is: Appropriate for all ages. WHY IS THERE NOT A THIRD CATEGORY. Either choice is wrong. I start really actively hating & (even though let's be honest I could walk into any of their stores and drop $200 bucks no problem)

WHOA WACKO THING #3: Their website is next to impossible to use as far as uploading any book files. Amazon's is a little bit tricky but it's doable, especially if you're motivated. But this, &, this was really nuts. I considered the possibility that maybe I was just a moron, but then I went online and asked other authors who had tried to use the site and they said it was wacko also.

So I sought out alternatives, but I should add I also may opt for two other choices which are frequently available to everyone but sometimes we forget about them: 

a) I COULD BE LAZY AND DO NOTHING

b) I COULD DECIDE NOT TO DECIDE RIGHT NOW

c) OR....

So I may or may not have to redo all five files. If I were a millionaire I wouldn't have to deal with these problems. Maybe my only problem would be that Nicolas Cage keeps calling and calling. That would be a great problem to have.

#BooksForMaui

As you may have seen, of my sweet book babies, Starfish is the attention hog, and it's doing it again. Starfish is one of the books available in the Books For Maui online auction to raise funds for Maui relief.  

The auction is set to run this week from Monday morning until Friday midnight and the original fundraising goal was $25,000 but guess what? In the first 12 hours of this auction, they have already raised over $61,000. I'm not sure how much they'll end up getting by Friday but I can tell you, the people of Maui need every dollar these books can get. If you've wondered how you might be able to help the people of Maui, this is a great way to do it. If you'd like to visit this auction site, please go to    https://www.32auctions.com/BooksforMaui. If you'd like to specifically bid on Starfish, you can go to https://t.co/cs43YqhipT.   

Writing A Film Treatment

When my book STARFISH ON THURSDAY was optioned, I had hoped it would be greenlit for production. Unfortunately, by the end of the one-year option period, this didn't happen.

I decided it was time to be proactive. 

This was easier said than done. Dabbling in an industry where people can make a lot of money also means you can get sued for a lot of money. So where to begin?

Step One: Don't be a dumbbell.

What that means is decode the terms, find out the rules, and protect your work.

Step Two: Don't get sued. 

Before you enter into any agreement, make sure it doesn't violate the terms of any current agreement you have with someone else. 

If you get good news, especially if it involves money, stop everything and consult with an attorney who specializes in entertainment law. Most attorneys will give you the first consultation for free. 

Don't assume you understood the rules the first time. George Harrison assumed he knew how to write a song and he lost his court case. 

https://ultimateclassicrock.com/george-harrison-my-sweet-lord-plagiarism/

I decided to write a film treatment to send to casting directors and producers. Prior to this, I had only written a logline and summary for the Starfish project, and Taleflick had written a page pitch.

A logline is a one or two sentence summary that tells what the story is about, who the main character is, and what they're up against. Think of any TV series or movie you've ever seen and  try to summarize it this way in 2 sentences. It's hard to do.

When I pitched Starfish for Taleflick, I didn't realize I'd have to come up with a logline. At first I was stumped and then I tried out several ideas and each time realized I needed to condense it more. The finished version I sent in was this:

Plucky female Kevin Arnold type comes of age in 70s and 80s Seattle while loving and fearing her abusive pillhead mother.

That final version surprised me, but it did the trick.

This week I wrote a film treatment for Starfish. A treatment includes the title, logline, character descriptions, and a detailed synopsis of the story. The length of a treatment can vary between 1-50 pages but from what I could gather, unless you're a famous hotshot, most people won't read it if it's longer than 10 pages. My treatment came in at 6 pages.

I was able to skip the step of getting permission of the author of the book because I'm the author and sole owner of the intellectual property.

Prior to sending the treatment anywhere, there's another step: registering the treatment with the Writer's Guild of America (WGA). If you skip this step, most legitimate people won't read it and it puts you at risk for someone stealing it and claiming it as their own.  Registering a treatment can be done online: it takes 5 minutes and costs $25. The WGA gives you a registration # and that goes right on the treatment itself.

This doesn't absolutely guarantee you that someone won't try to steal it, but registering it (with the date, your full legal name, address, phone number, and driver's license number or social security number) gives you enough to prove your case pretty well. 

The next step: sending it out to studios.

Happy to announce Juanita High School and Lake Washington High School have both added my books to their libraries. #WashingtonState

How Much Should You Spend: Remembering The Vegas Rule

One thing I've learned is if you're an author and you just add expenses as you go, you end up spending a lot more than you planned. Eight years into this gig, I'm a lot better at planning ahead. If I'm not releasing a new title, if I'm just promoting the books I already have, this is what my budget currently looks like. As you can see, it still adds up, but it actually only ends up being $22.75 per month. Per the Vegas Rule, this is spending what I can afford to lose: about the price of a pizza. Keeping costs low means that even if I don't sell any books at all, I'm OK. If I do sell some, it's a bonus.

Every author will have a different budget. As you can see above, there's a cost for a year's worth of my website, a cost to keep the domain name (www.amieryan.com), about 80 for advertising (although I do try to get freebies online whenever I can--the image above was created, totally free, with a site called Canva), the cost to keep Starfish on the TaleFlick site for another year in the hopes it will get optioned again, and the cost of entering one writing contest, just for fun.

Should you try to get your book into libraries?

Should you try to get your book into libraries? This is a good question. After my book Starfish got into the Seattle Public Library system, I kind of forgot to try to take it to any other library system until my friend and bookcover artist (The John to my Paul) Dane Egenes asked me if I'd ever thought about getting it into the King County Library System. That's what motivated me to contact them and suggest it.

Before I wrote any books I just assumed all the U.S. libraries were somehow connected--that if a book went into one, it went into all of them. It turns out that within each state there are several different library systems, each with their own criteria for accepting books into their catalog. King County, for instance, has an eight point criteria, including that the book be "edgy." 

Whether or not TO do it is a good question. It does make the book available to anyone, without cost, so that's a plus. Some people think it means if a person can check out an author's book at the library it will lead them to seek out other books they've written, but I don't know if that's really true.

Moneywise, it doesn't really make anything for the author. At the time the book is accepted, the library system will purchase a certain number of copies (usually with a discounted rate), so the author receives the royalties for those copies at the time of sale, although a discounted rate means a discounted royalty. For me this is about $2 instead of $3. After that the author receives no royalties from this library book no matter how many times it's checked out.

Anyway, after KCLS accepted Starfish, I thought I should do an experiment and try out 14 public libraries across the U.S. One of the frustrating parts is that even if a library accepts your book into their catalog, they don't necessarily notify you. Of course, if they don't want the book, they really have no reason to notify you. So either way, you just sit there, going: I wonder what's going on. With KCLS they didn't notify me and then I went onto their site and searched the catalog, and there Starfish was, in three branches, so that's how I found out.

Some will only accept book suggestions if they come from one of their library's cardholders, and you have to be a resident of the city to get a library card. 

Some want you to send a copy of the book. Some specify not to send a book. All of them want to see something in the news about the book. This is where Starfish had the edge over my other books, because it had been optioned and there was a press release. It helps if you've had the book reviewed by Publisher's Weekly or Kirkus Reviews, but I have reservations about doing this.

For one thing, it's really expensive, at least, it seems expensive to me. A Kirkus review is $425 and a Publisher's Weekly review is $399. And that doesn't mean it will be a positive review. You can plunk down $425 and then read a negative review which will be of no help to you whatsoever. The idea of paying this amount really violates my Vegas Rule (only spend what you can afford to lose), but it also bothers me to think of spending this on one of my books and not all of them. It feels like having five kids and deciding only one of them can go to college.

You may be thinking: what about Amazon reviews? Some libraries will consider those but one I submitted to said right on their website: "We don't consider Amazon reviews to be reviews."

I don't have a PW or Kirkus review, but I do have the TaleFlick book assessment, which I've sent instead. That, the press release, a book description, an author bio, the genre, the recommended age reader, the nuts and bolts info: page count, book size, ISBN#, publishing date, the verification it's available with expanded distribution via Ingramspark. Some libraries have you send this and also fill out THEIR form which asks you to list the same information, much like applying for a job with a resume but you still have to fill out the employer's application, to show you aren't a moron and can follow directions without a bunch of attitude. Almost all the library systems say it can take up to six months before they make their decision, so for an impatient person like me, this sounds like a long time.

Anyway, so far (three days in) there are three libraries who require I send them a review copy, so I'm setting those libraries aside for a minute because I'm not sure I want to work that hard. I still might end up doing so, but I'm holding tight to see if I can get a bite without having to send copies. I'm limiting the experiment to 14 for now because if I add any more, I'll be checking my email 100 times a day.

All of you readers can help in this Starfish effort, if you feel like doing a good deed. If you own a library card, you can request your library carry Starfish On Thursday by Amie Ryan. You can either do this right at the checkout desk or you can go to the library's website and click on the tab REQUEST A BOOK and do it there. Can't find that ? Click on the CONTACT US tab and request it there. I would be grateful to any of you who feel inclined to do this, in whichever state you are in. If you live outside the United States, you can still request your local library carry this book, wherever you are. I thank you in advance😊

To learn more about my books, please visit www.amieryan.com

Happy News

I just learned the King County Library System has added my book Starfish On Thursday to their shelves in three branches: Bellevue, Redmond, and Issaquah. What a great surprise!