Denver Business Journal

There's not enough time in a day. But these blogs are important -- if not now, perhaps someday. It's providing content for some of our e-gems and I've linked to one of my blogs from within the OP Author's Center as the starting point for the new networking page. This is where author's can add their own blogs or webpages. It's just launching and has some more work to do.

A gentleman from the Denver Business Journal contacted us on Friday about Publishing Gems. We'll be conducting a phone interview today to discuss it. I'm curious how to found out about Publishing Gems, as I haven't sent out the press release yet. I have one version of the release, but I'm waiting to ask him how he heard about it before possibly rewriting it. Two different slants -- maybe I'll distribute both.

I don't know if I mentioned it or not, but the Adventures in Publishing cover for the paperback edition is being changed. The board approved re-doing it, possibly getting a number of different designers to provide concepts. We're having our next board meeting in Florida. We'll discuss it there.

It's be Aidan's first plane ride. He has a cold right now. Hopefully he gets better for his first visit to the ocean.

OutskirtsPress.net is up and operational and submitted to the search engines. It duplicates some of the amazon.com promotion we're doing so we'll see if we get an effective "cross trump" going.

Writing Associations

We attended the CIPA College over the weekend. A lot of good information from a lot of talented and experienced people. It's also nice to meet some of our new and potential authors face to face.

Our COO continues to have strong reservations about the front cover of Adventures in Publishing -- and even the name isn't sitting pretty with her. We're examining our options, but it may delay the publication of that.

The e-book of Adventures will still be released as planned. The final version is done, including a hyperlinked Table of Contents for the convenience of the reader. The ebook alludes to some elements of our website that are not implemented yet, so we're pushing to get those future implementations done (or at least done enough) so we can release the e-book. It's free, and it's available at http://outskirtspress.com/publishing.

It'll be sent out this week, even if I have to pass on sleep completely. The major renovation to the site that is mentioned in the Guide is the Wholesalers section. In an unprecedented move, we're allowing all our registered users in the OP Community to act as wholesalers or distributors of all our books. They can buy any book published by Outskirts Press at the full trade discount price and sell it for retail to keep the profit. Due to our exclusive pricing model, the author still makes 100% of their set Book Profit, and this further helps with the distribution of our books, and the profit to our authors. We may have this operational this week, too.

I'm also suppose to mention our OutskirtsPress.net portal site for SEO purposes. So there you have it.

A Day Before CIPA

The CIPA College starts tomorrow with the Newbie College, which I will not be attending but our COO will. All the pieces are in place, our displays, our brochures, our banners, our cards. I should be picking up 100 copies of Publishing Gems today. And by should be, I mean they should be there.

I had an epiphany about Listmania on Amazon.com. We'll see if my understanding about computer algorithms pays off as I watch some exposure for Publishing Gems soar. Too bad the cover art isn't up. That's the problem with revising it after publication -- it messes up the Ingram Feed, and then they (Amazon) seem to take forever to reupload the images, even when we submit them directly via FTP. Affects BN, too, although they're usually faster.

Adventures in Publishing is receiving it's final layout after I completed the edits yesterday. We'll do the indexing today and tomorrow. I might not have this free version available before the college, which was my deadline, but I have the webpage up and I'm collecting email addresses of people who are interested so we can send them the free ebook when it's done. My new goal is by the end of March. The ebook will be followed by the publication of the paperback, first weeks in April. No fooling.

A busy week

This update is long overdue. This past week has been pretty hectic and my 6-month old is not sleeping all that well, lately, so lots of sleepless nights and crazy days. The CIPA college is this week so we've been in a rush to get everything done for that, including a display for our best books, a brochure holder, card holders, copious quantities of Publishing Gems and a 6 foot banner. We'll also be submitting Publishing Gems for the EVVY awards, so I need to get that submission form filled out today.

America's Curious Ways is the last EVVY entry we're submitting. All the others were submitted at the last CIPA meeting a month ago. That brings a total of 7 that Outskirts Press is submitting this year.

I'm also busy enhancing my "profile" on Amazon.com to add some articles and listmanias to further promote Publishing Gems and some of our other titles. Yesterday I submitted 11 "So you'd like to..." articles about various self-publishing topics ranging from plotting fiction to choosing a publisher. This feature on Amazon offers another way to promote books on their site and I'm going to give it a thorough test to see if it translates to more sales of Publishing Gems, which is already being sold online on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Although the cover has not been uploaded for either yet. They're resolving that today back at the office so that both online listings are complete, hopefully before the CIPA awards (after all, a complete online listing is one of the elements I stress for important book promotion in my book. Might be a good idea to put my money where my mouth is).

Final edits are ongoing for Adventures in Publishing. I plan on completing them today. Then we just have to do the index and that interior is complete. THe front cover is done. We have to finalize the back and spine and it'll be ready to go to print. We're going to change the file pretty considerably for the e-book version, but hopefully I can pull that off this week and it up and freely available from http://outskirtspress.com/publishing before the college, which begins this Thursday. Jeanine is going to the Thursday afternoon Newbie classes, and then we'll both be there all day Fri and Sat. It's at the Red Lion Inn in Denver, Colorado. Come see us.

Ti-i-i-ime...Isn't On My Side

Time is getting short. I'm working like a dog to get Adventures in Publishing done and published in time for the CIPA College on March 17-20. I doubt I'm going to pull it off at this rate. The interior design is nearly done, but I want to increase the margins just slightly, which will throw off the page-breaks. These are page breaks that I've already designed to by adding or deleting content to make the sections as aesthetic as possible. There's a lot of content and information in this book and I really came away with just how valuable of a service we provide as I was writing it. We're going to offer it free as an e-book to anyone who joins our Outskirts Press community, plus the hardback will be available from Amazon.com for an unheard of price of $5.95. Who says on-demand books have to be expensive? This book will even feature a "Case Study" in the back the details exactly what options and pricing model was used. Anybody publishing with Outskirts Press can duplicate the same distribution and pricing structure if the follow the same specs of Adventures in Publishing. It's all outlined in the book.

The back cover is still a work in progress. I want to include samples of all of the cover choices, (25 images), plus some information about how easy it is to publish a book. There may not be room for both. The cover images are small enough already (25 images on a 6 x 9 back --). Plus room for the barcode, price, and Outskirts Press logo.

As if that we're enough, we're wrapping up for the big publication launch promotion, to be coordinated the last week of March. -- Which unfortunately is a week before our Florida trip. But I think the promotional infrastructure is in place to the point where it can run without me.

That plus the OutskirtsPress.net SEO efforts continue.

CEO Monotony

These entries are sounding redundant. But, then again, life is kind of redundant. We're still working on promoting Publishing Gems, getting it finalized, and finishing up Adventures in Publishing. We're still working on SEO and I'm considering additional thinks OutskirtsPress.net can do for us other than simply being a SEO portal site. I have a concept, but since the BOD decision not to mention strategic thoughts here that haven't happened yet, I have to keep it to myself.

The good news is that the pages for Publishing Gems and Adventures in Publishing are going to be done here in the next week or so, including the final covers for both. The final front cover for Adventures is done. We still need to do the back. We also have to made moderate adjustments to the site, since the content of the book refers to things that WILL be done. Might as well make the book accurate when it's published, don't ya think?