Okay so I’ve been bummed that I can’t do nanowrimo cause I just don’t have the time to do it, but… I still need a goal/challenge for this month that is in some way comparable.
So… I thought while everybody else is doing nanowrimo, I can do NaSiWrimo, okay, yeah, so it doesn’t roll off the tongue quite the same way (It doesn’t even roll right, mentally.) But I’m not a genius like Chris Baty. I figured the thing I really need a kick in the pants to get done, that I’m procrastinating on, is working on my indie site.
And I’m procrastinating for two reasons I think. One is that I have a “legitimate” reason to put it off. I’m getting KEPT ready to go out the door. And that’s great, but it’s not like I spend an entire day every day doing that. And after that I’ll have the excuse of rewrites of SMS. And I really want to get my indie site going.
I’ve got the banner designed and the home page up, and the RSS up. (It’s so cool, I’ve got my site set up for RSS, so when I update a new page, people who are subscribed get notified. It’s like a blog/website hybrid. But it’s organized like a 3-tier webpage, or will be.)
The second reason is, I have all this information in my head and I know what I want to say, but it’s so “big.” Blogs are easy. You just write whatever every day, and hope you aren’t too boring. There is no organization, no rhyme or reason.
But you get to a classic 3-tier website, and it gets insane. I think part of my problem is, I don’t want to really start publishing pages, until I have enough of them actually written so I know if it works right and flows in the right ways. So maybe I should spend this month writing rough draft for as much as I can, then at the end of November, I can publish the pages I have.
So my goal is 30 pages by the end of the month. I may end up with something closer to 15, but if I set my goal at 15, I’ll have 7.
But with 30 pages I have a strong foundation.
The site basically takes someone through all the reasons they might go indie, and reasons they might not want to, so people can be informed enough to make the right decision for themselves. Purposes of going indie, ways one can go indie. Where you can get more information, the best resources, etc. Going indie for every budget, and on and on. I want it to be as comprehensive as possible, but that takes a long time to build, and the whole thing is daunting.
But, I think there are many different ways of doing this and reasons for doing it, for those interested, and it doesn’t really help when there is a “one true way” of going indie being preached. Most “true self publishers” still completely scoff at POD technology. And to me, one of the few reasons that’s going on is because they don’t want more stigma. Well, stigma sucks, but it isn’t a good enough reason for me to do a 2,000 – 5,000 copy print run.
And even doing short run printing, once you figure in warehousing, and shipping into distribution, the “economies of scale” don’t play right until you print at least 750 copies at one time, for many books. Plus with warehousing, you always run a risk of book damage. And going into distribution is much harder going offset as a small press. It’s much easier with POD, because you have Lightning Source owned by Ingram, so automatically you can get into the Ingram catalog, and on a short discount, not this insane 60 – 70% stuff they make micro-presses do otherwise.
As you can see, I have to work on this site, haha, I’ve got to get these thoughts out in a logical way.
In other news,
I dreamed that after all the votes came in, McCain won, instead of Obama, and they took the presidency away from Obama. And the racial tension was INSANE. And I was totally freaked out that McCain/Palin were going to be in the white house. Gee, if I had known THESE were my feelings before, I could have voted. hahaha. And also, in my dream I kept thinking Spy was going to freak OUT! OMG. Awful dream.
Apparently McCain really was the greater evil for me. If the universe could give me these dreams, BEFORE electon day, that would just be spiffy.
November 7, 2008 at 2:19 pm
I’m still so happy Obama is our President-Elect. He’s going to be a great president. I feel it.
And good for you, Zoe. You’re making terrific progress!
November 7, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Thanks, Edie!
I hope Obama is a great president. We need one of those, after having the worst president in US history. If Obama chooses to, he could be another JFK. (In the sense of being beloved, not in the sense of being assassinated.)
November 7, 2008 at 2:33 pm
“…stigma sucks, but it isn’t a good enough reason for me to do a 2,000 – 5,000 copy print run.”
Fuck stigma. That’s my advice. I think I’ll make it into a t-shirt.
November 7, 2008 at 2:35 pm
hahahaha. Well can I make the T-shirt that says “Screw Stigma?” Cause you know I’m having a store attached to the indie site haha.
November 7, 2008 at 2:39 pm
LOL. G’head.
(Yeah, I suppose family-friendly is best…)
November 7, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Hehe yeah I’m not sure I need my shirts to say “fuck” hahaha.
November 7, 2008 at 3:52 pm
I have to pick my kid up at kindergarten everyday. While I wouldn’t mind wearing a “fuck stigma” shirt, I think the PTA might glance askance at me.
And I hate glances askance.
November 7, 2008 at 3:54 pm
bwahahahahaha. MoJo.
Do you hate glances askance cause it feels like a Dr. Seuss book?
November 7, 2008 at 5:42 pm
HAH! Yeah, my blog would no longer be a writing blog; it would become an Obama blog until the day he was re-elected.
Or else I’d quit writing and go into politics.
What’s a 3-tier website?
November 7, 2008 at 5:49 pm
hahahahahahaha, Spy.
Awwww.
A 3-tier website is the best layout for a website to be properly organized and easily spidered.
You have your main page, and then the pages you link to on your main page, in a navigation bar, those are your tier 2 pages. They serve as hubs that link to tier 3 pages also on your site, back to the home page, and to places off your site.
Tier 3 pages are pages you get to through in text links on your tier 2 pages.
I’m not sure if everybody calls it a 3 tier website, but that’s how it works.
When you start getting into 4th tier pages (pages on your site that you link to from your tier 3 pages, it gets hard to spider, and more annoying for your visitors.)
November 7, 2008 at 8:44 pm
My 2 cents for what it’s worth … do your site outline (loosely) and start publishing ASAP. I maintain a website for About.com, and yes, it’s weird to build a website in “public,” so to speak, but it’s also crucial to get pages online as quickly as possible so you can begin to build an audience and begin to climb in rankings on the search engines. When I started, I had the same question: Why so fast? Why can’t I write 50 pages or so, then publish? It seemed so embarrassing to have a site with one or two dinky pages at first. But I quickly saw the wisdom of my corporate overlords as I watched my PVs climb steadily as I steadily added pages to my site. Now, four months later, I still only have 45 pages or so, but I’m doing a few thousand PVs a day. If I had waited until I had all 45 pages written, then published all at once last week, I’d still be down at 150 PVs daily. It’s all about traffic …
JVZ
November 7, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Hey JVZ, you’re totally right. This is very sound advice. I made my outline last night, and the two pages I did today I published. Tomorrow I’ll go in and tweak them and then do the next two pages. I’m keeping up with where links need to be added as I get those pages up, via highlighted notes in a word document. (Actually an OpenOffice document)
And big congrats on getting an About.com position. After awhile, those pay pretty well and they are very hard to get!
November 8, 2008 at 12:25 am
OMG! There’s definitely a problem with my brain! I just read your answer to Spy’s question, and I could hear the brain cells popping and dying. It does the same thing with financial matters. So sad. (But I could tell what “spidering” was by the name. If it were an S.A.T. question, I would have gotten it.)
I think “Glance Askance” would be an awesome t shirt. You could have a person looking sideways in a disapproving kind of way. I’d buy it! People are always “glancing askance” at me!
November 8, 2008 at 9:42 am
hehe, Robin. We are months away from T-shirt time. Gah, if you knew how much crap I put on my plate. Seriously, if I ate my to-do list, I’d be as big as a house.
It’s just a good thing I don’t have a “real job.”
hahahahaha! I’ll tell you what makes my brain do that … PHP and Cascading style sheets. If you even BRING those things up, I start crying. Literal tears. That’s why Tom is my tech guy, but mostly I use templates.