[00:23.120 --> 00:25.260]  And I wouldn't, I would have never changed.
[00:25.420 --> 00:26.700]  They used to be good.
[00:34.610 --> 00:38.920]  I had COVID like two weeks ago, so I just have residual...
[00:39.500 --> 00:40.750]  No worries, just don't cough on me.
[00:41.260 --> 00:45.040]  Yeah, I had the mask on, I ate a cough drop, and then the menthol went right in my eyes.
[00:45.260 --> 00:46.640]  Or wait, Listerine mints.
[00:47.320 --> 00:48.460]  Oh, yeah, these are just like a...
[00:48.820 --> 00:50.940]  Listerine mints, you know, you have with a mask on.
[00:51.140 --> 00:51.960]  You're like, oh, God.
[00:53.280 --> 00:54.560]  All right, let me introduce you.
[01:00.710 --> 01:01.690]  Good morning, everyone.
[01:03.870 --> 01:05.290]  It's not morning, it's evening, right?
[01:05.290 --> 01:08.610]  All right, so welcome to the six o'clock hour.
[01:09.230 --> 01:16.170]  And in this hour, we're going to have John Huntington talking about moving beyond Amazon self-publishing, purgatory.
[01:16.570 --> 01:19.570]  But just a reminder, if you have phones, please put them on stun.
[01:20.230 --> 01:22.630]  We have the exits here in case of an emergency.
[01:22.630 --> 01:33.430]  If you have some type of issue or emergency, feel free to contact someone who is wearing a radio or who has a volunteer, blue volunteer shirt or security.
[01:35.310 --> 01:36.650]  Make sure you stay hydrated.
[01:36.830 --> 01:37.670]  It's been hot all day.
[01:37.810 --> 01:42.170]  I think we hit close to 95 or 96 today.
[01:42.510 --> 01:44.110]  So stay hydrated.
[01:44.290 --> 01:45.730]  Anyway, here's John Huntington.
[01:45.730 --> 01:46.590]  Thank you.
[01:49.730 --> 01:50.690]  All right.
[01:51.330 --> 01:55.010]  So first off, I just had COVID like two weeks ago.
[01:55.010 --> 01:58.490]  So I have residual congestion, but I feel pretty good.
[01:59.390 --> 02:01.190]  It's been really great to be back in person.
[02:01.190 --> 02:02.790]  I've been coming to this thing for a long time.
[02:02.790 --> 02:10.650]  And I wanted to really, being somebody who works in the show business, I wanted to really thank the audio, video, and lighting crew.
[02:10.730 --> 02:15.870]  I think I got to forget anybody who are all volunteering and made this thing, really making this whole event possible.
[02:15.910 --> 02:19.890]  So I really appreciate all those, that great crew doing this work.
[02:20.010 --> 02:20.710]  So thanks to them.
[02:20.950 --> 02:22.010]  Thanks to everybody for coming.
[02:24.570 --> 02:31.150]  So this is a little bit of rambling talk, but it's based on the same idea on a talk that I did a bunch of years ago.
[02:31.150 --> 02:34.450]  So back in 2014, it was HOPE X.
[02:35.230 --> 02:46.470]  I did this thing called the Self-Publishing Success Story, talking about how I moved the book from a publisher on to self-publishing myself through a thing called CreateSpace.
[02:46.710 --> 02:47.810]  Had a pretty good run.
[02:48.250 --> 02:55.230]  And then in 2020, I tried to make a very small update to the book, which is a 475-page book.
[02:55.350 --> 02:55.990]  Oh, I have...
[02:55.990 --> 02:57.210]  Here's the new one.
[02:57.310 --> 02:58.570]  I'm going to give this away at the end.
[02:58.570 --> 03:00.090]  So that's the new small one.
[03:00.190 --> 03:01.650]  This is not the 500-page one.
[03:02.350 --> 03:05.230]  So I tried to change the words master and slave in there.
[03:05.430 --> 03:07.250]  And this is not related to those words.
[03:07.250 --> 03:13.010]  But the book ended up getting trapped in Amazon Purgatory, where it actually still resides because I couldn't get it out.
[03:13.270 --> 03:15.670]  And I'm going to talk about how all that happened.
[03:17.290 --> 03:23.850]  And I'm going to talk a little bit also about what it's like to self-publish now, what I'm doing now, and some of the economics of that as well.
[03:24.310 --> 03:25.110]  So whom...
[03:25.110 --> 03:30.510]  I'm a professor of entertainment technology at City Tech in Brooklyn as part of CUNY, my local one stagehand.
[03:31.030 --> 03:31.510]  I've written...
[03:31.510 --> 03:33.890]  Basically, I've written the same book like six different times.
[03:34.070 --> 03:36.370]  So at first, it was Control Systems for Live Entertainment.
[03:36.690 --> 03:38.470]  Then it became Show Networks and Control Systems.
[03:38.630 --> 03:40.190]  Now it's Introduction to Show Networking.
[03:40.490 --> 03:43.890]  Subject matter expert on the ESTA ETCP.
[03:43.890 --> 03:48.750]  And I've done a little bit of everything mostly in live entertainment and mostly in sound and networking.
[03:48.750 --> 03:53.570]  But I've worked on feature films and concerts and theme parks and all kinds of stuff.
[03:54.690 --> 03:56.510]  Also a storm chaser and photographer.
[03:57.130 --> 03:59.210]  I actually talked about that here before.
[03:59.470 --> 04:00.450]  And I've...
[04:00.450 --> 04:04.230]  I guess I've spoken to every hope since 2010, including the virtual ones.
[04:04.370 --> 04:06.530]  So again, it's really nice to be back in person with everybody.
[04:07.550 --> 04:11.290]  So I mentioned this already, but the first book was way back in 1994.
[04:12.130 --> 04:14.230]  Then I made a second edition and a third edition.
[04:14.430 --> 04:15.750]  So those were all just traditional...
[04:15.750 --> 04:17.250]  This I should mention is a trade book.
[04:17.990 --> 04:20.730]  So it's a technical book about show networking.
[04:20.910 --> 04:22.990]  And in those days, it was more about control systems.
[04:23.590 --> 04:27.350]  With a fairly narrow market in the live entertainment production area.
[04:27.670 --> 04:33.230]  And that back then, you know, I get you could self-publish, but it wasn't that as easy to do it as it is now.
[04:33.610 --> 04:36.210]  And so I did this with a publisher, did three editions with them.
[04:36.990 --> 04:39.970]  And then I actually got a sabbatical to make an updated version.
[04:40.170 --> 04:44.550]  And then the publisher was like, well, we don't know the third edition, the sales and whatever.
[04:44.870 --> 04:48.210]  And of course, in reality, they did like virtually nothing to sell it.
[04:49.510 --> 04:53.330]  So then I was like, I always say I was depressed for like a day.
[04:53.670 --> 04:56.290]  And then I said, hey, maybe I can self-publish it.
[04:56.450 --> 05:03.690]  So in 2012, I got the book self-published and actually coincidentally, I literally got the copy right before HOPE 9.
[05:04.490 --> 05:05.630]  Made a Kindle edition.
[05:06.550 --> 05:11.250]  And then in 2014, I presented this self-publishing success story.
[05:11.470 --> 05:12.350]  That's still online.
[05:12.510 --> 05:13.050]  It's on my website.
[05:13.250 --> 05:13.930]  You can go see it.
[05:14.450 --> 05:15.630]  Talks about all that.
[05:15.690 --> 05:17.490]  But I'll touch on some points about it.
[05:17.610 --> 05:22.410]  But the basic idea was, you know, I got off the publisher and then I moved to this thing called CreateSpace.
[05:22.410 --> 05:27.130]  So CreateSpace was originally independent and then they got bought by Amazon.
[05:27.550 --> 05:29.310]  But it ran really well.
[05:29.810 --> 05:39.950]  Copies, just a brief, this is all explained in the other talk, but a brief sort of overview of that is when you do print on demand, there's literally like a giant laser printer and a robot that makes a cover.
[05:40.070 --> 05:42.010]  So when you order a copy, it's just printed out.
[05:42.450 --> 05:43.490]  The machine spits it out.
[05:43.490 --> 05:44.630]  And it...
[05:45.130 --> 05:45.730]  Excuse me.
[05:46.090 --> 05:50.150]  And Amazon has several of these printing things these days just tied in with their warehouses.
[05:50.670 --> 05:51.350]  So if you...
[05:51.350 --> 05:52.050]  I think the...
[05:52.050 --> 05:54.970]  It used to be the closest one to here was in Newark, Delaware.
[05:55.290 --> 05:58.770]  So if you order a copy, they would just print it and they'd ship it right up.
[05:59.590 --> 06:01.830]  Back then, I had sold about 1,700 copies.
[06:02.090 --> 06:06.410]  And again, self-publishing, you do most of the work, but you keep all the money.
[06:06.410 --> 06:10.290]  So with the publisher, they keep 90% of the wholesale cost.
[06:10.410 --> 06:13.890]  So that means that's usually about 40% off the list price.
[06:14.030 --> 06:21.550]  So if you have a $10 book, that means that they will sell it for six and you get 10% of that, right?
[06:21.690 --> 06:22.770]  So nothing really.
[06:23.650 --> 06:26.270]  And in the old days, they had a lot of cost, right?
[06:26.370 --> 06:28.750]  They had to print things, warehouse it, do all that kind of stuff.
[06:29.090 --> 06:30.470]  They don't do that anymore anymore.
[06:31.030 --> 06:32.290]  Again, that's all on my website.
[06:32.290 --> 06:37.790]  So in 2017, I made a second edition of the self-published book.
[06:38.990 --> 06:39.650]  Excuse me.
[06:40.070 --> 06:41.630]  And then, so that was already out.
[06:41.750 --> 06:47.170]  And then 2018, I get this email from Amazon, from CreateSpace.
[06:47.370 --> 06:49.570]  And it's hard to read up there, but...
[06:49.570 --> 06:50.450]  Excuse me.
[06:51.910 --> 06:57.950]  Basically, they're like, we're moving CreateSpace, which had always been run separately, into this thing they call Kindle Direct...
[06:58.570 --> 06:59.610]  I call it desktop.
[06:59.770 --> 07:00.810]  It's Kindle Direct Publishing.
[07:00.810 --> 07:02.690]  So they're basically merging it all together.
[07:03.270 --> 07:05.610]  And at the time, I didn't pay much attention to this.
[07:05.710 --> 07:09.650]  And I couldn't do much anyway, because I just updated the new version and all that.
[07:09.830 --> 07:10.650]  Everything seemed fine.
[07:11.010 --> 07:15.210]  And it's the usual corporate language, you know, distribution, blah, blah, blah.
[07:15.430 --> 07:16.890]  For me, nothing really changed.
[07:17.030 --> 07:17.650]  It kept selling.
[07:17.910 --> 07:18.790]  Everything seemed fine.
[07:19.710 --> 07:23.270]  Then, as I mentioned in 2020, I attempted to update the book.
[07:24.530 --> 07:26.890]  And then, why was I updating it?
[07:27.090 --> 07:27.890]  A couple of reasons.
[07:27.890 --> 07:29.750]  One, the market had changed.
[07:29.950 --> 07:35.150]  So rather than this big book, like the small book covers most applications.
[07:36.850 --> 07:38.070]  That was the main reason.
[07:38.270 --> 07:39.870]  And I thought, wow, this won't be too hard.
[07:40.250 --> 07:41.750]  And it's 2020, right?
[07:41.830 --> 07:43.310]  I had time sitting at home.
[07:43.470 --> 07:44.610]  I'm like, oh, it won't be too hard.
[07:44.690 --> 07:49.610]  I'll extract these chapters out of the main book, update them, print the new one, do that.
[07:50.290 --> 07:55.750]  And then also, of course, around that time was all the Black Lives Matter protests and everything.
[07:56.290 --> 08:05.810]  And then sort of just the awareness in the industry that this terminology of master and slave, which they talked about in a control systems context, that it was obsolete and it needed to go.
[08:05.910 --> 08:06.630]  And that was happening.
[08:06.630 --> 08:09.130]  It's pretty obvious, but it's happening in the industry.
[08:09.130 --> 08:18.890]  So really the only update that I wanted to make on the book was just edit like two paragraphs in there, get rid of this archaic language, and then create a new version.
[08:19.090 --> 08:23.030]  And that's sort of the idea of the self-publishing thing anyway, since it's all print on demand.
[08:23.030 --> 08:25.210]  You should be able to make a new version every day.
[08:25.410 --> 08:30.070]  And just the next one gets ordered, we'll have the new update on it.
[08:31.730 --> 08:43.250]  So I thought I would go through the big book to sort of refresh myself, but I've been a few years, sort of refresh myself on how it was, extract this out, make this little change, update it, and then I make the new one.
[08:43.370 --> 08:44.410]  I think this will be great.
[08:45.650 --> 08:47.630]  So I should talk a little bit about FrameMaker.
[08:50.920 --> 08:52.060]  Let's get some water here.
[08:55.100 --> 08:57.200]  So FrameMaker, I can't see.
[08:57.280 --> 08:58.640]  Has anybody heard of FrameMaker before?
[08:58.800 --> 08:59.340]  I'm always curious.
[08:59.800 --> 09:00.340]  Oh, one hand.
[09:00.480 --> 09:01.280]  Oh, two hands went up.
[09:01.420 --> 09:01.840]  Okay, good.
[09:02.900 --> 09:08.340]  So back in the 2000s, I started doing the production work on the book after a couple of editions with the publisher.
[09:08.580 --> 09:15.620]  And they have really great people that do, you know, graphics and layout and all that stuff, but they don't understand the material, so it's not really their job.
[09:15.900 --> 09:21.800]  So I wanted, you know, if I have this chart or this diagram, I want it attached to this paragraph no matter what.
[09:21.800 --> 09:23.960]  I don't want it to flow to the next page or anything like that.
[09:24.380 --> 09:25.720]  So FrameMaker could do that.
[09:26.040 --> 09:29.300]  That's what I did the original book in, and it's still being used today.
[09:29.300 --> 09:39.480]  So the IEEE standards for, like, Ethernet, which is like an 800 or 1,000-page document, they still write, as I just checked on the web last week, they still write in FrameMaker.
[09:39.580 --> 09:40.280]  So it's still around.
[09:40.420 --> 09:42.400]  Every few years, it's like, oh, FrameMaker's going to die.
[09:43.100 --> 09:43.660]  It's not.
[09:43.660 --> 09:53.460]  And it's really great if you have, you need to write a user's manual in 12 languages or have some very complicated sort of linked documents and things like that and multiple platforms.
[09:53.460 --> 09:54.720]  It's really, really powerful.
[09:54.980 --> 09:58.700]  It's really overkill for a simple print book with an e-book version.
[09:59.320 --> 10:01.060]  But I was kind of, I was already in it.
[10:01.220 --> 10:04.280]  And I tried, in the previous editions, I really wanted to get off of it.
[10:04.420 --> 10:07.200]  But it was just, it's too, you're kind of stuck in this thing.
[10:07.440 --> 10:13.040]  It's an immense amount of work to export out of it and go into InDesign or something, which is much more popular today.
[10:14.960 --> 10:16.560]  So fun begins with this.
[10:18.460 --> 10:20.960]  I got the new version of FrameMaker in 2020.
[10:21.400 --> 10:23.260]  I changed the 20 words in the book.
[10:23.560 --> 10:27.860]  And then they literally, the way I did the edits, pages didn't reflow.
[10:27.860 --> 10:30.040]  I mean, FrameMaker can update all this in an instant.
[10:30.180 --> 10:31.000]  It's not that difficult.
[10:31.160 --> 10:33.020]  But literally, the number of pages stayed the same.
[10:33.300 --> 10:34.860]  The cross-references stayed the same.
[10:35.040 --> 10:35.920]  Everything, nothing changed.
[10:36.260 --> 10:38.640]  Didn't touch one graphic or anything in the book.
[10:39.060 --> 10:40.140]  Just exactly the same.
[10:40.340 --> 10:45.680]  And then I had like a Google document, because the export process is a little bit, you know, some trial and error in that.
[10:45.980 --> 10:52.360]  Had a Google document, followed that down, went through the whole thing step-by-step, so I knew what I was doing, exported out.
[10:52.960 --> 10:56.540]  And then I made a, excuse me, coughing so much.
[10:57.780 --> 11:09.600]  I made what's called a Kindle print replica, which is a way that you can take a PDF and stick it in a Kindle, and then it stays inside the Kindle world, but it keeps your graphic layout, so that way I don't have to redo the whole thing.
[11:10.240 --> 11:13.220]  And I'll talk about my e-book sales are still much smaller than the print ones.
[11:13.440 --> 11:14.300]  That worked great.
[11:14.300 --> 11:18.640]  But then the PDF for the interior, the print book, I got this error.
[11:19.280 --> 11:20.500]  Is there something going on?
[11:20.560 --> 11:21.400]  I can't hear the...
[11:21.400 --> 11:22.000]  Oh, sorry.
[11:22.860 --> 11:24.240]  Error processing interior.
[11:24.460 --> 11:32.520]  I probably could have titled the talk this, because that's really what my entire life became for a couple weeks of this sort of nightmare.
[11:33.020 --> 11:36.980]  All it says, so this is like 475-page PDF.
[11:37.460 --> 11:38.420]  I get this one error.
[11:38.500 --> 11:39.120]  It just says, error.
[11:39.260 --> 11:41.280]  There's a problem processing your interior.
[11:41.920 --> 11:43.400]  Check your file and try again.
[11:43.600 --> 11:45.040]  So useless, right?
[11:45.100 --> 11:46.560]  There's no information in there at all.
[11:49.080 --> 11:49.480]  CreateSpace.
[11:49.680 --> 11:50.920]  Tech support was excellent.
[11:51.080 --> 11:52.720]  They were down in South Carolina, I think.
[11:52.940 --> 11:55.180]  You would call, email, get the information.
[11:55.180 --> 11:56.220]  They could fix things.
[11:56.500 --> 11:56.900]  It was great.
[11:57.400 --> 12:08.900]  However, when I contacted the KDP tech support, which I believe during this part of their integration, I'm speculating, somebody may know, but I think they offshored it somewhere.
[12:09.860 --> 12:11.000]  Email was useless.
[12:11.300 --> 12:12.380]  I had to call.
[12:12.840 --> 12:16.500]  Of course, they told me to clear my cookies, which is always aggravating.
[12:17.140 --> 12:21.960]  Then they told me to like, oh, you should print the Kindle print replica file.
[12:22.100 --> 12:23.620]  It's like, it's called a replica.
[12:23.620 --> 12:27.340]  It's not the PDF, which is like a high-quality thing for printing.
[12:28.060 --> 12:29.280]  They wanted me to...
[12:29.280 --> 12:33.120]  So it's basically sort of like taking a JPEG of your PDF and then trying to print that.
[12:33.740 --> 12:35.000]  But I uploaded it.
[12:35.100 --> 12:36.680]  It accepted that, no problem.
[12:36.760 --> 12:38.900]  But I wasn't going to print it because it just looked terrible.
[12:41.360 --> 12:42.740]  Post on a bunch of forums.
[12:42.880 --> 12:44.860]  The KDP forum was just horrible.
[12:45.420 --> 12:50.400]  I actually had like a little flashback, because I archived all this before I deleted everything off of there.
[12:51.360 --> 12:52.840]  And I was just getting like beaten up.
[12:52.960 --> 12:54.620]  And all these people telling me the same thing over and over.
[12:54.700 --> 12:55.320]  And I was an idiot.
[12:55.480 --> 12:57.160]  And I was like, this is just useless.
[12:58.180 --> 13:01.200]  Went on the FrameMaker forum, Illustrator, Acrobat.
[13:01.940 --> 13:02.660]  Everybody stumped.
[13:02.720 --> 13:07.660]  I actually hired a FrameMaker expert, who's a consultant, really experienced this stuff.
[13:07.660 --> 13:11.460]  They had no idea what this error meant or what any of the things we could do.
[13:12.720 --> 13:14.180]  So the only thing anybody told me...
[13:14.180 --> 13:18.680]  So again, all I was trying to do was change the words master and slave out of the book.
[13:18.820 --> 13:19.240]  That was it.
[13:19.460 --> 13:20.300]  Like three sentences.
[13:20.780 --> 13:22.520]  Update the, you know, copyright page.
[13:22.600 --> 13:23.040]  That was it.
[13:24.920 --> 13:28.160]  Anybody could tell me like, well, of course, you just replace all the graphics.
[13:28.280 --> 13:29.840]  There's literally like 200 graphics.
[13:30.220 --> 13:33.260]  And they're basically just direct imported from Adobe Illustrator.
[13:33.400 --> 13:34.860]  So just like placed in FrameMaker.
[13:35.140 --> 13:36.740]  And they're just telling me, oh, just redo them all.
[13:36.820 --> 13:40.460]  I'm like, no, I'm not, you know, wasn't going to do that.
[13:40.920 --> 13:43.520]  So, but that basically would mean just starting over.
[13:43.720 --> 13:44.920]  To do that, I'd do an InDesign.
[13:45.040 --> 13:48.600]  And as I said, just trying to change a few words.
[13:48.760 --> 13:50.220]  So I tried everything I could.
[13:50.660 --> 13:54.220]  I did every formatting, every export thing, every setting.
[13:54.500 --> 13:57.600]  And what's kind of hilarious now, not sure if you can read that.
[13:57.600 --> 14:02.080]  But it turns out once you create these KDP projects, you can't delete them.
[14:02.300 --> 14:04.540]  So permanently up there are projects.
[14:04.720 --> 14:05.880]  It says, f*ck KDP.
[14:06.520 --> 14:07.520]  This is horrible.
[14:08.760 --> 14:10.040]  Amazon is destroyed.
[14:10.220 --> 14:10.780]  Print on demand.
[14:11.100 --> 14:11.660]  All these things.
[14:11.980 --> 14:14.860]  And this is now still linked to my Amazon account.
[14:15.020 --> 14:18.500]  So if I go up there and if I look in KDP, there's just these lists of projects.
[14:18.680 --> 14:19.620]  It's like, f*ck Amazon.
[14:20.120 --> 14:21.240]  All this over and over.
[14:21.380 --> 14:22.460]  And you cannot delete them.
[14:22.640 --> 14:24.280]  Again, the excitement of this system.
[14:24.720 --> 14:26.840]  So then I got escalated to the technical team.
[14:27.900 --> 14:29.480]  You can't speak to them directly.
[14:30.220 --> 14:32.320]  And they respond three to five business days.
[14:32.520 --> 14:34.040]  So you can imagine how well this went.
[14:34.400 --> 14:37.060]  And then all they could do is really...
[14:37.900 --> 14:40.720]  Well, I'll get to the little bit of detail they offered me eventually.
[14:42.460 --> 14:45.720]  They couldn't tell me if it was a problem with one graphic or all of them.
[14:46.180 --> 14:48.340]  Because if it's one graphic, sure, I would redo it.
[14:48.400 --> 14:50.960]  But they're just sort of like, oh, reset it, redo everything, start over.
[14:50.960 --> 14:51.980]  I'm like, I'm not doing that.
[14:52.120 --> 14:54.080]  I'm just trying to change like three words in this book.
[14:55.160 --> 15:01.520]  And all I could get was that the interior file contains complex graphics and multiple layers.
[15:01.520 --> 15:04.380]  And the file features contain complex vector images.
[15:05.140 --> 15:05.500]  Okay.
[15:06.160 --> 15:08.020]  So basically, it's an illustrator graphic.
[15:08.140 --> 15:10.560]  They're not telling me like, oh, you can only have three layers.
[15:10.560 --> 15:12.820]  It can be this DPI or whatever.
[15:12.980 --> 15:14.560]  And there's no useful information in that.
[15:14.700 --> 15:17.000]  But this is what it looked like in their prepress systems.
[15:17.100 --> 15:18.260]  They just said, oh, here's the problem.
[15:18.340 --> 15:18.980]  It looks like this.
[15:19.100 --> 15:20.260]  I'm like, great.
[15:20.480 --> 15:20.660]  Thanks.
[15:20.780 --> 15:22.100]  I mean, this is what it's supposed to look like.
[15:22.180 --> 15:23.480]  This is a lighting console.
[15:25.140 --> 15:27.400]  Not from the one company that's back there.
[15:28.720 --> 15:34.960]  And again, what's insane about all this, the file that was giving them all the errors, they were printing virtually the same file.
[15:35.080 --> 15:36.860]  Because all I did was change a couple words in it.
[15:37.300 --> 15:38.880]  The interior PDF was still there.
[15:38.880 --> 15:40.380]  They're still printing and selling it.
[15:40.680 --> 15:42.940]  So it was in the system as printing.
[15:43.280 --> 15:46.500]  But I take the same thing, change three words, and now I can't print it.
[15:48.220 --> 15:52.960]  So after all this, it was like 10 days of this nonsense and like 50 hours.
[15:53.040 --> 15:54.300]  I guess I actually trapped it.
[15:54.940 --> 15:55.660]  Oh, I have a...
[15:55.660 --> 16:03.160]  If this is actually interesting, you have a whole blog entry that lays out all the details of the notes I took at the time, which is why I remember all this stuff.
[16:04.160 --> 16:05.900]  So I'm like, okay, I give up.
[16:06.040 --> 16:07.700]  I'm going to lead master and slave in the book.
[16:07.700 --> 16:10.420]  I'm going to write a blog entry about why I can't change it.
[16:10.560 --> 16:12.060]  And I'll just, I'll have to live with it.
[16:12.640 --> 16:14.260]  So I said, I go in there.
[16:14.380 --> 16:16.320]  There's no way to revert back to the old file.
[16:16.420 --> 16:18.920]  The one they're printing, I can't revert back to it.
[16:20.680 --> 16:23.280]  So I caught them up and said, hey, can you do it?
[16:23.340 --> 16:25.920]  And it turns out, no, they can't do it because they delete it.
[16:26.200 --> 16:28.600]  Once you upload a new file, they delete the old one.
[16:29.180 --> 16:30.680]  No warning, nothing.
[16:30.940 --> 16:32.080]  You can't, none of this stuff.
[16:32.080 --> 16:35.080]  So now I got the tier two escalation, very exciting.
[16:35.820 --> 16:38.780]  So they said, why don't you find the old file and upload it?
[16:38.840 --> 16:39.760]  I'm like, okay, great.
[16:39.940 --> 16:40.840]  So I did that.
[16:40.940 --> 16:42.980]  And you can imagine what happened when I uploaded.
[16:43.060 --> 16:46.340]  This is the file they're printing, error processing interior.
[16:46.340 --> 16:55.160]  So literally, I mean, at that time, you could buy this book that had the master and slave language in it from this PDF that I had made in 2017.
[16:55.260 --> 16:59.040]  Now I'm taking the same thing, uploading it back into their system.
[16:59.200 --> 17:01.700]  Now I get this error processing interior thing.
[17:01.860 --> 17:04.240]  So you can imagine how excited I was at that point.
[17:04.700 --> 17:10.240]  Then I found out, I don't know if it still works, but there was an email called Jeff at Amazon.com.
[17:10.700 --> 17:12.200]  They do actually answer it.
[17:13.260 --> 17:14.200]  It's kind of ridiculous.
[17:14.380 --> 17:16.600]  It says, Jeff Bezos has received your email.
[17:16.820 --> 17:17.640]  It's like, oh, come on.
[17:18.240 --> 17:20.340]  He asked that I respond on his behalf.
[17:20.440 --> 17:22.080]  Like, okay, maybe, maybe once.
[17:22.660 --> 17:23.880]  So blah, blah, blah.
[17:24.080 --> 17:29.260]  The only way this file will be ingested is you rasterize the same thing, which I'm not even sure what that means.
[17:29.460 --> 17:31.320]  There actually are raster files already.
[17:32.780 --> 17:35.380]  I can't tell if there's anything, there's some commotion out there.
[17:37.320 --> 17:38.680]  So then here's the key.
[17:38.680 --> 17:47.920]  I am aware that the file may have had no issues prior to this when uploaded to CreateSpace, but the new specifications will have to be adhered to in order to publish the change of your book.
[17:48.300 --> 17:49.000]  Okay, great.
[17:49.280 --> 17:50.360]  What are the specifications?
[17:50.800 --> 17:52.220]  They don't have them.
[17:52.320 --> 17:56.440]  There's like a bullet page, sorry, a web page with like 10 bullet points.
[17:56.480 --> 17:58.000]  I think I have a screenshot of that coming up.
[17:58.840 --> 18:01.320]  And then they tell me, oh, go get an expert.
[18:01.540 --> 18:03.120]  I'm like, okay, now I'm just screwed.
[18:04.460 --> 18:06.600]  So the back and forth.
[18:06.800 --> 18:08.640]  And then eventually they just kick me back to tech support.
[18:08.920 --> 18:19.980]  So I think now I should point out that, you know, at this time, Amazon had sold my various editions of my book and had grossed like $222,000.
[18:19.980 --> 18:23.800]  So I'm not asking, I'm not like, this isn't millions.
[18:23.800 --> 18:24.520]  I get it.
[18:24.600 --> 18:29.480]  But I think if you sell $200,000 worth of product, you should at least have somebody who understands their system.
[18:29.500 --> 18:33.180]  Just take a look at the file and go, oh, this thing that we're selling today.
[18:33.980 --> 18:34.660]  Here's the issue.
[18:34.800 --> 18:35.240]  Fix that.
[18:35.360 --> 18:35.760]  Boom, boom, boom.
[18:35.900 --> 18:36.700]  You can't do it.
[18:36.760 --> 18:38.120]  It's just one system you go in.
[18:38.440 --> 18:39.900]  Maybe this has changed since then.
[18:40.060 --> 18:41.080]  I kind of doubt it.
[18:41.840 --> 18:47.480]  And I should mention too, over that eight years, I had made like almost $100,000 of the royalty.
[18:47.520 --> 18:49.800]  So it was worth it for me to do all this.
[18:50.620 --> 18:52.880]  But at this point, my book is just stuck.
[18:53.280 --> 18:55.360]  And so this is why I say it's in purgatory.
[18:55.660 --> 18:59.500]  It's probably can't see it on the screen, but it says live with unpublished changes.
[18:59.500 --> 19:00.800]  So you could still buy it.
[19:00.980 --> 19:06.920]  But the unpublished changes were the new file I was trying to upload, which they won't print and they deleted the old file.
[19:07.000 --> 19:08.540]  So this is why I say it's in purgatory.
[19:08.540 --> 19:09.320]  I was just stuck.
[19:10.980 --> 19:14.740]  And the, yeah, basically the error that's still there is the interior files.
[19:14.840 --> 19:16.000]  I'm just stuck on this whole thing.
[19:16.200 --> 19:21.040]  And there's no, you know, if they said, okay, you have to invest this time and do this, and that'll fix it.
[19:21.220 --> 19:22.100]  Here's the problem.
[19:22.240 --> 19:23.280]  It's 18 layers.
[19:23.460 --> 19:24.080]  Here's the problem.
[19:24.220 --> 19:24.560]  It's this.
[19:24.740 --> 19:26.260]  It's the wrong color space.
[19:26.440 --> 19:34.920]  Any information that was useful other than rasterize the graphics, these are, you know, it doesn't, it just doesn't, I don't know, it doesn't make sense.
[19:35.120 --> 19:42.700]  And that's basically, I mean, I'm not a PDF expert, but this is, you know, part of the PDF export process from FrameMaker is to flatten the graphics.
[19:42.700 --> 19:46.220]  So they're not giving me enough specification on what to fix this.
[19:46.900 --> 19:49.100]  And again, I hired a FrameMaker expert.
[19:49.380 --> 19:50.800]  They didn't know what they were talking about.
[19:50.840 --> 19:51.540]  So it's not just me.
[19:51.960 --> 19:54.600]  So I'm like, okay, there's a competitor to Amazon called IngramSpark.
[19:54.600 --> 19:56.940]  I set up an account over there.
[19:57.700 --> 20:03.840]  I took the 2017 file that Amazon was printing, upload it to IngramSpark.
[20:04.380 --> 20:05.020]  What happened?
[20:05.360 --> 20:07.000]  They accepted the first try.
[20:07.360 --> 20:14.140]  So the same PDF that Amazon's telling me is unprintable with no changes whatsoever, Ingram just took it, printed it.
[20:14.140 --> 20:15.040]  No problem.
[20:15.260 --> 20:18.040]  There's some error about the resolution of this photo or whatever.
[20:18.200 --> 20:18.760]  That's all fine.
[20:19.380 --> 20:20.120]  Went right through.
[20:20.440 --> 20:20.900]  No problem.
[20:21.140 --> 20:21.820]  Okay, great.
[20:22.300 --> 20:26.580]  I'm just going to move my, you know, I owned all the ISBN numbers, all this stuff.
[20:26.700 --> 20:29.820]  I'm just going to move my stuff out of Amazon, put on Ingram.
[20:29.940 --> 20:31.960]  And ironically, Ingram will sell through Amazon.
[20:31.960 --> 20:34.660]  So it will still be available, but they just won't print it.
[20:35.520 --> 20:46.220]  So what happens is, and this gets really boring, but KDP has this thing called expanded distribution, which allows it to be sold just beyond, you know, inside Amazon directly.
[20:47.060 --> 20:49.600]  That will go to some bookstores and things like that.
[20:49.800 --> 20:54.140]  I had enrolled in that because I, you know, I have classes that use this book and stuff.
[20:55.260 --> 20:58.960]  And the, why couldn't I de-enroll from expanded distribution?
[20:59.640 --> 21:03.940]  It's still in setup at KDP because error processing interior.
[21:04.180 --> 21:05.520]  So I'm still back in the same...
[21:05.520 --> 21:06.580]  So I can't even...
[21:06.580 --> 21:10.480]  So the file that I own, which they won't print, which is printable by their competitor.
[21:11.260 --> 21:19.360]  My ISBN that I own, they won't release it because it's in their expanded distribution program, which I can't get out of because they won't take my print files.
[21:19.520 --> 21:21.060]  So it's just like, duh, man.
[21:22.480 --> 21:23.600]  So that was the end.
[21:23.680 --> 21:24.160]  That was it.
[21:24.300 --> 21:27.880]  So I had sold over the years 5,100 copies.
[21:27.880 --> 21:29.520]  And I just had it.
[21:29.640 --> 21:30.700]  I'm like, all right, I gotta...
[21:30.700 --> 21:31.740]  I have to get out of this.
[21:31.920 --> 21:33.340]  And all along...
[21:33.340 --> 21:36.440]  Oh, I shouldn't mention, I was getting this talk ready.
[21:37.080 --> 21:37.460]  The...
[21:37.460 --> 21:41.060]  I got a royalty for one cent a couple days ago.
[21:41.260 --> 21:46.860]  So they're enrolled in some old Kindle loaner program where it's like by pages read.
[21:46.860 --> 21:53.000]  So somebody read a couple pages last week or last month, and I got a one cent royalty from them.
[21:53.160 --> 21:53.980]  And I'm like...
[21:53.980 --> 21:54.840]  Now I just...
[21:54.840 --> 21:57.780]  I don't go back and go into it.
[21:58.140 --> 22:00.160]  So in summary for me...
[22:01.120 --> 22:06.760]  Again, the people I spoke to at the KDP tech support, wherever they are, super helpful.
[22:07.060 --> 22:08.440]  They were very nice people.
[22:08.700 --> 22:10.220]  They empathized with my problem.
[22:10.360 --> 22:13.760]  They were trying to help, but they just didn't have the tool set to do it.
[22:13.760 --> 22:14.900]  Maybe this has been fixed.
[22:15.080 --> 22:22.100]  I did send my blog entry back to that Jeff at Amazon.com email right about the time I sold my Amazon stock.
[22:22.760 --> 22:23.420]  And the...
[22:23.420 --> 22:24.720]  Of course, heard nothing back.
[22:24.880 --> 22:26.240]  But I mean, they've been made aware of this.
[22:26.360 --> 22:28.740]  I don't know if they chose to fix it.
[22:28.820 --> 22:30.380]  I'm not gonna go find out at this point.
[22:31.560 --> 22:32.820]  So I get that they're not...
[22:32.820 --> 22:34.580]  You know, they don't know FrameMaker.
[22:34.700 --> 22:35.620]  Nobody knew FrameMaker.
[22:35.660 --> 22:38.800]  I don't expect them to like tell me how to run Illustrator or whatever.
[22:39.060 --> 22:43.300]  But you have to give people enough detailed information to fix the problem.
[22:45.340 --> 22:46.140]  By comparison...
[22:52.060 --> 22:56.660]  IngramSpark has a 40-page pre-press guide, all the details, everything in there.
[22:56.840 --> 22:59.300]  And then the key part is they give you this thing on Adobe.
[22:59.600 --> 23:02.920]  I couldn't find it when I went looking for it the other day, but I got it at the time.
[23:03.100 --> 23:04.840]  This thing called a job options file.
[23:05.000 --> 23:08.240]  So basically, you just take Acrobat, you load up this job option file.
[23:08.400 --> 23:10.240]  It exports it exactly how they want it.
[23:10.380 --> 23:10.960]  Everything's good.
[23:10.960 --> 23:17.300]  But I'll say the file they said was printable, I hadn't even run through that.
[23:17.400 --> 23:18.560]  I just did the basic export.
[23:18.780 --> 23:19.220]  Everything worked.
[23:19.320 --> 23:20.700]  So this is all a KDP problem.
[23:21.940 --> 23:27.100]  Obviously, Amazon shouldn't be like deleting your project when you upload a new version, until the new version's working.
[23:28.580 --> 23:30.960]  And they should tell you what's happening with that.
[23:30.960 --> 23:32.320]  So that's going to go on.
[23:32.760 --> 23:33.920]  Kind of common sense stuff.
[23:34.200 --> 23:37.260]  So all that said, is KDP right for you?
[23:37.480 --> 23:43.320]  I think that it seems to me, and this is again from 2020, seems like KDP...
[23:43.320 --> 23:55.620]  I'm completely speculating here, but it seems like Amazon just wasn't making enough money on people like me, even though, again, I sold $200,000 of the books with them, to make it worth having this upper-level tier of support.
[23:55.620 --> 23:58.280]  And again, I'm not expecting like, you know, special treatment.
[23:58.280 --> 24:02.420]  I just wanted somebody, one person I could talk to who can answer my problem.
[24:02.780 --> 24:07.000]  It seems like that now they're really oriented more towards hobbyists.
[24:07.120 --> 24:08.640]  So somebody wants to publish their memoir.
[24:08.840 --> 24:10.320]  They're going to sell five copies of it.
[24:10.460 --> 24:11.940]  They're going to send in a Word file.
[24:12.740 --> 24:13.740]  All of that is fine.
[24:13.800 --> 24:15.400]  They'll give you a template in Word or whatever.
[24:15.840 --> 24:17.540]  So again, I'm totally speculating.
[24:17.860 --> 24:21.240]  I mean, Amazon wouldn't tell me if I asked, but that seems like that's what happened.
[24:21.380 --> 24:23.240]  Like there was a successful niche for them.
[24:23.460 --> 24:25.260]  Maybe Ingram took it over or whatever.
[24:25.940 --> 24:27.440]  But now it's like if you...
[24:27.440 --> 24:33.920]  So if you have something very simple or like a novel or something with not a lot of graphics, it probably works fine.
[24:34.100 --> 24:36.520]  I still think I would go with Ingram today anyway.
[24:38.480 --> 24:42.080]  And all of them and Ingram both offer like production services.
[24:42.260 --> 24:48.040]  So if you just want to write something, you want to hire somebody to lay it out, do the cover, all that, they can do the whole package for you.
[24:48.720 --> 24:51.820]  And so things could have changed, but f*ck them at this point.
[24:51.980 --> 24:53.840]  It's like after what they put me...
[24:53.840 --> 24:56.700]  And also, you know, I f*ck Amazon in general, I think so.
[24:57.540 --> 25:01.840]  So in the meantime, so the final result of that is what I call the big book.
[25:02.200 --> 25:04.920]  I got it out on Ingram in 2021.
[25:06.100 --> 25:07.420]  I had to get a new ISBN.
[25:07.760 --> 25:08.420]  Mine was stuck.
[25:08.600 --> 25:10.040]  Mine that I own, I should say.
[25:10.140 --> 25:11.040]  I mean, I paid for it.
[25:11.140 --> 25:11.540]  I own it.
[25:11.880 --> 25:13.280]  They're stuck in their system.
[25:13.280 --> 25:18.600]  And again, there was no one who would just say, hey, we'll override that and fix this for you.
[25:18.720 --> 25:22.820]  Like it's just, it's like, you know, the database is the database.
[25:23.040 --> 25:24.160]  No one can challenge it.
[25:24.240 --> 25:25.120]  It's like it's in there.
[25:25.360 --> 25:26.560]  No one can touch it.
[25:26.680 --> 25:33.340]  It makes the final determination and there's no human that they will make available to me that can go in and like unplug the thing and fix it.
[25:34.320 --> 25:36.640]  It's a publisher number.
[25:36.940 --> 25:37.560]  I'm sorry?
[25:38.160 --> 25:41.200]  The publisher number.
[25:41.420 --> 25:44.060]  If you change publishers, you have to get a new ISBN.
[25:44.140 --> 25:48.700]  Yeah, but I, well, I'm, I'm, you're probably right, but I, it's just possible to do.
[25:48.820 --> 25:52.140]  And I bought an ISBN separate from them that is not, I'm the publisher.
[25:52.360 --> 25:54.720]  So my, my number is in there, not theirs.
[25:55.240 --> 26:00.800]  They, when you set these up, you can get an ISBN from them as part of sort of the package deal.
[26:01.100 --> 26:01.820]  I didn't do that.
[26:01.900 --> 26:03.180]  I got my own separate from them.
[26:03.360 --> 26:04.120]  I uploaded it.
[26:04.200 --> 26:05.100]  So I, I'm the publisher.
[26:05.720 --> 26:07.060]  Zircon Design is my publisher.
[26:08.080 --> 26:10.840]  Um, so I unpublished the, the KDP edition.
[26:11.260 --> 26:14.500]  Um, in the new version, I lowered the price.
[26:14.900 --> 26:19.840]  Um, and then in the long run, this book is sort of the end of the line for this thing.
[26:20.200 --> 26:21.960]  Uh, mostly that's due to the market.
[26:22.200 --> 26:27.820]  The, uh, market now, you know, this, this stuff, the, the low level details aren't as important as it used to be.
[26:28.040 --> 26:30.660]  So now, uh, networking is where it's at.
[26:30.840 --> 26:34.380]  So the new book's about networking that, and this is, this was all sort of the plan anyway.
[26:34.380 --> 26:36.900]  Um, but I didn't really want it to end like this.
[26:37.100 --> 26:42.080]  You know, so, um, so I wanted to keep some, uh, version available.
[26:42.080 --> 26:46.020]  They, they would do the Kindle, uh, print replica, but f*ck them.
[26:46.160 --> 26:47.280]  I'm not giving them money for it.
[26:47.280 --> 26:48.660]  I don't want to do it.
[26:48.800 --> 26:50.460]  But I found this thing and I was looking for this.
[26:50.580 --> 26:52.980]  I talk about this in the original talk in 2014.
[26:53.500 --> 26:59.320]  Um, that I wanted in those days to get like an individually watermark PDF, DRM free PDF.
[26:59.640 --> 27:02.060]  I couldn't find that then, but I could find it now.
[27:02.220 --> 27:08.100]  So I got this thing, uh, through this company called DPD and you get individually a watermark PDF.
[27:08.320 --> 27:09.300]  There may be other solutions.
[27:09.500 --> 27:11.800]  Now this cost me about 120 bucks a year.
[27:11.800 --> 27:17.400]  Right now I'm sort of, you know, I'm losing a little bit of money running it, but I wanted to keep the thing available in some electronic form.
[27:17.840 --> 27:29.880]  And the, um, if you can see that the, um, the watermark down there, this is sort of the template, but it just comes up and it puts in the bottom of every page a little thing that says who bought it, their email.
[27:29.880 --> 27:33.480]  Obviously you could fake this, but it's just a disincentive to take the thing.
[27:33.600 --> 27:35.140]  If you want to loan it to your friend, I don't care.
[27:35.360 --> 27:39.100]  But if you want to publish it online, at least would be traceable some way to find out who it is.
[27:39.360 --> 27:40.760]  I haven't gone looking for it.
[27:41.120 --> 27:43.640]  Uh, there hadn't been that many sales of it, uh, to make it worth it.
[27:43.740 --> 27:45.700]  But I, I, it is an exciting solution.
[27:45.700 --> 27:48.680]  If you have a book, I think now, cause this is just a PDF.
[27:48.920 --> 27:50.080]  You can do whatever you like with it.
[27:50.360 --> 27:55.480]  The, I think the individual watermark, you know, is a good sort of disincentive just to like put it online for free.
[27:55.480 --> 27:59.320]  Um, but again, if you want to share it, you want to send it to your cousin, whatever, that's great.
[27:59.560 --> 28:02.460]  It's sort of like, that's what it, it should be in the print version.
[28:03.040 --> 28:05.380]  So I kind of jumped out of order in the timeline here.
[28:05.840 --> 28:11.180]  Cause in the meantime, while I had the time during the lockdown, I wanted to make this other book.
[28:11.280 --> 28:14.340]  So the process for that is I wrote this over summer and fall.
[28:14.460 --> 28:16.280]  So I exported out of FrameMaker.
[28:16.500 --> 28:18.560]  Basically each chapter was an RTF document.
[28:18.780 --> 28:28.340]  I was pretty surprised at how much of the formatting sort of survived that coming out of there into InDesign, which is where I write, and I just write, just write it right in InDesign.
[28:28.440 --> 28:29.180]  Let's talk about that in a minute.
[28:29.380 --> 28:33.740]  I did have to reset all the graphics because it's only, it's a much smaller version.
[28:34.320 --> 28:38.360]  Um, the, uh, it wasn't as many, so it was pretty manageable.
[28:38.620 --> 28:40.780]  Hired a graphic designer, make a nice layout.
[28:41.220 --> 28:49.940]  Um, and then when we were making this layout, the, uh, we had the EPUB, had the electronic version in mind for the beginning.
[28:49.940 --> 28:59.840]  So the old layout I had made in 2012 or whenever that was really wasn't, I did, wasn't thinking about, uh, you know, EPUB electronic books back then.
[29:00.020 --> 29:01.660]  Just think about the print layout.
[29:01.740 --> 29:07.420]  So it's much more complicated than it probably needed to be, but it looked nice in the page and things were in the right place and all that stuff.
[29:07.860 --> 29:11.700]  So now we just made a much more simplified layout with EPUB in mind.
[29:11.700 --> 29:13.080]  I talked about that.
[29:13.560 --> 29:16.480]  And then, oh yeah, as I mentioned, this is that Ingram table of contents.
[29:16.640 --> 29:18.900]  This is the information they give you, which is very detailed.
[29:19.300 --> 29:27.900]  Uh, so if you, and if you're not an expert in this, which I'm not, you can give this to a graphics expert and they go, oh, of course it's PDF, X, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[29:28.080 --> 29:31.020]  It's this and it's, it's there, all the information's there.
[29:31.580 --> 29:41.820]  So the layout we came up with it, you know, has some graphic elements, but some of this stuff, which will be in the print edition or is in the print edition, doesn't, just doesn't go into the EPUB and that's fine.
[29:42.000 --> 29:44.540]  But everything else is basically just sort of inline graphics.
[29:44.760 --> 29:46.840]  And I made a smaller version and all that.
[29:47.160 --> 29:49.840]  Um, and it, it came out, I think, pretty good in there.
[29:50.160 --> 29:58.220]  So the process of that, I hired the original illustrator to update some things, hired a copy editor, and then uploading Ingram was very smooth.
[29:58.700 --> 30:04.700]  Basically the way, Kindle's the same way, basically, you get your file in, you upload it, you approve it online.
[30:04.700 --> 30:08.020]  So you look at it, did it accept properly, does everything look right?
[30:08.020 --> 30:14.980]  And then I still like to order a proof copy, uh, and get that and look at it before I sort of release, hit that release button.
[30:14.980 --> 30:15.740]  So I did that.
[30:15.860 --> 30:16.920]  And I'm glad I did that.
[30:17.040 --> 30:19.780]  Cause I screwed up the cover, um, on this thing.
[30:19.860 --> 30:22.340]  I just had the, like, uh, the width wrong or something.
[30:22.660 --> 30:25.560]  And I had to redo it one time and that, you know, it costs a little bit money.
[30:25.940 --> 30:32.320]  Um, and then I did something to try to kind of keep it, you know, this is all during the lockdown times and everything.
[30:32.780 --> 30:35.900]  And again, I was pretty aggravated on Amazon at that point.
[30:35.900 --> 30:43.620]  Um, but one of the things that's just true with KDP as well is you can buy the, the, uh, copies yourself at basically print costs.
[30:43.720 --> 30:46.720]  So it's like, they're just buying it for a few dollars a copy.
[30:46.960 --> 30:48.820]  I don't remember the exact number off the top of my head.
[30:49.180 --> 30:51.040]  And then, uh, you can do whatever you like with it.
[30:51.120 --> 30:53.440]  You can give them away like today, you can sell them.
[30:53.440 --> 30:59.100]  Um, so what I did is I, the only place I made it available was from a small company in our industry.
[30:59.620 --> 31:03.540]  That's, uh, founded by small friends of mine that has a, you know, really good reputation.
[31:03.540 --> 31:05.000]  That's also related to this topic.
[31:05.240 --> 31:06.700]  So I'd worked out a deal with them.
[31:06.800 --> 31:09.700]  I'm like, they just, they'll be the only ones who can sell the print edition.
[31:10.060 --> 31:12.200]  I knew I was going to make an EPUB version eventually.
[31:12.580 --> 31:14.900]  Um, and then we did that for a while.
[31:14.900 --> 31:20.280]  And then basically after a couple months of that, you just basically click a button in the Ingram website.
[31:20.320 --> 31:22.300]  And then it releases it out to every, to everybody.
[31:23.880 --> 31:26.260]  And everybody in Ingram is, it's a lot of channels.
[31:26.760 --> 31:32.280]  Um, and one thing that's definitely better about Ingram than KDP is that libraries can buy it.
[31:32.360 --> 31:40.500]  I don't know exactly why all that works out, but the Kindle world, like, you know, if you have a library that wants to get it for a collection, there's basically no way for them to get it.
[31:40.780 --> 31:43.180]  Ingram is, they sell to everybody, bookstores.
[31:43.180 --> 31:44.980]  And they do sell back through Amazon.
[31:44.980 --> 31:47.320]  So Ingram will print it and it goes back to Amazon.
[31:47.620 --> 31:49.580]  All the major bookstores, even Walmart.
[31:49.800 --> 31:51.260]  I can't imagine I've sold many Walmart.
[31:51.780 --> 31:57.460]  Um, and then overseas and, uh, UK and Europe, and then also Australia and New Zealand.
[31:57.580 --> 31:58.700]  So it prints all over the place.
[31:58.840 --> 32:02.440]  I think they have, I believe Ingram has three print facilities.
[32:02.680 --> 32:06.360]  I think one in California, one in Europe somewhere, and then one in Australia.
[32:06.460 --> 32:07.360]  They had a big one in Australia.
[32:07.480 --> 32:08.700]  They were moving for a long time.
[32:09.180 --> 32:13.040]  Uh, and now all this stuff was a little bit slow during this sort of lockdown time.
[32:13.040 --> 32:15.520]  But everything seems to be back up to speed now, which is great.
[32:15.820 --> 32:19.720]  So, and now they're like really aggressive, like trying to get new people into their system.
[32:20.480 --> 32:26.440]  Um, yeah, I used to, the only way to get it to libraries, I would just donate it because they couldn't buy it through the system.
[32:26.700 --> 32:29.920]  And my school bookstore, you know, I'd use it in class.
[32:29.920 --> 32:36.720]  And I had to wholesale it myself to our bookstore, uh, which is not used to selling, buying from individual people.
[32:36.960 --> 32:42.720]  So they could then sell it back to the students that some students on financial aid can only buy through the bookstore and stuff like that.
[32:42.940 --> 32:44.800]  But through Ingram, you just say, Hey, it's on Ingram.
[32:44.880 --> 32:45.780]  They're like, Oh, okay, great.
[32:45.980 --> 32:46.580]  And that's it.
[32:46.700 --> 32:48.420]  And they, it goes through their normal channels.
[32:48.560 --> 32:50.480]  They get their discount, wholesale discount.
[32:50.660 --> 32:51.240]  Everything's fine.
[32:52.940 --> 32:56.120]  Uh, also Ingram has a thing that's pretty cool called Aereo.
[32:56.380 --> 33:03.180]  Um, and what that, what that does is allows, it's sort of your own store in that goes direct to Ingram.
[33:03.420 --> 33:06.480]  So this way, like this is just a screen capture for my website.
[33:06.700 --> 33:06.960]  Yeah.
[33:06.960 --> 33:10.100]  I just got some embedding code from them stick on the website.
[33:10.100 --> 33:12.440]  If you click on that, it just comes up.
[33:12.580 --> 33:14.460]  You, the goes, uh, you don't know.
[33:14.620 --> 33:18.040]  I mean, you just, you're buying it and processing and putting your shipping address in everything.
[33:18.340 --> 33:20.700]  What you're actually dealing with is going directly to Ingram.
[33:20.700 --> 33:22.340]  They print and send it to you directly.
[33:22.900 --> 33:24.880]  And then I get the royalties I would normally get.
[33:24.980 --> 33:29.440]  Plus I get a little additional kickback, uh, from, from Aereo on that.
[33:29.560 --> 33:33.520]  And that's also true in Amazon through KDP and even not through KDP.
[33:33.860 --> 33:35.020]  You know, they have a referral code.
[33:35.020 --> 33:36.480]  So I have a little button on my website.
[33:36.640 --> 33:39.700]  So if you buy it on Amazon through there, I get an extra dollar or something.
[33:39.980 --> 33:50.280]  Uh, you know, for all of this stuff, uh, cons of Ingram is they're a little bit slower than Amazon to ship because they're not Amazon, right?
[33:50.280 --> 33:52.040]  They don't have all these warehouse all over the place.
[33:52.520 --> 33:53.280]  Sales reporting.
[33:53.460 --> 33:54.580]  And I think this is true with all of them.
[33:54.660 --> 33:56.720]  They, they could make all the sales reporting better.
[33:56.880 --> 34:05.860]  But Ingram, because they sell through these three mechanisms, it's a little, you get like three statements every month and like, oh, you sold one copy in the UK and two in Australia.
[34:05.860 --> 34:08.000]  And they're all in different currencies and it comes in.
[34:08.140 --> 34:10.680]  So that's a little bit confusing, but it's, it's manageable.
[34:11.020 --> 34:16.680]  Uh, I just, in preparation for this slides you're going to see in a couple of minutes, I had to spend like a day going back through all these old statements.
[34:16.960 --> 34:18.120]  But now I got a spreadsheet.
[34:18.240 --> 34:20.080]  I'm just going to process every month to look at it.
[34:20.160 --> 34:22.460]  Cause it's kind of fun to see like, where's it selling and all that stuff.
[34:23.140 --> 34:25.500]  Um, the, yeah, it doesn't have that.
[34:25.660 --> 34:28.020]  There's no real analytics in there, which I find frustrating.
[34:28.020 --> 34:29.080]  Cause you know, they have it.
[34:29.160 --> 34:30.720]  They know exactly who they sold it to.
[34:31.000 --> 34:34.760]  They know exactly if it went through the arrow system, uh, whatever.
[34:34.760 --> 34:36.740]  They don't pass that on to me.
[34:36.860 --> 34:37.980]  I wish, I wish they would.
[34:38.280 --> 34:39.480]  I talked about that.
[34:39.820 --> 34:53.400]  Oh, one other thing that was a bit of a surprise that I guess Amazon probably just doesn't accept returns or I'm not sure what they do, but, but because Ingram sells to bookstores, bookstores, uh, you know, if they buy 10 copies and they only sell four,
[34:53.900 --> 34:56.520]  they have the ability to send those six back to the publishers.
[34:56.700 --> 34:57.560]  So the publisher is me.
[34:57.840 --> 35:02.220]  So once in a while I just get a box out of the blue, that's some return copies.
[35:02.220 --> 35:05.900]  And they're usually like, Oh, all this handling, they're not gonna be good, but they, they usually look fine.
[35:06.060 --> 35:07.640]  In fact, I think that's what this copy was.
[35:08.060 --> 35:09.840]  Um, so that's just something that's part of it.
[35:09.880 --> 35:16.020]  I have to eat that cost coming back, but that makes it flexible for a bookstore doesn't want to get stuck with a bunch of books they can't sell.
[35:16.820 --> 35:21.340]  Um, one really stupid thing, you can never change your login email.
[35:21.340 --> 35:25.740]  So I discovered this because I consolidate all my emails and I can't change this one.
[35:25.840 --> 35:26.880]  I was like really confused.
[35:27.060 --> 35:30.520]  I had to like contact their tech support and they're like, Oh, sorry, can't change it.
[35:31.280 --> 35:46.580]  So, um, so for the eBook for this one, I went to Google play books and I have to say whatever issues with all these giant corporations, if I could only print, do print on demand through one outlet, it would be them because it's just the easiest thing.
[35:46.760 --> 35:48.700]  Like the E pub goes in with no problem.
[35:48.720 --> 35:52.700]  If you write this in, uh, InDesign, uh, you just click the button.
[35:52.800 --> 35:53.800]  This is export to E pub.
[35:53.960 --> 35:55.240]  It comes out, it's done.
[35:55.460 --> 35:56.800]  Uh, no problem.
[35:56.800 --> 36:01.100]  Um, and then they, you get 70% of whatever the sales are.
[36:01.280 --> 36:03.020]  So I'm selling this for $15.
[36:03.140 --> 36:06.460]  So I get something to 70% of that, which is a reasonable amount.
[36:06.660 --> 36:10.600]  And Kindle, you get less because they kind of, it's a very closed off market.
[36:10.680 --> 36:14.580]  I can't remember the exact royalty off top of my head, but this was just clean.
[36:14.740 --> 36:17.360]  You sell for $10, they get three, you get seven.
[36:17.500 --> 36:18.260]  That seems reasonable.
[36:18.380 --> 36:22.100]  They got, I mean, but all they're doing is distributing a file and running a website, right?
[36:22.100 --> 36:25.240]  So it's not, which they, Google does a lot of them.
[36:25.400 --> 36:27.420]  Um, talk about that.
[36:27.620 --> 36:30.240]  So they do, I, uh, analytics probably the wrong word.
[36:30.340 --> 36:36.600]  You don't really get the sort of search traffic that you would through like Google normally, but you do get pretty detailed reporting.
[36:36.720 --> 36:41.580]  I don't know like name and address who bought it, but I can see, oh, there's a sale in the state from this country.
[36:41.820 --> 36:44.280]  They paid this, uh, all that kind of stuff.
[36:44.520 --> 36:48.660]  Uh, wherever you buy it from, I get paid in U.S. dollars, which makes it simpler for me.
[36:48.660 --> 36:52.700]  Um, and then one really, really nice thing about this that Kindle did not do.
[36:52.860 --> 36:54.840]  And again, I'm two years out of Kindle.
[36:55.020 --> 37:00.300]  So this could have changed, but Kindle would allow you to either do a hundred percent discount, which I did.
[37:00.440 --> 37:02.340]  I talk about this in the talk from 2014.
[37:02.640 --> 37:06.500]  I did not pay what you will just, uh, promotion where you just sort of give it away.
[37:06.940 --> 37:13.360]  Um, but Google allows you to do percentages, dollars off, all that kind of stuff or a hundred percent discount.
[37:13.360 --> 37:15.460]  So that's how I do academic copies.
[37:15.460 --> 37:20.980]  Um, the, uh, so if you teach an institution, you want to evaluate the book.
[37:21.200 --> 37:24.740]  I, I just, uh, send you a link, you get it, you download the thing.
[37:24.880 --> 37:28.860]  And you do have to have a Gmail address to access the account, but otherwise it works.
[37:29.120 --> 37:31.360]  And I think I bought it myself to test it.
[37:31.520 --> 37:33.400]  I ran it on my tablet, my phone.
[37:33.540 --> 37:34.240]  It seems fine.
[37:34.360 --> 37:37.180]  I couldn't, I had a couple of little minor issues with it, but there's always something.
[37:37.500 --> 37:38.800]  Uh, it seemed to work pretty well.
[37:38.800 --> 37:45.020]  So, so now to me, that's how academic copies I used to have to under create space.
[37:45.200 --> 37:47.020]  I would just buy a copy and ship it somewhere.
[37:47.280 --> 37:49.140]  Cause they would do international shipping and all that.
[37:49.380 --> 37:50.340]  Now I just send a link.
[37:50.440 --> 37:51.640]  And this is also true for publishers.
[37:51.640 --> 37:56.120]  Like if you, uh, uh, you're a publisher or professor, I get an email once in a while.
[37:56.220 --> 37:57.620]  Like, Hey, there's a new book to evaluate.
[37:57.880 --> 37:59.740]  They're not going to send you a print edition anymore.
[38:00.280 --> 38:06.780]  Oh, also it's, you can see over here, this is also for my website, but the, um, that's also in Google book search.
[38:06.960 --> 38:08.400]  So you can search right inside it.
[38:08.680 --> 38:14.500]  Um, and that's, I've had that for a long since I've been some, some publishing only had one complaint about the Google format.
[38:14.660 --> 38:17.000]  Somebody emailed me, they really wanted an Apple.
[38:17.200 --> 38:19.160]  I just explained the situation and they go, Oh great.
[38:19.340 --> 38:19.860]  And that was it.
[38:20.120 --> 38:31.280]  So, um, so promotions, I gave away a hundred copies of the print edition, uh, to unemployed people in my business because the entertainment industry was just decimated by the pandemic.
[38:32.000 --> 38:34.120]  So, you know, I, I did it for that.
[38:34.120 --> 38:40.560]  It also, of course, is a self-promotion thing, got some positive reviews and some magazines and stuff like that, got on some podcasts.
[38:40.560 --> 38:48.100]  So it's, if you're in whatever industry you're trying to reach, you, you already know how to do this stuff and the publishers just aren't doing it.
[38:48.140 --> 38:54.100]  I did a rehearsal of this talk and, uh, had a couple of friends of mine in there who have been dealing with the publisher more recently.
[38:54.100 --> 38:57.160]  They said basically nothing's changed, uh, which is unfortunate.
[38:57.500 --> 38:59.520]  So here's the economics of this thing.
[38:59.920 --> 39:02.200]  Uh, so far I've sold 1100 copies.
[39:02.320 --> 39:07.180]  So this in the last, uh, sorry, the print edition, the last 21 months, 107 eBooks.
[39:07.380 --> 39:10.540]  So I'll talk about that in a second, but still, and I'm the same way.
[39:10.540 --> 39:13.700]  If I'm reading complex technical information, I just want it in paper.
[39:13.880 --> 39:20.420]  So I like to have the eBook to search it, but, uh, so that grossed about $17,000 over that.
[39:20.760 --> 39:22.380]  I, and this is a very rough number.
[39:22.380 --> 39:24.660]  I think I, out of pocket was maybe about five grand.
[39:24.660 --> 39:30.140]  So I hired graphic designer for like maybe 1500 bucks, copy editor, illustrator.
[39:30.440 --> 39:31.320]  That was a few thousand.
[39:31.780 --> 39:33.260]  Most of the setup cost you could do.
[39:33.300 --> 39:35.040]  If you do this yourself, you don't have to pay that.
[39:35.180 --> 39:38.540]  And if you're not worried about typos, you don't have to hire a copy editor.
[39:38.780 --> 39:40.180]  I had a copy editor in the business.
[39:40.360 --> 39:40.800]  It was great.
[39:41.500 --> 39:45.240]  Um, the costs to actually get in the system are pretty minimal.
[39:45.700 --> 39:47.160]  Maybe a couple hundred hours.
[39:47.280 --> 39:56.940]  So if you want to print a book, it's, um, and so the way I always calculate this out is like, I think it's a, every book to me is really about a year to write it, but I would say about 400 hours.
[39:57.100 --> 40:01.320]  So probably like, and I, I can't write this kind of information like eight hours a day.
[40:01.320 --> 40:04.080]  I have to do like four hours and do something else.
[40:04.080 --> 40:06.760]  So I would say roughly about 400 hours.
[40:06.900 --> 40:10.240]  So I think somewhere in there, I'm taking in about $30 an hour.
[40:10.240 --> 40:14.900]  So that's, of course, pre-tax, office expense, computer, all that kind of stuff.
[40:14.980 --> 40:16.780]  But if you look at it, it's sort of like a consulting rate.
[40:17.040 --> 40:18.240]  That's about where I am on it.
[40:18.380 --> 40:19.360]  And I'm, and I'm happy with that.
[40:19.440 --> 40:21.680]  I mean, I don't, I, it's actual money.
[40:21.680 --> 40:25.040]  It's worth doing, but I mean, I could go be a stagehand and make more money than that.
[40:25.200 --> 40:26.840]  But it's, it's rewarding for me.
[40:27.060 --> 40:31.540]  I end up doing talks like this and I, and you have, you know, get out there in the industry a little bit.
[40:31.540 --> 40:37.480]  Uh, the old book, which I really thought was just going to die out is confusing to me.
[40:37.640 --> 40:38.620]  It's still kind of popular.
[40:38.960 --> 40:41.940]  That sold 500 copies, only 14 eBooks.
[40:42.280 --> 40:44.400]  Uh, there might be, I have a reason for that second.
[40:44.640 --> 40:50.580]  That again, on that it made, and that was much lower hours because it's really just, uh, making those changes.
[40:50.660 --> 40:54.500]  And then I think Amazon cost me a hundred hours on that.
[40:54.640 --> 40:58.400]  So this would be more money except that they just wasted all my time on this stuff.
[40:59.000 --> 41:06.380]  Um, so here's from 2014 presentation, um, same kind of thing back then.
[41:06.620 --> 41:11.440]  So I think in this, this book, every edition is selling around about 2000 copies.
[41:11.700 --> 41:14.320]  I, I, this one could sell more in the long run.
[41:14.440 --> 41:17.560]  I'm not sure, but that's just sort of, you know, I kind of saturate the industry.
[41:17.820 --> 41:18.660]  It's still right.
[41:18.660 --> 41:20.580]  Really the only book on the topic out there.
[41:20.720 --> 41:24.040]  Um, and I, all those things, and it's been around a long time now.
[41:24.320 --> 41:31.320]  Um, so the hourly rates back then back on the older book, which was, it was priced much higher to, uh, had twice the price of this one.
[41:31.900 --> 41:36.940]  Um, obviously the income's higher and my rate was higher.
[41:37.160 --> 41:39.300]  Um, I think that's one mistake.
[41:39.380 --> 41:43.820]  If I was just looking at this, a pure business aspect, I probably should have priced this book a little higher.
[41:43.960 --> 41:47.360]  And you can see the old additions again, back to the nineties.
[41:47.720 --> 41:49.820]  Every one's two to 3000 copies.
[41:49.920 --> 41:53.360]  That seems to be in my market, like sort of the saturation point.
[41:54.160 --> 41:56.020]  Um, I talked to that.
[41:57.120 --> 41:57.520]  Right.
[41:57.680 --> 41:59.300]  So I'm still very happy with this whole thing.
[41:59.480 --> 42:02.640]  Cause I, now I feel like this thing is in a good position for the future.
[42:02.880 --> 42:05.540]  There's a great thing called the audio nerd book club.
[42:05.540 --> 42:09.520]  Uh, that's a discord run on a discord server out of a, uh, sound podcast.
[42:09.820 --> 42:11.720]  Uh, they're going through the book right now.
[42:11.720 --> 42:15.060]  And I'm sort of looking at it with fresh eyes with, I'm zooming with them every week.
[42:15.220 --> 42:24.700]  And I'm seeing now like, Oh, here's some stuff for the second edition, but I'm not at that point yet, but I'm still kind of baffled while the older one, which is now at least five years old is still selling as well as it is.
[42:25.060 --> 42:33.180]  Um, I'm not, I don't quite understand that, but I, in the long run, I plan to extract the, the still relevant information out of that, put in another book as well.
[42:33.540 --> 42:35.680]  Print book is still far more popular.
[42:35.680 --> 42:42.500]  Um, so the eBook in this, in this book is only about 9% of the total sales.
[42:42.680 --> 42:45.540]  And for the big book, it's only like two and a half percent.
[42:45.840 --> 42:49.740]  That could be right now because they're not sort of an integrated platform.
[42:50.000 --> 42:55.720]  Cause when I was selling on Amazon, you buy print or Kindle is all in the same, you know, it's like one different click.
[42:56.100 --> 42:59.980]  Um, but even then the eBook sales were much lower, uh, than the print ones.
[43:00.080 --> 43:01.240]  I find this kind of fascinating.
[43:01.440 --> 43:09.460]  Um, what I would love to do, which I haven't been able to find a way to do is like, if you buy the print edition, I'd love to give you the eBook, but I've just never found a mechanism to that.
[43:09.620 --> 43:14.460]  That doesn't involve me like getting an email from a thousand people and like sending a code out.
[43:14.700 --> 43:18.100]  So, um, so do I recommend self-publishing?
[43:18.460 --> 43:19.200]  Uh, absolutely.
[43:19.360 --> 43:24.100]  Again, if you have a book to sell a million copies, publishers are going to probably come find you.
[43:24.360 --> 43:24.940]  That's great.
[43:25.060 --> 43:32.180]  But for this, for like trade book, the pub, there's really one publisher in our industry, in the live entertainment technology industry.
[43:32.620 --> 43:36.400]  They are, so I just, again, I checked with some friends like last week about this.
[43:36.600 --> 43:42.460]  Everything I wrote in this slide in 2014, uh, is still, uh, true and not true for them.
[43:42.680 --> 43:47.260]  So I think, and I think that is interesting, like down here, there, downstairs here is a couple of publishers.
[43:47.480 --> 43:49.260]  I think they meet these criteria, right?
[43:49.360 --> 43:50.400]  They have a strong identity.
[43:50.640 --> 43:54.480]  They offer credibility, uh, which means the publisher like vetting the books.
[43:54.620 --> 43:57.260]  The big publisher in our industry really doesn't vet anything anymore.
[43:57.260 --> 44:04.320]  And it's not, you know, there's very nice people, well-meaning people that work there, but they are not, you know, entertainment technology people.
[44:04.420 --> 44:05.220]  They don't know the material.
[44:05.320 --> 44:07.300]  And there's no one at the company that does.
[44:07.460 --> 44:10.200]  And then everybody's there for like six months, they move on to something else.
[44:10.340 --> 44:12.400]  So it's just structurally broken in that way.
[44:12.580 --> 44:16.040]  So I, the one big thing is I think, I'm like full professor.
[44:16.040 --> 44:17.300]  I don't have to worry about this anymore.
[44:17.460 --> 44:28.940]  But if you're worried about tenure and promotion, I think a publisher would probably, even this one that I don't like in our industry, would probably offer you some credibility, probably not a valid credibility, given what I just said.
[44:29.600 --> 44:33.260]  Um, and then they do, they take everything off your plate.
[44:33.420 --> 44:37.180]  You're basically just uploading something, send them a word file and the rest comes out.
[44:37.460 --> 44:40.780]  Um, but I think there's a lot of, there's a lot of issues with that.
[44:41.380 --> 44:53.820]  Um, I think I talked about, yeah, and the other thing is, the publishers, and I believe this, again, I'm mostly talking about an experience with one publisher, the dominant publisher industry, but they don't even really engage with the authors.
[44:54.040 --> 45:02.980]  I mean, they, once it's printed, like they sell it, they go to a trade show or whatever, but they don't be like, hey, we noticed that's selling at these universities, but not this one, or how about this or whatever.
[45:03.100 --> 45:06.240]  There's, it's just sort of like, they just have an old mindset about it, I think.
[45:06.820 --> 45:16.100]  Um, and then what's insane is their eBook version of the old edition, which is now, what, I don't know, five, six years old, um, was just a clear PDF.
[45:16.140 --> 45:17.100]  They would just email you.
[45:17.180 --> 45:17.780]  They lost it.
[45:17.820 --> 45:19.540]  So you can still find that on the web.
[45:19.540 --> 45:21.400]  I used to find copies of it.
[45:21.560 --> 45:23.480]  And I would tell the publisher, and they're like, oh, thanks.
[45:23.700 --> 45:24.820]  And then they go find it.
[45:24.880 --> 45:27.100]  I'm like, you're taking 90% of the money.
[45:27.360 --> 45:28.700]  You should be doing this yourself.
[45:28.940 --> 45:30.700]  You know, so I had to find a pirate of copies.
[45:30.820 --> 45:33.780]  So now, in these days, I just don't look because it's too aggravating.
[45:34.480 --> 45:42.460]  Um, so again, given that if you're writing, uh, I would say for almost anything, because the other thing about self-publishing is I own every bit of it.
[45:42.640 --> 45:48.040]  If a publisher came in here tomorrow, it's, I don't know why this would happen, but it's a, we want to give you a million dollars to this book.
[45:48.200 --> 45:48.700]  I'm like, great.
[45:48.940 --> 45:50.600]  I'm going to unclick this thing online.
[45:50.800 --> 45:51.380]  Here you go.
[45:52.020 --> 45:57.360]  But so you, even if you have something like, uh, you know, I told a friend of mine who's writing like, you know, sort of fiction book.
[45:57.440 --> 45:58.940]  I'm like, I still would self-publish it.
[45:59.000 --> 46:00.980]  You just get it out there, start building a little audience.
[46:01.220 --> 46:03.740]  And then if somebody wants it, then you just do it that way.
[46:03.780 --> 46:04.900]  So I still recommend that.
[46:05.360 --> 46:19.520]  Um, and I, anybody, I think to me, writing basically anything, maybe other than, I mean, a fiction, but, uh, any sort of technical book, I always just say, write a blog, maybe start a podcast or something else with a friend of mine, the guy who copied it in my books about to release his own book about different topic.
[46:19.820 --> 46:21.240]  He's got a podcast audience.
[46:21.480 --> 46:23.340]  Now, you know, 50,000 people every week.
[46:23.700 --> 46:24.500]  There's your audience.
[46:24.520 --> 46:25.540]  Like the marketing's done.
[46:26.100 --> 46:28.120]  Um, it is additional work.
[46:28.240 --> 46:33.920]  I mean, if I think if you're at this convention, you have a kind of hacker mindset, this stuff is kind of fascinating to me.
[46:34.060 --> 46:40.400]  Obviously, even with this nightmare with Amazon, uh, I, I, I don't really regret ever having gone through it.
[46:40.400 --> 46:43.300]  I wish, I mean, I would still be with Amazon today if they hadn't f*cked this up.
[46:44.020 --> 46:46.020]  Um, talked about that.
[46:46.320 --> 46:50.280]  Oh, and the other thing, like, by self-publishing it, I can do lecture videos.
[46:50.440 --> 46:51.940]  So I have, I did this for the old book.
[46:52.040 --> 46:53.040]  They're just public online.
[46:53.340 --> 46:57.440]  I just literally take the book text, put it on screen, do the lecture I do in class.
[46:57.680 --> 46:58.900]  I've made that for the new book.
[46:58.980 --> 47:00.040]  I haven't put them online.
[47:00.340 --> 47:02.940]  I might, uh, try to sell that somehow or something.
[47:02.980 --> 47:03.940]  I'm not sure what I'm doing yet.
[47:04.080 --> 47:06.720]  I like the promotional part because it engages with the audience.
[47:07.160 --> 47:11.880]  So in the big picture, this could be a whole other session, but is there a future for technical books?
[47:12.000 --> 47:13.320]  I think there's so much stuff now.
[47:13.440 --> 47:14.220]  It's just free on the web.
[47:14.400 --> 47:19.720]  I do think that it's worth paying for trusted source information and people, it's a lot of work.
[47:20.340 --> 47:23.040]  Um, classroom textbooks, I think are dead.
[47:23.560 --> 47:27.340]  Uh, in my college, uh, we, the, they actually will get a grant.
[47:27.520 --> 47:28.460]  I think this is a great thing.
[47:28.760 --> 47:35.180]  They'll get a grant for a professor to make, and what's called an OER, open educational resource, for things that are sort of common topics.
[47:35.180 --> 47:39.320]  And then it's free to the students, and the professor got paid to write it, which is good.
[47:39.560 --> 47:41.400]  So that's, that's everything all in one.
[47:41.600 --> 47:46.760]  So my book is still, uh, unfortunately for the industry, but my book's still kind of a niche.
[47:46.960 --> 47:48.640]  So it's not really subject to that yet.
[47:48.800 --> 47:55.100]  But I think a general, like in our school, like general sound and things like that, it's just a web page you go to now.
[47:55.100 --> 47:58.680]  Uh, I might, this whole thing, I'd be like surfing into the wave.
[47:58.820 --> 47:59.480]  I'm not really sure.
[47:59.900 --> 48:01.420]  Uh, I talked about that.
[48:01.960 --> 48:02.520]  Oh yeah.
[48:02.760 --> 48:04.640]  I'm gonna look and make an angry eBook.
[48:04.880 --> 48:06.980]  And I think I'm just about out of time.
[48:07.260 --> 48:09.220]  So, uh, questions for anybody?
[48:12.080 --> 48:13.340]  No questions at all?
[48:16.080 --> 48:17.420]  Oh, somebody's running up.
[48:18.940 --> 48:20.680]  Oh, hey.
[48:21.120 --> 48:24.660]  Do you, do you think print on demand is even worthwhile in this environment?
[48:24.660 --> 48:27.340]  Like, is there, is there any, any real role for that?
[48:27.580 --> 48:28.660]  I missed the first part.
[48:28.820 --> 48:28.880]  Sorry.
[48:29.200 --> 48:33.420]  Do you think that print on demand has any real role in the modern environment?
[48:34.020 --> 48:35.200]  In the modern, sorry?
[48:35.360 --> 48:43.000]  Well, in the modern environment, I mean, you're talking about challenges of eBooks and distribution methods and monetization and OER, all this stuff.
[48:43.140 --> 48:46.380]  Then you've got places like Lulu Press, Amazon, that'll bind it up for you.
[48:46.580 --> 48:46.680]  Right.
[48:46.800 --> 48:48.280]  Are people making money doing this?
[48:48.360 --> 48:48.680]  Is it worthwhile?
[48:48.880 --> 48:50.340]  Is there a role in the classroom?
[48:50.720 --> 48:50.940]  Yeah.
[48:50.980 --> 48:58.320]  I'm not sure if you saw the other slide I have, but right now the, my eBook sales are 10% of the overall sales right now.
[48:58.500 --> 49:01.020]  So I'm still making money right now and print on demand.
[49:01.500 --> 49:05.060]  So again, in my thing, in a general purpose textbook, I'm not sure.
[49:05.860 --> 49:10.240]  But I think, but yeah, I think absolutely there's, there's a future for that.
[49:10.380 --> 49:10.920]  Thank you.
[49:11.960 --> 49:14.040]  And I was going to, we're giving away the copy.
[49:14.200 --> 49:15.520]  We didn't want to like hand around a thing.
[49:15.620 --> 49:17.760]  So we were going to give it to the first person who asked the question.
[49:17.980 --> 49:20.540]  So Greg, if you want this copy, I don't know.
[49:20.580 --> 49:21.380]  I'll be up there in a minute.
[49:21.500 --> 49:21.740]  Thank you.
[49:22.020 --> 49:22.260]  Okay.
[49:22.520 --> 49:24.800]  And if you're not interested, you can give it out to somebody else.
[49:25.020 --> 49:26.160]  I have a quick question.
[49:26.380 --> 49:26.540]  Sure.
[49:26.540 --> 49:31.160]  So are any of the traditional publishers jumping on to print on demand for flexibility?
[49:31.680 --> 49:33.020]  I haven't heard much about that.
[49:33.600 --> 49:34.820]  Uh, that's a good question.
[49:35.080 --> 49:44.260]  I don't know because I've out of been out of that world for a while, but I will say in like 2014 or whenever I did that first thing, my publisher was like, Oh, print on demand.
[49:44.420 --> 49:45.140]  We're looking at that.
[49:45.320 --> 49:49.180]  I think it's way cheaper than warehousing and all that kind of stuff.
[49:49.200 --> 49:58.500]  Again, if you're going to sell a million copies of something like a political tell-all or whatever, like that economics of that, they'll just ship that to China and print, you know, a container load.
[49:58.660 --> 50:01.620]  And like, I have some photos that sell to a weather calendar.
[50:01.760 --> 50:02.800]  Like they print those in China.
[50:02.800 --> 50:07.560]  Like now for the next year, like those type of things, the traditional printing model makes sense.
[50:07.720 --> 50:11.640]  But for anything else like this, it's sort of a niche or a trade book or technical book.
[50:12.100 --> 50:14.260]  The print on demand really does the only thing that makes sense.
[50:14.420 --> 50:23.980]  And the print quality actually, the old one and like old offset printing by the end, you know, second or third printing, it started to look pretty raggedy, but these things are basically just laser printed.
[50:24.220 --> 50:27.060]  So every copy of just looks brand new, right from the PDF.
[50:27.480 --> 50:29.240]  So great.
[50:29.420 --> 50:32.100]  And I think probably out of time, but that's it.
[50:32.260 --> 50:32.660]  Great.
[50:32.800 --> 50:33.760]  Well, thanks very much.