Math, Guns, and Snark: SLHuang's Self-Publishing Thread

benbradley · Mar 17, 2014

Congratulations! I recall threads where we discussed the cover and a few other things.

Kylabelle said:
Ooh this one does look like fun.

I chuckle at 'Book 0', by the way, and no mathematician here, at all.

I do know some folks who will assert that God is Math. I get what they mean. This is ubercool stuff you're putting out there, IMO, and I hope to be able to read it.

Good luck and congratulations!

ETA: Fabulous cover, too.

Most programmers know about starting with 0. Array indexes naturally start at 0 as the first element in the array (in assembly/machine code, the first element is a zero offset from the starting address of the array), unless you've only programmed in BASIC, where the index to the first element is artificially set to 1.

But now I'm thinking of titles, sort of like Janet Evanovich's number series, but math related. The second book could be titled "One Identity" (if you don't already have a title, I give you permission to use that). Non-math geeks won't get it, and math geeks on first seeing it might thing "Gee, that could be a math pun, I wonder if the author knows about that." Then they read the blurb and the previous title "Zero Sum Game" and conclude that it IS a pun!

Philosophically, it's been argued that God didn't make ALL of math. One famous quote is "God made the Integers, all else is the work of man:"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kronecker
And there's a Stephen Hawking book on math titled "God Created The Integers."

LAgrunion said:
This is very exciting!

I'm especially intrigued by the Creative Commons license, which if I understand correctly has different levels of granted rights (e.g. you can use it for anything, only non-commercial use, etc.). What will you grant?

If you write a prequel, will it be called Book -1? Heh.

And the fanfic will numbered with complex numbers!

Kylabelle said:
(they are actually saying intelligible things to each other in binary.)

*runs from room where too smart scary peeples are!*

There's surely several ASCII-to-binary converters online, or you can look up ASCII table and binary table, and do it yourself without too much work. It might even help you understand it.

I'm waiting for someone to post Unicode characters where each character is 16 bits or even higher multiples of 8 bits each.

LAgrunion said:
Doode, math teachers should totally teach in pizza. The most practical application I got out of pie-r-squared was to calculate the areas of a medium verus a large pizza to see which one was a better value at their respective prices.

True Math Geeks know you don't even need to involve pi in that, you can just square the diameter to get an number proportional to the area, then get the ratio between each squared diameter to its costs to get the value.

KateJJ said:
Good luck!

For(int i = 0; i < 1000000000000000; i++)
{
sellCopy(lisasAwesomeBook);
}

I hope that runs on a 64 bit machine, else it won't loop for that many times!

(and don't ask how I know...)

slhuang said:
Eeeek! You folks are quite, quite wonderful. Omg, thank you for making my SP thread such a geeky delight! And for all the marvelous support and good wishes!

That's a good question! One that . . . I do not know the answer to! I shall look into it and let you know what I find. I, er, do not actually upload any books for piracy in real life (respect for the authors' wishes for their own books trumps my personal philosophies on it), so I have no idea if there are any stats available on the torrent sites for things like that. But I shall try to find out . . .

The MOST interesting question, I think, is one that will be impossible to get an answer to: how well my book would've done without the CC license, and what the paid/pirated numbers would be then. Unfortunately there's no way to have a control group here. (And I don't think it's unreasonable to hypothesize that piracy might have a positive (monetary) effect on some media and a negative one on other media, so I don't know if we'll ever be able to say for sure whether this ends up helping my particular book . . . I suspect the very most my book might be is an interesting case study, but it would be very cool if it did become that. )

Now that I think about this being a mystery series, I recall that John Dunning wrote some mysteries set in the used/antuquarian bookselling and limited-edition publishing fields, and they did well. I recall reading "Booked To Die" and "The Bookman's Wake."

But I suspect you're right about the effect of piracy - I can see where it would have a positive effect on an unknown author and unknown works (right where you are right now!), but a negative effect on blockbusters such as "Star Wars" and Michael Jackson's "Thriller."

LAgrunion · Mar 17, 2014

slhuang said:
The MOST interesting question, I think, is one that will be impossible to get an answer to: how well my book would've done without the CC license, and what the paid/pirated numbers would be then. Unfortunately there's no way to have a control group here.

Pffffft. Non-barnyard animals give up so easily.

If you install a flux capacitor in a FTL drive powered by a palladium cold-fusion reactor, you can drive your Prius into a hippo’s arse, squeeze through a sphincter in the time-space continuum, and land in a parallel universe. That’s where you can publish your book without the CC license.

There. Your control group.

And if you keep jumping through the parallel universes, you can tweak one variable at a time to refine your experiments.

ElaineA · Mar 17, 2014

LAgrunion said:
Pffffft. Non-barnyard animals give up so easily.

If you install a flux capacitor in a FTL drive powered by a palladium cold-fusion reactor, you can drive your Prius into a hippo’s arse, squeeze through a sphincter in the time-space continuum, and land in a parallel universe. That’s where you can publish your book without the CC license.

There. Your control group.

And if you keep jumping through the parallel universes, you can tweak one variable at a time to refine your experiments.

DUUUHHHHH!

slhuang · Mar 17, 2014

Thank you once again for all the continued good wishes!!!

(Responding individually in reps . . . I :heart:

all of you!)

Little Ming said:
There are. But I would guess the hard part is controlling if other people upload your book to another site without your knowledge. Or possibly direct downloads from other sites that don't have stats.

Here, I was hoping you had some super-mathematical-omniscient-internet-spy program. Or something. You've disappointed me, Lisa.

Sigh . . . I shall try to be more Ayshun. *hangs head in shame*

But seriously, how will you release your book for piracy? Direct download? A specific torrent site? Do you have any plan for tracking if others might be uploading your book elsewhere? And is it still "piracy" if the author gives permission for others to download for free?

Ha! I hadn't really decided that yet, if I would seed it myself or not. Presumably, as an unknown it would help sales to seed it myself, but I worry about dancing on the edge of KDP's TOS, since they state that I as the author cannot offer it for a lesser price on any other sales channel. I do not think BitTorrent would count as a sales channel -- many other authors would be in trouble if so! -- and there are quite a few other CC-licensed books on Amazon, including both self- and trade published ones, but I do want to adhere to the spirit of the agreement I'm publishing under, which I think might mean that I should not seed it myself (and almost certainly not offer it for free on my website -- Doctorow and Lessig do do that, but theirs are trade published so presumably not under the KDP TOS).

The most important part of licensing under CC for me is that, philosophically, I don't want to turn the people who read and share my book into criminals. I want them to be able to read and share and not feel they're doing something wrong, and to say that explicitly. I do think that if I seeded my book it would lead to more sales -- I've read about at least one case of a trade published author doing that, in fact, to boost his sales! -- but I may want to consult a lawyer first to make sure I'm not violating Amazon's TOS by doing so, not because I think it's likely they would come down on me but because in principle I do want to adhere to the agreement I am electronically signing.

(I should note that if Amazon decides the CC license itself violates the "don't offer it for cheaper elsewhere" clause, the worst I think they would do is price match and lower the price to free -- which would suck, but would not be the end of the world, as I could choose to license the remainder of the series differently and use this book as a loss leader. But that hasn't happened to other self-published CC-licensed books, and I think it is unlikely to happen to me -- if Amazon price-matched to BitTorrent I think they'd be opening a pretty big can of worms, and as the intent of the clause is to keep people on Amazon rather than on other retail channels, I think peer-to-peer sharing falls solidly outside of that. And another reason I think they would be unlikely to do this is that they would risk bringing down the Internet wrath of Doctorow et al, who can levy a lot of Internet wrath.

)

benbradley said:
Congratulations! I recall threads where we discussed the cover and a few other things.

Most programmers know about starting with 0. Array indexes naturally start at 0 as the first element in the array (in assembly/machine code, the first element is a zero offset from the starting address of the array), unless you've only programmed in BASIC, where the index to the first element is artificially set to 1.

But now I'm thinking of titles, sort of like Janet Evanovich's number series, but math related. The second book could be titled "One Identity" (if you don't already have a title, I give you permission to use that). Non-math geeks won't get it, and math geeks on first seeing it might thing "Gee, that could be a math pun, I wonder if the author knows about that." Then they read the blurb and the previous title "Zero Sum Game" and conclude that it IS a pun!

Hee! You've caught me! I am having fun with a naming scheme in the vein of Janet Evanovich. I'm using the whole continuum, though. Books 2-6 will be:

Half Life
Root of Unity
Plastic Smile
Golden Mean
Binary Operator

I have possible titles for . . . probably 10-20 books, if I want.

(Expect book e to get crayzay.

)

I admit to being more of a mathematician than a computer scientist, so it tickles me more to use the whole continuum than to count like I'm in an array.

Philosophically, it's been argued that God didn't make ALL of math. One famous quote is "God made the Integers, all else is the work of man:"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kronecker

Ha!

There is a certain beauty in Diophantine equations. I always wished I were better at number theory . . . alas, my brain tends to like the type of math with no numbers in it at all. Just letters. *snerk*

And the fanfic will numbered with complex numbers!

. . . This would make me so happy, you have no idea.

I hope that runs on a 64 bit machine, else it won't loop for that many times! (and don't ask how I know...)

Ha! I love that you know this!!

LAgrunion said:
Pffffft. Non-barnyard animals give up so easily.

*continues to hang head* You and Ming, outdoing me on the Ayshunness. Must Ayshun harder.

If you install a flux capacitor in a FTL drive powered by a palladium cold-fusion reactor, you can drive your Prius into a hippo’s arse, squeeze through a sphincter in the time-space continuum, and land in a parallel universe. That’s where you can publish your book without the CC license.

There. Your control group.

Of course! What was I thinking!

*goes off to build flux capacitor* Now I just need a hippo . . . HMMMMM . . .

KateJJ · Mar 17, 2014

Ok, I'll bite, the rest I can figure out but.... "Plastic Smile"?

slhuang · Mar 17, 2014

KateJJ said:
Ok, I'll bite, the rest I can figure out but.... "Plastic Smile"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_number

It is not particularly well-known.

But that title fits the overall plot arc of the series really well . . . so I couldn't resist.

Edited to add: It equals 1.32471795724474602596 . . .

Putputt · Mar 18, 2014

slhuang said:
Of course! What was I thinking!

*goes off to build flux capacitor* Now I just need a hippo . . . HMMMMM . . .

Bwuh?

*swims frantically away*

Mutive · Mar 18, 2014

ElaineA said:
LEEEESSSSAAAAA! So much congrats on the wonderful advanced buzz ZSG is receiving. I cannot wait to buy...If you don't release this by March 30, I will gnaw your woody exterior to slivers.

Agreed. I want my math-sie sci-fi. I do not want to gnaw you to slivers, but may be driven to it if the book is not out by the release date. (Either that, or I will wait until ElaineA has gnawed you, then just dig my roots in. Sweet, sweet, fertilizer...)

slhuang · Mar 18, 2014

Mutive said:
Agreed. I want my math-sie sci-fi. I do not want to gnaw you to slivers, but may be driven to it if the book is not out by the release date. (Either that, or I will wait until ElaineA has gnawed you, then just dig my roots in. Sweet, sweet, fertilizer...)

You guys are quite, quite marvelous.

So, to update: I have 7 review copies out right now to SFF reviewers, including to some people who are among my favorite reviewers on the internetz, which is both terribly exciting and nervewracking! And I'm writing up more review requests as I speak. I've been shocked at what a good response I've gotten so far -- I mean, obviously I don't know if I'm going to get positive reviews, or if they shall end up reviewing at all or close it disappointed after two chapters, but pretty much across the board I've gotten "yes! Definitely send it!" or "I'll take a look!" instead of a rejection or no response, and I honestly was not expecting that ratio. I got lucky in two ways:

I seem to have (utterly accidentally!) Done Social Media Right, by which I mean that I've built up relationships with people I respect online and some of those people happen to be reviewers, which I did not do on purpose. And also multiple people seem to have noticed my blog and other online writings in a positive fashion (!!!) which boggles me a bit. (The way I "do" social media, by the way, has always been to talk to people I like about things that interest me, which is actually fun and is certainly far less exhausting than going into it with a goal of promoting myself. I honestly would not have the energy to do it any other way -- in fact, social media has become something I do for enjoyment separate from my writing, and even though I started an Internet presence because I wrote a book, it turns out that if I'd scrapped the book I would have wanted, without question, to keep up all my online relationships. Which is a lovely place to be.)

The subject matter of my book is piquing people's interest, for which I credit mostly the QLH squirrels in my 200-post-long thread that banged my blurb into shape (THANK YOU, squirrels!!). Some part of this is also, I am sure, that I got lucky in that I happened to write about something people seem to be finding interesting, but another part also might be that my MC is a woman who kicks ass by doing math, and I'm getting quite a positive response to specifically that part of it. Women who go around shooting people and women who do lots of math are apparently both under-served markets.

I'm seeking SFF reviewers in general rather than specifically-SP reviewers, by the way, which is much harder to sort through as many of them don't review SP books, but I believe that's where my audience is. Although I don't think most SFF readers care if a book is self-published, I also don't think they seek them out (i.e., I don't know any SFF readers who frequent SP-centric blogs rather than SFF-centric blogs).

Finally, I got the most important positive review of all today, by which I mean that my mother finished it! (I didn't show it to her till it was all done.) I was . . . a bit worried, because my mother is a terribly sweet, kind woman who doesn't cuss and my book has quite a bit of violence and swearing (one of her first comments was along the lines of, "My, there's a lot of street language!" MY MOTHER IS THE MOST ADORABLE PERSON EVER). But she LOVED it -- she said she's on a high from it and had such an attachment to the characters and she's already bugging me for the next book. I have won, AW! *sticks gold star to forehead*

Mclesh · Mar 19, 2014

slhuang said:
Finally, I got the most important positive review of all today, by which I mean that my mother finished it! (I didn't show it to her till it was all done.) I was . . . a bit worried, because my mother is a terribly sweet, kind woman who doesn't cuss and my book has quite a bit of violence and swearing (one of her first comments was along the lines of, "My, there's a lot of street language!" MY MOTHER IS THE MOST ADORABLE PERSON EVER). But she LOVED it -- she said she's on a high from it and had such an attachment to the characters and she's already bugging me for the next book. I have won, AW! *sticks gold star to forehead*

Ahhhh, this ^^^ FTW. :Hug2:

EMaree · Mar 19, 2014

Whoa I'm not sure how I missed this thread.

-- Love the blurb. It's cinematic and brilliant and wooow.

-- LOVE the title and the cover.

-- Love the way you're utilizing Creative Commons.

Getting the attention of The Book Smugglers is fantastic too.

slhuang said:
That's a good question! One that . . . I do not know the answer to! I shall look into it and let you know what I find. I, er, do not actually upload any books for piracy in real life (respect for the authors' wishes for their own books trumps my personal philosophies on it), so I have no idea if there are any stats available on the torrent sites for things like that. But I shall try to find out . . .

I'm fairly sure Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has uploaded his own material (movies and some song files) to The Pirate Bay. As the official torrent poster he can monitor how many people are seeing, leeching, commenting etc. I thiiink most major torrent sites should give you this kind of display, but as you addressed a few posts back, it would mean you'd have to be the first person torrenting your own work.

I'm loving the way you're arranging all of this, slhuang, it's fascinating. I'll definitely be following this to see how you do.

Nonny · Mar 19, 2014

I've mentioned on your blog I've been looking forward to this! and just saw your post here. It's awesome you're getting attention for this; I really hope that this is a success. I think part of it, too, is that you're hitting a niche area, which can sometimes be very much a good thing. I LOVE the idea of a math super-hero, and a woman?? Oh HELLS yes. I might also consider reaching out to areas that are not necessarily writing/reading/SFF oriented but are STEM-oriented. This is, for instance, something I could absolutely see Geek Feminism featuring in one of their link posts. I know quite a number of women in STEM who would be absolutely excited by this.

YAY for the response from your Mom. lol, I remember my Mom's reaction to my first published piece (a vampire erotic fiction short). My ex-fiance and I both had stories in the same SFF erotica 'zine and she actually called me over the phone to tell me she had bought a copy (even though I had offered to send her one free; she absolutely refuses anytime I have something out to let me send her a free one) and, "Well... I liked your story, it was good... but I liked Robert's better, there was more fantasy and less sex and swearing." (I still giggle at this. She tells me she likes my recent work better. "Much less sex! ... but still a lot of swearing". LOL)

Little Ming · Mar 19, 2014

slhuang said:
I seem to have (utterly accidentally!) Done Social Media Right, by which I mean that I've built up relationships with people I respect online and some of those people happen to be reviewers, which I did not do on purpose. And also multiple people seem to have noticed my blog and other online writings in a positive fashion (!!!) which boggles me a bit. (The way I "do" social media, by the way, has always been to talk to people I like about things that interest me, which is actually fun and is certainly far less exhausting than going into it with a goal of promoting myself. I honestly would not have the energy to do it any other way -- in fact, social media has become something I do for enjoyment separate from my writing, and even though I started an Internet presence because I wrote a book, it turns out that if I'd scrapped the book I would have wanted, without question, to keep up all my online relationships. Which is a lovely place to be.)

THIS. Please, if people get nothing else from this thread*, please, this is how you should be doing "promotion." Which is to say you're not really promoting at all. The constant "BUY MY BOOK!!!" is annoying.** "I am a human being with thoughts and opinions--want to share them?" is much, much more effective.

*and, of course, ~~pirate~~ buy Lisa's book.

**not directed at anyone specific, just a general observation of the internet.

slhuang said:
The subject matter of my book is piquing people's interest, for which I credit mostly the QLH squirrels in my 200-post-long thread that banged my blurb into shape (THANK YOU, squirrels!!).

*Sits back and waits for royalty check*

slhuang said:
Finally, I got the most important positive review of all today, by which I mean that my mother finished it! (I didn't show it to her till it was all done.) I was . . . a bit worried, because my mother is a terribly sweet, kind woman who doesn't cuss and my book has quite a bit of violence and swearing (one of her first comments was along the lines of, "My, there's a lot of street language!" MY MOTHER IS THE MOST ADORABLE PERSON EVER). But she LOVED it -- she said she's on a high from it and had such an attachment to the characters and she's already bugging me for the next book. I have won, AW! *sticks gold star to forehead*

*pushes own mother away from screen*

Nothing to see here, Mom. No, there's no one else out there making you more disappointed in me...

slhuang · Mar 19, 2014

Nonny said:
I might also consider reaching out to areas that are not necessarily writing/reading/SFF oriented but are STEM-oriented. This is, for instance, something I could absolutely see Geek Feminism featuring in one of their link posts. I know quite a number of women in STEM who would be absolutely excited by this.

You read my mind, Nonny! (Or, well, my promo plan.

) I'm coming to the end of the list of reviewers I was going to send to -- I've been personalizing all of them so it's taken a while -- and my next plan is to send out to different geek spaces on the internetz and see if I get any bites. I figure it could be good -- they probably aren't inundated by ARCs the way reviewers are, so might be more inclined to say, "cool, what's this free book?" On the other hand, they might be more like, "why on earth is someone sending me a book." Ha! I shall report back if I have any success . . .

But yes, I agree, a lot of the opinion-makers in SFF are not necessarily book reviewers, and I'm hoping to be able to tap that a little bit, if I can.

"Well... I liked your story, it was good... but I liked Robert's better, there was more fantasy and less sex and swearing." (I still giggle at this. She tells me she likes my recent work better. "Much less sex! ... but still a lot of swearing". LOL)

Hahahaha! Your mom is so cute! And yes, that is EXACTLY something my mother would say, too.

Little Ming said:
THIS. Please, if people get nothing else from this thread*, please, this is how you should be doing "promotion." Which is to say you're not really promoting at all. The constant "BUY MY BOOK!!!" is annoying.** "I am a human being with thoughts and opinions--want to share them?" is much, much more effective.

Speaking as a Person and not someone currently promoting a book, I do seriously agree with this from the other side as well -- I am very turned off by "BUY MY BOOK" promotional types, but am all about promoting the books or blogs of my friends that I've built relationships with online. And I think having a SM community of genuine human beings that you care about interacting with, instead of promotional feed list -- it just, y'know, makes the Internet a more pleasant place.

Putputt · Mar 19, 2014

D'awwww! Your mom is the adorablest!!! *counting down the days to the release* Congrats on the numerous reviewers!! All this positive response is super well-deserved!! I've been threatening my friends with mah hippobutt if they don't read yer bewk.

slhuang · Mar 19, 2014

Oh, and in particular in the vein of emailing my book info and review copies to people who are not normally reviewers -- I have figured out how to use DropBox! (Yes, many of you will tell me I'm behind the times, I know.

) So far I've been using the, "may I send you a review copy?" etiquette with reviewers, but for other publicity avenues I'm cold-contacting, I'm trying to minimize the effort the person has to do in terms of actually requesting the ARC from me. Anyway, sending unsolicited attachments would make me an ass, but DropBox lets me include links to the EPUB, MOBI, and cover image right at the bottom of the initial request email. Also convenient to send to reviewers if I don't know which format they want, without cluttering up their inbox with multiple attachments!

Wheeeee technology!

J. Tanner · Mar 19, 2014

slhuang said:
I'm trying to minimize the effort the person has to do in terms of actually requesting the ARC from me. Anyway, sending unsolicited attachments would make me an ass, but DropBox lets me include links to the EPUB, MOBI, and cover image right at the bottom of the initial request email. Also convenient to send to reviewers if I don't know which format they want, without cluttering up their inbox with multiple attachments!

I just set up basically the same thing with Amazon Cloud Drive for sharing freebies with my mailing list. It's all automated now, and it turned out pretty slick. (For those who don't have cloud storage service yet, Google seems to be offering the most space now and the feature set variations are pretty minimal compared to Dropbox. I use ACD only because that's where my music was already.)

EMaree · Mar 20, 2014

Oooh, that Dropbox solution is nifty.

usuallycountingbats · Mar 20, 2014

slhuang said:
Finally, I got the most important positive review of all today, by which I mean that my mother finished it! (I didn't show it to her till it was all done.) I was . . . a bit worried, because my mother is a terribly sweet, kind woman who doesn't cuss and my book has quite a bit of violence and swearing (one of her first comments was along the lines of, "My, there's a lot of street language!" MY MOTHER IS THE MOST ADORABLE PERSON EVER). But she LOVED it -- she said she's on a high from it and had such an attachment to the characters and she's already bugging me for the next book. I have won, AW! *sticks gold star to forehead*

Could you be any more Ayshun?!

You get all the win.

benbradley · Mar 20, 2014

slhuang said:
...
Anyway, sending unsolicited attachments would make me an ass, but DropBox lets me include links to the EPUB, MOBI, and cover image right at the bottom of the initial request email. Also convenient to send to reviewers if I don't know which format they want, without cluttering up their inbox with multiple attachments!

Wheeeee technology!

I was thinking about the piracy/Creative Commons license thing - if readers/sharers themselves have to scan a physical book or otherwise convert it from one format to another to give it to others, the formatting will likely end up looking like crap, and something you might not want to be associated with, though of course you don't have (much) control over it. I think you mentioned a problem with Amazon or wherever you might publish that prevent you from selling at a lower price (by "seeding" it on a file-sharing site), but having a range of well-formatted copies for beta/ARC readers that say "Advanced Reader Copy, not for general distribution," well, that just might get the Bit Torrents and other sharing methods seeded for you...

EMaree · Mar 20, 2014

benbradley said:
I was thinking about the piracy/Creative Commons license thing - if readers/sharers themselves have to scan a physical book or otherwise convert it from one format to another to give it to others, the formatting will likely end up looking like crap, and something you might not want to be associated with, though of course you don't have (much) control over it. I think you mentioned a problem with Amazon or wherever you might publish that prevent you from selling at a lower price (by "seeding" it on a file-sharing site), but having a range of well-formatted copies for beta/ARC readers that say "Advanced Reader Copy, not for general distribution," well, that just might get the Bit Torrents and other sharing methods seeded for you...

I was thinking it would be neat to create a "pirate editon" of the eBook which is identical to the trade version, but has a final page saying something like: Thanks for reading ZERO SUM GAME! If you'd like to keep up-to-date about my latest works, visit [website] or join [mailing list]. If you enjoyed this book enough to make a donation you can do so [here].

I hear a lot of pirates claim "I enjoyed this book, and I'd like to donate to the author directly to show my appreciation" (it's a common refrain on Reddit, for example). I'm not sure how much of it is just talk, but if I were uploading a CC edition of my books I'd try to make it easy for them to do that.

J. Tanner · Mar 20, 2014

benbradley said:
if readers/sharers themselves have to scan a physical book or otherwise convert it from one format to another to give it to others, the formatting will likely end up looking like crap, and something you might not want to be associated with

Why wouldn't they just share the unprotected EPUB/MOBI they purchased/downloaded?

No conversion is necessary at all on EPUB. MOBI is a tiny bit trickier to get from a Kindle PRC(?) download, but should be minimal effort to someone who is presumably familiar with seeding torrents.

girlyswot · Mar 20, 2014

EMaree said:
I was thinking it would be neat to create a "pirate editon" of the eBook which is identical to the trade version, but has a final page saying something like: Thanks for reading ZERO SUM GAME! If you'd like to keep up-to-date about my latest works, visit [website] or join [mailing list]. If you enjoyed this book enough to make a donation you can do so [here].*

And the pirate edition could have everyone saying 'Arrrrghhh, shiver your timbers, me hearties' all the time. With a skull and crossbones on the dedication page.

Ignore me. It's late here.

EMaree · Mar 21, 2014

girlyswot said:
And the pirate edition could have everyone saying 'Arrrrghhh, shiver your timbers, me hearties' all the time. With a skull and crossbones on the dedication page.

Ignore me. It's late here.

I was thinking that, but I restrained myself because I was afraid of being too silly. You are braver than me, and I salute your silliness!

*pirate salute* *do pirates salute?* *shush, let's not overthink it*

usuallycountingbats · Mar 21, 2014

With the seeding thing - why not just have something saying it's released under CC and do what you will with it, plus the paragraph about donating. Those that are likely to want to share it will, and I kind of feel you should take the same approach to this aspect as to social media. I think it'll be more effective and generate more word of mouth if you let the readers decide rather than seeding it personally?

I may be wrong though - I have no experience of this!

Math, Guns, and Snark: SLHuang's Self-Publishing Thread

It's a doggy dog world

not to be taken seriously

All about that action, boss.

Inappropriately math-oriented.

coffee and pistols at dawn

Inappropriately math-oriented.

permanently suctioned to Buz's leg

Blissfully Clueless

Inappropriately math-oriented.

It's too hot

a demon for tea

Serve no master but your ambition

Inappropriately math-oriented.

permanently suctioned to Buz's leg

Inappropriately math-oriented.

a demon for tea

Procrastinating on the net.

It's a doggy dog world

a demon for tea

a demon for tea

Procrastinating on the net.