Created an Author Page on Facebook

I tried to do this years ago, but author wasn't one of the choices. And although "author" pages have been an option for a couple of years now, I just got around creating one.

Steven Fujita page on Facebook

My 2015 Writing Projects

After devoting a lot of time to recovering from my spinal cord injury for the last 2 1/2 years, I am hoping to get back into fiction writing.

So, I am hoping this is the year I publish both the prequel and sequel to my first book, Sword of the Undead.  My plan is to publish a three-in-one book, call it Samurai Vampire: The Trilogy.  It will be 3 novella length stories. Book 1 will result in the first meeting between Yagyu Jubei and Lord Kageura. Book 2 will be Sword of the Undead, and Book 3 will be the modern day meeting between the 2 samurai.

My second fiction book I am hoping to write, but probably won't be finished this year, is a fictional account of my recovery from spinal cord injury.  In my non-fiction book, Toe Up to 10K, I leave a lot of emotions out, and that book is really more of a "this is what happens when your spinal cord gets injured, and this is what I did to help my body overcome as much as it could."  The book is a personal perspective, but I didn't devote any real time to inter-personal relationships.

A third book that I would like to complete this year, but may or may not be published is a sequel to Toe Up to 10K.   I think this is the year that my body will be strong enough to run a 10K.   Since I am injured at the T4 level, I am prone to an uncommon, but serious and potentially fatal condition when the body is physically overstressed, called AD (can't remember what it stands for).  I need to be aware of that.  That said, the sequel will cover my improvements since Fall, 2014 to present, and my journey and entry into a 5K or 10K race,

So, Happy New Year and Happy reading in 2015, everybody!

Sony in a No Win Situation

The other day, Sony Pictures America decided to pull the movie, The Interview, completely.  No theatrical release, no dvd release, etc. etc.


Sony is getting a lot of flack for this decision.  "Cowardice" is a word I have come across a lot when reading people's reaction.


As a result of this "incident," Sony gets a lot of bad press, loses money, and the corporation gets called a coward.


But when Sony made the decision, this was probably the lesser of two evils. 


What if Sony decided to go ahead and release the film anyway?


And one or more "terrorist-like" attacks took place and some fatalities took place. Then what?


Not only would Sony not hear the end of it, they would be burdened with so many lawsuits that it would not only cripple Sony Pictures, but perhaps the parent company.


I could hear it now, "Everybody knew about the threats and they went ahead anyway."


Sony was damned because it didn't, but would have been really damned if they did and something happened. 


What really puzzles me is that the emotions seem to be displaced here.  People seem to be more outraged at Sony for being hacked, than at North Korea for doing the hacking.


All boiled down, Sony is the victim of a crime.  An international one at that.  It's kind of like blaming a robbery victim for walking down a desolate street at night.  Sure, the victim could have taken more precautions, but does a victim's vulnerability make a criminal act against him/her acceptable?  No, it does not.


Then, there is the question of who?  Depending on who is behind this, should determine how we, as a nation should respond.


If it were one or a group of individuals, then this is a matter for law enforcement agencies to bring the perpetrators to justice. 


However, what if it was State sponsored?  Then, it is not a crime against an individual or entity of the United States, but an act of war against the nation of the United States.  Just because it wasn't an attack on a military installation like Pearl Harbor, or Fort Sumter, doesn't make it less so. 


I've gone a little off-topic here.  Disappointed as I am in Sony for bowing to the hacker's demands, I would hate to have to think how I would have reacted had Sony decided to release the film and lives were lost as a result.

Video of me

It's rare to get me on video with audio, but here I am responding to a man on the street question posed by the Los Angeles Times.

Los Angeles in 3 words

Self-Publishing

I was asked in a writer's message board/forum today about self-publishing and my condensed answer was so long that the reply probably would have taken up more space than the entire webpage, so I'm posting my answer here.  Even so, what I have written is just the tip of the iceberg.

So bottom line, how much more expensive is it to self-publish than try to sell to a traditional publisher - probably $1000 - $4000 depending on how much of the you do yourself.  Because all the money you spend on promotion would be spent by you anyway unless the publisher thought it had a best-seller on its hands. Then, you would save on publicity costs, and your only expense is the creation of the book, which would still cost $1000 to $2000 or more, again depending on how you you spend on proofreading and editing before sending the manuscript to publishing houses..

Self-publishing is evolving constantly and the environment is certainly different than it was 4 years ago.  And practices might change even a month from the time I write this. 

All three of my books were done differently - and a lot had to do with technology at the time, and what kind of reach I wanted with the book.

I won't write about how my thinking (and the industry itself) has evolved because it would take a long time to explain, but here is the decision making process I made for the most recent book, Toe Up to 10K. 

1. I wanted the book to be in eBook and physical format.  However, the packagers that offer both physical and eBook distribution don't offer the best royalties for eBooks, or, in some cases, the physical book.   So, at this point, I decided to utilize one company for the eBook and one company for the physical book. 

2. For the eBook, I then had to decide whether I would convert and upload myslef, or hire a eBook publisher to do it.

    A. The three major eBook devices (Kindle, Nook, and Kobo) all allow authors to upload for free. Getting sales recorded and faster payments are two benefits of uploading to sites yourself. However, that's three separate conversions and uploads you would have to do, and  you would have to create an account with each as well. 

    B. I used BookBaby to do the conversions for me and distrubute it to the ebook retailers. They have several packages.  I used the premium for $299 because  you get 100% royalties from the ebbok retailer as if you uploaded them yourself.  If you use a cheaper package, I think they keep 15% of your royalty share.   The downside is that i have to wait months before the retailers report sales back to BookBaby (I believe it is the same with Smashwords below).

    C. There is a company called Smashwords that is similar, but you have to convert your document to Smashwords compatible and then they would upload it to the various ebook retailers.  They wil distribute for free, but they keep 15% of your royalty share.  If you can't convert to Smashwords compatible, then you need to hire someone and I don't know how much that would cost.

3. If I just wanted an eBook, it would have ended with me using BookBaby for the distribution, and I would be done, but I wanted a physical book, too.  So, I went and compared the self-publishers, and decided CreateSpace was the best match for me. 

      A.  They are affiliated with Amazon, so if a book sells on Amazon, you get an immediate recording of the sale (rather than 2 - 6 months); their royalty rates are good, and they have a do it yourself conversion tool.  I tried, but could not format it properly for them because  it contained tables and outlines, and they too, considered it a complex layout.  This cost me about $700, but if the book were just text, like a novel, it would have cost much less. 

     B. They have a create your cover for free option.  Unfortunately, the cover you make using their cover creater will be too small a file for using it elsewhere.  I created my cover with CreateSpace, but had to re-create it - I think I used MS-Word - for the eBook version. But I was able to re-create one close enough that it's hard to tell the difference.  You can probably also go to Fiverr.com and hire someone to design a cover for you for $5 bucks.

    C. I think their osts for author's copies were lower than the other companies I compared them with.

So, the actual distribution of the book is quite reasonable, and your royalties will be much larger than a traditional publisher.  The real money pit is in the writing and the promotion of the book. 

For self-publishing, my costs were $299 for the eBook distribution, plus $19 for the eBook ISBN, and $700 for the physical book distribution (ISBN was free), for a total of $1018.

However, the costs of publishing a book is mostly eaten in the creation and promotion of the book. 

1. The copies of each draft I made at FedEx so I could proofread probably cost me over $100.

2. I probably spent about $1200 on proofreading and editing (cheaper to find someone on your own than to use the distributors editorial service).  

3. I did the covers myself so that was free, but the packagers will charge about $200 to make a cover - or you can find someone local or on the internet (Fiverr for $5 bucks) to design a cover for you. 

4. Promotion is the big expense.  For the vampire book, I probably spent over $5000 in Facebook ads, sponsoring websites, taking ads out in newspapers, traveling, book fairs.  For the personal finance book, the publicity budget ws $0 because I got sick soon thereafter.  And for "Toe Up," I've spent probably about $1200 so far,mostly due to a press release I sent out via PR Newsire and multiple online promotion campaigns via book promtion companies, such as PumpUpYour Books.com, Book Viral, and others.  My original plan was to budget $1000 for this book, but I've past that already, but I think I'll keep it under $3000 - hopefully under $2000. 

The above information is condensed because I can go on and  on and expand the discussion on each of the items above, but the above is some idea of what to consider when self-publishing.  But would I continue to do it? Definitely.  Creative control, higher royalty payments and really, most of the costs are expenses that would come out of my pocket with a traditional publisher anyway.

The one negative about self-publishing is that I really can’t time the release date accurately. It’s just whenever the book hits the retailer uploads them.  But with good planning, this can be overcome as well.

My new favorite review for Toe Up to 10K

Thank you BookViral for this great review


Book Viral Review for Toe Up to 10K

Ambitious #Book Club on Facebook

Here is a Book Club that is a Facebook community page that I like and wish it success. It has been around for a while, I'm sorry I didn't come across this page sooner.

Ambitious Book Club