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Technology Risk and the Independent Author

February 7, 2011 By Mark Leave a Comment

Two years ago I looked at hundreds of WordPress themes in anticipation of putting up this site. I’d never paid for a theme before, but time and again I kept coming back to the themes at StudioPress.com. Their designs were clean, their support seemed solid, and after a while I decided to pull the trigger on their Streamline theme, which is the theme you see on this site.

For a year and a half I was perfectly satisfied. The support was excellent, the theme performed as expected, and I was able to get on with the business of blogging.

About six months ago, however — give or take — StudioPress became a subsidiary of CopyBlogger, the underlying software for the themes was radically altered, and the support on the site became spottier and more contentious. I never faulted the moderators for putting limits on the amount of customization they offered, but the tone and frequency of such reprimands seemed to signal an intent to drive additional fee-for-service revenue from the basic themes being sold.

Because I knew upgrading my current theme would break a number of modifications I’d made, I put off the upgrade as long as possible. At the same time I faced an ever-growing backlog of changes I wanted to make on my site, and at some point it became obvious that I should upgrade before making any additional changes to an older version I had every intention of migrating away from. [ Read more ]

CreateSpace Shipping for Proofs

December 31, 2010 By Mark 4 Comments

My desire to offer a print-on-demand (POD) version of my short story collection, The Year of the Elm, is close to fruition. I’ve completed the content formatting and cover design, and passed CreateSpace’s submission tests for both files.

Yesterday I ordered my first proof. While filling out the ordering form I was given the following shipping options:

Economy Shipping $3.61 Estimated Arrival Date: Tue, Jan 18, 2011
Standard Shipping $6.39 Estimated Arrival Date: Wed, Jan 12, 2011
Priority Shipping $24.78 Estimated Arrival Date: Tue, Jan 04, 2011

Now, keep in mind that I ordered my proof on December 30th. That means the estimated shipping times for the above options are 19 days, 13 days and 5 days respectively. Those times also include 3, 2 and 1 weekends, respectively — and all include a national holiday for New Year’s Day. [ Read more ]

Calculating Cover Design Value

September 25, 2010 By Mark Leave a Comment

This post is part of Cover Design Week. To see other posts click the CDW tag below.

In the previous post I said that neither the amount of cash you have on hand nor the cost of an expense necessarily tells you whether that expense is a good idea or not. That’s particularly true for something like the design of a book cover, which is so inherently subjective in any instance as to defy meaningful cost-benefit analysis by even the biggest publishers.

If how much money you have, or what something costs, says nothing about value, then money as a useful metric has pretty much been exhausted. However, since time equals money in many business situations (if not in life as well), we can also look at the value of offloading cover-design responsibility onto someone else from that perspective. In doing so, we may find a more useful way to judge both the merit of the decision and the economic value as well.%nbsp;%nbsp;[ Read more ]

Time, Money, Stupidity and Self-Sufficiency

September 1, 2010 By Mark 1 Comment

A couple of weeks ago I was compelled to open the case on my balky computer and dig into its guts. My goal was diagnosing a long-running and progressively worsening series of program crashes and operating-system reboots, all of which were crimping my productivity and putting my data at risk.

It took more hours than I would have liked, but in the end I had my culprit: a bad stick of DDR2 memory, now upgraded and replaced. Along the way I also updated the BIOS for my computer, stress-tested and reconfigured various bits of hardware and software, and killed several trojans and a dormant worm.

I am now suffering no computer ills. My machine is running like an electronic top. I’m confident going forward that I have a stable platform from which to work, and that’s no small comfort given that I hope to do a great deal of writing over the next nine months. My computer is, after all, my workshop, and I don’t need a workshop that blinks out at random intervals.

Optimus Perfecticus
While diagnosing my computer problems I ran a series of tests, including MemTest86+ — which proved decisive. In order to run that program I had to download and install it, which I was able to do after a couple of faltering attempts to decipher the geek-speak instructions.

While performing this relatively simple task I found myself confronting an age-old debate that seems almost generic to human existence:

When should you hire someone to do a job for
you, and when should you do it yourself?

The answer, always, is found at the intersection of time and money. How much will it cost, and how long will it take, either to pay someone to solve the problem or to do it yourself? (Here I’m assuming that the goal is not one of self-satisfaction, but simply solving a problem by the most effective means.) [ Read more ]

Walking the Ditchwalk

October 5, 2009 By Mark Leave a Comment

In my parasites post I advocated spending money only when you absolutely have to, and only when you know you’re getting something of equal or greater value in return. As an independent author I followed my own advice in putting up this site, and in this post I’d like to walk you though the process I followed in considering blog software options, blog theme options, and a number of graphics options.

For blog software I was fairly sure I would go with WordPress, because it’s free and because I had a positive experience with it several years ago. What I got for my effort then was pretty impressive. The functionality you get with WordPress now is almost absurd, and I couldn’t recommend the application more. (I use the self-hosted version, but WordPress.com is also available if you prefer something hosted and less technical.) [ Read more ]