Clarion Tips and Tricks

Vylar posted hers here, so here are my own Clarion tips and tricks.

1) Nutrition and sleep don't stop being necessary during the workshop. More than one person has had severe long-term health consequences because of failure to take care of these two essentials. I could have gotten a lot more out of Clarion with quality sleep.

2) People get more and more tired and stressed and thus more and more ragged as the workshop goes on. There will be prickly moments. They are, however, moments that need not be long-term. Battering down defenses means you get to get the barriers to your writing out of the way, but it can come at significant short-term emotional cost.

3) Have an outlet outside the workshop -- a friend you can IM, someone you can call -- someone you can unload to, someone where you can say anything and it'll be okay.

4) When in doubt, there's always tacky stuff from Archie McPhee.

The Great Self-Publishing Experiment, part I

As some of you may know, I've been considering selling a copy of my published short on various sites, so I thought I'd do a round up on what the requirements are.

I'm surprised at the variation. Author royalties on 1000 copies of a $0.99 cent book vary from $170.40 (Kindle store via Smashwords vs. $309 selling via Amazon directly) to $643.50 (B&N with no ISBN) to $693 (iBooks if you have an ISBN).

That's a huge chunk of change. Assuming you sell those copies over the course of a year, it's up to $43/month difference. Assuming you sell them across the various stores evenly, it'll be around $500 net to you for those 1000 copies.

Oh, and buying ISBNs sucks. Considering going in on it with a local group.