BurningbirdRecovered from the Wayback Machine.
I love to write. Writing to me is a shield when I’m afraid and a weapon when I’m angry. It is friend and lover and thief of time. It exposes me and hides me. It is there in the morning, and there in the evening. Of all the chaos of my life, writing is my one constant.
When I’m hurt or I’m afraid of hurting, I write and with my writing heal or am healed. One in the same.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
Well, now that I’ve had a chance to be a Melodrama Mama, more details.
I hadn’t received my royalty check this month from O’Reilly and contacted the accounting department to see what’s up. Well, what’s up is that not only am I not getting a royalty check, enough of the Developing ASP Components books (both first and second edition) were returned to the company that my royalty account is a couple thousand in the negative.
I knew that first edition books would be returned once second was out, but was surprised by the volume of returns on second edition. I chatted with one of my editors to find out this is happening across the industry. Companies such as Amazon are closing down warehousing and reducing inventory to reduce costs and because people just aren’t buying the books. Next quarter, which reflects the September 11th date, will be even worse.
Well, I had foolishly counted on that royalty, and now I’m at a very vulnerable spot in my finances. Very. I had counted on this and my other writing to help me through the technology down time here in San Fran and SiliValley.
And I can’t even grab anyone to go out for a rip roarin’ bender to commiserate — all my buddies are back east, up north, in the middle of the country – or are you, my dear, faithful, funny, and interesting weblog readers. Lucky yous.
Worse then the money is the fact that the book isn’t doing as well as I would like. Dammit this is a good book! What could I do if Microsoft decides to change their technology to .NET just as I finish writing a book about Windows 2000 and COM+? I won’t prostitute myself by mouthing wonderful things about MS and .NET just to sell the book. I’s got ideals, I has!
(No money, but ideals. That and 5.00 will buy you a cup a joe at Starbucks. I wonder — If AOL can sue Microsoft, maybe I can, too. Hmmm.)
Anyway, tears into a bubbleless, warm beer. I’m close to broke, my company is close to broke, and I’m not pretty enough to be a hooker and sell my body — and my reading public is giving me a resounding “We don’t want your book. Nyah. Nyah.”. And that Wrox drivel is now selling better than my quality tome. Really, is there no class in the world?
Now that I’ve had all that ABOMINABLE whining done with, it’s time for me to remember that others have it a lot worse than me, I’m lucky enough to have the opportunity to write for profit (sometimes at least), I have a new car I can live in if need be, O’Reilly’s very cool about giving me additional work to help out (and holding my negative balance on account) … and I have nice folks like you all to carry my sorry self and my maudlin story to.
Thanks for listening and for putting up with me being a Melodrama Mama.
P.S. Why the hell aren’t all of you people who’ve read Chris Locke’s excellent Bombast Transcripts not putting in great reviews at Amazon and Barnes & Noble? Do you know how difficult it is for an author waiting for that first review? And how much it can influence book sales? Get your cute, sexy little hind ends (all my readers have cute, sexy hind ends – don’t argue) in gear, and post a review now! (Well, buy the book and read it first – Sharon has an affiliate store – buy the book through her.)
I can do cute. You bet. Even BurningBird can do cute.
Here’s cute. Tell me this isn’t cute.
HOW CAN YOU SAY THIS ISN’T CUTE!!!
There’s been confusion about why I reacted so strongly to Zeldman’s posting, earlier in the day. Copied from an email I just to a friend:
Zeldman sees only wrong within the Internet. The industry is stupid. Content created without web writers is bad. He seems incapable of seeing the wonder that surrounds him, and that touches him in his everyday interaction.
Case in point – metadata has nothing to do with websites being visited or not. Not really. It’s all about how to generate buzz. We know this from weblogging; it’s all a game. None of us uses meta-data to connect via weblogging. In fact, we’re seeing the beginning instances of a truly semantic web through the human element contained in weblogging — and all Zeldman “sees” is that too many sites aren’t accessible.
I agree with him that web writers aren’t valued as highly as they should; I disagree with the assumption that only web writers can create good content.
It’s elitism and I’ve been fighting this on the internet since day 1. Zeldman is an elitist. If he’s talking about hiring firms, I’m not seeing this from his post. Perhaps the viewpoint is based on our different perspectives of Zeldman.
At first I thought the reports of Red Hat and AOL in discussions were a joke. However, I found out otherwise.
I like my friend Andy’s view of the possibility at O’Reilly – chances are this is going to be a mix that won’t favor either open source or technical innovation. AOL may be business savvy (and known to be rather ruthless in this respect), but the company is also a technology killer.
John Robb thinks that AOL should package and distribute Radio as an alternative to .NET. John, apples and oranges. Radio ain’t .NET. And remember what I said about AOL being a technology killer. Radio is Userland’s baby – you sure you want to hand it over to the really, really big BigCo Suits? What’s the price of success?
Two monopolies are not better than one. A world with AOL and Microsoft sharing dominion is no better than Microsoft having dominion alone.
