When I was in college, word processor typewriters made it possible to print my stories, but I was—and still am—a terrible typist. Fun fact: Typing was the only class I ever failed. To this day, I type with my index fingers, my middle fingers, and my thumbs, all the while staring at the keyboard to make sure I hit the correct letters. It was not the way I was taught to type, but I’ve typed over two million words with these six fingers, and I’m okay with that. When personal computers became popular, I bought one and wrote more often. I think I still have a journal that I typed out back then. The problem is, the file is saved on a 3.5” disk, and how do you play that nowadays? Back then, I rarely shared my stories with anyone, figuring others would find them either remedial or ridiculous. The aforementioned turbulent childhood left me with some self-confidence issues. Anyway, I wrote the stories that I wanted to read, and they were my treasures to keep. It wasn’t until much later in life that I realized stories weren’t meant to stay hidden. They’re meant to be experienced by as many people as possible. And who knows how much one story might change the world?
The second novel I wrote was during my first NaNoWriMo participation in 2009. Taking part in it helped me focus on setting word-count goals. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words during the month of November. There are 30 days in the month, so that means I’d achieve my goal if I wrote at least 1,667 words every day. That didn’t seem so hard, and most times it hasn’t been. Words tend to come easily for me once I get my mind focused on a book. I don’t have any trouble starting a book. I rarely have trouble ending one. I tend to write series of books, so most of my endings are soft endings, as I call them. They end the book, but not the story. So my stories can go on for a long time. “The end of THE END is the best place to begin THE END, because if you read THE END from the beginning of the beginning of THE END to the end of the end of THE END, you will arrive at the end.”
I realized after writing my first novel that I needed to make the characters a little more like me, or at least more like real people. To do that, I began adding just a bit of my personality into each character. Now when I create a character, I create his or her entire life. How else can you create a person you know as well as you know yourself? Still, some of my characters can be demanding, and I have to be willing to take them in a direction I wasn’t planning to. When that happens, I have to be able to realistically write how my character would react, or what he or she would say in a given situation, or why the character would behave in a specific manner, or even why the character is the way he or she is today. Xander Bruinski, the main male protagonist in Visions of Murder, is probably the one character of mine who is most like me, in terms of personality, anyway. Adding these traits to my characters was difficult for me at first. It’s hard to open up and put a little part of myself into the characters of my novels. It made me feel vulnerable. But it has to be done if the story is going to be honest. As Neil Gaiman said in his Masterclass, putting yourself out there is akin to walking down the street naked. I’ve participated in nearly every NaNoWriMo since that first year. I’ve missed a few, but I do try to take part every year. As I mentioned earlier, I tend to write longer stories. I’ve actually never finished a novel with only 50,000 words. I think my smallest novel is around 80,000 words. Of course, there’s no punishment if I can’t get to the 50,000 mark by November 30. The goal is self-imposed. Either way, when I get to the end of the month, I just keep writing until I get my first draft done.
I think we need stories in the world. Stories help us relate. Even though my books are works of fiction, they seem real enough to me, and that matters. No, the characters don’t actually exist. The situations I put my characters in never happened. The places I write about are ones you generally won’t find on any map. And though I feel a little like Slartibartfast in creating an entire alien world, the planet of Arkainia doesn’t exist. But even though the characters, situations, and often the places don’t really exist, the stories I tell are real. The struggles my characters go through are real. The emotions they feel—and evoke in the reader—are real. That’s the most amazing thing about being a storyteller. I get to create something real from something unreal and share it with the world. That amazing feeling is something I want everyone to experience. I encourage anyone who has ever given thought to a literary idea to make that thought a reality. Every year I put a post out on social media imploring everyone to participate in NaNoWriMo with me. I offer any assistance I’m able to give to help others facilitate their dream of wring, whether it be a book of memoirs, a book of poetry, or even a book of bad jokes. And I do that because the world needs stories. We have enough reality. What we need is a little magic.
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I started this blog post nearly two months ago now, ranting about my troubles with ISBNs for my upcoming books. I was frustrated about how expensive they were and wanted to get that frustration out the only way I knew how. I’d complained about it to my family, and they were sympathetic. But I was still left with the discontent inside me that I couldn’t make go away, so I thought if I put my frustration into words it might help. So I started a blog post. It just has taken me this long to finish the darned thing.
Unlike most of the other posts I’ve done, this one is kind of informational. When I started the post, I had knowledge of what an ISBN is. I knew ISBN is an initialism for International Standard Book Number, and that it is a unique identifier that is on every piece of literary work made available to the public. That way, whether the book is on the shelf at Barnes & Noble, or on the shelf at a local library, or on the cyber shelf at Amazon, or even on the shelf at a small store advertising books written by local authors, it can be identified. Each book deserves to be treated equally with an equal voice, so to speak. Each book for sale gets an ISBN whether it’s 5 words or 5 million words, whether it’s written by Stephen King or unknown author Steven Smith.
I knew WHAT an ISBN is, but what does it mean? What do all those numbers say? Well, I found out. Below is the ISBN for the paperback version of Blood Bound. 
The ISBN is 13 digits long: 979-8-9867837-0-3, and each number, or group of numbers, represents information. Although useful to some, the numbers on the ISBN are pretty useless to the average reader. I’m the author of the book and I have to admit, the numbers are pretty useless to me. And that is precisely why I decided to figure out what the heck they mean.
All books published before 2007 only have a 10-digit ISBN. After 2007, the industry adopted the 13-digit number you see today. The numbers are in sections separated by a hyphen. The first section, called the prefix element, identifies when the book was published. Since the inception of the 13-digit ISBN, the first three numbers have only ever been 978 or 979. The second section, called the registration group, indicates geographically where the book is published and what language it’s published in. Historically, all books with the number 0 and 1 will indicate that the book is published in any English-speaking country. Recently, since the introduction of the 979 numbers, the first two sections of 979-8 will be unique to books published in the United States. Since all my books are published in the United States, all of my ISBNs begin with 979-8. The next section, called the registration element, indicates the publisher of the book. Each country that assigns an ISBN will assign publishers in that country their own registration number. In my self-publishing career, I have used 2 different publishing companies. I started out using Purple Flower Publications and recently started a new company called Dreamwriter.earth
I will get into the purchasing of ISBN a little later in the blog, but I purchased 2 separate blocks of 10 ISBNs, the first using my initial company of Purple Flower Publications and the second under the current name of Dreamwriter.earth. As a result, I have two separate publisher numbers. Some of the earlier books use the original number of 9830839, but the recent ones use the registration number assigned to Dreamwriter.earth, which is 9867837.
The next section, called the publication element, identifies the book title and edition. Each title and edition will have its own unique number. Blood Bound has the number 0. Since I purchased 2 separate blocks of 10 ISBNs, each of the publishing companies will have assigned the unique numbers of 0-9. I have yet to purchase a second block of ISBNs under the same company, so I am eager to see what those numbers will be. The ISBN is only 13 digits, so the next block I purchase for Dreamwriter.earth cannot use 11-99 as the publication element since that will make the ISBN 14 digits. So, what, then, will be used? Stay tuned for that because I don’t know the answer but will hopefully soon find out. The last number of the 13-digit ISBN is the check digit. This is basically a calculation to validate the ISBN. In other words, it’s used to make sure the ISBN is legitimate. At the price they charge, I can imagine the inclination to just make up a number and save yourself the cost. 
If you’re not a number person, I won’t be offended if you want to skip this next section and read the rest of the post. Hint: scroll down and look for Shaun the Sheep and start reading after that.
I am a number nerd. I always have been. Math was my favorite subject in school and numbers have always made sense to me. I love Sudoku and other number puzzles. I once took a class on how many things in nature depict the Fibonacci sequence. What the heck is the Fibonacci sequence, you ask? Well, check out this short video and find out.
Okay, now let’s bring the post back to the subject of ISBNs because I’m going to geek out and explain how you calculate the check digit. It’s a 5-step process, and really isn’t all that complicated, despite the need for algorithms to figure this number out quickly. The algorithms are used because people are lazy and want an easy way to verify the ISBN is legit. For this example, we will go back to the ISBN for the paperback version of Blood Bound.
First, we will need to identify the odd numbers and the even numbers. Sounds easy, but we’re not figuring out which of the first 12 numbers are odd. We are using the odd-numbered places. For example, of the first 12 numbers, 9799737 are all odd numbers, but what about 0? Is zero an odd or even number?
Fun fact: zero is actually an even number. Here’s my inner number geek fully emerging. According to Merriam-Webster, an even number is a whole number that can be divided by two into two equal whole numbers. This means if you take the number (N) and divide it by the divisor (D), which is 2, you will get an integer (I). An integer is defined as any of the natural numbers, the negatives of these numbers, or zero. Let’s test this. N = 0, D = 2 If N/D = I, then N is even. 0/2 = 0, which is an integer (I), which means 0 is an even number.
Okay, back to the check digit. We were talking about the odd and even numbers. Now, we don’t take just the odd numbers of the first 12 numbers in the ISBN, we take the numbers in the odd places. So, we add together the first digit (whether it’s an odd or even number), the third digit (whether odd or even), the fifth, seventh, ninth, and eleventh. For my paperback Blood Bound ISBN, the odd places are the following numbers: 9, 9, 9, 6, 8, 7. And the even places are the following numbers: 7, 8, 8, 7, 3, 0.
Step 1: Add all the numbers in the odd numbered places: 9+9+9+6+8+7=48 Step 2: Add all the numbers in the even numbered places and multiply by 3: (7+8+8+7+3+0)x3=(33)x3=99 Step 3: Add the results of Steps 1 and 2 together: 48+99=147 Step 4: Divide the result of Step 3 by 10: 147/10=14 with a remainder of 7. Step 5: If the remainder in Step 4 is 0, the check digit is 0. Otherwise, the check digit is the remainder in Step 4 subtracted from 10: 10-7=3. So, the check digit in my ISBN is 3. To summarize, the Blood Bound ISBN of 979-8-9867837-0-3 tells anyone who understands the confounded things that the paperback version of Blood Bound is published in the United States (979-8). Furthermore, it is the 10th ISBN used by Dreamwriter.earth (986737-0). And lastly, the check figure of 3 tells everyone that the ISBN is legitimate and not some made-up, bootleg number.
Whew! What a lot of information in just a few numbers.
Now that my number-geek section is over, I’m going to go on a rant about how ridiculously expensive the ISBNs are. First of all, you NEED one to publish a book. Sure, you can use the free ones that Amazon will give you, but you can only sell your book on Amazon. If you entertain the notion of having a few of your books on a physical store bookshelf or in a library, you have to get an ISBN.
Passed in 1890, the Sherman Antitrust Act banned business from merging to form monopolies. Additionally, it prevented these groups from dictating, controlling, and manipulating prices in a particular market. The definition of a monopoly is a commodity controlled by one party. Guess how many companies sell ISBNs in the United States? Ready for this? One. Bowker Company is the only place you can buy an ISBN in this glorious country of ours. So, how exactly is that not a monopoly? 
I get that they want to limit the places that sell these little highly sought-after morsels to ensure integrity and uniformity, but why should this unique identifier be so expensive?
I can go into a definition of what capitalism is, but it basically comes down to something (hereafter known as “S”) that many people (hereafter known as “P”) want under the control of very few people (hereafter known as “VFP”). The VFP who have control of S can, and will, extort as much return as possible from P to feed their greed. They have S and they are going to demand as payment for S as much as they want, knowing that P has no choice but to comply with their demands because P needs S and can only get it from VFP. That, right there, is what is broken about our world. The desire for money above the desire for better circumstances.
On Bowker’s website, you have the option of purchasing (a) 1 ISBN for $125, (b) 100 for $575, or (c) 1,000 for $1,500. Seriously? Going back to simple math, the price per unit is (a) $125, (b) $5.75, and (c) $1.50. Why is 1 ISBN so much more per piece? Is it a benefit of bulk purchase? No. It’s because a small, self-published author might need 1 or 2, but certainly not 100 or 1,000, so he or she will most likely purchase that option at a much higher cost per unit. To me, that just seems like the small, self-published author is being taken advantage of, and as a small, self-published author, I feel victimized by this capitalistic greed.
Furthermore, this price is just for the ISBN number. If you want to download the actual barcode to put on your book, Bowker extorts an additional $25 per bar code out of you. With publishing costs so high already, it’s no wonder that it’s so hard for self-published authors to make any money. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe this is a conspiracy between Bowker and the publishing companies to discourage self-publishing. Because why would you self-publish when you can be taken advantage of by a publishing company? Reading back, I find that this blog post sounds uncharacteristically pessimistic of me. Anyone who knows me, knows that I tend to be optimistic about things. Is my view becoming skewed as I age? Maybe. Is that good or bad? Who knows? 
Well, that’s all I have to say about ISBNs. Together, we’ve learned what an ISBN is, what all the numbers mean, and how to verify that the ISBN is not a bootleg. Additionally, we’ve discovered that they’re expensive but necessary. But, hey, what isn’t anymore?
Right now, I’m working on getting my fourth book set to publish. This one was expected to be released last November, but I had an idea when reviewing it that changed a lot about the book and required copious revisions. I suppose it’s better to get the book exactly the way I want it before it is released than to release it in haste and later regret it.  But while I was waiting for the proof of the book to come back, I got two other books set in InDesign and in the proof stage. I was amazed at how quickly the process went. When I was first learning to use the features in InDesign that would allow me to get a book laid out, I found it problematic to say the least. Every feature I needed had to be learned. That was just the layout. I won’t even go into the problems I had with doing the book covers. That will be the topic of another blog post. Thank goodness for the Internet and YouTube. That’s all I have to say about that. Having an easier time with InDesign the second time around reminds me of a moment from my earlier days. When I was in college, I studied accounting. I went to a very strict and well-respected private college. It taught accounting, finance, and business. That was it. My electives weren’t fun things like learning a foreign language or how to create macrame plant hangers. We had Learning the Stock Market and Investing for Retirement. Studying for mid-terms and final exams was ... not fun. In one of my earlier college classes, I was introduced to the concept of cost allocation. Briefly, allocating is the accounting process of taking overhead or indirect costs and allocating them to the direct costs to better analyze the amount needed to break even and make a profit. Back in college, I found the concept difficult to learn, and I struggled with it more than any one person should.  I managed to get through the subject with most of my hair still intact and hoped like heck I wouldn’t need the knowledge in whatever job I had in the future. Anyway, fast-forward ten years and I’m working at a company as a controller. I have reporting to me two accounting clerks, one for receivables and one for payables. My accounts payable clerk was still in college and was having trouble in a few of her subjects. She asked me if I would tutor her. I agreed, and we sat down during our lunch break, so I could pass along my knowledge and expertise. One of the subjects she was struggling with was cost allocation. Having been in the workplace and, unfortunately, doing allocations on a regular basis, I was now very familiar with the process. I explained everything to her. She didn’t get it. I was amazed at how much my thinking had changed. I had been in her exact place ten years earlier, struggling to understand. Now I was frustrated explaining something I found quite simple and having her not understand. That was how I felt recently with laying out my books in InDesign. Publishing my first books years ago, I struggled with every aspect of doing the books. Not that I’m an expert by any means, but when I began using InDesign again after years of being away from it, I didn’t find the task quite as daunting as I had during my previous adventure in self-publishing.
I had not immersed myself in laying out books over the years. I had not dedicated a large amount of time to the task of preparing a book for publication. I hadn’t even opened the program in nearly five years. So, why was the process so much easier this time around? Mainly, I think it has to do with the quote that starts this post. I learn by doing. I know this about myself. Someone can tell me a hundred times how to do something, and I will scratch my head when left to my own devices. I’ll struggle to complete the project, and probably use some colorful language in my pursuit to complete what I am trying to complete. Someone can show me how to do something until next week. I will remember how to do it, and maybe complete the task on my own with some success, with or without the aforementioned colorful language. But the information will probably not stick inside my noodle, and I’ll be back to the head scratching and colorful language when I try to do the task again. But when I do the process myself, that’s when I learn. By doing, I break down whatever barrier I have inside my head that allows the information to stick. I always used to joke that I have a file cabinet inside my head. When I try to do something I’ve only been told how to do, the file cabinet drawer doesn’t even get opened and the knowledge gets misplaced. By doing something I’ve been shown how to do, the information might or might not make it into the file cabinet, and if it does, it gets filed under “Q” instead of “L.” It’s not accessible when I need it. By doing something myself, I file the information in the correct drawer under the correct letter, and it is available to me when I need it. That’s kind of an odd analogy, but this is my noodle I’m talking about. Off topic, but that reminds me of the Stephen King book Dreamcatcher. I haven’t read the book, but I have seen the movie. I saw it a long time ago and don’t remember much other than aliens come to Earth and take over humans. The main character hides from the alien inside his mind in a locked room. His mind is filled with file cabinets. In one of the cabinets is the solution on how to get rid of the aliens. He has to sneak out of his locked room when the alien inside his mind isn’t paying attention. He’d run from the room, look through some files, and run back before the alien knew he was there. It was a weird movie. Anyway, back to self-publishing, which oddly enough includes one book involving aliens. But more on that in a bit. When I got serious about self-publishing this second time around, I took the time to learn some of the features that would help me. I found this course on InDesign. In the course, the instructor (who explains things extremely well) explains the concepts, then shows you how to do the concepts. What sets this apart from most tutorials is he then assigns homework. He encourages you to create the same project on your own that he created in the lesson. By doing, I learned. There were several projects in the course that were irrelevant to my goal, but I have used several of the tricks he shows in the course. If you’re interested in learning InDesign, I highly recommend the course. Anyway, now for the alien bit, I’m going to finish up proofing my fourth book for publication. I hope to have it out by the end of the week. This book was out of my comfort zone when I originally had the idea to write it. I saw an image from a fellow artist on Instagram that just refused to leave my mind. A story took root and I now have the Arkainians, a species with their own appearance, language, history, and culture. Oh, and they just happen to live on another planet.  You can read a chapter of the book as well as get updates of when it will be available for sale. Just click on “Lyra Zonder” at the top of the page.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this post. It has been the first one so far this year. I will try to be better about blogging more often, but I make no promises. I tend to write when the mood strikes me, and I have learned over the years that it is pointless to argue with myself. I almost never win. "From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere." ~ Dr. Seuss I started out self-publishing. I published my first novel all the way back in 2010. Back then, there weren’t as many of the vanity press publishers as there are today. Many of the publishing contracts, when I originally was thinking of publishing my book, were not very advantageous for the author, but rather lucrative for the publisher. So, unless you sold millions of copies of your book, you really weren’t going to make much profit.  The idea came to me to self-publish. I knew absolutely nothing about the process and admittedly, my husband did most of the work for the first book, so I will not write about that experience. But the second and third books I published were all me. I did everything from writing, to layout, to cover design, to promoting. It was a lot of work and I sold very few copies of my books. It was a challenge to learn new software. I used Adobe InDesign for the layout. Luckily, there were a lot of YouTube videos on how to do things because it was very frustrating. Adobe Photoshop was worse. The program itself was fine. The error was with the user. Maybe that’s not entirely fair. The program is so extensive, unless you use it often, there is so much that can be done it’s overwhelming. I ended up just watching videos on the specific things I wanted to do. Otherwise I got too confused. Once I finally managed to get the book laid out and the cover conceptualized, I needed to figure out how I was going to print the book. I chose to use Amazon’s CreateSpace, which I think now has changed its name to Kindle Direct Publishing, though if I type in "CreateSpace" in the internet search bar, I get to where I’m wanting to go. CreateSpace is pretty easy and there are many helpful links. You can use this site to do everything. It’s an a-la-carte type of thing where you pay for the services you use. They have folks who will copyedit the manuscript, lay out the book, and even design the cover, depending on how much money you want to spend. I did everything myself and used their service simply to get my book for sale on their site. The three books I self-published didn’t make me enough to allow me to pursue writing as my career. Admittedly, I got a little discouraged, and thought I might as well not put forth all the effort if no one was going to read the books. Once the three books went up on Amazon’s site, I focused on writing and stopped thinking of publishing. Fast-forward ten years. During that time, I not only added my daughter to the family, I wrote something like fifteen novels. And by novels, I mean extended novels. Ernest Hemingway I am not. I tend to write BIG books. My average novel is a hundred thousand words. Some are between eighty and ninety thousand, and some are a hundred fifty to a hundred eighty thousand words. “There is no friend as loyal as a book.” While I was busy writing, tons of vanity press publishers sprang up and the idea came to me to give one of them a try. My mom saw a television commercial for one such publisher and encouraged me to give them a call. With naïve hope, I did and decided to give them a try. I went with Newman Springs out of Red Bank, New Jersey. The problem with this is all the costs had to be paid by the author. Their contract stated they wouldn’t take any royalties until a hundred percent of my investment was returned, which sounds like a win-win, and it probably would be if enough books sell to actually recover the cash outlay. For me, that wasn’t the case. I was out thousands of dollars and did almost as much work as when I had done it all myself. Needless to say, I didn’t use their services for a second book.  Fast-forward another five years, and here I am now. We left the busy, over-crowded, and expensive area of Seattle and moved to a small town in North Idaho. The housing is manageable, and the people are friendly. I now have the luxury to be retired at a fairly young age. I get to be a full-time mom and unschooling guide for my daughter. I never stopped writing and added a few more novels to my unpublished bookshelf. As the calendar flipped over onto my 50th birthday, I decided it was time to give self-publishing another try. "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." ~ not Albert Einstein Turns out Albert Einstein never actually said this quote. Funny how things get mixed up.
Hello, and welcome to my blog. This is my first time writing a blog. I’ve read many of them over the years and enjoyed … less than half of the ones I read. I’ve never really been a blog person, preferring to keep my thoughts private. I’m not a social person, nor am I one to thrive in social situations. I’m an introvert who enjoys being at home. So, why, you ask, am I writing a blog. Well, I really don’t have a good answer other than I thought it was something I wanted to try. I’ve just set up this new website to promote my books. I’ve written over twenty novels and have previously published four — one with a publisher and three self-published. I thought it might be enjoyable to try my hand at blogging to talk about my adventures, or misadventures as the case may be, in getting my novels published. You will learn more from a glorious failure than you ever will from something you never finished. ~ Neil Gaiman I tend to be a bit wordy, but I will try to keep these blog posts fairly brief. I’m going to try to post one each week, but I’m terrible with schedules and often don’t stick to them out of spite. So, I will TRY to post one weekly, but I won’t guarantee it. Let me tell you a little about how I got to where I am now. It all started a long time ago… Just kidding. I’ve been writing ever since I was a child my daughter’s age. I “published” my first book in the third grade. It was just a handmade cover made from cardboard and wallpaper and someone sewing the pages to it, but I wrote it and I illustrated it. I still have that book and have used it as inspiration in my endeavor.
I was an avid journal writer throughout school. I did it mainly to keep my sanity in a difficult and dysfunctional family life, but it kept me writing. Then, I went to college and sort of fell out of writing. I’ve always loved stories, though, and have had vivid, colorful, and often memorable dreams. When I remember a dream, it stays with me forever. Call it a mental quirk, but my brain is like the Hotel California for dreams. Anyway, the desire to write didn’t return until much later, after I was married. My husband and I were living in Alexandria, Virginia, at the time. I was having a wonderful dream one morning about meeting my favorite hockey player in a restaurant. Not actually being there together but happening upon each other. He bought me a dessert and had it sent over to my table. I gazed into his eyes and invited him over to my table. He rose gracefully from his chair across the room and began walking toward me. Just before he got to my table, my husband woke me up to get ready for work.  I just wanted to go back to sleep to find out what happened. But I couldn’t. I had to go to work. I couldn’t get that dream out of my mind. Several days later, I decided I just HAD to know how the scene ended. So, I sat down and wrote it out. It ended up being the first chapter of one of my books. Fast-forward fifteen years and here we are now. In my next post, I’ll take you with me as I reminisce about the start of my self-publishing journey all those long years ago, in a galaxy far, far away … no, wait, that was something else!
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