Tag Archives: Cyber War I

Book Marketing

06 Saturday Apr 2019

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I told myself that for my second novel, I would focus on marketing.  As a product manager, that’s a big part of my day job.  Still, I find everything after writing, from formatting a book for publishing to creating online ads, highly tedious.  If a publisher approached me today and told me they would publish my book for 90% of the royalties, I think I’d sign up as long as they did all this post writing stuff for me.

I’ll share some of my marketing progress, to hopefully benefit the other writers who read this blog.  To date, I’ve only marketed on AMS (Amazon Marketing Services) and Facebook.  They are both easy enough to learn and have pervasive reach.  First step for AMS is buy KDP Rocket and watch Dave Cheeson’s training videos.  I think the videos are free, and also posted on YouTube.  But buy the tool too.  It will save you hours building up your AMS keywords.  And that’s a big part of what the training is for.

Cheeson walks you through building keyword lists that you will add to your AMS campaign.  He recommends 200-300 minimum.  With KDP Rocket, this took me a few minutes.  The goal is that when shoppers search on Amazon for books, your book shows up as a sponsored ad.  It’s not terribly difficult, but I found I needed some repetition to learn concepts like impressions, click-through-rates and cost-per-click.  The training videos helped but also the process of establishing ads and reviewing my reports and dashboards have reinforced my knowledge on these principles.

I found Facebook campaigns a bit more complicated.  Much of it is intuitive but they have these three components to advertising that I didn’t get at first: a campaign, ad sets, and ads.  A Facebook rep actually gave me an hour-long training session, so I have it down now.  I learned to use Facebook’s ad manager.  It’s a dashboard for launching and tracking campaigns.  Prior to this, I thought I had to boost posts on my Facebook author page, but that’s the worst method.

For example, I created the video above.  I wanted to use it in multiple campaigns.  The link would always carry traffic to where my book can be bought on Amazon.  However, Amazon has different URLs (web sites) for different countries.  The U.S. is amazon.com while the U.K. is amazon.co.uk and India is amazon.in.  See the complete expanded distribution list below.

Amazon Sites

Those are my ebook prices, although I’ve lowered a few of them, like India and Mexico, since I screen captured that graphic.  The far right column is my profit.  Back to my story.  If I target a Facebook ad to Bangalore, India, and I did, I need the video to link to amazon.in.  And my add targeting the Netherlands needs the link to lead shoppers to amazon.nl.  Everyone in the Netherlands can read in English, and there are more readers in India than there are books in America.

Using my Facebook Author page, I would have to repost the video multiple times, once per Amazon region I was targeting.  Once I learned how to use the Campaign-ad sets-ads feature of the Ads Manager, I only had to upload that video once.  All part of my book marketing learning curve.

Oh, and I subscribed to a basic plan on promo.com to create my video with licensed video and music.  There are a million ways to create videos, but it’s good to use a product that contains a library of licensed content.  Promo is where I got my M-60 tank and music.  I discovered from reviewing my India results that absolutely everyone over there uses a mobile device rather than a desktop computer.  And other research has led me to understand that video is the way to go for mobile advertising.  Time will tell.

No ​Risk, No Reward

09 Saturday Feb 2019

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BBS Check

This never gets old.  Nor is it likely to lead to wealth.  Six pack of IPA though, or a couple of hand-rolled puffers from the local dispensary.  Enough to get me through the winter.

The last time I posted a photo of a royalty check, I received comments voicing concern from publishing the bank routing and account numbers.  Myth.  As you’ll learn from reading my pending sequel to Cyber War I, Full Spectrum Cyberwar, the ACH system is quite secure based on its high degree of authentication.

Crooks can compromise your checking account, but not anonymously.  I don’t make these cyberattacks up.  I interviewed my banker brother-in-law for those specifics while drinking rum at a wedding in Cancun.  Full Spectrum Cyberwar does take some liberties with what my brother-in-law shared with me.  It’s fiction after all.

I’ve improved on my writing from the first book, and have toned down some of the tech talk.  Not entirely though, because that’s the point of it for me.  To tuck away a primer on cybersecurity inside a fictional thriller.  You’ll learn how to confidently auction wares on the dark web.  And how to hack into a wifi server.  I expect this next book to be banned in certain countries.

This blog has been visited by fifty-five countries so far this year.  Including all eight countries currently banned for export by the U.S. State Department.  If I’m not careful, I could be swept up in Mueller’s Russia investigation.  These are risks writers face.  I’m up for it.

 

Royalty Check

01 Friday Sep 2017

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I really feel like retirement is just around the corner.  I can taste it, it’s so close.  Just ten thousand or so more royalty checks per year at this scale and I’ll be living on an island somewhere off passive income.  I’m being cheeky of course.  I should appreciate any sales and I do.  As inconsequential as this check is to my overall financial well-being, it felt good to receive this in the mail.  Fortunately, my electronic fund transfers from Amazon are slightly larger and more frequent.

I’m told 90% of all books never return more than $1000 in their printed lifetime.  My expectations are low.  But I am serious when I tell people that this is a ten year plan.  That I truly hope to be earning a low five figure income once I’m retired.  The trick will be to establish a catalog of a half dozen or so books by then.  Becoming a better writer will help too, and I expect repetition to provide those skills.

Toward that end, I’ll be attending my second writers’ workshop next weekend – the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold Conference.  It’s unfortunate timing as my undergrad alma mater Texas State will be in town to play my grad school CU.  I hate to miss that game but this will be worth it.  I learned tons last year.  And that experience was perfect timing as I’d finished my first draft and the lessons learned aided me tremendously with my second draft.

I’m hoping for this year’s conference to kick-start me on my current draft.  I started writing my sequel to Cyber War I in January but stalled out in May when I changed jobs.  I think I can begin to make time for writing again if I just get motivated and focus.  I need to stop drinking in the evenings like Hemingway and start writing like him.  Looking forward to this workshop.

Still at it

04 Tuesday Jul 2017

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I’m still at it.  Still writing my next novel.  Being a sequel, there will be more similarities than not, but everything will be different to me.  I have different objectives.  I had two goals with the first book, discovering if I could tell a story, and learning the process of writing and publishing.  I’m satisfied I succeeded at both.  Enough people have given me positive feedback that I told a good story, and having completed the publishing process is inherent evidence of achieving my second objective.  This second book will be an effort to improve in everything I sucked at with the first.

I won’t rush it like the last.  I’d finish it again in six months if I could but this year is different.  I’m learning a new job and I don’t care to ignore my running habit as much this time around.  Not that I couldn’t use a few pounds but I gained ten last year.  Taking more time though should lead to a better book.  Cyber War I had enough typos that I’ve only recently fixed them all.  I think.

Going slower should lead to higher quality but I’ll also use better tools and perform more editing.  Using Evernote for the first book worked well but the font was so small I couldn’t see the errors.  I’m now using Scrivener, which contains the notebook-like features of Evernote but has a thousand times more benefits.  It’s the ultimate writer’s toolkit.

I was happy with the editing I received on Cyber War I but it was limited due to the money I put into it.  I intend to spend perhaps double this time.  And of course I’ll take more time to review and respond to the suggested edits.  My step sister Shirley visited me this last week and told me in so many words I could benefit greatly from more editing.  Point taken.

I’m doing other things differently as well.  I have much more of an outline prepared for the sequel.  It’s not complete, like the first I don’t yet know my ending.  I didn’t have an ending for Cyber War I until I was nearly half way through.  My climax came to me during a run and I immediately wrote it before filling in the second half of the story.  That much is true for this book.  I don’t write my chapters serially.  Like Schrödinger’s cat, I write three or four chapters simultaneously, I even move them around before determining a final position of events at closing time.

I can say, and this is probably why I’m blogging on this topic, that I’ve picked up the pace the last couple of weeks on my writing.  It’s not easy with so many other priorities.  Between binge-watching Thirteen Reasons Why, reading three books at once, learning the new job, and hiding from Karen while she’s on a home improvement surge, it’s hard to do it all.

The Kirkus Review

15 Wednesday Mar 2017

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I was slow to warm up to the idea of paying for a professional review.  Not that I was concerned over the criticism, but I simply wasn’t comfortable with how marketing works in this industry.  I’m learning and I’ll leverage this review for some promotional plans.

It’s good feedback too.  Sort of reminds me of working with my editor.  I can’t thank my friends enough who have posted online reviews for me.  Those are like gold.  But, not surprisingly, they contain very little criticism.  That makes receiving professional criticism so much more interesting.  I’ve posted my Kirkus review below, but first here is what I think about it.

There are two negative critiques.  The point of some of my less-than-great writing examples doesn’t bother me.  I rushed this novel with a first draft in 6 months and fully published in 9 months, with minimal editing while working my day job.  I met my objective of getting a book on the shelf.  Plus, that’s really just an example of my writing style that I am okay with.  So no biggie.  The criticism on my character development though stun a bit.  Not just because I know it to be true.  One of my lessons learned was that I’m weak in this area.  Still, it hurts for the review to use my lead character to make this point.  I was somewhat confident on my efforts describing my protagonist.  It’s good criticism though.

I’m totally thrilled by the compliments.  Clearly this reviewer appreciates the tech thriller genre but it made me feel pretty good to be told I did well describing technical detail through dialog.  I initially used a large amount of narrative to describe highly complex topics and received negative feedback on this from my beta readers.  I responded by rewriting it into dialog.  To be fair, I deleted a great deal as well, but good to know my efforts were deemed successful by this reviewer.  Especially since my target audience is technical.  Below is the review.

*****

Computer-security analysts stumble upon plans for a cyberstrike that could immobilize the United States in Mahoney’s debut thriller.

After a security breach involving user IDs, Cyber Business International’s investigators trace the source of the hack to one of its clients, the Arabian Nights Casino in Macau. Rob Warner, who leads CBI’s incident-response team, heads to the Asian territory to investigate. It turns out that Justin Peters, a CBI network administrator there, had been doing work for the casino when someone accessed his privileged user account and wreaked havoc. Rob, however, is suspicious of the casino’s director of cybersecurity operations, Edmund Ho; he may have a grudge against the casino that stems from his demotion after a cyberattack that crippled the local network by flooding it with traffic. Further investigation reveals other players, which leads CBI to predict a similar attack in the United States. But a larger conspiracy may be at play—which would explain why an assassin is targeting Rob. Mahoney’s acronym-laden technological jargon gives his novel an air of sophistication. For example, he intelligently defines terms such as “botnet” and “exploit kit” by context, generally via dialogue between Rob and others, such as Rob’s friend and colleague Bill Johnson. Myriad plot elements along the way keep the tale exciting, including the actions of an American spy and more than one hired killer and a Las Vegas–set final act in which many characters converge. Some oddly structured sentences slow the story down, though, as when Rob questions “flirting with guidelines, well ethics, shoot, the law, like he did in Macau.” The novel also includes little information about its protagonist’s personal life, although it’s abundantly clear that his job is putting a strain on his marriage.

A smart, highly detailed entry in the techno-thriller genre.

*****

Kirkus reviews are known to be almost entirely a rehash of the storyline.  I feel fortunate to receive as much commentary as I did.  The final sentence is what I’ll be able to attach to book covers and other media to promote the book.

The Sequel

10 Friday Mar 2017

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Cyber War

I’ve started writing the sequel to Cyber War I and am interested in feedback and ideals.  I have the outline about 50% complete, and have even written a couple of random scenes.  If you’re interested in how writers write, I outline the story first to a degree that includes not only the storyline, but concepts I want to cover.  That’s where I’m interested in your thoughts.

I’m limited by my genre, tech-thriller, in terms of how much I can stray from the action.  A literary novel could contain unlimited extraneous topics.  Going off topic too much in a thriller loses the audience.  I only added in a single commentary to Cyber War I, that of automation.  My intent was to generate awareness of the current impact of automation in the technology industry.  I did this by expressing various viewpoints through character dialog.  I even shared my partial viewpoint near the end, which might not be good form but still, I think readers could take away their own point of view without me having added too much bias.  I’ve had feedback on the corporate culture in the book, but that was really just coincidental as part of the story setting.  I wasn’t trying to make any point with that.

The next book will of course focus on the same topic, cyberwar, which is a cyber attack between nation states.  I intend to add in commentary on big data and data privacy, which I think are highly correlated, much in the same way I commented on automation in the first book.  Do you think I’m missing anything else that is very close in topic to cybercrime?  Something that would be relevant and topical?  And a natural fit with hacking?  I need to do research on these topics ahead of time; that greatly speeds up the writing effort.

By the way, this graphic will very likely be my cover for the second book.  Any thoughts on that?  Any characters, for those of you who read the first, you care to see return?  Any that need to die?  Crowdsourcing here.  This is your opportunity.

Weeping Angel

08 Wednesday Mar 2017

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Any Doctor Who fans?  If so, you should appreciate the reference to the weeping angels from that show, and perhaps understand why this is such a clever name for an exploit kit to hack into Samsung TVs considering how the CIA uses it in collaboration with MI5 – or the Brits.

I’m referring of course to this week’s data dump of classified CIA material on their hacking program, actually their toolkits, by WikiLeaks.  Much of the news hovers around the ethical concerns of the CIA hacking into American citizens’ Internet-connected Samsung TV sets to listen in to their conversations or track what shows they watch.  Or the issue of them not sharing exploits with vendors.  I’m not interested in that.  It’s all inference anyway.  All we really know is the software programs they use, in conjunction with other European agencies, to electronically eavesdrop.  Personally, I’d be disappointed in them if they didn’t have some cool capabilities like this.

I might be more technical in this area than you, but to let you know, I’m not really all that savvy on how these exploits work.  Which is why I think you might find my take-away from this event interesting.  You should be able to identify with my high-level understanding.  Understand it is really quite possible for a hacker to eavesdrop on your conversations, to hack into your iPhone, to capture your sensitive WhatsApp texts before they are encrypted.  For Pete’s sake, last week’s news was about two million internet-connected teddy bears, from Spiral Toy’s CloudPets, making their customers’ conversations available online.  The point isn’t that the CIA uses these tools, it’s that anyone can use these tools.  It’s that these tools exist.  There is no assurance of data privacy.

In Cyber War I, I explain to readers about how ransomware works and to be aware.  I give some technical details on several aspects of hacking and cybercrime.  I intend to go deeper and explore other dangers in my sequel.  I hope you enjoy this information; I’ll try to blog more on these topics.

If you’re looking for assurances, there aren’t very many.  For online protection for when you don’t mind the inconvenience and are uber concerned on protection, consider employing two-factor authentication.  At least on financial sites.  This is typically a process of logging into a site with your password (something you know), and a passcode that gets sent to your phone (something you have) during the login process.  More and more sites are adopting this, but leave it to you to use it.  It probably won’t be available on your TV any time soon.

Color Mode

25 Saturday Feb 2017

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This is a bit geeky but I want to share some of my lessons learned as a survivor of the indie publishing process.  This mistake cost me some money because I bought a handful of books to sell on consignment at a local bookstore before discovering this problem.  The issue was some of the text in my book was a lighter shade of black than the rest of the text.  I had two shades of black.  Turns out, there are maybe 1004 shades of black.

RGB represents the three primary colors of red, green and blue.  Computers and TVs, essentially all monitors, output color in RGB because they are working with light.  Think the colors of the rainbow.  All the colors of the rainbow combined are white.  You see the white in the middle of the RGB Venn diagram above.  Conversely, when there is zero light, a monitor screen is black.  RGB is represented by 0 to 255 values for red, green and blue respectively.  Based on what I just said, 0,0,0 is black and 255,255,255 is white.  Microsoft Word outputs fonts in RGB because it assumes it is outputting to your computer screen.  Your printer converts RGB fonts to CMYK as you print.

Which brings us to CMYK or Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key.  Key means black because the last letter in black is “k” and “b” might lead you to think blue. Your printer isn’t dealing in light like a monitor, it’s working with ink.  Think a box of crayons.  You were told in elementary school that all the colors of the rainbow make white, but you could never get all your colors to come out as white no matter how big your box of crayons.  CMYK is represented by values from 0 to 100.  Hence, the Venn diagram above yields black for the 0,0,0,100 combination of C, M, Y and K.  Black and White are on opposite ends of the spectrum for RGB vs CMYK.  And they use a different amount of pixels, 256 vs 101 per color setting.  Make sense?

When I had to use Adobe InDesign for my book layout and create print and ebook formats for my publisher, I didn’t know that this graphics package was preparing my fonts for a printer and converting MS Word fonts from RGB to CMYK.  This alone would not have been an issue had it converted everything to the same color mode.  For some reason my MS Word fonts had two different values for black.  Or at least they converted to two discrete values.  One was a default setting for black that InDesign calls Black, for which the CMYK values are 0,0,0,100.  Or maybe 100,100,100,100.  I forget but think both sets of values are equal.  The second default setting was called Registration.  Its CMYK values are various numbers for each of the four settings.  The result is a lighter shade of black.

My publisher, Ingram Spark, which is really a distributor as I have my own publishing firm, Lobo Media, returns an electronic proof to me to look for issues with my print uploads.  Had I actually printed it, I might have noticed the color disparity.  I only reviewed them online though, and guess what?  The CMYK values don’t contain nearly as many pixels as RGB, think 100 vs 255 as printing is at less resolution than display monitors, so I could not discern the disparity on my screen.  It shows up in ink on paper, but not on a monitor.

I think the lesson here is to print out at least part of your proof to look for printing errors.  I’m blogging this because it was a topic of discussion at my book signing Thursday night.  I signed and gave away my leftover copies that contained the misprint.  They are totally readable, but flawed.  While Karen was walking around assuring everyone that the kinky sexual preferences of the book’s protagonist were entirely fiction, I was having conversations on color mode.

Marketing Plan

24 Friday Feb 2017

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cake

Last night, I got my cake, and got to eat it too.  That was how it felt to talk about nothing other than my book with friends for a two hour happy hour, that stretched into five hours. Don’t ask me how bakers can make photo-realistic frosting.  It involves printing and leaves me with the impression we’ve gone as far as we’ll ever go with technology.

ellie-n-chase

Ellie and Chase focused on the eats while the adults imbibed beverages.  Chase’s mom Wendy hosted this book signing for me and I can’t thank her enough.  Such a sweetheart.

suzy

A couple of other events competed for my neighbors’ attention last night, but Suzy picked hanging out with authors over more socially responsible activities.

fam

Last night’s book signing kicks off my marketing plan.  My ebook will go on sale for 99¢ Sunday.  I’ll follow that up with some advertising – a $25 or $50 investment on Facebook and maybe something on Amazon.  I expect a Kirkus review in early April, about the same time as I hope to have my book on display at the Tattered Cover.

blaine-and-doug

You might be able to find these two characters in my book.  Doug represents all Security Analysts.  Blaine is the source for some of my dialog.  He’s promised to help me launch my website, which is key to my marketing plan.  Blaine has also published several books and is guiding me on next steps.  He thinks he knows more than me, and he does; but I think I have the better cover design.

Bath Time

22 Wednesday Feb 2017

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dr-teals

Want to know how I do it?  How I run so much for an old man?  I’ll tell you how I do it.  After running long runs, which I consider to be 12 miles plus, I soak in epsom salt.  Cost about $4 a bag.  Cheap thrills.

This will be my first week to run over 50 miles as I train for the Colorado Marathon in May. I’ll be running two or three 12 mile or longer runs per week for the next ten weeks.  That’s a lot of baths, but Dr. Teal can go the distance.  I probably won’t need to buy a second bag.  Much more affordable than a massage.

I ran 12 miles today.  Taking off tomorrow to drink like Hemingway at my book signing.  Stop by for happy hour 4 to 6 at 2020.  I’ll be running 15 miles on Saturday if you want to join me out on the trail.

Book Signing @ 2020

08 Wednesday Feb 2017

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The Boulder Bookstore still has copies of my hardcover if you’re interested in attending my book signing Thursday, February 23rd.  They are shelved in the Local Authors section.  There are even some paperback editions in Longmont at Local Editions at 17th and Harvard.

book-signing

My friend Wendy has been so gracious to set this event up for me.  Some people still think writing is cool.  She emailed some people and sent out a Nextdoor invite.  I figure this blog post should capture anyone not on either communication.

2020

I’ll order some food trays and it will be a cash bar.  Happy Hour prices though.  The event time is 4 to 6, although you can stay for dinner.  They generally serve one entre but are otherwise small plates and pizza.  My neighborhood also has Mexican, Thai and BBQ.  I’ll tell you where this story came from, answer any questions, and let you know about my next book.

Amazon Reviews

03 Friday Feb 2017

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The reviews are finally starting to roll in on Amazon.  Nothing on Goodreads or Apple iBooks yet.  I think I would be happy even if they were all 3 stars.  It was nerve-racking, waiting for reviews to appear.  And just having reviews of any sort is critical to promoting further sales.

Reviews are inherently subjective, but I would give myself 4 stars.  As a debut novelist, my skills aren’t quite there yet to give myself 5 stars.  I know where the weaknesses are in the writing.  I give myself four though because I am satisfied I accomplished what few others have done, which is to convey fairly technical information on cyber attacks in a digestible fictional story.  I read a few books in the sub-genre and can tell you, no one else has done this.  I’ll add that I just discovered a book written by a German author that looks promising, but everything else merely references cyber attacks in the title, and give near zero details in the book.

Of course, this is also one of my book’s major distractions.  I broke the rules of the genre to get so technical.  I was warned.  But I wasn’t necessarily writing to sell a million copies. Like my blog, I was writing for myself.  And what myself wanted to do was to relate a computer security primer as a fictional read.  I did, based on advice from beta readers and my editor, delete thousands of words.  I also moved much of the technical narrative into dialog – that helped make it more readable.

So most of the reviews reference how technical the book is.  One review clearly phrases it as a criticism, which is totally fair.  It’s a no-no for a thriller to get so in the weeds.  I was ready for that critique though.  Very curious to see what else readers will comment on.  One of my early beta-readers said he couldn’t read it because it was so in-your-face political.  He didn’t provide examples and I have no idea what he meant.  My undergrad is in poli-sci and I feel confident I didn’t intentionally insert political commentary.  My characters had points of view, very few of them were mine.  Beyond politics, there are some easter eggs in there I’m waiting for readers to challenge.

Amazon and Goodreads allow me to comment on reviews directly online.  I have been advised by other authors to not do that.  I probably will though.  It’s review season people.  Review early and review often.

Fiction Writer

28 Saturday Jan 2017

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pan-am

Karen has begun to read my novel.  Apparently she is feeling obligated considering I dedicated it to her.  I didn’t expect her to appreciate all the technical content.  If my story weren’t fiction, it would be non-fiction.  I imagine writers are motivated for various reasons; part of my desire was to relate a computer security primer.  The technical content is rather dense in places and it’s fair to say I wrapped a story around a scientific white paper.  But that’s not what Karen is all worked up about.

The thing about writing fiction is everyone questions where the imagination comes from.  I find I’m not able to get away with saying, “I just made that up.”  Not in this house.  So I’ve developed a string of responses, depending on the question.  Like, “that really happened,  I pulled it from the news.”  Or, “I used that name because it’s generationally accurate.”  If you’re a writer in a similar position, constantly defending your actions, or your writing, please share some of your defensive responses with me.  I’m running low.

The most dangerous subject matter is of course sex.  I believe my book to be pretty tame.  In fact, writers label my style of writing on sexual content, “closed door” sex.  It’s not graphic by any means.  But that doesn’t mean Karen isn’t mad at me.  I might have included some locker room talk.  Nothing in comparison to Trump’s pussy-grabbing banter, but then I’m not a billionaire.  There is talk of Asian women, Chinese Xiaojie, and an affinity by my protagonist for uniforms in bed.  Excuse me for thinking outfit fetishes were mainstream.

Read my book and tell me if I’m weird.  Seriously, I just made all that stuff up.

Last Day

26 Monday Dec 2016

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hyde-park

This is my last day of the holidays in Texas.  Driving home tomorrow morning.  These are some highlights.  Eating out is always one of my favorites in Austin.  We’ve been dining at the Hyde Park Bar & Grill for thirty years.

book-for-mom

It’s so hard to shop for your parents when they already have everything they need.  I simply wrote a book and wrapped that up for my mom.  Writing a novel this year didn’t make me exceptional in this crowd.  I enjoyed the discussions with Mark and Paige on their novels.  Paige has published several and Mark is still editing his first.

papa-reading

It’s a tradition that Papa always reads for the girls on Christmas Eve.

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Brit, Ellie and Rachel dressed up fancy on Christmas day.  Ellie and Brit ran every day too.  They ran a ten miler one day, to counter the extreme eating.  No matter how many times I got them down to Town Lake, Brit would run past the bridge where she was supposed to cross, running farther than planned.

bnw

The fancy dresses didn’t last long.  I recall seeing them mostly in their pajamas.

santa-gift

I always get the best gifts from my brother-in-law Chad.  This package included a Batman onesie and even funnier coffee cup.

grandkids

Each year includes a photo on the stairs of the Collier-Mahoney-Campbell grandchildren, from Brit the oldest to Liam the youngest.  We’ll end today with some laser tag and dinner at Matt’s El Rancho.

Indie Publishing

10 Saturday Dec 2016

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For anyone interested, this is a short primer on self publishing a book.  Made shorter yet, because I undoubtedly skipped a few steps.  All I can relate though is my experience.  I equate self-publishing with acting as your own general contractor on a large home improvement project.  You can hire out any task that a traditional publisher would do for you, or you can choose to do it yourself, or some tasks you can choose to skip.  You don’t need no stinking permit.

My first step was to write a first draft.  This was more than an outline, it was a cover-to-cover story, and it made me confident that I could continue the writing and publishing process.  Near the end of my first draft, I began peppering a writer friend with questions on what my next steps should be.  The key step I missed already was that I should have been participating in a writer’s critique group, eliciting feedback on my manuscript as well as providing others my critiques.  This process not only helps to progress your story, it forms a network of contacts in the industry.  This is something I’ll do earlier on my next book.  In fact, I’m already in one group and plan to start up another.

My next key step was to attend a writer’s conference in Denver, sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers.  This turbo-charged my progress, providing me with invaluable information on both the industry and writing itself.  The cost was in the $500 range, so it was my first real financial commitment, but so worth it.  You can only learn so much googling information online.  There is nothing more powerful than attending sessions with real people and networking.  I  learned here that I needed business cards, which I then purchased for $15.

The business cards led me to license what would become my cover art.  I bought a graphic from Dreamstime for $15, which I later increased my usage rights for $69.  The initial license allowed me to use the graphic for my blog and websites and business cards, as well as 500,000 copies of my book.  This would have been fine but I was nervous that I didn’t fully understand the license terms and increased my digital rights to be safe.  I think many writers spend a few hundred dollars having something original created.  I believe you want your cover art well before you actually publish to use for early marketing.

Marketing should start early.  I could argue that I began to relate my efforts in my blog after my first draft was complete.  That’s something.  I still have not created a website.  I plan to over the Christmas Holidays but I did purchase a couple of URLs for about the price of my business cards.  One for my story title and another for my publishing firm.  You don’t need to establish a publishing firm but I was advised to and did it even though I wasn’t clear I understood its importance.  Turns out it is nice for other steps in the process like registering a limited liability corporation.  Also not necessary but if I make any real money it will be good for financial record keeping.  It cost $35 to register an LLC with the State of Colorado online.

Along with establishing a business entity, you should register with the IRS for an EIN, an employee identification number that is the business equivalent of a social security number.  This isn’t necessary either but again is wise.  The EIN, LLC and publishing firm were all good to have for when I opened up a checking account at the bank.  With these things in hand, I was able to register an account with a publisher.  I went with Ingram Spark.  Their role is essentially a distributor.  You could register directly with Amazon or Apple iBooks.  You will want these financial items in any case as you’ll need to setup an electronic bank transfer for your expenses and royalties with these publisher/distributors.

I took care of these business tasks while my book was with an editor for three or four weeks.  This included spending another $100 plus on ISBN codes.  As an indie publisher, I didn’t need to hire an editor.  I already had my second draft by this time and I was gaining confidence that it was readable.  I am so glad I hired an editor.  My third draft, based on her suggestions, is a thousand times better.  This cost me $800, which was very reasonable for my number of pages.  I could have hired additional editing services, like someone to check for typos or someone to design my cover and book layout before publishing.  I had help from friends on correcting typos.

Sort of wish I’d have paid what is called a book coder to design my book layout.  Might have cost me a few hundred dollars, but I still had to spend money buying a copy of Adobe InDesign.  I’m actually subscribing to an online version for $29 per month.  Having to learn how to use this software was harder than I anticipated.  The really difficult part is not knowing the format expected by publishers.  The print versions were straightforward but designing the eBook took me a full week to get right.  Actually two weeks if I count the time it took to fix an issue I discovered after reading the iBooks sample.  I could write another blog on just that process.  I probably will.  Ping me if you have questions on self-publishing.  Happy to share my experience.

Vacation Day

09 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by in Running

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first-mileI took today off.  I’ve been working twelve hour days lately, waking up at 5am to host 6am calls with India.  I need the hour prep and two cups of coffee to wake up enough to lead a call.  I’ve had zero time to run during the work week.  I just got in eight miles today though on a snow-covered trail in 25° and full sunshine.  These photos are from last weekend’s Colder Bolder 5K.

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This old looking guy behind me is actually ten years my senior.  He ends up beating me across the finish line by five seconds.  I didn’t exactly run this race slow.  That old man is fast.  I came across another older runner on the trail today, probably about my age actually.  We ran together for about two miles.  I left him at my four mile turn-around.

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Running across Varsity Bridge in this photo, fatigue set in like a double chin.  A half mile remains from this bridge and I maintained a strong pace, but coasted more than kicked.  I ran strong throughout and didn’t feel the need to hurt myself with a final sprint into the field house.  I ran much harder than I expected and enjoyed every breath of it.  Today’s trail run was just as awesome.  Perfect cold-weather running.  Looking forward to a good winter.

Since I’m all about marketing my book now, I’ll point out the links in the upper left.  Not sure if they show on a mobile device, but will be there on a computer screen.  One takes you  to an ebook edition at Apple iBooks.  The other links are to order print editions at Amazon.  Buy several as Christmas gifts for your techie friends and family.

Published Online

01 Thursday Dec 2016

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The book is starting to show up in various online venues.  I’m really disappointed in Amazon because the book is creeping onto their system so slowly.  They do offer the hardcover but just now finally added the price.  Amazon doesn’t show my cover image yet, Apple and B&N show it.  Few of the venues offer the ebook yet which is ironic.  I’m told full launch could take a week or two.  Amazon added a couple dollars to the price I set for the paperback – which I suspect they will keep.  If you want to buy this at a bookstore, until it is stocked, which might be never, you will need to ask them to order it.  They should have it in their catalogues.  These links should take you to the respective sites.

Amazon Paperback

Amazon Hardcover

Apple iBooks ebook at $11.99 standard selling price

Barnes & Noble paperback at $11.49 best deal

My favor to ask of anyone who reads this is to please submit a review online.  That’s the biggest thing that will help sell the book.  Assuming it’s positive.  And really, if the review is somewhere in between, but helpful to other readers in terms of being descriptive, that’s great too.  I sort of think bad reviews are helpful too in that it will steer the book to the right audience.  Receiving reviews will be an interesting process.

One of the more complicated aspects to writing a book is taking criticism. Maybe not taking it so much; after working decades in corporate America, I have pretty thick skin. But knowing how to take that criticism and do something constructive with it is an art form. I can structure my critique groups into three categories. The friends and family I submitted my first draft to. A critique group. And my editor.

Let me start out by apologizing to my friends and family for sending them something so rough it probably was not readable. I was advised not to use friends and family because they wouldn’t want to hurt my feelings by commenting. That’s probably true. Most never gave me feedback. Could be they were too busy to read it but more likely they didn’t want to hurt my feelings. A few were less sensitive. A friend suggested to me that anyone who reads probably at some point thinks they want to write a book. I agree with that. I suspect my friends who took the trouble to provide feedback did so because they enjoyed being part of the writing process. I was actually counting on that.

Then there was my critique group. The mistake I made with this group was I started too late. You should begin with a critique group as you start writing in order to get instant and constant feedback. But I didn’t know what critique groups were until I’d already completed my first draft, and didn’t join one until I had my second draft.

Then there was my editor. Awesome feedback from her. Hours if not days and weeks worth of suggestions and corrections and rewrites. That sums up my three sources of criticism. The art form is in what to do with criticism.

Being my first book, I’d have done well to simply do what everyone told me. The feedback from friends and family was generally safe stuff that wouldn’t hurt my feelings. Make it less technical. Fix glaring errors. I did all that.

The feedback from my critique group tended to be genre specific and basic rules of writing. The genre stuff was to keep my story moving. Delete anything extraneous. Delete commentary that doesn’t deal directly with the story. I mostly ignored that. And this is where the art comes in. This is where I took risks because as a new writer, what do I know? I was advised by yet another writer to take everything with a grain of salt and make my own decisions on what to change and what to keep. I did.

I struggled much more with my editor’s critiques than with my critique group. She read half the book before responding to me so she had more context behind her than my peers who would only read ten pages at a time. And she’s just good at what she does. I probably accepted 90% of her suggestions.

I’m more than a little nervous waiting to read reviews on my book. Worse thing would be to not have any reviews. My expectation though is to have a little of everything. Good reviews will be awesome, they’ll help sell the book. Otherwise they won’t be nearly as interesting as bad reviews. I’ll totally discount the trolling, but most bad reviews will be constructive to an extent. And I’ll have to consider them just as I did with the criticism I received while writing my three drafts. I’ll have to decide what I want to accept and what to discard. Ironically, some negative criticism might actually flatter me. Readers might think I’m writing my personal position, but if it was really only a specific character’s point of view, I’ll accept that as good writing.

 

Ransomware

29 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by in cyber war, Novel

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This week’s ransomware attack against San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency underscores just how real the events in my Cyber War I novel are.  My soon-to-be-released story is fictional of course, but I didn’t make this stuff up. These attacks I describe are literally off the front pages.  This attack requested 100 bitcoin, roughly $70,000, to free their ticketing systems.

I mirror another true story from last year where a hospital was attacked, requesting a similar ransom.  My story details this attack vector and how you might recover from an attack.  Hint, backup your system, preferably offsite.  While farfetched, you might even get lucky and find your files still unencrypted in your trash bin.  It doesn’t hurt to look.

Hope you appreciate this small computer security primer.  It’s really a thinly-veiled attempt at self-promotion for my book.  I’m in the marketing phase of book writing and publication.  If I were serious about it, I’d have started marketing more aggressively months earlier.  And I’m too cheap, or just not committed enough, to drop 100s if not 1000s of dollars into book promotion – so I am leveraging my blog.  Hoping my book will be available by end of week.

File Upload

26 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by in Novel

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I became a published author today.  Maybe.  I’m not really sure.  I clicked on some buttons to upload my novel Cyber War I to Ingram Spark.  They claim to have a fully automated publishing process, but the final message on my screen suggested I wait a couple of days to hear back.  That’s funny on multiple levels for me.

A technology theme I emphasize in my story is automation.  Different characters present various points of view.  My personal view is complicated but to be clear, I’m no Luddite.  My objective in the book is to give the topic attention, to gain awareness; because I suspect many people equate automation to robots and consider it a futuristic thing.  My point is it’s already happening.

The other funny angle to this is based on perspective.  Ingram Spark is automated after I performed serious manual book layout design work.  I had to subscribe to Adobe’s InDesign graphic design package, design the layout of all pages in between the covers, and separately design the cover.  None of this was rocket science but it was significantly more technical than formatting pages in Microsoft Word.  My sweetheart editor walked me through designing the layout for my internal pages.  I spent three hours last night and seven hours today working on my cover designs.  One for the ebook, another for the paperback, and yet a third for the hardcover.

I received a couple of error messages after uploading, both related to my covers and not the text.  The error messages were clear enough I was able to fix the issues and resubmit.  Ready for the next phase of publishing when I hear back from them.  Now off to shower before meeting up with a buddy to watch the CU/Utah game at Folsom Field.

Self Promotion

17 Monday Oct 2016

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The time has come.  If I count the three years I spent blogging inside the IBM firewall, then I’ve been steadily blogging, at least weekly, for ten years.  Which means, I’ve established my digital presence.  Next step is to leverage my online persona for commercial gain.

Because I’m on a path to indie publish my pending novel, target date Thanksgiving, I won’t have the benefit of the promotional activities performed by a traditional publisher.  I’m okay with that.  I won’t be nearly as successful on my own than if I worked with a traditional publisher, but this isn’t about the money.  And I find navigating the editing and publishing process as interesting as writing.  It’s work, but it’s interesting.  Being a product manager, many of the activities mirror my day job, launching new computer security services.  A good number of the writers I’ve met are intimidated by the publishing process.  I’m confident I have the needed skill set.  Plus, I have some friends advising me along the way.

I’ve debated over whether or not to use this blog.  When I went through cancer a couple of years ago, I fired up a new blog to capture that experience.  This is more than simply a runner’s blog, it’s my life story, but that content seemed too different to me.  And it was a bit graphic, so I kept it separate.  What I learned from that though is if I establish a new blog to promote my writing, or even a business facebook page, I won’t benefit from the many years I’ve spent curating the content in this blog.  I haven’t contributed new content to my cancer blog in two years so I don’t expect it to receive many hits.  Occasionally it will receive one hundred hits in a single day but it typically receives about three views per day.  This blog receives thirty views per day on average, sometimes three hundred.  Math suggests I leverage my running blog for what it’s worth rather than starting something from scratch.

I’ll make blog titles and use photos to make the content clear up front.  That way readers not interested don’t have to click.  Running sites that link to my blog will have a head’s up it’s not the typical running content.  My blogs are only about 70% running related as it is.  390 running topics out of 565 total.  And I don’t feel bad about leveraging my blog for self promotion.  I do quite a bit to keep this site commercial free.  I pay a premium fee for what would otherwise be a free site at WordPress, in order to keep advertisements off my site.  Although to be honest, I don’t do that for you.  I do it for the aesthetics.  I find the ads ugly and distracting.

I’ll also go beyond just self promotion.  I’ll strive to contribute original content that, other writers at least, might find interesting.  I’ll include details on my self-publishing costs.  $1000 to date, and I’ll itemize those expenses in future posts.  I’ll describe the process as I learn it.  I know there are plenty others interested in writing and self publishing.  In an age when most of what you read online is click-bait, I feel good about producing original content.  I’m sharing here what I intend to use for my book’s cover art.  Let me know what you think.  Or if you have other suggestions on something that would speak to cyberwar, which is the topic of my techno-thriller.