My book is now available!

Just to let everyone know, my second published book is now available. I just sent an e-mail to spread word to friends and family. I will copy and paste that e-mail right here...

Hey everyone. How's it going? I hope well. I'm actually writing to inform everyone that I have another book out, about, and available for purchase. I feel rejuvenated in the new year, have several projects either finished, halfway complete, or in the starting stages, and have a feeling that you'll see more than one published work from me this year (hopefully).

The book that I just finished, entitled The Serious Scale of Sarcasm: More Balanced Than a Drunken High-Heeled Clown on a Tight Rope, is a nice bit of creme-filling in between the two crunchy bits of cookie. My next project (which is complete) is a non-fiction book that won't be winning any Marcia Brady Awards for smiles it provokes throughout its reading. Between that and a compilation of poetry, I thought it'd be a good idea to write a book that is a bit lighter in substance and hopefully provokes a good chunk of laughter, especially to those who don't have a tendency to waddle around while they walk from a gigantic stick having been implanted into their derrière.

I like to compare this book to a hybrid of authors/works: David Sederis-George Carlin-Al Franken. No, I'm not nearly as famous as those three (and perhaps not as talented), but there are humorous personal stories that are shared in this book, much in the manner of Sedaris. The book doesn't shy away from wise cracks, kind of like Carlin (without the profanity). I also discuss, in depth, a few topics of interest, especially in the political world, reminiscent of Al Franken.

I had a jolly ol' time writing and organizing this book to be what it is. I hope others get just as much pleasure from reading it. The book can be found at lulu.com at first and hopefully amazon.com, bordersstores.com, and barnesandnoble.com in the upcoming days/weeks. The specific Lulu URL is: http://www.lulu.com/content/722238
You could also just type my name in the search option or the title of the book at Lulu's homepage (lulu.com). As the book hasn't been posted at other retailers quite yet, there is no specific URL to find the book at those sites. But, their homepages are at: Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and bordersstores.com.

Just a side note here. While this book doesn't truly contain any profanity, it does contain material that may not be suitable to children, because of certain jokes and certain topics that it covers. If I had to rate these as films, I would've rated Seasons Come, People Grow: A Poetic Journey with a PG and I would rate The Serious Scale of Sarcasm: More Balanced Than a Drunken High-Heeled Clown on a Tight Rope with a PG-13.

I keep attempting to legitimize the final price of the book to myself, but I have to admit, I'm not too thrilled with the price this time around. There were some changes in the Lulu world from when I published my last book there. For some reason, customers "allegedly" complained about there being different prices on Amazon and Lulu, so Lulu enforced a new policy of the prices needing to be identical. Unfortunately, other retails (amazon, border, barnes and noble, etc.) seek a great deal of profit for each and every book sold, so unless my book was 100 pages or less, the chances are that it may be a bit on the overpriced side. It being 236 pages, the absolute lowest I could price it was $15.80, so that's where we're going to start. Because of that, and get this, for every book sold outside of Lulu, I will receive no profit. I initially priced the book at $12.50, so I felt it'd be ridiculous to raise the price any for a slight profit. But, since the initial price was $12.50 and I will receive no profit from any other retailer, I thought I'd make a deal with everyone. For every book bought off Lulu, I will send you $3.00 back, so that you're only paying close to the $12.50 I had initially proposed. All you'll need to do is forward me the thank you letter you receive from me to ensure me that you did indeed by a book off Lulu, along with the address which I should send the money to. This can only take place, however, if you buy the book off Lulu. I won't receive any profit money from any other retailer, so I won't have any royalty money to send back to the buyer. You're welcome to buy it at Bordersstores.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Amazon.com, etc. The book's circulation is more important than the money it generates. Also, if $12.50 is even too much, the book can be downloaded off Lulu for $3.25. This book is 52 pages longer than the first with 60,000 more words, so the $0.80 hike in price isn't awful, I suppose, but I was iffy on the initial price of the first book, so I wanted to drop it this time around. But, what can you do? If the $15.00 was too much, the price of the first book has been lowered to $10.00. Also, the cheapest form of shipping is the USPS Media Mail option, which is $2.48 for one book. With this, it'll take approximately one week to manufacture the book and ship it.

Breaking down the price, it costs two cents per black and white page on the interior (236 x .02 = $4.72), costs an additional $4.53 for the cover and binding, which brings the total production cost to $9.25. Retail makes $6.55 off every book sold. That's equivalent to 41.4% of the total book value. Those greedy punks. Because of that, the final price is $15.80. On Lulu, I receive 80% of the profit, so 80% of $6.55 is $5.24 (33.2% of total price) and Lulu receives 20% or $1.31 (8.3% of total price). I'd like to note that the three blank pages at the very end (234-236) were a necessary requirement to make the final page total divisible by 4. It was initially 233 pages, but, as math will tell us, that is in no way divisible by 4. I also made sure to include a table of contents section in the first edition. I'm also going to work harder at the marketing game this time around. I'll probably try to utilize MySpace a little more fully, will attempt to spread fliers, set up book signings, contact celebrities who are affiliated with book clubs, sarcastic humor, etc. I'm also going to walk around and ask random people if they're millionaire investors and if they'd like to aid a young, aspiring author. We'll see how that goes. If any of you know any millionaires willing to dish a few bucks out here and there or would be willing to help spread word in any other way, please feel free to let me know.

Alright, well, that's all I can think to write for the time being. I hope all is well. Feel free to write any time, and I hope you enjoy this book as much or more so than the last. Take care.

Sincerely,

Craig