Publishing Pickpocketry - Beware Penguins Offering Deals

     I had heard dire warnings about allowing Penguin-owned vanity press 'Author Solutions' anywhere near my checkbook.  Author Solutions has been accused of cackling off to the bank with the life savings of over 150,000 very unhappy authors who allege that dealing with Author Solutions was one of the worst decisions they ever made.
     The latest news is that Penguin, after buying Author Solutions about a year ago, has not only NOT cleaned house, they are taking their scam show on the global road.  If you plan to self-publish and want to be shocked and alarmed, read this post from Let's Get Digital:     The Author Exploitation Business 

A Lovely Surprise and a Surprising Reframe

When your only reference for book sales is based on JK Rowling or Stephen King or Nora Roberts or Mark Victor Hanson's runaway "Chicken Soup for the Soul," it's easy to consider your own efforts as not worth snorting at.  My novel, "A Chip in Time" was (only) downloaded approximately 1600 times, although (I confess) nearly all of them were priced at $0. But just today I ran across some very interesting  information presented by the intrepid Jonathan Fields of TribalAuthor.com.

 According to industry wonk, Morris Rosenthal, the average mainstream published book sells a mere 2,000 copies. And, though estimates vary widely, most self-published and POD books cap out at anywhere from a few copies to a few hundred.

Well, now. 

The gurus of manifesting and quantum physicists (ok, ok, the people who popularize quantum physics) all - to a man/woman - say that you get what you subconsciously expect to get.  And that telling yourself better stories is the best method for adjusting said expectations. So I am going to do exactly that, since I am obviously already a pretty successful author, hey-hey, ho-ho.

Expect to hear a lot more from me about purposefully collapsing ye old quantum wave.