I recently received an email from an indie author bookstore that wants to stock my books.

My response is not elation or gratitude, it's suspicion.

I think this industry is making me a cynic.

Anyhow...

P.J. Boox http://pjboox.com/ was started by "award-winning(?) author and illustrator, Patti Brassard Jefferson in the summer of 2015. Brassard describes herself as a self-published author who released her first book with an indie publisher (how does that work?) and so on and so forth to the end that apparently she can "relate".

Her store only accepts self-published and indie authors (are these not one and the same?), "as well, micro, small press, vanity and subsidy publishers may submit books. Traditionally published large publishing houses and imprints may not."

Already I'm having difficulty with the pitch and wondering if Brassard wrote this how she became an award-winning author? I mean is there a difference between micro and small press? Aren't vanity and subsidy publishers the same thing? Is a traditionally published large publishing house the same as a large publishing house or a traditional publisher? Does the writer know that saying the same thing only using different words is still being redundant?

Anyhow, let's cut to the chase.

Brassard doesn't want to stock my books she wants to rent me shelf space in her store.

For $80.00 and a one time set up fee of $18.00, I can rent a shelf that will fit six books max for four months. If they sell your books in the store you get 98 percent royalty. If you want them to sell them online you ante up another $15.00 set up fee and they take twenty percent.

You send them your books and every month they send you the money you earned that month.

So lets crunch some numbers, shall we?

My novel Abandoned Dreams sells for $9.99. I order six to fill the shelf and have CreateSpace ship them to PJ Boox. It costs $26.57

I add the set up charge and the shelf rental of $98.00 plus the cost of the books for a total of 124.57. If I sell all six books at $10.00 = 60.00, less 2%@ $1.20 = $58.80 net. I'm in the hole $65.77.

What about if I sell more than double that, say 13 books at $10.00 = 130.00, less 2% @$2.40 = $127.60, but printing and shipping has just jumped to $49.07, so I'm still in the red $46.04.

My brain's getting tired but suffice to say I would need to sell about 20 books in four months to break even and just a few less in the next four month cycle to pay the shelf rental considering the setup fee is waived. I fare even worse with books sold online by PJ Boox.

Will a bookstore in a strip mall in Fort Myers, Florida sell more books (a lot more) for me than Amazon considering they have my books available in all major English speaking countries in the world?

So let's sum up shall we? Taking advantage of the offer presented by PJ Boox means more hassle and less profit and grinding my teeth every time I have to think, say or write that ridiculous name.

Sure I want to see my books in a bookstore, but I'm waiting until they pay me rather then the other way around.

Stay Calm, Be Brave, Watch for the Signs

30

Book Giveaway Win a copy of

THE BIG PICTURE, FOREST or ABANDONED DREAMS

Enter at

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway

Video book reviews of self-published authors now at

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My novels, FOREST – Love, Loss, Legend, The BIG PICTURE – A Camera, A Young Woman, An Uncompromising Ethic and Abandoned Dreams are available on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003DS6LEU and as e-books at https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/raglin

The ECO-WARRIORS series:

Book 1, Saving Spirit Bear – What Price Success?

Book 2, Loving the Terrorist - Beyond Eagleridge Bluffs

Book 3, Not Wonder More – Mad Maggie and the Mystery of the Ancients

are available as e-books an paperbacks at

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More of my original photographs can be viewed, purchased, and shipped to you as GREETING CARDS; matted, laminated, mounted, framed, or canvas PRINTS; and POSTERS. Go to: http://www.redbubble.com/people/rodraglin

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Or, My YouTube channel if you prefer photo videos accompanied by classical music

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This year I restarted my shelf space project, which was designed to force me to keep track of the physical space taken up by the stuff I acquire vs. the physical space freed up when I offload things (usually either donating or selling them). Ideally, I should offload more inches than I acquire.

Yeah, that's not going so well. I just looked at the numbers, and so far I've acquired 12.03 inches more than I've offloaded.

Anyway, last year I kept track of everything in an adorable cat-themed journal, but I couldn't seem to keep it up for more than a couple months. This year I'm using LibraryThing for everything, and it seems to be working out better for me.

I'm in a bit of a reading slump. So what do I do? I buy more books. ::sigh:: One thing I want, but haven't ordered yet (and probably won't until there's a Yen Press sale at Right Stuf), is Yen Press's release of the first volume of Kaoru Mori's Emma.

Anyway, here are my latest book selections: 3 e-books, 1 print book.

Bryony And Roses - T. Kingfisher - I'm so behind on T. Kingfisher's stuff, but I wanted to have this on hand anyway. Nine Goblins won me over that completely. Plus, this is a "Beauty and the Beast" retelling, and I tend to be drawn to those.

A Key, an Egg, an Unfortunate Remark - Harry Connolly - I don't read much urban fantasy anymore, but this had a few aspects that appealed to me. One, it's a standalone. Two, Marley, the heroine, sounds awesome. She's older than the average female urban fantasy protag, and she's a pacifist. Three, I read some of the excerpt, and Marley won me over when her nephew came to ask her for a love potion and she was all "You mean a rape spell? Because that's what love potions are."

Tiffany Girl: A Novel - Deeanne Gist - I rely on Wendy the Super Librarian for my Christian romance recommendations, and Deeanne Gist is one of two authors I tried and loved after reading her reviews.

The Dark Wife - Sarah Diemer - A f/f retelling of the Persephone and Hades myth. Based on what I read in the excerpt, it doesn't seem like there's going to be much emotional depth (Persephone goes from "I love Charis, what Zeus did to her is horrifying and awful" to "Hades is enchanting" awfully quickly). Even so, the premise grabbed me.

For the record, my 2015 shelf space count is now at -1 5/8 inches. Oops.

It's all good, though, because I had a fabulous day. Chocolate mousse, books, a couple hours of reading with no one and nothing bothering me, and baby guinea pigs (one litter was only 3 days old!). Here are the books I bought:

The Coelura - Anne McCaffrey - The last time I read this was many years ago. I remember it feeling a bit dated even back then, but I also remember enjoying it.

Ascension: A Tangled Axon Novel - Jacqueline Koyanagi - This one caught my eye back when Grim posted about getting her copy.

vN - Madeline Ashby - A total impulse buy. The publisher description makes it sound like the heroine is maybe half android, half something else. I'm not sure how that works, but I'm intrigued.

Obsidian and Blood (Obsidian & Blood) - Aliette de Bodard - This is three books in one, and so dauntingly thick I almost put it back. Maybe I should have, considering how slow my reading speed is anymore. It sounds really interesting, though. The back of the book says "File under: Fantasy; Magical murder; Aztec mystery; Human sacrifice; The gods walk."

The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya - Nagaru Tanigawa,Noizi Ito - This is a Japanese light novel. I've watched the original anime, plus a couple of the spinoffs, and I own (but haven't yet read) the first book in the series. This is the third, a collection of short stories.

Rurouni Kenshin, Volume 1 (Voyage to the Moon World - Novel) - Kaoru Shizuka,Mark Giambruno,Cindy H. Yamauchi - Another light novel. I don't have high hopes for it, based on my experiences with other shounen manga-based novels, but it was cheap and should be a quick read.

Volumes 4-6 of Dawn of the Arcana - I own volumes 1-3 and have only read volume 1 so far. The artwork is nice, and it has the potential for some really twisty politics and romance. I think this would be a nice one to binge read, and now I can.

Black Gate Volume 1 - Yukiko Sumiyoshi - I know nothing about this one, but it's a 3-in-1 omnibus edition, which gives me plenty to judge it by. I flipped through it and the artwork looks okay.

Aron's Absurd Armada Omnibus, Vol. 1 - MiSun Kim and Aron's Absurd Armada Omnibus, Vol. 2 - MiSun Kim  - Another one I know nothing about. It's in full color and consists almost entirely of 4-panel comics.

Vampire Academy: The Graphic Novel - Richelle Mead,Emma Vieceli,Leigh Dragoon - Okay, so graphic novel adaptations of English language novels almost never work for me, but I flipped through this one and thought the artwork actually looked really nice. It looks like it covers the entire first Vampire Academy book.

I plan to keep track of the amount of shelf space I free up (with donations or selling stuff to used bookstores) vs. the amount new purchases take up, starting today. I have no idea how long I'll manage to keep this up, but I think it'll be interesting (or possibly horrifying) to see how the numbers work out. Naturally, e-books will have no effect (hurray).

Today I donated 5 5/8 inches (sorry to you metric folks) worth of stuff to my library. Which is not a lot, considering that there's a used bookstore shopping trip in my near future.