I can't force you to buy my book...

but hypnokitteh can.



Check the image of the cover over there on the right. But don't read the message under it because that's meant for the cheap bastards, not you. You are thoughtful and generous and not at all cheap.

The bastard part I'm not sure about because I've heard some stuff. On Twitter. But I'm sure it's all lies.

I need to check with Dennie Heye and Walt Crawford to find if any of their books sell.

(you have no idea how long it took me to figure out how to make the eyes do that... 5 years.)

did I mention, EFFING UNNECESSARY?

the.effing.librarian has published a FOURTH book.

Holy crap.

Here it is. An effing intimate, effing special, effing unique, effing personal and effing affordable collection.

And it can be all yours for $8.99.

$8.99.

I will be truly offended if you don't buy...mmm... five copies.

Perfunctorily, Me, by the.effing.librarian.
ISBN 978-1453698143

I wouldn't have mentioned it, but it just popped up on Amazon. Did I say it's only $8.99? It's sort of a greatest hits collection.

The "$10,000 book" got marked down.

The "$10,000 book" is out. But for circumstances beyond my control, I had to price it at $2,999.99.

And again, this is my reasoning: since no one would buy my books for fifteen dollars, they might as well not buy them for then thousand dollars.

I really wanted to have a book published that would cost $10,000. I wanted to go to Amazon and find my ten thousand dollar book and shout, "Woo-hoo!" Because ten thousand dollars is a lot of money. Or so I thought.

But not so for a book on Amazon. I just did a search and found:

The case of the irate witness: A Perry Mason mystery, and other stories by Erle Stanley Gardner (Hardcover - 1973)
1 used from $55,364,960.99
Seller: Mr. Affordable

And then I see that there are hundreds of other books that are listed for millions of dollars. So pretty much everyone has one goof book on Amazon listed for thousands of dollars or more. And my dream of having one of the most expensive published books faded away.

So my third book, Librarianship: "THIS TIME IT'S PERSONAL": a $2,999.99 book is listed for $2,999.99 and not $10,000. Because then it would have a different title, dummy.

I don't really have anything else to say about it. But as soon as I order a few copies for myself, I will hold a raffle and give a couple away.

But I am working on a fourth book, one that will be priced under $20. Because it seems unfair to anyone who doesn't want to buy any of my books, to not buy them simply because of price. To say, "Oh, the effing librarian isn't worth $2,999.99" isn't much of an argument. I want to give everyone the opportunity to not buy my books, not because they are cheap bastards, but because they think I suck.

The Ballad of the Ten Thousand Dollar Book.

As some of you who know me know, I love pedicures. I love have strangers touch my (size 11) feet. And I'm not above touching strange feet in the library if I'm sure that the kindness will be reciprocated and that my little piggies will get some attention.

Yeah, sorry. I don't know what the hell that was about. I would never think of touching anyone's feet in the library. But ask why I'm not allowed into the Home Depot, and that's a different story entirely.

But anyway, I wanted to tell you about my TEN THOUSAND DOLLAR BOOK. So far, I've compiled two books from posts on this blog and they are for sale on Amazon for $1,000 each. I don't think many people believe that they are real books, but they are. I have copies right here. But since you are cheap bastards, you'll just have to take my word for it.

I publish with CreatSpace, which is an Amazon company. Just like with this Blogger site, I like to keep things under larger companies. I seem to get some perks from posting this crap with a Google company, as my stuff gets crawled pretty frequently and I'm easy to find with a quick search. I see that "the.effing.librarian" returns "About 93,900 results" with Google. But on Bing, I only get "1,050 results." I'm sure the Bing number is more realistic, but which one do you think I'll invite to my parties? Oh, Google, you flatterer. I don't believe a word you say about 93,000 hits. Tee-hee-hee. Now, let's get comfy so you can rub my feet.

So Amazon also offers perks. When I publish on CreateSpace, (after a few days) my book appears on Amazon for sale. And then millions of potential buyers can ignore it and buy something from Thomas Pynchon or Brett Michaels.

I also publish painlessly. Here is the process for the latest, my TEN THOUSAND DOLLAR BOOK:

• I copy and paste blog posts into Word and add some additional commentary and footnotes.
• I have the HILARIOUS IDEA to charge TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS for the book. I know from experience that you won't buy copies at even twenty dollars, so I figure if you won't buy for twenty, then why not charge ten thousand, or a million? It doesn't matter to me; it's print on demand and it costs me virtually nothing to do it. And if it seems too stupid for even me, I can change the price anytime I want.
• I save the book as a PDF.
• I fill in the form with the information for the book. I can't make up my mind on the title, but I know I want "$10,000" somewhere in it.
• I upload the PDF.
• I open the CreateSpace book cover maker (beta) and begin making the cover. I designed the covers for the first two blog books ("blobogoks") and it was such a pain in the ass, that I don't want to do it anymore. I go through the steps: select template design, check. Upload image, fuck.
• It seems that there's some problem between my local image editing program and CreateSpace. My software says my images are the required 300 dpi, but when I upload, CreateSpace says they are some odd configuration that I don't understand. So I try again, 8 times until I get it right. I scale the image, check the settings, save then upload and wait for the "green circle" to tell me the image has been accepted into the cover creator. I have the HILARIOUS idea to place an image of a TEN THOUSAND DOLLAR BILL on the cover... because this is a TEN THOUSAND DOLLAR BOOK.
• The image is accepted, but now I want to see how it looks on different cover designs, so I go through most of them until I find one that looks somewhat stupidish, but not unbelievably stupid, just stupid enough.
• I enter the text for the back cover. It's not funny. So I try again. The last two books were easy because creating the covers from scratch took so damn long, I had time to think about what to write. This time is so fast, I hadn't prepared anything. So I enter something. Then I panic at the thought of typos. This text box doesn't look like it has a spell-check and copy the text into Word to see if I have mistakes. When it looks okay, I copy it back.
• Now I can choose colors for the cover. And this is where I fail. I can't find any colors I like. So I try to find colors I don't like. And I'm successful. The cover is hot purple and lime green. Okay, I lied. I love those colors.
• I go to the page where I enter the proposed book price and I enter "$10,000." And huge red letters appear to inform me that my number has exceeded the maximum price of "$2,999.99." I can't set whatever price I want? FUCK. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity fuck. Fuck.
• Fuck.
• So I go back and start again. Which is good because I notice that I left a "," (comma) in the title that shouldn't be there (or should be there, but doesn't look right within the cover design), so I change it. I also change my name because I had "the.effing" as my first name and "librarian" as my last, and that looked wrong with the missing ".", so I enter "the.effing.librarian" as the last name with no first name. I think the other two books have some odd separation of first and last name, so I don't know how Amazon will group these after I submit, but I don't really care that much.
• And I need to edit my image. So I take the "$10,000" bill and cover the numbers with the new "2,999.99" number. Which doesn't look like crap. I was going to leave it all alone and just never explain why a ten thousand dollar book costs two-thousand nine-hundred and ninety-nine dollars. I'd just leave that to you to ponder.
• Oh, and I need to got back and change all references to "$10,000" in the book also. And resave and reupload the PDF.
• So then I had a manuscript, a cover and a price. And I clicked "submit" to have CreateSpace check the book for printing errors and then tell me if it's okay for publishing. The book has lots of images from posters and things from the blog and I think I saved them to the correct dpi, but since I don't really know how this shit works, I might have to do them again and resubmit the PDF several more times before it's accepted. But then my book will be finished.
• Apart from the actual typing, about 3 hours for all this other crap. Not too bad for a finished book. I imagine that an intelligent person would bang this out in about 45 minutes.

So my TEN THOUSAND DOLLAR BOOK is now a TWO THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED AND NINETY NINE DOLLAR BOOK. And this was its story.

And if you buy one, I will be very very embarrassed for you.

But if you win one, you will be awesome! Yes, when I get a few copies printed, I will give away two copies because that is all I can afford in postage. And it's only for winners with mailing addresses in the United States. So if you non-Americans want to play, begin looking for a friend here in the States who will let you use his address and then you can get the book sometime later when you go to Disneyland or something.

free book

FREE pdf copy of METAL ASS or Fame and Fortune if you send me your email address. For a limited time. I figured it would be unfair to leave without offering. ("my name" at gmail.)

The $1,000.00 book.

BOOK UPDATE!

Due to underwhelming demand, Fame and Fortune and Other F Words is now priced at $1,000!

Your eyes did not lie. That's one THOUSAND dollars. (Yes, U.S. dollars.)

If you didn't want to buy it before, you, for damn sure, wouldn't want to buy it now.

But no matter, the $1,000 edition isn't for you, anyway. The $1,000 edition is only for those who demand to pay as much as possible for ordinary items. It's for people who purchased the $1,000 iPhone app, "I Am Rich." It's for people who tip the valet $100. It's for people who floss.

So, no, the $1,000 edition of Fame and Fortune and Other F Words is not for you. I thought it was for you, so I priced it accordingly, but now I realize I was wrong. The $1,000 edition is for people who absolutely need to spend $1,000 for a paperback book.

So if you can afford it, if you're good enough, if you're classy enough, if you're special enough, buy it.


[Otherwise, email me and I'll still send you the PDF for free, 'cause we're stickin' it to the Man.]

My bad.

You know, I should have mentioned this earlier, but if you ask, I'll email you a PDF copy of my blog book, or blook as they're called. Or is it blobogok? Wait, blobogok is Klingon for "Vengeance is a plate of tuna noodle casserole best reheated at 350°F," so that can't be it. Anyway, free PDF copy of Fame and Fortune blah blah blah if you email me.

That esnips link on the BOOK page only has about 109 pages you can download, but this would be the full 317 pages of stuff you already didn't want to read last year that I'm trying to pawn off again as something new and interesting. Yes, like reheated tuna noodle casserole. Which I happen to like. BLOBOGOK!