No Phone Challenge And Publishing News

Brennamanpublishing.com

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unknown 0:03

Hello. Oh shit.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

I know I need the I need the volume down. I don't think I can do that. I'm gonna tell you right now, I know I already know I'm not gonna last long out here. It's hot. It's damn hot. And in case you can't tell, couldn't tell by my uh reaction, I am for the very first time in a very long time wearing headphones so that I know if I sound like a nutcase. I need to put a pair of these in the car. That's Betty, she's running. Um God damn it. Oh shit. Where's the ball, babe? Oh, there's the wind. There's a tornado. Shrim wires. But judging by the level of heat, it's not gonna hit us. I thought it was going to. It might still hopefully don't knock on wood. But uh I don't think it's gonna. Oh, there it is. Walked right past it a little bit ago. Um. I don't think it'll hit us.

unknown 1:51

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

I don't think it'll hit us because earlier it was uh quite windy and skies were cloudy and it looked like it might rain. And now we have moved to clear skies and uh suffocating heat that makes you think you might be able to cook something in your crotch. Like uh good morning Vietnam. Crotch butt cooking. Morning Vietnam. Anyway. Oh, I finished this inevitable ruin earlier today, and I have started a parade of horrible sh. A parade of horribles. That means I'll probably finish a parade of horribles mid-August. Well, probably first week of August. Because I don't know, because I've started an official I have officially started a podcast challenge. Okay. And mom had an idea for a better challenge, but I don't think I can get anybody else to be on board with me. And the challenge is to not use technology created after your birth year. So for example, we would use my birth year. And nothing created after 1997. Which as I sit here with my legs splayed, playing with the dog in the backyard, feels like it was much longer ago than it was, because I like looking at my gut and the shorts I'm wearing. I feel I feel like a stepdad. I ain't got no woman, I ain't got no woman with kids. I ain't married, nothing like dad, but nothing like a stepdad. One thing I'm missing is socks with my sundales. Oh, we got it. Daddy, let's go. Come on. Okay, go now, it's just getting too hot. Come on. Um but I don't know, without everybody involved in it, it'd be kind of hard to do, you know. So basically, my challenge is to just be on my cellular telephone as little as possible. This challenge is helped. You need to cool off, okay? By the fact. Um, that I just recently has in yet. Put in a house phone. Um, it's very cool. Little side note, I had a we have real old school phones, and I managed to break all three of them trying to put them in because we're trying to get the ringer to work better. It did not. Turns out there's a whole actual reason and shit for it, but it boiled down to I broke the phones. But I mean ultimately they weren't really useful if they weren't gonna ring. And you need them to ring. So I got a retro phone that's modeled after one from the 30s, but it has modern features. And my current phone with our carrier does not actually work most places in the house. So the house phone, I don't know. It's one of those things that I'm willing to pay for, and that's what matters. What was I saying? Oh. So I have the house phone, and anybody who has my number can call me on that. Anybody who does not have our house phone number, uh, you don't need to be talking to me. It has come to and these rules are subject to change as the challenge goes on, but so far I have had to use my phone a couple of times for various things, like and it's not a complete social, like, or not internet ban, because I'm trying to run a business. That requires a website. Since I don't have a brick and since I don't have a brick and mortar location, and even those really need websites these days, what are you gonna do? Um was I saying? Oh. So, unless I come up with a better ruling later, um, the current rule of the challenge is I just have to use my phone as little as possible. Helps me focus. I'm working on starting a new novel. Um, I haven't quite got it all outlined and everything yet. I've been trying to read more this year, which is good. I'm doing good. I've I just earlier today finished my 16th book. I know there are people like booktubers or whatever who claim to be like, Oh, I read like 38 books this month. Fuck you, no, you didn't. No, you fucking didn't. Fuck you. What you did, or at least what I think most of them have done, is they buy the book to use in the video, maybe they skim it, but then they read the Wikipedia for what happens in the book, and they're like, Oh, wasn't that one part devastating? I mean, I don't know any of this for sure, but anytime I see a booktuber who who boasts about how often because then there are some of them who are legit. There's some of them are like, it's July. I've read you know, 15 books this year. I've read 20 books this year. Got it. But the ones who are like, I read 20 books last month, they remind me of that interview with Anderson Cooper where he's going through the warehouse of Game of Thrones props with Kit Harrington, and he's like, Ugh, I'm such a nerd for this. But then he knows nothing about the show. Like he's like, Oh, I am just such a nerd. I just love this show. This is my show. And then he asks, Who wears this? and points to the hound's helm. Anyone who saw the first episode knows who wears the hound helm. It's the fucking hound. It's just It's just past 3 PM, but I am yawning because I have been up and moving or doing something. I spent an inordinate amount of time today trying to figure out a thing on the fun on the website. I don't actually expect and that that's the crazy thing, is I don't actually expect anybody to use this page. What about it there just in case anybody wants to? My original thought was have a tier subscription type shit. Um, like Patreon or whatever, but then I realized I don't actually the we don't publish enough books for that to be a thing. Um like it would be different if it was like five dollars a month and you got a free book every month or whatever. Jesus. I'm may have to do this later if I can't quit, Yanan. But so then my thought was donate. And I had some things on there, and I'm like, why would anyone do that? Because okay, like, for example, I really want a book vending machine to be put somewhere and have Brennan publishing books in it. And my thought at the time was if you donate X amount of dollars to kind of crowdfund our this thing, you'll get we'll send you tokens, and then you will basically get a book out of that. And then I thought about it for more than ten seconds, and I'm like, that doesn't really work. Um, because it's not like they're it's not like they're donating to go for for it to be like nationwide or globally. So I mean, even if I put it wouldn't manage to get a bun of a book vending machine into like the busiest airport in the world. Average-wise the average person donating to that is probably not gonna use it often, right? It's more of a stumble upon it kind of a thing, you know? Like if somebody lives in Boise, Idaho, and they're like, Alright, I'll donate, here's this. They're not gonna come to Wisconsin to use a book vending machine. I'm like, that's fucking done. Just phth, it's gone. That was yeah, that that violent little pop with me doing the t sound directly into the microphone because four years in, I still don't know how to do any of this shit. Um So what's on there right now is if you go onto the page, it says like on BrennanPublishing.com, it says support us. And you go and it says contribution, not subscription. Cause I really am genuinely tired of the fact that everything is a goddamn subscription. I apologize for people who are like me and hate ASMR if that's how that came out. Um, but they're I I'm not only people I live with don't like when I say that, but it's fitting. It's like buying Jesus. It's like buying um a computer program, you know, like Adobe or anything. It used to be expensive, then you had it forever. Like I remember buying RosettaSone for Russian, I think it was like five hundred dollars or some astronomical price like that. It probably wasn't that expensive. I don't know. But I got the whole thing, downloaded it, mine forever. If I found the computer I downloaded it on, or the thing I downloaded it with, I could uh still have it and still use it, right? And now Rosetta Stone's like they're like, instead of one extremely expensive purchase, how about you give us, you know, twenty-five ninety nine or fifty dollars or whatever the hell it costs every single month until you don't want to use it anymore. And some of them I get like, I pay a subscription fee for for our website. And that makes sense to me, because that's an ongoing cost. You know what I mean? By the way, have a website still still against the data centers. Because the you know, it of the Orwellian totalitarian regime that they're helping build, but uh we're not discussing that today, because another part of the podcast challenge is me avoiding so much of the fucking news. The horrors of the real world uh are have already taken away me getting to read the Sunday paper. Because it was driving me crazy. And now that has been replaced by Facebook. And I just I can't function with all that shit, you know what I mean? It's like, oh mo the the bad guys are taking over, oh the DSA wants to abolish the Second Amendment, but Okay, first of all, most of this is probably blown out of proportion. Secondly, I already have the gun and bullets. So if worst comes to worst, I will go out shooting whomever needs shot, right? But until slash if that happens, I still have to exist as a human being in the real world, and I can't do that very well with the entire internet doing its best to drive me fucking crazy. And y'all, it ain't a short drive. So I am trying to limit my internet access to only being on my proper actual laptop computer, not constant fucking phone. We'll see how that goes because those things are programmed to be as addictive as heroin. Um, I was gonna do a thing where I just left it in the car, but with how hot it is, I'm afraid it'd ruin the phone. And whether or not I want the damn thing, it's it it was a quite expensive. I was going to originally go back to a flip phone, but that was also expensive. And I'm, you know, trying to do other shit. I don't have two, three hundred dollars to drop on a phone f fucking phone. Now, somebody wants to give me two hundred dollars? Flip phone, house phone. I'm back in the 90s, bitch. Or 2000s, because it's flip phone. I'm back in 2005, bitch. Um was I Oh. So it on the support us thing on the home on the top part of the homepage, um, there will be two options. One is uh either's like a drop-down menu, and if you click on one of them, it says, We want the next book. Or I think that's what it says. And there are options for your donation or contribution or whatever the hell you want to call it. And this is why I write shit down. I think it's five dollars, and you get your name in the acknowledgments of the next book that we publish. Um ten dollars, and it's I think the next two or three books will have your name and be like, thank you so much, or like, you know, be like, we couldn't do it without you. Boop. In a book that other people will own. And then and by the way, I didn't pick these amounts, Squarespace did, and I just didn't change them. And I think the next one is twenty five? Maybe I don't know, whatever the next one is. It's you get your name in like I think it's the next four or five books published by the company with a thank you or like we couldn't have done this, Roger, in the acknowledgments. And then I think the last option was 50 bucks, and you get your name in all future published books, as well as your name in the dedication of the next Ethan Thomas book, which will be either the third freak house book or the time travel book story that I'm working on. It kinda depends. But more than likely, your name would be in the dedication page of the next freak house book. The other one is I took the book vending machine off the thing off because I'm like, that's that's dumb. Just, you know, save money, pay for it yourself, you lazy prick. The other one is Oh, what is it? It says something like we want new authors or something. They the idea behind the titles was that it was like it was people who are on the website telling me, like, hey, we want different authors. And basically, I do not remember any of the amounts on the button. I do know that I I think this is the one that has a custom option, or maybe they both do. Um and basically it was just one hundred percent of those go to me paying someone to read manuscripts because everybody wants to write a book, and I don't I'm not important enough or ha have the patience enough to work with agents and shit like that. So basically what would happen is if enough people giggive gave money to pay someone to read a bunch of manuscripts, what I would do is I would get a P.O. box and then I would put that on the social media and the website and be like, send your manuscripts. And if there were any conditions, because part of the company's mission statement being we want books oh no, the phone's TV. Part of the whole mission statement of the company being we want books to be affordable means we can't publish huge books, right? We don't have the economies of scale. Trying to sound important how to do. Um, 'cause like I bought the Way of Kings and it is a thick boy. Like you could you could beat a motherfucker to death with that with the mass market paperback. I think I paid twelve dollars. Maybe eleven. I don't know. I don't know. And see, our paperback books are trade paperbacks at mass market paperback prices, right? More or less. More or less meaning, you know, some are eight dollars or were and then some were twelve. So, but our books at ten bucks eats a nice book at an affordable price. Uh, we I pay printing costs based my ear hurts on the size of the book. Um sorry, I just got distracted because I switched headphones so I could air out one ear, and apparently the right side of the headphones either is picking up better or I can hear significantly better in my right ear. Either one was a little distracting. Um Oh, so like I couldn't publish a two hundred thousand page book because I would have like bare minimum for the paperback version, I would have to charge like just real quick. I'll do the math. And see, this is what I'm talking about. Occasionally I need my phone to do math and things. Hold on. I'm gonna pause. Okay, we're gonna use a different example. Um because there's an eight hundred and twenty-eight page limit for the paperbacks, and we might publish a different author at a different size. Um I publish it one size because autism is fun and I like when all the books line up. But so we're gonna use a five by eight book as an example, okay? 828 pages is 178,831.44 words. So on Amazon, because they are a surprisingly affordable printer. And they have a calculator. Others and twenty-eight pages. I'm gonna say okay. Okay. Um it helps being listed on Amazon even though on my website they're cheaper and all that. But I actually went through and looked at other printers and let me tell you, if you want to turn me off from ever using your website or buying anything from you as a company, d all you gotta do to keep me away is put please inquire for pricing. Fuck you, I'm online because I didn't want to talk to anyone. If I wanted to buy something and have to talk to someone, I would have left the house and gone to a fucking store. Please give us a quote, and then you get a hundred and fifty thousand fucking emails over the next two months. Some of the sometimes years. I I there are things where I like multiple years ago that I will still occasionally get texts about and be like, Hey, are you still moving across the country? Like no, I wasn't I was never gonna move to Arizona. It was for a book I want to say the furthest distance and roughly how much it would cost to move. Are you still moving? Fuck you. So, I like that Amazon and Ingram Spark both have calculators. Instead of all of that, get a quote from my shit. They're also pretty affordable. Okay, so for an eight hundred and eighty-two or eight what I say, eight hundred and twenty-eight page book, the printing cost uh for me would be ten dollars and ninety-four cents. So then it would have to be basically um hold on for me to be able to give the author money as well as make money to keep the company running minus ten ninety-four and half. Okay. If I published a book that big, right, and I would charge and it would charge sixteen dollars for it. Okay. Then you subtract the printing cost, I would leave f and then you subtract the half of profits paid to the author, that would leave the company with two dollars and fifty-three cents from that book. I don't hate that actually. But it does hold on. Hold on. I wanna Oh where are y'all going? Hold on, let's let's do some do some research in here. Hundred and eighty thousand words. Harry Potter and the Gaul Little Fire. Okay, that's JK for okay. Okay, the Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman. Hundred and sixty-eight, so pretty, pretty close. Okay, well, that's just it's difficult to judge because the size affects, you know, how many pages everything is. Apparently that's a series. Okay. Brandon Sanderson books. Fucking there we go. Okay. Outlander. That's a big ass book. Pebb. Nine dollars and thirty-one cents. See, it just doesn't work. I've really kind of lost the the thread here. Most big ass books are kinda old. I mean older, you know what I'm saying? Jesus, no wonder the game of those books are so fucking boring. They're huge. The shining. See even the shining, that's gonna be some three or two hundred reservoirs. Yeah, see, I I just I'd have to charge too much just in order to make money. I really got sidetracked there. Oh, and see, that's what I'm trying to avoid with the damn phone thing. Um So uh when I got the P.O. box, there might be certain um caveats. I might, you know, find a better printer and say, fuck it. I don't know. But basically what would happen is a whole bunch of people would send us their books to read. And I and they would have to be read. Well, I would of course, you know, read some of them, but I would imagine that I can't read all of them. I can that because that's why publishers pay other people to do things, because no, no one can do everything. Because I also, you know, I like to write books. I have things in my life that I do, you know. I write books, I do a whole DD campaign for people, I have an actual job. Um, and by actual I mean currently being paid for it. Currently making money at it. Um, I have, you know, personal shit like I don't have the ability or the time to read 150 books a year or 150 manuscripts a year. So I pay someone. Maybe that person's my mother, maybe that person is my cousin, maybe that person is just someone that I found and met and was like, hey, would you like a job?

unknown 31:45

I don't know. That's not really important.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

The overall thing is they need paid. And I have always said that if I ever had a business and I had an employee, I would pay that employee, you know, well, because who amongst us hasn't had a job that didn't pay well? So those donations go to that person and then we publish books. So I guess technically the donor would be paying them. And then eventually, if we start selling enough books and making some money, the that part of the website just disappears. Just go br delete. And because hopefully by that period of time, I can pay them. Cause all of this stuff is going to happen eventually. It's just, you know, I'm poor, so it's gonna happen on a much shorter timeline or a much longer timeline than if other people give me money. Um, I don't know. Feel free to you know give me ideas like would it be better? Now the dog's upset. Hold on. You wanna go play some more? Come on. You've cooled down enough, it's okay. I need shoes. My feet have been getting real gross. Go sit down, buddy boy. It's gonna be dinner with the Hydra podcast. Um yeah, that's that's basically the new page. Because we're gonna have all of the different types of books that we currently have, but it I think it would be really cool, you know. That's that's kind of the dream is to someday be able to help other authors have books. And I think that would be the coolest part for me would be if we got like the book vending machine I want. Because I there there there's basically no way for me to keep um the prices that we have right now on the website. They were cheaper, uh, but then you know Johnny pointed the manager pointed out you're not you're not making enough money. And then they bumped it up, bumped it up a bit, and plus then when we're at book shows, I don't always have to make change, you know what I'm saying? Like when when the novel is for four dollars, they're pretty much always gonna have to make change. And now I can just be like five dollar bill, thank you very much. You have a great day, and I hope you like the book. Um But there's basically no way to be in bookstores with the prices that I have. Like hell, I can't even be on Amazon for that price because Big Daddy Bezos gotta get his cut. So if we put if we put stands or book vending machines or something, and they said Brennan Publishing, and we had those up and everything, and it wasn't just my books in there. I mean, I am currently working with with other people to have their books, but those people are all people I know directly. Um and I think that there would just be something really cool and I threw the ball, bitch. You gotta go find it. And I just think that there would be something really, really cool in have a book published that I published, but had nothing to do in the creation of, you know what I'm saying? So to sum up, because I have lost my train of thought about a dozen times so far. The one thing it just is helps us publish faster because I'm currently paying the formatter, and then you gotta buy the numbers so that I you know the ISBN numbers and pay for covers. That's another thing that would be really cool if someday I could pay real artists instead of stock photo covers. But the reason that I don't have real artists and will never in my life accept AI as art. Because it's not it's not it's not a tool, it's not art, it's rebranded theft. But anyway, the reason that I don't have a proper artist doing it and instead they're stock photo covers is because there is a huge gap in the type of artist I can pay and the type of artist who's good enough to make a book cover, if you know what I'm saying. Like I looked for real artists to try to, you know, make somebody else's dream come true and or support another artist, and the ones that I can afford are not good. The ones who aren't good are what they're expensive for a reason. They're expensive because they do top quality bugging work, but you know, this is what I'm saying. So for for the time being, we're publishing, I don't know, it's taken a long time because there are real life bills and business bills. And if I want to stay as chubby as I currently am and feed the dogs, real life bills have to come first. So, um Jesus, we're at 38 minutes. 38 minutes down the rabbit hole. Okay, I'm gonna go put this online and I will probably talk to this recorder a lot. Come on, baby, and update everyone on the podcast challenge and things as time goes on. Aka beater's thing, bitches.