Calling All Writers, Current and Future

I decided to self-publish a short ebook about job searching for two reasons: the first was that I wanted to do something with what I learned about searching for a job from the 10+ years I spent as a hiring manager. The second was that I needed a test case to find out how much money, time, and effort it takes to publish and promote a short ebook once it is written.

I wanted that data because I'd been toying with the idea of publishing other people's books. After more than a year running Tungsten Hippo, my short ebook review site, I have gotten much better at finding interesting ebooks to read, even when they aren't high in the Amazon search results. However, I still see a hole in what is available. I want more short science ebooks, and more short ebooks about social science topics, and more short ebooks telling interesting historical stories, and more short fiction ebooks that really make me think. There are some of all of those types of short ebooks, but I think there should be more. I love finding a short ebook that can teach me something worthwhile in an evening or two, and I want there to more of them.

At the same time, I have been wondering whether short ebooks could help fill some of the gap left as traditional media downsizes and online media struggles to find a business model that supports in depth writing. I wonder if a revenue stream from a few short ebooks could help buffer writers against the rough economic tides, whether those writers are earning a living primarily from their writing or from something else.

So I've decided to go for it. I will take some of the money I make from the profitable part of my business (i.e., the consulting work) and invest it in publishing short ebooks. And by invest, I mean: I will pay the upfront costs (cover art, editing, ISBNs, etc) AND I will offer authors a modest advance. I will also give authors the option of choosing a higher initial royalty rate over an advance- for some types of authors, this will be a better deal. For others, the advance with an earn-out period will be a better deal. I think most authors will be able to figure out for themselves which model is better for them, so I'll let them choose. I'll also invest my time by doing a kickass job formatting the book for publication and by working on promoting the book. Authors will still need to do some promotion, too, but I will help line up reviewers and will be experimenting like crazy to figure out how best to market the sorts of books I want to publish.

I want to focus on pieces that are 30-160 pages in length (7000 - 40,000 words). Those are guidelines not firm rules. They are based on the definition of a novelette and a novella. I want fiction and non-fiction. For fiction, I am not picky about genre, but it has to be the sort of story that has interesting themes and makes me think. For non-fiction, I truly am interested in the "meatier" topics. I think there are several other companies publishing things like true crime stories now, and want to instead focus on books that make me learn something new and worth knowing. I would be absolutely thrilled to see people submit a short ebook about their research, as long as it is aimed at a general audience. I don't just mean science research, either- one of my favorite short ebooks is The Heart of Haiku. Science, social science, humanities... I'll consider it all, as long as it engages me and makes me learn.

In all cases, the writing has to be good. Since it is my money, I get to decide what good means, but the shorthand version is "well-written and compelling."

I know that short ebooks are a tough market, and I'm prepared for it to take a little time to make this profitable. But I do intend to make it profitable, which means that I intend for the authors to earn more than their advances. I have some (I think) cool ideas for new things to try to increase the market for the books I'd publish, and some even cooler long term ideas I can try once my basic ideas are working and I have a bit of a catalog built up.

But... none of this can happen if I can't find compelling stories to publish. That's where I need your help. I am looking for three things:

1. If you are already sold on my idea and want to submit your writing for me to consider, hooray! Please do. My email address is wandsci at gmail dot com.

2. If you're not sure, or even sure that you're not interested in submitting your writing, but would like to help out: I'd really like to talk over the terms I'll be offering with an experienced author or two, to make sure they are fair to both the authors and my business. Again my email address is wandsci at gmail dot com.

3. If neither of the above applies to you, you can still help by spreading this post far and wide.

Thank you!

Surprisingly Profound Kids Art: Rainbow over a Field

It has been far too long since I've posted any of my kids' art. Time to rectify that, with this beautiful painting from Petunia:

She tells me that it is a rainbow over a field. I think the bright primary colors symbolize the happiness of seeing a rainbow, but the artist is silent on this topic, preferring to let her work speak for itself.

In other news, I cleaned a bunch of too small clothes out of Petunia's closet and moved some size 5 things from Pumpkin's "too small" area to Petunia's closet. They never even made it to the storage bin in the garage. I can't decide if that is a big win or a big fail.

I also finally posted another taster flight of short ebooks at Tungsten Hippo. Today's taster flight is stories about love.

Also on my to do list for today: pushing the button that randomly picks the winners in the raffle I ran for the release of Petunia, the Girl Who Was NOT a Princess, and notifying said winners. OK, who am I kidding? I probably won't get the winners notified until sometime during the week. But I am determined to pick the winners!

So, that turned into a bit of a "random updates" post. Feel free to share your random updates in the comments!

Weekend Reading: The Keep On Truckin' Edition

Here it is, Friday again. Both my days at home were short work days, due to self-maintenance things. On Wednesday, I got my first ever full body mole check and learned that as we age, we get more things called sebhorrheic keratoses, at least for we=pasty white people of northern European descent. The doctor who told me this was about 12 years old and thought the "Mostly Harmless" t-shirt I was wearing was hilarious. Today, I got my haircut. That was more fun, and was the necessary precursor to getting some professional head shots taken to use in my professional social media profiles. Apparently, I can't just put a picture of a cloud in those.

Anyway, I thought this week would be a bit of a loss in terms of my non-contracting projects, but it wasn't. That is a testament to the power of the theme I've chosen for this week's links: keep on truckin'. I just wrote my daily to do lists and chugged through them, and here we are on Friday afternoon and most things on them are done. Go me.

To the links:

Cord Jefferson's essay about his mother is just wonderful. I'm going to bookmark it and come back to it when I'm struggling with explaining the bad things in the world to my kids, or with parenting in general. Or life in general.

I've had several LOLSOB sort of conversations with men I know about that famous catcall video, and basically, I am tired of the reminders that I live in such a different world than they do. So many men I know are so incredulous that catcalling happens, or that dudes talk to me even when I've got my headphones, or... gah. So this video in which the New Zealand Herald hired an actress to walk the streets of Auckland sort of made my day. And I reflected and realized that I could not recall ever being catcalled in New Zealand, and my first visit there was when I was not yet 30 and in what was probably the best physical shape of my life. Yet another reason to try to arrange my life such that I can spend more time there!

I mostly don't have an opinion about Lena Dunham. I don't watch Girls and I haven't read her book, and I have no intention of changing either of those things. So I largely ignore the back and forth about whether we should embrace her or hate her. But the recent flap about one section of her book has been hard to ignore. If you've missed the uproar, Roxane Gay's take on it is (as usual) quite smart. I wasn't going to read more than that, but I'm glad I read Jessica Bennett's piece on this, because while I do not agree with everything she says, I do strongly agree with the point she makes about how women- even feminists- tear down successful women. I have written about this in relation to famous women in tech like Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer. It is not that I think these women, or any prominent women, are perfect and above criticism. It is that we focus so much more criticism on them than we do on their male counterparts, and the criticism is more vicious.

While I'm halfway ranting, let's talk about the midterms, and voter turnout. I have seen a lot of disappointed Democrats bemoaning the fact that Democratic voters don't turn out as well for midterms. And I've seen a lot of smug Republicans say that this means Democrats should re-examine their policies or whatnot. But I haven't seen much analysis of why Democratic turnout is lower. Here's my guess: because we've been constructing impediments to their voting. Precincts in districts with more non-white voters are more likely to have long lines. Several states have new voter ID laws. Some states have whittled back early voting and placed more restrictions on voting by mail. These things matter, and I suspect they matter more for voters who are more likely to vote Democratic. I read about lines of up to 9 hours to vote on Tuesday. Ask yourself: would you have been willing to wait 9 hours to vote? I didn't wait at all and the entire process took less than 10 minutes. But I live in a predominately white district in a state that has a vote by mail option open to everyone and good early voting provisions. The fact that anyone has to wait more than 30 minutes or so is a national disgrace, and I don't think it is an accident. I think some very cynical people are doing whatever they can to keep power while the tide of the nation turns away from them. Shame on them for passing these laws. Shame on them for trying to make voting harder, rather than easier. And shame on us for letting it happen.

I am still looking for a good analysis of what impact all of this has on outcomes. I found an article with some early observations, but I suspect it is too soon to have a full analysis. I hope someone produces one. Regardless of the impact of these laws and policies, though, they are wrong, and antithetical to democracy. We should fix them.

(The Democrats should probably also ask themselves why so many white men don't like their message, and think about how to win white men over, but that is a rant for another day. I'll just say I don't think the answer is "be more like the Republicans.")

Moving to happier things- this interview with Cindy Gallop on being an entrepreneur as an older woman is awesome and inspiring, and was the source of some of my resolve to keep on truckin' this week.

Erica Joy's post about being a Black woman in tech is less fun to read, but very important. I've thought a lot about the psychic impact of being so outnumbered- and as a white woman, I am far, far less outnumbered than Joy is. The underrepresented people who stay in STEM careers are doing a lot of work that white men do not even recognize exists. (Sort of like how they don't realize catcalling is an issue, apparently.)

Joy's determination to find a way to stay in tech while also taking care of herself is inspiring. It was in my mind when I picked this week's Tungsten Hippo quote, from Kiese Laymon:

"Your heart was good but you forgot to guard it. You killed yourself slowly because of this."

I am glad she is guarding her heart.

I was also inspired by Molly Crabapple's post about being successful as a creative person in the internet age. The entire thing is really good and you should read it, but I particularly liked rule #5:

"I've never had a big break. I've just had tiny cracks in this wall of indifference until finally the wall wasn't there any more."

Here is a great tweet about aiming high:

Most of us are capable of punching above our weight. We're just scared cause the other guy looks bigger.
— Ashley Ford (@iSmashFizzle) November 7, 2014

And here is a dog herding ducks, because I always have to end with something fun:

Science with the Kids: Gravity

Who's ready for some fun, quick, and easy science with the kids? The kids and I had some fun science time last night. I thought I'd share what we did, because this is super easy and the kids genuinely loved it.

First, we did a little experiment. I took a sheet of paper and a little bag of pennies and showed them to the kids.

Materials for experiment #1

I asked them what they thought would happen if I dropped both at the same time. Not surprisingly, the both said that the pennies would hit the ground first. I told them that was their hypothesis, and it was good to have a hypothesis, and that we'd test it. But first, I asked them what they thought the other possibilities were. They quickly got that the paper could hit the ground first. I asked if there was a third possibility, and after thinking for a minute, Pumpkin came up with the idea that the two objects could hit the ground at the same time.

I've done this experiment with other kids (probably 50 kids total, over the years) and Pumpkin is only the second child to come up with that third option, so I'm pretty proud of her.

Then we did the experiment. We counted down from three, and I dropped the pennies and the paper. As they expected, the pennies hit first, while the paper floated down.

I asked them why they thought this was, and they both agreed that it was because the paper was lighter.

Then I asked them how we could test that theory. They didn't have any ideas, so I provided one: I crumpled up the paper and said that if their theory was correct, the pennies should still hit first. They agreed.

Materials for experiment #2

Then I dropped the pennies and the paper together again. This time, the two objects hit at the same time, which just delighted my kids. They were literally jumping up and down with excitement.

I asked whether they had any other ideas about why the pennies hit the ground first in the first experiment but not the second, and to my amazement, Pumpkin got it. She said it was because the air was pushing on the paper and in the second experiment, the paper was smaller so the air couldn't push on it as much. Mr. Snarky had been watching in bemusement up until this point, standing behind the kids. I saw his eyebrows go up when she said that. I think I managed to just smile and say that was a good answer.

In fact, I am very impressed with her answer. I think they covered something similar in science last year at school- they talked about wind as part of their weather module, and she came home with a pinwheel. But still, she was able to take that idea and apply it to something completely different. I was not expecting either kid to figure out why the paper fell more slowly in the first experiment.

After talking about our results a bit, we all watched this really cool video demonstrating the same point with far fancier equipment:



The kids really liked the video, so even if you don't do the experiment, consider showing the video to your kids. I think having done the experiment makes the video more fun, though.

One thing I didn't do that I wish I had done was point out that the people in the control room in the video are a physics professor and a bunch of engineers. They all knew what was going to happen, but they still react to the outcome with the same delight my kids showed during the penny and paper dropping experiments. That's part of the beauty of science!

The entire process-two experiments, discussion, and video watching- took less than 20 minutes. I think Petunia is maybe a little bit young for the experiment, or at least for doing the experiment with an older sister who got the answers faster than she did. However, Petunia still really enjoyed the experiment and the video, and both kids tell me they want to do more family science experiments. I guess I'd better find us some more to do. Feel free to leave suggestions in the comments.

Unanticipated Things I've Learned about Day Care and School

While I was at the Halloween parades on Friday, in between sniffling about how big my kids are getting and how delightfully cute all the kids were, I was struck by how lucky we've been in our choices of where to send our kids during the day.

Of course, we visited several options and did a bunch of research before making each decision, but in each case, there have been unanticipated things that we never thought to ask about that have made a big difference in how much we've enjoyed our choices.

I'm not sure if we would have made choices based on these factors even if we had thought to ask about them ahead of time, but in the spirit of sharing what I've learned, here are the two biggest things that we didn't consider when making our choices but that have had a big impact on how much we've liked those choices:

Item 1: we didn't ask about how the day cares we visited handle kid-on-kid aggression in the toddler rooms. This, however, turns out to be a point of wide variation. One of my friends spent three solid months stressed out about whether her older son was going to get expelled from day care for biting. He was two. Another friend would hear from her child that she'd been bitten, but not get any communication from the school about the incidents. Both of these extremes are unnecessarily stressful, in my opinion.

Our day care strikes a nice middle ground. Older kids (4 and up) who bite or hit are sent home for the day, and if they can't stop, might be expelled. I'm not aware of that ever happening, though. In the toddler set, these things were treated as something that happens when kids don't yet have the words to express their emotions. The presumption is that they just need to learn better ways to respond, and the school partnered with the parents to make that learning happen. We got reports home of bites given or received, and the school taught very specific behaviors to do instead of physical aggression and shared those with us so we could reinforce them at home.

It was still stressful when Pumpkin was biting and being bitten- something that happened occasionally between 15 months and 3 years, with a peak at about 2 years- but at least we weren't worrying that she was going to be expelled from day care or wondering what else was happening that we weren't being told about.

Pumpkin at the height of the biting phase

Petunia never went through the biting phase. I think this is partly due to Petunia just being more laid back than Pumpkin, and partly due to the fact that Petunia's class is smaller than Pumpkin's was, so the teachers were probably able to see an incident escalating and intervene before any child made it physical. Regardless, this is now the main thing I mention when an expecting parent asks me about how to pick a day care. Most of the other advice I could give is pretty standard, but I never came across this particular issue when I was researching day cares and how to choose them.

Item 2: there are distinct advantages to NOT being at the "best" school in the "good" district. We picked our school for two main reasons: (1) It is a language magnet, and we love the idea of having our kids become fluent in a second language, (2) it is two and a half blocks from our house, which makes the logistics of drop off and pick up soooo much easier. We also visited other magnet schools and our neighborhood school when making our choice, but in the end, we only entered the lottery for our current school. (If we hadn't gotten in, we would have defaulted back to the neighborhood school, which we actually really liked.)

We looked at the various school performance statistics and did all the other things you're supposed to do when evaluating schools, but we didn't think to ask about things like: how much money will you extort from us with "expected donations" and other "optional" fundraisers? How do you schedule your on campus activities? It turns out that in those two key areas, we got lucky.

Our school is a magnet (meaning it draws kids from all over the district) and a Title 1 school (meaning that a large percentage of the kids qualify for the free or reduced lunch program). Both of these things contribute to a school environment that feels much friendlier to working parents than what I hear about from my friends in the "good" (i.e., wealthier) schools. There is an annual giving campaign, but they were appreciative of our donation, not demanding of it. There are a few other fundraisers throughout the year, but there is no pressure for the kids to bring in large amounts of money, so they truly do feel optional. And most importantly to me- they schedule their events in a way that minimizes impact on the parents' schedules. Parades, performances, and other special events tend to be first thing in the morning or last thing in the afternoon, not at random times in the middle of the day like I hear about from other parents.

I would never have thought to ask about event scheduling when visiting schools, but this thoughtful scheduling makes a big difference in whether Mr. Snarky and I can attend the events, so we are able to be more involved parents without having to take large amounts of time off work.

Bonus item: talking about school choice with other parents will uncover racism and classism that will shock you. Only about 25% of the kids in our school are white. The largest racial group is Hispanic, at just over 50%. A lot of parents with Mexican or Central American heritage send their kids to our school so that they can be not just bilingual but bi-literate. The next largest racial group is African-American, at roughly 16%. The school does not have a larger than average number of expulsions or other serious behavior problems (that information is included in the statistics we looked at when checking out schools), but many other parents would respond to the news about where we were thinking of going by getting a moderately surprised look on their face and saying something along the lines of "but that's a rough school!"

I quickly learned that "rough" is the code word for "not majority upper middle class white kids." Our school is not rough, not even in the upper grades (it is a K-8 school). One of my favorite things about going to school events is actually seeing the middle schoolers, who are always involved in the events and participating in a positive way.

I have no advice on this one. Schools are a difficult topic, where your general beliefs about what is right and your worries and aspirations for your children collide. It happens that both Mr. Snarky and I went to schools that would be coded as "rough" and thought that the diversity of our fellow students was one of the best things about our pre-college education. So it is relatively easy for us to ignore the comments about the school being "rough" and just be grateful that we got into such an awesome school that is so convenient for us (it was a lottery process).

Other parents will have different educational priorities and I would never judge a parent for making a different choice. I do judge the people who use the "that school is rough" code words, though. If you want your kid to go to a school where most of the other kids are of the same race and/or in the same socioeconomic class, fine, but don't justify that decision with the lazy assumption that schools with a different student body composition are somehow dangerous. Some may be, but many are not. Also, the biggest local on campus drug bust I can recall hearing about recently happened at one of the toniest schools in town. Using the "rough" code word just perpetuates inaccurate and harmful stereotypes. We need to do better.

Have you learned any unexpected things about schools and day care? Share them in the comments!