If we had a dollar a day...we'd never get out of debt

I just read that scientists estimate the universe to be 13.73 billion years old. (in a story about warp drive theory), and it got me wondering--is our national debt greater than the universe's age?

Some quick math shows that if we stopped spending and tried to pay back the debt at $1 a day, we would not be able to pay it back in the life of our universe. (The universe is 5,011,000,000,000 (five trillion, 11 billion, approx) days old. Our debt to date is 7,395,572,420,301† (seven trillion, 395 billion and growing). Check it out here.

I remember when the debt hit a trillion, and folks thought our economy would collapse. Twenty-five years later, we're still going strong--and have increaded the debt seven-fold. What's that say about our economy? Our government?

A Peek Into the Realities of Small Press Publishing

An author for one of my publishers recently did an ad campaign on facebook, and he asked if he could see the sales to compare them with the ad campaign. The following is the reply from the publisher. It's a great eye-opener into the reality of being a small-press publisher: (This is printed with permission)

PRINT
We sell our print books through the following:
1. Ingrams
2. Website
3. Folletts
4. Brodart

Of the above, Brodart and Folletts sell directly to libraries and bookstores. They send us purchase orders and I fulfill the purchase orders and bill them. Brodarts pays very promptly. Folletts pays somewhat promptly. (Although they did send me a check for $0.00 last month. I’ll try not to spend it all in one place.) Generally the only books they buy are the ones that have been reviewed in PW or LJ.

If people order from our website, they generally pay in advance. I sometimes have libraries or stores order via email or phone and depending on the situation, I may or may not get payment in advance. If I do not get payment in advance, it can take FOREVER to get payment from some bookstores. Since I’ve been stiffed so many times in the last year on these invoices I am beginning to be more hard -nosed about demanding money in advance.

This paragraph edited by request of the publisher: We have a contract with one distributor who is very large, but is notorious in the business for being slow to pay. I have no way of tracking our sales through them. It just has to be a pleasant surprise when and if I receive a statement from them.

All other print copies are sold through Ingrams. This includes the books sold on Amazon.com. I do not sell print copies directly to Amazon.com. Our printer is a subsidiary of Ingrams so I can check my compensation report and see how many copies they have sold but I don’t know who they sold them to. I have no way of knowing how many of those sales are to Amazon.com. Bookstores and libraries also order through Ingrams, as well as other online book retailers. I can sometimes tell when some of you are doing signings because I will see an order in a multiple of 5. This is generally updated on a weekly basis. There is a three month delay on these payments to me. If we’ve had returns, then there may not actually be anything left for them to pay me by the time they get done taking out the money for the returns. Sometimes we end up OWING them money because the cost of the returns in a single month exceeds the amount they owe us for sales.

Electronic
We sell our electronic books through the following:
1. Fictionwise
2. Mobi
3. Kindle
4. Our website
5. Reader’s Eden

We sell most of our ebooks through Fictionwise. I can track our sales from their website. They update it weekly. They pay quarterly.

There are a gazillion other EBook vendors out there who are Mobi retailers and who sell our books through their agreement with Mobi. If you see your ebook on a site other than one of the ones above, don’t worry about it. They have a license with Mobi to sell the book and we get the same amount from them that we do from Mobi. I can track our sales on the Mobi website. We used to sell a lot on Mobi but since we have gone to Fictionwise and since the introduction of Kindle, we sell very little on Mobi. Amazon.com owns Mobi. Mobi pays annually provided the amount hits a minimum level. We haven’t hit their minimum for the last two years (It’s a VERY high minimum.) That’s why some of you have very old Mobi sales on your royalty statements that are still in the payment pending table.

Our Kindle contract is rather convoluted because it is an addendum to our Mobi contract. We don’t actually have a contract with Amazon.com to sell on Kindle—our contract is with Mobi to sell in Kindle format on Amazon.com. There is a 3 month delay on receiving sales figures from Kindle. They send me the statement just before they send payment.

So, I will not be able to tell for 3 months if your ad on Facebook is resulting in sales on Kindle. I can, however, tell you that I have not seen much activity on Fictionwise. I’ve seen 3 copies sell on Ingrams. FWIW, that’s the data I have.
I can also tell all of you that I have google alerts out for every single one of you and the people whose names show up on google alerts the most often have the highest number of sales.

Link for Finding out if a Website is safe

Thanks to my wonderful husband, Rob, for finding this link. You can go to it and put in the address and it will tell you if a site has malware on it: http://safeweb.norton.com/

It happened again!

Yesterday, I blogged about an red flag I'm recognizing for infected links through Google. Today, I got another one. This one came from a Google alert:

The Fifteen Mysteries And Virgin Of Rosary
So when you get a book like Magic, Mensa, and Mayhem, that of rosary ... Check out the rest of the stops on Magic, Mensa, and Mayhem's Virtual Book Tour. ...

Notice that that the sentence doesn't really make sense, but the words I put in bold are the same ones in all the other links I mentioned yesterday.

I'm wondering if the person who originally used those words in her/his review has contracted a virus and that's how it's spreading. I'm going to look back over my reviews and see if I can figure out who it is. In the meantime, if you do Google searches or Google alerts, make sure the summaries make sense before clicking on a link!

Clue to Protecting Yourself from Infected Websites

Today, I was doing a standard Google on "Magic, Mensa and Mayhem," clicking on links I'd not seen before and my computer was attacked by a virus. Fortunately, I recognized the signs and stopped it in time. However, when I went back to try to find what site was going to infect me, I discovered the following. Notice how similar the partial summaries are:

• King Stephen Hung Fitzalan Army
So when you get a book like Magic, Mensa, and Mayhem, that really DOES ... Check out the rest of the stops on Magic, Mensa, and Mayhem's Virtual Book Tour. ...
jamisonjimpson.unraiiqwy.cc/king_stephen_hung_fitzalan_army.html - 13 hours ago - Similar -
• Sky Bus, Flight Information
So when sky bus, you get a book like Magic, Mensa, and Mayhem, that really DOES make you laugh out loud, how do you express that without it sounding cliché? ...
ashlynnhucquart.btigryxi.com/sky_bus_flight_information.html - Cached - Similar -
• Pose De Puce Wii Toulouse
So when you get a book like Magic, Mensa, and Mayhem, that wii toulouse really ... Check out the pose de rest of the stops on Magic, Mensa, and Mayhem's ...
katelynnfennell.mklqjkme.cc/pose_de_puce_wii_toulouse.html - 23 hours ago - Similar -
• Invalid Partition Fix Disk
So when fix disk you get a book like Magic, Mensa, and Mayhem, ... Check out the rest of the stops on Magic, Mensa, and Mayhem's Virtual Book Tour. ...
mckenziedelbergue.bxpfxiu.com/invalid_partition_fix_disk.html - Cached - Similar -
• Barry Citizens Advice Bureau Volunteer
So when you get a book like Magic, Mensa, and Mayhem, that really DOES make you laugh out loud, how do you express that without it sounding cliché? ...
juliannewintour.mxwvwhc.cc/barry_citizens_advice_bureau_volunteer.html - 11 hours ago - Similar -

Lesson here: Be wary of the links you click on.