So, I am a self-published author, and I wanted to diversify away from the #Amazon ecosystem for some time. However, I am hitting a snag with the Print on Demand options.

My paperback books are sold in a 6"x9" format, which is a standard format for paperbacks. With Amazon KDP, I sell my books for a standard price of $17.99, and I get about 5$ in royalties for each paperback sold.

Now I've used online calculators to calculate printing prices for a 384 page book on assorted Print on Demand platforms (this is the length of my current manuscript).

With Amazon KDP, I get the usual $5.19 in revenues.

With OneBookShelf (a platform that is primarily for #TTRPG, but which also sells fiction) I get US printing costs of $11.73, which should leave me revenues of about 4$. Still acceptable.

However, the biggest "alternative" Print on Demand platform is Draft2Digital, and there I would only get revenues of $1.11. Which is too low for my tastes.

So if I want to keep decent revenues for my print books, my options are:

- Increase the prices for my paperbacks. And I would have increase the price all the way to $24.49 if I want to get at least $4 in royalties.

- Skip Draft2Digital as a print publishing platform, and stick to Amazon KDP and OneBookShelf - although the latter only prints in the USA and the UK, which means customers in other countries will have to have to pay extra for shipping.

What are your thoughts what I should do? And what are some other Print on Demand platforms I should look into?

#amwriting #publishing

I agree that attacking the digital infrastructure of #Russia is a good idea to reduce the amount of fascist trollbots influencing politics in the Western World.

However, I am unsure what the specific vulnerabilities of the trollbot infrastructure is. In the last few days I have seen a lot of claims that the attack on the #Yandex data centers has reduced them. But I have seen no trustworthy, verifiable data - just anecdotes.

And as the saying goes, "The plural of 'anecdote' is not data."

RE: https://mastodon.social/@keynotes/117431830919179621

I am in this picture and I don't like it.

When a Wild Maiden takes an interest in your husband, your best chance of survival lies in acting like a complete doormat.

#MythologyMonday
https://wiki.sunkencastles.com/wiki/Curse_and_Blessing_of_the_Wild_Maidens

When a spirit woman takes an interest in a mortal man, she does not hesitate to remove any obstacles to her courtship.

#MythologyMonday
https://wiki.sunkencastles.com/wiki/The_Golden_Girdle

Ich habe hier einiges an Gerüchten gesehen, daß durch die Beschädigung des #Yandex -Rechenzentrum in #Russland die Aktivität von #AfD -nahen Bots (und anderen rechtsextremistischen Accounts) stark zurückgegangen sein soll.

Aber "Gerüchte" reicht mir nicht. Hat hier irgendjemand was belastbares, von vertrauenswürdigen Quellen?

The Mountain Spirit helps or hinder miners according to his own inscrutable whims.

#Germany #folktale #folklore #mining
https://wiki.sunkencastles.com/wiki/The_Mountain_Spirit

Ich habe gerade in der Bekanntschaft einen Notfall.

Hat hier jemand eine Ahnung, wer in #Düsseldorf und Umgebung unentgeltlich zum Thema #Visum beraten kann?

Bitte boosten!

EDIT: Danke für das Feedback.

Kurzer Umriss der Situation: Sie ist auf dem Weg der Einbürgerung, aber die Ausländerbehörde hat sich sehr viel Zeit gelassen (Antrag war schon 2020).

Jetzt braucht sie wieder eine Visumsverlängerung. Die Ausländerbehörde fordert dafür eine Unbedenklichkeitserklärung vom Finanzamt. Allerdings hat sie da aktuell wegen einiger Umstände Schulden:

- Ein medizinischer Notfall in der Familie der sich zum Todesfall entwickelte, und für den sie im Frühjahr sehr kurzfristig nach Südafrika musste - und dann kam der Irankrieg, was die Flugtickets nochmal deutlich teuer machte.

- Eigene medizinische Probleme, weswegen sie auch demnächst ins Krankehaus muss und gesundheitlich eingschränkt ist (Gebärmutter-OP).

- Allgemein schwierige Auftragslage in ihrer Branche (Übersetzung von medizinischen Fachtexten).

Nun hat sie die Befürchtung, daß ihr Visum nicht bekommt, wenn die Ausländerbehörde die neusten Zahlen vom Finanzamt bekommt.

I could use some book recommendations. I am looking for folk tale collections which are

1. from cultures outside of Europe, and

2. were written by people _from_ that culture.

Ideally, they should also be translated into English (or German) by people from that culture as well.

It would also be a plus if they contain a lot of "local legends" which incorporate local geography and history (as opposed to "fairy tales" which take place at indeterminable places and times).

#folklore #AmReading #Bookstodon

While reading this Wikipedia article on the #folklore of #Indonesia , I saw this book unter "further reading":

"Moertjipto (1992). Folktales of Yogyakarta South Coast. Translated by Hartiko, Hari. Directorate General of Tourism, Republic of Indonesia."

Does anyone have any idea where I could order a copy from Germany?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folklore_of_Indonesia

This month's topic for my folklore translations is "villainous nobles", and next Monday's tales feature two rapists (and these are just two examples of many). This got me thinking of how sexual violence is dealt with in German folk tales.

Yes, the folk tales condemn rape as something very evil. However, they also reinforce the social consequences for the victim. Women who were raped are implied to be "ruined", and it is portrayed in a positive manner when a woman chooses death rather than submitting to rape (such as throwing herself off a cliff), even though suicide is otherwise portrayed as one of the greatest of sins.

And this portrayal of the social consequences is one of the things that bothers me, since there is aways an implication that a woman who is raped is partially at fault, since they _could_ have chosen death instead (like the alleged "positive examples" of women in folk tales who do just that). This is victim-blaming, and makes the situation worse for them.

Such narratives persist into the modern day, of course, where too many women who were raped are blamed for allegedly putting themselves into the situation where they were raped, instead of putting the focus on the choice their attackers made to assault them.

And now I wonder if there are any cultures where the folk tales deal with this topic in a different consequences - where they don't imply any social consequences for the victim, but focus on blaming the attacker for his choice instead.

While my academic background (Diploma in Physics, PhD in Computational Materials Engineering) has nothing to do the books I write (English-language translations of German folk tales), it nevertheless incluenced my writing style and process:

1. I cite my sources, and have the massive bibliographies to prove it. I've seen too many folk tale collections where the author either didn't cite their sources, or doesn't specify which source they got each tale from. For me, that's not good enough. There are also numerous secondary sources for historical, cultural, or folkloric detail - and I have seen too many books discussing #folklore where the authors are more interested in #esotericism than scholarship, making claims and jumping to conclusions without citing material that supports their theses.

2. I use #TeXLaTeX for typesetting. This is _definitely_ not something I recommend to others who haven't used it in academia before, but I've developed a process that allows me to generate PDFs and EPUB files from the same source files, and it works for me. Unless something breaks down after updating the libraries, and I have to sacrifice another black goat at midnight...

3. Peer review. I only learned after publishing my first book that there is a similar process for book publishing called "alpha readers" (readers with relevant expertise reviewing an early draft of the manuscript") and "beta readers" (readers reviewing the near-finished draft from a fan perspective), but I took to it with enthusiasm after that. I want to make my books as good as possible so that they will still be read (and bought) decades after I have published them, and systematically getting feedback from others is key to that.

My book are odd in that they are neither precisely fiction nor precisely nonfiction - they are collections of fictional tales, but with commentaries and explanations which are nonfiction. And while my primary audience are lay enthusiasts like myself, I still want to make my books useful to serious scholars.

#amwwriting

The magical tomes known as "Characters" give their owners the power to achieve anything they want.

But, sooner or later, the owners come to a bad end.

#Germany #folktale #folklore #magic
https://wiki.sunkencastles.com/wiki/The_Charakter

#ScribesAndMakers 6 Oct: On a scale of 0-100, how much conflict (however you personally define it) is necessary for a compelling story?

Zero. A lot of folk tales are about the protagonist encountering the supernatural. This does not need to have _any_ conflict to be compelling. Here is an example:

https://wiki.sunkencastles.com/wiki/The_Quick_Procession_of_Perchtl

RE: https://wandering.shop/@cstross/117382330824033578

I bet he is merely doing that because radium has the chemical element number 88.

RE: https://mementomori.social/@juergen_hubert/117371451723895923

So far, I've had eight volunteers, with five confirmed by email.

I want to find at least 10 beta readers, and a dozen would be nice.

RE: https://mementomori.social/@juergen_hubert/117371451723895923

So far I've got six volunteers, but I could use a few more.

I am looking for beta readers for "Old Goatfoot", my upcoming collection of Devil-tales from German folklore. Beta readers are test readers for books who provide feedback from a fan perspective and help the author identify and fix problems before the book is released.

I will consider you qualified if you (a) have read one of my previous books, or (b) have read and enjoyed multiple folk tale collections by other people.

Since I am writing for an international audience, I am _particularly_ interested in beta readers from outside Europe and the Anglophone countries outside Europe (i.e. USA, Australia, New Zealand), since they might bring unique cultural perspectives to the table. This is not necessary to be a beta readers, but I consider it a bonus.

Beta readers are expected to read and provide feedback on the book manuscript (which currently has a word count of 109,000, although about 20% of that is the bibliography and indices) within four weeks. Beta readers who provide useful feedback will get a free copy of the paperback version of the finished book.

If you are interested, please send me a Direct Message with a short explanation for why you think you are a good fit.

Please boost for greater reach! #folklore #amwriting

Die Affäre #Weimer .

https://www.n-tv.de/politik/Interne-Dokumente-wecken-Zweifel-an-Weimer-Darstellung-id31366070.html

"Why were there so few nonbinary people in German folk tales?"

"Because anyone who was outed as nonbinary was burned by the authorities."

https://books.google.de/books?id=DYlUAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA1053#v=onepage&q&f=false