Quarter Share

I've been reading a lot of SF lately. And this has included a lot of Libertarian military SF where aliens and space marines are duking it out in huge battles and such. And since it is Libertarian the villains are often as not venal guys such as you'll find inside the beltway running the Democrat and GOP parties.

If you haven't read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, you're unfamiliar with the pattern of political manipulators fighting against hard working businessmen who are just trying to create wealth. On the other hand, if you're breathing the typical cultursmog, you are quite familiar with the recurring trope of greedy corporations plotting to poison/kill/cheat their customers.

On the other hand, Quarter Share does none of the above. There's math in this space opera. And that makes it far more subversively libertarian than anything Ayn Rand ever preached.

Math? Subversive?

The story starts with the hero, Ishmael Horatio Wang. Yes, the hero has a name that's evocative of both Melville and C. S. Forester. I was almost put off by this, but I'm glad I didn't. The author lampshades this. Every time he introduces himself he says, "Call me Ishmael," and whoever he's talking to rolls his or her eyes. But the allusion to familiar sea stories should give you a good idea of the arc of this series of stories.

Quarter Share starts off with an 18 year old Ishmael suffering the accidental death of his mother. Since he lives on a "company planet" and he has no job, he is forced to leave. Instead of preaching about corporate evils, the author Nathan Lowell simply shows the company acting as if all it cares about is the bottom line. And this forces our young protagonist out of his mother's apartment and onto an interstellar freighter.

Since he has no training or connections, he starts out, like Midshipman Mr. Hornblower, at the bottom of pecking order. Things start out well for young Mr. Wang, because he knows how to make coffee and he shows initiative in the ships mess. He proceeds to work hard and shows a willingness to do the dirty jobs others wouldn't like.

He also has a tendency to think non-linearly and sees unexpected opportunities for trade. As a crewman, he can use his limited wages and limited mass allotment to make a few bucks on the side. His buddy, another quarter-share crewman happens to have the ability to sense what's abundant on the current planet they're visiting and what's rare on the next planet. Between the two of them they start making money on bigger and bigger deals. Before the book is done, the senior officers on the ship take notice.

One of the things you can see if you ignore Ayn Rand's preaching is that people in business are often pleasant to deal with, they make friends with their customers and vendors, and enjoy doing business with their friends. It is enjoyable to set up a trade where both parties come away better than they were beforehand. The process of dickering and haggling over price often seems like a negative sum game, but only if you're short-sighted. When you look at the larger picture, both parties are enriched when a trade can be negotiated.

Free trade creates wealth.

Quarter Share can be a little bit math heavy as Ish and Pip work out, say, the relative merits of shipping gemstones versus mushrooms. And that's not a problem. If you're going to succeed in life, you've got to be sharp enough to recognize a profitable opportunity when it presents itself. Or ways to make something valuable out of something nobody wants.

I highly recommend Quarter Share. Five stars.

Inside Baseball

I was reading Larry Correia's blog when I saw him write this about a discussion with his editor, Toni Weisskopf:

I bounced several things off of Toni to see what she wanted me to focus my energy on next, (Having a ton of books under contract to be written is a really good problem to have) and she really wants to see this epic fantasy that I’ve been talking about for years.

This is a glimpse into the relationship between a successful author and editor. It struck me how businesslike the conversation was. Here's the deal, Mr. Correia and Ms. Weisskopf have a common goal: make gobs of money by selling books.

Mr. Correia has a good idea of how to put words on paper that make awesome stories. Ms. Weisskopf has a good idea of the sort of people she can reach and sell books to. Neither one of them have the whole picture, so they compare notes, brainstorm, and try to find out which stories will do better than others.

It's every bit as much a business conversation as one between a General Contractor and a Realtor about building a spec house. I know a few small businessmen and this glimpse of Mr. Correia makes a lot of sense when seen through this lens.

Contrast this with the depictions of authors in the mass media. You never see Richard Castle or Robin Masters talking to their editors like this. The popular conception is that the writer is some kind of free spirit whose creative outputs drop from his fingers in an arbitrary and capricious fashion as his muse takes him.

NO, the successful author is a successful businessman who builds things on spec, if s/he doesn't have a book deal, or to spec if s/he does. Most businessmen are normal people who relate to their vendors and customers who also happen to be normal people. And unless there's trouble, normal people conduct business with each other in a pleasant and cooperative fashion.

Once you've figured out how to devise a cunning plot, fill it with dazzling characters, and render your stories in breathless prose, think about how you can be a reliable business partner. This includes communicating clearly, meeting deadlines, and exceeding your partners' expectations.

Register a Company Name

(This is the 7th installment of my How To Publish An Ebook thang.)

When you publish an ebook, you'll have to identify who is publishing it. Publishing is a business and by publishing a book you are going into business for yourself.
 
You might say Steve Poling Publishing, but why should you publicize me? Instead, come up with a cool name for a publishing company. When you come up with a cool name, google it and make sure nobody else has something close.

Run it past some friends to get their reactions, because it's really easy to not-see problems with the name. I have a friend who came up with a cool name for a company that just happens to differ by only one letter from a slang term for an unnatural sexual act.

Once you've got a name you like, you have to register that name. How will you register the name depends upon your jurisdiction and how you want to organize your publishing company. Maybe you want to organize your publishing company as a multinational corporation. Get a lawyer and ask him what to do.

To start a little smaller, you can organize as a sole proprietorship and file for what I call a DBA. The letters stand for "Doing Business As." This probably won't need a lawyer. It depends upon your jurisdiction. In Michigan all you need to do is fill out a form, give it to the County Clerk with a fee and get approval. I suppose they check to make sure someone else doesn't already have that same name. (Just for laughs, why not try to file "Ford Motor Company" and see what happens.)

If some MBA tells you different, believe them instead.

Once you've got the name you are going to publish under, get ready to use it in a number of places. Starting with your ebook's metadata.
(You can find the bullet-point outline of How To Publish An Ebook here.)