Daniel J. Hogan's Blog

That's right kids, I'll be at Motor City Comic Con all weekend! I'll be a guest there and I'll be selling copies of The Magic of Eyri for a special Convention Only price. So if you're in the 'hood, swing by and say hi. I'll have free mini-pins and Air Heads candy at my table.

Learn more at: http://www.motorcityconventions.com/motor_city_comic_con/

In other news, my promo cards from lulu.com didn't come yesterday so I WON'T have them for this weekend. I'm all kinds of pissed off about that.  I only have about 50 cards left, which should be OK...but having a fresh batch of 500 would have been nice *grumble* I blame the pokey process that lulu.com uses for ordering said cards. They should really stream line it. Watch, I bet they'll show up today, but I won't be there to get 'em. Grrr. So I whipped up some proxy cards last night before getting on the road. They ain't that pretty, but it is better than nothing. Gotta make due "Adapt. Improvise. Overcome," as Dad likes to say.

You can now read the first two chapters (about 20 something pages) of The Magic of Eyri online. And actually...you can buy it now if you want. I put it on sale on lulu.com last night so I'd have enough time to get all the website stuff done for May 1st, which is the 'official' launch date.

However, it'll be about six weeks before anyone can buy it through amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and Borders. I didn't know that (well, maybe I did) ahead of time, but it doesn't matter because I couldn't have put it up for sale six weeks ago anyway. Here's the details from an email lulu.com sent me:

"Your book information will be sent to Bowker's Books In Print and once approved by Bowker, Lulu will upload your title to our distribution network. When this occurs, you will be notified by email. Should there be any problems with your title in Books In Print, you will also be notified. This process is generally completed within 2-3 weeks. You can expect to see your book listed on Amazon and other online retailers within the next 6 to 8 weeks."

Hopefully everything should be fine with it. Lord knows I toiled over everything long enough for the past week to make it as perfect as possible. I have grown to loathe Microsoft Word because of it. I don't get how to do something as simple as removing a header and footer from a single page at the end of  a .doc can be such a hassle. Sheesh.

So, in maybe six to eight weeks real stores will carry the book...but it is up to them and part of that is up to me to promote it. This next phase is going to be as hard, if not harder, as writing the book itself. But people can buy it right away via my site.

Speaking of shameless self promotion, I designed some more things for the Eyri Store yesterday. I'll upload those later today. I'm really enjoying designing stuff for the store, it's fun.