Author Archives: Maria Langer

Yes, I’m Still Around

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But busy having a life and dealing with it.

I know I’ve been neglecting this blog when my sister mentions that I haven’t posted anything new in a while. Oops.

Truth is, I’ve been busy. House guest, cell phone lost on mountain top, two days of aerial survey work, rush to finish a writing job, plan a last minute vacation, search for a lost dog, cancel last-minute vacation, find lost dog, etc.

Life. Sometimes it interrupts blogging.

But wouldn’t you want it that way? I’m not complaining.

(Although I could have done without that lost dog episode.)

How NOT to Provide Instructions to Your Web Developer

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Hint: Embedding images in a Microsoft Word file is never a good idea.

WheelsYears ago, I received a flyer in the mailn about a replacement for my helicopter’s stock ground handling wheels. For those of you who don’t know, you move a helicopter around on the ground by attaching wheels that lift the skids off the ground so you can push it. The stock wheels on my helicopter — then an R22 — were too small for me to clear the runners for my hangar door. These larger wheels — called “Big Wheels” — would give me the extra clearance I needed to get over the lip.

Trouble is, I didn’t want to spend $450 on a set of wheels, sight unseen.

So I offered the manufacturer a free Web site in exchange for the wheels. Being a guy who wasn’t particularly Internet savvy, he said yes. And thus began our relationship.

In the ten or so years since then, Walt has given me numerous items of ground handling equipment to test out. Some of it I really liked — like the Big Wheels that he gave me for my R22 and, later, for my R44. Others, not so much — the original tow bar design, for example, wasn’t quite beefy enough to tow my R44 from my hangar to my departure area some distance away at the airport. But it was all great quality stuff that I was pleased to have the opportunity to use and show off. In exchange, Walt got a respectable-looking website, first coded in HTML and then upgraded as a WordPress-based CMS. Lots of pictures — some of which I’d taken with my helicopter as model; the one above is an example. (Yes, my first helicopter had white skids).

The only thing that kind of bugged me over the years was the way Walt requested updates to the site. He’d sometimes send random photos with notes. Sometimes I’d make a requested change and then he’d respond with another change to the same page. I’d get bursts of email messages from him with new content. It got to the point that I’d usually wait a week or two after hearing from him to make sure there wasn’t anything else on the way. That led to me forgetting to take care of things for him and him politely reminding me and me finally getting it done.

Please understand that I don’t mind updating his site periodically. It’s not as if he does it every month — or even every year. It really isn’t (or should’t be) much work. And I use the wheels regularly. I don’t feel as if I’ve done enough work to cover the cost of them yet. After all, it isn’t as if I created some super spectacular custom solution for him. It’s not as if I spent weeks of my life developing and maintaining his site. And he really is a nice man who makes a great product.

About a month or so ago, I got an email message from Walt’s wife. (I didn’t even know he was married.) She wanted to know the best way to request changes. I told her to put them all into one email message.

The email messages started arriving a while later. Note that I used the plural form of the word message. I was busy with other things — a book, travel, etc. — and I didn’t take a look at them right away. She emailed me to confirm that I’d received them. I said I had and would get to it as soon as I could. She waited another week and then sent another email with a note saying that she’d put all the changes in one document, as I’d requested.

Attached was a Word document.

And then I looked at the other email messages. They all included Word documents, too.

I don’t recall asking for a Word document and I know damn well I never told her to embed the images in a Word document. There are few things as painful to me (or likely to anyone else) than removing more than 50 images from a Word document file.

EditsBut what’s worse is that she created it with Word tables and used notes inside the table cells to indicate which images to keep and which ones to remove.

Yes, that’s right — she also sent me images I already had. Images that were on the website.

And did I mention that the images were all different sizes and resolutions and proportions? They look the same here because she resized and cropped them in Word. But they’re all over the map when it comes to size and some of them are as tiny as 2-1/2 inches wide at 72 dpi. This is supposed to replace images that were at least 6 inches wide at 72 dpi. Do you know what they look like when I try to scale them up?

But it’s the inconsistent use of little down-pointing arrows and the positions of the images that I’m struggling with. Is she pointing to a replacement or the one I’m supposed to delete?

Understand that she didn’t reproduce the page the way it appears on the website. She didn’t label them the way they are on the website. From what she’s sent, it’s not even clear whether she’s introducing new products, removing old products, or just playing a really mean joke on me.

Don’t get me wrong. I like Walt and I love his Big Wheels. (Seriously: if you have to pull an R22 or R44 or R66 around, these are the wheels you need.) He’s a nice person and his wife seems very nice, too. It’s extremely difficult, however, to get the job done with what they sent. And not to scream in frustration.

I know they’re doing the best they can. But I also know that this could easily be a post in Clients from Hell.

So now I’m waiting for her to get back to me with more information and possibly some newer, larger photos so I can finish up, take a deep breath, and go have a martini.

Do you understand now why I don’t do websites for other people anymore?

On Unfair Reviews

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They destroy morale and businesses.

These days, many companies have created online rating/review services for a wide variety of things. There’s Google and Yahoo! of course, for just about any business or product that can appear in search results. There’s Yelp for local businesses and there’s Urban Spoon for restaurants. Angie’s List, which I’ve never visited, even advertises on NPR. Hell, back when I was writing Quicken books, even Intuit tried to get into the act — although I’m not sure how that went, considering how completely saturated the review market is.

There are also product ratings systems on many online services. All the online booksellers — Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. — have them. There are rating systems for computer applications built into services such as CNET Downloads and Mac Update. Even Apple has online ratings for the products it sells, from hardware and software in its Apple stores to iTunes content, to iOS apps, to iBooks.

Frankly, these days you can’t shop for a product, company, or service online without being bombarded with people’s opinions of said product, company, or service.

And therein lies the rub.

What Are Opinions?

Reviews are a matter of opinion. And, on the surface there is — or should be — nothing wrong with opinion. After all, everyone is entitled to an opinion.

In a perfect world, a person would research a product, company, or service to determine whether or not it should meet his needs. If he decides that it does and gives it a try, he becomes entitled to form his own opinion on that product, company, or service. His opinion should be based on how well the product, company, or service met his needs, based on his expectations, which should be drawn from his research. It should also be based on his actual experience with the product, company, or service.

Sadly, only a small fraction of reviewers these days seem to understand this simple fact: you are not qualified to form and share an opinion of a product you know nothing about, or one that failed to meet unreasonable expectations.

An Example

Suppose you like cherry pie. You do a bit of research and determine that nearby ABC Pie company sells pies. You go to its website. You learn that they have won awards for their pies at the county fair for the past ten years. You learn that they appeared on a morning talk show where they talked about their pie-making techniques — and they even have a video clip on their Web site for you to watch. You learn that they have all natural ingredients and that all of their fruit pies are made exclusively with fresh, US-grown fruit. You drive over to their pie shop and are amazed to see a line coming out the door of people who have come to buy pie. You wait fifteen minutes on line. You get to the counter and ask for a cherry pie, to go.

The woman at the counter is friendly, but tells you there is no cherry pie. She’s apologetic when she reminds you that it’s February and they are unable to get fresh cherries until June. She reminds you that all of their fruit pies are made with fresh fruit. She tries to interest you in some other pies, but you want cherry. She apologizes again and says she hopes you’ll be back in the summer. After making sure there’s nothing else she can help you with, she moves on to help the next customer.

You’re upset. You feel that you wasted your time going to a pie store to get a pie you think they should have had. After all, you assumed that a pie shop would have cherry pie.

Are you qualified to get on Yelp and bash ABC Pie Company for disappointing you? For making you wait on a long line? For having terrible pie?

Of course not. You had unreasonable expectations — based on your own research! — and you never actually tried their product.

Besides, if cherry pie was the only thing you’d buy, why not call ahead to make sure they have it before taking the time to visit?

To get on Yelp and fire off a one-star rating and a review that bashes ABC Pie Company for the long line and lack of cherry pie would be unfair. To further tarnish the company’s reputation by insinuating that their pies weren’t good or that the woman at the counter was rude would be tragically unfair.

Yet people do this all the time on Yelp and other review services. And it hurts businesses.

And that brings me to the motivation of today’s post.

I am a Victim

One of the things I learned early on a writer was to not read reviews of my books. The reason: although many of them were fair — positive and negative — there were always a handful of unfair reviews that would get my blood boiling.

The earliest of these was back when I wrote my first Quicken book in the late 1990s. The Amazon reviewer gave it 1 star and said that it didn’t include anything more than what you’d find in the manual. This was blatantly untrue. The book included several lengthy sections with advice on finding mortgages, reducing debt, shopping for insurance, and calculating loans. I wrote this original material at the request of my editor, who wanted the book to provide information to help readers get their finances in order. I drew upon my accounting experiences as a small business owner, as well as what I learned in college business courses. I created photo-copyable worksheets, each of which appeared in the book. None of this content was in the product manual. It was clear that the reviewer had never read the book — and possibly never even opened it. Yet, for some reason I couldn’t discover, he had taken it upon himself to bash the book and publish outright lies about it.

Talk about unfair!

I appealed to my publisher and they went to Amazon with the facts. The review was eventually removed.

It was then that I decided to avoid reading reviews of my books.

iBooks Author IconBut sometimes reviews get in your face. Yesterday, I checked the listing for my iBooks Author book in the iBookstore. I don’t even know why I did. And I was shocked to see a one-star review where the reviewer had taken the time to do some book bashing. His complaint: the book wasn’t written with iBooks Author. He claimed that it was impossible to write the book without using the software to write THAT book. (Almost as if he didn’t think I’d ever used the software at all.) I guess he never considered that the book provides instructions for creating another book with iBooks Author. Or maybe that’s not good enough for him.

It’s almost as if he’s suggesting that when I write a book about Excel, I should write it in Excel. Or when I write a book about Photoshop, I should write it in Photoshop. (A picture book, I guess.)

I should mention here that nowhere in the book’s description does it say that it was written with iBooks Author. Obviously, he had unreasonable expectations. (Kind of like assuming there’s cherry pie when there’s no reason to believe there should be.)

So he bashed the book. Even said “don’t waste your money.” As if the content didn’t count for anything because it wasn’t written in iBooks Author.

(Don’t waste your money on this Toyota because it wasn’t built in a Mercedes factory.)

Why would someone do such a thing?

Is he stupid? Does he simply not understand what a review is supposed to be? A summary of how a product met reasonable expectations?

Or just inconsiderate? Does he have a mean streak that makes him want to hurt people by making unfair comments in public?

Or have it in for me? Is there something about me personally that he doesn’t like? Something that makes him want to hurt me?

Does he understand the impact of his actions? My book had steady sales for four days in a row, but after his “review” appeared, sales dropped off. While I don’t know for sure if his “review” caused the drop, what am I supposed to think?

And what am I supposed to do?

I should mention here that the only other review (with words in addition to stars) was a five-star review that had glowing praise for the book. (And no, it wasn’t written by me or any close friend.)

Obviously, I’m going to try to get Apple to pass judgement on the review. I think I have a case, but I don’t really think Apple will do a thing. As I mentioned at the start of this post, things like this happen all the time. Apple would need a full-time staff just to handle complaints about unfair reviews.

I’ll just have to live with it and hope potential buyers can see just how unfair it is.

And if you think book reviews have been the only source of angst for me, think again. This telemarketer’s “review” was so over the top, I had no trouble getting it removed.

Fight Unfair Reviews

As a business owner and author, all I can do is present my case for the other business owners and authors out there. Many of us work hard and seriously do our best to make customers and readers happy — or at least satisfied.

If you have a legitimate gripe about a product, company, or service, by all means, share it. If a product, company, or service did not meet your reasonable expectations, tell the world.

Throughout the years, I’ve gotten feedback about my work from people who have read and commented on my work. Not all of it was good. In every case possible, I took the negative points — the fair ones, anyway — to heart and used them to improve my work in the future. I’ve added new content to later editions of the same work, I’ve changed the way I present certain material. I want my work to be the best it can. I want my readers to be happy with my work. Legitimate, fair reviewers can help me — and others — be the best we can be.

But unfair reviews don’t help anyone.

See an unfair review online? Mark it unhelpful or report it (if possible). Weed out those unfair reviews so the fair ones get the attention they deserve.

Small business owners are depending on it.

Weird Health Problems? Check Your Meds!

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While trying to track down the cause of one weird symptom, I find the cause of another.

I’m in generally good health. A bit overweight, perhaps, but still able — and willing! — to move around pretty well. The weight issue and genetics is probably the cause of my high blood pressure, which has been kept under control by medication for the past four or five years.

Unfortunately, one of those medications was costing a small fortune — $80/month. (Yes, I know that you or someone else you know probably takes or has taken medicine that costs a lot more. If it makes you feel better, do tell us about it in the comments. Sadly, costly medicine is a fact of life here in the U.S. Remember that when you vote for politicians who support Big Pharma and insurance companies. Can I get back to what I was saying now?) I decided to see if there was a cheaper alternative when I began seeing a new doctor.

He agreed that Micardis (Telmisartan), which is what I was taking, was too expensive. He prescribed two other medications — Lisinopril and Amlodipine. Together, these pills would cost $32/month. A savings of almost $50.

I started taking them. I monitored my blood pressure with a home device. I had follow up visits. Everything was fine. Medicines were working and blood pressure was well within acceptable limits. End of story.

Or not?

Two Weird Symptoms

About a week or two ago, I began noticing two annoying little health problems. I didn’t think much of them and I don’t even know if they started at the same time.

One was an incessant ringing in my ears — mostly my left ear. Not loud. More like the kind of ringing you have in your ears about an hour after a rock concert at a big indoor venue. Like Led Zeppelin at Madison Square Garden (1977).

Yes, I know I’m a helicopter pilot and I’m subjected to loud noises quite often. But I also know that I spent $1,100 on a pair of Bose noise-canceling headsets for a reason. Plus, it’s not as if I’m flying every day. And yes, I do drive my Honda S2000 with the top down on the freeway and it is very noisy. But I don’t do that every day, either. And I’ve begun wearing earplugs on the highway just in case it is the car that’s causing the problem.

My ears are clean — I use Q-Tips after every shower. I have no other symptoms related to ear ringing, such as vertigo, headaches, etc. It’s a simple case of tinnitus that’s worse when I’m in quiet places and worse in the evening. Annoying when it goes on for more than a week and shows no chance of stopping.

The other weird symptom is a dry cough. Everyone gets these coughs now and then. You get a tickle in your throat and you cough. The more you cough, the more you feel like you need to cough. (Some of you out there might know another activity that sometimes causes a cough like that.) It a dry cough, though, and nothing comes up with it. Drinking water or sucking cough drops does not help. Oddly, blowing my nose — even if it’s dry — does help. The cough happens periodically throughout the day and wakes me — and my husband and likely the upstairs neighbor — in the middle of the night.

Normally for me, a cough like this signals the onset of a cold. First dry, then phlegmy, then a post-nasal drip, sore throat, and the rest of it. But not this time. Just a dry cough that comes and goes throughout the day. Every day. And every night. And the more I cough, the more I strain the muscles in my chest, so now I’m kind of sore, too.

Finding the Cause

I figured the ear ringing had to do with my new meds, although I couldn’t understand why the symptom didn’t show up for over a month after starting them. So I pulled out the little flyer that came from the pharmacy for each of them and scanned the side effects. As anyone who has ever watched a drug commercial on TV can tell you, all drugs have numerous side effects and these two were no different.

And guess what I found?

One of the side effects of Lisinopril is a dry cough. I did some more research on the Web and came up with a bunch of search results on “Lisinopril dry cough.” This page even explains why the cough occurs in some people. And that it sometimes takes a while for the side effect to appear.

Damn!

The good news is that the cough usually goes away when you stop taking Lisinopril. The bad news is that it might take months to stop.

Of course, no explanation for the ear ringing. At least not in the med pamphlets.

So today I’ll make an appointment with my doctor and see him about the meds and the ear ringing. Hopefully, we can get to the root of both problems and resolve them soon.

The Moral

There are two morals to this story:

  • When taking meds, it’s important to consider possible side effects when otherwise unexplained symptoms begin appearing.
  • If you stay in good health, you shouldn’t need meds or have to worry about side effects.

Lesson learned.

More Self-Publishing Insight

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With project #3 done, I have a few more experiences to share.

Late last month I wrote a typically lengthy post about my experiences to date as a self-publisher. At that time, I’d finished two book projects and was in the middle of my third.

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m not new to publishing. My first self-published book was my 79th book. I’ve been at it for 20 years. But as my publishers begin to cut back on their publication schedules, I had to do something to find a market for my work. My self-publishing solution seemed like a good idea.

The jury is still out, however.

What Book #3 Taught Me

My third and biggest (so far) self-published book.

My most recent project, iBooks Author: Publishing Your First Ebook, taught me a few things:

  • I don’t write as fast as I used to. Sure, I knocked out a 242-page book with 274 screenshots, all laid out in InDesign CS5.5, in about 10 days. But they were grueling days that never seemed to end. And the whole time, I was racing against the clock, doing what I could to be the first book out about iBooks Author. I’m not sure, but I may have succeeded. But I’m really tired.
  • An InDesign to EPub conversion process doesn’t always work as smoothly as it did the last time I did it. Indeed, Apple’s iTunes Producer program kept choking on the epub I created, even though it proofed fine in multiple tools. (Note to self: Make sure the name of the InDesign file does not include spaces. Further note: Make sure all filename extensions are in lowercase. Sheesh.)
  • None of the ebook sellers are interested in providing support for publishers. Amazon.com sends an automated response, follows it up with a canned response two days later, and then ignores subsequent requests for help on the same issue. Apple’s Contact page takes you through a list of possible FAQ responses and then tells you to get an aggregator. Barnes & Noble won’t allow pubs over 20 MB in size. Period. If you don’t know their rules or have a clue what you’re doing, you’re screwed.
  • Amazon.com will squeeze every single penny they can out of a publisher. My final book was huge — after all, it included 274 color screenshots. Amazon.com’s “delivery” fee ate up half of my royalties. I had to recompile the book with all images converted from PNG to JPG to regain about 50¢ per copy in royalties.
  • DRM might not be a good idea. I’d been sitting on the fence about this option and decided to try it for this book. I really thought Amazon.com and Apple’s iBookstore would have had this figured out, but apparently they don’t. On the third day after publication, I was getting complaints from readers. I wound up republishing the iBooks version with DRM turned off. We’ll see what happens with the Kindle version.
  • I hate indexing books. Well, this book didn’t teach me that. Other books taught me years ago. But it did remind me. Unfortunately, when there’s no advance and no guarantee of sales, I can’t afford to hire an indexer. So I have to do it myself.

I Like My POD Printer

A few days ago, I searched for my first self-published book, Making Movies: A Guide for Serious Amateurs, on Amazon.com and was pleasantly surprised to find both the print and Kindle versions. Apparently, the Amazon.com Website is automatically populated from data in the Ingram Catalog. Since my print books appear in that catalog, they also appear on Amazon.com. The second book was there, too.

What was odd, however, is that the book is available from other booksellers who sell through Amazon. They’re discounting it. I don’t personally care what they sell it for because I don’t earn based on a fixed wholesale price, which is 55% off the retail price. The POD printer gets the money they send, subtracts the cost of production, and sends me the rest. At least that’s how it’s supposed to work. We’ll see, I guess.

I should mention that the print books are on Barnes & Noble’s Website, too. BN.com even showed the correct cover photo. (I had to contact Amazon to get the cover photo to show up for the print book.)

Books Do Sell

Although sales for my first two titles were a bit sluggish — and remained so — the third book is selling quite briskly, especially on the iBookstore. I’m able to monitor sales at Apple, Amazon, and BN on a daily basis for the previous day’s sales. I’ve sold about 100 copies in 3-1/2 days.

Oddly, it’s also the most “popular” of my books on Amazon.com right now, even beating out my Lion book. It’s currently #9 in the Graphic Design category in the Kindle store; it was #16 yesterday. (Of course, one of my Mac OS books once hit #11 storewide on Amazon.com, but I fear those days are long gone for me.)

But I’m no fool. I figure I need to sell an average of 80 books a day to make a living doing this. So, in a way, I’m back to where I was when I started my writing career 20 years ago. Back then, I realized that if I wanted to make a living as a writer, I’d have to write a lot of books.

What Are Your Experiences?

Someone recently commented on my first self-publishing post to thank me for sharing my experiences. But I’d like to read what others are going through. Why not use the comments link to share your experiences with me and the others who read this? Surely we can all learn from each other.

I don’t know about you, but I never stop learning.