Walking Down The Avenue v1.0 coming next Thursday!

Dups and Aaron and the team did not defeat me.   As I had feared all along,  they did make multiple significant changes to Empire Avenue this week.   But I am pleased to say that I have just finished all of the revisions.     One more through proof-reading tomorrow or the next day and Walking Down The Avenue v 1.0  will be ready to "smash" into a real eBook.

A friend who is a retired graphic designer made the book cover for me,  using a public domain image.   I'm thrilled with the cover  (Which looks So much nicer than my very amateurish effort on the beta).  I expect that I will upload it to Smashwords on Tuesday.  Provided there are no problems with the upload and it all goes according to plan,  I may give the book's sharehloders ((e)WALKING) the first sneak peak via a shareholder mail on Wednesday.   Then starting Thursday I have a list of 14 people,  all of whom have lots and lots of shareholders,  who have agreed to send out a shareholder mail containing a 100% off coupon.

Although the price is going up from free to $2.99,  I don't expect to sell many at all at that price this first month.  I will be promoting the book with the 100% off coupon all over the place and hope to get twice as many people to download the $2.99 version as did the free version, but I'm not really expecting that many of them will pay for it.    What I hope is that Empire Avenue continues to evolve, change and grow.   To a point where a year down the line,  hundreds of newcomers each day get the book recommended to them from the first thousand or so who get to read it for free.

If you'd like to be one of those first thousand,  you might sign up for my very low volume mailing list in the sidebar.    On September 1st,  I plan to mail the 100% off coupon to my e-mail list.    It will only be the second e-mail I have ever sent out on that list,  which is really only for updates about Walking Down The Avenue.  So if you'd like to peruse the eBook when it's published next month,  please fill out the form and check your e-mail on 9/1/2011.

It seems as though...

I will just never be a consistent, regular personal blogger.    While Empire Avenue has made some changes this month,  in particular a new and improved layout for profiles and support for mobile check in service Four Square and iPhone photo sharing suite Instagram.     So I am going to have to do some re-writing and revising in the next two weeks,  for the most part the book's text will stand as written.      I am going to allow a handful of other players to send out a free coupon code for Walking Down The Avenue 1.0 via shareholder mail.     I will also send out the coupon code via shareholder mail to both my (e)LIBDRONE and (e)WALKING accounts and via e-mail to everyone who signs up for my mailing list.  (Look in the right sidebar!)    For those who do not receive a coupon code,  the list price will be $2.99.   Since I will be heavily promoting the 100% discount coupon,  I don't know how many copies I may or may not actually sell very many copies,  but I am looking forward to at least potentially beginning to make some money from the eBook.

Still to be done,  I need to get a new book cover image ready.   I also need to finalize arrangements with the folks who will be sending out the coupon codes for me,  and make those last changes and additions to the manuscript.    August 30 will be here before I know it.  (Although the book will officially launch on September 1st,  I intend to actually upload it on August 30th,  to allow time to be sure that the book is up and available on launch day.)   I am so pleased with all of the great people I am meeting on Empire Avenue and am especially grateful to the nearly 250 folks who (as of this writing) have downloaded the free beta edition of Walking Down The Avenue.    The free beta will continue to be available until approximately August 30th-- the new 1.0 version will replace the beta version on Smashwords.    If you download the beta version from Smashwords prior to the upgrade,  you will be able to re-download that beta version again for as long as Smashwords exists.    However, you will not be able to download the new 1.0 version unless you buy it,  either for $2.99 or using a coupon code as described above.

Thank you so much for your help and support.   I look forward to continuing to write and update Walking Down The Avenue for as long as Empire Avenue itself keeps going.

Getting ready for 1.0

On September 1st I will be releasing version 1.0  of my eBook Walking Down The Avenue.   At that time I will raise the price from free to 99 cents.   I feel certain that I will not distribute as many paid copies right off the bat as I did free copies,  but my  strategy with this book has been as a long term project.  If, as I hope, Empire Avenue has a nice long run and the game continues to constantly evolve and change,  I should be able to continue publishing up-dated versions every two or three months.

Actually,  I am hoping to have the new text and all of the edits done and the new and improved book cover image uploaded by August 30th or so,  so that I can make sure that everything is working correctly.   Then on September 1st I will announce the new book release in a guest blog post on a popular social media blog.   A free coupon code will be available to Empire Avenue shareholders,  both mine and those of the host of my guest blog post.     I will probably be fairly free in giving out the coupon code to shareholders.     I will also be distributing the coupon code via my e-mail list.   So if you haven't already,  you might want to sign up in the sidebar at the right.   This is a very low volume mailing list.   Every six to eight weeks, at most I will send a new message.   So far the only message I have sent was to announce the availability of the beta version of Walking. I give you my word that I will never be a spambot.

How much work I am going to have to do on revisions depends largely on how much Dups and the team change the game between now and around August 23rd.    I have already made some updates and revisions and begun adding new material,  but I am very much at the mercy of developments on the Avenue as to how much updating I will have to do.   I am so pleased and grateful to everyone who has downloaded and read Walking Down The Avenue and especially to the 32 of you who have subscribed and even more grateful to the 15 folks who opened the message.   So here is just a little added incentive to sign up for my mailing list-- everyone who is subscribed by August 31st will continue to receive a free coupon code for my eBook for as long as I publish it.    As I said I plan initially to be very free in handing out the free coupon code,  but just as what is now free will cost 99 cents next month,  I don't plan on giving the book away forever.   So be one of the few who have the savvy to sign up now and continue to get the most useful eBook about Empire Avenue for as long as the game goes on.

Sometimes....A Bear Just Has To Be A Bear

My friends who know me well already know that I am a bear.  Both in the bear sense and  in being especially fond of bears iconicly and totemicly.    In Walking Down The Avenue I wrote that the Books index on Empire Avenue was such a natural fit that I would not switch to another index just to be a CEO.    And yet today,  I just did.   After three months of being visually identified mostly with my Libdrone Books logo, with scads of pie pictures and for awhile with a Seattle Space Needle picture I used as my Facebook avatar,   I decided on a whim this morning to post a handful of public domain bear photographs on my Facebook page.     And rather a lot of my friends Liked them.


I previously stated that when I reached 2.3 million eaves in net wealth I would sell off some shares and buy my third Bigger Piece of the Pie.     I have reached that wealth milestone and spent an hour or so today going through my portfolio.    Don't own shares in me.  SOLD!   Sold off my shares when we were max/max and you still acted friendly to my face?   SOLD and BLOCKED.   Compared to my previous experiences buying pie,  this third slice came rather easily.   For the first time in more than a month,  I went through my entire portfolio yesterday evening and made and identified all of the tickers I held shares in that didn't own any in me.    Where I only owned a small number of shares and/or the dividends were awful I went ahead and sold right away,  and re-invested the proceeds in shares that I want to keep.    Those that paid great dividends I put on a list.   And just as soon as dividends were paid I started selling.   Selling off those that had not invested in me netted me about 210,000 eaves.    I sold down in a few shares where I owned a lot more shares than the other party.   I also sold about 50 (out of 300 owned)   in two or three friends whom I know will understand.  

In honor of my third slice of pie,   I  will this weekend be serving up yummy delicious pie to everyone who invests in me.   However instead of posting it in my Empire Avenue avatar I will post pie pics on the buyer's Facebook wall.   I will acknowledge all buyers on my Empire Avenue profile.   Alas,  the pie that I am serving is only pretty pictures,  rather than Empire Avenue upgrades.   If you'd like a slice and you aren't already on Empire Avenue,  sign up now and get 2,000 eaves free from me.   My thanks to  Ryan who taught me and so many other players the value of having a newbie farm to finance pie upgrades.   My take away today is that change is good for creating new interest and getting out of a price rut. (With all of the likes my bear pictures garnered,  my share price is up over a full eave today.)  And that sometimes,  a bear just has to be a bear.

Social Media Motifs

My friend Holly wrote a piece yesterday about the rather small number of motifs that all fiction can theoretically be reduced to.    I'm familiar with the point and it is a good one--  there really is nothing new under the sun and most all novels tell one of the same old stories,  in a unique new way.   And the idea of the same old stories being endlessly repeated certainly resonates with me in my social medial activities these days.   Sometimes it seems that every other thread I read deals with one of a handful of seemingly endless arguments.

The "Google + is the greatest thing since sliced bread" threads  (now numbering 12,344,963,021 as of 7/14/2011 05:29 GMT) aren't really arguments.    While I am definitely underwhelmed with G+ and very frustrated at Google's inability to let me use one account to access all of their services I desire,   I am hardly a strident critic of Plus itself-- it seems to me ridiculously early to be passing any sort of judgment about a brand new product still in beta.

Another debate,  which is a bit livelier is over whether it is okay to Like or +1 your own material.  Some argue that it is simply basic SEO, while others feel that it is silly, tacky or even unethical to to Like yourself.   I don't see it as an ethical issue, really,  and I'm sure the SEO advocates have a valid point.   But I am so trained by years of using StumbleUpon to be very restrained in giving thumbs up to my own material  (like yourself often on SU and you get sent to a kind of purgatory-- click up all you want,  no one will Ever see those posts) that I really just can't bring myself to Like and Plus myself.   Luckily I seem to have friends who are willing to do it for me.

The question "what is spam" certainly brings out strong feelings.   Most everyone hates spam.  Most everyone is certain that they themselves do not spam.   Yet the beat goes on.   Those who have things up so that every time they type 140 characters they score 1 tweet, 1 blog post (on Tumblr), and 1 Facebook post certainly don't think of themselves as spammers,  though other folks certainly do.   There are  lots of gray areas,  reasonable arguments about different audiences on different sites and it seems to me the chances of this question being definitively resolved within the lifetimes of anyone who will read this are, pretty much, nil.

The most contentious perpetual argument on Empire Avenue is,  I have come to believe,  "What IS A Blog?"   Those who read my earlier piece with that title will recall that it is not a simple question, but rather a sorting mechanism that pits creators against curators against copiers.    And which participants may accurately be sorted into which of these categories and when generates,  I have come to believe between a third and half of all conversation on the Avenue, in the communities and in the Facebook groups.  (The G+ crowd is so busy crowing about plus,  that they ignore even this most insoluble of the endless social media arguments.)

While I can at least hope that some of the hype around plus will eventually die down and we can have a chance to use it and work with it and see what it can and can't do and importantly how Google handles the issues that will inevitably arise as they roll out Plus to the entire planet.  I quietly point  out that Google does not have an especially enviable record for user satisfaction, and is very Facebook like in making it pretty much impossible for users to contact a human been for support when something goes wrong.    There isn't really anything new in social media.   Only people clever enough to have the same old discussions in ways that seem new all over.

I don't like noisy bars

This is a rant.    If you're in no mood to hear it,  please click here to go somewhere else today.    I've been genuinely pleased with the modest success of my beta release of Walking Down The Avenue.   More than 70 people have downloaded a copy already,  and all of the feedback I've received has been positive.    I am working on adding additional material for the 1.0 release,  which I am not in any hurry to rush out.  

As previously mentioned,   I have not been enjoying Google + very much.    Due to Google's restrictions and profile requirements I find that I am now using THREE separate Google accounts-- and while it is possible to get two of them going at the same time in separate browsers,   I literally have to log out of my e-mail to use G+  or to post to this blog.  #IAmSONotAHappyCamper.      And the G+  feature that everyone seems SO excited about is a complete non-starter to me--  the group video chat thing appeals to me not at all.    I am severely hearing impaired and web video chat does not work for me.   Period.   Paragraph.   Page Break.    I can watch tv or movies by relying on the closed captions.   In person I can sometimes read lips and interpret expression and body language--- though this can be hit or miss,  particularly with people I don't know well.    Honestly,  even my spouse sitting five feet away from knows to type me an IM if we Really need to Talk.    G+  sure doesn't look like a Facebook killer to me,  at least not in this early iteration.

All of which is by saying that I continue to do most of my socializing in Facebook groups.     It appears that Empire Avenue is Not going to be adding FB groups to EAv scores any time soon:  they seem to be focusing on improving the discussion boards in the Empire Avenue communities and trying to lure the discussions in house.   Unfortunately I don't believe I'm alone in feeling they are a long way in terms of both ubiquity and user interface from making much progress towards this goal.     I know from my 20 years online that change,  often drastic change,  is the only constant in any online community.    And  it really saddened me today to see that a community I had really enjoyed seems to have become Way too spammish for me to enjoy.    The rule has always been that Buy Me spam is strongly discouraged but members are allowed to celebrate "significant game milestones".    I know that everyone has a slightly--very different experience of Empire Avenue.   The more active you already are on the connected social networks the more rapidly your price will rise, and your dividends may well keep up.

I am experienced on social media,  though I've never really tried to be "most popular" and after more than three months in the game,   I seem to be seriously plateauing at 80.    I have gotten as high as 82 but today am back down to 80.    After a heavy day of active social media,   I'll probably go up again tomorrow but I am reaching the limits  of how much social media I'm willing to Do and am beginning to wonder if I will have to come to grips with being an 80 dollar stock that just isn't going to go on to become a centurion.   (At least not without a lot of help from my friends.)    And in all this time,   I think I have Once posted a buy me-ish type spam to One group,  when my shares were going for 42 and I made a Hichiker's reference.   So this gorilla icon guy,   whom I haven't met and don't know posted the _n_th  Buy Me spam thread  (I saw at least 6 buy me or single player recommendation threads,  both of which are supposed to be against the rules) before the gorilla guy's post prompted me to ask if the rules had changed.

Gorilla guy  (whom I've blocked, thanks) took offense and told me to sell him or whatever.   No need,   never bought.    Like I said the guy posting was a stranger to me.    Who seems to be a good bit newer in the game than I am.    Who posted a thread and got tons of replies about his big push from 77 to 80.      Whatever.    (I firmly believe that it is quite impossible to be friends with everyone;   the ability to civilly ignore people you don't wish to engage is the most useful online social skill imho.)   But then one of the groups moderators posted,  not to trash the guy for spamming,  but to assure me that I am a valued group member too and would be more than welcome to share my significant game milestones too.   Oh-----kay.      The problem is if now 600 people are allowed to spam any particular price milestone they choose  (and not just the traditional 100-- which like a bridal shower is more properly pushed by one's friends rather than by the Bride) what had been a cool place to hang out and shoot the breeze with some incredible people has pretty much become a spammy snake pit that I am just not likely to hang around very much.    There's another group I like and respect and belong to,  but I rarely go there anymore because the scroll rate is so high and the signal to noise ratio has gotten way noisier than I'm comfortable with.    What I hope the mods  (and even the gorilla guy for that matter) understand is that it's not about being angry or taking my marbles and running home.    It's about too much noise making the good conversations too hard to follow.

Sometimes....

Sometimes I just hate Google.    Long time readers of my books blog will recall some years back that it was a change on Blogspot (which required anyone commenting on a post to sign in with Google or Open ID and did not allow one to comment leaving just your name, e-mail and URL) that finally got me to move the books blog over to WordPresss.     I railed against Google at the time,   and was pleased that they after a time changed it back.     Indeed I probably would not have used Blogspot for this new personal blog,  if they had not made that important change.

While reading the zillionth or so person's observation the other day about how bad Facebook sucks,  I find myself thinking the other day about how much I dislike having become basically a pawn of a few huge companies online.    We all know how bad Facebook sucks.  particularly in terms of their privacy policy and their complete lack of customer service.  (Unless of course you are an advertiser-- a friend tells me that advertisers can get someone on the phone or to answer an e-mail;  my friend explains to me that Facebook users are not Facebook's customers.)    And the same of course is true of other huge online companies.    Those of us who use g-mail are definitely Google users, rather than customers.    This started off as a post about how frustrated I was at not being able to get into Google+.

You have to understand that for years my primary Google account has been based on a typo.   Way back in the MUD days  (if you don't know what that is, you are an online NEWCOMER who needs to remember her manners-- don't care how much Klout you have) I used the handle outofit.  Out of it.   That was how I often felt when I first began hanging out with some friends from Compu$erve on Timewarp  (telnet: quark.gmi.edu:5150).    To get to Timewarp I typed  that string at ! Unix prompt.   The Unix shell account I bought and accessed over dial-up from my local ISP was the only way for folks not connected to an .edu or a .gov  to get online.    So it was,  very early in my blogging career when I set up a new Blogger account  (long before gMail days btw) that I chose my old handle outofit.     I'd used it for a number of years and had not yet conceived my libdrone handle that became the one I try to promote everywhere and always.    Silly me.   I typoed  ouofoit  into the account creation box and quite failed to notice the typo before I submitted it.    For all of these years I have published multiple blogs while logged in as ouofoit@gmail.com,  an address I never gave to any of my friends.   And which I never connected to the web of a dozen or so e-mail addys I use,  all of which forward into the one gMail box I actually use to manage all email correspondence  drone@libdrone.info.

This last bit proved to be critical.    I received dozens of invites to +  from different friends at lots of e-mail addys.   And every time I clicked to join in the fun,  I got an error that + requires Profile and your organization is not allowed profiles.  (gMail on my own domains,  the free plan).     I finally added a profile and displayed my real name with my very old typo ouofoit and after waiting about,  voila,  I am accessing the Plus and busy finding and adding all my Facebook friends.      Time was I talked about how using different handle for different parts of your life enabled you to pursue even specialized interests with very different groups of friends,  who have little in common with each other and whom you don't want to mix with each other.     Google +   with its circles feature seems prepared to enable you to finally do just that with your primary social media logins.     How ironic that on Google +  I am a 4 year old typo come to life.