The Many Uses of Dusted!

Holy cow Dusted has so many uses you guys! It's the Swiss army knife of books! It can be used as a sun shield for other books!

So much protection from fading and looks great too!

Are your kids bugging you for a new toy? Dusted makes for a great set of building blocks for hours of fun and imagination!

Amazing!

Need to use the bathroom? Forget that boring old smartphone, Dusted uses no battery, requires no WiFi, and is 100% compatible with eyeballs!

Does double duty if you run out of toilet paper!

Got some laundry to do? Don't bother with regular laundry soaps full of harsh chemicals that can irritate skin, use Dusted as an all-natural cleaning agent in all your laundry loads!

Throw a second copy into the dryer for extra softness!

Playing some videogames while waiting for the laundry to finish? Can't get past a difficult area? Dusted can help with that too! Dusted is 100% guaranteed to get you past that one spot you can never beat!*

*Except for Dark Souls.

In fact, Dusted even works as a videogame console! It's compatible with all discs, cartridges, and hardware of any make and model!

Got a Wii game but only a Gamecube Controller? No problem!

Don't know what to feed the family? No worries, Dusted is even edible! With all of your daily essential vitamins and minerals included you have a complete and balanced meal!

Yummers!

So buy Dusted today!

Kindle Books are Getting Pricer (and so is Dusted)

It probably sounds weird, but I like to read some of my old blog posts. One in particular grabbed my attention recently was about Kindle book pricing. I’ve been kind of paranoid lately about the prices going up because, as time goes on, I slowly start becoming an old lady that clings to every penny but, when I clicked some of the book links, I found that I was actually correct but far worse than I even imagined. I'm not the only one who's noticed.

Let’s review some of the old prices versus their current prices shall we? The previous prices are based on the time of my old blog post which was posted January 10th, 2014. That was just over 3 years ago. 

Mistborn Boxset

Previous price: $15.30

Current price: $22.99

Allegiant

Previous price: $6.99

Current price: $9.99

The Hunger Games

Previous price: $14.99

Current price: $25.99

The Sight and Fell set

Previous price: $7.99

Current price: $6.99

(Okay so this one went down)

Cold Days

Previous price: $4.99 (I predicted it to raise to $7.99)

Current price: $9.99

Game of Thrones 5 Book Box Set

Previous price: $19.99

Current price: $39.99

It used to be that ebooks were priced just under the cost for a paperback but, somewhere down the line, that unspoken rule was thrown out the window.

And, as much as I hate to say this, I decided on February 4th to increase the price of Dusted.

There are several reasons for this, the main one is that it’s my primary income now. The big move I made last summer meant quitting my previous job and, as anyone in this economy knows, it has been difficult to get a new one.

Unless I was willing to commute 10 hours to my old job.

The lack of reviews means I need to get more from each copy sold. I know they sound unrelated but some people will pass on books simply because there aren’t that many reviews for it (whether they’re good or bad is irrelevant.)

Part of the price hike is that Amazon kind of forced my hand. It would have been easy to blame them for everything and turn them into the bad guy but I couldn’t do that because I was already considering raising the price and, more importantly, Amazon has been amazing to me, and other small indie authors,  to allow my writing to be published. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

Most of all, however, I honestly believe I am providing a quality product to my readers. It’s not perfect but I poured my heart, soul, brain, and time into Dusted to make it what it is, and I think I have earned more than a just kudos for it. Has anyone ever actually said to themselves “Ew $2.99? I’m not buying that I’m going to buy a different book at $0.99 because it’s cheaper”? At this point in Dusted’s lifetime if I make a sale then I make a sale, regardless of price. Not to mention that, these days, lower pricing actually lowers sales.

 

So let me break down some numbers for you. Amazon allows you to choose between royalties of 35% or 70%, each one with their pros and cons. For a long time the income didn’t really bother me so I had it set for 35%, this was getting me $0.32 per copy sold. That said, it has taken me years to gain enough money to even buy something at McDonald’s.

By changing to 70% royalties I actually get to have a much larger sum of money. One of the disadvantages of the gained royalty, however, is a forced increase of the ebook price. I was unaware of this but, apparently, if you want 70% royalties, you must price your ebook at a minimum of $2.99. That’s okay though because I was already deciding between raising it to $1.99 or $2.99.

Okay, so the price for the consumer goes up a staggering 300%, it sounds bad when you put it like that but let me show you something

 

Yes with 70% Amazon charges me for shipping the ebook to you.

Where before I was making $0.32 cents in royalties per copy I would now be making $2.05. You pay 300% more than you did previously but I now make 640% more.

More profits means I can work harder at this writing thing. Becoming a full time author has been my dream since I was fourteen years old writing a terrible novel on loose sheets of paper with a pencil until my hand cramped.

Each copy sold, especially now, means I get one step closer for that dream to come true.

The Cost to Entertainment Ratio in Media

Originally this was meant to be a part of a different post, but it ran as a long enough tangent that I decided to split it off.

Lots of people, especially these days, struggle financially. I'm not going to get into the woes of money and the economy, but you do have to consider ways to save money, even in entertainment. As of this writing Idaho's minimum wage is $7.25 which is the same as the Federal Minimum Wage. In order to save money in regards to entertainment your cost per hour to entertain yourself needs to be lower than the amount of money you make per hour and the cost to entertainment ratio of gaming is unbeatable if you know how to play your cards right.

I might be a little biased though. 

I couldn't find a breakdown of the cost so I'm going to do it here. Let's start with some averages.

Average cost of a movie ticket: $8.61
How many American households have computers: 84%
How many American households have gaming consoles: 80%

I'm not going to cite my sources since it's not really the main point, but it's a generalizing so that I don't have to calculate the extra cost of purchasing a game console or computer, because at that point I would then be calculating the cost of a TV to watch a movie and a car to go to a movie theater. You have to draw the line somewhere and so I choose to assume everyone has a TV, a game console, a computer, a car...

a house.

Watching a movie in the theater

Tickets(for two): $17.22

Movie length: Let's be generous and say 2 hours

Cost to entertainment ratio: $8.61 per hour

This is assuming you don't have dinner and don't buy anything from the concession stand (popcorn, drinks, candy)

Watching a movie at home

DVD: I've seen movies range from $10 to $30 so let's say it's $15

Movie length: 2 hours

Cost to entertainment ratio: $7.50 per hour

Reading a book

Cost of book: It varies. I tried googling it but I got some weird results:

I bought 4 trade paperbacks and now I can't afford groceries.

So let's say $10 for a book.

Book length: Again, it varies, but I've been able to read an entire book in a day so let's say 8 hours.

Cost to entertainment ratio: $1,25 per hour.

If you buy my book, however, you will gain money because the pages are actually made of solid gold.

Playing a videogame, Multiplayer

Videogame length varies more than anything else here, so I'm going to use several examples. Since I'm primarily a PC gamer I'm going to use those. I'm also going to use specific examples that are better for two or more people to watch or participate. The Elder Scrolls and Fallout games are amazing, but they work better for solo entertainment. I will be using my own gameplay time in games I have finished, so your mileage may vary.

Borderlands 2

Cost: $20, this is the current price, not on sale, without any DLC.

Game length: Variable. I have played through it multiple times and I have just clocked in my 200th hour (this is my 3rd most played game in my Steam library, under Team Fortress 2 and 7 Days to Die) I do, however, have all the DLC. Sometimes I have skipped a lot of the side quests, sometimes I don't do the DLC, so let's cut off 100 hours to be fair.

Cost to entertainment ratio: $0.20 per hour.

Divinity: Original Sin

Cost: $40

Game length: I haven't played the Enhanced Edition, which includes more stuff. I played the classic edition. So I'm being a little harsh with this one by using the Enhanced price with the Classic gameplay time, which is 67 hours.

Cost to entertainment ratio: $0.60 per hour

Left 4 Dead 2

Cost $20

Game length: Again I'm halving this because L4D has been one of my favorite games but it also has a ton of replay value. So let's say 95 hours.

Cost to entertainment ratio: $0.21 per hour

Playing a videogame, Singleplayer + Watching

Maybe you're not much of a gamer though? Maybe only your spouse is while you prefer to watch a movie. That's cool too! There are games out there that are just as fun to watch as to participate. These are going to have a less efficient cost to entertainment ratio compared to the multiplayer games but they are still significantly better in cost than a movie.

The Walking Dead

Cost: $25

Game length: 29 hours

Cost to entertainment ratio: $1.16 per hour

Life is Strange

Cost: $20

Game length: 13 hours (I cut my time in half because I have played the game twice.)

Cost to entertainment ratio: $1.54

The Stanley Parable

Cost: $15

Game length: 4 hours

Cost to entertainment ratio: $3.75


I will reference some of these specific games (and more!) in another post)

Did you enjoy this post? Then check out more!

Life is Strange Review
TFTBL vs LiS: Episodes 1
Tales from the Borderlands is my GOTY
I, Gamer

Please keep reading I have cats to feed.

The Maximum Ride Movie Snuck Up on Me

I love Maximum Ride with all my heart. Even now, after getting rid of books 4 and up, I still think to myself "Why oh why did I get rid of those?" before I read my old review posts and remember just how bad they really were.

I knew for a long time that a Maximum Ride movie was announced but, somehow, the production and even the release managed to evade me. When I first heard about it I tried not to get my hopes up, the longer something is hyped for me the bigger my disappointment seems to be, even when it's good. I resigned myself to the fact that it may or may not get made and, if it did, I would know.

So, imagine my surprise a week ago when the movie popped up on Amazon. My first thought was "Holy flockcakes, it exists?" followed by "Thirty freaking bucks!?"

Which translates to 39.98 Dollarydoos

Luckily, a few days ago, I found out Netflix has it on streaming. My Internet is slow, but I managed to watch it for the most part. 

It's actually weird that I didn't know. I don't follow anything but people on the book of faces, but I am a Jenna Marbles fan, who was one of the Executive Producers. I actually had to rewind the opening credits to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. Other big names include the director Jay Martin known for his work...

...in the Art Department apparently.

Well, at least they got a a good actress for Max! Allie Marie Evans was great in...uh...

Actually I don't mind, I'm all for small names. As an indie author I would be a hypocrite if I wasn't, and everyone has to start somewhere, right? (I did catch the way you said "sorry" though, Allie, nice try but I worked with a Canadian nurse for 3 years, I am now deeply educated in Canadian culture. Maple syrup y'all!) I do have a small problem with her hair to eyebrow shade ratio:

Which actually looks even more exaggerated in the movie. A lot of people, oddly enough, had a problem with all the character's hair color. It looks like Miss Evans's original hair color, based on her eyebrows, would have been a better choice. Rather than a brunette Max they decided to go with Nevermore!Max.

I'll come back to this in a just moment.

So let's launch right into the movie itself. It's low budget and been trapped in development hell for ten years, what could possibly go wrong?

One of the beginning scenes has Nudge looking at an outfit on a laptop because she's the fashionista of the group. I wanted to show you a picture of her wearing a sunhat indoors in their gloomy house but all of the shots I can find are conspicuously absent of her (I think the movie poster even has Max twice instead of Nudge).

Oh, Nudge, did you get a tan?

She's thinking about running off to buy it but, when Max finds out, she's yelled at for risking exposure when they have to stay hidden. This is from Max who, from the looks of it, must go to the salon to get her roots done on a regular basis. An earlier scene showed her with black-painted toenails as well. At some point that nail polish had to have been purchased.

Anyway, it diverges from the book story-line in a few small ways, but it's the worst regarding their wings. The first time I saw the wings, I was expecting bad but not so bad I would start laughing. Apparently (?) the wings are stored inside of their bodies and slice open their backsides every time they are spread out. This has led to two built up lines of scar tissue.

Just like real birds.

My main beef is that the fun is missing. The characters in the book are witty and wry most of the time, especially in bad situations, and love to give each other a hard time. The movie focused entirely on dark brooding to the point where all of the characters wear black like they're an offshoot of the Addams Family.

Another weird problem is that, despite being a main character (second only to Max herself) Fang's name is never mentioned.

Uh....Chad?

The Erasers, the minion mooks, aren't even trying to be wolf-guys, they just look human, except for discount Jacob Black Ari.

"I'm here for Bella Max."

Suddenly, the movie comes to a halt halfway through the book because apparently they took the advice of Peter Jackson while he was directing The Hobbit. It ended as though it was going to continue, but I get the feeling that's not going to happen.

Despite all of that I actually liked it. I went in knowing full and well that it was going to be a steaming turd of a movie. I liked it for what it was, not what it was trying to be. Thanks to MST3K and Rifftrax I love B grade movies, the wackier the better.  I would say Maximum Ride almost verges on "so bad it's good."

At least it was better than Eragon.

Did you like this post? Then check out:

Nevermore Book Review

Max Ride Forever Review: Part 1

Max Ride Forever Review: Part 2

Max Ride Forever Review: Part 3

Books I read in 2012

Now you're stuck in an infinite loop.

Let's Get Started Shall We?

So I have basically been trapped in limbo for the last six months, August had been weirdly optimistic apparently. Luckily the hopes of people making a satyr costume has been keeping Dusted Glen alive.

Hopefully I can get back onto the scheduled bandwagon. Expect a brand new post soon! (I'd go as far as to say tomorrow but then if I miss tomorrow I'd probably shoot for the day after but then here come the people with the torches and pitchforks and how they managed to get here when I'm living with 97528395 inches of snow on the ground I don't know because I can barely get out of my driveway even on a good day not that I really have anywhere to go I'm kinda like that one song you know the one that was popular in the eighties from that band with the name that's a noun and the lead singer struck out on his own and still makes music as a solo artist to this day but it's just not quite as good as his original stuff with the band but don't tell him that because it was quite a falling out I'm pretty sure there was a biography or an autobiography why do they call them autobiographies it's not like the books write themselves although I suppose they sorta do because by living your life you're creating the story to your own biography so they should call biographies as "someone else wrote this"-graphy and autobiographies as iGraphies and lots of people would buy it because everyone rips off the lowercase i thing that apple did oh booyah I managed to have a lowercase standalone letter I be grammatically correct anyway the section in the parenthesis is longer than the entire posts so I'm going to call it good.)

Temporary Hiatus

Whenever I read that term on other stuff it usually translates to "gone forever" but I hope that's not the case here.

I am in the process of moving upstate and haven't had time to write any posts unfortunately. I hope to be back onto a regular schedule by August.

Sooner, if I eat my fiber,

Cinco de Kittens!

This blog post was five days late on purpose.

Exactly one year ago I ended up with a bunch of kittens. Not just your average age kittens like someone is trying to give away, these were dependent orphans.  A stray cat had some kittens and, unfortunately, got hit by a car. A coworker of a coworker is how I ended up with them. I did lots of research before taking them on. Still, there was lots I didn't expect.

Like the fact that they had all watched The Ring.

The lives of five little kittens were suddenly my responsibility. They were two weeks old (the picture above is from the day we got them, I do believe). I went in not expecting a single one to live. When the first one latched on and sucked part of the bottle down I had a good feeling. I felt even better when I got them to pee and, later, poop (I was always relieved to see them poop, which is probably the weird.)

Did you know Walmart carries tiny bottles and kitten milk replacer? I didn't either. Soon, I had making bottles of formula down to a science, feeding them every 4-6 hours. This went on for days, then weeks.

Four boys and one girl. Usually our kittens have a theme to their names, their theme was the letter X: Max, Drexel, Xero, Hex, and Pixel.

I still remember when they first began to play. It started as half-hearted bapping at each other, then wrestling.

"What do you mean you're not my real mom?"

They they got mobile enough that we had to start building fortifications. The baby gate we bought didn't last long before they began climbing it. Walls of Rubbermaid tubs and cardboard were built higher and more complex as they bested the previous versions.

No surface was sacred.

They had the run of an unfinished studio apartment.

Their claws grew sharp, and they became aggressive about eating. Soon, I had to wear a leather glove just to feed them, like a falconer of kittens.

The first night I didn't check on them once I sat in my house, listening to the quiet, wondering what to do with all of this time I suddenly had.

Occasionally I would watch movies with them. B-Grade movies à la Rifftrax was my culturing for them.

Which is probably why they chitter at the voice of Mike Nelson.

Soon, like all my kitties, they graduated to the outdoors.

I may be crazy and have lots of cats, but I ain't no lady.

This was the last photo of all of them together.

No, one did not die.

I had known a long time, from litters previous, that suckling for kittens is more than a food response, it is also a comfort one, like a pacifier to a human baby. What happens when you provide food, but not a pacifier? They turn to the only other thing that reminds them of their mother: Each other.

I learned the hard way that, apparently, male kitten anatomy tends to get, erm, suckled on. It was funny initially and I expected them to grow out of it, or at least the victim kitten would get old enough to knock some sense into the suckler. Out of the two of them, only one grew out of it. Unfortunately, the other one didn't. He was relocated to my parents house where he terrorizes their clowder to this day.

Even after subtracting one they got too big to all fit in my lap at once.

Despite not having a mother to teach them to hunt they managed very well. All of them were spayed and neutered because, after that much commitment, they sure as heck better not be going anywhere. The only weirdness different than other cats is the Pavlovian response to leather now.

Of course, with the spring comes a higher mortality rate. I still have two of them with me, and I gave them more time to experience life than they would have had otherwise.

That, and I have gained the most photogenic cat ever:

SO

GORRAM

PHOTOGENIC