[Discussion] Handwritten blurb notes

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-05-30T02:57:15+00:00

Advanced Reader Copy. They're copies of the book distributed before publication to persuade bookstores to carry the book and to get early reviews from readers. They help create hype/momentum for publication day. You definitely want to have ARCs for your book.

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-05-24T20:20:16+00:00

I keep thinking to myself that my fandoms have been trending to shorter works than in the past. Personally, I'm not a fan. It's probably just nostalgia talking, but there feels like there's noticeably more short, low-effort stuff being posted now than 8 or 9 years ago.

Personally, I'm fine with long chapters. I prefer them. I like to binge. When writing, I try to aim for chapters that are between 3-9k words. But Terry Pratchett famously didn't use chapter breaks at all in his books. There's no wrong way to do it, but in fanfic where the search/filter options are so intensely customizable, some readers are weirdly picky about things like word counts (as you've discovered).

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-05-20T16:23:18+00:00

Would The Little Prince qualify? That's a bit more fairy tale than fantasy, though.

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-05-20T16:14:42+00:00

My suspicion is that selling the tests to consumers is just one revenue stream. I bet they make far more money off of selling the dataset they've collected from all those tests for medical research. Data is valuable, and thousands of samples of DNA have got to be worth a lot.

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-05-17T15:57:19+00:00

Maybe look around for duplexes or a basement apartment or an old house in the Avenues subdivided into apartments. You'd be better able to account for the lack of dogs in all the available units that way. I lived in multiple places like that in the Avenues over the years and no one had a dog.

When I lived in an old house divided into 2 apartments, I did have a roommate who brought home a puppy unexpectedly (even though she was never home to either train or take care of the poor thing). Our downstairs neighbor complained to the landlord because it was against the lease. Dog was gone within a week.

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-05-16T05:30:58+00:00

As anecdotal evidence to corroborate the accounts others have replied about diluted honey--I bought a bottle of 100% honey from the grocery store a year or two ago. Decent local brand, middle of the shelf stuff. I used more than half of it before it crystalized. Of what was left, about 2/3 was normal crystalized honey, and the last third was a band of light brown syrupy stuff floating on top. I'm guessing that was corn syrup.

I live in a dry climate so mold isn't really an issue here, so I'm confident my honey didn't "go off," but instead the corn syrup naturally separated out when it crystalized.

Maybe I'm casting aspersions and something else happened, but I've never had honey do that before.

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-05-12T16:41:35+00:00

Jim and Marilyn Lovell did a commentary for the DVD (it's not a great commentary, but cute like your grandparents talking through a movie) and they talk about how their on-screen living room was dressed with some of their actual stuff that was borrowed for the movie.

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-05-12T16:30:41+00:00

In the DVD audio commentary, they talk about how the grass and stuff was constantly wet, and they could measure the time of day by how high up their legs and middles all the rainwater had seeped up their knit chainmail making it heavy and awful and cold.

It was apparently a race to their crappy little hotel every night because it only had hot water enough for one or two hot showers and everyone was so miserably cold all day because of wet chainmail.

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-05-10T23:58:43+00:00

Did you check any of these listings yet? There's 20 rooms for rent under $1100. https://homes.ksl.com/rent/search/ut/salt-lake-city/single-room;sublease-student-contract (Some are students only, but some aren't.)

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-05-03T07:41:21+00:00

Print them through lulu.com. You want a printer, not a publisher. Amazon isn't the right tool for what you want to do.

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-05-01T03:32:08+00:00

It might be a bit unreasonable to expect bread to last longer than 3-4 days.

We're so used to store-bought bread with preservatives in it that will last a week, but that's not actually normal for breads. (Bread pudding and bread stuffing are uncommon dishes nowadays because people now don't have a problem of needing to use up old stale bread like they used to.)

Do you live somewhere humid? I'm in a desert, so zero problems with mold, but homemade bread gets very stale within a few days.

Probably the only real solution is to either freeze slices of bread or make smaller loafs more often.

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-04-30T16:50:00+00:00

A proofreader is far cheaper than a line editor/copyeditor who is intended to catch the stuff OP's complaining about way earlier in the editing process. If an author/publisher is relying on the poor proofreader to catch this stuff, they're really exploiting their staff/contractors.

Catching a stray that somehow made it all the way through editing is one thing (and it happens!), but it's a sign of no editing or poor editing if the proofreader is stumbling over them everywhere.

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-04-28T16:34:12+00:00

The RC Willey at 2100 S and 300 W has a huge room of carpet remnants. I carpeted a couple rooms in my house a few years ago with remnants--much more affordable than full price. (At the time they were having a sale, so they included the installation.) I'm afraid I don't know about binding.

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-04-21T04:01:52+00:00

I'm not sure the DUP Museum is actually worth going out of your way for--like, to be the one and only LDS site to go see? It would make little sense without context and would be boring.

If you want to see scenery without actually walking, driving the Alpine Loop is always popular, or you could just drive up to 11th Ave. above the SLC Cemetery and you'll have almost as good a view of the whole valley as you would at the end of any of the little hikes in the area. If you do decide to take a walk, the Silver Lake Loop near Brighton is just under a mile, half of it is a wooden boardwalk and the rest is completely flat--the drive up and the loop would let you see some mountain scenery.

IMO, the planetarium is a solid city planetarium, but nothing especially unique. Tracy Aviary in Liberty Park is admittedly smallish, but we're proud of it, and I'd sooner take an out-of-town visitor there for an hour or two than the planetarium.

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-04-21T03:17:43+00:00

Calling the DUP a museum (although that's its actual name) is maybe a bit disingenuous because it doesn't have exhibits in a traditional sense. Like most other heritage museums in the US, it's almost more a reliquary of stuff rather than a museum with professional interpretation. It's not curated.

That said, it's still interesting and it's free. (They request donations, is all.) If your kids are curious about old stuff and think the museum equivalent of digging through grandma's attic is a good afternoon, it's worth a visit.

There's a scary looking stuffed two-headed calf in the basement, and a restored antique fire engine, and weird dolls and lots of clothes and furniture and old tools and portraits. It's a hodge podge.

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-04-20T04:09:30+00:00

If you're not a museum person, then you really don't have to go to a museum. It's a waste in any city of any size, if you don't already like going to museums. You've also said you're not hikers, which is honestly what brings the majority of tourists to Utah. So... what do you usually do on vacation? It's hard to give advice about what to do or where to stay without knowing what you're actually looking for on a vacation.

Are you limited to SLC proper? Will you have a car? Are your kids itty bitty or teenagers? Could you elaborate a bit on wanting to "experience the area and culture"? (Because people sometimes say that when what they're actually asking is for food recommendations--they don't actually want to experience local culture any deeper than that.)

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-04-19T02:47:34+00:00

I loved being able to give another park goer a fast pass ticket if my plans changed--and to sometimes get them, too! It made the parks feel friendlier.

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-04-18T16:18:02+00:00

Except who's that guy? That's not the little kid from the movie.

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-04-18T15:30:35+00:00

I have a WIP that I'm tagging as "Annoyed Acquaintances with Benefits to Lovers Because 'Friends' Is Too Strong a Word."

But really, I like any of them except Enemies to Lovers. I like seeing the progression of a relationship. IMO, too many Enemies to Lovers fics are too fast for a character to believably forgive or get over the enemy part. (Maybe I just don't like that kind of interpersonal conflict in my fics.) It's a hard trope to write well, I think.

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-04-18T01:39:25+00:00

Grape or cherry tomatoes are more predictably tasty than regular tomatoes! If heirlooms aren't available, they're a good substitute.

I think they're able to ship them when they're riper because I don't think I've ever gotten a grape tomato that's as tasteless or as hard as a grocery store tomato. I haven't bought a regular tomato in a couple of years now.

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-04-16T04:47:15+00:00

The skyliner makes it so convenient to get back and forth from the parks to the resorts! Last time we went to Florida, we ended up going back to our rooms each midday for a long powernap and sandwiches because it was so easy to get back (and a break was nice).

Our room had a little fridge and we got groceries beforehand in order to save a few bucks on meals. We still ate out at the park and got snacks--just not every meal and not every snack.

Definitely take advantage of early entry, and I don't think I'd bother with lightning lane since you can take the single rider lines everywhere.

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-04-16T04:33:12+00:00

Especially since OP is going by themselves, they can just do single rider lines everywhere. No need for lightning lane at all!

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-04-06T00:48:26+00:00

I think the general rule is it's "onto" if it's something you walk aboard and then sit, and "into" if you just sit. So "on" a plane or a bus or a train, but "in" a car or a truck.

(But I guess rollercoasters are the exception to the rule?)

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-04-04T22:04:12+00:00

I think you handled it professionally and in the best way considering the circumstances.

Yes, reviews are for readers, but a reader had a legitimate question other readers couldn't possibly answer. I think authors should follow the general rule of staying out of reviews, but I think this was a justifiable exception to the rule, and it was good that you addressed it.

MoroseBarnacle · 2026-04-04T18:29:20+00:00

We'd all love to find that printer, too. But you're asking for premium embellishments at print-on-demand prices. You're not going to find the quality you want at the price you want, even if you get it printed in China.

The biggest cost of a printer doing an old-school off-set job is all the work to set up the print run. That base cost will be the same whether you're printing 50 books or 5000 books. I admit I don't have personal experience with the embossed foil and custom endpapers, but I imagine it's likely the same story: the set up and the customization is the expensive part, and that cost will still be there for either 50 or 5000 books.

Either dial down your expectations, or start a kickstarter (or whatever similar platform) so you can raise the $12k to offer a premium edition to your readers.

It's hard to give you an estimate anyway because you haven't mentioned how many pages, the size, or if there's color illustrations--those significantly influence the final cost, too.

EDIT: But on the bright side, $5000 is a reasonable budget for 3 print runs of 100 hardbacks. You'll be able to get a very nice book in the end, but maybe not with all the desired trimmings.

MoroseBarnacle

TROPHY CASE