Matthew Wayne Selznick

Let’s take a look at the state of Matt in 2006, moneywise, eh?

2006 was the first year I swapped a full-time “day job” and part-time creative endeavors for full-time creative endeavors and a minimum-wage part-time job. How’d that work out for me, you might be wondering?

Even if you’re not wondering, I still think it’s important to be fairly transparent about my doings… some of you donated to my travel fund to get to various conventions, purchased copies of my first book “Brave Men Run - A Novel of the Sovereign Era” or donated to the Podiobooks.com version… some of you hired me for consulting and / or editing services, and some of you utilize my web hosting services. Since it’s you’re money at work, I think I should share how things went.

I made about $4,440 in 2006 from various sources. Of that, 42% was from consulting and editing, 25% came from web hosting, and 15% came from income related to “Brave Men Run - A Novel of the Sovereign Era.” The other 18% was thanks to Ebay income, PayPal dividends, convention travel donations, and small miscellaneous income and payments from various sources.

In terms of expenses, I paid out a little over $4,000. Most of this went to travel, lodging, and registration expenses for the three conventions I attended, WorldCon, the Podcast and Portable Media Expo, and PodCamp West. 12% of expenses went to hosting costs for my websites and podcasts. Nearly 8% paid for domain name registration and renewals. I had to replace my problematic desktop computer this year, and monthly payments for that accounted for almost 11%.

When all is said and done, I netted about $400.00. Obviously, if not for the 20-hour-a-week wage slave job in the morning and the fact that my wife still has her 50 - 60 hour per week job (and the fact that she’s gracious enough to take the majority of the financial burdens these days), I would not be able to live on this. That’s a given, though — I know I’m far from replacing the income I made when I was a career guy for Borders. That’s not the point, really — I’m actually excited that I grossed forty four hundred bucks doing creative stuff.

What is educational to me, though, is where that money came from.

My web hosting service is the classic example of passive income — it requires only occasional attention from me, and provides a valuable and inexpensive service for fifty or so people — some of whom have been with MWS Media for more than two years.

In 2006, I had eight consulting clients — five I provided with podcasting and website consulting, three, fiction and non-fiction book manuscript editing. While far from the amount of work I need to sustain myself, this is more than I’ve ever had before, and that’s encouraging. In fact, income in January (some of which was for work done in 2006) is already a quarter of what I made in this area in all of 2006! In 2007, I’m looking forward to doing more work for existing clients, as well as building relationships with new ones.

Many of you are aspiring authors and podcasters with a professional interest in the success of “Brave Men Run - A Novel of the Sovereign Era.” Let’s break down the numbers for the book’s income in 2006:

• Donations from subscribers to the Podiobooks.com podcast edition (2,633 new subscribers in 2006): $272.99; about 43%; about $0.10 per subscriber
• Royalties for the print edition (111 copies sold): $180.25; about 28%; about $1.62 per book
• Royalties for the e-book edition (37 copies sold): $163.25; about 26%; about $4.41 per e-book
• Royalties for the MP3 CD edition (3 copies sold): $20.37; about 3%; about $6.79 per CD

It’s challenging to accurately interpret Podiobooks.com subscribers as if they were book buyers, since not every subscriber completed listening (hard to believe, I know!) So we’ll leave that out of this next figure:

Average income per copy sold: $2.41.

So there’s a snapshot of how a moderately successful, independently published, multi-format book can do in its first full year of existence. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

There it is… an approximation of my financial year for 2006. Note that these figures aren’t precise — the exact, to-the-penny numbers go to the IRS…! But it does give you a pretty good idea of how things went for me.

I would be a lousy self-promoter if I didn’t mention this:

If you’d like to make 2007 more lucrative for me than 2006, you are encouraged to visit…

• MWS Media — services and support for the independent creative endeavors of individuals and small businesses. Podcast and website consultation, fiction and non-fiction editing, inexpensive web hosting, and more!
• “Brave Men Run - A Novel of the Sovereign Era” — a critically acclaimed, Parsec Award nominated coming-of-age story that mixes alternate history and comic book sensibilities with an eighties movie feel!

Spent part of today working on fixing, editing, and repairing two of my web sites. This one, and the primary MWS Media site. Long enough that I’m tired of working on it, now… I think I need some food and maybe a shower and bed. I’ve been up since three thirty in the morning — my wife had to fly out of town this morning so I drove her to the airport.

Of course, I may have accomplished more if I hadn’t stopped to post my opinion about the Sex Pistols and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame “scandal” on the Mike Watt Yahoo! List. Can’t link to it, it’s members only, but basically I wrote that it was a case of a manufactured band rejecting a manufactured honor.

Oops… I went and put another sacred cow on the barbie…! Right away, one of the list members accused me of “DIY elitism,” which, I pointed out, is (to me) an oxymoron. And so the snowball rolled down the hill, gathering yellow snow and bits of shit and gravel as it went.

Anyhoo, one of these days I’ll lay down the planks of my platform vis a vis the DIY Ethic. Basically, what happens to me so often on the Watt List is I get attacked because I don’t put the icons of punk (another oxymoron?) up on any kind of pedestal. When I say X sounds tired and bored these days, when I blast Watt himself for being on Sony (and for — blasphemy — putting out a pretty darn boring, self-serving album), when I challenge the idea that the Sex Pistols had anything at all to do with punk rock… well, I hear about it.

Sometimes I have fun with it — rise to the challenge. I’m in the middle of that now… and now I’m blogging about it…. when, as some would say, I should be writing.

So… okay. I’ve run out of steam. Nice talkin’ to ya. I’ll keep you posted… time for food, a little bit more work, then bed.

Oh — I’ve got a web-based voicemail / fax service for MWS Media, now… if you’d like to leave a verbal comment about this site, “Brave Men Run,” or MWS Media in general, call 1-206-666-4DIY.

Okay! For the first time since we moved into this house, four years ago, I feel like my office is someplace that says something about me.

For a long time, I wanted to get rid of the desk I’d been using — it was too big, too heavy, too brown. Plus, I didn’t like where it was in the room… I had no floorspace.

Recently, my wife dragged home a desk that was smaller. This inspired me to do a complete redesign of my office.

Now, all the big bookcases are along one wall. The smaller desk is in the corner next to the window. All my little creatures and whatnots are on display. My books are organized again. And I have room in the middle of the floor. ‘Cause sometimes, you just like to sit on the floor when you work, y’know?

For those of you at all interested, here’s the desk where I’ll be doing most of my work from now on:

Yes, that’s a lava lamp. And I’ve put half-inch thick foam core on the wall behind — I need to get four more pieces of that to go all the way to the ceiling. I have two cork boards, but I really like the white of the foam core.

Next to the desk is a small bookcase that used to have all my comics trade paperbacks stuffed into it. Now it just barely holds (most) of my writing books:

The comics themselves have a home in the bookcase:

For a better view of the assorted action figures, daikaiju, and other toys on the bookcase, let’s go from the left:

And then from the right:

Many years ago, when “Ray Bradbury Theatre” was on the air (where’s the DVD boxed set, dammit??), the show would open with Ray in his office, surrounded by toys accumulated from a long lifetime of childhood. I was inspired. This is the first time I’ve really done it. It’s a daring thing, in a house with four cats, but we’ll see!

So there ya go — I haven’t done anything but this for the last three days. Over the next week, I have to slowly start going through a bunch of papers and scraps and build a filing system — something I’m loathe to do, but I really have to get organized. I don’t have the storage space to do otherwise.

Okay. Gotta think about bed now. Early morning tomorrow. Hope you enjoyed the mini tour.

I’ve spent the last day and a half re-doing the lush and lavish studios of MWS Media. My nose is clogged from old dust, my back is sore from moving heavy things, and I have cuts on my fingers.

Still, I’m going to have more space in the office and I’m gonna really dig the new… digs!

Pictures will follow, maybe tomorrow night.

As part of my attempts to Scale Back and Sharpen Up, I’ve pulled the plug on DIY Endeavors Radio, the streaming webcast that served as a kind of super-set of my DIY Endeavors Podcast.

It simply wasn’t worth continuing to pay for and maintain a webcast station that never had more than two listeners at any one time, and often went days and days with no listeners at all. So, while I’ll continue doing my DIY Endeavors Podcast (spotlighting DIY, independent music and other creative endeavors), the streaming webcast, it is no more.

Unless, that is, enough people decide it’s something they want to hear so bad that they’ll donate some money. If I raise $300.00 in a special PayPal fundraiser, that’ll be enough to bring DIYER back for twelve months.

Honestly, I’m not holding my breath.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not at all bitter about DIYER’s lack of success. I did next to nothing to promote it, after all, and maintaining it was a pain in the ass. Not to mention the fact that I had to keep my desktop computer on 24 / 7 if I wanted it to broadcast. It’s going to be much more quiet at night around the lush and lavish studios of MWS Media from now on..!

I do apologize, you two or three people who doggedly requested Lijie, Shudder, City Beautiful, and Mark Mason, among others. If you want to hear those artists, let diyendeavors@gmail.com know, and I’ll pop ‘em in the podcast now and then.

Thanks for listening!

Oh — I’m in a much better mood today. Sloughing off dead skin helps!