The Book. - Not All Men Are Monsters - Sex. Travel. Food. Life. - Brian Johnston

about book royalties

notallmen — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 19:17:50 +0000

I’ve received some important questions lately, now that my book can be found in other online outlets like amazon.ca. I thought I should provide some clarification:

Any royalties I earn from the sale of Not All Men Are Monsters will be used to start a skills/employment development project for the underprivileged (in Latin America and/or Africa). Amazon.com provides a $4.56 royalty to my project, whereas other sites (such as amazon.ca or amazon.co.uk) provide only $1. With the US dollar so low right now, and the book’s price reduced by 28% only on amazon.com, it is actually the same price or even cheaper for the consumer, including shipping, to purchase the book from amazon.com, in addition to my project receiving a larger royalty (a tip if you see the site charging you a large import fee in addition to shipping: click the button to deliver the book as a gift, and it is usually waived/reduced).

At the same time, there is currently no link between amazon sites when it comes to reviews and the additional product information I can post on the sites, so amazon.com works as the central source (for now). So if asked, please recommend amazon.com and the link below:

http://www.amazon.com/Not-All-Men-Are-Monsters/dp/1442160462

For those who can afford it (the book sells for retail through this site), I receive an even larger $8+ royalty if the book is purchased directly from createspace:

https://www.createspace.com/3382147

In the end, I am grateful for any purchases and interest in my first novel; I just want to be sure that those who are interested in seeing more money go to my development work projects understand how to make that happen.

Thanks again for all the support!!

Brian

deciphering the dialogue

notallmen — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:04:43 +0000

As this novel is put together with real online chats, emails, and writings from my personal diary, I used some visual queues to allow readers to differentiate between them. Now that the book is available for purchase (only) on Amazon.com, I thought I’d provide a simple guide to clarify for those who may not catch the important differences right away.

Chats are indicated with the time in brackets before each line typed. These are usually interactive conversations in less formal English (without regular punctuation/capitalization), where advice and reflection is immediate. The person I’m chatting with is usually indicated in the first or second line.

Emails share all types of information, and are usually addressed to a particular person, with one exception: when you see ‘Hey Everyone’ written, this indicates that the message was part of the travel update I send to an expanded list of friends around the world, to let them know what and how I’m doing.

Personal diary entries are reflective writings that I don’t share with anybody at the time, regardless of who I may be writing them for. They are indicated in the novel with a calligraphy script, mimicking the journal they were originally recorded in.

Postcards sent from overseas are also printed in a calligraphy script, indicated with the word ‘Postcard’ written in bold.

As you read through the book, you’ll probably become familiar with the different writing styles, and seeing them juxtaposed also increases the awareness of how I (and people in general) edit, mute, and alter personal expression depending on who the intended audience happens to be. I’ve put this together seemlessly so that it reveals the plot like a novel (not memoirs), and I hope you enjoy this style of storytelling as much as I do!

Thanks,

Brian

designing the cover

notallmen — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 21:13:22 +0000

While contemplating different cover designs, the idea to use the image of the Japanese flag as the backdrop came to me when I noticed that the dimension ratios for a standard novel are the same as a flag (3:2).

I wanted to create an original type font that would grab the readers’ attention while preserving a Japanese feel (there are many fonts on the market that mimic Chinese characters, and that’s not what I was after). There are three main scripts in the Japanese writing system:

kanji, taken from chinese characters

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hiragana, an alphabet used to write ‘Japanese’ words

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katakana, an alphabet used to write ‘foreign’ words

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Since I was writing ‘foreign’ English words, it was logical to use the katakana script as a base for my personal font.

I first took characters that looked similar to English letters, and used them directly in the book title.

For the other letters, I took pieces of different character strokes, and brought them together to create the remaining letters in the title.