Episode: 475
Title: HPR0475: Lord Drachenblut Interviews Scott Sigler
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0475/hpr0475.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 21:18:58

---

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
than the close. So Ariac has to add it each and every episode and get it over to
potiobux.com and if anybody listening to this doesn't know,
p-o-d-i-o books.com potiobux.com has
about over 253 audio books
that the techies can download and just enjoy. So Ariac
strips out all my talking because those are straight audio books, gets my potiobux.com
and that's pretty much what it does. All right in the
final things you'd like to say for the hacker public radio audience
uh you should all go hack everything and promote scotsiglor.com and and or scotsiglor.net
uh my email is scotsiglor.net and if anybody wants any questions it can email me anytime.
So are you suggesting and maybe we can get you to say that they should all hack the Gibson?
Absolutely they should hack the Gibson. All right well scot thanks for the you know
the brief time and a little bit of talk of the tech behind the sh- thing um
actually one more quick question if it's not too much is a little bit about what went behind
getting dark you know dark overlord media going and getting this book into print or is that
too long-winded for now. I'll give you the quick rundown. First of all um
printing your own hardcover novel is very difficult. We didn't know a difficult it was adding a
16-page color insert into it is even more difficult and I'll tell you what when 3,000 hardcover
books show up in your rented warehouse that you've got eight days to get it in and out and get
everything shipped uh in five ballots of book show up it's an enormously large amount of books you
don't think that it is. So we uh ANI spent eight 14 hour days in a basically a one-car garage
signing books packaging books and getting them shipped out two-day priority to places all over
the world we packaged 1500 books in that time absolute blast but uh the impetus behind it was
people wanted my stories in hardcover they wanted to keep safe and my publisher crown was not
interested in publishing this particular book so now I work with crown and now I have my own
small press and that's how it is. Alright now what companies can you turn to if you wanted to produce
your own hardcover you know you don't have to name the one if you don't want but what companies
out there will produce a hardcover book and if you don't mind talking roughly costs because
I'm sure you don't want to talk about what this costs you exactly but well first of all give
you the basic model what I think things are changing in the internet space and being able to be
a media personality online and go out and develop an audience is that our business model is this
we put the book up for presale in order to generate enough capital to actually produce the book
neither one of us in the company have enough money to say we're just going to fund this
so we put up for presale I sold a thousand copies of the rookie in the first three hours it was up
that brought in the capital for us to actually do the print run the print run was 20 grand shipping
was another three grand I mean it's just these insane numbers that I'm not very comfortable with
but because we presold so many copies we were able to pull this off so I really think that our
dark overlord media has all about finding people who have anywhere from ten to thirty thousand
people listening to them following their blog etc die hard pants who will be happy to pre-order so
pre-order means capital comes in then you go print the book and you're profitable from square one
that's kind of the overall model it's still a little bit staggering to us the numbers involved
but everything seems to be working out in the fans are at the bottom line is the fans have gotten
the printed copy of the rookie they seem to beautiful color insert the beautiful color cover
the emboss and the embossing everything and everyone who's got this book has basically
email us and said they're thrilled with it or that they would have paid more for it so that's what
matters to us awesome so and companies that might do this kind of work for the company we worked
with the print vendor is called Donnelly D-O-N-N-E-L-L-Y and I'm sorry I think they're a new hamster
they're somewhere in the east coast you can find them online they have been absolutely spectacular
we call them literally every other day finding out we don't know how to do this we don't know how
to do this they help us every step of the way they're amazing awesome vendors and that's really
the only company we're with we did everything else ourselves now what kind of software did you
use for the creation of the book well actually the layout was done by sheer brick media out of the
new England area that's s-h-e-e-r-b-r-i-c-k and I don't know the website at the top of my head but you
should you can google for that they did the interior layout Jerry Skullian did our cover layout
and we basically crowdsourced it we had different fans we had different companies that already
did these things and we just sounded out can you people help us with this we found fans that came
in and did all the work for us and and and and and that's how we put the book together so I can't
recommend a specific company this was largely a social media influenced project and if I didn't
have the audience I have I wouldn't have found these talented people put it out all right and
there was one more question but you know the blood guts and gore you know I'm saying you're going
I'm going home I'm reading the rookie screen you all who don't have a copy yet all you techy
guys out there listening to this techy guys and girls basically the rookie is Star Wars meets the
Godfather meets any given Sunday and if you want a snake copy go to scotsigo.com slash the rookie
one word and you can check it out for yourself and I'll also go on to say you know if I can get
this up in time anyone who hasn't heard this or you know that when the tailgate tour is still going
there are still stops available about how many would you say at this point Scott right now we
still have 17 stops available if you hear this in time just go to scotsigo.com slash tailgate
see if we're going to be in your area come out and say hello and don't forget the rookie podcast
is also free and that's it scotsigo.com slash the rookie you can hear the whole book for free
if you want to buy a hardcover great if you don't let's never free and enjoy now will you probably
do a softcover in time have you thought of now why didn't you go with someone like you know what
the print on demand sites like Lulu because with a guy like and with a guy who's got an audience like
you I could imagine you know the print on demand services would be you know what could meet your
demands though I'm guessing the hardcover was the sticking point the sticking point was a the
cost from Lulu the cost per unit for a paperback is around $12.95 that we want to do with a paper
with a hardcover it was close to $40 which means I would have added sell for $45 to make any kind
of profit which wasn't businessly business wise it wasn't feasible and second the quality they
could provide was not high enough quality for my fans if my fans are going to spend their hard
and money in a book it has to be the hottest thing they have seen in years so we had to we had to
do it ourselves because no no nothing against Lulu they cannot do what I need to provide my fans
you don't want your fans showing up in the closet of doom oh wait now it's the office of doom
we don't want them showing up in all you know 20 billion plus of us throughout the galaxy and
trying to linch you for selling a cheap product yeah basically that's it for the fan my fans
they give me a lot of time to try out my stories they give me a lot of money to play my stories so
I'll close with this my fans deserve the best we can possibly do so we had to do this ourselves
and it came out great and I really hate to ask one final question after all that but how much
has the crowdsourcing of because I remember listening to infected at one point screaming at my
iPod strapped my arm what kind of blathering idiot sits there and says the main character doesn't
have a landline is yet using dial up now I don't know if the version of infected they can easily
get at this point still has that but how does that how does having a crowd base like that as the
books coming out affected your writing process this is the last thing I'll say it's the best thing ever
I get 30,000 people a week listening to my stuff and whatever their specialty if I get something
if I screw something up I get many many emails telling me what I screwed up and how to correct it
and I am the luckiest author on the planet because I have 30,000 editors who get to listen to my
stuff for it ever goes to print and it can't be better all right well thank you for your time Scott
all right this has been Lord Dragon Blue with Hacker Public Radio wishing you good night
thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio
HPR is sponsored by caro.net so head on over to C-A-R-O dot 18 for all of us