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However, as a goal-oriented person, I have been working on a few new goals for this year. And because of this I feel that the direction of my blog is going to change a little. I hope my new journey is one that you may be interested in following. Once again, for me, it is a step into the unknown, but as I have always said, that is where life begins to be exciting! More details to follow in Part 2 of this blog... In the meantime, for anyone just joining me at this point in my journey, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Ian Usher, and here is a quick overview of my recent history, which leads me on to the next adventure, to be outlined in the next couple of blogs. I began my blogging "career" in March 2008, when I announced that I was going to sell my whole life on eBay. This attracted a huge amount of international publicity, and resulted in quite a wild ride. My old website, ALife4Sale can be viewed here, and all of the blog posts from that crazy few months, in chronological order, can be found here:- ALife4Sale blog posts I was asked many times in interviews in the run-up to the auction what I wanted to do when I sold my life. I wondered the same thing myself, and eventually started jotting down some ideas. This ultimately grew into a list of 100 goals, and I set myself the challenge of achieving them in 100 weeks. In August 2008 I set off on an amazing two-year journey, travelling three times around the world, doing all the things I ever wanted to do. There is much more detail on the 100goals100weeks website here, and the full journey is chronicled in the blog posts, which begin here:- 100goals100weeks blog posts My journey ended in July 2010, and the final outcome was a very pleasant surprise. I ended up in Whitehorse in the north of Canada, and spent four months writing a book about my incredible experiences. I called the book "A LIFE SOLD - What ever happened to that guy who sold his whole life on eBay?" There is more detail about the book, and the background to the story on my current website, www.IanUsher.com, and the blog postings from my months in Canada can be found here:- ALifeSold blog posts To be continued... The book is now published and available online. Here are a few links to Amazon sites around the world:-
I began to look at alternative options, as I was still keen to get the book into print, and complete Goal #100 from my original list. I read a lot of information on the publishing industry, and on self-publishing options, and was intrigued and encouraged by some of the discoveries I made. Publishing seems to be very much like the movie industry, with much of the mainstream business being controlled by a few very big players. These large international publishing houses are really only interested in guaranteed sellers, and are more than happy to take on and promote well-established authors. But they are very reluctant to take a gamble on unproven writers. Even when they do take on a new author they are unlikely to offer much more than printing and distribution, and the author is expected to do the bulk of their own publicity and marketing. And by publishing through the traditional publishing houses, only a very small fraction of any sales ever makes it back to the author. After the bookshop takes their 55% of the book's retail price, the print and profit costs are taken by the publisher, and the agent takes his 15% there is very little left for the creator of the book. A typical royalty, or profit per book, might be around $1 for a book priced at $15. However, I discovered that as in the movie business, where small, independently produced movies can compete, and often succeed, a similar opportunity exists in the literary world. "Print On Demand" is now becoming very common. As an independent author, or small publishing house, it is now possible to create a book, and store the files for the book with a Print On Demand (POD) print and distribution company. Typically there are two files needed to produce the book - the cover, and the content. With these two files the POD printer can create copies of the book one at a time, as needed, and some will also distribute direct to the customer too. This offers a huge advantage for an independent author or publisher. There is no longer any need to print large runs of a book, as a single copy can be created and despatched whenever one is needed. The initial cost to set up a new publication is no longer prohibitive. There is no longer need to store boxes and boxes of books in the garage or spare bedroom. A second advantage is that a good POD company provides details of all books it has available for print, to a whole host of online and offline suppliers, so a book listed can be offered for sale by many retailers all around the world. The third major advantage is that retailers tap directly into the POD supplier system, and as orders come in, the POD company prints and despatches the books. The independent author or publisher does not have to do any form of order fulfilment if they do not wish to. I eventually decided that I would publish the book independently. I was very lucky, in that I had the luxury of time, as I could put in a full-time effort into searching out the information I needed. It is quite a minefield out there, and the options for authors wishing to publish a book independently are varied and confusing. However, I bought a few books, and studied hard. There are a few relatively simple options available, and Amazon's own POD offshoot, CreateSpace, at first seemed to offer the best potential. While the CreateSpace program is very accessible and easy to use, Amazon take a hefty mark-up. On any CreateSpace-published book sold on Amazon they take 40% of the cover price. If you opt to enrol for their expanded distribution program, and sell through other retailers too, they hit you for a whopping 60% of the cover price as their sales commission. After Amazon get their cut, CreateSpace deduct printing costs, and the remainder goes to the author, either directly, or via his/her publisher. Once more this leaves a very small profit margin. But the more I read about the publishing industry, and the more I learned, the more I began to discover that there were even greater possibilities on offer. I finally discovered one of the world's largest POD companies. As part of the Ingram Group, they feed their huge catalogue of books into Amazon's system, as well as to many other big name retailers. A book printed and distributed through them is automatically listed with hundreds of retail outlets around the world. Their service, in terms of distribution, far exceeds anything else I could find anywhere else. There was another huge advantage too. Unlike Amazon's CreateSpace, instead of taking 40%, or even 60%, it is possible to choose for yourself the percentage of the cover price that is given to the retailer - and you can set this as low as 20%. In financial terms, this means that per book sold, at a cover price of $15, you, as an independent author earn an extra $3 for every book sold, when compared to CreatSpace's 40% cut given to Amazon. When compared to their "Expanded Distribution Channel", which takes 60%, each sale nets a whopping $6 more! Three to six dollars of extra profit per sale - that's fantastic. Publishing my book independently had suddenly become very appealing. However, there was a small problem. Unlike CreateSpace, who are only too happy to deal directly with authors (and also very happy to take a huge percentage of the proits too), this POD company will only deal directly with publishers. They simply don't want the hassle of dealing with individual authors. The answer appeared to be obvious - I needed to find out how to become a publisher! To be continued... As a footnote, my book now appears on book retail websites all over the world. I have no idea how many suppliers now offer my book, but here are a few random examples of international outlets carrying "A LIFE SOLD - What ever happened to that guy who sold his whole life on eBay?" USA (Amazon)  Canada (Amazon)  UK (Amazon)  UK (Tesco) Sweden (Adlibris) Australia (Berkelouw Books) South Africa (Loot) Russia (!!) Estonia (!!!) and so on... To see for yourself, just type the book's 13 digit ISBN (International Standard Book Number), or the shorter 10 digit ISBN, into a Google search:- 9780980865301 0980865301
It took quite some time, however to register with the POD company, and there are a few hoops to jump through. Finally though, as far as they were concerned, I was a publisher. At the same time I had been working on the files for the book, trying to ensure that they met the printer's exacting standards. The whole process took around a month all-in-all, but I was finally ready to submit my two files - cover and content - to the printer. The files were accepted, and setup fees were paid, and before too long my proof copy was mailed out to me for final approval. I opened the package when it arrived with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. This was my telling of a story that had been in the creation phase for around three years. I had been working full-time on the project for the previous five months, and at last I was finally going to see the very first copy of my book to be printed. It looked exactly as I had hoped and imagined it would. I was incredibly proud of what I had produced. The print quality of both the cover and the contents is fantastic, and is indistinguishable from a book you would buy from the shelves any bookstore. It is an incredibly professional-looking, high quality end product. Within a day or two of my acceptance of the proof copy the book appeared on Amazon, and over the following days started to pop up all over the place. Just as I would have had to do if I had been accepted by a traditional publishing house, my task, now that the book is available all over the world, is to publicize it. But the beauty is that I receive about $6 from each sale, as opposed to perhaps a dollar per sale. I only need to sell about one sixth of the number of books to make the same income. During my travels, and now since completing my journey, I have met several people with fascinating stories of travel, adventure and inspiring personal journeys. A few of these already have books in print. I have met several people who have either completed a book, or are currently working on one about past or current journeys. One such example is Yvette Francino. Our paths first crossed online, and we eventually met in Los Angeles in November 2008. I was honoured to become part of Yvette's adventure, and ultimately included in her book, "The Laptop Dancer Diaries"  as "Mr. November". We have kept in touch, and met again a couple of times since then, and she gave me many tips and assistance as I worked on publishing my book.
More recently, as I passed through LA, and stayed with my friend, and internet publicity guru Evan White, I was introduced to one of his buddies, Kyle MacDonald. You may remember Kyle as the guy who started out with one red paperclip, trading it for increacingly bigger or better items, until he eventually traded up to a house. He published his book, "One Red Paperclip"  , via more traditional publishing channels, and it was an honour to make a trade with him, swapping a copy of my book for his. I think we came out about even! He's a fun guy.
There are many others out there with similarly unique, adventurous, exciting, quirky and inspirational stories. Further examples might include, but is certainly not limited to:- Eat, Pray, Love 
by Elizabeth Gilbert
(Marriage crisis leads to worldwide journey in a search for answers and meaning - sound familiar? I could use that overview as a description for my book too!)
Yes Man 
by Danny Wallace
(English book by a guy who decides to say "Yes" to everything! The Jim Carrey movie of the same name was based on this book - the book is FAR better!)
Honeymoon with My Brother 
by Franz Wisner
(Another story similar to mine, in which the author is ditched by his wife-to-be just hours before his wedding. He ends up going on the already-booked honeymoon with his brother, and then decides to continue travelling for a further year.)
Are You Dave Gorman? 
by Dave Gorman
(A tequila-fuelled wager leads to an entertaining round-the-world quest to meet 100 namesakes)
Since finishing my travels, and ending up in Whitehorse in Canada, I have been able to host other travellers passing through, much as I was assisted many times by strangers on my long adventure. Several of these have also been working on their own manuscripts about their adventures. So it occured to me that as I am already set up as a publisher, it would be a relatively easy process to assist others to get their work into print. And that is now what I am hoping to do with Wider Vision Publishing. I plan to focus almost exclusively on travel, adventure, and inspiring personal journeys. I only intend to publish a few great stories, whenever I find them. However, more recently it occured to me that there must be so many more people out there with all sorts of books, either finished, or in progress. With everything I have learned recently about publishing, perhaps I could help them get their work in to print? If you have something you think would be worth publishing, read the next blog, "A publisher's journey (Part 4)..." To be continued...
I am now interested in helping out others who have their own stories to tell, and am open to all submissions of manuscripts that fall into the loose category of travel/adventure/personal journey. I would like Wider Vision to maintain a narrow focus (oh, the irony!) on this type of book, and hope eventually to publish a small range of complementary titles, actively marketing them as best as I can alongside my own book. Just before Christmas I stumbled across a blog about moving to Costa Rica to start a new life. Nadine and her husband decided to opt out of the rat race and move south, and make a fresh start. Nadine is a very entertaining writer, and has some hilarious stories - take a look at her blog "Happier Than A Billionaire", and my particular favourite story, "Stop, or my husband will shoot!" I made a couple of comments on her blog posts, and we ended up writing back and forth a little. Nadine told me that she is just about to start the arduous process of trying to find an agent to represent the book she has been working on, and then hope that the agent is successful in brokering a deal for her. Prompted in part by Nadine's story, and in part by my idea to help others who fit into the Wider Vision category, it occurred to me that there must be thousands of other people out there who have other types of book that they would like to publish, and are struggling to do so. What if I set up a separate publishing company, with the view of publishing any type of book that someone wanted to get into print, whatever style of book it is - personal memoires, fiction, cook books, guide books, short stories, family histories - absolutely anything? I could be the publisher that will publish (almost) anything! After some excited discussions with my partner, Moe, the idea became firmly rooted as a strong possibility. I thoroughly enjoyed the process of working my way through the minefield of information on setting up a publishing business, and dealing with one of the world's largest printers. When creating something I tend to be very focussed on the small details, and like to have everything just right. I wanted everything to look perfect in the book, and happily spent hours arranging and formatting pages to make it look just how I wanted. I am very pleased too with how the cover looks. When I received the first copy of the book I was immensely proud of what I achieved. It took me weeks to do all of this, and including setting up Wider Vision Publishing, I estimate that I spent over a month just on the practicalities of publishing the completed book. Now however, having completed the process, with everything in place, I could do it again in a much more timely fashion. And so, on Christmas Day, when one of the presents I received was the domain name Moe and I had discussed in some detail, I realised that this was something I really wanted to do. Dog Eared Publications had just been born! To be continued...
So as I have travelled I have written an occasional blog about the new publishing venture. I have also been at work on the new website, and it is almost ready. There are a few issues with it that need resolving, the main one being the contact page, which isn't currently working - not sure why. If you have any questions, for now, please feel free to use the "Contact" page on the IanUsher.com website. At the moment I am travelling down the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand in a small camper van I bought last week. Internet access is somewhat limited, and the library I am in at the moment won't allow me to connect via FTP to change any of the web pages! Slightly frustrating. Anyway, as I suggested in a previous blog post, I am changing the direction of the blog a little. I intend to do a lot less blogging about my travels from now on, and plan simply to enjoy the journey, without the self-imposed requirement to take suitable photos, and to write about it all. The blog will now be much more about books, writing, printing, and publishing. You can follow my progress as a fledgling publisher, and hopefully I will have the pleasure of dealing with a few of you if you wish to see any of your own work in print. So, publishing... Dog Eared Publications can offer the budding writer some significant advantages, I believe, over both traditional and self-publishing:- The traditional publishing route can take a long time, with typical timelines being up to two years to see your book in print - that's if you are one of the lucky few to be offered a publishing deal. Self-publishing is now a viable option, but the learning curve can be very steep, and offers many challenges. This can take quite some time to figure out, and any mistakes can set you back by several weeks. With Dog Eared Publications, you will have the first copy of your book in your hands in a matter of weeks, and see it on sale online a few days later. As with self-publishing, profit per book will be significantly higher than traditional publishing, perhaps around five to six dollars per copy sold, rather than about a dollar or so. This will obviously vary from book to book, and on your retail price, which you choose yourself. Your book will be listed on Amazon, and with hundreds of other online retailers, but instead of being tied to Amazon's higher retail charges, you will only pay 20% of the retail price of your book on all sales, wherever they are generated. All the hard work of preparing your book for print is taken care of by us, and your book will be a professional product that you will be proud to show off. But our biggest advantage to you is that WE WILL PUBLISH (almost) ANYTHING. That's right. We will publish any type of book - fiction, non-fiction - if you tell us that it is ready for print. We charge a small fee for preparing your book for print, but in terms of the learning curve you would have to climb, and the weeks, or months, that it would take to learn what you would need to know, the fee is very reasonable. How does this work? Well, we don't do any form of assessment of the merit or sale-ability of your book. That is entirely up to you. We suggest that you employ the services of proof readers, copy editors, and designers, as you see fit. But when you tell us your book is ready to print, we'll publish it. Simple! How much does it cost? Well, take a look at the DogEaredPublications.com website for details on what we offer, what is included in the price, etc. The "Pricing" page can be accessed from the menu on the left of any of the pages on the site. I look forward to hearing from you if you have any questions, or have anything you wish to see in print. Happy writing. Ian
But New Zealand is just so stunning, and the photos are mounting up quickly. So I have found a suitable compromise, I think. I have decided to keep an online photo album, which should be relatively easy to maintain. I'm not going to do any writing though! The photos are merely for myself, and any family and friends interested in seeing where I have been and what I have been up to. 2011 pix can be found here: http://www.ianusher.com/2011.php
The video is in two parts, both shown below. What a great reminder of a fantastic weekend. Thanks again Colin and friends. Check out a few of Colin's other videos on his YouTube channel - he has a couple of world records, and has been arrested for one of his stunts too:- http://www.youtube.com/user/colinfurze
I have been doing a bit of travelling, and simply enjoying the travels for myself. I left Canada just after Christmas - it was getting far too cold for my liking - and headed to much warmer summer weather in New Zealand for a couple of months. In March I arrived in England, and spent some time there and in France. The highlight of the month was acting as best man for my friend Bruce as he married Lizzie. Congratulations to you both! While in England I did a couple of TV interviews. The first was televised last month on ITV's local news programme, Calendar. Apparently the second interview I did has just aired this week on BBC TV, but I haven't managed to get a copy of it yet. Here is the Calendar interview:- It is still my intention to do very little further writing about my travels, but as mentioned in a previous blog, there are some photos available from recent travels, really just for friends and family, but available for anyone else interested too. Pix here (click on any of them to see a larger version):- http://www.ianusher.com/2011.php Happy travels.
He took a few photos of several people in Whitehorse, and was keen to do so with me too. I was surprised when he contacted me a couple of months later, to inform me that his article had been featured in the colour supplement, "D" that comes with national daily newspaper Repubblica:- http://periodici.repubblica.it/d/?num=731 (page 36) 
There was a bit of interest in the following days from a couple of other Italian publications, and I sent off some pictures and answered some questions. And then just yesterday I received an email from Italian glossy magazine "Millionaire"! I have just been featured in their latest edition. I'm surprised to be featured, this time because I am in no way qualified to appear in such an extravagantly entitled magazine.  
I also had a double-page feature a couple of months ago in UK magazine "Pick Me Up", which was a follow up to an article they published a year previously. After that article came out, I was contacted by the UK-based reporter for US magazine "National Enquirer". They have a huge circulation, and the US-based office just sent me a copy of the story they are going to run. You can see the article below (click on either side of the article to see a larger version). The magazine itself is due to hit the shelves next week, I think on Friday 29th April. It is in the issue dated 2nd May.  
I spent January and February in New Zealand. In March I returned to England for a month, and was very proud to be best man for my buddy Bruce at his and Lizzie's wedding. I then returned to Los Angeles, where I met up with Moe at the airport, and we spent three wonderful weeks down in Panama. We are now back in Canada, and are visiting with Moe's family for a week or so, before we return to Whitehorse once again. I hope the snow has all gone by the time we get back - it has been a bit of a shock to fly from the tropical Caribbean in Panama to the snowy mountains of Canada. There are some pix from my travels here, but I have yet to upload any from Panama - it's difficult to find the time (and motivation) to do so while sipping chilled beers on a sunny Caribbean balcony! It has also been very difficult to do any sort of publicity for "A Life Sold" while travelling, but I have managed to appear in a few magazine articles, which has helped. See the previous blog for full details. However, it is now time to get back to "work", and really try to get behind the book and give it a bit of a push. And so with wonderful timing, I have booked a day with publicity website "I Wear Your Shirt". I came across Jason Sadler's site via my internet-publicity buddy Evan. Jason has been wearing t-shirts for a living for a couple of years now, and does a great job with the publicity work he and his team do. My day for publicity on their t-shirts is tomorrow, 23rd April. There are a few live video shows throughout the afternoon (2pm to 5pm USA Eastern Standard Time (EST)), and there is also going to be a prize draw giveaway. The prize for the day is an Amazon Kindle, loaded with a digital copy of "A Life Sold". Entry is free, and entry details will given on the live video feeds. The live-feed shows play on the uStream player online, and feature interactive chat too, so are a lot of fun. I plan to be online to chat as much as possible throughout the shows. The shows are on live from 2pm to 5pm EST. They are recorded too, and can be accessed afterwards on uStream. The live daily show can be accessed here:- http://www.ustream.tv/iwearyourshirt There is a countdown clock on the page which show how long it is until the show starts. Hopefully see you online tomorrow, and good luck if you enter the prize draw.
The book, "A Life Sold" was published in November last year, and as part of the promotion for the book, I decided to run a $10,000 prize draw. And today was the big day. Were you in the draw? Did you win $10,000? If not you, then who, and what was their #1 goal? Watch the video to find out!
His stated goal in the prize draw entry was: "to learn to understand the stock market and invest wisely - in turn, strengthening my relationship with a grandfather (a stock broker) and my father (an active investor)". With that in mind we arranged to meet in Denver, Colorado, as I planned to pass through there in early September. The initial idea was to visit a gold mine and do some gold panning, something slightly related to the investment goal. However, with the addition of Scott's mate Andrew to the crew, we decided on something a little more adventurous, although totally unrelated to the goal. I picked Scott and Andrew up at Denver airport on the Friday evening, and we headed out into the mountains early on Saturday morning, taking to the mountains on three ATVs we rented for the afternoon.    
It was a beautiful day, with perfect, warm, sunny weather. The quads were great fun to ride, and, somewhat surprisingly, we managed to return all three of them undamaged, but considerably muddier.   
We stayed overnight in Frisco in the mountains, and after a hearty breakfast in Denver, I worked out what we had spent, and gave Scott a cheque for the balance of the $10,000. He took home over $9,000, which should give his investing portfolio a good initial boost. Congratulations Scott, and good luck with the investing. Thanks to both you and Andrew for a great weekend.
But I have just received a very exciting confirmation. My "life for sale" story has been bought by Walt Disney Pictures. As you may (or may not) be aware, I have been under option for quite some time now. Interest was first expressed by several studios in the very early days after I announced that I planned to sell my whole life on eBay. Those crazy days seem like they were a long time ago now, but I look back with fondness on a fantastic experience. Eventually, after several months of talks with several studios, my Hollywood agent (I still can't say that I have a Hollywood agent with a straight face!) finally suggested that the Disney deal had the best possibility of eventually coming to fruition. Disney purchased an initial 18-month option in November 2008, which didn't commit them to anything, but meant that I couldn't sell the story anywhere else. In the contract, they were able to extend the option for a further 18 months, for a further payment. They did this in May 2010. The extra funds came in very handy towards the end of my 100 goals in 100 weeks adventure, as funds were beginning to run a little low. The extra cash injection meant that I didn't need to return to work immediately after completing my two-year journey, and I took time out to write "A Life Sold", my book about the whole amazing adventure. Since publishing the book, I have done some more travelling. spending time in New Zealand, England, the States, Costa Rica and Panama. I stayed in Canada again for summer 2011, but as winter drew nearer, I felt the draw of a warmer climate, and headed back to Panama. I've been here for a couple of months, and am thoroughly enjoying myself here. And it was here that I heard once again from Walt Disney as the November deadline approached, and their second and final option was about to expire. They emailed and informed me that they intended to exercise the option, and asked where I would like the cheque to be sent. How exciting! Well, the cheque arrived in timely fashion, and has now cleared into my bank, so it is official - my story has been purchased for development into a movie!! I have no idea what happens next, and have asked Disney about their plans and potential timelines. I'm still waiting to hear back from the creative executive on the project, but apparently he is on holiday for a while. I'll keep you updated as and when I hear anything. In the meantime, if anyone wants a copy of the soon-to-be-a-movie "A Life Sold" as a Christmas present for that special someone, it is available at Amazon sites around the world, as well as many other online retailers. I'll keep you updated with movie progress as and when I receive details.
In October 2010, I achieved Goal #61, by securing a small role in a Hollywood movie. I played the part of a diner at a hotel/bed and breakfast establishment in the hills above Malibu. It wasn't a speaking part, but it was still enormous fun to hang out on set with the other extras, and meet some of the main actors too. You can see my original blogs about the achievement of the goal here:- And... Action! The movie was being filmed under the working title "Storage", but has recently been released under the title "2nd Take". The movie's home page is here:- 2nd Take - the movie There is a trailer for the movie which is just over 2 mins long. I am very proud to also make a small appearance in the trailer, although you only see the back of my head at about 1 min 17 secs. Don't blink or you'll miss it! 
Yes, that's the back of my head over the leading actor's shoulder! As yet I haven't actually seen the movie, but I am looking forward to doing so very soon, as I have ordered a copy for delivery. You can buy a copy here if you like:- So what next for my flourishing acting career? Well, if Disney ever pull their finger out, and get around to making their "Life For Sale" movie (they bought the rights to the story in November last year - see the previous blog post here), I would love to score a small role in that too. I haven't heard anything from them at all about progress, so really have no idea what is going on. I'll keep you updated... Blog navigation:-
Reviews for "A LIFE SOLD" :-
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_________________________
The book:-
is now on sale at
Amazon sites worldwide
and at other online retailers.
Links here
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