Perils of Publishing

Printing, A Perilous Adventure

As you have probably noticed, I have had several posts concerning the nature of my new book How To Do Nothing Well. I am writing these posts partly for people that are trying to publish so that a “pipeline” of what works and what does not in the modern post “everything is deplatforming everyone” era. My latest go around concerns thebookpatch.com. Here is what their site looks like as of yesterday:

As you can see, this is not exactly ideal, particularly as they also owe me money from some orders placed. One customer had gotten an email that morning that said her order was being shipped. So, whatever happened must have happened rather unexpectedly and in a hurry. I hope that everyone who ordered my book from thebookpatch received a copy. Part of the reason I selected them was because they had been around since 2009 and were more unlikely to suddenly disappear. Of course, they still suddenly disappeared, so time is no great indicator of market longevity.

Their Facebook page (or is that meta?) is also missing or else blocked by Facebook now, but as of yesterday this is what it looked like:

Quite a mysterious disappearance with a lot of very irate authors. I tend to be more patient and I sent them an email yesterday when I noticed the site was nonfunctional and as of today I still do not have any answers and that goes under “unacceptable” in my book of “business communication when you owe people money”. So, why they suddenly went away is currently unknown, however, I did find something interesting concerning the proprietor of thebookpatch. This one deserves some quoting.

The Guy Who Founded The Bookpatch…

Born in 1949 in Canada, Victor Ostrovsky moved to Israel with his family at age five. His inclination for the arts was apparent from a very early age. The well known Israeli painter, Gilady, lived on the same street and often set up his easel outdoors to paint. Victor would watch, spellbound, on his way to and from school as Gilady created beautiful images on the blank canvas. Eventually, the artist presented Victor with his box of oil paints and took the time to guide him into a world where expressions come through images and color, handing the child a gift that would soon become a passion.

Victor entered the military at the age of eighteen and became the youngest officer in the Israeli Defense Force. Victor rose to the rank of a lieutenant commander in the Israeli Navy and served as head of the weapon testing program when he was recruited by Israel’s elite intelligence agency, the Mossad. After two and a half years of training in the Mossad, victor became a katsa (case officer.) after serving in the field and becoming aware of the activities of elements within the agency that had more to do with self-preservation than the good of the country he left the service. After five years of trying to inform the powers to be with little success, he wrote an exposé “By Way Of Deception” that shook the agency’s foundations and is said to have brought about change. Victor has written two more books since A nonfiction “The Other Side Of Deception” and fictional spy novel “Lion Of Judah.”

Today, Victor’s insight and knowledge of the intelligence community facilitates his writing of fictional novels and screenplays and serves as a basis for his enigmatic and cryptic paintings. His canvases offer tantalizing images, evoking a mystical and other-worldly reaction from viewers. Hats, gloves, scarves, and umbrellas hide his mysterious figures’ identities, provoking and teasing our imaginations with visual portrayals of adventure and intrigue. The activities of his figures and the titles of the work reflect the enterprise and language of the international intelligence community, bringing several layers of meaning to his paintings while creating stories for the viewer.

source: https://villagegallery.com/gallery/victor-ostrovsky/

Mr. Ostrovsky was/is the owner of thebookpatch, and suddenly it makes sense as to why an ex-Mossad whistleblower might want a way to write a book that does not go through the channels of Amazon and the like. Amazon, as I noted in another post, has become far too “motherly” in the sense that it wants to “help you file your taxes” and “adjust your margins” and a bunch of other stuff while taking large percentages of your sales. It is almost like Amazon is a kind of “rain forest” that “makes money” by selling logging rights except replace rain forest with authors and logging rights with rape.

At the very least, if anyone has a motive for a swift disappearance, I’d say Mr. Ostrovsky has one. The inner-workings of any intelligence agency organization are convoluted at best. I suppose that is why they call them “spies”. They definitely, as per Edward Snowden, do not like anyone blowing any whistles since by their nature they operate in the shadows.

Publishing Without An Agency…

Frustratingly, as an author, however, I did not do a “Deep dig” on Thebookpatch thinking to myself “Gee, I wonder what intrigue and misadventure might lie here!” No, instead, I simply wanted a reliable publisher for print on demand services. I had recourse to this because Amazon was far too “controlling” in all the wrong ways, and we know that it certainly isn’t on the payroll of any intelligence agency, right? Right. I’d like to publish my damn book without having to consider every black budget in the “known world” and whether they might “get offended” by my “meditation book designed to give someone a closer relationship with spirit.” Instead, as an author, I am sandwiched between “CIA” and “Ex-Mossad” somewhere in the “self-help” print on demand section.

Too Many Clowns

The bottom line is, there are too many clowns masquerading as legitimate services with far too much power and money at their disposal. My book is first and foremost a “church book” and rolls together three world religions. It does not say they all “go the same place” but it does show that they do indeed go somewhere and that somewhere is most assuredly not an intelligence agency unless you mean the intelligence agency of YHVH. However, we will remember that even the “spies for Israel” to gain the land had some serious problems in that only two came back reliable and loyal to that source. Everyone else got a long slog of 40 years through a desert.

I Was Able Though…

I was able, however, to find a workaround to offer the for print version of the book up on my site. I’m not going to get into its inner workings right now, other than to say it is a company that offers a “bridge” to Wordpress. So, it actually looks better like this anyway, in my opinion. More “my brand” as opposed to “thebookpatch-now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t” brand.

Which Brings Me To This Morning’s Shower Thoughts

Speaking of bridges, a rather novel idea I had occurred to me as I was grabbing a shower was that typically, we are only AS assertive as we are willing to burn bridges. In other words, there are some people who are attaching dynamite to the bridge before we even get on it just waiting with a button in their hand to blow the thing when we are convinced by them to get on it. That’s not what I mean. What I mean is that most people don’t stand up for themselves because they are afraid of a burned bridge. Of course, if a burned bridge is what results, then should you really be around a person that forces that scenario to start with? I’d say no, and I’d say whatever thebookpatch is doing, it surely looks like internet scorched Earth.