Freienfels was uncommonly picture-heavy - as usual, we stood together with a few friends, one of them a woodworker. Who was in need of a few nice pictures of his equipment and himself while working... so I took the opportunity, brought my camera, and had a lot of fun documenting different woodworking techniques.

Working with a drawknife...


there's a very special kind of beauty to really sharp tools doing their thing with wood.

There also were axes, protected by sheaths made after a find from Haithabu...



... and irons of different sizes and shapes for finishing troughs.



Of course there were also a few photos that I did not shoot myself, such as this one - spinning on my bench with distaff-holder, in front of my trusty little market stall.


And a closer look at the table with goods:



I did a lot of spinning this weekend, trying out a theory regarding spindle whorls. Added bonus for this? A very special photo - the light and shadows of spinning!

The topic of getting paid for books, and how much you get as an author, and how much you make if you sell books came up again in one of my conversations this weekend - need I mention that I talked about the Beast a lot?

The conversation, however, reminded me that this is something not everybody knows, and probably a good thing to blog about.

Anyone who has ever heard something about authors and royalties knows that you will not get rich by writing.* From the cover price of the book, about 2-15% end up in the author's bank account.** So where does the rest go?

A good chunk of the money is consumed by the actual printing of the physical book and related costs - storage, transport, shipping, logistics involved with that. Then there's the people working in the publishing house who have to pay for their lives as well. About half the cover price is deducted for booksellers (which can include authors, if they choose to sell their own book as well). And that's it.

Since book prices are more or less fixed***, that means you can decide where your book-buying money goes to, with no difference (or very little of it) to your own bank account.  The publishing house and the author get a fixed amount for every book sold, but then there's the seller's profit, which is about 30-50% of the cover price.

Your choice of where you get the book decides who gets this money. Want to support a certain publishing house because you just love everything they turn out? Order your books directly from them - it means they get their profit plus the bookseller's profit. You have a favourite bookstore, online or brick-and-mortar? Buy your books there. (Since price differences are rather small, buying books not in the Big River Store, but from other companies, is a rather pain-free way to curb the monopoly of Amazon, too.) Your most beloved authors are selling books themselves? If you buy directly from them, they will get their royalties plus the bookseller's profit (which is usually a multiple of the royalties). I can't say how things will work out for the Beast yet, but for Kleidung im Mittelalter, I get about six times as much money if I sell it myself than if the publishing house or a bookshop sells it (and I'm getting a good royalty rate for this, so it will probably be an even bigger difference for the Beast).

So if you are ever wondering where to buy a book in the future, now you know that your decision will actually make a difference to the bookshop, publisher, or author. The most important thing, though, is that the book gets out there at all - to be read, enjoyed, talked about, and used in all the many possible ways that a book can be used. (Including as a doorstop or plant press, if necessary.)



*The very few exceptions to this are what proves this rule.
** If you google stuff, there are quite a few web sites that will tell you a standard royalty rate is 10-15%. This, however, is not true for all genres or types of books and all circumstances; if you are not writing a novel, things may be very different.
*** Book prices are completely fixed in Germany and Austria - books printed by publishing houses here have a price that you must ask when selling said book, or else. Prices are more fluid where this system does not apply, but a newly released book will sell for more or less a similar price wherever you buy it.

It's sunny outside, the evenings are getting milder, and spring has fully sprung. This is the time of the year when the season starts - as is traditional for us, it does so with Freienfels.

So we'll be off to spend a few days there, starting tomorrow. Which means if you need some spindle sticks or whorls or fibres or a netting needle or other stuff, you can drop by at my market stall and get them there.

Blogging, therefore, will be on hiatus for a few days, and I'll resume my daily woolgatherings here on Tuesday.

When I looked around for medieval-style spindle sticks several years ago and couldn't find any, I went and searched for a woodworker who could make soe for me. I quickly discovered that it's not easy to lathe-turn something that is long and thin and getting even thinner towards its ends, so I was very happy to find someone willing and able to produce spindle sticks for me, to my specifications and measurements.

Now, several years later, they have turned out to be one of the best-selling items in my shop. I have sent those spindle sticks off to do their job and twirl to make yarn into places all around the globe, something I would never have expected when I started selling them.

Since I started selling the sticks, they have remained the same price. Today the day has come when I will have to raise the price a little bit - they will sell for 8 € a piece from now on instead of for 7 €. However, to make up for that slightly higher price, I am now able to offer a little more variety: you can now choose between beechwood, pearwood, or (European) maplewood. All three are hard, durable woods that have their own charm. Maple is the lightest-coloured of the three, beech is a little darker with the characteristic longish speckles, and the pearwood is a warm, reddish colour with scarcely visible tree rings.






The picture shows the new kids along with the old beech version - from left to right, they are a beechwood spindle, a pearwood spindle, and a maplewood spindle. I actually can't decide which kind I like best... what a good thing, then, that I can have all three!

(You could, too. Here's the direct link to the spindle sticks in my shop.)

The Hugo nomination ballot is still causing a lot of discussion - among many people. There's those that have a firm opinion in one way or another what should be done this specific time and maybe for the future; there's also a lot of thinking and pondering and suggesting going on about how the Hugos have changed over the years, and how they could be changed now to fit in with the times again.

If you're interested, Jim C. Hines is having a nice long post about choosing sides, with some links sprinkled in, and there is now a survey about the impact of the Hugo on non-US readers of the genre, here. Shaun Duke made that survey, and eventually the results will be written up and posted.

In case the Hugos are something that you never heard about and don't even want to hear about, you can always take a look at the Will of King John instead. Or in addition, if you like both old legal documents and modern genre award debates...

This has been a rather full week, and I'm really, really looking forward to the weekend now!

If you are looking for something to while away a little time and haven't done so yet, the Free 14 at Maney is still running until Sunday, so if you like conservation, heritage or archaeology journal articles, that might sweeten your weekend a bit.

Me, I'll take care of two or three little things now, and then I will sit in the sun and unwind. The Beast is finally finished, edited, proof-read, proof-read again, our changes carefully considered and sent in, all remaining questions answered and it is off our desks for good. It's been wonderful, nerve-racking, exciting, exhausting, painstaking and demanding work to get this thing finished for print.

Actually, the whole work on the book was wonderful and nerve-racking and demanding, and at times it became hilarious, and at other times it was deeply frustrating. There were times when one of us tried very, very hard to get a point across to the other one, because only one could see the issue and the other couldn't. There were times when we sighed in frustration because the literature was too scarce, or too biased, or doesn't explain something clearly and we couldn't find a better book or article for the topic. There were times when we wished we had about a hundred more pages of leeway to explain things about the cans of worms here and there, things fraught with so many issues from research history and old biases and uncertainities that we could either write "this is a disputed thing" or start to do a few weeks more research and write many more pages (for which we did not have the space). There was much nitpicking about the exact phrasing of this or that so it would be as hard as possible to misunderstand or misinterpret.

It wasn't all sweat and toil and sighs, though. We had a lot of good times and a lot of fun doing all this, and you can bet that there were ample little jokes we made, and there were even a few puns in the draft at some stages.

The Beast has given us three years of collaboration where we managed to solve all these issues of writing, and all the other issues that came up through language differences, time zone shifts, cultural differences and personal preferences. Oh, and the mis-timed illnesses that had a tendency to hit us both at the same time when we could both not afford to let the Beast rest for a few days. So sometimes it was tough going, but we both did persist, and it was an amazing, wonderful ride altogether, and I am very proud that we did persist and never got too mad at each other for too long. 
I'm also very proud of what we wrote, together, standing on the shoulders of giants, merging our expertise and our passions and our voices.

Now, soon, it will be out in the world to be enjoyed by many other people. I'm thrilled about that, and a bit nervous (will people like it? will it be the helpful book we intended it to be?) and very, very happy that we found a lovely publisher who did a lot of work, too, to make the book look as beautiful as possible.

It's finally, finally really done. Finished. On a sunny Friday. I am happy.

Really, all the wheels.
The wheels in my brain (since I'm still working on that last proofread, and any minute now the doorbell will ring and I'll have somebody here to assist with a garment cut); the wheels on the bicycle when we go to town; on Monday the wheels on the car, when I'll pick up Gary from Britain and we'll zoom over to Bamberg for a library visit.

Wheels are also, figuratively, turning on a few other projects and events - planning is going on, and it is nice to feel that things are moving, moving, moving and that there will be no day where I think "what could I be doing" in the near future.


And recently (in Backnang) the Great Wheel was also turning. Here's picture proof: