Gulag Publishers Inc has
been set up to introduce a dynamic new model of publishing, and adapt to the
growing popularity of eBooks.
We offer the full package
of eBook publishing services:
Our experienced
creative team will polish your manuscript, design a sumptuous cover, prepare a
beautifully finished version in all available digital formats and publish them
on every online retailer (and select large retailers).
Our dedicated marketing
executives will expertly package your book and sell it to a public that will come
soon come to adore you.
You won’t have to worry
about any thorny legal issues once your sales hit the stratosphere courtesy of
our world-class legal division.
The best parts?
1. We take any book,
regardless of length, genre or perceived quality by other publishing outlets.
2. While you can usually
expect to wait for years to publish your book through other major companies,
our guaranteed timeline from manuscript submission to publishing is two
weeks.
3. The entire service is
FREE!
Our Business Model or ‘What’s
the Catch?’
We do not take any
monetary compensation for our services. That’s a fact.
What we offer is a
mutually beneficial contract that helps our business grow. Not only will you sign
a lucrative publishing contract with us, but you also receive the opportunity to
freshen up your resume with a highly sought-after work placement at one of the
divisions of our growing corporation!
Gulag Publishers Inc is a
division of Gulag Mining Enterprises, a growing global force in precious metal
mining activities. We whisk you away to one of our precious metal mines and temporarily
employ your services as an unpaid worker. You will spend your days working in a magical environment
surrounded by sapphires, rubies, diamonds or gold, depending on the location.
One of our happy author/miners
Other benefits include:
Improved fitness and
coordination with the help of our mine supervisors
A chance to experience the
wonders of a new country for free!
FREE catering services1
FREE shared accommodation
with other aspiring authors
FREE protection gear and
equipment checks
FREE insurance against
mining accidents2
1 Our menu in currently
limited to two forms of low-protein gruel, but plans are being made to add
a third form.
2 Please note that the policy
is taken out against your name, with Gulag Mining Enterprises as the
benefactor.
How long will this internship
last?
Our fabulous accomodation
Your legal mining work contract
(some would call it an extended active vacation!) begins on the day we publish
your book, two weeks after you submit your manuscript. With our new flexible
model, it ends on the day your eBook makes a mere 1000 sales! After this, you
are free to go back to your loved ones and reap the ongoing rewards of your newfound
success as an author.
With our publishing team at work,
some authors have reached this target in as little as a week! Do not worry if it takes longer, you will be treated well at our mining facility.
Think about how exciting
this opportunity is:
A fast, free professional publishing
service
A free ‘working vacation’
A high potential for fast success
It’s no wonder that our
inbox is full of eager applicants.
(Light warning: Following
these steps might result in a few angry emails and bullets being fired in your
direction. Unfortunately, the popular saying “whatever doesn’t kill you makes
you stronger” only applies to the emails.)
Getting your book sales to
take off isn’t easy. Contacting reviewers, hosting giveaways, participating in interviews,
going free for a while, building connections on social networks and good old advertising
are basic methods used by authors and publishers to give their book a shot at
greatness. As with any other product, the results of these efforts vary
greatly. You can take two identical author twins, have them write the same
story and follow the same marketing plan, but there could still be a large
difference in sales.
What's the solution?
There are two schools of
thought. One involves authors attempting to manipulate the ‘butterfly effect’
by flying to a different country and killing a butterfly, in the hope that
chaos theory sets in and somehow results in more sales for their book. As
expected, this has produced mixed results and probably a few hurricanes.
The second, more effective
route is to use tactics that are frowned upon in public. Here are three tips, (not) guaranteed
to increase your sales figures!
1. Take hostages at a large book signing
Hugely popular ‘Young
Adult Author X’ is hosting a book signing at one of the largest bookstores
downtown. Hundreds, if not thousands are expected to turn up to grab a signed
copy of her highly anticipated epic about the post-apocalyptic love between two
vampiric zombies.
This is your opportunity
to orchestrate a lucrative hostage situation. Remember to follow the principles
of branding, by making sure that the name of your own book appears everywhere
during your gun-toting rampage. This could include:
Wearing custom clothing
that advertises your book, instead of a dark criminal outfit
Forcing ‘Young Adult
Author X’ to read the first chapter of your book and give it a glowing review
Talking to the negotiators
at length about your book, and agreeing to release a hostage if the police
announce details of your upcoming blog interview to the crowd
Demanding a million unmarked kindle
book sales instead of cash
Refusing to talk about
anything but your book at your eventual trial
You might spend the rest
of your life in prison, but we all have to make sacrifices as aspiring authors.
2. Start a gang of innovative pickpockets
Pickpockets in major high
street locations usually work by covertly relieving you of your valuables and leaving
nothing in return. You can strike a blow for their reputation and increase your
book’s readership by changing this model! After you hire and train a gang of
such thieves, give them cheap USB flash drives containing a copy of your ebook.
Instead of simply robbing their targets, your gang will replace the wallets
with these copies of your book.
The downside? Your book’s
name might become synonymous with theft and the ensuing rise in crime
statistics. It might be worth it if your book is associated with that genre.
3. Lobby for heavy sanctions against nations where your
book isn’t selling well
If you have the
appropriate connections to get this done, then you’re probably rich and
important enough to explore better avenues of promoting your book.
Nevertheless, even if you
choose this path and the sanctions don’t go through, you can be sure that your
book will at least get extensive media coverage. Most of it will be in the form
of angry protestors burning effigies of you, but any publicity is good
publicity. Right?
Good luck and let me know
how this strategy works out for you! Suggestions and additional methods are
always welcome.
Financial organisations
have stolen a rather large share of the negative limelight in recent years.
Other prominent self-styled supervillain entities such as Monsanto and Academi / XE / Blackwater / Pointless-Name-Change-Number-4000 are probably ecstatic at the
temporary lull in scathing media coverage.
Meanwhile, helpless
entities like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are being ripped apart by the public.
Their only meagre consolation is that they are in bed with regulatory agencies
that will never bring them fully to account for their actions, but what good is
that? Once you lose the love of the public, it will take more than buying your
3rd yacht to console you.
This witch hunt has also brought
out some unfortunate bloopers by these financial firms. Let us look at the top 4 and take note on how
to avoid such PR no-nos in the future.
"After
tax, that’s like, what, $75,000?" an investment banker at a rival firm
said as he contemplated Morgan Stanley’s decision. He ran the numbers, modeling
the implications. "I’m not married and I take the subway and I watch what
I spend very carefully. But my girlfriend likes to eat good food. It all adds
up really quick. A taxi here, another taxi there. I just bought an apartment, so
now I have a big old mortgage bill."
Don’t get me wrong, I spat
out my caviar myself after reading about these capped bonuses. However, talking
about your plight if you’re a banker in this current climate is unwise. Once
this economic mess dies down, you can start negotiating a better pay packet and
not have to suffer the horrors of public transportation or women who date you
for your personality rather than your wallet. Hang in there.
3. Champagne Supernova
During the Occupy Wall
Street protests, bankers were caught 'toasting' the protestors with champagne from
the balcony.
Of course some people
decided to take this as a sign of arrogance, rather than what it really was -
hard working bankers inviting them in to the building for a party.
If you’re a banker, you
can avoid this by holding these parties in private secluded locations. It would
also greatly help your company’s image if you were to donate your champagne
surplus at the end of these events to the local orphanage.
2. Holy Avenger
Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO
of Goldman Sachs and revered Captain of Industry,
made a well-publicised blooper in 2009 when he declared that his bank was doing
“God’s Work”.
Critics might argue that god’s
work might consist of more than just misleading investors about the value of
stocks and then secretly selling them behind their backs, but this can be
disproved with a simple handy quote from the Bible:
Leviticus
25:14
"If you sell or buy property from one of your countrymen, don't cheat him…”
..wait that wasn’t it,
here’s the right one:
Colossians 3:23
“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not
for men.”
Ah
there we go. He truly was doing god’s work. But the next time, it would help to
carry around a holy book and back up your statements with ancient wisdom.
1. Didn’t you get the memo?
A delightful letter was
thrown at the Occupy Chicago protestors. In it, the bankers calmly stated that they needed jobs too and if Wall Street
was put under any more pressure, they would have no option but to steal
the jobs of teachers, landscapers and other lower income workers. Here’s a copy:
“We are Wall Street. It’s
our job to make money. Whether it’s a commodity, stock, bond, or some
hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn’t matter. We would trade baseball
cards if it were profitable. I didn’t hear America complaining when the market
was roaring to 14,000 and everyone’s 401k doubled every 3 years. Just like
gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I’ve never heard of anyone going to
Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas.
Well now the market
crapped out, & even though it has come back somewhat, the government and
the average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat. God knows there has to be
one for everything. Well, here we are.
Go ahead and continue to
take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen
when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take
yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We’re used to not
getting up to pee when we have a position. We don’t take an hour or more for a
lunch break. We don’t demand a union. We don’t retire at 50 with a pension. We
eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates,
we’ll eat that.
For years teachers and
other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice.
Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing
landscaping? We’re going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a
year and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the
youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime and double time and a half. I’ll
be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer,
thank you very much.
So now that we’re going to
be making $85k a year without upside, Joe Mainstreet is going to have his
revenge, right? Wrong! Guess what: we’re going to stop buying the new 80k car,
we aren’t going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No
more free rides on our backs. We’re going to landscape our own back yards, wash
our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You
spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.
The difference is, you
lived off of it, we rejoiced in it. The Obama administration and the Democratic
National Committee might get their way and knock us off the top of the pyramid,
but it’s really going to hurt like hell for them when our fat a**es land
directly on the middle class of America and knock them to the bottom.
We aren’t dinosaurs. We
are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive. The
question is, now that Obama & his administration are making Joe Mainstreet
our food supply…will he? and will they?”
Poor people should heed
this message. After all, it has been scientifically proven that only
bankers are capable of waking up at 5 in the morning (Kids at home: Do not attempt this dangerous feat).
Nevertheless, the Chicago
bankers made one mistake, and that was to reveal their plans to the enemy. Instead
of secretly stealing blue collar jobs and cutlery, their scheme has now been
widely read by the public. Does a poker player show his/her cards before
burning the host’s house to the ground? NO. Come on!
Anyway, this concludes our
brief roundup of banking PR disasters and how to avoid them in the future. Stay strong and
consider cutting back to 4 vacations a year, the industry still has a storm to
ride out.
I want to launch a pre-emptive strike and clear up a misconception that could arise among potential readers.
I am not the popular Batman supervillain Ra’s Al-Ghul, trying to sell the secrets of my life under an assumed name.
Very few people (zero) have been blackmailed and assassinated so far on my journey as an author.
Just to re-iterate, buying the book won’t result in a wacky Armageddon scenario, unless of course you decide to follow the advice and make it work for you.
I’m sure that at some
point or the other, you have considered what it would be like to rule the world.
I mean, what sane individual hasn’t?
Supervillain: The Concise Guide is a book that caters to these thoughts by offering you a foolproof way
of fulfilling this fantasy. There are no downsides to following the advice in
the book as a grown adult, no sir-ee.
Anyway, I’ve launched this
blog to try and stir up some publicity for it. It only weighs in at around 26,000
words, so hopefully it’ll provide some entertainment on your occasional lunch
break. I’ll also occasionally throw in my other thoughts on various subjects, including
the daily journal of a cat that is growing sick of its master’s efforts to take
over the planet.
