Autographed Copies of He's the Weird Teacher

Full Disclosure: This is a strange post to be writing.

I have been getting messages asking about getting autographed copies of He's the Weird Teacher. First off, wow that's really cool. Second, make sure you keep the book in mint condition afterwards because someday you'll be able to sell it on ebay for tens, possibly dozens, of dollars.

I do want to help people out who want autographed copies of the book, so I've been trying to figure out the best way to make it possible without being difficult. I've come up with a few choices-

1) Go to your perfered online bookseller (amazon and createspace have paperbacks) and order the book, but have it sent to my home instead of yours. It comes to me, I sign it, then I send it on to you. Through paypal you pay me to ship it to you. Obviously, to do this you need to get in touch with me on the tweets  so you know where to send it. This is kinda creepy though, so you might like option two better.

3) I have copies in my home. DM me on the tweets or email me (the weirdteacher@gmail.com) and let me know you want one and we'll work it out that way. Total book costs for in country shipping is $14 media mail and $17 priority. That is the book plus shipping and that's all. What kind of a jerk charges for his signature?

3) In the non-creepiest and/or funniest way possible, find me in person and ask me to sign it. Hell, I'll sign your e-reader cover that way too. I'll even take a picture with you and the book*.

Unfortunately, I don't have the money to pay to ship the signed copy to you, so I've added a link over on the sidebar which will connect to my paypal account. I'll tell you how much shipping will be, you put that into the paypal account, then I'll send your signed copy out.

So yes, getting a signed copy will be a little more expensive because you'll be paying for shipping, but imagine the look on the faces of all your coworkers and friends and family members when they unwrap that present at Christmas and see, "Dear Your Name Here, You're an awesome human person. Read carefully. There will be a test. -Doug Robertson". You can't buy joy like that.

Happy reading, and don't forget to leave those reviews on Amazon! Thanks!

*picture cost $56 per person per picture**

**unless you can quote Holy Grail, Spinal Tap, Jaws, or Legally Blonde to me. Then the fee is waived.

Amazon Update

He's the Weird Teacher is almost completely on sale everywhere. I think it should still show up on the Barnes and Noble page at some point. But amazon has linked the paperback and Kindle pages together now.
Find that HERE.
Remember, you can also go to Smashwords and Createspace.
Please continue to spread the word and leave reviews!
Thank you.

E-Book Announcement- He's the Weird Teacher

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages!
The Kindle and Smashwords editions of He's the Weird Teacher are live and ready for purchase.
Follow this links to the page to get yourself the newest, hottest, most exciting, most hyperbolic book about teaching I've ever written.

• Amazon.com (Kindle)
• Smashwords (Nook and other e-readers)

 The paperback is not up yet so if you want an actual hardcopy to hold in your hands and smell the pages then you're going to have to wait a few more days. But if you're a digital person then He's the Weird Teacher is ready to be bought.
The price for both amazon and smashwords is $4.99.
If you buy on amazon, and I'm going to be saying this over and over, please please please go back and leave a review after you read it. Reviews are how books move up and down the suggestion fields and the more positive reviews the book gets the higher it should move and, theoretically, the more people will see it.
Like I said, the paperback is not up yet. It will be soon though.
It would mean a lot to me if you would help spread the word by tweeting, Facebooking, Google+-ing, and word-of-mouthing He's the Weird Teacher to everyone you know. I'm warning you, I'm going to be kind of a pain about this over the next few weeks, but it's only because I'm crazy excited and proud of the product.
Thank you for reading, sharing, and being a part of this.

In the Mail!

It's in the mail.
There is a paperback copy of He's the Weird Teacher being printed, cover and all, as we speak. Soon it will be in the mail. Approximately ten days after that it will be in my mailbox.
This paperback copy is my final approval draft. It isn't so much for edits, as that is done and anything wrong is wrong in this edition (I'm sure there are spelling and punctuation things that slipped through, but they should be few and far between), as it is for making sure the layout, cover, and all that good stuff is like I want.
The website, createspace, is waiting for my approval. I'm pretty sure the amazon page is on deck, and the smashwords page too. When it is ready ready I'll post links to amazon, smashwords, and createspace, because it'll be order-able from all three. I've also set it up so that libraries and book stores can order copies themselves. This will come in handy since the bookstore at my almamater, the University of the Pacific, has told me they would like to carry a few copies. It also means independent bookstores and the University of Hawaii (who makes an appearance kind of) are going to be getting nagging phone calls and emails from me in the next couple of days that will sound something like this:



I appreciate everyone reading this and I'll be calling on you to help spread the word once the book is ready to rock. Big things will be social media sharing and giving it reviews on amazon. Reviews are how things move up the suggestion lists, putting it in front of eyes I'll never be able to reach otherwise.
Thank you for your support. I'll post pictures of the proof once it gets here.
Squee.

Thesis Statement

Saw this on Facebook today and it rang true. This quote, though this is the first time I'd seen it, is pretty much the thesis statement for at least two chapters of the book and I hope is a theme that gets taken away by the reader at the end.

Corrections Submitted

Earlier this week Ray at y42k publishing sent me the penultimate draft of the book to look over. There is always one final pass of correcting before you send the book off to print. Stuff slips through. There was a list. Wanna see it? Wanna see a list of corrections that are basically meaningless out of context? Ok.

[ ] Pg 14. Capital T in The Simpsons. And no apostrophe
[ ] Pg. 16 period after first before "
[ ] Pg. 21 next to THE Demarcus...
[ ] Pg. 21 "what a teacher could BE" not do
[ ] Pg. 25 This is one of those stories, then paragraph break.
[ ] Pg. 42 capital And in And Not Freaking Out
[ ] Pg. 48 obviously then comma. Last paragraph
[ ] Pg. 50 "it's logical end" should be its
[ ] Pg. 51 after the list "teachers'" apostrophe placement
[ ] Pg 56 "impressed my principal so MUCH that..."
[ ] Pg. 64 "If need to..." Should be "If I need to..." Last full paragraph
[ ] Pg. 64 end of same sentence, "heart to heart with the child ask..." There should be AND between child and ask
[ ] Pg 76 2nd paragraph "they get to argue with me ABOUT how..."
[ ] Pg. 86 last full paragraph delete MYSELF "...a section I think of at the end of every quarter."
[ ] Pg. 146 comma after "In fact", first full paragraph
[ ] Pg 146 italics I, Robot, second full paragraph
[ ] Pg. 159 second to last word should be KINDS not kind
[ ] Pg. 178 first full paragraph "opportunities" instead of opportunity
[ ] Pg. 183 I'd like there to be a page break between "Thus endeth the chapter" and the next line. Possible?
[ ] Pg 191 middle paragraph second to last sentence. "parent's" should be "parents'"
[ ] Pg. 235 end of middle paragraph. "You just stand THERE" not then
[ ] Pg. 254 top paragraph, right after the strikethrough, delete "a"
[ ] Pg. 263 second to last paragraph first sentence, delete "that I"
[ ] Pg. 265 "For fun he...rides HIS motorcycle..."

There. Happy? So those things slipped though and I managed to finish the list in a few days. I just sent it to Ray so now I wait again. I wait as he goes through and makes those final changes. Then he'll let me know what I need to do with the cover, because the size we made it probably isn't totally correct. Luckily, that's easy fix for Dorothy.
All this means we creep closer and closer to an actual release. Very exciting, ladies and gentlemen.

Out Of My Hands (for now)

There isn't too much to say in this post. But it is exciting to be about to say.
I've turned in the book to Y42K publishing. He has his fee and all the text and information he required to start his end of the process. So now I wait. Should be a week or two, and then he comes back to me with more questions and a dummy copy that I can check over for mistakes. Dorothy and I will probably have to fiddle with the cover size a little once we know for such what the page count in the paperback will be (no Word doc page count does not equal actual page count). I approve the dummy copy, we finish setting up the Smashwords and amazon pages, then away it goes and I make millions of dollars becoming a world wide sensation ending up on The Daily Show while Jon Stewart laughs at my stories. Or I sell enough to break even. Or only my friends buy it. But even if that happens, at least I wrote a book I'm proud of and got it out into the world.
Ok, more as it develops! Thanks for reading.
Doug

We Have a Cover

I kind of was going to tease this out, maybe release a little bit at a time or something, but I can't. I way way waaaay too excited about the whole thing to do that.
My friend Dorothy came over to the house today to shoot the picture for me to use for the cover of the book. That's all I had planned. Take some pictures, then hang out. Instead, she came over with all her gear and her computer,  we hashed out the basic idea for the cover, shot for fifteen minutes or so, and then got to editing and she, using the templates provided to me by y42k.com (by the way, go check out their book on the Boston Marathon called The 27th Mile) totally built the whole cover with me in Photoshop. It was very cool and I can't thank her enough and I'm totally thrilled with what we ended up with. It took some fiddling, but my initial idea was pretty strong and she has an eye for graphic design, so it came out great. I think it'll be eye-catching on shelves and in the amazon shop and hopefully it's going to make people click on it/pick it up.
The below image is the front cover. We actually built the entire cover and there's a back to it too with a blurb about the book that I'll probably use in most of the promotional material, but I'm not putting that up.
And with all that said...
Drum roll, please

I love it. I love it love it love it. I think it's great. I can't thank Dorothy enough. What I can do is send you all to her websites. If you have photography needs and are in the Tacoma area, hit her up.
Here is her website and here is her Facebook page. Please reach out. If you like the book design let her know that too; she should know how kick ass it is from people who aren't me. She shot Super Awesome Wife and my wedding too, so if you dig around on her site a little, or just wait on the main page, there's all kinds of pictures of us.
He's the Weird Teacher will soon be headed off to the publisher, and from there it should be a matter of short weeks before you all can hold it in your hands or download it to your reading devices. I hope you're half as excited about reading it as I am about releasing it into the wild.
Thanks.