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Living the Dream

LIVING THE DREAM

RE-RELEASED!

"Living the Dream" is a semi-humorous crime story about a loser named Kurt who thinks that his ticket to Easy Street lies in a half-baked kidnapping plot. After the road trip from hell he arrives in Florida to find that Vicky, his intended victim, is out of town. Vicky's husband, Jimmy, is thinking of divorcing her and probably won't pay the ransom anyway. And Leslie, Jimmy's mistress, wants a piece of Kurt's action. Just to make matters worse, Kurt has a bookie, a biker and an ex-Navy SEAL all wanting a piece of his hide. Kurt had no idea that kidnapping was such hard work. His plan might work if it doesn't get him killed first.

Living the Dream re-release

 

Tim Baker’s first novel, Living the Dream has been re-released. Originally released in 2009 by a company called Dog Ear Publishing, it will now be published under Tim’s company, Blindogg Books.

When Living the Dream was written, the self-publishing world was in its infancy and as a first-time novelist, Tim Baker didn’t know much about it. After several months of research, he settled on Dog Ear Publishing. The company worked with him every step of the way. Their assistance was invaluable.

Here’s a little trivia about the independent publishing world…authors who are not published by the large traditional publishing houses have to pay independent publishers to publish their books. The cost varies and different companies offer different packages.

To have Living the Dream published Tim paid a little over $1,200. Each book sale earned him $2.01.

When it came time to publish his second novel, Tim decided to use a different, less expensive company. That novel was Water Hazard and the cost of publication was around $700.

By the time he was ready to release his third novel, Tim decided to become his own publisher. He formed Blindogg Books, purchased a block of ISBN numbers and has published all of his novels since then.

So why is Living the Dream being re-released?

Sometime around 2018 Tim noticed he was not receiving royalty checks from Dog Ear Publishing for Living the Dream. He dismissed it, writing it off to lack of sales. 

It wasn’t until he went to Dog Ear Publishing’s website to order “author copies” of the book (author copies are sold to the author by the publisher at a reduced rate. Usually, authors buy them and sell them at personal appearance events, etc.). The option for purchasing author copies was non-functional. Tim made several phone calls to the company which went unanswered. He tried emails, even sending some directly to the owner of the company. None of his emails received a reply.

After some research Tim came upon some bad news. Dog Ear Publishing was out of business, the owner had disappeared, none of the authors were getting their royalty checks and – worst of all – the files of all the books published by Dog Ear Publishing were nowhere to be found – meaning no new copies of the book could be purchased…by anybody. (https://selfpublishingadvice.org/dog-ear-publishing-alert/ )

Bottom line, Living the Dream appeared to be dead in the water.

Tim joined a Facebook group created by other Dog Ear Publishing authors and after nearly two years a man who used to work for Dog Ear  Publishing posted that he had files for many of the missing books, one of which was Living the Dream.

Now, with the files for his book back in his possession, Tim eliminated any references to Dog Ear Publishing, and has re-released it under Blindogg Books.

Living the Dream is now available for purchase on Amazon or directly through our online shop if you wish to have a personalized copy. 

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