Our Ontario (Canada) “municipality” spans three small towns and a handful of hamlets, for a total population of around 14,000. Up until the end of last year, I ran a web hosting business, which connected me both to many local businesses and also to other technical people in the area. In mid-2024, I decided to sell my hosting operations, in part to be able to focus on writing, in part to spend more time with in3d.ca (my business centred around 3D printing and related technologies), and in part to spend more time with my family.
I was fortunate enough to be able to transfer my clients to a local web developer, a far better option compared to merging them into one of the big hosting behemoths. Leaving the business also removed the reason to interact with the local community of technical folks, many of whom have become more than just business associates.
Back in February, four of us decided to get together at one of our local microbreweries, to share conversation and pizza. This was rewarding enough that we decided to make it a monthly thing, and to expand the group to other people who were technical and/or worked in the online space. Bad weather forced a cancellation of our March meeting. March also ended with severe weather, an ice storm had most of us without power for a few days, but most of us managed to get out yesterday for meeting number two.
Aside from more great conversation, the meeting resulted in a plan to include some of the other breweries in the area (we’re blessed with four within a 25 minute drive of each other), to set up a mailing list, and to invite others as we discover them.
In terms of personal impact, John Charlton, a web developer who is retiring into photography mentioned that he’s been posting his work here on substack. Aside from touting the features of this platform (which have convinced me to give this a try). He expressed some surprise that it was his writing that garnered the most positive feedback. I’ve read a few of his posts and I can say I’m not surprised. His writing appears effortless, in many cases it’s a small scale travelogue, as he takes you through a day of image-making, along with many excellent photographs. Highly recommended.
Dumb Passwords
For the past few months, I’ve been compiling the “Dumb Password Report”, an analysis of the passwords hackers have been using to try to gain access to my sites. I say the report is terrifying because I see attempts that closely match some of the passwords my hosting customers have tried to use over the years. Last night I prepared the Dumb Password Report for March. Check it out, especially if you think something like “Admin2024@” counts as a good password!
Advertising on Facebook
This morning I’m clearing a little backlog of unread emails. Of note today is David Gaughran’s newsletter (davidgaughran.com), who generously offers detailed advice on promoting books through Facebook. By generously, I mean there’s no up-sell, no bait and switch (“for the full story, [buy/subscribe/etc.].”). He does have books on the subject that can be purchased for a reasonable price, but half the time his newsletter doesn’t even mention them. I think his revenue model is landing big launch deals from major publishers, so putting all this information out there is demonstrating his expertise. He must be a thorn in the side for a group of “experts” who are selling “crack the code” workshops for significant fees. Especially since feedback from other authors is that those thousand dollar courses are often so outdated that they do more harm than good. Facebook is nothing if not a moving target.
I used to follow his emails closely, extracting everything I could from each, making notes. This has been moderated by three factors. Most importantly, I’m not sure Facebook is a great place to reach Science Fiction readers. It looks like a decent place for Fantasy, a great place for Romance, self-help, travel and the like. Then there’s their AI targeting push. They have made it extremely difficult for an advertiser to control who sees their ad, and naturally their “AI” biases toward larger audiences, which means more revenue for them, less efficiency for the advertiser. No thanks! And lastly, the change in Meta’s moderation policies. It’s one thing to keep an account there, to have an author page, but it’s quite another to actively support the thing by advertising there. When seeking a balance between my need to get visibility for my work and the desire to not fund a toxic platform, I’m leaning heavily toward spending my money elsewhere.
Yardwork
The arrival of spring and the aforementioned ice storm have left us with much work to do outside the house. There is a daunting list of projects. So much so that I won’t even begin to list them for fear of wanting to give up. On the list for just today is levelling some ground behind our garage, in anticipation of a new firewood storage bin, a trip to the dump to get rid of the debris that was formerly in that space, and tackling the dismantling of an old deck, the next step in clearing out part of the yard. It is a warm, sunny day and I need to get to it.
What follows is my first post on Substack. It’s a somewhat rambling explanation of why I’m on Substack in the first place (TL/DR: the network effect is better, especially now that Google search is useless). Still, I expect Substack to enshittify sooner or later, so it seems that echoing posts here is the best defence against that. I plan to schedule posts to publish here a few days after they publish on Substack, mostly so that search engines can pick it up first and not dilute what little utility they offer.
I’m in the process of writing my first novel. It’s a cyberpunk-inspired hard science fiction story set on Earth in the near future.
I intend to self-publish the book. This carries with it many implications. First and foremost, I’m solely responsible for the quality of the finished product. Not only do I have to craft an interesting story, I need to hire my own developmental and line/copy editors to help me ensure that the work is the best it can be. Then there’s recruiting beta readers: people I’m close enough to to trust with an unfinished manuscript, but distant enough that I’ll get honest feedback. There’s the mechanical aspects, formatting/typesetting the book, securing ISBNs, commissioning cover art, organizing the front and back matter.
And finally the part most writers seem to dread: marketing and promotion. Advanced Reader Copies sent to a select list, both as a final check to make sure there are as few errors as possible, and hopefully as a source of positive reviews, a set of social media posts, emails to my lengthy list of newsletter subscribers, paid advertising, and much more. Hypothetically leading to ultimate success (for a highly individual definition of success ranging from “I finished a book” to “I earn a good living from my work”).
Except I don’t have a lengthy list of newsletter subscribers or a massive social media following. I do have a minuscule mailing list, roughly two orders of magnitude smaller than Kevin Kelley’s semi-valid One Thousand True Fans that a creator needs to sustain their work. Not good.
Not that I haven’t started all the things that are supposed to yield a dedicated fan base. I have. I just haven’t continued them. I’ve got a handful of sites, three blogs, two of which rarely see updates (and the third just documents releases of software I maintain, that’s easy but boring). Even if I was updating regularly, the pathetic state of web search probably means I’d be posting into a void anyway.
I digress. In terms of writing, I there is just one place where I should be doing all the things to build a following, my alanlangford.com site. I should be posting there about progress on my work, offering samples, maybe discussing some aspects of the main characters. This should be easy. The thing is, I’m still not sure. I’m not sure about everything. What if I share part of a chapter now, and by the time I get through two to five more draft/revision cycles, that chapter is entirely cut? Have I been dishonest? Will people be disappointed?
I just don’t feel comfortable writing about this stuff until I’m certain that things I say are going to be part of the book are actually in the finished work. Anything else feels dishonest.
And yet I need to say something, somewhere, or have to settle for a number of true fans that I can count on one hand. That’s not an acceptable outcome either.
As a result, here I am on Substack, capitulating to the promise of benefiting from some network effect, akin to the community of fellow writers I’ve connected with on Mastodon. During the sign-up process, I was asked to provide a single sentence describing what this blog is about, and my best answer is “I don’t know yet.” My suspicion is that if I’m going to post regularly, this is going to be something akin to early “web logs”, some kind of open book journal that reflects the scattered, disjointed activities and interests that pass for my life.
This is in some ways a terrifying prospect. Much like many creative folks, I’d prefer that my fans came after my work, rather than before. But that’s not the way the world works. I was going to write “works these days,” but I have a feeling it was always this way; only the medium has changed.
Buckle up. I don’t know how weird this is going to get.
Right, so TFP, unbelievably back in the White House, threatened Canada with a swath of tariffs, and Canada responded with a plan to implement a swath of “eff off, eh?” tariffs in response. Eventually this resulted in a conversation between TFP and our Prime Minister where we agreed to do all of the things we were going to do anyway in exchange for a 30-day reprieve. Cool.
Except we also agreed to appoint a Fentanyl Czar, which admittedly is new. I mean it’s really new, because as far as I know we haven’t done the Czar-theatre thing in the past. Because, well, because it’s theatre. But now we have to, to buy favour with the idiot-in-chief. And I’m guessing we’ve only got 30 days to do it.
That’s not really enough time to use the current US model, which would be to find a sycophant who has been publicly pro-fentanyl, drag them up in some kind of confirmation-hearing theatre and ask them pointed questions where they lie and say now they’re as anti-Fentanyl as anti-Fentanyl can be.
No, we need to use a tried and true Canadian method. A lottery. We’ve got a well-oiled lottery apparatus here. I’m confident that we can set up the Fentanyl Czar Lottery in no time. We’ll sell tickets at ten bucks a pop, and then a few days before that 30-day “reprieve” runs out, select someone at random, give them the title, and pay their salary from the funds raised.
The TL;DR on this is always, always, always dig deep into any organization offering publishing services and do your due diligence. There are many ways to spend a lot of money and receive little value. Here’s the result of my digging into one of those services.
I’m part of several writers groups on a variety of social media sites. Earlier today, A fellow going by the name of “John Stokes” posted a link on one of these sites to waitlistr.com, saying something along the lines of “Apply to get on the waiting list for high quality Canadian book production services”. The image attached to the post referred to Agora Publishing.
A wait list? No reputable publisher I know of has a “wait list”, especially not one offering self-publishing support. They might have a slush pile, but not a wait list. This aroused my suspicions. It sounds like that well-worn marketing technique “false scarcity”. Better get on that wait list quick, or it will be years before they get to you! Right. Let’s check that out!
I left a comment saying that authors might want to check references before spending any time and/or money on this, and “John” deleted the post. Bad move, “John”. Now I’m curious!
First, as always, I check with Victoria Strauss’ Writer Beware blog at https://writerbeware.blog/ and https://writerbeware.com. There’s nothing there, but there was a Twitter post from her indicating that there have been complaints. You’ll have to find that yourself, since I’m no longer linking to sites that support fascism, and Strauss hasn’t made it to Mastodon yet.
Next, I thought I’d look up Agora myself. What we get is a nice looking home page, but most of the links on that page just replicate the same information. There’s no evident content beyond that. Here’s what the home page looks like:
Looks okay, I guess. Save for the fact that the address is a PO box in a shopping mall and it’s an awfully thin site for 23 years of publishing. I figured I’d see where it’s hosted, so I did a quick IP address lookup and got 165.140.159.91, which appears to be a VPS at Scala Hosting. Noted.
Next, I wondered what all these sites that were “talking about Agora Publishing” actually had to say. None of the images actually link to websites, and I’d never heard of any of these publications, so that requires a little searching.
First up, the Toronto Business Journal found at tobj.ca, which we can find at (drum roll) 165.140.159.91:
There it is, in the footer: developed by agorapublishing.com. Well, that’s an independent, objective source, isn’t it? For an extra bonus check the sidebar which features some COVID-19 conspiracy theory garbage and (surprise, surprise) self-publishing services through Agora. There’s more cross-links there too if you want to really dig into the mind of this person.
On to the “Canadian Business Daily”. That site doesn’t come up, but there’s a YouTube channel of that name that links to agoracosmopolitan.com at, you guessed it, 165.140.159.91! Here we find… well it’s not a business journal, that’s for sure. All I can say is if I were an incel trolling for women to “neg”, I’d build a site that looked a lot like this one.
If you can stand to scroll down, you can find insightful business articles like “Are demonic clones now running the world?” Seriously.
Moving on, we have “Le Canadian” https://www.lecanadian.com/ (yes, also at 165.140.159.91):
This is pretty much the same whacked out content as the other sites, still featuring dating events in the past. There’s no explicit mention of Agora, but the contact page lists “National Co-Managing Editor: John Stokes”. So, another independent journalistic source there. Is this starting to smell the same for you? I bet it is!
Next up we have “The Ottawa Star”, a non-responsive site, if I managed to find the right one. And finally, the glowing, independent review that would be found at “Toronto Capitalistocracy” [wut? LOL], if the site could ever be located. I found nothing referencing this ludicrously named site.
I was going to dig into “John Stokes” a little more, but I got blocked real quick. That’s great defence of my remarks there, bro. Nothing to hide, eh?
But there are ways around being blocked. I’m not planning to dig any deeper, but here’s the source for his profile image:
He’s cropped it, of course, but it’s good to know that “John” makes a good “Man in Blue Longs Sleeves Smiling at the Camera while Sitting on an Office Chair”. (Credit to Yan Krukau, who I imagine has never met the person behind the “John Stokes” name. https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-man-in-blue-longs-sleeves-smiling-at-the-camera-while-sitting-on-an-office-chair-7792769/). Needless to say, I won’t be convinced that a “John Stokes” exists until I see some official documentation.
Now, should you be masochistic enough to find some of the books available from Agora, be prepared for lots more conspiracy theory and the like. I’ll spare you what else I’ve learned.
It is probably redundant to say this, but if you’re looking for help self-publishing, Agora is not an option I’d recommend.
Update: A friend did a reverse lookup on the phone number and found Xcheaters-Reviews.com Magazine Publishing Montreal, QC. That site is dead now, but a LinkedIn page describes it as “Xcheaters-Reviews.com is an an eclectic lifestyles oriented magazine which includes investigative analysis and sightings reports on UFO and alien sightings.”, which sounds consistent with these other sites. Meanwhile there is an (also defunct) xcheaters-bistro.com, which was located at the same mall, same “BP” (which seems to be an attempt at “box postale”, or “bag postale”, except in French it’s CP “Case Postale”). Here’s a capture from the Facebook page:
Same phone number too! None of this seems to be based on the name xcheaters.com, which looks like a sleazy “casual dating” site based in Cyprus. I can’t see anything to say that they’re related, but opening a bistro based on the name of a sleazy dating site is curious, to say the least. Especially with all the dating-related content on those “business” sites. Possibly it’s just an outdated attempt to get some search traffic and route it through an affiliate link, or maybe it’s just deranged. It’s hard to tell.
Easily one of the most irritating things about WordPress is the continuous attempts to up-sell in the dashboard. Here’s how to get rid of them.
It’s one thing to have a gentle hint, like Updraft Plus saying “hey you can get more features with the pro version” and a dismiss function that makes the reminder go away for a year. It’s more irritating to have something that pops on every login, and even more irritating to see something show up every time you are on the dashboard.
I can tolerate most of these. Sometimes they’re irritating enough that I just switch plugins, especially when they try pushing related plugins you don’t give a damn about. This is one reason why there’s no Yoast on my sites. The SEO Framework is just as capable, a lot less pedantic, and it doesn’t nag. Yet.
But what to do when there’s no alternative and the plugin is persistently nagging? Use your ad blocker to make it go away! Since it has just recently pissed me off, I’m going to use WPCode Lite, an otherwise useful plugin as the prime example. With a recent update, this plugin has elected to add a widget to the post edit page with the title “WPCode Page Scripts”. Cool! That’s a welcome minor convenience. Click on the widget though and what do you get?
Page Scripts is a Pro Feature
That’s nice, but for me it’s not worth subscribing. How do I dismiss this? Surprise, surprise, I can’t. Well, F*ck you, WPCode! I’ll do it myself. Now this takes a little knowledge of HTML and custom AdBlock Plus rules, but the general process goes like this:
Right click on the widget and choose inspect. This will highlight the general area in the code you want.
Look for the highest level element that uniquely identifies your target widget. In my case, inspect took me to a div with the id “advanced-sortables”. We don’t want that. There are a bunch of useful elements on the page that are enclosed by that. Drill down a bit and we find another div with the id “wpcode-metabox-snippets”. That’s the one!
Click on your AdBlock icon.
Click on the gear to get to settings.
Select the advanced tab from the left.
Scroll down to “Your Custom Filters”.
In the box below “My Filter List”, enter this rule, substituting your domain for mine:
ambitonline.com###wpcode-metabox-snippets
You can also leave off the domain if you have multiple sites, but in my experience more specific rules help prevent long periods of “WTF” until your realize that the ad blocker is doing something you didn’t expect.
I’m picking on WPCode here because the arrogance of this has really ticked me off, but you can apply the same method to most other notices like this. At some point, plugin developers will take defensive measures to make this even more difficult and then we’ll have a discussion about writing user scripts in TamperMonkey and it’s kin.
Recent Comments