Owner’s Share: Episode 23

Again, remember this is just to hold you over till Podiobooks comes back up …

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49 Responses to Owner’s Share: Episode 23

  1. freonwheels (joe b.) says:

    Thanks Sar.

  2. prestone! says:

    let the literary sharks begin the frenzy feeding!!! 123go!

  3. Sal says:

    Woo Hoo!!! Thank you, thank you!

  4. Sal says:

    Oh….and donation made. Hope they make it back up by Friday.

  5. Nate says:

    wow. that didn’t take long — and if they don’t, it won’t be because they didn’t move heaven and earth to try to make it.

  6. Jamming says:

    I am feeling better in the anticipation of Episode 23, I think this one will be important to me on the return to Diurnia.

  7. Ron C says:

    Podiobooks will be back Friday. Yes Sar, see if it ain’t Sar.
    Thanks a million credits Nate for posting here in the mean time.

  8. DanJ says:

    Thanks Nate!

  9. Kenn Mackintosh says:

    Another “Thank you Sar!”…. with a knuckle to the forehead. Now I can head to bed to listen before sleep. :)

  10. david says:

    Thanks for my daily Ish fix.

    Question: who did Ms. Arellone said snored on the Agamemnon? Gutshot? Is that a typo (read-o)?

  11. Mary Beckett says:

    Thanks for keeping up our feeds Nate – sent a donation to Podiobooks – hope everyone that can afford to will donate something, too! I realize that times are tough in some places, but we need to show our support for this fantastic source of great audio entertainment!

  12. My wife (Lori) and I are exceedingly happy to know that we have an episode to listen to before we sleep! :-) Our 2-year-old daughter enjoys listening too (well, sometimes she says “NO story!” but other times she says “Story please!”).

  13. P.S. Sent a small donation to Evo to aid Podiobooks in its growing pains. I can’t afford a lot right now — lots of expenses and only one salary coming in — but managed to end a little.

    I imagine Chris will be pretty busy over the next few days. Oy.

  14. Michael S. says:

    Quick question Nate. What is the difference between these episodes and the ones screened through Podiobooks.com? I don’t really notice a sound quality differential.

  15. Brainswarm says:

    Gutshot has to be a nickname for either Schubert or Hill, who she shared a compartment with. I can see a snorer being saddled with such a moniker by his bunkies, who have to live with it every night.

  16. Donald Thurin says:

    Thank U Sar, you always think of your virtual ship and crew first !!

  17. Lars says:

    Yeah would donate myself but pretty tight with monbey at the moment.Will donate when i get my salary of course.Maybe they SHOULD do as someone suggested?one server for the other books and one for Nate’s?love having my daily Ish fix :D

  18. Nate says:

    @david – Back on the Agamemnon, Mr. Hill’s nickname was “Gutshot.”

    @michael s – there’s no difference in sound quality, but these have not been vetted for proper tags. They *should* be the same files when podiobooks gets back to normal.

    About donations:
    If you can and have donated, thank you so much. If you can’t, we do understand. Even a few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have been able to myself. That’s one reason we do this the way we do.

    Keep in mind there are other ways to “donate” than with cash. Ratings and reviews for specific works on iTunes or Podiobooks help individual authors a great deal. It’s particularly important on iTunes where downloads and ratings mean positioning of the Podiobooks products on the pages where they compete with the big budget productions from commercial studios.

    So, thanks, Crew. Your time, your money, and your support really does add up to something significant.

  19. Roz says:

    Many thanks Nate! I’ve also been able to make a Podiodonation. I actually prefer to pay separately for authors and hosting – rather than the 75-25 split that is administered by PB.com. I hope they’re soon back up & running!

  20. Nate says:

    @stephen – thanks for that. if every one of my listeners sent just $1, that would cover the cost of the new servers for about three years. Not just the *extra* cost of the upgrade but the whole cost of their server. That says a lot about how many of you are in the crew.

    And Evo is shocked and delighted with the level of support. When we started getting a handle on the meltdown and he realized how much money it would take to get it up to where it should be, I know he was a bit concerned. I’m not sure where we are at the moment, but thanks to your generosity, we’ll be back up and running. I expect the “please donate” message will be a bit more prominent than it has been in the past. We’ll see how that all shakes out when the new box comes up.

    Thanks again to one and all.

  21. Nate says:

    Thanks, Roz. Every contribution helps the cause.

    Ok, I need to stop reading comments and get back to 24. Y’all are gonna be jonesing again in half an hour.

    :D

  22. Zeus says:

    I’m confounded as to why they don’t just use a third-party provider. Does anyone build and use their own server anymore? Unless they’re doing something unusual, wouldn’t a “AAA” host be more reliable and affordable? I have unlimited bandwidth and space on mine and it’s relatively cheap, reliable, and I can host multiple sites and files. Regardlesss of that little mystery, I donated some buckage.

  23. Jamming says:

    Have I said thanks lately? “Thanks” There, that’s your limit until Episode 24.
    Are you still reading this? Go! Back to work. ;)

  24. Nate says:

    @zeus – that’s something you’d need to take up with evo. my sense is that it’s some kind of hosting service because the new server provisioning had to be scheduled. I know I’m running on Bluehost but having seen the kind of load that 4k hits a day is doing here, I’m not sure it would be enough for them.

  25. Lars says:

    yes go back to episode 24 heheheh (and maybe 25 as well? lol just kidding).If i am considered as part of the crew i do feel honored as well.I feel like i know Ish as a real person (even if i know he is not) weir?Happy sailing

  26. Franklyn says:

    Sounds like Ish needs some customer service training. If the cargo routinely covers the expense for the ship and the average trip + stay = two and a half weeks, 3 passengers a trip at 15K cred means just under 1 million creds per stanyer profit.

    Going to take a while to buy back those shares even with a full complement of passengers.

  27. BookerJ says:

    Thank you again Nate. This episode is a testament to your skill as a writer…you made me loose sleep again. :) lol I was just rolling around trying not to think about how much Ish has frustrated me this book. Its like he is a completely different person. I do think that it is more of a “You can’t see the forest for the trees” thing while the story progresses. Ish has not had an issue with dressing down a crew member in the past. He stomped on Ms. Thomas well enough to get her straight in the last book. He also, not too long ago, saved a ship from complete scrubber failure and death…and yet he feels the need to tip toe around the chief? Then he blows up at a paying customer rather then those who need it? I’ve started to think this is more of a sci fi horror book with body snatchers lol.
    Thank you!

  28. Rasmus says:

    Thank you ^^
    I have heard all uer storys(Well the ones there are on podiobooks anyway) and i love them they are not like the normal stuff i read / listen to keep up the good work and again thank you =)

  29. Michael says:

    Thank You, i feel like a Fiend. I can get enough

  30. Wade says:

    I was running some numbers wondering how the shares worked out based on the 45k proffit from this run. And by my calculations the chief makes more than the Ish. Which is just wrong. I will include my maths for you to help show me where I went wrong.

    45,000 Total
    13,500 Ishmals Share as captain and owner (30%)

    31,500 Remaining
    Remaing Crew is 1 Double share, 1 Full share 1 half share and 1 quater share (3.75 shares)
    16,800 The Chief
    8,400 Ms Arioni
    4,200 Mr Hering
    2,100 Ms Malony

    If I was Ish I would start charging more for the company before declaring a profit.

  31. david says:

    @Nate: Re: Gutshot. Nice. I see what you did there.

  32. Nate says:

    @BookerJ – he *does* seem off, doesn’t he? hm. wonder why…

    @Wade – you missed the double share for the Captain who is also an officer. See the General Progress thread for 2 or 3 explanations of how it works.

    Some general comments about shares and profits. Shares come from what’s left after the direct costs of the run are deducted. Soft allocations like depreciation are not included. The company’s 20% is a share of what’s left. As ROI, it’s not really a lot on ships with marginal performance.

  33. Wade says:

    Thanks Nate I knew I was missing something. I could do with a full share berth on the ship myself.

  34. ajdowns says:

    @Wade, The bit you are forgetting there is that Ish actually gets the 20% Owner’s Share, the 10% Captain’s Share and a double share as an officer, so there are actually 5.75 shares of the profit.

  35. ajdowns says:

    I should really finish reading the comments before I make responses… sorry @Wade

  36. Jason says:

    Oh… come on, he needs to get rid of gramps, bump into Ms Gerhert and hire her on instead. Also, why didn’t he send a message off to the investment manager dude asking about any updates?

    I’m not very patient it seems.

    The story is progressing nicely and I’m curious how he’s going to wrangle up the necessary funds.

  37. BookerJ says:

    @Jason – huh? why bump into Ms Gerhart and hire her? A lot of people want Ish to still get together with her for some reason. She is playing stupid games if she really did want something more. Although, Nate really does hammer it into all of us that Gerthart, and most of the women in this book, love to play their female games. *secret* It is because they love to say “men!” and feel offended or belittle the men(“their fault”) :) I know i just got into trouble with a lot of those types…but that’s from plenty of observation! mwahaha

  38. Osman says:

    @Jason – I thought Ish did try to contact the investment manager, but was notified that he was out of system and would be away for some time yet. Not sure how easy it is to get a message out to someone and back since the only things crossing the great distances are the clippers and the people on them.

    Makes me kind of wonder how interstellar electronic messages are handled. Are all ships expected to relay network messages from their departing system to where ever they are going?

  39. BookerJ says:

    @Osman – what I remember is that Ish didn’t try to contact until he was in port. He hasn’t bothered to send a message this entire time? Only Nate knows :) I don’t even remember Ish asking Mr. Simpson to try to find someone at all, nor even a hint. Ish just signed the note and was going to try to solve it himself because Simpson didn’t have time to solve it. He said if he had a few days or a week it wouldn’t be a problem…why wouldn’t it have been solved already if that was the plan? /shrug. Something this important…I think Simpson would have left a note for Ish at the very least if this was the case.

  40. Memline says:

    OK, Gramps is working for DST which means he is paid by DST. Uh huh. That is a conflict of interest right there. If they say slow things down, whose orders do you think he will follow? He is a liability. I am afraid he will do many things to foul up the passengers and ship on this next trip unless we can get rid of him. This is not good, really. Nate, what are you up to here?

  41. Nate says:

    Moi? *innocent look* Up to?

    (evil snicker)

    What ever could *I* be up to?

  42. Joey Voss says:

    Keep practicing, Sar…

  43. Todd Baker says:

    funny I now check your site more then facebook, you rock!!!!!!!!!

  44. James A Brown says:

    Hey man. Love the pods. As an aside, why not put up the audio files as torrents? You’d have no bandwidth costs after the first few downloads.

  45. Lars E says:

    tsssk Nate.We all know your as soft as a kitten :P
    I agre about the chief though…HOWEVER i rather hope he get’s involved with Malone instead of Gerhart.Then she can see she messed up big time and ish only get richer lol.Also the newsies could spread what rumors they want and it would be TRUE.Well all we can do is to wait *sigh*.Guess i have to start listening to full share again :D

  46. Yan says:

    Yeah! Thanks Sar. It is such a pleasure to listen to your stories. Podiodonation on it’s way… As for the plot, although you get an idea that something seems wrong, it is never clear until needed, which keep you on your toes. Really great stuff…

  47. Nate says:

    re: torrents – they don’t really feel all that useful for this application. the lifespan of “big bandwidth” requirements is about three weeks. (and btw, it’s not *my* bandwidth. Podiobooks serves media out of Libsyn) After that there’s problems with seeds when there just aren’t enough people using bit-torrent to give you a good field to draw from.

    Right now, there’s the added problem of time. I just don’t wanna take the time to fart around with it and if somebody ELSE does it then I lose visibility on the data that I need to successfully represent the works to people who might wanna talk to me about money. What I need to focus on right now is reading the next epi, getting it edited, and submitted to my QC team so you can hear it.

  48. guestford_junkie says:

    Have I said Thank you yet? I’m enjoying this very much!

  49. Howard says:

    @BookerJ – Based on Greta’s talk she recognizes that Ish needs to deal with some things before he will be ready for a serious relationship, even if he does not. Based on comments from just about EVERYONE knows Greta wants Ish but Ish actually believes what Greta said to him.

    At least she seems willing to wait….

    I thought it odd that Ish had not contacted William Simpson, although I could have missed it when I listened at 0:dark-30 :). If I was in his place that message would have gone out before even looking for cargo. (Oh, and when is FINALLY going to write the routine to fill the ^##()@ cargo hold once the first shipment is selected?)

    Could Ish finally be heading for a meltdown…

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