There are 10 types of people in this world: Those that know binary, and those that don’t.

***

Mystery, suspense, sci-fi, conspiracies, and a multitude of thrills await you with the “Mary Jo Melendez Mystery Series.”  Mary Jo, an ex-USN Master-at-Arms trying to get her new civilian life established, is framed in Muddlin’ Through.  Her search to prove her innocence takes her around the world from one skirmish to another, a gypsy romance, winning new friends, and a new self-understanding.  In the sequel, Silicon Slummin’…and Just Gettin’ By, the bad guys are back, she acquires a stalker/serial killer, and she finds a new love.  Available in Kindle formatted ebooks only.

In libris libertas…

This is an interesting question for readers.  Their only vote in the matter is with their purchases.  So, let’s analyze that first.  Readers rule.  They tend to reward the known more than the unknown, though.  When readers (and I’m one, so this applies to me) get comfortable with an author, they’ll pay a higher price, but only up to a certain point.  When we’re trying out a new author, we want to be rewarded for trying someone new.

That’s human nature and probably explains why authors and publishers make special offers.  In the case of some indies, in fact, giveaways.  If an author has a series s/he wants to get readers hooked on, s/he sells it at a very low price or gives it away.  The idea is that when I read the first book in a series and like it, I’m supposed to extrapolate and assume all the other books in the series are good too?  That’s a big assumption especially if preceded by the assumption that any book in the series should be readable independently from the others (a correct assumption).  Moreover, we might see the Hollywood sequel phenomenon: sequels, whether books or movies, can become “more of the same”–formulaic is the word used for books.

Readers have come to expect freebies and greatly reduced prices, especially from indie writers.  It’s probably non-productive whining to say that we’re killing the goose that laid the golden egg.  I’m not helping you at all when I download your free book or sale-priced book.  It doesn’t improve your name recognition in my case—I read so many books that I often download one and start it only to realize I’ve already read it (don’t ask me why this gets by Amazon).  At best, during the download I’m thinking the author is stupid in giving away her or his hard work.

It’s also non-productive whining to say that readers are spoiled by the giveaways and reduced prices.  They’ve come to expect them and don’t seem to put any value on an author’s hard work.  But let’s be realistic: Let’s assume that the typical ebook can sell N copies (N is pretty low if you believe Amazon).  Maybe Amazon doesn’t count freebies in totaling up N, but I do—we’re actually talking about numbers of readers.  If the author gets N free downloads, that might be all s/he is getting, especially if s/he normally sells the ebook for $4.99 and returns to that price.

I’ll propose a different tactic.  It hasn’t worked for me, but it’s different (FYI: the above tactic hasn’t worked either).  I value my work.  I’d rather put ALL my ebooks at a fair price (it’s often the “sales price” of other authors) and let the chips fall where they may.  I’m pretty sure that the person who downloads it has put some thought into her or his purchase.  My idea is that smart buyers are also smart readers.  They want to stimulate their intelligence, not numb it.  Yes, they want to be entertained, but not in a trivial way by reading fluff.  I don’t write fluff.  Never have, ever since my first novel written during the summer I turned thirteen (OK, it was a bit raunchy, but it wasn’t fluff).

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[Short, pithy, and biting humor is often better than a rant.  I’ll take a swipe at it here.  Maybe some enterprising cartoonists in the audience can work these into editorial cartoons?  Let me see them if you do.  Wish I were good at that.]

In ISIS HQ, Youssef says to Adil, “I just got a great deal on a Galaxy mobile phone—two for the price of one, unlimited data.  I gave the freebie to Abdul.”  “You fool!” says Youssef.  “That doesn’t have Apple’s great encryption.  You have to support Apple because they support us!”

On campus, Gretchen says to Hilda, “Are you going to the march against GMOs?  Everyone’s going to be there!”  “No, I’m heading to Recife with Ben to protest there instead.  They’re genetically modifying male mosquitoes to battle against Zika, and we have to stop that!”

Rupert Murdoch, exhausted from thinking about his future wedding night obligations with Jerry Hall and already considering who his next wife will be, is sitting in the armchair next to the nuptial bed as she beckons him to join her by crooking her pinkie.  “What’s more alluring than me?” she asks.  He holds up a book.  “Der Wanderer,” he says.  “It’s this wonderful play written by Goebbels.”

The S&M aficionado asks his victim, “Do you know why this editorial cartoon isn’t in color?”  When she shakes her head in pain, he says, “Because it’s fifty…”  (You can finish that one–did you think I was talking about Gawker?)

Evo Morales dreamed that Hugo Chavez and he met Josef Stalin in the Devil’s Bar.  “Bros,” says Papa Joe, “you just never could learn that democracy is a dictator’s worst enemy.”  Evo looks at Hugo.  “Democracy?  Is that some strange Russian word?  I’ll have to ask Vladimir Putin.”

To the hobbyist, who flew a drone into the path of a landing plane, the judge asks, “Did you ever think about what a drone could do to a jet engine?”  The response?  “I wanted to say hi to my fiancé who’s back from Europe.  I was going to use a laser but didn’t want to blind the pilot.”

The cop in the interrogation room asks one of the thugs who participated in a recent gun heist by a ten-man gang, “What were you thinking?  Chances were good we’d catch you.”  The thug responds, “We’re NRA members and believe in Second Amendment rights.  Every American deserves to be armed.  And why should gun manufacturers make all the money?”
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Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24 in the church. So ends a friendship that began in their school days.  (Seen in a church bulletin.)

***

Coming soon! Rogue Planet.  Hidden away from near-Earth planets in remote spiral arms of the Galaxy are Human worlds that have lost contact with more progressive worlds and reverted to strange and primitive customs and traditions, their leaders using religion, superstition, and imported technologies to rule in tyranny.  Survey ships explored and catalogued these planets as suitable for future colonization centuries earlier, but groups with a special interest in ensuring a homogeneous and often despotic society didn’t bother applying for permission to colonize.

Following the ITUIP (Interstellar Trade Union of Independent Planets) Protocol, ships are restricted to observe and maintain a hands-off policy for these rogue planets, even when there is great temptation to intervene.  Eden, where a theocracy rules with an iron fist, is such a planet.  A group of rebels struggles to end the oppressive regime to forge a new future.

Set in the same universe as the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” and the Dr. Carlos stories, this saga, mixing the best of hard sci-fi and swashbuckling fantasy, once again explores the never-ending battle between good and evil so prominent in the my works.  It’s another surprising and entertaining addition to his already extensive collection of sci-fi, mystery, and thriller tales.

In libris libertas….

See your blurb here. Have you released a new book?  Are you promoting an old one?  I’ll allow up to three (3) blurbs per newsletter, one per author, so drop me a line at steve@stevenmmoore.com and include the text of your blurb in the email message.  First come, first serve—in other words, FIFO—and I’ll accumulate and flush the queue every month.  It’s advertising, increasing your name recognition, reader outreach—whatever you want to call it in marketing lingo—and it’s free!  Why am I doing this?  First, I can’t seem to sell books, but maybe I can help you sell yours.  Second, readers of this blog and I might see a book we’d like to read too, one we wouldn’t otherwise notice (of course, that’s the idea!).

Authors: This is worth your while because there are many real visitors to this blog (see below), and it’s free.  Make your blurbs no longer than the paragraph above.  They must be in English (but aren’t limited to U.S. writers), fiction books only, and I won’t promote romance or erotica books.  Please limit the blurb to one book, but you can mention if it’s in a series (# whatever after the title).  Include the link to the ebook (be assured I’ll check it).  I won’t include your email—this can’t be a query for reviews.  Your ebook’s retail price has to be less than $5, it doesn’t have to be on Amazon, you don’t have to have four- or five-star reviews yet, and you don’t have to include any special offers.

Readers: My endorsement of the author’s book is neither intended nor implied.  (I probably haven’t even read it!)  And don’t assume that the author sympathizes with or endorses opinions expressed in this newsletter or blog either.  If you like what you read in the blurb, use the link to the book’s page, wherever it might lead, in order to find more information.  Because this newsletter is archived, links might disappear with time—that’s a feature of the internet.  In that case, don’t blame me.  You can just search for the book if you read a blurb from 2016 in 2018 and the link doesn’t work.

Too big to fail?  Hachette Livre will buy Perseus.  Mergers in the publishing business have consequences similar to those of airline mergers—higher prices for consumers (the readers), less product quality of service (the books), and exploitation of workers (the authors).  Whatever happened to anti-monopoly laws in the U.S.?  French Hachette by accretion is putting other publishers out of business, especially small imprints and presses.  Of course, that’s what they want!  But we don’t have to give in to them.  I check the publisher of a book now.  If it’s on my blacklist (Hachette and its subsidiaries are), I won’t buy the book.  You shouldn’t either!  Same for authors who want to eliminate any competition (there are many now).

Apple v. DoJ.  They lost!  The arrogant multinational of Jobs and Cook will now pay $400 million to ebook lovers (no, I don’t know how that will work); they will also pay $50 million in legal costs to the 30 states who joined with DoJ and sued the Big Five and Apple.  Jobs’s “agency model” was reviled by sane people everywhere.  The Big 5 traditional publishers (Hachette is one) settled with DoJ long ago; Apple persisted.  SCOTUS declined to hear Apple’s appeal.  Finito.  Apple pays.  Not surprisingly, both the NY Times and Wall Street Journal lamented the decision–they’re always biased toward traditional publishers (News  Corps Harper Collins owns the WSJ).

Of course, Amazon eventually caved to the Big Five (they were selling reasonably priced trad-pubbed ebooks, by the way, and paying the publishers royalties corresponding to their inflated prices–this was really an Apple attack on Amazon); Amazon adopted their “agency model” anyway, the consequence being diminished ebook sales for them because readers won’t pay ebook prices at or more than paper version prices (since then, and like many other readers, I’ve only read trad-pubbed ebooks when they’re on sale–damned if I’ll pay more than $5 for any ebook!).  But the end of this egregious lawsuit is something to celebrate.  Now, if DoJ could just win the encryption cases, we could doubly smack Apple around–they deserve it.

They’re even on the front page of WSJ!  Speking of WSJ, last week Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal had an article about books on its front page.  That in itself is so unusual I went outside to see if the Earth was still spinning (hard to do that in the morning, of course, especially without my coffee hit).  While the WSJ is certainly part of traditional publishing—at least they’re up front and obvious about their biased news coverage compared to the NY Times—they usually relegate anything about publishing to the interior pages.  What was all the hubbub about?  Cat mysteries!

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[Do you like series?  Series can be problematic for an author.  On one hand, your characters can demand another chance to live again amidst your prose, and you can get another chance to develop them further.  On the other, you run the risk of becoming formulaic and neglectful of those other stories your muses are pressuring you to tell.  Whether for those, or for some other reasons, few people review an entire series.  I have four myself, and it’s hell to advertise them and get reviews for them.  In the spirit of trying to turn that situation around, today I review two crime series that have captured my R&R reading attention.]

Z series. John Stockmyer, author (Stockmyer Books).  Z is for Bob Zapolska, an unlicensed PI with some interesting high school buddies (one cop, one mobster)—they played on a championship football team together.  He also has a steady and sexy girlfriend who looks like a model but is an insurance company’s slave, and an on-again-off-again mistress who’s a sexy ghostbuster.  That’s basically the series cast—the villains come and go.  You’d think that Z’s encounters with them would be minimal—Z is for almost zero on the PI pecking order—but the bad guys seem to find him as his mundane cases turn into major ones.

Z is the quintessential anti-hero, an ugly bruiser who stumbles through life doing the best he can.  The stumbles, including tightrope walking between legal and illegal and balancing girlfriend and mistress, add some comedy.  The books in the series are uneven and formulaic at times, though.  Some new ones have appeared that are on my TBRoR list (“To Be Read or Reviewed”).  Jump in anywhere.  In each ebook there are references to Z’s previous cases, but the books can be read independently in any order, the mark of a good series writer.  I’m hooked.  (Yes, John, is also the author of the “Under the Stairs” fantasy/sci-fi series, which is even better.)

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[Not all my stories have their origin in what-ifs.  I began this little novella even before my first novel that I wrote the summer I turned thirteen.  I won’t say how many years it took me to finish it, but it has a certain teenage innocence about it still.  Enjoy!]

Escape from Earth

Copyright 2016, Steven M. Moore

Part Four: The Escape

[My apologies…the chapters got out of phase…]

Chapter Eleven (cont)…

“We have examined our spacecraft in orbit,” said Saki’s older colleague.  “Your space debris did major damage.  We’ll have to make some quick repairs with material and components we can find here.  Our escape pods need repair too.  We’ve been working as fast as we can.”

Lucas studied the man.  ET?  Android?  How to tell?  His bare feet, blue jeans, and sweatshirt made him look like an old hippy.  Sitting in a lotus position while Lucas sat in an old rocking chair helped the metaphor.  Saki came out of the kitchen and handed each man a beer, keeping one for herself.

“I shouldn’t keep you from your work then,” said Lucas.

“You can help us in two ways, so I need to explain that.”  Joli held his hands as if he were praying.  The pause seemed long—calling it “pregnant” always seemed a bit sexist to Lucas.  The survivors’ leader finally rested his palms on his thighs.  “Two lists.  First, materials.  We will create a wish list of items we need, mostly chemicals in bulk.  We have no idea where to get them, but you might.  And we have cell phones and something called Yellow Pages.”

“Old,” said Saki.  “Not make Yellow Pages now.”

“I know.  But it’s a start.  I’m assuming chemical factories don’t close that often.”

“You’d be surprised,” said Lucas.  “If they’re bought out by someone else, or go under because of Chinese competition, it’s here today, gone tomorrow.  I don’t know the area.  The phones are our best bet for determining where to find what you need, but the reception might not be too good here.  I’m game to go and obtain what you need, though.”

“The regular reception is good enough,” said Joli, “but there’s no wi-fi, and we have limited data plans for these phones.  We’ll have to work around those limitations, maybe use hot spots in the city.  The second problem is obtaining printed circuit boards and other electronic parts.  We think we can design work-arounds to fried electronics, but it’s a daunting task, especially in adapting our software to the work-arounds.  I can’t begin to calculate how much time we’ll need for that.”

“You don’t have much.  The FBI isn’t far behind us, according to my sister.  Do you have any parts catalogs?”

“I think we need to steal those.  Saki says you dabble in this stuff?”

“Saki might overestimate my skills.”  He waved his fingers.  “But I’ve built some complicated stuff and done a few work-arounds in my life when the available parts weren’t exactly what I needed, even after becoming a doctor.  All I can do is try.  Who’s your electronics specialist?”

“Modi has some theoretical knowledge, enough to make some clever design changes, but he doesn’t know about practical issues.  The two of you should work together.”

“We’ll develop two lists then.”  Lucas looked at Saki.  “Let’s suppose we can fix the pods so they can carry you back into orbit.  How are you going to fix your ship?”

“You go too,” said Saki.  “Fix there.”  She smiled.  “I need my feral human.”

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Don’t go on automatic when listening to a fanatic.  The bet’s on the horse with thoughtful discourse.

As an ex-scientist, it’s always amusing for me to see other authors and book marketing gurus push various marketing techniques on the basis of anecdotal evidence.  The only source I’ve ever found who comes near to using real stats is Mark Coker of Smashwords.  Mind you, I’m not plugging Smashwords here—there are alternatives nowadays, maybe even better ones.  Smashwords offers no advertising options, for example, paid or free, leaving that for the online retailers it distributes to.  Maybe that’s why Coker once said, “Your best marketing is a book that sparks enthusiastic word of mouth….”  Of course, in “word of mouth” he’s probably including the internet, because there’s absolutely no way that an author can reach out to the entire country and the world otherwise.

It’s clear that many of the so-called gurus want you to pay them to do that, so they offer you online services and advertise themselves as the anointed who hold the keys to the kingdom of book success.  Many of these offers are limited to ebooks, charge according to genre, and require N 4- or 5-star Amazon reviews (as if a 4- or 5-star review means your ebook is any good these days).  None of them offer their services pro bono; in other words, they don’t back up their claims with willingness to share royalties over a certain period of time.  They all want their money up front.

Ignoring their hype and anecdotal testimonials, these websites follow Sturgeon’s Law pretty well.  There are no stats to prove that marketing method X really works.  For every successful author (there are only a few, by Amazon’s own admission—their stats, of course) who claims to have achieved her/his success via X, there’s a more successful author who was frankly surprised at her/his success because they did nothing special.  Consider Mr. Weir, author of The Martian, a one-book wunderkind like Harper Lee (I’m not counting her rejected MS), at least so far.  He offered a free PDF-download of the book.  Coker’s “enthusiastic word of mouth” took over.  If we call that a marketing technique, it certainly didn’t generate the enthusiasm—the readers did, not the technique per se.  In the same way, readers can kill a book, no matter how much money an author pours into PR and marketing—and certainly if s/he just offers a free PDF at her/his website.

The Martian and many other books prove Coker’s point, but no one, absolutely no one, knows how to backtrack from the readers’ exuberant enthusiasm and determine the cause of the effect.  Coker talks backtracks a little to talk about “a book that sparks.”  Writing such a book is the first necessary condition, whatever “sparks” might mean—why The Martian did so is too much like winning the lottery, though.  Moreover, any marketing guru who claims to know what causes the post-writing sparks is full of you-know-what (same for agents, of course).  You shouldn’t pay good money for you-know-what, especially when there is so much you can do DIY—in other words, spend your time, not your hard-earned money.  Note that this applies equally well to traditionally published authors.  Traditional publishers nowadays spend all their marketing dollars on the old stallions in their stables even though they’re ready for the glue factory.  Most traditionally published authors are relegated to life as a midlist author who receives no benefit from the huge royalties the traditional publishers steal from authors beyond a book cover (maybe a positive benefit) and an egregious contract (a negative benefit).
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People are addicted to their smart phones, so much so that they walk into fountains, kill pedestrians and other drivers, and expose themselves to scam artists, muggers, and perverts.  Beyond that, or bloviating about trivial matters, or being a narcissistic showoff on social media, what can a smart phone do for you?  Depends on who you are, of course.  I’ll turn the question around and discuss what your smart phone CANNOT do.

ID a song.  I heard an oldie the other day.  I could hum the melody.  Loved the piano riffs.  But if I hadn’t been able to remember the name of the performer, I could have never answered the question: Who’s that performer and what became of him?  (It was Richard Marx, by the way.  He’s going on tour and has a new album.)  Song recognition isn’t covered by voice recognition.

Make par in golf, or catch a fish.  It might know what those things are, but it can’t do them.  And it can’t help you do them either.  Smart phones are just limited little computers, apps are just limited little programs, and neither of them are really smart.

Write a novel.  Beyond mentioning the obvious that your smart phone can’t create any of the elements necessary to spin a good yarn, try writing a novel with your thumbs!  Voice recognition technology, you say?  Try it.  You’ll be spending so much time editing that you’ll scream for your laptop.  Or join Jack in the Cuckoo’s Nest.  But maybe all those badly edited ebooks are written this way?

Help you find God or inner peace.  It might hook you up with the latest online quack who calls her- or himself a preacher, but God doesn’t answer a smart phone call and the internet offers no inner peace, just a bunch of random stuff that obeys Sturgeon’s Law, not God’s.  You can obtain more peace by putting your phone on a tile floor and stomping it into pieces.

Make popcorn.  Tres important, mes amis!

Offer a substitute for a loved one’s hug or kiss.  You might find a dating site or attract a pervert on Facebook (is that what the new “love” emoticon on FB is for?), but your smart phone is not much of a companion, in spite of your obsession with it.  Moreover, anyone who kisses her or his iPhone or Galaxy screen is just asking for a major bout with the flu, unless s/he puts hand sanitizer on that screen often enough.  That would have the advantage of making it slippery so thieves couldn’t grab it as easily…or make it drop to that tile floor and shatter into pieces!
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