Item: Hachette v. Amazon fallout?  Not much seen, actually.  I bought a copy of Michael Connelly’s The Burning Room, though.  This ebook cost me $3.99, I think, but it’s now listed at $4.99.  In either case, that’s in the “sweet spot” between $2.99 and $4.99, the latter price not bad for a new book of this length.  So…maybe the fallout will be subtle, with Hachette and other Big Five publishers realizing that they must sell ebooks at reasonable prices in order to compete—no one wants to pay almost the hardbound price for an ebook these days.  And, to benefit from Amazon’s domination of the ebook market, the Big Five have to change their business models in order to survive too.  Changes in author royalites also coming?

Item: Deaver’s experiments continue.  Prolific author Jeffery Deaver, like James Patterson, has more money than God, so he can afford to experiment with us mere mortals.  First, he writes a garbage-dominated rendering of a 007 adventure (literally and figuratively).  His next experiment was writing a book in reverse; I stopped after the first two (last two?) chapters, disgusted with the whole idea.  Now he’s come out with The Starling Project, a book that’s not a book, at least traditionally speaking, because it’s only available as an audio book (most audibles have a book version).  With voices from Alfred Molina and friends (and maybe sound effects?), is this the future?  If so, indies will be priced out of the competition.

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Item: A kinder, gentler Hachette?  BS.  Last Monday, Nov. 10, the NY Times published a front-page article about how homey Hachette is now with its CEO in a cubicle just like the other worker bees.  First, it wasn’t Hachette, but a subsidiary, although the Times insisted on using Hachette; and second, why is the Times doing this?  If you take the totality of Times articles about the Amazon v. Hachette war-of-words (more words from Hachette and its sycophants than from Amazon), it’s clear that the Times is biased and has a Paul Bunyan-size axe to grind.  This article is the most egregious, though.  I put it in the same category as the Monsanto commercial where the most notorious chemical company in the U.S. tries to present itself as looking out for food safety in American households (?), or BP’s Alaskan commercial about how they’re providing new energy solutions for America (the Gulf spill?).  Does the Times think anyone buys this outrageous double-speak they call “reporting”?

Item: Grammar experts.  I’ve had exchanges with a few.  Most are very helpful and much more accessible than any HS English teacher I’ve had (generally only slightly better than HS math teachers in knowing what they’re talking about).  Most of these experts recognize the difference between fiction and non-fiction and their grammar requirements (one can argue that the latter should pay closer attention to “the rules”).  I have two grammar rules: (1) Never believe what MS Word tells me (I’ve had Bill Gates correct me, wanting to replace it’s with its, or vice versa, for example, and be completely wrong); and (2) in my fiction, natural speech, especially in dialogue, trumps the grammar rules every time (if not ending a sentence with a preposition becomes too stilted, don’t fix it—of course, this isn’t even a rule).

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Item: Attacking Amazon.  OK, I said I wouldn’t weigh in on the Amazon v. Hachette kerfuffle anymore, but I must say here that the one-sidedness continues.  Paul Krugman, NY Times columnist and ex-economist, wrote in his column last Monday, “Amazon has too much power and uses that power to hurt America.”  Holy Jumpin’ Jokers, Batman, they must be worse than ISIS!  Do we need boots-on-the-ground, Paul, to invade the Amazon warehouses that are hurting America?  Is Bezos going to terrorize Patterson and the other 899 one-percent authors throwing their financial weight around and wringing their hands about the evil man?

Should we ask the Secret Service, as bad as it is, to start guarding these irreplaceable, fearful, and unhappy “best selling” authors, faithful disciples of the Big Five, or have SWAT teams move in on all the thousands of indie authors who follow the teachings of Iman Bezos?  Or, Paul, are you just suffering early dementia but aren’t willing to admit it?  If not, you should stick to your usual modus operandi of bloviating about economics and politics and such, i.e. things where you can better pretend that you have something intelligent to offer to your readers.

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Item: Let’s bury the Hachette.  Yeah, I know, Hachette is French and probably not pronounced like hatchet, but I couldn’t resist.  What I’m arguing for is to forget about the Amazon v. Hachette saber rattling.  These behemoths can rattle their corporate steel as much as they want, and the NY Times can write as many biased articles about the controversy as they want.  I’m tired of it.  Moreover, everything’s been said already; I’m not seeing any new thoughts (in spite of Lee Child).  Trad-pubbing v. indie pubbing is the more general issue, but all these controversies are starting to remind me of the Betamax v. VHS controversy.  Market forces (that’s most readers, by the way, and they protect themselves nicely by deciding what to buy) will determine the outcome.  Meanwhile, I’d rather work on my books.  (FYI from 10/17: The NY Times continues its one-sided presentation of this kerfuffle today in spite of the Times’ ombudswoman’s determination that their coverage is one-sided.  Oh well….)

Item: Some common misconceptions.  In my next-to-last sentence, I used the word “books.”  I’m using it as a generic term, like “novels” or “anthologies.”  Of course, all my books are in ebook format.  One common misconception among the reading public is that an ebook isn’t a book if it doesn’t have a pbook version (hard cover, trade paperback, or paperback).  One of the great things about today’s publishing environment is that readers have access to books in many ways—serialized online, ebooks, hard bound, trade paperbacks, paperbacks, audio books—who knows if new ways will appear.  My books, though, are defined by the words I put together to entertain my readers.  How I release them to the waiting public doesn’t morph them into non-books!

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Item: Hachette-bias at the Times.  It continues.  David Streitfeld, a Times reporter, brought out the barbs again in his article, “A Writerly Chill at Bezos’ Fire” (Sunday, Sept. 21).  Let’s ignore the fact that “writerly” isn’t even a word (being able to write isn’t a skill most Times reporters have, so I won’t embarrass Mr. Streitfeld by harping on this).  To summarize: every fall, Mr. Bezos invites well-known novelists to his Campfire, a literary weekend in Santa Fe, NM.

To quote Mr. Streitfeld in all his eloquence, “Writers loved it.  There was no hard sell of Amazon, or soft sell.”  Yet this year some writers won’t attend.  You guessed it: all the thoroughbred horses in the Hachette stable, along with any other one-percenter authors following Doug Preston and James Patterson’s rallying calls for attacks on Amazon, these are the people who aren’t going.  Hugh Howey, sci-fi writer and champion of indie publishing, doesn’t want to go either because readers and writers are caught in the middle of this mess.  PeePee (Patterson and Preston) won’t be invited, to be sure—would Churchill have invited Hitler over for a little campfire shindig?

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Item: Looking for MJM?  You’ve seen her diary entries.  Now you’ll know Mary Jo’s entire story.  Muddlin’ Through has just been released and is available on Amazon.  (See below for more info.)

Item: Book bundles.  Some authors are releasing ebooks chapter by chapter.  Others are bundling several previous novels together in one ebook.  What’s going on?  What works?  Do readers want this?  I read an ebook recently that I thought was a full novel, but it turned out to be a novella.  Dumb me!  A reviewer warned about this, but I didn’t look at the reviews before I bought the book.  I rarely do.  I prefer to buy ebooks for my casual reading based on the blurb and the excerpt—that useful “peek inside” on Amazon.  I don’t care much what reviewers think, especially in those many reviews of only a few lines or so (see below for more on reviews); these are often written by family and friends.  Too many reviews are like endorsements on LinkedIn, i.e., mostly worthless.  (You might pay attention to only the number of reviews.  If so, I’ll warn you: that’s worthless too, for many of the same reasons.)

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Item: Some stats from the “Author Earnings Report.”  I’m quoting these secondhand from Poynter’s Newsletter because they’re interesting.  The AER considers 7000 top selling digital titles (pseudonym for ebook, methinks) on Amazon’s bestseller lists.  As of 8/5/2014, the infamous Big Five captures only 16% of the ebook market while indie authors capture 31%–I guess the remaining 53% goes to small imprints not owned by the Big Five conglomerates.  Moreover, indie authors take home 40% of the Kindle store’s royalties.  It’s estimated that ebook sales will surpass pbook (hardbound, trade paperback, etc) sales in 2017 if present trends continue.  In my R&R casual reading binge just completed, I read five ebooks for the price of one Big Five ebook, and every one of them was a fun, relaxing, and entertaining read.  I read mostly ebooks now, except for reviewing, and refuse to pay the Big Five’s exorbitant prices for new ebooks or pbooks.  If you’re looking for new and interesting authors, your best bet is indie or books from small imprints.

Item: Other curiosities from the AER.  DRM seems to harm ebook sales at any price point.  Assuming that’s true, I wish someone would end my confusion.  If I release an ebook via Amazon or Smashwords, does it have DRM?  I hope not.  My most recent ebook, Aristocrats and Assassins, is listed as having simultaneous device usage and lending enabled.  I think I understand the latter, but does that and the former automatically preclude DRM?  I’m one who says I really don’t care if you trade my ebooks around or obtain illegal copies.  That’s on your conscience.  If you do it, I hope you enjoy the book and tell your friends and relatives about it.  I’ll chalk it up to PR and marketing in that case.

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#385: Hanging up Steve’s shorts. I hope you’ve enjoyed the free short stories found in the series “What Happened to Those Characters?”  I’d been planning this for a while, but believe me when I say it’s not easy to come up with a new story every week.  I’d venture to say it’s more difficult than NaNoWriMo, but I’ve never done that—of course, people who have probably haven’t written that many short stories in that amount of time either.  I’m crazy and they’re crazy, but sometimes you have to challenge yourself.

If you missed any of the stories, they’re archived in “Steve’s Shorts” (where else?).  I won’t say I won’t return to the series in the fall, but right now I need to catch my breath from the marathon I just ran, creatively speaking.  I hope the stories will stimulate you to check out some of the associated novels.  Guess what?  That’s another reason I wrote them!

#386: Lurking is fun.  I’m talking about hangin’ ‘round discussion groups, not peeking through your neighbor’s window with that telescope you bought your kid last Christmas (remember Hitchcock’s Rear Window?—there was a hilarious take-off on that in the ABC show Castle).  Readers and writers alike can find many groups on the internet that deal with reading and writing and the book business (LinkedIn has some of the best, while GoodReads and FaceBook are OK).  Join up and lurk.  I’m probably a 95% lurker, 5% participant.  That lurking percentage is explained by two internet laws of discourse: (1) the more you participate, the more time it takes; and (2) the more you participate, the more chance there is that someone attacks what you have to say.  But it’s cool just to follow the passionate debates (see below, for example)—that’s lurking.

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#378: Big bad Bezos.  Most authors are sitting on the sidelines (including yours truly) wondering which gladiators, Amazon or Hachette, will win the skirmish.  A few like James Patterson and other Big Five mouthpieces are calling for a government lawsuit against Amazon, but everyone should remember that Hachette is a French conglomerate and the other company Amazon allegedly is stiffing is a German one.  Should the U.S. government try to referee a battle between feuding international corporations?  I think not, it would set a bad precedent, and the calling for it is another Patterson whine that should have made yesterday’s list, especially since his attitude is so anti-American!

#379: Summer reading.  Unless something’s settled in the feud mentioned above, readers can’t be sure they’ll get what they pay for, especially for summer reading.  I’m not sure whether they can ever be sure about that because authors are still giving away freebies on Amazon that are good quality reads on one hand, mixed in with a lot of crap; and Big Five publishers are gouging readers with exorbitant ebook prices on the other, most of it just expensive and/or out-of-date crap (oh yeah, they only do that for classics, right?).

Here’s what I do: I limit my serious book browsing to Amazon.  Bookstores—I’m talking about book barns and other commercial bookstores in bed with the Big Five, not your used bookstores or rare bookstores—just don’t carry all the books that might interest me.  (I’m pretty sure none of Hachette’s will, especially Patterson’s, so it doesn’t matter that I can’t buy them on Amazon right now.  Do you look to see who publishes the book when you buy?  Right, you look at the author, title, cover, and summary or blurb, maybe a few reviews, also easier to do on Amazon, although the latter aren’t worth your time—see below.)  I focus on ebooks under $5 to load up my old Kindle paper white for summer reading almost anywhere (yeah, it works in the sun—hmm, another Amazon product, go figure).

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#369: Titles don’t have copyrights.  That’s fortunate for Nora Roberts.  Her new book, The Collector, was released 4/15/2014.  An excerpt from my new book, The Collector, appeared in Aristocrats and Assassins, released 3/9/2014.  I imagine that such a short title has been used before, though, so both Nora and I would be in trouble if titles had copyrights.  Writers shouldn’t get the idea that it’s clever to reuse some famous author’s title just to come up in a search with them.  In my case, The Collector doubly matches what goes on in this mystery—I don’t know about Nora’s—and that’s what a writer should strive for.  A title should be a short blurb reflecting the content of the book.

#370: GoodBadBizarre review.  There’s a new review website, GoodBadBizarre.com.  The reviewer there just wrote an extensive in-depth review of my new thriller Aristocrats and Assassins.  As a reviewer, I can only admire the thoroughness.  This is the epitome of what we mean by an honest review, and I’m not saying that only because it was a positive review.  The condensed version posted on Amazon has five stars, but the reviewer still found negatives—the bad and bizarre.  More than anything else, though, I’m pleased with the way the reviewer got inside my head to determine what I was trying to do with A&A.  Eerie….

#371: Pseudonyms.  The person that runs GBB above uses a pen name.  I respect that.  In fact, I often wish I had used one from the get-go.  There are too many Steve Moores out there—just Google Steve Moore, Steven Moore, or Steven M. Moore (yeah, that’s one of my old math papers—really old!—from one of my previous lives). I should have picked something less common, like Deaver or Baldacci.  What’s your opinion on pseudonyms?  If you’re a reader, do you mind if an author uses one?  If you’re a writer, do you use one? (more…)