[Lots of news today.  Cherry pick what you find interesting, but be sure and read about the May Day Sale.  And BTW, nothing here is an April Fool’s joke.  Enough jokes are played on the American public by politicians.]

Jellybooks.  If you missed this 3/25 post, check it out.  It’s about data-miners colluding with traditional publishers.  Not a surprise, of course: When there’s a niche on the internet, it will be filled—Darwin’s Origins applied to electronic media.

See your blurb here.  In #115, I made this offer.  So far, no takers.  Think about maybe combining it with an interview.  I’ll send you questions, you can choose the ones you want to answer, and you can even add your own.  The final version has to be approved by you and me, of course.  I’ll let this ride for a while.

May Day, May Day, May Day Sale. Mary Jo Melendez invites you to a Kindle Countdown Sale.  Before she adds her stories to Smashwords, making them available in all ebook formats, she’s giving you a chance to read Muddlin’ Through and Silicon Slummin’…and Just Gettin’ By at $0.99, reduced from $2.99.  That’s $2 off, folks!  Or, two exciting books for $2!  The sale will take place from April 29 through May 5.  This is absolutely the last time these prices will be reduced.  It’s the perfect time to begin stocking up on good summer reading.  (OK, it’s a wee bit ahead of time to announce this, but you wouldn’t believe the acrobatics I have to perform in order to schedule a Kindle Countdown Sale for an entire series, thanks to those Amazon KDP Select restrictions.)

Throwing in the towel. Or, as Roberto Duran said, “No mas!”  (That, or some similar sporting event, might have been the origin for “throwing in the towel.”)  There are many good writers and good books out there.  That’s heaven for readers, of course, but it’s hell for authors.  I saw a recent statistic from Amazon that most authors sell fewer than 500 copies of any one title.  If that Amazon stat is valid, that readers’ heaven will soon shrink because many authors will flee hell by either discontinuing their book production or not releasing new books if they continue writing.  I’m trending toward the second category as a matter of economic necessity.  Explanations are found below.

I’m already cutting back.  Rogue Planet will be my only new book this year, even though I already have two other manuscripts ready.  Below I also suggest things you can do to change my mind.  It’s not just me, of course.  Many authors are in the same sinking ship.  Maybe it’s just that the number of readers is diminishing (Netflix and video games winning them over?) while the number of books is increasing.  For whatever reason, it’s a dire time for authors and promises to be a dire time eventually for readers.

An author’s political views.  I’ve said it many times in this blog, and I’ll say it again: You, the reader, are going to miss some entertaining fiction if you won’t read an author because of his political views.  I write about conspiracies and paranoia sometimes, so I’ll express some paranoia myself: I believe many people won’t read my stuff because I’m a rabid progressive.  I agree with Sanders on most things, for example, although I think he needs to revise his stances on foreign policy in general and terrorism in particular (he can still learn—he’s a smart old curmudgeon).  That said, my own personal viewpoints never stopped me from reading Orson Scott Card, Michael Crichton, James Hogan, Bill O’Reilly, Jerry Pournelle, or Ayn Rand.  (I discovered that at least two of those authors are overrated, but I read them to find that out.)

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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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Alternative to Smashwords.  Several author friends have suggested an alternative to Smashwords, Draft2Digital.  Smashwords is a retailer that also distributes to the iStore (Apple), B&N, Kobo, and many other online retailers.  So does Draft2Digital.  The only advantage I can see for the latter is that they’ll also produce a Create Space paper book; Smashwords doesn’t.  (There’s some indication that Draft2Digital is quicker to adjust promo prices—Smashwords just blames their retailers—but I don’t care about that.)  It’s a coin toss (made infamous in the Iowa caucuses).  I’d still like to see an ebook outfit that would take my MS Word document, turn it into an ebook, and then market it and sell it.  I’d be willing to give up more royalties to do just that (marketing experts all want their money up front!).  I guess that’s something that lies between indie and traditional publishing (the latter takes too much in royalties, of course).  Anyone know of an outfit like that?  Drop me an email if you do…or comment below this post.

Rogue Planet.  You’ve read the excerpt (see the category “Pre-Release Excerpts” if you haven’t.  Here’s the blurb, just to remind you:

“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 were restricted to observe and maintain a hands-off policy for these rogue planets, even when there was 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.”

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Amazon “bookstores”?  The company just announced that they will expand their number beyond that unique one in Seattle.  Wondering what the business model is?  If you’re thinking Create Space paperbacks will be featured, you might be in for a big surprise.  From what I’ve been able to glean from all the BS, these stores will reflect what you can find on Amazon’s site: all sorts of crap will be for sale and, as an afterthought, books.  For a retailer that started out selling books, they have come a long way in shedding that mantle, so far that neither they nor their customers worry much about books anymore.  Authors shouldn’t think that Amazon is going to be featuring their books, that’s for sure.

Smashwords.  If you want a retailer that only sales books and does it well, complement your Amazon catalog with one on Smashwords.  Worried about formats?  Smashwords features them all, including mobis.  Moreover, Smashwords is a distributor too; they distribute to many other retailers (Apple, Kobo, B&N, and so forth), as well as selling to libraries.  It would be in your best interests to end Amazon exclusivity and add Smashwords.  I’ll be doing this slowly but surely (see below).  Think of it like this: it’s like the stock market in that you’re better off having a diversified portfolio.  I don’t own a lot of stock, but I’ve written a lot of books.  I want to reach out to as many readers as possible.  Amazon limits that.

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[Sorry, this is a wee bit verbose, but it’s been awhile.  I was busy getting the manuscript for Rogue Planet (see below) ready to send to beta-readers.  Cherry pick those items that grab your attention first.  You can always come back to this newsletter later—they’re all in the archive.]

Item. Wise words?  I’ve started a new series of posts titled “Monday Words of Wisdom”—words of advice, a bit of humor, forced rhymes, whatever you want to call them.  Why bother?  The number one reason is that people’s Mondays are often bleak—returning to that day job on Monday is often a drag—so a little bit of humor might do as much for you as caramel topping on your latté.  Second, finding words that rhyme and using them logically exercises my mind—maybe not as much as a crossword puzzle, but it’s a wee bit more creative.  Third, I don’t sell many of my books, so maybe I can get a side job with Hallmark.  It would beat working as a Walmart greeter.

Item. The course on fiction writing.  It’s almost done.  Phew!  Readers who took the opportunity to learn about the book writing business hopefully enjoyed my personal spin on it.  Call it the indie viewpoint.  I don’t like traditional publishers—their treatment of authors is terrible—but I hope I also provided some thoughts for frustrated authors working in that paradigm who are thinking of going indie.  Next week will be the last lesson.  I imagine it will make some PR and marketing people angry with me (see below for an example)—I don’t have much love for most of them either.

I suppose many readers and writers might say I have some nerve pretending to write a complement to King’s On Writing.  Say what you will, I’ve written many books.  King started earlier and won the lottery, so I ignore a comparison of number of books published.  And he completely ignores indie books, probably disparages them, in fact, ignoring his personal startup pains described in his book.  If only for that reason, his book needs an update to consider the problems of indie writers.

Item. Books with graphics content.  Paper books, especially pop science and textbooks, often have fancy graphics.  They’re probably a major factor contributing to the cost of a book, especially an academic textbook, inflating the cost beyond the traditional publisher’s greedy desire to exploit starving students.  Of course, there are also those coffee table books that are mostly pictures.  People think they’re conversation starters.  (One conversation might be about how expensive they are.  Or, why anyone would ever buy them.)

But I’ve often argued that the ebook offers a great opportunity for inventive authors to go multimedia (probably indies, because there’s nothing inventive about traditional publishing).  One can envision a great and interesting combination of graphics, sound, even videos and odors.  Whether we’d still call that an ebook is beside the point.  (And thinking about a version of Fifty Shades of Gray like that might gross some people out, including me.)

About the graphics, though.  I recently reviewed a book that had a lot of them.  Many people have Paper White Kindles.  Color graphics often don’t translate well to many shades of gray (even if there are fifty).  Authors and publishers should think about that.  Especially for textbooks (if you’re depending on a reader to distinguish two curves in a graph, one black and the other blue, the results might be disappointing on the Kindle).

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Item. New plug-in.  Amazon has just announced the “Kindle Instant Preview Widget.”  It’s a plug-in to your website to allow visitors to view your writing samples (book excerpts, short stories, and so forth).  If you’re an author with a website, you might like it, but I don’t see much use for it.  First, I publish free short stories and book excerpts on my blog, and the “peek inside” on each Amazon book page allows readers to peruse my writing.  I’d rather send readers there with links to the Amazon book page because they can buy the book if they like what they see—I don’t and won’t sell books from my website.  Second, I pretty much stick to the WordPress plug-ins (contact page and social media icons) and have resisted even adding a Goodreads icon, all to avoid clutter.  Third, my website designers, Monkey C Media, use a lot of HTML stuff—I pay them for updates already from my royalties, so adding this widget would just increase that expense item.  That’s my take.  You might see it differently.  If you try it and like it, send me an email about your experience.  You might change my mind!

Item. Interesting phenomenon.  The WD (Writer’s Digest) police finally caught me.  I let my subscription lapse, so they cancelled all their email newsletters too.  Fine.  That rag is mostly a mouthpiece for traditional publishing anyway, and the newsletters were generally zero useful content or links to the WD website.  The magazine offers some advice about writing, but the content is all too often dedicated to finding a publisher or an agent—useless blather to me, but maybe useful for writers interested in being traditionally published.  They also promote their contests, money-making machines that prey on naïve writers—do the math.  They don’t do this out of the goodness of their hearts, you know.  (Of course, just about any contest, paid or free, is a waste of your time.)

Item. New feature.  Asimov stopped writing fiction for a while to write popular science.  Although some of my blog posts could already be classified as popular science, I decided to formalize a bit with a series titled “Sciences and Mathematicians.”  It starts next week.  Don’t worry.  I’ll still write fiction.  In spite of my R&D background, writing’s always been my first love.

Item. Continuing feature.  Are you following my lessons on fiction writing?  This short course (lesson #2 appeared Wednesday) distills my ideas.  Readers, learn what one author thinks about writing fiction.  Writers, see if you agree—whether you do or don’t, send me an email with your comments, if you’re so inclined.  Or, comment right here after any lesson.  I’m interested in your opinions.

Item. Old but new book.  After reading some of the other books in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series” (they’re all independent stories, by the way), have you wanted to read #1, The Midas Bomb, and balked at the Infinity edition’s price?  I’m not accusing you—I would have balked too!  Now you can read the completely rewritten and reedited second edition for $2.99 in ebook format.  It’s also available in paper at Create Space for $9.99.

Item. New books.  An indie writer often has to make the choice of spending money on PR and marketing of existing books or preparing the next book.  I prefer the latter.  Look for the sci-fi saga Rogue Planet this spring and Gaia and the Goliaths, #7 in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” this fall.

Item. Getting acquainted.  I provide free stories on my blog so you can get to know my writing, but I don’t give away free books.  My ebooks already are good entertainment at a reasonable price, so you have no right to complain.  I need some royalties in order to prepare the next book, pay for the upkeep of this website, and do some PR and marketing with what’s left over (I always run in the red, by the way).  Besides, my ebooks at $2.99 or $3.99 are much better for you than any McDonald’s meal.  Use any excerpts provide in this blog’s archives or the “peek inside” feature on each Amazon book page if you just want to dip your toes in my literary waters before buying.

Item. Only want free?  OK, you can read one of my books for free.  I’ll send you a freebie (Amazon’s Whispernet is the most convenient for me) in return for an honest review.  Query me via my contact page.

In libris libertas….   

Item. The New Year.  This will be my last newsletter until the New Year.  To all readers, reviewers, and writers—I hope 2015 brought you joy and success, and may you all have a safe, healthy, and prosperous 2016.

Item.  Goodreads.  I love this site!  It’s where the readers are—people who are avid readers and intensely interested in books and their authors.  I’ve met some great people there, both readers and authors.  It’s now my social media site of choice.  Facebook has been relegated to my author page for the most part (too many narcissists and people mounting soapboxes anyway).  While I still have trouble with Goodreads’ unwieldy user interface (it’s like a multitude of patches on an old inner tube), I’m learning (I have to keep a notebook on my groups and choices for them, things about my author’s page, and how to set up things).  I still haven’t figured out how to say I finished the bio of Winston Churchill, for example—it still shows me on the last page…of the index!

But here’s my advice after several years of climbing the learning curve, for both readers and writers: stick with it!  For readers, you’ll learn about great books and great authors—some of them will be obscure and never mentioned by the NY Times or found in B&N book barns, but great reading can be had for those who are looking for new reading entertainment.  For authors, be a reader first—stick to the various author and promo sections in the different reading groups you belong to.  When the moderator says no promo in a certain section, follow that rule.  (Sometimes one of my own books is a good example of something in a discussion, but I try to warn readers in that case.)  I recommend that authors stay away from the authors’ groups too.  You’ll meet enough authors in the reading groups, and chances are they’re more interested in reading your books than those in the author groups just wanting to discuss writing and marketing techniques.

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Item.  Holiday hiatus.  In the spirit of all the end-of-the-year holiday celebrations, my blog posts will be more sporadic for the next three weeks.  My first priority is friends and family.  Yours should be too.  Be safe, be warm, be well, and enjoy whatever festivities you have planned for the holidays.  And, by all means, read a few books.

Item.  New Year’s Resolutions.  Have you made yours?  I’ve made mine.  Some are contained below as I continue to navigate my book business through the reefs and shark-infested waters of modern publishing.  My willing, eager, and able crew hasn’t decided to abandon Captain Moore’s ship yet, so we’ll keep going.  They’re all smart ladies—Donna Carrick, Sara Carrick, Carol Shetler, and Debby Kelly.  The first three are Canadians while Debby migrated from New England to the U.S. West Coast.  I couldn’t have the number of books I currently have without this crew.  And Amanda Kerr, from BookBuzz.net, lets the whole world know about new releases with her excellent and affordable PR and marketing packages.  Join me: let’s give them all a special holiday hoorah for a job well done!  I resolve to do that more next year and continue to bring readers exciting entertainment at reasonable prices.

Here’s another more personal resolution: I plan to read more books.  While I enjoy writing and have many more stories to tell, it’s always a joy to read a well-written book.  I need to do it more often, although I read more than I write even now.  There are so many good books and authors available these days.  That’s good for readers, not so much for authors.  Adding all the different formats—print, ebooks, and audiobooks—the opportunities are endless.  Find time to read—the alternative, as considered in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, is unthinkable.  Most books are better than the drivel you can find on TV these days.  How many car chases, exploding helicopters, brain-eating zombies, fangy vampires, mushy romances, mind-numbing sitcoms, space aliens, and so forth do you have to see anyway?  You can read about many more if that’s your shtick, you know.

Item. Childhood’s End.  This novel probably was the tipping point in Arthur C. Clarke’s sci-fi writing career.  It’s now a classic, classic sci-fi at its best, cerebral stuff that makes the fantasy fluff of Star Wars, a story which seems like a bad fairy tale in comparison, Hunger Wars, and yes, even The Martian, poor competition that’s left in the dust.  That’s the book, of course.  Hollywood often manages to ruin things when basing a book on a movie.  That’s the case with the SyFy Channel’s movie based on Clarke’s novel.  I watched the first part.  Ugh!  Maybe current TV viewers will know no better, but I give it a thumb’s down.  Some of the acting was OK, and you often have to go in with an open mind when Hollywood steps in, but I wasn’t happy.

Item.  Smashwords stats.  Coker finally got around to publishing these on his blog (he’d given a summary at some book event last summer).  One stat relates to the genre question I mentioned in a previous newsletter: the most popular fiction genres in descending order are romance, erotica, YA and teen fiction, fantasy, mystery and detective, gay and lesbian fiction, science fiction, historical, thriller and suspense, and adventure.  No percentages were given, and it’s not clear if overlaps were removed (romantic mysteries, for example).

Another reaffirms the sweet spot for ebook prices, $2.99 to $3.99 ($1.99 is a no-no and $0.99 and free are seen as promos). Will traditional publishers pay attention to this?  Probably not.  Finally, although Smashwords just expanded to some retailers and ebook library services overseas, iBooks and B&N are still its most important affiliated retailers.  I’ve noticed sales picking up with them, which is why I’m moving ebooks away from Amazon exclusivity where sales are flat.  I’m more interested in increasing readership than sales per se, but I won’t give my ebooks away.  $2.99 to $3.99 seems a fair price for me and might one day allow me to break even.  Of course, I could just stop publishing books instead of pumping royalties back into producing the next book, but that’s no fun!

Item. The Midas Bomb, Second Edition.  This is the FIRST book in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series.”  The original edition was professionally done by Infinity Publishing, so why publish a second edition?  The original was published in 2009.  Six years might not seem like a long time, but you have to consider that five other books in the series have followed.  #1 was written in a style different from #2-6.  I wanted to completely rewrite and reedit the book in order to match its style to the other books—hard-boiled, minimalist writing for mystery, suspense, and thriller novels.

Infinity’s prices were no longer competitive either.  You will still be able to buy the ebook in all the standard formats at $2.99 (non-exclusivity on Amazon means that there will be no Kindle countdown deals for this book, but at this price, why would you need them?).  The pbook (trade paperback from Create Space) will have a new edition too, at $9.99, essentially the price of the original Infinity ebook!  I plan to make the other ebooks in the series available in all ebook formats too at least, and, budget allowing, continue to add pbooks for the remaining books.  This is an experiment, so please help me make it a success.  (For those who already have the first edition, you can have fun comparing the two.)

For reviewers, the Kindle version is available on Net Galley.  Other ebook formats are a bit more complicated, but I can manage them too.  The paper version is very complicated because I have to deal with snail mail, a real hassle anytime and especially over the holidays, but my arm could be twisted.

Item.  Christmas presents for your favorite readers.  Yeah, I get it, people like to give paper books as gifts because they’re tangible.  But you might want to check with your friends and relatives.  If they have a Kindle or some other e-reading device (most smart phones can function as e-readers nowadays, and there’s always that Amazon app that allows you to read Kindle-fomatted ebooks on most any device), they might prefer an electronic file they can download.  Use Amazon’s and other retail sites’ gift-giving feature to send some e-stocking stuffers their way.  And, if you insist on pbooks, see The Midas Bomb above or Full Medical, Soldiers of God, and Survivors of the Chaos, all available in paper.  Your least expensive way to do the latter is right from the source—Create Space (Amazon), Xlibris, or Infinity.

Item.  New books for next year.  Hopefully, next year I can publish Rogue Planet and #7 in the C&C series, Gaia and the Goliaths.  The first book will be something like a sequel to the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” and the Dr. Carlos stories, but it’s more epic like Dune in the sense that the downtrodden are trying to win back their planet.  There’s a preview of the second novel at the end of #6 in the series; #7 has an environmental theme.  Both books are now in the editing process and will be sent to my beta-readers at the beginning of 2016.

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Item. Anne Frank.  Strange happenings here.  Was that book only based on her diary?  The recent extension of the copyright has been celebrated by some and decried by others.  The case opens the Pandora box of copyright law yet again.  Of course, the only reason that there’s a polemic is that there’s a lot of money involved.  For some reason, I thought this was all settled when the movie came out, but I guess I’m wrong.  Makes you think about copyrights for your own books if you’re an author.  Be sure and put that copyright statement in the front of your ebook, and get an ISBN, not just an ASIN for it, because that will help establish your copyright too.  In fact, also put the copyright statement on each MS.

Item. Some stats about pbooks v. ebooks.  In a digest by Jonathan Stolper of some recent Nielsen’s data, the pbook v. ebook split is now 74%/26%, but the ratio varies widely by genre.  Makes me wish I could afford some pbooks if that ratio holds true for mysteries, thrillers, and sci-fi (I still need the genre-specific stats to make a wise decision on that, plus some cash I don’t have).  Decisions, decisions.  I’d like to reach more readers obviously, but I’ve decided to start making some of my ebooks no longer Amazon exclusive and put them up on Smashwords too, which distributes to places like Apple, B&N, and Kobo.

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Item. Family Affairs.  In case you missed it, #6 in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series” was just released.  The title is the theme, but this is still a novel filled with mystery, suspense, and thrills.  The yin-and-yang detectives (Chen is a conservative Asian with a Mona Lisa smile; Castilblanco is a tough but compassionate progressive who has become a Buddhist) have to solve two cases at once in this one before bringing the bad guys to justice…or even determining who the bad guys are.  Available on Amazon in ebook format only.  Reviewers can have a free copy in return for an honest review by querying me at steve@stevenmmoore.com; the ebook is also available via Net Galley.

Item. The Midas Bomb, Second Edition.  You probably balked at the $9.95 price for the ebook version of #1 in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” and rightly so.  I would, but it wasn’t my doing.  Many readers have discovered that numbers 2 through 6 can stand-alone (this is true for all my novels), but maybe some didn’t want to start a series where the first ebook is so expensive.  I empathize with that.  So, lucky you, coming real soon you’ll be able to buy The Midas Bomb, Second Edition, for only $2.99, matching the prices of the other novels in the series!  Look for it.  (The original edition, available in both pbook and ebook format, will still be available; the second edition will only be in ebook format.)

The Midas Bomb is, of course, where the adventures of Detectives Chen and Castilblanco all began.  If you have read other ebooks in the series, you won’t want to miss this one!  In addition to the intrepid detectives, the arch-villain Vladimir Kalinin makes his first appearance here.  His presence is felt in many ebooks in many different series.  In this novel, Rolando Castilblanco has lost two partners and is adapting to his new partner, Dao-Ming Chen.  You will also witness the on-again-off-again romance between Castilblanco and Pamela Stuart, who later becomes his wife in the series.

Item. Gardners?  If you’re a UK reader or writer, you probably know all about Gardners.  If you’re a Yank, maybe not.  I didn’t.  Smashwords’ new distribution agreement with this UK ebook provider to bookstores and libraries is welcome.  First, it compensates for the loss of Oyster (I wonder what Google is going to do with it?).  Second, Gardners’ business model is far better than Overdrives’.  Third, iit opens up some new horizons for one’s ebooks in the UK.  Starting Oct. 22, Gardners will start offering ebooks in the Smashwords catalog.  Buyers and borrowers will have complete access.  Because many of my ebooks are international in scope (about half are available on Smashwords), I’ve always thought that UK readers might enjoy them.  This also might be a challenge to Amazon’s KDP Select.  We’ll see.

Item. The Times’ continuing bias.  The NY Times’ biased attacks on Amazon continues.  As reported here, the Times’ expose quoting disgruntled Amazon employees was countered by the company’s other employees, and Jeff Bezos remarked that the Amazon described in the article isn’t the Amazon he knows…or wants.  Now Jay Carney, Amazon spokesperson, and some editor from the Times are in a pissing war of words over the expose because Amazon discovered the main whistle-blower quoted by the Times was laid off and out for revenge.

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