Item. Mockingbird follow-up.  Well, well, yet another case of the media looking for scandal!  It turns out that the sequel to Harper Lee’s classic is creating a scandal because the grown-up Scout, after living in NYC for some time, returns to Alabama to find old Atticus has become a racist bigot.  I found To Kill a Mockingbird a rough ride—disorganized ups and downs as the two different stories unfolded (only the trial appeared in the movie)—so maybe I’ll like this one better.  I don’t have any emotional stake in Atticus the good guy v. Atticus the bad guy.  The author wouldn’t get away with that today.  Critics are saying that Lee’s old editor knew what he (she?) was doing by rejecting the original and encouraging a rewrite.  Maybe not.  This sequel, written before the famous novel, might have been the better book.  Of course, coming out now, it’s a poignant reminder that racism and bigotry is still a national problem.

Item. A thank you.  Authors don’t do it enough, but I want to express my thanks to all readers who take the time to review the books they’ve read.  I don’t have many reviews, but I value every one of them, even the negative ones, because the person took the time to review.  Through reviews an author can learn the likes and dislikes of his readers (but email correspondence works too).  While readers often use more than reviews, and should (see below), when selecting their reading material, it’s clear that reviews can provide useful information for doing just that.  So, thanks to all the reviewers out there.

Item. Star reviewers.  Don’t worry, writers: I’m not creating a list to compete with Amazon’s star reviewer list.  One not containing 90% product reviewers is sorely needed, but I don’t have the time or the data.  No, here I’m talking about the wide range of reviewers’ interpretations of the Amazon star ranking system.  Many book bloggers use it, and there’s a wide range there too.  Let’s face it: the star-system isn’t uniformly applied, it’s primarily a convenience for Amazon (they can computerize all their book reviews), and readers often take the shortcut of counting stars instead of reading the review.  I’d do away with it, period, because achieving consensus about its application is impossible.  (I won’t use it in book reviews here and, in my official book reviewing capacity at Bookpleasures, it’s not used.  Of course, Goodreads uses it—their nexus is far too tight with Amazon.)

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Item. The Mockingbird sequel.  It turns out that the “discovery” of the Harper Lee’s old MS (written before Mockingbird but still a sequel) occurred in 2011 and not just recently.  Why Harper Collins didn’t own up to that originally can be analyzed by the pundits, but do we care?  I find it all a wee bit disappointing because it detracts from Lee’s famous and still unique novel, but who knows what big publishers will do to sell a book?

Item. Goodreads and LinkedIn mean good people.  Now that I’ve phased out my social media activity on Facebook (yes, I still have an author’s page there) and phased in more activity on Goodreads, I have found many new online friends.  Between Goodreads and LinkedIn, I have a rich experience with discussions about reading, writing, and the publishing business.  I value all my old FB friends too, but there’s too much “look at my cute pics,” grandstanding, and soapbox preaching going on there for my taste, not to mention that FB programmers are often tinkering, something which led to my not being able to share blog posts anymore.  Pox on Zuckerberg and his staff, not my FB friends.

Item. Goodreads ads v. Facebook ads.  If anyone’s interested, I now also have an A/B comparison between ads on these two social media giants.  I advertised Kindle Countdown Deals for Angels Need Not Apply and Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder, the first on FB and the second on GR.  There were many more clicks on FB but no sales.  There were fewer clicks on GR—only one!—and fewer views (10,808), but still no sales.  Of course, this is a very small sampling—your results may vary, as they say—but the books are similar, so I consider my stats a learning experience.

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I wish for all a safe and enjoyable July 4th weekend!  Please drive safely and drink in moderation as you celebrate the country’s Independence Day.

Item. More than Human: The Mensa Contagion.  We’re about to hit the publish button for my new sci-fi novel.  It offers a twist on an alien invasion story as well as exploring our final frontier.  Here’s the blurb: “People of Earth!  You’ve just won a complete makeover of your society that brings peace and prosperity.  What will you do next?”  “Why, go to Mars, of course!”  This epic sci-fi tale relates how an invading ET virus affects Earth’s social structures and subsequent space exploration.  I had fun writing it.  I hope you have fun reading it.

Item. Countdown to countdown.  Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder, book #3 in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” will be a Kindle Countdown Deal from July 1 through July 7.  It will be on sale for $0.99 during that period, reduced from $2.99.  Chen is accused of murder, but proving her innocent leads to a lot more than just a crime of passion.  This is a mystery first, thriller second, in contrast to other C & C ebooks.  These books can stand alone and be read in any order, so this is an opportunity to meet these detectives.  They play on their home turf too, the Big Apple.

Item. Free writing contests.  I usually don’t support or enter contests because there are fees.  The ones mentioned here are free.  The first is a general short story contest sponsored by the Creative Writing Institute–there are some rules so read them.  The second is a sci-fi writing contest sponsored by a German site, Inkitt.  Their site also supports other genres. Try them out and let me know.

Item. Kindle Unlimited.  Many of my ebooks are exclusive to Amazon via KDP Select.  That means readers participating in the Kindle Unlimited program can download these ebooks for free.  On the book’s Amazon page, you will see the current price and the price for Kindle Unlimited, $0!  Take advantage of this and don’t feel bad about it. I’ll still count you as a valued reader.  Readers rule, and I value every one of you.

Item. My love affair with anthropology and archaeology.  Like many baby boomers, the public library was my refuge for reading when I was a kid.  I finished all the sci-fi books there by the time I entered high school.  I also read most of the books on anthropology and archaeology, focusing on primitive cultures and the prehistory of human beings.  I thought I wanted to go into those fields, but decided the human animal was just too complicated, so I opted for math and science to prep for a day-job, knowing that writing was a hard way to put dinner on the table.  My father influenced that decision, choosing to feed his family over many years over painting still-lifes and landscapes.

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Item. Countdown to countdown.  Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder, #3 in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” is a Kindle Countdown Deal from July 1 through July 7.  The $2.99 price will be reduced to $0.99 for this short time.  Here’s the elevator pitch: Does Chen commit murder? The long answer is surprising.  Look for it.  Note: This is more mystery than thriller.  (It’s not my first mystery, by the way.  The first was The Secret Lab, a YA sci-fi mystery taking place on the ISS in the same fictional universe as Survivors of the Chaos.)  If you missed the Countdown Deal for Angels Need Not Apply, put this one on your calendar.

Item. Language concerns.  ABC weatherperson: “Today is more perfect than yesterday.”  ABC reporter: “Traffic is basically at a standstill.”  Another ABC reporter: “It’s literally chaos here.”  (Those all occurred in one day!)  Maybe in the heat of the moment, such slips are acceptable.  I’m not saying that we should start our own Académie Française, but these are examples of bad English usage.  Avoid them in your writing, even in dialog.

Worse: People writing those news banners running across the bottom of my TV screen should watch their grammar and spelling.  Other people (like me) multitask and read them.  No serious crimes are committed, but it is unprofessional, although some of the errors are hilarious and provide some comic relief from bad news reports.

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Item. Countdown to countdown.  Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder, #3 in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” is a Kindle Countdown Deal from July 1 through July 7.  The $2.99 price will be reduced to $0.99 for this short time.  Here’s the elevator pitch: Does Chen commit murder? The long answer is surprising.  Look for it.  Note: This is more mystery than thriller.  (It’s not my first mystery, by the way.  The first was The Secret Lab, a YA sci-fi mystery taking place on the ISS in the same fictional universe as Survivors of the Chaos.)  If you missed the Countdown Deal for Angels Need Not Apply, put this one on your calendar.

Item. Language concerns.  ABC weatherperson: “Today is more perfect than yesterday.”  ABC reporter: “Traffic is basically at a standstill.”  Another ABC reporter: “It’s literally chaos here.”  (Those all occurred in one day!)  Maybe in the heat of the moment, such slips are acceptable.  I’m not saying that we should start our own Académie Française, but these are examples of bad English usage.  Avoid them in your writing, even in dialog.

Worse: People writing those news banners running across the bottom of my TV screen should watch their grammar and spelling.  Other people (like me) multitask and read them.  No serious crimes are committed, but it is unprofessional, although some of the errors are hilarious and provide some comic relief from bad news reports.

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Item. PR ploy?  Fifty Shades MS stolen?  OK, maybe someone wants a bit of the action ($$$ these books make, you dirty-minded people!), so they’ll sell illegal copies on the web.  I doubt it.  The idea of having two novels, one from the POV of the innocent and gullible victim (those are nice adjectives to describe her) and one from the POV of Mr. Grey, the S & M king (again, nice adjectives to describe him), is purely exploitive—the author and publisher should be ashamed.  And I wouldn’t be surprised this is a PR ploy akin to leaking J. K. Rowling’s name as the author of those droll mysteries—the latter’s only redeeming quality is showing what name recognition and branding can do for you.  For traditional publishing, it’s all about greed and money, no matter what it takes.

The flip side of the coin is to ask why this schlock appeals to people.  Because I’m a writer, I’m interested.  I ask readers (both men and women), who say they’ve read at least the first book in the trilogy, what part of the book they liked best.  “Give me the juicy details,” I say.  A Puritan’s silence follows 99% of the time.  1% admit that the books are terrible, and/or they were just curious.  The guys are secretive wannabe Mr. Greys, I guess; and the gals are frustrated wannabe S & M victims?  I’ll just write it off as just part of our crazy culture, though.  But I sure hope that this series’ readers aren’t avid readers, just people with hidden, prurient interests, because I can’t and won’t write this schlock.  ‘Nough said.

Item. Changing genres.  To continue with the theme above, romance novels have always been a popular genre, but they’ve become so popular that people like James Patterson and his wrecking crew of associated co-authors are trying to dominate those genres too.  Maybe that’s a smart move when you run out of ideas in your original genres and become too formulaic?  Or, is it just a way to take a break?

Don’t get me wrong: there are subgenres of that romance genre that contain very appealing stories.  Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities (his only novel I can stomach) is a historical romance, after all, as well as being a classic.  So is Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables (more 19^th century schmaltzy than Two Cities, though).  Many thrillers have romantic interludes (not often as steamy as Fifty Shades and other erotica books, though); two recent ebooks of mine, Muddlin’ Through and Silicon Slummin’…and Just Gettin’ By, have some romance—relationships are often part of a character’s life that make her/his life more interesting for the reader.

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Item. 99 Cent Sale!  These will occur periodically through the rest of 2015.  The first deal occurs for Angels Need Not Apply, #2 in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series”; it will be on sale for $0.99 on Amazon June 1-June 7.  That leaves you only a few days to take advantage of this reduced price—this ebook reverts to its original price is $2.99 at the end of this period.  The elevator pitch: Al Qaeda, a drug cartel, and neo-Nazis combine forces to create mayhem!

Item. Facebook ads.  After my experience examining what Bookbub offers (a lot of nothing for an expensive price), I decided I’d promote my Kindle Countdown Deal (see above) on Facebook (it’s an order of magnitude less than Bookbub and supposedly FB targets potential readers).  Wrote a comment describing the deal on my FB page, clicked on the boost button, filled out the usual crap, and submitted.  The acknowledgment email arrives welcoming me as an FB advertiser (oh joy!), telling me that their gurus (computers?) will censor me (you can’t use FB for Facebook and other evil things, for example), and informing me they’ll tell me what they think in 15 minutes.

I never received the results of their censorship study, but FB started boosting that post from my FB page.  This is a big experiment for me.  Even though FB is an order of magnitude more reasonable than Bookbub, I’ll still need to sell many ebooks to pay for that little campaign.  You can help me out here: $0.99 for an ebook is the same price as a dollar meal at McDonald’s and a lot healthier for you (I’m surprised that got through the FB censors, by the way).

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Item. 99 Cent Sale!  These will occur periodically through the rest of 2015, even though you almost have to be a member of the Bolshoi to dance through the 90-day Kindle Select periods.  (Don’t retain that image of me in a tutu, please!  Probably not quite as bad as me in a speedo, because there’s music associated, but people receive enough bad images for a lifetime from reality shows.)  The first deal occurs for Angels Need Not Apply, #2 in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series”; it will be on sale for $0.99 on Amazon June 1-7.  The elevator pitch: Al Qaeda, a drug cartel, and neo-Nazis combine forces to create mayhem!

Item. Bookbub.  Many authors recommend it, including Joe Konrath.  I’m setting up some Kindle Countdown deals (see above), so I thought I’d try it.  Yeah, I know that was illogical.  I’d be reducing my ebook’s price and paying Bookbub dearly to tell readers about it.  I guess those recommending authors are one-percenters who have the money to burn?  Bookbub’s business model also charges more for popular genres too.  Between paying Bookbub for advertising and Kirkus for reviews, most indies with my number of ebooks would go broke.  $20K isn’t chump change!  Pox on Bookbub’s house.  Besides this newsletter, I’ll stick with Goodreads, thank you—it’ free, and I can directly reach out to readers.

Item. Goodreads.  Lord knows if I’m using it correctly, but I think I’m starting to get the hang of it.  The basic problem I see, beyond an interface that’s far from user friendly, is that it’s primarily for readers with author services tacked on.  Being primarily for readers is good, by the way: First, that makes it a better social media site than Facebook.  FB purposely limits your author fan page posts to 1 to 5% of FB members, and too many of those people aren’t readers.  Second, I read a lot more than I write, so I want to hang online with readers.  Third, as an author, I want to reach out to people who are readers and are potentially interested in my ebooks.  There are millions of readers on Goodreads.

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Item: Changes to Goodreads.  Same confusing website (watch for those links with the tiny print!), but they’ve added two useful features, one for readers and one for readers/authors.  The first allows you to download books you’ve purchased on Amazon onto your book list in one fell swoop.  Although I’m an avid reader and read many more books than I write (as it should be), I’ve always been lazy about doing this (AKA I want to spend my valuable time writing, not doing Goodreads/Amazon’s work for them).  I made the “fell swoop” occur just recently though, so authors who’ve had their books read and reviewed by me might note slightly different rankings.  I apologize for that—damned if I was going to go to Amazon to check how many stars I gave a book when I don’t believe in that ranking system anyway.  By the same token, if I couldn’t remember having read the book (even though Amazon’s computer says I did) or remembered trashing it, I generally didn’t make the transfer to Goodreads.  (You’ll see what I mean when you take advantage of this feature—it is nifty and shows one advantage of Amazon’s long tentacles.)

The number two feature for both readers and authors is that now, you dear reader, can “follow me” by finding my Goodreads profile (this link will require a log-in if you’re not logged in already) and clicking on the “Follow Author” button.  This adds another tool for authors that need to be discovered (I’m one, by the way).  Another writer (Goodreads newsletter?) mentioned that she found the RSS feature the most useful (what I do here on this site is “shared” to my friends on Goodreads and now all “followers” too).  I often write blog posts of interest to readers and writers (like this one!), so this new follow option works for both those groups.  Goodreads might be confusing as hell, but these two features are very welcome.  And I’d rather have friends or be followed on Goodreads by readers than on Facebook or Twitter.  The latter two sites have too many people who aren’t readers, and never will be, and I want to reach out to readers above all because I think I offer quality reading entertainment at a reasonable price.

Item: Book bloggers.  I recently discovered bloggersintl.blogspot.com with its bloggerindex.  Between Simon Royale’s list and this one, authors supposedly have a list of avid readers who are willing to review books.  Indie authors, though, shouldn’t get their hopes up.  Many book bloggers in Royale’s list aren’t accepting new review queries (“closed to further notice” isn’t enough to remove them from the list, I guess).  Many in the bloggerindex aren’t either.  Those who do place conditions like only pbooks (in this day of ebooks?) or traditionally published books (that’s bloggerindex—Royale’s are supposedly looking only for indies), paying authors (“our slush pile is full, but if you pay me you can speed things up”), or restrictive genres (I always get a warm and fuzzy when Google Chrome queries me if I want to continue to a website because it’s X-rated).

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Item: Newsletters.  I subscribe to a few.  They come via old-fashioned email.  I’ve noticed lately that some are starting to say something like “For the full graphics experience, this newsletter has a web version.” Or “This newsletter continues on our website.”  Ha!  I knew the day would come.  When I started this newsletter, I opted to make it just a regular feature in my blog (there’s no graphics experience involved either, so everything loads nicely—I don’t do HTML and I don’t make videos).

I never like to see my email in box fill up with fluff and stuff and assume other people don’t either.  Smart readers and writers know that email newsletters are often used to generate email lists and those lead to that spam avalanche (the newsletters I subscribe to don’t do that, though).  I generally don’t collect email addresses for advertising purposes.  That makes it more difficult sometimes for PR and marketing but preserves my sanity.  (If you use the contact page at this website to request a free ebook in return for an honest review, your email is used only once to gift you that ebook—for other ebooks you want to review, you have to make a separate request.)

Item: Heavy-fisted Apple.  This is non-productive whining, so you can ignore it and go on to the next item if you’re a reader (as opposed to reader/author).  I recently had to “upgrade” some covers of my ebooks on Smashwords because Apple (they’re only one retailer Smashwords distributes to, mind you) only handles ebooks now with a certain number of pixels in the book’s cover.  Amazon never complains about covers.  I don’t know why Apple can lord it over everyone else in the publishing business.  And people think Amazon’s bad!  (That perception is basically due to Big Five publishers, of course.)  Obviously, Apple gets away with what it can until the Justice Department steps in, like they did with that price-fixing collusion with the Big Five.  Pox on their house!  Hopefully the new Samsung smart phone smacks them around a bit—they’re too uppity for my taste.  (FYI: the only Apple product I use in my house is iTunes.  It’s not connected to the iStore—or whatever it’s called—because I only use it as database software for my music library.)

Item: Endorsements.  I’ve been noticing a lot of them.  Lee Child here, James Patterson there, Douglas Preston everywhere, Douglas, Douglas, Douglas, Lee, James, others….  Their endorsements are usually zero-content one-liners (most are) that NEVER influence my book buying (in fact, they just might turn me off).  Although I love to learn from reviews of my own ebooks (that assumes an honest and complete review), I generally don’t pay attention to reviews when I’m buying either.  Smart consumers of ebooks should learn to use the “peek inside” feature on Amazon—it’s there to give you a taste of the author’s style.

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