News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #110…
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.
But the process might stop there. At the risk of sounding like PBS and its ubiquitous yearly funding campaigns, I need your help. Because I pump the royalties from all previous books into publishing the next one, turning manuscripts into readable books is completely dependent on you, dear reader. That’s the way I run my indie business. Sticking to the indie paradigm, the only other option is crowd-funding, and that’s too much like begging for my taste.
I’ve never had writer’s block, but I’ve delayed publication more than once because book sales decline. I can write stories for myself, of course—I’ve been doing it since I was thirteen—but I’d rather share them with readers like you. I love to entertain readers. You can help ensure a supply of entertaining books at reasonable prices by supporting indie authors, me included. Think about it: you can read three or more indie ebooks for the price of one traditionally published ebook!
Item. Reviews. I’ve pretty much given up begging book bloggers and others for reviews. It’s demeaning, and I only get about a 10% return from those who even respond to a query and receive a freebie in return for an honest review. There are also too many reviewing sites that state the author needs N four- or five-star reviews already (N can be as high as twenty—anyone see the vicious circle here?) and/or ask for money to speed up the review. I’m tired trying to remember who the dorks are!
That said, I’m willing to turn things around. If you want to read one of my books for free, you can if you offer to review it. Query me—I answer all queries eventually, unlike some others who don’t even bother. If you want to review any book from my catalog, contact me at: steve@stevenmmoore.com. Using your email address, I’ll send you your free book in return for that honest review. That’s a permanent SOP and will remain so for the near future.
Sound a bit grumpy? Yep. My take now is that if you want to miss out on an entertaining read that’s a freebie, it’s your problem, not mine. (Note that reviewing is the only way you’ll get one of my books for free.) But I’ll continue to review books and wonder why I do so because no one returns the favor. (Note to authors: I don’t participate in so-called review exchanges.) It’s a strange world almost everywhere you look…fascinating, but strange! The indie writer’s might be the strangest of all.
[This newsletter, as part of this website’s blog, is financed by my book sales. All contents are free here and public domain as long as credit is given me and copyrights are followed. But I need your help—buy my books! They’re exciting entertainment at reasonable prices.]
In libris libertas…
