News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #124…
Google allows piracy. I’m hammering this home. Go to that famous search engine and search for “book piracy through Google.” You’ll get an eye-opener, so much so that you won’t even need your daily infusion of caffeine. I can’t say they encourage it, of course. It’s just that they don’t do anything about it. They want to digitize every book that’s been written. I don’t know how that relates to them allowing piracy, but I’m suspicious. Like my detectives Chen and Castilblanco, I don’t believe in coincidences. See my post last Friday for an example of how I was personally affected. Pox on their house.
Microsoft buys LinkedIn. I’ve been ignoring LinkedIn for a while. Now I have more reason to do that. Microssoft will pay $26.2 billion for this white elephant, chicken feed for Bill Gates et al. Now LinkedIn will continue screwing people like Microsoft is doing with Win 10. If you have auto-updates for your desktop or laptop computer, you’ve probably been annoyed by those notices to upgrade. If not, Microsoft might have already taken over your computer and downloaded Win 10, and you couldn’t stop them.
I worked my butt off killing all vestiges of “Tile World” (Dave Pogue’s term—I love his books) on Win 8.1. Turns out a lot of people were unhappy with Win 8.1, basically Siamese twins of two different OS’s. Win 10 is touted to be a major improvement. I suppose I’ll upgrade—when I choose to do so, not Microsoft—but I’m leery. I’m afraid I’ll spend two more weeks of frustration again, getting things to work as I like them to. I don’t want Edge (the “new” internet explorer that doesn’t allow file extensions) nor Bing (as much as I dislike Google—see above—search engine Bing is a piece of crap). If MS Word and the el cheapo MS mail package don’t work, though, I might be buying a Mac in the near future. Or not—I hate Apple too. Gee, maybe I should go back to Unix (i.e. Linux)?
A Konrath twist on the book lottery. Remember IAC? The IAC (Indie Authors Coop) banned me because they felt my saying that having a successful book is like winning the lottery disparaged their members’ hard work. I never disparage writers’ hard work! Nowadays writing is a slog because there are so many good books and good writers competing for diminishing numbers of readers. Hugh Howey (Wool) and Andy Weir (The Martian) won the lottery—plain and simple—and they might not have worked as hard as other authors! (I found a lot of things to fix—both content and copy editing.) But who wouldn’t celebrate their good fortune? It gives us all hope of winning the lottery so we can keep writing and publishing more books.
Recently Joe Konrath offered a little twist on this lottery concept, and I quote: “Landing a huge publishing contract is like winning the lottery.” There are ways to hedge that, of course—you can be one of Stephen King’s relatives; or know Big Five stallions or mares through your parents, leading to lavish (and questionable?) endorsements; or have some other not-so-obvious leverage—but the Big Five, soul source of those huge contracts, typically only bet on the sure horse. Newbies, in particular, aren’t likely to win this particular lottery. So Joe champions indie.
Joe tends to see the traditional publishing paradigm as an inferior business model to the indie one, for this and other reasons. But I’m not so sure anymore. Back to having that successful book: indie writers have to invest in their business in many ways. Konrath has successful books—he’s worked hard and won a few scratch-off lotteries if not the big one like Howey and Weir—so he doesn’t see this as a problem because he has the cold cash. But it is a problem for many authors and in my case, because the business model of using royalties from past books to pay for the next one hasn’t really worked for us. I’m not offering any excuses (the piracy mentioned above might be one, though)—maybe my stuff is just crap.
I’m not talking about PR and marketing costs—even the Big Five won’t pay for that unless you’re one of the coddled stallions or mares in their stables. But the indie writer has costs even before that. For the newbie and the first book, they might not seem like much—costs for formatting, editing, and cover art, for example. But those costs add up over successive books. Traditional publishing avoids those up-front costs for the author. Bottom line: indie lets you easily get started and maybe publish more books in a short time, but, if none of those are successful, you might not be able to continue, unless you’re well off.
Going wide. Maybe you’ve noticed: NOT ONE of my ebooks is exclusive to Amazon now. Exclusivity, claimed by many to be the greatest thing since sliced bread, never worked for me. Massive book giveaways? Never occurred, and I probably just ran through all readers for the ebook. Great response to Kindle Countdown Deals? Never happened–$0.99 or $2.99, they’re all a good deal anyway. Vast numbers of readers borrowing my books to read? Nope, never saw pages read or tapped into that “vast” Kindle fund (some via Scribd, though). Exclusivity leading to piracy? Maybe. (See above.)
While exclusivity might work for some authors, I’m going wide now. The “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries,” Muddlin’ Through and Silicon Slummin’…and Just Gettin’ By, are recent additions to Smashwords. By being non-exclusive, I can add ebooks to SMASHWORDS and take advantage of their MANY OTHER RETAIL CONNECTIONS. And, with their coupon codes, I can offer you, the reader, sales on my ebooks in ALL EBOOK FORMATS (see below for one), just like with Kindle Countdown. Maybe going wide won’t help me find more readers, but it’s worth a try because it offers me a chance with many other book retailers Smashwords distributes to (Apple, B&N, Kobo, etc, as well as borrowing services). Let me repeat: Smashwords offers many more ebook formats and distributes to Apple (iAnything format), B&N (Nook format), Kobo (ePub), and other retailers, as well as lending services!
Links in these blog posts are now more likely to go to Smashwords for this reason. The book covers on the “Books & Short Stories” webpage will still take you to the book’s page on Amazon, though (see below), but you might find it cheaper on Smashwords with a coupon code.
Paper editions. Slowly but surely I hope to add paper editions for ALL my books. Please bear with me. This takes a major investment of time and money on my part because twenty books still remain. The second edition of The Midas Bomb and the new sci-fi book Rogue Planet are available in paper format (Create Space—you can find them on the book’s Amazon page).
Older paper versions for the first edition of The Midas Bomb, the first edition of Soldiers of God, and Survivors of the Chaos are still available from Infinity Publishing, and the first edition of Full Medical is still available from Xlibris. (In neither Infinity or Xlibris’s bookstores, don’t search for Steven M. Moore—that doesn’t work! Search for their titles. Those old PODs are cheaper there than at Amazon, though!)
I have a second edition of Survivors of the Chaos in the works; like Soldiers of God, this second edition will appear in ebook format only at first—paper versions of the second editions of Survivors and Soldiers have to wait due to budget constraints. For now, Infinity also offers an ebook version of Survivors.
Rogue Planet reviews. I made my writing budget as red as a Chinese dragon by updating this website. It might not look that different, but look around to get the feel. You can now click on book covers and go to the book’s Amazon page—cool! After 22 books, those old “Buy Now!” buttons began to look like a used car salesman sounds—harsh and annoying. I added some covers and two complete reviews for my new sci-fi book too. I usually only include extracts of reviews, but you won’t find these on Amazon! No, I didn’t pay for them (writers, never do that!), but they’re only on independent review sites.
Wesley Britton’s appears ONLY on BookPleasures while Sherri Fulmer Moore’s (no relation) ONLY on Readers’ Favorite. I need more on Amazon, of course. You can have a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. In fact, if you review the ebook version, I can sweeten the deal with another freebie from my catalog—no review obligation, just a thank you for being a reviewer. (Sorry, the extra freebie offer only applies to the ebook version. I get a deal on the paper version, but Amazon’s shipping charge—almost the price of the book—kills me.) This review policy applies to ANY BOOK in my catalog.
Free PDFs for the asking. I can offer several. Query me via email (contact page) and I’ll shoot off the one you want. Available are: Mayhem, Murder, and Music (short story collection), Escape from Earth (novella), and Writing Fiction (short course). They represent material I decided not to publish to help my book publishing budget out a wee bit. I also saved by not adding a download option for the PDFs in my recent website upgrades. And don’t worry—after I send a PDF off to you in return email, your email disappears from my system. I respect your privacy.
Where to buy my books. Well, not here. I don’t sell things from this website. I don’t display ads either. I do endorse some products (see the “Join the Conversation” webpage)—I see nothing wrong with that because the endorsements show some of my tastes. I do offer quality entertainment at reasonable prices, though. My ebooks are all less than $4 save one (that will change sooner than later, I hope), and my recent trade paperbacks are around $10.
Assuming you don’t have a peg leg and are not wearing an eyepatch (see the first mini-post), you might want to know where to buy my books, though. You can find all of my books on Amazon, ebooks and paper. Many of my ebooks are also available on Smashwords and its associated retailers (Apple, B&N, Kobo, and so forth). Because no book is exclusive to Amazon now, you will find promotions only on Smashwords now (see below for an example). (Above I mentioned the Infinity and Xlibris bookstores for old POD editions, most with at least ebook second editions now.)
“Clones and Mutants Trilogy” on sale. Some authors bundle a series or part of a series. Here’s an alternative: from now until July 1, all three books in the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy” are on sale AT SMASHWORDS, $0.99 for each ebook, reduced from $2.99. The clones make their appearance in Full Medical (coupon code VJ44L) as part of a complex government conspiracy, they combine forces with the mutant in Evil Agenda (coupon code LE48D) to thwart another plot, and they all save the world in No Amber Waves of Grain (coupon code PZ86X). These aren’t comic book characters like X-Men—they’re real people who work to halt an apocalyptic future. Use the links and go directly to Smashwords to enter the coupon codes and get hours of summer reading for only $3. (Amazon addicts, did you know Smashwords also sells .mobi files for your Kindle? They handle all popular ebook formats.) Pass the word about this sale to your relatives and friends.
In libris libertas…
