#157:  New!  Look for Pop Two Antacids and Have Some Java.  My new short story eBook anthology will be released exclusively on Amazon KDP Select.  Free over this Fathers’ Day weekend—this Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.  If you enjoyed NYPD detectives Chen and Castilblanco in The Midas Bomb and Angels Need Not Apply, you will enjoy these new cases starring the detective duo.  And, if you were reluctant to buy the novels, this is a painless way to meet these two crack detectives!  You will learn more about them and enjoy the thrills and suspense as they unravel some strange cases.

Either free or priced at $0.99 after Fathers’ Day weekend, this collection is inexpensive entertainment to take with you on summer vacation.  Enjoy!  (For those in the know, Castilblanco pops Tums to counteract the acid from the coffee.  Tums are to him like lollipops to Kojak.  I don’t mind using product names in my stories—be assured that these are not paid advertisements!  Nevertheless, I thought it was appropriate not to put a product name in a title.  What do you think?)

#158:  Full Medical is back!  For owners of non-Kindle eReaders (there are a few out there—readers using Sony, Nook, iPad, etc), Full Medical has returned to active status on Smashwords.  This means Smashwords will again distribute to other online eBook retailers (Sony, B&N, Apple, etc, all transparent to you) as well as sell the sci-fi thriller at their own site.  It’s still a bargain at $4.99.  (For Kindle owners, it never went anywhere, of course, but it was free for a few days—hence the temporary Amazon exclusive.)  Evil Agenda, its sequel in the “Clones and Mutants Series,” is $2.99 still.  Consequently, you can buy the complete series for $7.98.  Enjoy the thrills that will keep you from dozing off on the beach this summer and turning into a cooked lobster!  Take this Rx with a piña colada or mojito to maximize the effect (the thrills, not the sunburn).

#159:  Other summer reading?  In addition to the books named above, sci-fi fans should check out Survivors of the Chaos and Sing a Samba Galactica where you can follow future human society through social singularity to first encounter—meeting both friendly ETs and unfriendly ones.  Another space adventure can be found in The Secret Lab, for young adults and adults young at heart.  All the books mentioned above can be obtained as inexpensive eBooks (The Secret Lab is also $0.99 and all others less than $9).  Some books are also still available as trade paperbacks.  Peruse my catalog on the “Books and Short Stories” webpage.  You have a wide selection of books there.

You should also check out those books that have received a good review from me or recommended books on “Steve’s Bookshelf.”  Mysteries?  Check out the books by Donna Carrick and Carolyn Rose.  Thrillers?  Take a look at Fett and Langford’s CDC thriller and LaFleur’s thriller set in a New England town.  These four writers are indie authors and their four books will give you many hours of reading pleasure.

#160:  Are eBooks taking over?  Not yet, but the stats indicate that, for now, my decision to follow others down that exclusive eBook road is not just helping my productivity (I’m now limited by how fast I can write and edit quality stories, not by production costs).  My decision is echoed throughout the self-pubbing world.  Even the Big Six are reluctantly jumping on the eBook bandwagon—a bit late, perhaps, and some of them are still learning about formatting.

According to Bowker’s, 211,269 self-pubbed books (eBooks, trade paperbacks, and hardcovers) were published in 2011.  This number is based on ISBN’s.  For eBooks, many indie authors skip the ISBN now and use Amazon’s ASIN, which is free, so who knows what the real number is?  This doubt is exacerbated by the question about whether Bowker’s (or anyone else, for that matter) counts duplicate titles (e.g. books that are in both trade paperback and eBook formats, with different ISBN’s, like some of mine, might be counted twice?).

Whatever the number, it indicates that the competition is ferocious and that it’s increasingly difficult for any author to create a wave that rises above the average sea level of all these titles.  Of course, indie authors are also competing with Big Six titles and titles released by small publishing houses.  On the other hand, it’s a great time for the consumer—you, the reader!  You have never had so much to choose from.

If you break that 200k+ number down, it becomes a bit less competitive for the fiction writer—45% of the total are fiction books.  The average price for fiction books was $6.94 (biased down by inexpensive eBooks); the average price for non-fiction was $19.32 (biased up by expensive trade paperbacks and even more expensive hardcovers).

Another way to break the number down is to consider only eBooks.  They account for 41% of the self-pubbed books but only 11% of sales.  Here they are counting dollars, which is stupid—the higher prices of trade paperbacks and hardbounds makes the eBook sales figures look bad.  The eBook average price was $3.18, trade paperback $12.08, and hardcover $14.40.  If they consistently counted titles, the eBook percentage would be much higher—and will probably be astounding for 2012!

For the publishing industry in general, non-eBook sales are declining—bad news for the Big Six and terrible news for their associated and subservient mega-bookstores.  The first depend heavily on their non-digital sales (paperbacks and hardcovers).  The second have invested heavily in infrastructure designed to display thousands of non-digital books.  The publishing industry, however, is improving if you count titles—eBooks are making up for the loss in non-digital sales.

One recent news item points to changing attitudes in the Big Six and their slate of best-selling authors:  The author of Gravity’s Rainbow and other “literary novels,” Thomas Pynchon, a long-time holdout against eBooks, has just signed a deal with Penguin Press to put all his backlog of books into eBook formats.  (Too bad he didn’t do it before authorities “discovered” Apple’s agency deal.)  I predict that more and more old-time authors will start doing the same (or their heirs) because it stretches those royalties into a new format.  I, for one, enjoy keeping books I like around (“literary novels” aren’t among these, though—sorry, Thomas).  That’s much easier to do if I store them on my Kindle!

The answer to the question “Are eBooks taking over?” can only be “Not yet…for 2011.”  Retiring baby boomers with time on their hands might keep the non-digital publishing world buoyed up for a long time.  However, I’d be willing to bet that the readers among them are also just as wired-in as their children and grandchildren.  I don’t have the money to back up my bet, but time will certainly tell us whether the digital revolution will change the world of book publishing as much as it did the music industry.

[Note:  The figures cited were taken from Dan Poynter’s Newsletter and he credits Bowker’s.  My comments are, of course, my own and don’t necessarily agree with Mr. Poynter’s opinions—I take full responsibility for them.]

#161:  Speaking of biasing book sales figures….  The mommy-porn Fifty Shades series still continues to be 1-2-3 on the NY Times trade paperback and eBook bestsellers lists.  Sex shops are celebrating their bonanza as people flock to them to buy all the toys described in the books.  I heard they’re even going to make a movie.  Does anyone have a problem with this?

More egregious attacks on literary art come from celebrities (?) who tell all, with the help of a ghost writer, of course.  A recent example is the book by Edwards’ mistress—its title essentially has “I’ll tell it all” in it.  I hope said mistress admits to destroying a family and making the last days on Earth for Edwards’ wife a living hell.  The mistress probably doesn’t, but I certainly won’t read the book to find out.

I suppose it’s worse when a Hollywood star “writes” a book and then takes it on tour.  Books by celebrities sell well and the Big Six seem to specialize in them now.  They even pay for part of the tours, writing it off as advertising, because that advertising comes back ten-fold as the scandal junkies get their fixes.  “Pop culture,” I believe it’s called, and book sales stemming from it, either bias book sales to look good, or terribly bad, depending on your moral outrage.

Conclusion:  When the pundits say book publishing is healthy in America, it’s time to make the Clintonesque observation, “It depends on what the meaning of ‘healthy’ is.”

#162:  Hollywood rediscovers fairy tales?  Or, should I ask, is Hollywood making big profits with fractured fairy tales (apologies to Rocky and Bullwinkle)?  It all started with ABC’s Once Upon a Time, where TV-Hollywood weekly twists and distorts your favorite fairy tale stories and characters into tales of dark adventure, violence and intrigue (this was first for the viewer—I have no idea about the movie production deadlines).

Next was the Julia Roberts’ vehicle Mirror, Mirror—a bit dark at times but more like the Griswold’s fairy-tale vacation (Julia lampoons the evil queen from the classic Snow White tale).  Finally, we have Snow White and the Huntsman, a visual feast for the eyes with great acting, great scenery, and great music (all except for the last song when the credits rolled—it turned me off completely)—masterful performances by Charlize Theron as the wicked queen, and newcomers Chris Hemsworth and Kristen Stewart, both surpassing their Avengers and Twilight roles, as the Huntsman and Snow White.

If I had to rank the evil queens in these three Hollywood versions of the Snow White tale, I’d choose Charlize Theron, Lana Parrilla, and Julia Roberts, in that order.  Ms. Parrilla plays two roles, remember, and does an admirable job.  So do Once Upon a Time’s writers—much better than in their Lost debacle (the ending that left everyone saying, “What just happened?”).  Of course, TV budgets can’t compare with movie budgets—this is why Mirror, Mirror was a bit disappointing (special effects often interfering with the story) and Snow White and the Huntsman perhaps had an unfair advantage (it’s still the best film this summer!—just the right amount of special effects to recreate the magic).

Fairy tales can be considered a subgenre of fantasy.  Unlike vampires, werewolves, zombies and that whole Harry Potter gang, they often speak more to universal truths and existentialist angst than any of the current crop of fantasy tales from book authors or Hollywood script writers.  Moreover, they are art pieces where the audio and visual can add synergistically and not serve as a distraction.  Unfortunately, like most of that supernatural zoo fad that is now running its course, fairy tales can only go so far—even new twists on old tales.  Writers (discounting the Lost fellows) have tended to avoid jumping on this bandwagon.  Hollywood writers and producers would do well to make sure that they don’t run their fairy tale bonanza into the ground.

In libris libertas….

 

This entry was posted on Friday, June 15th, 2012 at 4:00 am and is filed under News and Notices from the Writing Trenches. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.