News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #54…
#301: Name recognition at work…and play? If any author needs a demo of the power of name recognition, the latest J. K. Rowling gig provides it. Ms. Rowling, saying she wanted unbiased opinions on her new venture into detective stories, published The Cuckoo’s Calling under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. Until last week, sales of the book were underwhelming. When it was announced who the real author is, sales took off, just in time to accompany the release of her last novel in paperback. Now bookstores can’t keep up with the Cuckoo’s hard copies.
These events also show the power of ebooks and have Rowling’s publisher wringing his hands. People are flooding to the ebook version. While the Little, Brown people desperately try to catch up with demand for more hard copies, it’s likely that ebook buyers will exhaust the pool of thousands of wannabe readers, leaving the publisher with hundreds of unwanted hard copies. If they’d been smart, they would have just released an ebook of the Cuckoo, at a more reasonable price, of course. It will probably all work out for Ms. Rowling, of course, who is becoming more of a savvy businesswoman and less of a writer as time passes.
#302: WD ESP? Readers will remember that I’ve been lamenting for a while (I updated my lament just last week) about the lack of a true Kindle edition for WD (Writer’s Digest). Will apparently they now have one—$14.95 for the year’s subscription. It’s almost like the WD people had ESP, though I have no idea why our minds might be in tune.
Reviews are mixed. Apparently, there are problems with WD running on Kindle Fire. These are possibly attributable to Amazon. We had some Kindle Fire compatibility problems with my last ebook releases—they were ably solved by Donna Carrick via reformatting. You might want to wait until Amazon and WD find a solution. (I hate to recommend that anyone be a beta tester.)
#303: Strange justification for B&N book barns? David Carr wrote a strange opinion column in Monday’s July 15 NY Times that left me scratching my head. It was titled “Why Barnes and Noble is Good for Amazon.” His thesis is that the B&N book barns offer the buyer the chance to browse for new stuff among all those books so they can later go and buy them online from Amazon. Huh? That doesn’t sound like a very good business model for these super-sized bookstores.
He uses as an example the B&N book barn in Clifton, NJ, just down the road from us on Route 3 heading into the Lincoln Tunnel. This is the antithesis of a quiet little bookstore. It’s true that you can peruse the books published by the Big Six—rather, Big Five, now that Penguin and Random House have combined. Carr says you can browse and find that rare book that will delight you. I’m sorry, David, if you’re so naïve to think that all the books that might delight me can be found in a B&N book barn. They are, after all, just outlet stores for the Big Five and maybe a few smaller imprints (don’t blink—your favorite small imprint will soon be bought by one of the Big Five). Not many small imprint books and zero indie books can be found there (they might order the small imprint book for you, but rarely an indie).
Mr. Carr also champions that Clifton book barn because it has a Starbucks. C’mon! Their coffee is so bad that I wouldn’t be able to tell whether it was that burned-toast beverage or the inflated price the Big Five wants me to pay for the book that’s giving me the acid reflux (hmm…maybe that’s the strategy?). Even if B&N harbored anywhere near the number of books I can find on Amazon, or even if the coffee was the best in the world, why would I want to go to a New Jersey strip mall just off a noisy Route 3 (the noise is 24/7, by the way)?
I can browse just fine on Amazon, thank you. I can even browse just fine on B&N’s website, although it’s less user friendly than Amazon. (I do admit that all the other crap that Amazon sells gets in the way.) And I can find nice mom & pop traditional bookstores that are quiet, peaceful refuges away from highway traffic and bustling malls…and Starbucks. Some of them even have older books, used books, and out-of-print books. (I completed Greg Benford’s Galaxy Center series that way, although my collection is all paperback.)
Of course, Mr. Carr, and all other staff members of the NY Times reporting on the book business, including the Apple lawsuit, have an agenda: it’s company policy to support the Big Five because the NY Times company itself is a big-time publisher. Not big in the readership sense—that’s smaller every year—but big in the sense that they and the Big Five are large dinosaurs just waiting for their demise. Their mewing complaints are not very helpful at all.
#304: Speaking of Apple…. Apple lost. They’re going to appeal. Hopefully, they will lose again. Many people see this as a win for Amazon. Maybe. Let’s take Stephen King’s Under the Dome as an example. I couldn’t find the original 2009 edition on Amazon, but I could probably find it in a bookstore. I only found the new “media tie-in” edition (I really don’t want to know what that means, thank you). The paperback is $13.19 on Amazon. The ebook is $7.99. The price for the ebook doesn’t seem too bad, considering the book is 1000+ pages (a real door-stopper, what I use most King books for, gifts because I never buy them), but it’s a four-year-old book. Still, Big Five prices are coming down.
That’s not a consequence of the Apple lawsuit. In fact, the Big Six settled with the government long ago (well, long ago in terms of today’s internet environment!). They are trying to cope with the indie ebook phenomenon. They’re not doing it well—and that’s giving them the benefit of the doubt (they purposely hide book sales figures). They’re still shafting writers on royalties and charging too much in order to pay for all their bloated overhead, but their ebook prices are coming down. They have to. I think they’re beginning to recognize there are too many people like me who refuse to pay more than $10 for an ebook (Rowling’s just makes it, if I’m not mistaken, but I won’t buy it)…no matter who the author is.
Where and when is all this price-maneuvering going to stop? I wish I knew. I think I’m pricing my ebooks competitively. I do know that, as a consumer, I’m benefitting. You are too. It’s a readers’ market, folks! Now we just need to get more people reading. Download an ebook and go to it. Reading is the most intellectual fun you can ever have—if you’re not writing, that is! (The only other thing that tops that fun is probably not considered intellectual and is not a topic for this blog.)
#305: So sorry you missed them…. My summer promos are over for now. For those who downloaded one or more of my KDP Select freebies, thank you. If you can, write a short review telling other readers what you liked about the book. Each time I receive a review, my day becomes a bit brighter (maybe cooler is the right word, considering the summer heat wave). For those who missed the download, shame on you! How could you pass up some great summer reading that was at such a bargain price—free!
In particular, my two 2013 ebook releases, The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan and Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder, are now back to their original price of $4.99. Hey, they’re new, and I put a lot of work into them to entertain you, the reader! You can still get a free copy, though, in exchange for an honest review, as long as my review budget lasts. Just contact me via the contact page at this website. This offer holds for all of my ebooks, although the older ones have less review budget left.
A case in point: sci-fi lovers should check out the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” my dystopian and futuristic bow to Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. Unlike Asimov, though, my imagined future has ETs in it, both naughty and nice. Like Asimov, I imagine a loose confederation I call ITUIP (Interstellar Trade Union of Independent Planets). I also have my version of the Mule, a mad industrialist who tries to dominate the Nexus, my name for the intertwined stringverses that make FTL possible (no warp drives for me!). If you’re truly a sci-fi fan, I think you’ll enjoy these books. Survivors of the Chaos, Sing a Samba Galactica, and Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand! are all available for review. My budget on Survivors is almost depleted, though, so, first come, first serve!
#306: Coming soon! The next book in the “Clones and Mutants Series,” No Amber Waves of Grain, and a new anthology of speculative fiction, Paso Dobles in a Quantum Stringscape, are in final editing. Look for them. I’m hoping for a fall release.
In libris libertas…
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