News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #74…
Item: Attacking Amazon. OK, I said I wouldn’t weigh in on the Amazon v. Hachette kerfuffle anymore, but I must say here that the one-sidedness continues. Paul Krugman, NY Times columnist and ex-economist, wrote in his column last Monday, “Amazon has too much power and uses that power to hurt America.” Holy Jumpin’ Jokers, Batman, they must be worse than ISIS! Do we need boots-on-the-ground, Paul, to invade the Amazon warehouses that are hurting America? Is Bezos going to terrorize Patterson and the other 899 one-percent authors throwing their financial weight around and wringing their hands about the evil man?
Should we ask the Secret Service, as bad as it is, to start guarding these irreplaceable, fearful, and unhappy “best selling” authors, faithful disciples of the Big Five, or have SWAT teams move in on all the thousands of indie authors who follow the teachings of Iman Bezos? Or, Paul, are you just suffering early dementia but aren’t willing to admit it? If not, you should stick to your usual modus operandi of bloviating about economics and politics and such, i.e. things where you can better pretend that you have something intelligent to offer to your readers.
And then we have Kobo mogul Michael Tamblyn telling indie writers they’re next in line for Amazon’s author-oppressing tactics. What’s Kobo? most of my readers might ask. That anyone has to ask means they’re not big players, but they are Amazon competitors, i.e. book retailers. But Kobo hasn’t done anything for me. Sure, Smashwords distributes to them, as they do with many other retailers, but Smashwords hasn’t done much for me either. My take is that Kobo is more important for book sales outside this country, but that evil Amazon is pushing them there too. Because Amazon currently offers just about everything I need in order to release my ebooks, including Prime (borrowing) and Countdown (sales opportunities) for my KDP Select ebooks, I’ll pay more attention to Amazon, thank you, until I decide, not Mr. Tamblyn, whether it doesn’t make smart business sense to do so.
Of course, Amazon is a retailer and Smashwords is a retailer and distributor, so one can argue for diversity and use both. That increases the cost of releasing an ebook about 33% for me though, so I tend to only use it for my sci-fi novels—for some reason, sci-fi isn’t very popular anymore (maybe I need to write a Fifty Shades of ET Love series, or a vampire romance that takes place in a lunar penal colony). Should I expand an ebook’s release to other retailers like Kobo? Should I produce pbooks to capture a few readers who still don’t have an e-reader (Amazon has a Kindle app for most devices)? Sure, I could do all that, and produce fewer books. It’s a trade-off. My muses don’t want that though, because they know I have many untold stories in me and are pushy—they want more books from me. Ergo, I usually don’t waste energy opposing them. Now, if only my speed reading capabilities were transferable into speed writing….
Item: World Enough and Crime will be released this Sunday, Oct. 26! My “The Case of the Carriageless Horse,” Detective Castilblanco’s first case, appears as a short story in this anthology, a collection of entertaining stories that will satisfy the reading appetite of any mystery and crime lover. (You can pre-order now by using the link I just gave.) I wrote this story partially motivated by my disenchantment with NYC Mayor De Blasio’s desire to rid the city of the horse-drawn carriages in and around Central Park. I might agree with him on some things, but he’s completely wrong about that—it would eliminate another charming aspect of NYC life, not to mention putting in danger the livelihood of these noble steeds. Maybe his goal is to reduce the city to a sterile dystopia? Liam Neeson is another person who thinks the mayor’s plan is stupid pandering to the PETA crowd, so I’m in good company. Sure, the horses need to be protected—they are. But they were bred for this job by humans, who now want to take away their birthright. I wish other famous city folk would speak out against De Blasio’s asinine proposal!
Item: The Collector is coming soon! I hate to be repetitive, but this is just a reminder that the next entry into the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series” will be released soon. I know all who follow this detective duo will enjoy this one. This story, like all my crime stories, also discusses some problems we shouldn’t ignore as a society. I don’t propose any solutions (other than having more concerned people like Chen and Castilblanco), but we can’t live in moral ambiguity and ignore them. And, if you liked The Thomas Crown Affair and The Monument Men, you’ll enjoy the backdrop of art dealers and art thieves. And, if you want to jump into the series, now is the time, because all novels in the series can stand alone. In particular, you can read them in any order. Enjoy!
Item: Don’t forget the Pumpkin Promo! Soldiers of God, Aristocrats and Assassins, and Muddlin’ Through will all be on sale for $1.99 from Oct. 30 to Nov. 5. These are all ebooks released this year, 2014, so they’ll return to their $4.99 price after the sale. Don’t miss the opportunity to start the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series” with Aristocrats and Assassins. Get on the Mary Jo Melendez roller coaster at the beginning of her series with Muddlin’ Through; a new adventure is coming next year, 2015. And Soldiers of God offers that bridge between the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy” and the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” filling in details readers of those two series might have wondered about.
Item: A challenge. You’ve seen those cable TV marathons, six or seven episodes of Castle, NCIS, Rizzoli and Isles, etc. With the NYC marathon coming up, what about a Steven M. Moore Marathon? All the following ebooks are sequentially connected, separate points on a continuous timeline spanning from 2014 to far in the future in one of my parallel universes: The Midas Bomb, Angels Need Not Apply, Teeter-Totter between Love and Murder, Aristocrats and Assassins, The Collector, The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan, Full Medical, Evil Agenda, No Amber Waves of Grain, Soldiers of God, Survivors of the Chaos, Sing a Samba Galactica, and Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand!
That’s one hell of a marathon! (I could go to Amazon and get an approximate word count, but that might scare you away.) You can even add to this list: the YA novel The Secret Lab is contemporary with Survivors of the Chaos, and Pasodobles in a Quantum Stringscape contains the Doctor Carlos stories, which take place after Come Dance a Cumbia; both are set in the same fictional universe Not many authors can offer you a meta-series like this one. Maybe you’re going to the ISS for a while (The Secret Lab takes place there), or Antarctica for six months (one continent I haven’t visited in my ebooks), or you just want to simplify your entertainment life during the long winter that’s coming to the northern Gaia latitudes. I’d love to join you, in fact, but I already know how all the stories end for some reason. I envy you.
[Note: you can see all my ebook and short story offerings by visiting my “Books and Short Stories” webpage.]
In libris libertas….
