Item: Refreshing and discouraging.  The plethora of new indie authors and entertaining indie ebooks is both refreshing and discouraging.  Discouraging because it’s harder with each passing week for a writer to rise above that vast sea of talent and become noticed.  You can’t even give ebooks away anymore, at least not in the numbers seen a few years ago, and the new price points for indie ebooks are so low that an indie writer has to sell many of them just to recover costs—forget about making a living.

It’s also refreshing because so many writers have so many interesting tales to tell that even avid readers are overwhelmed with good reading choices.  How this all shakes out is about as unpredictable as the stock market, but it seems like the number of readers is trending down while the number of writers is trending up.  The worst of times, the best of times, to say the least (and to plagiarize Dickens).

To my few readers out there, I thank you.  I know you have other reading choices—man, do I know that!  That you’ve let me tiptoe around your mind and entertain you a wee bit is wonderful.  That’s my goal.  I always say that if each one of my many ebooks entertains even one reader, it’s a success.  I might not recover the costs incurred producing that ebook, but, like the old medieval bard, if I receive your “story well told” and a few coins, I’m a happy fellow.  (Of course, I can’t keep on doing this ad infinitum.  For readers wanting more new and original voices, read the next mini-post.)

Item: Foreign authors.  Readers in the U.S. shouldn’t overlook some excellent ebooks coming from across the pond, in English or in translation (or a foreign language your read in, for that matter—FYI, mine’s Spanish).  And vice versa, of course.  Europe has been slower about adopting the ebook paradigm, but it’s taking off there as well, and Amazon has author pages for many countries overseas.  Two recent ebooks I reviewed were very entertaining and are worthwhile mentioning again: Reluctantly Charmed by Irish author Ellie O’Neill, and Shadow Ritual by French authors Giacometti and Revene.  My reviews of their ebooks can be found on Bookpleasures.  While we avid readers have many good reads from American authors, we shouldn’t forget that reading entertainment can be found  almost anywhere—it’s a small world and getting smaller every day.  And ebooks by foreign authors are an inexpensive way to travel and see that world!

Item: April/May’s “Señoritas Peligrosas.”  Anyone reading this probably knows I have four series.  Ideally, a series is a collection of stand-alone ebooks with some common characters, both heroes and villains and their friends.  “Stand-alone” means the reader can jump in almost anywhere and not get lost for lack of background info—mine satisfy that condition (one reviewer commented that I should teach a course on how to meet that “ideal”—I love reviewers who say things like that!).

Nevertheless, I can group together my ebooks in other ways.  Continuing the international theme and giving a shout out to those with Hispanic heritage, for April (yeah, I know, we’re halfway through) I’m proposing a grouping of ebooks I’ll call “Las Señoritas Peligrosas,” loosely translated as “The Dangerous Misses.”  These ebooks feature young, strong, smart, and energetic Hispanic women.  They are Jayashree “Jay” Sandoval from Full Medical; Alicia Castro from Angels Need Not Apply; and María José “Mary Jo” Melendez from Muddlin’ Through.

“OK,” you say, “so what?”  Here’s what’s in it for you: The first ten (10) readers who buy any one of these ebooks can receive another from the list for free!  To receive your free ebook, drop me an email with an e-copy of your Amazon receipt attached (your only personal info on it is a confirmation number—I confirmed that on one of my own receipts).  I need this receipt for two reasons: (1) to gift you your ebook through Amazon, I need an email address; and (2) I need confirmation that you bought the first ebook.  (Don’t worry.  Both email and attachment will be discarded after I send you your free ebook.  I don’t keep stuff like that around.)

This isn’t a contest!  It’s just a way to say thank you for trying some of my ebooks.  The offer lasts until the end of May, or until I have ten requests.  It’s a trial run: If there’s enough interest, I’ll create other groupings.  Some I have in mind: “Wonder Women,” “Vladimir,” “Killer Bugs,” and “Strange ETs.”  “Why not more than ten readers?” you ask.  Because I don’t have a secretary!

Item: Reviewing my ebooks.  Note that the above offer carries no obligation.  You’ll basically receive two ebooks for the price of one.  That’s a free ebook in anyone’s accounting system.  You can also read any ebook in my catalog for free in return for an honest review (for ebooks available on Smashwords, please specify the format—for Amazon, I know it’s mobi).  Honest means candid.  Reviews are the only feedback an author has, beyond critique groups, which I don’t recommend for many reasons (two are clashing egos and petty jealousies, which I experienced several times way back when).  I do communicate with readers, though, so if you just want to email me and say, “Steve, you screwed up with…,” that’s a personalized review of sorts, and I’ll certainly thank you for it and mull it over.  You might be onto something!  (Just don’t tell me that I should write erotica.)

Item: Story Cartel.  Continuing the review theme, when I heard about the idea behind this website, I thought, “That sounds great!  Is this too good to be true?”  The answer is yes!  Remember, my standing advice to writers is: never ever pay for book reviews!  Sending them their free ebook to review should be pay enough.  About this site, though: First thing I noticed, even before I could do anything there, was that I had to join (no scouting around their site is allowed when you first land—you’ll feel like an Amazon explorer in the 19^th century).  That immediately turned my radar on to stare mode!  But, silly me, I still joined.  I then discovered their “point system.”  Offering your ebook free to reviewers in exchange for an honest review for Story Cartel means you “buy points” in order to do that.  I suppose their justification is that it defrays the costs of running the website.  Well, maybe, if you count people’s salaries.  I run a website, so I know something about costs.  And if any number of people fall for this, this Cartel will more than defray those costs!

Moreover, they ask for e-files I don’t have, and many writers won’t have if they pay someone to format their ebooks.  In fact, I’d suggest that you don’t even have those files on your computer, given the nefarious number of hackers out there ready to grab onto your files and charge you a ransom.  (I guess they could try to ransom those MS Word files I’ve sent to my formatter, but I have those backed up the old-fashioned way—no clouds for me.)  Bottom line: Story Cartel is just a clever way to get you to pay for reviews—and the latter aren’t even guaranteed.  (By the way, they’re endorsed by Indies Unlimited, another site on my blacklist.)  I wrote Story Cartel with my complaints, telling them to de-enroll me.  We’ll see if they respond (I’ve been waiting since Monday).  If they don’t, I’ll be back—I don’t want their newsletter clogging up my in-box.  And you, dear author friend, can put your ebook out there, and offer a free one in exchange for an honest review, and do it all for free on Goodreads!

Item: Book review exchanges.  I’ve had a few people ask me to do a book review exchange—that means s/he’ll review my ebook if I review her/his.  I won’t do that.  The reason is simple: it leads to “fluffy reviews” (for example, if I give you a great review, you’ll feel compelled to give me one too, or the logical contrapositive of that), and those only serve authors, not necessarily readers.  That doesn’t mean that I don’t welcome reviews from authors.  Contrary to Amazon’s belief, an author honestly reviewing a book helps both readers and writers because the author-reviewer knows quite a bit about writing mechanics.  That’s why I review for Bookpleasures.  I can be candid with my reviews there—I couldn’t be in a review exchange.  (When I send an ebook to an author for a review, it’s always in exchange for an honest review, but many times I will add, “You’re under no obligation to review this book,” to get them off the hook—many won’t write the review if they find too much fault with the book.  I don’t like that practice, because it means real crappy ebooks go unscathed and their authors don’t learn anything, but it does make some sense.)

The other comment I made last week still holds, though.  Authors should be reviewers too, if only to see what other writers are doing.  (For the same reasons, and even more so, they should be avid readers.)  Let’s face it, folks!  Every plot conceivable has already been explored many times over.  Knowing that Tom Clancy wrote about the royals in Patriot Games didn’t stop me from writing Aristocrats and Assassins.  I gave my own spin on that plot—I’d like to think I did it better than Clancy (you’ll never know unless you’ve read both books).  Consider romance novels.  X meets Y (today X and Y can be either girl or boy, which is a different and now accepted wrinkle—don’t try it in Christian Lit, though); X enters a relationship with Y; and something romantic and maybe interesting happens.  That’s a romance novel in a nutshell.  How authors spin those basic plots is what makes wonderful reading for readers and allows writers to be creative.

Item: My new sci-fi novel.  “People of Earth!  You’ve just won a complete makeover of your society that brings peace and prosperity.  What will you do next?”  “Why, go to Mars, of course!”  More than Human: The Mensa Contagion is an epic sci-fi tale that relates how an invading ET virus affects Earth’s social structures and subsequent space exploration.  Coming soon.  (BTW, if you missed them,  this week’s previous blog posts were all about this upcoming novel.)

Item: Smashwords kerfuffle.  I like Mr. Coker.  I think he had/has a great idea with Smashwords.  When I can afford it, I put my ebooks on his site too, because they distribute to Amazon’s competitors (yeah, Amazon has some in the indie world, and I probably have just as many readers there as with Amazon)—places like Apple, B&N, Kobo, and so forth, not to mention their connection to Scribd and Oyster lending services.  For now, I only use Smashwords for ebooks with a sci-fi flavor, so I’ll probably scratch the bottom of my writing budget’s barrel and put More than Human: The Mensa Contagion on there too (see just above for the blurb).

You’ll find my “Clones and Mutants Trilogy” and “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” on Smashwords, for example (Survivors of the Chaos is an exception to the latter, but that’s from Infinity, and they already distribute everywhere).  Smashwords’ ebooks are available in epub, mobi, pdf, lrf, pdb, and html formats (and that’s why Smashwords can distribute to B&N, Kobo, and so forth—mobi is for Kindles, so they even compete with Amazon).  So what’ my beef with Smashwords?  The short answer: authors with a catalog are invisible there.

Let me explain.  I was thinking about PR and marketing last week (yeah, I don’t do that enough) and decided to compare Amazon’s filtering choices to Smashwords’.  While Smashwords’ price filters are better than Amazon’s, their other filtering options aren’t.  Those latter choices are “Newest,” “Best Sellers,” “Units Sold,” “Most Downloads,” and “Highest Rated.”  The first automatically excludes my “old ebooks” (while 21^st century, some even 2014, they’re not 2015—my most recent ebooks are on Amazon, in fact).  The next three put my ebooks into a vicious circle—they don’t meet any of these conditions and never will because no visitor to the site will ever see them.  I’m guessing the last is referring to book reviews.  I don’t have many, even on Amazon, but those Amazon reviews won’t be seen on Smashwords.  (And maybe a buyer on B&N reviews an ebook or two, but that review never finds its way to Smashwords either.)

My conclusion: authors with a catalog (that is, a list of one or more ebooks published before 2015) won’t ever get much exposure on the Smashwords site.  It’s no wonder that I reach more readers via B&N and Kobo where Smashwords distributes.  I’ve never been to those sites, but I imagine their filtering options must be a lot better than Smashwords’.  Writers who use Smashwords and have a catalog of previous ebooks should drop them an email and complain.  I did.  Maybe if enough of us do it, they’ll make some changes.

Item: MFAs revisited.  In a recent post titled “Literature, Journalism, or MFA Degree?” (see the “Writing” archive), I argued in favor of a journalism degree over a literature or MFA degree.  Cecilia Capuzzi Simon in “The Degree They Love to Hate” (NY Times Education Life Supplement, Sunday, April 12) presents a fairly comprehensive analysis of MFA degree programs (what? The Times actually has an article that’s unbiased about writing?).  Beyond their emphasis on “literary fiction,” that catch-all nothing-genre populated mostly by academics writing for other academics, there’s one thing about MFAs I mentioned and this author didn’t: A storyteller with a fascinating story to tell is the first requisite for fiction, and s/he can’t create these stories out of thin air.  Young MFAs better get some life experiences before they start writing, in other words.  (By the way, I don’t hate MFA degrees, but they often share the same negatives I made above about critique groups, because that’s the way they’re often run.  They’re also very expensive.  A double whammy for almost everyone, to be sure.)

In elibris libertas….

 

This entry was posted on Friday, April 17th, 2015 at 4:10 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.