Kindle DX

Amazon seems to have reduced the Kindle DX to $379. I love my DX!

Also, there's a new "graphite" DX here that looks pretty cool. A press release seems to indicate it has a new screen with better contrast. From Amazon: "Today Amazon.com is introducing the new latest generation Kindle DX and new lower price of $379, down from $489, and still with free 3G wireless-no monthly bills or annual contracts. Kindle DX is the 9.7-inch large screen member of Amazon's family of revolutionary portable readers. The new Kindle DX features a new graphite enclosure and our all new, high contrast electronic ink display with 50 percent better contrast for the clearest text and sharpest images. The new Kindle DX is available for pre-order starting today at www.amazon.com/kindledx and it ships July 7." So don't buy the old one; wait a week!

Also, no stats from me for the month, since Amazon seems to have muzzled us. I'll just say I did very, very well this month-- best month thus far-- and leave it at that:-).

Stats

Note to indie authors: Amazon's new DTP agreement has a confidentiality clause, which states you may not disclose stats or other info. No more stats from me, alas! So if you're curious as to whether the new 70% royalty benefits authors or not... you'll just have to keep wondering:-).

Royalties

Here's a helpful post on the new royalty structure (pointed out by Jody Wallace). I will say that I think most of my sales are from the US. Why? Because foreign buyers are charged an extra two dollars or thereabouts, and I've seen some complain that makes my 99 cents book too expensive. So this would make my raised prices $4.99, and I doubt too many will read an indie at that price. I could be wrong, though. The new DTP has royalty rates sorted out for you, and I'll report on how my sales shake out.

The big issue here is still Smashwords. They're basically saying that if some other third party discounts your book, Amazon will discount it to that amount, too, and pay you 70% on THAT amount. Smashwords premium catalog books are distributed to quite a few vendors, many of whom discount. I can't help but feel that the big loser here is going to be Smashwords (and I also can't help but wonder if that's deliberate). Most authors aren't making much through Smashwords, and if it comes down to either/or, they're going to pick Amazon. And that's too bad, because Smashwords has been very helpful to a lot of indie authors, and they don't deserve to be... smashed.

Dogs have feelings too

Oldest Kid and I were trying to watch Star Trek: DS9 last night. When we watch DVDs, we run them through the stereo system, and Hero sometimes takes exception to the low noises booming out of the subwoofer. Last night he wouldn't stop barking at the noises, no matter how much I told him to be quiet. At last, exasperated, I confined him upstairs. I was mad, and showed it in my posture, and I used the words "bad dog," too.

When I came back to get him forty-five minutes later, he came slowly to greet me, as if he were coming to his own execution. His eyes were filled with sorrow, and he had adopted his most submissive, cringing attitude, and was clearly saying, I know, I know... I'm a bad, bad dog, and you hate me now. I sat down on the floor and put my arms around his neck, and he immediately transformed into puppy mode, collapsing into my lap in a happy heap, rolling over, and waving his paws in the air, wiggling wildly all the while. You love me again! Yay!!!!!

Dogs are funny creatures. They are entirely dense about a lot of things, but they can be just as sensitive as humans to anger directed at them. Hero is far from Mr. Sensitive most of the time, but he knows when Mommy is mad, and he's just as eager as a human to make amends. He spent the rest of the night assuring me how much he loved me, and I made sure I gave him extra pats, too. There is nothing in this world more tragic than a sad-eyed dog!

Amazon

Amazon is back to normal today. Clearly they were messing with programming, as the new DTP system is now in place. I raised two books to $2.99, and despite warnings about how this would make them unavailable for sale for 24 hours, they still seem to be available (at 99 cents for now). They also have a new system for reporting royalties, which really sucks. I mean, really. On Firefox, it's too big for the screen, so you have to scroll in all directions, and it breaks things down by week, which looks really cluttered and confusing when you have six books for sale. I don't like it, but as long as they do in fact report royalties, I guess I shouldn't complain too much...

Ouch

One person on Kindleboards is reporting that Amazon sent him an email saying they were pulling his titles because he raised the price to $2.99 and they're still elsewhere at 99 cents (as I reported previously, it takes Smashwords a relatively long time to correct this stuff). Wow... pulling his titles is kind of harsh (surely lowering the Amazon price would be adequate?). I hope this is an automated system response, and that Amazon will be willing to work with authors who are caught in this sort of bind.

Meanwhile, every one of my books seems to be available for sale again EXCEPT my bestseller. I sincerely hope the sales rankings aren't functional right now. If NLaS drops badly in the rankings because it wasn't available, I shall be very... put out.

ETA: Update from Amazon: "Books in this category will not be removed/unpublished/banned from the website, but will be made unbuyable for a short time, to let other parts of our price matching logic catch up. We'll work on the wording of that message to make it more clear."

And my books are all selling again, yay!

OMG no one is buying my books!!!

I woke up from a nap and found that no one had bought my books all afternoon. OMG! No one loves me! No one is buying my books!

Well... turns out no one is buying ANY books. Amazon had some sort of server failure (maybe they were hacked, maybe they're instituting a new system, maybe something else), and all books were apparently offline. Looked like the forums might have been offline too. The books still seem to be unavailable. This is, of course, the problem with relying on one sales outlet-- if it's down, you don't sell books. But I trust Amazon to get it fixed a lot faster than a certain small press I've worked with in the past. Big companies can at least be counted on to get up and running again as fast as possible.

"You're screwed"

From Moriah Joven's blog entry (pointed out to me by Jody Wallace):

Writers: You’re screwed unless you put out your own stuff and you can market it. The old days are gone. “Getting” published is fine if that’s what you need to validate your soul. If you want better odds on getting to readers and making a little money, do it yourself. But dammit, do it right!

Bad writing, good reviews

While wandering around the Amazon forums, I saw a romance recommended I hadn't heard of before, so I went to check it out. (It's by no one who reads this blog, so don't get paranoid.) It was from a small press I'd never heard of (having looked at it, I think it's actually a few authors banding together, and possibly leaving reviews for each other), and it had six reviews. Five of them were of the glowing, four- and five-star variety. One, however, gave the book one star, and said that while it had potential, it had too many grammar and structural problems to be readable.

Curious, I downloaded the sample and read it. Just as the one-star reviewer said, it had potential. The story itself wasn't bad. But it read like bad fanfiction, with too many comma-free sentences, shifting of tenses, and short and choppy sentences. Getting through a full novel of that would have made me crazy, so I didn't download it.

When I went back and followed the link for the original "recommendation," it turned out to be the author herself. I also found she'd left herself TWO of the five-star reviews ("best book I have read in a very long time" and similar glowing verbiage), both of which implied that she was a reader, not the author. But when I checked the profile, it clearly identified her as the author of the book. If you're going to leave reviews for your own books pretending to be a real reader, you should probably not announce that you're the author who's written that title in your profile. Just sayin'.

Anyway, this is the kind of stuff that makes indies look bad, and I wish people wouldn't do it. But once again, I try to remind myself that I have no control over what other people do, and that I am only responsible for myself.

Raising prices

So as I said, I've been debating on Kindleboards whether raising prices is necessarily the best plan for everyone. Personally, I have always intended to raise my novels to $2.99 when the new royalty structure kicks in (though I'll leave the newest at the lower price for a month or so). But it will be interesting to see what effect that has. Never Love a Stranger has done great this month, earning me over $275 all on its own. If I were earning six times the royalties, clearly I'd be rolling in dough (well, okay, it's not like winning the lottery, but you take my point). However, the obvious question is whether the book would be ranked in the 300s if it were priced higher. I doubt it. But will it do well enough to continue earning more when I raise the price, or will the sales just stop?

It's hard to say, and it makes me nervous. Personally, I'm going for it, to see what happens. I certainly do understand why others might choose to stay at the lower price level, however.

Accomplished... not so much

Today I have:

-Cleaned parts of my house
-Argued with other authors on Kindleboards about whether it's reasonable for authors to stay at the 99 cent price point
-Shopped
-Thrown balls for dogs
-Cooked a pot of damn good chili

A good lazy summer day, really:-).

OT- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was the last Trek I watched all the way through (I didn't have cable when Voyager and Enterprise came out, and neither could be seen well on my local stations). When I first watched it, back when it started, I felt it was decent, but not up there with Next Generation. Now that I'm rewatching it, however, I feel that it's actually better than Next Gen.

I'm rewatching it from both ends at once (from the beginning with my daughter-- we just started season 2-- and from the end by myself; I've watched most of seasons 6 and 7), so my perceptions may be a bit odd. But what I like about it is that it isn't a copy of the original Trek. It's the first Trek that really tried a new path (and I really don't want to discuss whether or not it's a ripoff of Babylon 5, heh). It had long, complex story arcs that for the most part were well paid off. It had long romance arcs that got paid off, too-- you can see something building between Odo and Kira by the beginning of the second season, but they didn't get together till season six. Ditto with Bashir and Dax-- hints of that started in the very beginning, and in one sense it was never paid off, but in another it was, a long time later.

I think one problem a lot of people had with DS9 was that in season 4, they brought in Worf to bring up ratings, and the focus of the show necessarily shifted a bit. I like Worf (not my favorite Next Gen character, but I like him), so I didn't have a problem with it. At any rate, I felt that most of the original DS9 characters held their own just fine against him. And that's another thing I like better than Next Gen-- I like the characters and their relationships on DS9. It was the first Trek where they were allowed to get away from Roddenberry's decree that there shouldn't be serious conflict between characters. That led to the awesome feuding bromance between Odo and Quark, and the conflict-turned-bromance between O'Brien and Bashir. Not to mention the conflict between Kira and Sisko, and the larger conflict between religion and science (are the entities in the wormhole aliens, or the Prophets in their Temple?).

The only thing I don't like about DS9 is Avery Brooks. He has a beautiful deep voice, but I just do not like the way he delivers lines. He's way too pompous for my liking. I think he does okay as a Starfleet officer, but in more personal scenes (as in with friends, or with his son) Sisko just comes across as annoyingly stiff. He's my least favorite Starfleet captain, way behind Picard and Janeway. But Rene Auberjonois is amazing (Odo is my favorite DS9 character), and the rest of the cast does a great job, too. Overall, I think it's a very good show that's more consistent than Next Gen was.

*Scratches head*

Last night Never Love a Stranger suddenly took off in sales. Overnight it's jumped 200 points in the rankings (all the way back down to #336) and has had about 25 sales. I Googled but didn't find any blog post that might have promoted it (though it's been mentioned on a couple of Amazon threads, which could possibly account for it). Maybe it's just good luck. But Stranger was already far and away my best seller of the month, and now it's even more so. Now, however, I'm torn as to whether I want to raise its price to $2.99 right now. I'm worried it might be like killing the goose that laid the golden egg...

In other news, I was flattered by seeing myself mentioned on a thread asking for indie book recommendations. Someone suggested some indie romances, mentioned Stranger, and added, "ANYTHING by Ellen Fisher." Wow... thanks!

Sigh

So far today I've sold exactly zero copies of Love Remembered. I hate Saturdays. Doesn't anyone read on Saturdays?

Pricing

A fascinating thread here on Kindleboards that makes me grateful I've been too lazy to utilize Smashwords. Apparently your prices are only updated through Smashwords every so often, so changes can take quite a while to take effect. This means that if you try to raise your price on Amazon to comply with the new royalty model, they may refuse to pay you at the higher rate if your other prices elsewhere haven't gone up. I admit I've gotten kind of spoiled by Amazon-- changes only take a day or two, and I can see my royalties (or lack of them, today!) as they're earned. Working with Smashwords sounds like slightly more of a trial. (Although if you can sell thousands of copies as the iBookstore heats up, it may well be worth the effort!)

Good writing things

A blogger did a nice four-star review of Farthest Space and tweeted it up quite a bit. I've sold several copies since then, probably as a direct result of the review.

I sold nine copies of Love Remembered yesterday. Not a bad start. I just hope I sell that many today too!

Going over to the parents'-in-law house later to swim in the pool, have ribs, and have that birthday party for the kid. Should be fun.

I need a nap

I spent the morning taking my dad to the doctor. That involved an hour of waiting, with my dad agitating and saying over and over again, "The old doctor never made me wait! He was always in here just a minute after they brought me back! I don't understand why we have to wait so long!" All that repeated for an hour. At least the five-year-old was patient by comparison.

This afternoon I have to run out, order a cake, and get a few more presents for the nine-year-old's highly belated birthday party tomorrow. No rest for the weary, I guess...

On the up side, at least Love Remembered is up (and has sold a few copies!), and the Galaxy Express kindly mentioned me in this blog post.

Love Remembered...

... is now available on Kindle. This is a re-release but has been re-edited. It's a full-length colonial Virginia romance. Buy it here.

When Kindle titles don't sell

Lee Goldberg has an interesting post on Mark Terry, whose books for Kindle aren't selling well. His book Dancing in the Dark, is ranked around #104,000 in the Kindle store, and Terry says he's sold about thirty copies overall this month. He's also quoted as saying, "On the basis of what I've seen so far, I'm still leaning strongly toward traditional publishing venues."

I commented (though my comment has not yet shown up) saying I hadn't seen Mark posting on the Amazon boards. Maybe he has, and I just haven't noticed. But if he hasn't, I'd advise him to start there first. Part of the problem may be that established authors don't necessarily have a lot of time to wander around Amazon posting a whole lot. But there is really no other way to make yourself known over there, and you don't have to spend hours a day doing it-- in fact, posting too much is as bad as posting too little. Also, I notice Dancing in the Dark is priced at $1.99. If I were him, I'd drop one of my books to 99 cents for a month (yes, even despite the upcoming royalty change) and advertise THAT, too.

But all this still might result in books that doesn't sell. Some books just don't catch on, for no reason anyone can determine. He's got several others, too, and they all have good covers. But some of them are fairly recent. I'd like to think that one of them will catch on eventually, and lift the others. But if they don't? I don't know...

Anyway, if you're feeling like a thriller, this one might be worth checking out:-).

Grrrr on the old person

My dad couldn't get hold of me today (turned out my phone battery died, unbeknownst to me). He went into frantic mode and started calling every hour, and finally (after the usual several evening martinis) called the parents-in-law. They wound up sending my brother-in-law over to confirm I was okay, because Dad "couldn't sleep" due to worrying about my possible demise. I was pretty darn aggravated. Hello, old dude, I do NOT live alone. If I dropped dead of a heart attack, or even wound up in the hospital for some reason, my kids would most likely let you know about it!

Sheesh. Old people. I mean... just... sheesh. I try to have the proper grateful attitude that Dad's made it to ninety-three, but sometimes I just have to go sheesh.

Amazon

Amazon says their problems with the reporting of royalties are finally fixed.

However, I do notice they're taking an unusually long time to get Love Remembered up (though they're still within the 48-hour window). Admittedly they stopped to check the rights, but Stranger was available for sale not long after they asked for confirmation on that. I'd guess they've been so busy working out the reporting issue that they're a bit behind on other stuff. I'm trying to be patient, but I don't do patient well:-).

Good post

Good post at Self-Publishing Review, responding to the Salon article about slush. It says essentially that a lot of slush is a decent tradeoff, when the flip side is good books being published that otherwise would never have gotten the chance.

Rights

Sure enough, Amazon once again questioned if I had the rights to Love Remembered, and once again I referred them to NCP's handy-dandy Public Notice page. Hopefully they will accept that (as they did with Never Love a Stranger) and get my book up promptly.

"A bit pejorative"

Here's an interview with Sarah MacLachlan, president of Canadian publisher House of Anansi, that mentions self-publishing. Quotes and my thoughts:

I think publishers have a place as cultural aggregators. We put a stamp of approval on something by accepting it and by saying, "Yes we want to get behind this and put our resources behind it." That's something that a lot of people don't necessarily think about. Publishers add value.

Maybe, maybe not. Depends on the publisher, I guess. I will admit that most readers tend to assume that anything from one of the major publishers meets a certain minimum standard of quality, whereas indie publishing can be all over the map.

The other part is collection. Amazon is saying they're going to give you 70 per cent, but what happens on the day when Amazon decides not to pay you or takes two years to pay you? You're still a lone ranger out there trying to get your money back from them.

Personally, I'm a lot more worried about getting my money from a small or medium-sized press than from Amazon. But seriously, this is a concern for any writer dealing with any publisher. Suggesting that Amazon is somehow less likely to pay seems a bit disingenuous to me. And if Amazon does screw me over for some reason, at least I can quickly and easily pull my books, which is very unlike getting out of a contract with a traditional publisher.

I think anybody who wants to publish a book ultimately wants to have it published by somebody. In some way that gives them a sense of value, in saying "I wrote something that was good enough to be published by this company."

Personally, what I want when publishing a book is to make money and to reach readers. That's where the real sense of value comes from, for me. Others may feel differently.

Excerpt

Excerpt for Love Remembered is up here.

Love Remembered

I just published Love Remembered on Amazon. It'll take a day or two to go live, even if they don't ask me for proof of rights (as they did with Stranger). I've worked this one over, but it's still not perfect. It was my second book, and that shows, unfortunately. I did my best to get rid of the excessive adverbs and dialogue tags and general overwritten-ness, but there are other problems I couldn't fix without totally overhauling the whole thing. There are scenes that switch from one POV to another (fairly smoothly, I think, but I'd still never do that nowadays) and I think the suspense subplot is a bit on the bumpy side. Even so, I love the hero, probably best of all the heroes I've ever written, and I think overall it's a decent story. So up it goes, and I hope people will enjoy it. I'll try to get up a page with an excerpt on my site this afternoon.

An article

An interesting article here on a recent panel at "Untethered 2010 (Profitable Media in the Tablet Era)." It seems to have been generally more about how cool ereaders were than about how publishers can actually get readers to use them: Speakers were more than willing to talk about the cool things their devices and apps could do, and how widely we could expect them to spread in the near future, and there was even some talk of being responsive to consumer feedback, but nobody explained what readers were experiencing right now or what they really want from future devices.

A couple of quotes from the publishing side, from a discussion of "The Future of Book Publishing":

“Book publishing is not, contrary to what you may hear from time to time, in deep peril.”

“Our business model is not under threat… It’s about doing what we’ve always done — finding the best voices and marrying them to the best possible audience.”

“Publishers right now are learning about the fair market value of the product. Customers have [their own] perceptions of what content will [cost], and we’ll settle on some reasonable number. Enjoy the $9.99 bestseller while you can.”

And good quotes from Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books: “How do you not know what the consumers want by now?” she’d asked me during our earlier conversation, in response to another panel where media executives appeared unsure of what readers expected from them. “Consumers are so eager to talk back to companies… I remain eternally dumbfounded by the idea that [publishers] don’t know what consumers want.”

Stats update

As I posted earlier, Amazon has had a problem with their reporting of royalties for several days, but it seems to be fixed now, based on what other authors are saying. Now that my reported numbers are more or less correct, I have some milestones to report:

-Never Love a Stranger is my fourth indie book to pass a thousand downloads

-In the Mood is my first indie book to pass 1500 downloads

-Total sales for all my books have passed 5000 downloads

Price wars, part 2

The Kindle is now priced at $189.

Price wars

B&N has cut the Nook's price (to $199) and is introducing a new cheaper version ($149) as well. See this article for details.

Article on Konrath/Kilborn

Here's an article on Konrath's new horror novel (Endurance, written as Jack Kilborn), indie published on Amazon. The writer calls Konrath "the first real independent author" and says, "With all due respect to the others J. A. Konrath is the first author who’s not just using independent as a spring-board to get a deal from a Publisher and join the ranks of published authors who pretend Publishers are good guys because they cut the cheques."

Not sure I agree with that. There are likely other indies who are really devoted to independent publishing, and are really not looking for a deal with a publisher. And Konrath will sign a deal with a publisher if it's the right deal; his AmazonEncore deal makes that clear. I think Konrath's recent career moves show that authors have more choice now, and more ability to turn down offers that take too much away from the author. It doesn't mean we all must turn our backs on other forms of publishing en masse.

There are some typical arguments against indie publishing in the comments: "Konrath’s case is not typical for 99 percent of authors. There is soooooo much more to publishing than simply putting a book into circulation. The average unknown author (or even well-known midlist author) can barely get their most loyal readers to notice when they publish a book...If self-publishing an ebook guaranteed big sales for authors, yes, there’d be no need for publishers. Guess what? It doesn’t work that way."

Konrath is not typical. Granted. He's paying his bills on this stuff, i.e., making a living. Most indie writers will never achieve that. Most fiction writers will never achieve that, whether indie or traditionally published. So yeah, he's a fluke. But people are noticing indie writers on Amazon. Look at Vicki Tyley-- her first indie book on Amazon (Thin Blood) is at #15 right now, and has been ranked very high almost since she released it. Why? I have no idea, but clearly people have noticed her. This does not mean all indie authors will follow suit (or I'd be making a lot more money!). It does mean it's possible.

My canine King Lear

I put the dogs out for their last quick piddle in the front yard. A moment later I heard Hero barking. I looked outside and realized for the first time that there was lightning flashing and thunder rumbling. Hero is a bit afraid of thunderstorms, so I quickly went outside to rescue him. I found him standing squarely in the front yard, his muzzle pointed up to the sky, barking angry defiance at the lightning.

Collections!

My Kindle DX finally got the new update, which allows you to sort your books into folders (can anyone explain why this wasn't available before? Seems like kind of a no-brainer). I spent a happy half hour sorting my books into collections, and now I can find everything. Yay!

My father

My dad loves to talk about his life. I'd like to get a recorder this summer and record everything he says when we get together, just because it's all intriguing and should be saved for my kids. Today he told me about his career in the Army. He joined right after Pearl Harbor, and for some reason they flagged him as a likely soldier despite his lack of education (he says that during the Depression, no one in his small town went to college except the sons of lawyers and doctors). He was moved rapidly from private up to (I think) staff sergeant, and then sent to OCS in Orlando. Orlando then, he says, was a cow town. He became a lieutenant, and trained pilots in plane recognition. He wound up the war in California, having never been sent overseas, and was discharged as a captain.

I asked him why he didn't stick with the military, since he'd obviously done well and had a promising career. He shrugged and said that having gotten that far without getting shot at, he didn't want to push his luck. He said he might have considered the Reserves, as his best friend did, except that the nearest air base was too far from his town by the available public transportation (streetcar, ferry, and walking). He told me how his best friend had gone into the Reserves as a lieutenant and gotten called up for the Korean War. He managed to never see action either, but wound up a lieutenant colonel. "But," my dad said, "he was lucky. He could have wound up dead."

His meanderings then drifted to his love life. After the war, he said, he was planning on going to the University of Virginia on the GI Bill, but he met a girl and decided he needed to stick around Portsmouth. ("Shame on you," I said. He answered, "She was pretty.") He dated the girl for twelve years ("we were more or less living together, but you didn't admit that back then"), but then she went off to Mexico, leaving him behind in Portsmouth. I asked why they never got married, and he said it just never seemed right somehow. Not long after that he met my mom, and within three months they were married. "But," he said, "at first she wouldn't go out with me. She was twenty-six, and I was past forty, and she thought that at my age, if I wasn't married I had to be... you know... gay."

This is possibly more than I wanted to know about my parents *snickers*. Nevertheless, it was all interesting, though I've heard much of it before (not the gay part, though!). I have got to start recording these conversations!

Busy weekend

I'm going to be busy this weekend. It's Father's Day, so I'm driving over to take out my dad to lunch today, and my father-in-law tomorrow. It would be nice to take them out at once, but my father is so deaf now that he gets very frustrated in groups, because he can't understand a thing that's going on. So I figured it'd be best to take them out separately.

Um... what?

My son (9) brought home his test scores in math and reading. In reading, he reads at a ninth-grade level-- no surprise there; the only surprise is that it isn't higher. The kid reads all sorts of heavy nonfiction about World War II and science. Naturally he has a big vocabulary. But this kind of blows my mind: he scored 11.2 in math, meaning that "his test performance is therefore comparable to that of an average eleventh grader after the second month of the school year." It also says that "if the school's curriculum allows for study of algebra at this point, he can begin that study.... If you are using the Accelerated Math management software system with W, assign the Grade 8 library. This library should provide a good match for his abilities."

And here I thought math wasn't his strong suit *scratches head*.

Of sales and rankings

So as I said earlier, NLaS was down in the hundreds in Amazon's Kindle store for most of the day. It's still at 230. The odd thing was that my reported sales were less than my usual daily sales (and something like a fourth of yesterday's sales). I wondered about that, but figured that maybe once your book is ranked high, it's harder to knock down.

I went out to dinner, then came back and refreshed the "my reports" page. I was bewildered to find that the usually accurate Amazon had removed quite a few of my sales, and a substantial chunk of royalties. I fired off a note to DTP support, then checked Kindleboards. A lot of other authors were reporting the same problem. Moreover, they were reporting unusually low sales today, too. So at this point I have no idea what my actual sales were like today; it seems likely there's been a problem with DTP all day. I know they're in the process of switching systems, and the general theory is that they may have lost part of their database. I just hope they had it backed up!

Anyway, right now, I honestly have no idea what my sales have been all day. Now that I've gotten used to the obsessive checking of stats, it's a bit odd to be entirely clueless as to sales. I just hope Amazon isn't as clueless as I am on the subject:-).

Vuvuzela dog

Impy seems to be fully recovered (he's back to counter surfing in the hopes of finding something yummy), but he's still having gas problems, and passing bad-smelling gas quite loudly. Earlier he was lying at my feet in my office (lucky me) when this happened, and he looked around at his rear with an expression of great surprise: What the heck was that sound? Was that me?

I'm a mean doggy mom, because at that point I put him outside:-).

Wow

I woke up to find I'd broken into the 100s in the Kindle store. Never Love a Stranger is currently ranked at 167 overall-- #1 in time travel romance, #23 in Kindle romance, #7 in Kindle contemporary romance, and #3 in fantasy/futuristic/ghost. I am just sitting here boggling. This is my favorite (and best) book, but it's been up on Amazon for a while, and it's odd to see it suddenly leaping up the charts this way. I still have no expectation that it will continue, but I do hope that being in the top 25 romance sellers (which puts me on the front page of romance) might help keep sales going for a while.

Indie reading

I read Kept by Zoe Winters today:

A fun, fast-moving paranormal romance. I enjoyed it and downloaded the sequel right away.

Magical Me *laughs at self*

Never Love a Stranger is now down to #318 in the Kindle store and #2 in time travel romance. I am totally thrilled. I've never had a book go that high in the Kindle store before, and I may never again, so I'm gonna enjoy it while it lasts. Join me in drinking a Mountain Dew to celebrate, y'all!

Oh, the awards ceremony. Yeah, I made it in time... but my kid wasn't there. Turned out they'd moved her to the later ceremony (a small auditorium forced them to have two ceremonies) without telling me. I had to sit through two forty-five minute award ceremonies with a five-year-old, which was exactly as fun as it sounds. But my kid got recognized for being on the Honor Roll and for her amazing Accelerated Reader skills, so it's all good.

Weather gods, why must you thwart me?

Today is a very important day. My second daughter is being recognized at the school awards ceremony as the school's top reader. Unfortunately, the awards ceremony is at 8:15, and I have to get the third kid on the bus at 8:05, making it really difficult for me to get to the awards ceremony on time. No problem, I thought; I'll just send the boy out to the bus stop early, then drive over to kid #2's school. No worries.

Good plan, but nature has other plans. It is pouring buckets and thundering (we haven't had morning rain in months, so this is very clearly the weather gods attempting to annoy me). There's no way I can leave kid #3 standing out there for twenty minutes in this mess. I'll have to drive him to the bus stop and wait for the bus to pick him up, then drive over to kid #2's school, and I will assuredly be late. Fortunately they usually recognize stuff like perfect attendance first, so hopefully I will get to see my kid receive her award.

ETA: And the local weather station's website cheerfully assures me that the current local conditions are "cloudy." Dudes, when I get soaked by stepping outside for two seconds, that is not "cloudy."

Whoa

Never Love a Stranger has really taken off in sales today (not sure why, except possibly that it's on two Listmania lists now). It just hit #621 in the Kindle store, which I believe is the best it's done thus far, and #30 on the contemporary romance list. I'm very pleased.

Yay!

Isn't It Romantic? has now sold a thousand downloads. Thanks to all who've bought it!

Kindling

Delle Jacobs talks about Kindling your backlist, here (pointed out to me by Jody Wallace). More posts in this series will be forthcoming.

Isn't It Romantic?...

has sold 995 copies. I'm hoping to hit a thousand today!

Various stuff

I got a pretty negative review on Farthest Space. Not an unfair review by any means; the reviewer said that humor was subjective and that it didn't work for her. (It is very over-the-top, and that kind of humor is not for everyone.) She gave it three stars, which was very kind considering the content of the review. But since there are only two reviews on Amazon, that one seems to be impacting sales pretty badly. I haven't sold a single copy since it was posted. Hopefully people will get back to trying the sample and deciding if they want to read it, rather than being put off by the review. This is one reason a lot of indie authors try to get as many reviews as possible; one bad one impacts you less if you have twenty reviews, rather than two.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to get stuff uploaded on Amazon, and the DTP isn't working. Grrr, Amazon!

Good news is that Impy gobbled down quite a bit of chicken and rice last night, and kept it down. I think he's recovering, yay!

Google before you name your characters

I'm a Supernatural fan, and I'm greatly enjoying the tie-in novel The Unholy Cause, by Jon Schreiber. I agree with the chorus of reviews on Amazon that call it the best SPN novel so far. Only one thing keeps dragging me out of the story-- a fairly major character named Sheriff Jacqueline (called Jack) Daniels. Since I've been reading J.A. Konrath's Jack Daniels series, about another cop with this exact name, this is really bugging me. I realize Konrath is a midlist author, and not Stephen King or Stephenie Meyer, but come on, he's written six books plus some tie-ins with this character (so far). A quick Google search for "Jacqueline Daniels" brings up two references to Konrath's character in the first three searches. So this is really something the author of The Unholy Cause could have found out quite readily.

I have learned something from this: When you come up with a cute, clever name for a character, Google it before you use it. Someone was probably cute and clever before you were.

$450 later...

Impy had x-rays done. Last night's dinner is still sitting there in his stomach. The vet thinks he doesn't have an obstruction, but she's not entirely sure. He's going on a bland diet (rice and chicken) today, as well as an anti-inflammatory, and if he's eating by tomorrow morning, all well and good. If not, back we go to the vet. Keep your fingers crossed for him!

Dog troubles

Neither of my fluffy boys seems to be quite up to snuff. Hero wouldn't eat a treat last night, which was shocking-- Hero will eat pretty much anything. But this morning he seems fine. Impy, on the other hand... he had a bit of vomiting yesterday morning, he got me up early this morning because he had the runs, and most notably, he would not touch his breakfast. This is a dog who gobbles his food every morning and evening in ten seconds flat, and spends the rest of the day snuffling around the floors looking for crumbs, and checking out the counters for food he might be able to steal. He has never in his life declined to eat. Clearly something is wrong, so I called the vet and made an appointment. I have to admit I'm worried. Impy's always been terrible about stealing little toys and eating them (when you have four kids, stuff gets left out no matter how hard you try to keep the place dogproof), and I'm always afraid he'll chew something up and get hurt internally by the jagged edges. Hopefully it's nothing that serious.

Indie quality control

A self-pubbed author on Amazon asks if readers would like quality control on self-pubbed books. "I would think that having to wade through a pile of mediocre books to reach a gem is a right pain in the gluteus maximus for the average Kindle owner...So...would you as a reader like to know that the self-pubbed books you're exposed to have been through some kind of quality control before rearing their heads on the Amazon sales page? Would it make you more inclined to buy, more inclined to pay more, and more inclined to review?"

It's a speculative question, of course, since Amazon is unlikely to ever do such a thing, but I expect this thread will open a nice big can of worms (and probably invite some indie bashing). Regardless, it should be entertaining to watch.

Yay!

While writing for a small press, I co-wrote a fantasy romance with a very talented author. I had contacted her quite a while ago, suggesting we might want to put it up on Amazon now that the rights have reverted, but hadn't heard back from her. Today I heard from her-- I'd gotten lost in her spam filter, but she is interested. I'd be very happy to get this one up; I had fun writing it with her, and I think it's quite an enjoyable novella. I'll keep you guys updated!

*Cringes*

If your indie book has four misspellings in the first paragraph, numerous grammatical errors on the first page, and generally displays fourth-grade writing ability, you might be better off not touting it on the Amazon forums in glowing terms. Just sayin' (and no, I'm not talking to anyone who frequents this blog!).

Erotic romance!... or not

I was a bit amused to find In the Mood on this Listmania list ("erotic short stories that make you squirm and curl your toes") on Amazon. It is of course always flattering (and good for sales!) to be included on a list, but I don't think of any of my Ellen Fisher books as "erotic." I doubt In the Mood is anywhere near as hot as Accidental Orgy and Like Twin Stars: Bisexual Erotic Stories. Even so, I'm very pleased someone found that it curled her toes!

Midlist authors and e-publishing

An interesting article in the Huffington Post (link from Karen Newton on Twitter) about how ebooks may kill off the midlist author. The general idea seems to be that when people can't see their covers in brick-and-mortar stores, they won't buy them: As strolling and perusing the aisles of a bookstore is replaced with a mouse and computer screen, the demise of brick-and-mortar retailers will accelerate and critically important links between midlist authors and their readers will be severed...Digital books create a retailing bypass that diminishes the exposure of midlist books to potential readers.

He does quote agent Richard Curtis, talking about new ways in which writers can reach readers (Twitter, blogging, etc.). "Social networking is going to take the place of the autocratic handful of pundits who tell you what to read," (Curtis) said. Pointing to customer reviews as an example of the future, Curtis thinks readers will be guided in their eBook choices as restaurant-goers currently use Zagat ratings. However, the author then says that The reviews that currently populate the company's website are a mix of commentary written by friends (every author makes sure of that), irrelevant gripping about the price, format, or the publisher, and a large assortment of diatribes by--for lack of a better word--screwballs. Furthermore, the recommendations generated by Amazon analysis of a customer's purchases rarely include a midlist book.

I think the author is missing several things here. Buying books on recommendation doesn't happen just through Amazon reviews (which everyone knows can be badly off base for various reasons). I see people buying books because of recs on the various boards, on Goodreads, on blogs... admittedly the average person may not find these sites, but the more avid ones tend to. Also, I think Amazon recommends plenty of midlist books, to me at least. It depends upon your buying habits as to what it recommends, however.

And we have the usual assurances that print books will survive:

The strongest glimmer of hope for midlist authors is a growing conviction among publishing executives that printed books do not face a future entirely like that of the music industry where compact disc were replaced by downloads. Books are not the same as songs, according to Mark Suchomel, president of Independent Publishers Group. His company is one of the nation's largest distributors of books by independent presses, consummate publishers of midlist books.

"The way you sell music is by sample," Suchomel said. "The most interesting thing when judging a book is the cover." He sees a new world where both print and digital books will survive hand in hand, one version supporting the other.

For instance, Suchomel believes digital books will never substitute in the age-old practice of giving a book. "No one," he said, "is going to wrap up an electronic file."

Actually, on Amazon you get the customer's attention by the cover, and then you tend to sell based on the strength of your sample. And with regards to paper books, people have always picked them up and flipped through them to sample the writing. So yes, samples matter with regards to books, too.

And as to no one wrapping up an electronic file-- fluff and stuff. I've been getting gift cards from B&N for ten years now from my family, every Christmas. Now I just need to ask for Amazon gift cards instead. Not a really big change there!

But regardless of whether print books do or don't survive, I don't see the growth of ebooks as the inevitable death of the midlist. I see it as an opportunity for midlist authors.

Love Remembered

Completed my first runthrough of Love Remembered. I deleted a ton of adverbs ("she inquired curiously"-- how else would one inquire?) and excess dialogue tags. I used the words "harshly" and "softly" about eighteen million times apiece, and most of those have now been removed. I took out a lot of excessively fancy words for dialogue ("she sputtered" or "he countered," and similar verbiage) and either replaced them with a more basic "she said," or just took out the tag entirely. I think it reads a lot better now. I'll go through it a second time this weekend.

Ugh

I'm editing Love Remembered. The thing is chock full of adverbs and dialogue tags that don't need to be there, which gives it a very overwritten feel. I'm chopping them out ruthlessly. I'll probably go through it a second time so I get rid of as many as possible. In retrospect, I'm finding that I don't like my historical voice too well; it was probably a smart move to switch to contemporaries and SFR.

LOL, part 2

Intriguingly, the pirate site let my comment go through. So if you want to pirate my book there, there's a nonconfrontational note beneath it from yours truly, explaining why it would be nice to buy my books and directing you to my Amazon author page. Yay for polite pirates...

Review of moi

Mary McDonald reviews my book Never Love a Stranger here. A lovely quote: "Everything a romance should be." Thank you, Mary!

LOL

I found one of my books on an "easy download blog" offering a pirated version. It had comments enabled, so I left a little comment about how I was a single mom who'd lost her husband to cancer, and who had four kids to get through college (you can almost hear violins playing schmaltzy music in the background, can't you?). I included a link leading to my Amazon page and said that if people were interested in reading my books, they could buy my nice cheap books there. Alas, the comments are moderated, and I somehow doubt that comment will get through:-). Still, if people are going to pirate my books, it'd be nice if they'd at least allow me to use it as self-promotion!

Indie book reading

Last night I read A Scattered Life, by Karen McQuestion. This is an indie novel that will be released by AmazonEncore in August, though it remains on sale as an indie book for now. This is the AmazonEncore cover: I read it all in an evening, which I don't usually manage to do anymore, so clearly I enjoyed it very much. It was heartbreaking in spots but very uplifting at the end. And the writing was excellent.

Farthest Space

So I put a new barechested cover onto Amazon for Farthest Space yesterday, just as an experiment, and since then it's sold five copies. Not exactly my best seller, but considering it had only sold thirteen copies all month, it does seem to be something of an improvement saleswise. I will continue observing and see what happens.

Who you callin' a brand?

A very good blog post by author Maureen Johnson here. Quotes: "I think there are people out there who see the internet as a way of employing the same old techniques of SHILL, SHILL, SHILL...The other side, the side I am on, is the one that sees an organic internet full of people." And, "What I am saying is that I am tired of the rush to commodify everything, to turn everything into products, including people. I don’t want a brand, because a brand limits me. A brand says I will churn out the same thing over and over. Which I won’t, because I am weird."

Donna Fasano

An informative and interesting interview with indie and trad published author Donna Fasano, here on Spad's blog. She's won the Holt medallion three times! Wow!

Hero's got balls

A conversation between myself and Hero:

Hero (vibrating with self-importance, a tennis ball in his jaws): Hi, I have a ball.

Me (stretched out on lounge on deck in the sunshine with Kindle): Yeah, yeah, dog, that's nice. I'm reading.

Hero (vibrating right down to his stubby tail): Look! Best ball ever!

Me: Go away, buddy. I'm reading.

Hero: You can't be doing anything very important if it doesn't involve balls. (Drops slobbery ball on Kindle screen) You really, really want this amazingly awesome ball!

Me (reaching for ball): Fine, whatever, I'll throw it if it'll get you out of my hair...

Hero (snatching it back just before my fingers close on it): Ha! You can't have it! I told you it was the greatest ball ever!

Me: Then why do you keep dropping the stupid thing on my Kindle?

Hero: I just wanted you to know that I had it and you didn't.

Me: GO AWAY.

Hero (dropping ball on Kindle): I'll let you have it this time, honest.

Me (sighing and reaching for ball): Okay...

Hero (grabbing it back): Fooled ya!

And so forth and so on. Hero does love to chase balls. He just hates having to give them up first!

Sales analysis

So far this month, my sales are down just a bit, but still doing well. Hopefully when I get out Love Remembered later in the month, it will help. The month started out with Isn't It Romantic? and Never Love a Stranger running neck and neck, but NLaS has now pulled ahead as my clear leader, with almost a hundred copies sold for the month already. But most of my books are doing pretty well across the board.

The exception is poor Farthest Space, trailing sadly at a mere thirteen copies sold. I hate to do it, because I love-love-love my cover (and paid for it, besides), but I'm thinking I'm going to have to toss a bare torso on this one until people start looking at it. At some point I can put the original cover back on it, I hope. It's a fun book and I would very much like people to read it. The issue may not be the lack of naked chest, of course; it could just be that romance readers aren't particularly interested in sci-fi spoofs. But it's probably worth a shot to change the cover and see what happens, as much as I don't want to do it.

I guess that's progress...

This article (link picked up from @selfpubreview via a retweet by R.J. Keller) seems to say the self-published are no longer deluded eccentrics... or at least not as much. Although we're still presumed to be of no real consequence unless we're picked up by a big publisher, apparently:

In mainstream literary circles, self-publishing is generally considered the exclusive realm of egomaniacs, eccentrics and failures — those who've been rejected by mainstream outlets but are too deluded to realize the worthlessness of their work. There are, certainly, those rare tales of self-publishing success. But in the past few years — as sites such as Amazon and Lulu have made it easier and cheaper — self-publishing has taken off like wildfire. Last year alone saw the self-publication of more than half a million books. Some, like Hamann's, are finding homes with traditional houses. "Publishers are taking self-published books more seriously," said Sara Nelson, books editor for O, the Oprah Magazine and former editor of Publishers Weekly. "Ten years ago it was a very rare thing that a publisher picked up a self-published book. Now it's happening more frequently." Though not all that often. Most self-published titles sell only a few handfuls of copies.

I do like this quote from Michael Cader of Publisher's Lunch: "Sometimes the publishers are [wrong], and there is a substantially larger market that the author was able to find on their own. And sometimes they're not wrong, and there was a reason the book was self-published in the first place."

Fingers, clocks, and other stuff

I slashed the hell out of my little finger while cutting open a bag of dog food. I'm not usually that uncoordinated, but I guess we all have stupid days. It bled like mad and for a little while I was worried I'd have to have a stitch or two, but it finally stopped, and I put on a Band-aid. And yesterday I forgot to put sunscreen on my back when we went to the beach, so I'm nice and red on my back. Apparently I got to have two stupid days in a row:-).

I got myself a nice hall clock at Pier One. (If I can ever find my camera I'll take a picture.) It was originally $299, reduced to $119. I think it looks great, and it has a nice heavy weighted base, so my furry torpedoes won't knock it over on one of their mad dashes through the house.

I've spent days cleaning out my disgusting minivan. We got the cargo area cleaned out the other day, and I vacuumed it out today. The only major thing left is the third row of seats, which is narrow and will be hard to get into to clean properly. Once I have it all cleaned and vacuumed I may have the interior detailed, since there is some staining on the carpets I don't think I'll be able to get out on my own. Then again, when a van has 100,000 miles on it I'm not sure it's really worth the money to detail it, so I may just shrug and live with the stains!

New indie author

New author Mary McDonald now has her first book, No Good Deed, available on Amazon. It's only $1.99, so check out her sample and give her your support!

Kindle sales

Victorine Lieske has a post with lots of responses from indie authors (including one from yours truly) discussing the numbers those writers are getting in Kindle sales. It's a good thing to read if you're interested in Kindling, because it shows that numbers really are all over the map, and that there is a very broad range of results.

Ebooks are selling more, part umpteen

An interesting figure from Kindle Nation Daily:

Total first-week ebook sales for Steig Larsson's instant bestseller The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest amounted to nearly 30% of all units sold, according to a report today from Publisher's Marketplace... "Knopf Doubleday spokesman Paul Bogaards says their internal figures show an approximate first week sell-through of 425,000 units--which includes 125,000 ebook editions."...this translates into a 29.4 percent ebook share of the title's total sell-through, which would be by far the largest percentage yet reported for ebook sales of a major trade bestseller.

Yes, this is only one book. But how long before it's most books?

Sick dad

My dad, who's ninety-three, started feeling bad yesterday, and his blood pressure shot up. He called me, and I told him I'd take him to the doctor today. He'd had the same problem a couple of months ago, curiously. His friend/caregiver took him in that time, and he told me they'd checked him over very thoroughly and found nothing wrong, and his blood pressure had gone back to normal (of its own accord, as far as I knew).

Today he was really not feeling good, to the point where he was throwing up in the car (fortunately I found a bag just in time!). When we got called back, the doctor asked him if he was still taking his new blood pressure medication along with the old one. I hadn't even been aware he HAD a new blood pressure medication, because he hadn't mentioned it. My dad hemmed and hawed, but the upshot was that he had thought he was only supposed to take the first month's worth. So he'd gone off the new medicine, and unsurprisingly, his blood pressure had shot back up.

I was mildly irritated, because if I'd known he'd been prescribed a new medicine after his last blood pressure spike, then of course I would have just made him REFILL THE PRESCRIPTION, and we could have saved our time and the doctor's. But at his age, he gets to be clueless if he wants to be *shrugs*. We refilled his prescription, and from now on I'll be the one taking him to doctor appointments, just to make sure I know what's going on:-).

Wow!

Karen McQuestion and J.A. Konrath get mentioned in a WSJ article on indie publishing.

Hero

Hero is a literary dog who devours books (if Mom doesn't keep a close eye on him).

Hero guards his sheep... er, kids.

I often tell Hero (with great love and affection) that he is the World's Dumbest Dog. He has many amusing little quirks. For example, even after three years he has never been able to resign himself to the fact that the kids (his sheep) leave the house to go to school every day. He barks frantically when it's time for them to go, and if I didn't keep him confined to his crate till after they left, he would be at the front door, doing his best to block it. He thinks I'm a very bad mother for allowing the flock to leave, and would much prefer to keep them under canine surveillance 24/7.

Another example is trash. He's seen bagged trash be taken out virtually every day of his life, but he is still convinced that we are removing things that belong in the house. If you take out trash with him around, he'll try to herd you away from the door. If he's in his crate, he'll bark angrily. Trash is part of the house, and guarding the house is his solemn duty, and humans clearly do not understand that removing trash is a terribly wrong thing to do. In Hero's view, humans are none too bright, and we need to be protected from our own follies. It's a constant frustration to him that we don't let him do his job without interference.

Memorial Day brought a new and amusing proof of his status as World's Dumbest Dog. The neighbors about halfway down the road put up little flags (which fluttered patriotically in the breeze) in their front flowerbeds. Being as nearsighted as any other dog, Hero couldn't see exactly what they were, but he knew that there was movement down the street that wasn't supposed to be there. Every time I put him outside, I'd hear angry barking, and go outside to find him standing in the side yard, barking furious defiance at those flags. I kept assuring him it was okay, only to receive a witheringly contemptuous look: Obviously it's not all right! Those things don't belong there! Duh, human! I wound up keeping him inside most of the day, because nothing could convince him that the flags weren't a real and imminent danger.

I love my dog. But he's not the brightest bulb in the string:-).

Samhain

Just got my April Samhain statement (due to an error on my part, they've been sending them to the wrong email addy). My reported sales were from Amazon (which is usually a few months behind in reporting), so they probably date from before my first indie book, and they were, shall we say, insignificant. Judging from sales rankings, I'm selling a lot more Samhain books now. I'm happy that my Samhain sales are going up; they're a good publisher and they deserve to make some money off me!

Grumble

I get very mildly annoyed when people suggest my sales are all due to the bare male torsos. Clearly, they help, but I like to think people are LOOKING at my books because of the covers, and BUYING them because they're good.