Bunnysitters

I got my brother-in-law and his wife to take care of the bunny while we're gone, so all my animals will be taken care of. Now all that's left to do before vacation is pack!

Hmmmppphhh

You guys are making me feel unwanted. Two copies of the out-of-print Accidentally in Love (print version of The Nerd Prince and I'll Be There For You) are up for grabs, and so far ONE person has commented. I'm going to pick winners tomorrow, so if you want one, comment here or here. If not, at least we'll have one winner:-).

Another author's backlist book...

Julie Ortolon now has a backlist book up on Kindle, Falling For You. I've never read this one, and am happy to see it re-released. I'm planning on reading it while I'm on vacation!

Amazon press release

On Kindle Nation Daily, here. Two interesting facts are that "Amazon said that in the past three months it has sold 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover copies sold, and no free ebooks were counted in that tabulation" and Bezos is quoted as saying, "We've reached a tipping point with the new price of Kindle--the growth rate of Kindle device unit sales has tripled since we lowered the price from $259 to $189."

Also, "of the 1.14 million ebooks sold through July 6 by author James Patterson, 867,881 were Kindle books. So Amazon has had a 76.1 percent market share of James Patterson's ebook sales." Moreover, "Amazon said that its overall ebook sales for the first half of 2010 were more than triple what they were in the first half of 2009."

In short, ebook and Kindle sales are exploding. It's a good time to be an indie author!

Clean, clean

The kids and I did much cleaning today. The house is much less disgusting than it was. We also decided our current bunny hutch wasn't working well, and bought the bunny a new home, which he seems to appreciate. I still have to find someone to watch the bunny while we're gone; the cat and dogs go to a nearby kennel, but I'd prefer not to pay $18 a day for the bunny when I can easily find a teenager to toss food in his bowl for a few bucks a week. I just hope everyone around here isn't on vacation at the same time we are!

Lee Goldberg re Kindle publishing

From an interview, excerpted on his blog:

DAVID WISEHART: What advice would you give to a first-time writer thinking of publishing on Kindle?

LEE GOLDBERG: Don't do it. I still think selling your book to a publisher, and getting wide distribution in brick-and-mortar stores, is the way to go...and will always be my first choice.

He goes on to add, I have sampled hundreds of self-published books on the Kindle... and 99.9% of them aren't just awful, they border on illiterate, as if they were written by people who never graduated high school. It's astonishing just how terrible the stuff is. Putting unprofessional, hideous crap on the Kindle *will* hurt your career.

Free books!

While I was cleaning out boxes, I came across a box full of paperback copies of Accidentally in Love, the anthology of The Nerd Prince and I'll Be There For You, which is no longer available from Samhain. I don't really need ten copies, so I decided to give away a couple. Want one? Post in the comments, and I'll randomly pick two winners on Wednesday.

Baa baa blue crab

My five-year-old bonds with stuffed toys faster than any kid I've ever had. He saw a stuffed blue crab in the Jamestown gift shop, instantly fell in love with it, and decided he had to have it. I told him we'd buy it later, once we were through running around in the heat, and by the time we'd gotten back he'd named it (with his usual stunning creativity-- its name is Blue Crabby), given it a detailed history and personality, and determined that it would be one of the three stuffed toys he's taking to DisneyWorld. While we were trapped in the traffic jam in the car, it sat in his lap and carried on earnest discussions with him. It just accompanied him to bed, tucked in with a new song ("Mommy, don't sing me 'Baa Baa Black Sheep.' I want to hear 'Baa Baa Blue Crab'"). He's supposed to be falling asleep now, of course, but I can hear him in his room, still conversing with it and singing to it. It's not just a toy; it's his new best friend!

Tunnels are evil

We went to see Jamestown this morning (by which I mean Jamestown Settlement, the recreated version of Jamestown, rather than Historic Jamestowne, which is more about actual archaeological work), and the kids loved it. They had a great time checking out the fort and the Powhatan dwellings and the ships, and they gleefully wreaked havoc on my MasterCard in the gift shop. So that was fun. But alas, on the way back we ran into the usual bane of travelers in the Hampton Roads area, a tunnel blockage. We had left for home at a reasonable time (later on Friday afternoon all the tourists are heading for the oceanfront, exacerbating the usual traffic problems, so it's best to get back early), and I was just congratulating myself on my luck in missing any major travel problems when I got onto the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge Tunnel and saw the signs: ALL TRAFFIC PREPARE TO STOP. I hoped we'd get through anyway, but before long we then saw red lights and the words ALL TRAFFIC STOP, and we found ourselves stopped exactly three cars back from the head of the line.

It turned out that someone had had a wreck in the tunnel (why wrecks inevitably happen in tunnels, I can't tell you), and for some reason it blocked the entire tunnel. You'd think they could have gotten a lane open so that traffic could crawl through in single file, but noooooo. I sat there in the car for two full hours with four tired, thirsty kids. Fortunately we had a lot of books in the car (I'd left my Kindle at home, so I wound up reading my son's encyclopedias), and no one got too cranky. Still. Traveling anywhere in this area is fraught with peril. You think you're ten minutes from home, and suddenly... you're not.

Getting rich the Smashwords way

Pointed out by a commenter on J.A Konrath's blog: According to the Smashwords blog, one author made $4000 via the B&N store just in the month of June. So those of us who think Smashwords isn't worth the time might possibly want to reconsider (although Smashwords is quick to point out that this figure does not represent typical earnings!).

Busy, busy

This has been a busy week. Monday we went to the beach, Tuesday the oldest boy had speech therapy, today the second girl had horseback riding, and tomorrow I have a doctor's appointment. On Friday the kids have decided they want to go to Jamestown. Around all this I'm busily cleaning out the last of the boxes (well, the last in the house; there are still some in the garage) with the kids' help. It hasn't been especially restful here, and I haven't had a lot of time to promote. I need to get back onto Twitter and the Amazon threads...

Anniversary

Today would have been my nineteenth (!!!!) wedding anniversary. No one in the family gave me a call, so I imagine no one else remembers the exact date. That's not surprising; Vulcan Husband died before we'd reached our sixteenth anniversary. It's easy to forget dates as the years go past, but I do want to remember the day we were married. It's too important to forget.

Kindle commercial music

The jingle on the Kindle commercial is available on Amazon here for free. I really like this little song:-).

Gah

I got another unsolicited email from an author. It was titled "request for ebook review," but the body of the email was simply an ad with a link to the author's book on Amazon. I don't imagine the author reads this journal, but in case he happens by-- dude, cut this crap out. It is not cool, and it makes us all look bad.

A Scattered Life book trailer

From Karen McQuestion's blog:



This book (previously released as an indie book) will be out from AmazonEncore on August 10. If you haven't read it already, you should!

Good writing

Right now I'm enjoying some good writing: For Better or For Worse. It's one of my favorite comic strips, and I own a lot of the books, but I never found out how the story ended, so I was glad to find this site, which has a gigantic archive. I always admired this strip's writing. Although it's sometimes sappy (and what's wrong with that, anyway?) it doesn't veer away from real problems-- the difficulties of caring for an elderly parent/partner disabled by a stroke, for example, or the death of a beloved pet. This is an unusual thing in a comic strip, and I'm enjoying reading through it again.

Cleaning

Today, we are cleaning out the boxes still remaining in my bedroom. I want my room to actually be clear and neat, so I decided the boxes all must go. We've made a ton of progress so far.

Amazon woes

There is a small but vocal contingent on the Amazon boards right now insisting that authors must not start threads to promote their books, and that to do so is spamming. I say "small" because my own experience and observations indicates that starting such threads can have a really strong positive effect on sales, which suggests that most people over there don't mind a single thread per book. However, there are a lot of threads popping up about this issue, and some authors who advertise on the Amazon threads are reporting that their low-rated reviews are all being rated up as "helpful" (thus bringing them to the top), which may or may not be related. This is just something to be aware of if you post over there. Based on my (admittedly limited) experience over there, these things go in cycles, and the wave of anti-author sentiment will probably subside soon.

Yay Amazon!

Amazon listened to the complaints of its authors, and went back to a monthly reporting system (they had switched over to week-by-week, which, since they pay us monthly, made it difficult to figure out the monthly amount owed). I gotta give them credit-- Amazon is really terrific about responding to author concerns.

Amazon drama

On Amazon, there are a couple of raging threads going on about author behavior. One was started by someone who said authors shouldn't post threads to promote a book (Amazon eventually deleted his post, which may or may not tell us something about Amazon's opinion on the subject). The thread then drifted into debating what's appropriate for authors (as usual, most people prefer authors who actually interact on the threads, and will put up with less from authors who post nothing but advertisements).

Another one, on the romance forum, is more direct: Why the hostility towards authors? It's been fairly calm till yesterday, when an author or two started playing the woe-is-us card-- we're artists! We just want to make money like anyone else, and you won't let us! You all HATE us! (And I'm directly quoting that last; one author is saying repeatedly that "writers are hated.") IMHO, this is not the best way to win friends and influence people. Don't tell people on a board that they're creating a hostile atmosphere, don't whine about how hard a writer's life is, and for heaven's sake, don't tell people they're big meanieheads (or words to that effect). If you find a place unbearably hostile (and personally, I haven't had a lot of trouble on the Amazon boards), then don't harangue the regulars-- just leave.

Another dumb author trick is getting a lot of discussion over on amazon-- some author harvested email addies from Kindleboards and is now emailing people, asking if they like the Kindle (and conveniently including a large ad for his book at the bottom of his email). Problem is, it's generic enough that it does appear to be spam, and a lot of readers don't really like being directly approached by authors they don't know. So people asked about it on the Amazon boards, and in discussing it they've realized it's just an ad. This has annoyed a lot of people.

The interesting twist to this is that it's not an indie author, but an author published with Warner who has over fifty Amazon reviews, and even a Publishers Weekly review. Why he thought it would be a good idea to spam random readers, I can't imagine (although the book is a few years old, so maybe he's trying to get interest sparked in it again). But the funniest part is that the link to his book at the bottom of his email doesn't work:-).

Cute little kid-ness

My youngest, patting Hero's mottled fur: "Mommy, our dogs are spotted just like dominations."

And upon hearing my second daughter mention that she wanted to watch Avatar tonight: "Me too! I want to see that Avatar of which she speaks!" (None of us can figure out where he picked up that highly grammatical but rather odd construction!)

Borders...

is launching an ebook store. Their stated goal is to get 17% of the market within a year. "Borders was later to market than its rivals [there's a massive understatement for you] but said it took time to craft its strategy, which rests on selling books that can be used across multiple platforms rather than just one device."

Sales figures

Without going into specific figures, here's how my sales have been over the last few days. I'm not selling quite as many copies as I was before the price change, but I'm probably making more money (the weekly report doesn't give actual royalties earned, so I won't know that for sure for a few days). Never Love a Stranger is my best seller, due in large part to my purchased ad on Kindle Nation Daily. In the Mood and Isn't It Romantic? are doing quite well. Farthest Space is starting to show signs of life. All I Ever Wanted is not selling nearly as many as it did, but since I raised the price I may be making more on it. I may consider having that one featured on Kindle Nation Daily, too. Love Remembered is hardly selling; it still only has a one-star review up. Sales will probably go up if I get a good review, but the catch-22 in this situation is that if people aren't buying it, I'm a lot less likely to get reviews. Still, we'll hope for the best on that one. And finally, Unwrapped had a decent start yesterday. I hope it'll keep going!

Overall... could be better, could be worse. I'll be interested in seeing how total earnings this month stack up against last month.

I love Kindle Nation Daily

I bought a single ad with them for NLaS, but they featured me for a second day. How cool is that???

Unwrapped is available!

It's Christmas in July! Unwrapped (consisting of two short Christmas novellas, Unwrapped and Christmas Carol) is now available here on Amazon.

Various

I took all the kiddies to Toy Story 3 this afternoon. I wept through practically the whole thing (and for a while afterwards, to my immense embarrassment). So did my oldest. The rest of the kids were less moved, although they enjoyed it. But I think the theme of "sooner or later, kids must grow up" naturally resonates most strongly with me and the teenager. I will say that IMHO it was a bit intense for a G rating; my five-year-old handled it fine, but I hear that my six-year-old nephew freaked out in a couple of places. So parents be warned.

I heard back from the publisher of my single book written under a pen name, and they will be reverting the rights to me effective late November. Now I have to figure out how to promote a book under a different name, without any sort of apparent malfeasance (for example, I don't want to create a second account on Amazon, lest people think I might use it to review my own books or something). I'm not quite sure how to manage that. Study is required.

Unwrapped has appeared on the Amazon site, but is still labeled "not available." That usually means it'll be up tomorrow morning, but don't buy it yet; I need to check and make sure I uploaded the correct version before I start promoting it!

"Readers will not come"

Here's an agent's blog entry (pointed out by Moses Siregar III on J.A. Konrath's blog) that has some fairly typical comments about self-publishing. For example:

-From now on, I’ll be talking about these people self-publishing. The people who don’t believe what editors and agents keep telling them: their work isn’t ready.

The problem is that it can be difficult to tell if your work isn't being picked up because it isn't ready, or because of bad timing/bad luck or whatever. We've all seen stuff up on Amazon that is embarrassingly bad, and for those authors we all cringe in embarrassed sympathy. But how about Boyd Morrison? His book was rejected by numerous pubs, and then after a few months on Amazon, it got picked up by a major publisher. Did it suddenly improve? Nope; it was the same exact book it was when it was rejected.

By bypassing the traditional "gatekeepers," then, authors aren't necessarily ignoring a clear message from publishers. They're acknowledging that there are a lot of good books out there, and not every good book is going to find a happy home at the major publishers. They also may be acknowledging that nowadays, it might actually make more financial sense to hold onto your e-rights, rather than sign them away to the major pubs, who don't seem to have a clue how to sell ebooks effectively.

Sure, there ARE authors out there who are terrible, and who just don't realize it. In fact, there are lots and lots of such authors. But there are also good authors out there who are frustrated because their good books aren't getting picked up, or who aren't even trying because they think the publishing industry is dysfunctional.

-The Internet disproves a simple, old-fashioned idea: “If you build it, (throw it up on Lulu or Amazon or any of these other websites) they will come.” Readers will not come. They have too much other stuff on their browser.

As I've said before, it depends. Certainly if it's crap, they will not come. Crap just sits there in its obscure little corner, keeping itself company. But Konrath is not (despite what this blog post seems to imply) the only person making money on Amazon. There are quite a few indie authors doing pretty well. Maybe not paying their mortgage, but sometimes making a fair amount. They are building an audience, all on their own.

-The Internet is flooded with content. As a reader, my time and psychic space are limited. I seek only the things I’m looking for or already know about. I don’t go trolling for complete unknowns just to check out a new ebook, and I certainly would never pay money to try random self-published wares.

Fortunately, there seem to be a lot of readers who don't think this way. I don't think I've sold so many indie books because people were out there looking specifically for Ellen Fisher books-- after all, it's been over three years since my last release, and to be honest, most people had never heard of me anyway. Some readers-- maybe even a lot of readers-- are out there looking intentionally for new content.

-When folks actually self-publish, they’ll figure out firsthand how difficult it is to get their books in the hands of readers.

Very true. It's a sink or swim kind of thing. I like to think that good content will rise to the top, but it's possible that even good stuff sometimes won't make it into the hands of many readers. It happens in regular publishing too, sadly. There is no guarantee someone will read your book even if it's the best book ever, whether in indie publishing or traditional publishing. Publishing of any stripe is hard.

-Sure, there are exceptions. Joe Konrath’s success with bringing his existing readers to a new format has been noteworthy. And there are self-published books for the mass market that have sold huge. Two things come to mind: the work of Christopher Paolini and an adult book called THE LACE READER. And you know what happened to them? Both moved on to traditional publication. You know why? Because that was probably the writers’ goal in the first place, and they took a circuitous route.

Well, let's be fair. Paolini self-pubbed quite a while ago now. Becoming an indie author on Kindle was never an option for him. At that point, yes, most self-publishers wanted to sell to major publishers. This may not be as true now. I'm not familiar with the other book mentioned, but a glance at Amazon suggests it was released in 2008-- again, before the Kindle ball really got rolling. I'd have wanted to sell to a big publisher back then, too. Now, as ebooks are beginning to take a larger portion of the market, it becomes more of a question for many authors.

Also, the above seems to basically dismiss Konrath as "bringing his existing readers to a new format," thus suggesting that he's not won any new readers by going to Kindle format. I don't think that's the case. Certainly the rest of us indies who are selling fairly well aren't just bringing over existing readers. Indies seem to be developing a new customer base, one that's willing to look at samples and take a chance on authors they're not familiar with. And judging from what people report about their sales, that customer base seems to be growing.

-And you know why I know about these exceptions? Because they’re news. They’re rare. The other hundreds of thousands of self-published books? They’re unvisited websites and unopened boxes in somebody’s garage...

That's because most of them are in fact crap. But for the ones that aren't crap, indie publishing seems to be working fairly well, at least in many cases. I personally think we're going to start seeing a lot more "exceptions."

Publishing

Unwrapped (consisting of Unwrapped and Christmas Carol) has been uploaded to Amazon. Hopefully it will publish in the next day or two. I think these are two good, solid stories. I had thought Unwrapped was the better of the two, but when I reread Christmas Carol I was surprised by how much I liked it. Neither features my "typical" nerdy hero, but the heroes are both still vulnerable, deep down, so I believe my contemporary readers will enjoy them.

Writing stuff

I haven't had a single sale on Love Remembered in two days, thanks to the fact that the only review on it is one star. Very annoying. I need to figure out how to get more reviews on my books so a single bad one doesn't hit my sales so badly.

I'm going to upload Unwrapped today. It'll take a day or two to go live, but Amazon shouldn't have to check the rights, as it was never available on Amazon before, so that should help speed the process.

Royalty rate

The last week's report switched over to a weekly report, so I was able to see how many of my recent sales were at the higher royalty rate. My first few days at the new rate went extremely well. It's amazing how much more money you make at the higher rate. If I can keep my sales going, it will definitely be worth it.

Pickin' that pig

We went to a pig pickin' today, way out in the country. My parents-in-law and my MIL's sister attended too. It was good to hang with family, the kids had fun tossing beanbags around, and the late lamented pig was delicious:-). Tomorrow night, we're going to see fireworks with the parents-in-law. So we're having a very familycentric weekend!

A nice review

I hadn't really looked at Isn't It Romantic? on Amazon lately, but I was surprised to see I got a massively glowing review back in the middle of June. It's only four stars (the writer does say things happen too fast and that I need to invest in a thesaurus *g*), but it's still really ravingly good.. He called me "a writer to watch" and went on: "I just genuinely feel that this writer is magic. She writes people with real world flaws and concerns that make you feel for them immediately, and their inner 'demons' are the kind we all deal with, yet she still manages to keep the fun and charm in the romance... I suppose it's possible that this was the one time Ms. Fisher nailed it and the rest of her books won't measure up. But I doubt it. This kind of writing isn't a fluke. But I'll know soon enough. Her next book awaits in my Kindle queue. Come on. Try it! It's only 99 cents and easily worth twice that! LOL"

That's a really nice review. Unfortunately, when I look at the details, it's the kind of review that's bound to be labeled fake if I promote it. The reviewer has only one other review, and it's for a Blu-Ray. I am fairly certain I don't know this person, but looking at it objectively, it totally looks like a friends-and-family kind of review. Therefore, I won't promote it on the Amazon boards. But I do wonder if it's been helping to drive IIR's rather good sales.

$2.99

I confess to being mildly annoyed by indie authors who are publicly stating that they won't buy books priced at less than $2.99 anymore. Could we please not try to pressure each other? I'm pricing books at what I think is a reasonable price. $2.99 strikes me as reasonable for full novels, but not for novellas-- and I have quite a few novellas. Other people want to keep their price at 99 cents because they only have one book so far, or because they feel grateful to their fans, or various other reasons. How about we all just assume we have reasons for what we do, and not try to make others feel guilty about their pricing decisions?

Formatting again

After some effort, I have Unwrapped and Christmas Carol properly formatted, and have checked them on my Kindle. They total about 36,000 words-- a decent length for one book, I think. Unfortunately, I don't have a completely finished HTML or Word version of Christmas Carol for some reason. The one I have is marked up with Vulcan Husband's notes (including typically wry comments such as "Dagnabit! I told you before the glass ornaments were higher. Read your own story!"). I'll need to check this one against the published pdf version (the only version I have, alas) and make sure all corrections have been made before I publish it. I'm hoping to get it up sometime next week.

Real life

I have my older son set up for a speech therapy evaluation next week, and if they conclude he needs therapy (as I assume they will), there is an open hour for him. This is fortunate, as I was originally told they were all filled up and it might be weeks before we could get him in. School speech therapy hasn't been doing him much good, so I want to see if there's anything else to be done to help clear up his speech issues.

I made an appointment with the Crohn's doctor. My current medicine is no longer working well; I run low-grade fevers (up to a hundred) almost constantly, and my knees are stiff with arthritis, both of which are signs of inflammation. Not to mention all the usual Crohn's stuff, which no one wants to read about:-). I hate to say it, but it's probably time for steroids. Ugh. But we'll have to see what the doctor says!

The Galaxy Express

I forgot to mention that the lovely Heather Massey of the Galaxy Express mentioned both my SFR books in this post, and said nice things about Farthest Space to boot. She is a tireless supporter of SFR and its authors, and an awesome lady... if you're into SFR, do make sure you visit her site frequently!

Kindle Nation Daily

I paid to sponsor a "free daily book alert" for Never Love a Stranger on Kindle Nation Daily. Since it's pretty much the number one blog on Kindle, it seemed like a bargain. Stephen Skinwalker kindly referred to the "inventive, imaginative plot," and called me "one of the most popular and prolific novelists in the Kindle Store" (which is a great quote, but let's be honest, not entirely accurate!). So far, I've seen a decent uptick in sales.

Intriguing

I got curious, and looked at the other reviews written by the reviewer who gave me one star. She likes vampire books, threesomes, BDSM... but she finds sex with a ***** to be gross and icky. Go figure. I guess it just goes to show you that we all have particular, personal things that disturb us, and that what works for one reader doesn't necessarily work for another.

In other news, I am absolutely crushed over the terrible, terrible Last Airbender reviews. I've been looking forward to this one for months, and so have my kids. But it's clear that going to see it will just tick us all off. It's apparently that bad. It amazes me that anyone could screw up the source material that badly. Oh, well... we'll just see Toy Story 3 instead. Too many 3D extravaganzas are bad for the budget anyway!

My first 1-star review!

On Amazon, for Never Love a Stranger:

"This book was very well written and had an interesting plot in the first 1/3 of the book. THEN: the big "secret" is revealed about the hero- and it all goes down hill from there. I've read many time-travel romance books, and this one had a lot going for it, until it went in a totally weird and skin-crawling icky direction. I won't post a spoiler in my review- but lets just say that the hero misleads the girl and by the time the "secret" is revealed, you will be grossed out. I was so disgusted, I couldn't read anymore."

We all get bad reviews, but I bet you've never had a review in which your book was called icky, weird, skin-crawling, gross AND disgusting all at once. I think that's pretty darn impressive. Ordinarily, I'd just ignore a bad review, but this one has some potential for making people curious about that big skin-crawling gross twist, I think. So off I go to publicize it:-).

New cover

I decided to release one of my Christmas novellas as a "Christmas in July" kind of thing. When I looked at them, though, I realized they're both very short (around 15,000 words), since they were originally in anthologies. So I may bundle them together. I'm still going to call the collection Unwrapped, though: