My father drives me nuts

My dad (94) called me today:

"The sound on my new TV quit working."

Since we just bought the TV a couple of weeks ago, I was unconcerned. I answered, "I'll take a look at it tomorrow. You probably pressed something."

"No, no. I didn't touch anything. It's just broken."

"It's fine." I taped over all the buttons on the remote control so he couldn't mess anything up, but of course he could still press one through the tape if he really tried-- and he has an amazing talent for screwing stuff up. "I'll take a look at it tomorrow."

"That won't do any good. It's broken. I need a new one."

"No, you don't. It's fine."

"I don't understand this! The sound shouldn't stop working after two weeks! I knew I shouldn't buy this cheap brand. I need a top-of-the-line Sony."

I resisted the urge to bang my head against the wall. "I told you when you bought it, I have a TV of that exact brand, Dad. I've had it for years. It's not the TV."

"It is the TV. There's something wrong with it. I need a new one."

"I'LL LOOK AT IT TOMORROW, ALL RIGHT???"

But he kept going on about it, for about ten more minutes, and I very politely did not hang up on him. I hope that when I'm 94, my kids are as patient and kind and generally saintly as I am:-).

Another indie gets a contract

Dear Author reports that Stephanie McAfee, author of Diary of a Mad Fat Girl (a New York Times bestseller for six weeks, which has sold over 50,000 copies), now has a three-book deal with NAL.

More Judy Mays

Here's another article on Judy Mays. This one at least mentions the Facebook page supporting her. It also quotes the accusing mother more extensively. She says the erotica “is unethical, totally unacceptable. Period. It just sort of sickens and saddens me to know everybody’s sort of looking at this like, hey, this is OK.”

She also complains that people are attacking her on Facebook, and that her son is getting "backlash" at school. I imagine she thought everyone would support her, and that Mays would be attacked. I'm personally glad to see the attacks aimed in the correct direction for once.

Witch hunt

Here's a rather appalling article about a Pennsylvania teacher who writes erotic romances, under a pen name. She's been found out by parents and students, who are apparently shocked to find that teachers may have an existence outside of school:

Parent Deanna Stepp said the evidence is clear. "She is teaching children that are under the age of 18 and definitely the books that she is writing are adult books. I think she needs to make a decision as to what she wants to do. Either be a school teacher or author," Stepp said.

"I was shocked. If you are a teacher you shouldn't be doing that," said former student Shanette Apple.

"I was sort of shocked.Sitting in her class I had no idea. She is a good teacher but I had no idea what was going on behind the scenes," said former student Drew Hollenbach.

So now we're not allowed to write outside our jobs because we come into contact with minors. Wow. Are we allowed to read adult books when we're off our employer's clock? Are we allowed to have sex? Are we allowed to drink alcohol? For that matter, do we have any rights at all?

Lend me!

Cool, I missed this. In the week of April 4, my historical romance Love Remembered (which has been my second-best seller as Ellen Fisher this month, for the first time ever) was #23 on the BookLending.com Most Wanted list.

All I Ever Wanted review

Nice review, here. "Overall the characters are well drawn and the romance is your standard together-conflict-tension-more tension-together pattern. The sex scenes are interesting, as Max isn't your standard 'alpha male'... Fisher has departed from convention and it makes the book all the better. Aside from the abundantly abundant adverbs, which make an unexpectedly frequent appearance here and there, All I Ever Wanted is a nice, light romp."

Not surprised to hear I have an adverb problem; this was one of my earlier books, and I do love me some adverbs. I think I'll see if I can edit this one this week and republish it!

One more teenager in the house

My younger daughter turned thirteen today. Yeesh, I now have two teenaged girls *shudders*.

My oldest wrote her a Portal/Star Trek: The Next Generation crossover fic as a present (at the end, she wrote Congratulations on turning old). My six-year-old thoughtfully wrapped up one of his own toys, a toy knight and horse, for a birthday present for her. When she opened it, he informed her, "I never use it, and anyway, one of the dogs chewed a hoof off."

She laughed, and graciously thanked him anyway:-).

Ugh

I feel terrible today, but moms don't necessarily get to chill out on the sofa just because they feel bad. Today I've helped my son finish his big project (a model of the Pentagon, which we just spraypainted), gone to the store and bought enough Easter candy to rot thousands of teeth, and now I'm going to boil eggs so that the kids can color them this afternoon.

And THEN I'm going to chill out on the sofa, and maybe even take a nap:-).

Library lending

Amazon announces Kindle library lending, coming later this year. They are partnering with OverDrive.

The really big question is, what will people whine about on the Kindle forums now??

Busch Gardens, yay!

We bought season passes to Busch Gardens, and will be going there regularly in lieu of a summer vacation. We went today for the first time, and everyone had a good time. I only had a couple of issues:

1. There are not enough bathrooms (if you have Crohn's disease). Then again, the only way for a place to have enough bathrooms for a Crohn's sufferer is if they're provided at twenty-foot intervals:-).

2. The walking was hard. Since we moved to Tidewater, I've gotten used to flatness. I'd forgotten all about these things called hills.

3. My sons are a pair of weenies and will not go on any ride scarier than the "Little Balloons." I gotta work on those kids if I expect to get on a ride myself anytime this summer!

Today I did lots of work (or rather, my kids did)

The yard guys came late last week, and (after they mowed the lawn) weedwhacked my worst flowerbed. I decided to get it mulched before the weeds get a chance to get started again, so today I bought several bags of mulch. The kids are home for spring break, and it was a beautiful day, so they all decided it would be fun to help. (This is the kind of thing a smart mom takes advantage of while it lasts-- by August they'll be acting like they're being tortured if I ask them to help in the slightest way.) The kids dragged the mulch bags across the yard, I opened them and dumped them out, and then the six-year-old spread the mulch around the flowerbed. Then we hung up some new baskets of petunias (I murdered off my pansies already), and the kids watered all the flowers.

And finally, I went to Wal-Mart and got a few of those cute little solar lights, and installed them along the front walkway. I'd love to put them along the edge of the flowerbed in the back yard too, but I worry that the dogs will see them as something to eat (they think pretty much everything is a chew toy), and solar batteries won't do them much good. So I think it's best the back yard remain dark...

LOL

Me, stacking dishes into the dishwasher: "There, we're all caught up. I'm going to run this, and tonight we'll eat on styrofoam plates so we don't make any more dirty dishes."

My younger daughter: "The environment hates you, Mom."

The epic tragedy of being a dog

I took the dogs to the brand-new PetSmart down the street to get baths (which they both desperately need). They greeted the people behind the counter politely (and in Hero's case, with several attempted kisses), but they still gave me looks of Epic Tragedy: You're leaving us, aren't you? We've never been here before and for all we know, this is a place where they dissect dogs or hang them up by their toenails... or worse yet, BATHE them. How can you leave us this way? Don't you feel guilty? You really, really should feel guilty.

Poor guys. Fortunately they have a short memory, so as soon as I pick them up, all will be forgiven... till the next bath:-).

A bad review that made me happy

It's not often that a bad review makes me happy, but I got one today that made me smile. The reviewer gave one of my erotic romances two stars and complained that the sex was "too out there." I've always thought my weakness in erotic romance writing was that I was too vanilla, so this delighted me. I managed to write some hot stuff that was too much for someone! How awesome is that?!

B&N again

With whatever's going on at B&N, I'm still selling there, but my sales are way down. I may sell as many as 2000 books there this month (but then again, I may not-- it's hard to average it out because the first two days of sales for the month were excellent). That sounds pretty good until you realize that I sold 6300 there in March, and 11,500 in February. Ouch.

Obviously I need to get out some new Ellen Fisher books and focus on Amazon, where my sales are much steadier and more reliable, and don't seem to drop off for no reason. This next week is spring break-- hopefully I can get some serious writing done even with the kids underfoot!

Unexpected losses of income, or why indie publishing can be a bit scary

Two things are going on right now of relevance to indie writers:

1. Lots of B&N authors, on Kindleboards and the PubIt Help Board, are reporting massive drops in sales (possibly due to a problem with keyword searches over there). Some people on the PubIt boards are saying their sales are down 90%. B&N does not seem to be responding to most emails requesting info on the situation.

2. Lee Goldberg reported that Kobo was discounting titles (violating their agreement with Smashwords), that Amazon was price-matching, and that he was losing a whole lot of money as a result. Others on KB said they've had their prices lowered at Amazon as a result of this, too. This is not Smashwords' fault, and Kobo claims it's a "glitch," but the problem has been out there for a couple of days and still hasn't been resolved, resulting in a loss of income for Lee and others.

Once again, this is just a reminder that indie writing can be a bumpy road, and that odd and unexpected events may affect your income despite your best promotional efforts.

Rainbow

As we drove back from dinner tonight, it was raining lightly in the east and beginning to clear in the west, and we saw a rainbow beginning to form. By the time we got home, there was a giant brilliant rainbow stretching across the sky. Gorgeous!

Good doggies

I had a guy here all morning installing a new line for DirecTV, so that my daughter's TV could get satellite. The dogs (who were out in the back yard) correctly announced his arrival with a loud fanfare of barking, and barked once or twice more when he walked from the house back to his truck. After that, they were quiet-- they'd already announced his presence, and didn't feel the need to keep yelping about it.

Later, he went out for a while and stood on a ladder, just outside the invisible fence line, and when I went out to see how it was going, they were sitting there, quietly observing him. I then walked through the back yard with him, and the dogs both made a friendly leap at him (they still really, really want to leap on people to greet them), but when I told them NO! OFF! they dropped back to the ground and politely escorted us through the back yard.

In short, they behaved like good doggies:-).

Ewwwww

Amazon introduces a new, cheaper Kindle... with ads.

How not to promote, again

An addition to my How not to promote post from a week ago: If you find yourself getting upset on the Amazon boards, don't start cussing out readers and insulting everyone in sight.

And yes, once again, you would think this would be obvious to any writer. But apparently it's not. I don't know if certain authors think their only way of generating sales is controversy, or if they're just socially inept. But it doesn't do any favors for the rest of us.

A story about titles

I spotted a thread about Susan Johnson on the Amazon romance board, and it reminded me of something kind of odd that happened while I was still writing for Bantam. I was working on Love Remembered, and my editor suggested we retitle it to Temporary Mistress. An author writing for a traditional publisher has no real control over titles, of course, but I pointed out that there was no mistress, temporary or otherwise, in the book. Even so, she continued to push for that title. (I'm guessing the marketing department liked the title.). In fact, Bantam liked the title so much that they informed Amazon and other sites that my next book would be titled Temporary Mistress-- if you Google that title and my name, you can find quite a few hits.

When Bantam dropped me, however, they switched that title over to a Susan Johnson book. I guess the marketing department liked the title so much they were bound and determined to use it somewhere. I've never read the Johnson book, but I do hope there's a mistress in it somewhere:-).

Lucky kid

My dad bought himself a 46-inch LCD television a couple of months ago, and then decided it was too big for his living room. He replaced it with a 32-incher and handed off the big TV to us. We already have a huge TV downstairs, and I have no space for one that big in my bedroom, so I'm giving it to my oldest (her room over the garage was used as a den by the folks who built the house, so it happens to have space in the built-in shelving for a large television). Though I haven't ever allowed my kids to have TVs in their rooms, I was going to get her a TV when she turned sixteen in July anyway-- but it sure as heck wouldn't have been a monster TV like this one. She's one lucky kid!

When good boys go alpha

As I've mentioned before, I started watching Castle recently, and I'm catching up on this season via Amazon. I just watched the big episode, 3.13. This post will contain SPOILERS. If you are behind on your Castle watching and don't want to be spoiled, STOP READING NOW.

First of all, this episode ("Knockdown") is of course the one with the big kiss, and that's what I was looking forward to when I downloaded it. But as many people have noted, that highly anticipated moment isn't even the best moment in the episode. For me, the best moment occurred at the end, when Castle tackled the guy threatening Beckett, took him down, and beat the hell out of him.

Why did this moment get to me so much? Well, one of the things I love most about writing beta heroes is creating that moment when the hero suddenly goes alpha, whether because he's protecting the heroine or because he feels he has to take charge of a dangerous situation... or even in bed, when he decides he's got enough confidence to be in charge. This, for me, is the whole point of writing beta heroes-- to see that deep down, they have the guts to protect the woman they love, and that they really do have the strength to take charge when they have to.

Of course, Castle is really not the sort of beta I write. He's not all that geeky (despite a love for lightsabers), and he doesn't wear glasses. But he is often childish and silly-- a big ball of goofy, overgrown adolescent. So for him to go alpha because Kate was threatened was a lovely moment in their relationship, as far as I'm concerned. (And to keep it in character, his hand had to be bandaged afterward, which was a nice touch of realism that's too often missing in fiction.) But that one moment was enough to sell me on the Castle/Beckett relationship forever.

In fact, I think I'm going to go watch it again:-).

B&N- not just an erotica issue

There's a long thread here on Kindleboards discussing the B&N situation. I want to repeat here what I've said there-- this is not just an erotica issue. Based on the information we have, B&N is apparently manipulating its rankings system in order to change the composition of its bestseller lists. This should make all indie writers very, very nervous. If the bestseller lists aren't based on real and verifiable data, but simply on someone's whim, then the the entire system's validity falls into question. It means that B&N and Amazon can create bestsellers at will, and exclude books from the bestseller list at will. In the long run, this could affect far more than just erotica writers.

The vulnerability of being a writer

One of my hot romances sold 3300 copies on B&N last month-- far and away my best seller for the month. This month, it appeared to be picking up steam, with 365 copies sold in the first two days of April. And then, as I have reported below, B&N somehow "recalculated" the book's ranking (I still don't know if this has to do with it being erotic romance or not), so that its Nookstore ranking fell from the 100s to the 1100s. Not long after that, it went from #30 on the PubIt list to nowhere in the top hundred.

The result? Well, more than halfway through the day today, it's sold eight copies. If it's not on the bestseller list, people aren't going to find it. Certainly I may have a few fans who look actively for my books under that name, but on the whole, B&N has made that book invisible, and its sales will probably dwindle to a standstill. Even if I try to get through to B&N's customer service (which I've heard isn't easy), they will probably tell me they've recalibrated the rankings system, and I can't argue that-- how do I know where my book really deserves to be ranked? Or it might just be a "glitch," but the book's already lost its sales momentum, and it's unlikely to get it back.

My point? Well, if I have one, it's that we as indie writers are vulnerable. We aren't selling through too many platforms, and our books aren't available in brick and mortar stores. So if one platform screws us over, our sales can take a very serious hit. It's something to bear in mind when you make that decision as to whether you want to work with traditional publishers or not.

But of course, traditional publishers can screw us over bigtime too (look at the Dorchester debacle if you don't believe me). So maybe the lesson is simply that writing in general is a risky business.

Hmmmm

My bestseller at B&N, which (as I reported earlier) was #30 on the PubIt bestseller list earlier today, has now dropped entirely out of the top hundred. My storewide rank is still showing as over 1100. And yet I sold exactly 200 copies of the book yesterday, which is better than average for this book. Strange, very strange. I shall check in the morning and see if anything has changed.

I note that a lot of other erotic romances have dropped out of the top hundred PubIt books, too. Tina Folsom is still #2 on the list with an erotica book, and her storewide rank is #106. Yet that seems to be the only erotica book in the top 50, when PubIt was previously crammed full of erotica bestsellers (and the Folsom book that was previously #1 on the list, Lawful Escort, doesn't seem to be anywhere in the top hundred now-- unless I'm missing it, which of course is quite possible this time of night). It's all very odd.

Update on B&N

I'm going to assume B&N's ranking system is just screwed up today. The number one PubIt bestseller is Tina Folsom's Lawful Escort... with an overall store ranking of #1143 (far, far higher than the books listed below it). My bestselling book is #30 on the list despite a similar ranking. And no, it doesn't seem to be a picking-on-erotica-writers kind of thing, since Tina Folsom has an erotic book at #4 on the PubIt list and at #118 in the overall rankings. I think B&N is frankly just messed up *shrugs*.

How not to promote

Lately there's an influx of new authors on Amazon who are frankly a bit aggravating. The Amazon boards go through these cycles, of course, but that knowledge doesn't stop me from grinding my molars together when I read these posts. It's irritating enough when new authors come on and spam numerous threads/forums with their ads (I'm not talking about the legitimate promo threads, but either starting their own threads or posting on threads that have no real relation to their book). But that isn't so bad if the authors just fade into the woodwork afterward.

But these authors do not just fade away. When people complain, they don't respond politely, "Oh, I'm sorry to have annoyed you" and go away quietly. No... they insist they have a right to promote (one of them actually invoked the Constitution in his arguments. Seriously), and they will argue for endless pages about their supposed rights. At some point they'll abandon all pretenses at courtesy, and will then dismiss the forum members (who are, I hardly need to point out, the readers to whom they are trying to sell their books) as cyberbullies, and pull out the motheaten whine about how indie writers have to post on forums because no one pays attention to them otherwise. And no matter how many times people advise them to take a break from the keyboard, and warn them that the tantrums and whining are not helping their career, they just... will... not... shut... up. Their threads go on and on, getting nastier with every post.

I honestly do not get this behavior. What's more important to you-- selling books, or getting in the last word? Because to me, it looks like authors who behave this way are a lot more concerned about being "right" than about selling books.

If you really want to sell books, be polite no matter what, don't insult your readers, don't whine about how hard it is to get noticed, and in general don't irritate the hell out of people. All of that seems completely obvious to me, but alas, it's clearly not obvious to a few writers out there.

B&N rankings

I notice that my B&N rankings seem to be slipping, even on my book that's still selling well over there. It sold 165 copies yesterday, and yet it's ranked over 1100. Weird, as I'm pretty sure that used to be enough to get it up into the 200s range. My guess is that there are a lot more books selling really, really well in the Nookstore-- which is good news for all of us, I think.

Also, in the "what sells well on B&N does not necessarily sell well on Amazon" category, that same book has sold a big two copies so far this month on Amazon.