I admit it, my blog here is neglected, but right now it's for a good reason. I've been writing, hard. I just have not had the chance to get here and throw down a post, because I've been trying to get my next eBook polished, and I've been trying to get my new WIP completed and ready for the cold weather query blitz. Oh, and I've started a totally new and different non-fiction project about my personal battles which many of you know about. Those of you who don't will...err...have to buy the book... :)
Of course, now that my WIP finally has an ending, it needs to be meticulously re-drafted. It's at 65k words now and that's pretty high for me for a just completed draft, I'm probably looking at close to 85k words which is about 10k above my usual cadence. It's a really fun book, I think it's my best work yet. But it might end up taking a back seat for a while so I can get my next eBook published. The problem there is that my free editor cannot do it, so I need another pair of editing eyes and I have to pay for it...ugh... I hate shelling out money but I hate even more trying to find a good editor. I know there are tons of great ones out there but some are so expensive. I know in most cases you get what you pay for.
My new non-fiction project is still in preliminary stages, I've written an outline but I need to read a few similar books to get some ideas on how to round it into shape. I've never attempted something so far removed from fiction, but so far it's been a smooth transition. Since I was a journalist for a long time it's not a real far stretch to write a memoir-type piece. It is basically like reporting on myself.
So I hope all my fellow writers are getting ready for query season, because I would not want it to be easy for me to snag that great agent. I like competition and...wait a second, what the hell am I saying? On second thought, none of you should send out queries, yeah that's it... in fact you should all stop writing and take up toothpick sculpture, try and go pro with that. I hear toothpick sculpture agents are wide open and seeking clients.
I hope all of you made it through Hurricane Irene unscathed. Here in Upstate NY we had a lot of rain and some heavy winds, we lost power for about 5-hours. But other than that we were okay. My friends down in NJ and NYC had it a bit worse, they had some serious floods and damage to property. So I hope all of you out there are safe and sound.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Re-Thinking the .99 cent eBook
I used to side with the folks who thought a .99-cent eBook was a bad idea. I used to think we as writers were selling out, selling our hard work short and giving it away. But over the past few months I've slowly started changing my tune.
When I first released The Sweet Sixteenth back in April, I wanted to put it for sale for .99-cents, but after a conversation with a real published author, I decided against it. I learned that real authors were basically pissed off at the .99-cent eBook by independent authors because they were hurting their own sales and dragging down the level of pricing for eBooks in general. I saw that opinion echoed in several websites so I decided against making my book a .99-cent choice.
Now here were are only a few months later, and some of those very authors who were against it, are now doing it. I don't know what happened exactly, maybe it was the old "If I can't beat them join them" reason, I don't know.
I do agree that perhaps you should not debut an eBook at .99-cents, because then you leave no room to drop the price later. My plan was to drop the price of my first book, when my second eBook was out, which should be soon. But I've decided to drop the price right now, for several reasons, not the least of which is that the facts show that .99-cent eBook outsell their $2.99 counterparts by a score of 2-to-1. You make less per book, but you sell more books at the lower prices so it's something each author has to decide with each book.
The other reason is that so many authors are doing it, there is no point in taking some sort of stand anymore, to preserve some level of expected compensation for intellectual property. It is what it is, we are in a crazy time with these eBooks and the learning curves are very fluid and twisting all over the place. Everyone is making up their own rules as they go along and there is nothing wrong with that. And since no one is following any of the traditional rules, or even most of the new ones we are making up as we go along, I guess we can just pretty much do what we want and hope for the best. So in a sense, the only rule... there are no rules.
When I first released The Sweet Sixteenth back in April, I wanted to put it for sale for .99-cents, but after a conversation with a real published author, I decided against it. I learned that real authors were basically pissed off at the .99-cent eBook by independent authors because they were hurting their own sales and dragging down the level of pricing for eBooks in general. I saw that opinion echoed in several websites so I decided against making my book a .99-cent choice.
Now here were are only a few months later, and some of those very authors who were against it, are now doing it. I don't know what happened exactly, maybe it was the old "If I can't beat them join them" reason, I don't know.
I do agree that perhaps you should not debut an eBook at .99-cents, because then you leave no room to drop the price later. My plan was to drop the price of my first book, when my second eBook was out, which should be soon. But I've decided to drop the price right now, for several reasons, not the least of which is that the facts show that .99-cent eBook outsell their $2.99 counterparts by a score of 2-to-1. You make less per book, but you sell more books at the lower prices so it's something each author has to decide with each book.
The other reason is that so many authors are doing it, there is no point in taking some sort of stand anymore, to preserve some level of expected compensation for intellectual property. It is what it is, we are in a crazy time with these eBooks and the learning curves are very fluid and twisting all over the place. Everyone is making up their own rules as they go along and there is nothing wrong with that. And since no one is following any of the traditional rules, or even most of the new ones we are making up as we go along, I guess we can just pretty much do what we want and hope for the best. So in a sense, the only rule... there are no rules.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Writing Can Be Fun
Writing can be fun; we all know it or we would not be doing it. But it can also be about as pleasurable as sticking a No.2 pencil in your ear until it bumps into the gray matter inside your skull.
I think the creation part is what is fun, creating worlds, fleshing out characters, pouring your emotions and thoughts onto the page, that’s the fun stuff. But then when all that is done, the real work starts. Maybe someday I will be like those famous writers who just come up with the idea and pawn the hard work off on someone else. Of course, doing that is the easy way out.
After the experience of putting The Sweet Sixteenth on sale as an eBook, I decided that I wanted to do it again. So I put my current WIP on hold and went back to a story I finished last year. After rereading it, I decided it needed a rewrite if I was going to actually put it out into the world. It was a good story, but I had a couple agents tell me it was just too dark. Was it too dark, or, was I just presenting it that way? It is a dark concept, but it’s really not a dark story. Certainly it has dark moments. Either way I could see it needed something, and none of my beta readers could really help.
I was not sure what to do with the story; it was too good to go into the scrap heap, so I did the un-fun thing. I rewrote the entire story and put in the paranormal twist I wanted to in the beginning. I resisted the urge because at the time the concept did not seem to fall into place, it seemed like a paranormal twist was secondary to the story. Then during the first rewrite a new twist came to me and everything fell into place.
The problem is that the rewrite that was supposed to take a couple weeks has turned into a couple months and growing. Sculpting all those old storylines to fit a new twist can be maddening. Nevertheless, I could take any short cuts. The new rewrite was so significant the title no longer even worked, so that was another obstacle to tackle. I’m not really good at titles, if I had to do it all over again I’d probably change the title of almost everything I’ve written over the years.
So now, Revenge of The Taken is almost ready for it’s eBook journey. My point to this ramble is that the hard work part of writing, can sometimes lead back to the fun part of writing. It has been a lot of run doing what I thought was going to be a hassle. If I never put in the hours on this story, and plunged through the hard part, it would have never gotten to this point and I might have given up on it altogether.
Writing can be fun, but also hard work; when the two come together it really illustrates why we all keep doing it.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Kindle for Joplin
Last week severe thunderstorms knocked out power to our house in Upstate New York. We were without electricity for several days. During that time a lot of things were a hassle. The things we take for granted like running water, are very hard to live without. For the last two days of the ordeal we were lucky enough to have someone who could lend us a generator, which (just in time) saved a lot of food in our freezer that would have ended up in the garbage.
The only thing we lost, besides a couple showers, was a gallon of milk, some eggs, and a few other already questionable items from our crisper. It was hardly a disaster situation. Nevertheless, it got me thinking about the people of Joplin, Missouri. They didn’t just lose power, running water, and a gallon of milk. They lost entire neighborhoods, entire families in some cases, and entirely too much to even imagine.
My wife and I wanted to find some way to give what we could, but I've been unemployed since February, we have nothing extra to give out of pocket. I decided that the only real way to give back was through my writing. I thought if we could somehow harness the power of Kindle, we could help a little. After consulting a few sources, it seemed that 50% was the magic number.
So, for the foreseeable future, I will be giving 50% of each Kindle eBook I sell to the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation’s Joplin Relief Fund. It’s not much, but it’s what I can do. At the very least I hope it inspires other authors to do the same. Not necessarily to the same fund, since there are many in the USA that have been clobbered by wicked storms this year, but perhaps they can pick their own cause and give what they can. If you don’t want to give 50% just give 25%, every bit can help.
A few good people have already donated to the cause and I thank you. These are hard times for everyone economically; donations to all charity across the board are down. If you don’t want to buy my book, but still want to donate, click the link to the fund above and have at it. They have a form you just fill it out. For just $2.99 you can get THE SWEET SIXTEENTH, an action-laced romantic thriller for your Kindle, and give $1.50 to help those that with so little left.
The only thing we lost, besides a couple showers, was a gallon of milk, some eggs, and a few other already questionable items from our crisper. It was hardly a disaster situation. Nevertheless, it got me thinking about the people of Joplin, Missouri. They didn’t just lose power, running water, and a gallon of milk. They lost entire neighborhoods, entire families in some cases, and entirely too much to even imagine.
My wife and I wanted to find some way to give what we could, but I've been unemployed since February, we have nothing extra to give out of pocket. I decided that the only real way to give back was through my writing. I thought if we could somehow harness the power of Kindle, we could help a little. After consulting a few sources, it seemed that 50% was the magic number.
So, for the foreseeable future, I will be giving 50% of each Kindle eBook I sell to the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation’s Joplin Relief Fund. It’s not much, but it’s what I can do. At the very least I hope it inspires other authors to do the same. Not necessarily to the same fund, since there are many in the USA that have been clobbered by wicked storms this year, but perhaps they can pick their own cause and give what they can. If you don’t want to give 50% just give 25%, every bit can help.
A few good people have already donated to the cause and I thank you. These are hard times for everyone economically; donations to all charity across the board are down. If you don’t want to buy my book, but still want to donate, click the link to the fund above and have at it. They have a form you just fill it out. For just $2.99 you can get THE SWEET SIXTEENTH, an action-laced romantic thriller for your Kindle, and give $1.50 to help those that with so little left.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Momma Got Kindle
My 61 year old mother got a Kindle for Christmas. The idea appealed to her somewhat, she thought perhaps she would use it on occasion when she traveled. Now, my mother is not a techno dummy (her son does have a degree in computer science) but she still uses a desktop. She does not Facebook or Twitter, nor will she ever. She did not even have WiFi in her house.
Without WiFi, your Kindle needs to be hooked up to the PC and the books uploaded. That's a few more steps than most people will do on a whim. Of course, that's where I came in. As it turned out, she had a WiFi DSL router in her house supplied by her ISP. So naturally I hacked into the router and enabled the wireless. Then I quickly set of the WiFi on the Kindle and about a million books became a finger push away.
The next time I went to my mother's house, she sent me away with a shopping bag of about fifteen books. My mother has always been a reading machine, devouring books at a rapid rate, and leaving the leftovers to me. I'm usually about ten books behind her at a given moment, so there is always a pile of books for me to read around the house. But since the Kindle, I've been deluged with books. But that looks like the end of the line. I doubt my mother will ever buy another paperback again.
At first I looked at this as a sign of The Coming of Gozer, but it is so easy for people to buy an eBook with this device, they can't help themselves. It's not just easy, it's convenient to the point of books becoming an impulse item once again. Years ago, I remember as a kid supermarkets used to put books on the impulse racks. Over the years they seemed to have been replaced by candy and magazines. But at least where I grew up in New Jersey, books used to be on many of those racks. Most of them were romance novels, but some were thrillers and other genres. I imagine there are places where that still is the norm, but I don't see it often. In most cases markets and drug stores have a book section, but that is usually where the books stay. If you do not seek them out they won't find you.
With the Kindle, it's even easier than an impulse item. You type in a name, or a genre or whatever you want and zap, an 80,000 word novel is in your hand. It's so intuitive it's ridiculous.
I've heard people say these devices are the best thing to happen to authors since the printing press. Right now it is so cheap and easy to buy a book, it may effectively destroy the "second hand" book market. It occurred to me that many of the books my mother used to buy were used books. An author makes no money on a used book. I know in theory said buyer is supposed to then go buy a new book by that author. I agree that's valid on some level. However, the reality is that might not happen either. In which case the author was nothing but a pimp for the store.
Of course, stories of accidental discovery ... "I found this book on the beach and it changed my life" ...will not really have an equal in the eBook world. But on the flip side, authors will sell more directly. People like my mother will take a chance on an unknown author because it's so damn easy to do it. And why not? It didn't cost any gas to get it, it was only $2.99, and if it sucks you can delete it.The Kindle user sees little downside in buying a book they might have otherwise passed on. So authors will benefit in ways they might not have in traditional paperback, even if we lose some of the paper perks.
It's a weird new world and I guess we have to roll with it. We are not going to stop this snowball from gathering speed so we either get out of the way, or we jump into the icy cluster and hang on until it explodes into something else. It was my mother's reaction to Kindle that convinced me to eBook The Sweet Sixteenth - I wanted to learn the eBook process first hand before I was scrambling to catch up. Because if my mother can abandon paperbacks, anyone can, and everyone will.
Without WiFi, your Kindle needs to be hooked up to the PC and the books uploaded. That's a few more steps than most people will do on a whim. Of course, that's where I came in. As it turned out, she had a WiFi DSL router in her house supplied by her ISP. So naturally I hacked into the router and enabled the wireless. Then I quickly set of the WiFi on the Kindle and about a million books became a finger push away.
The next time I went to my mother's house, she sent me away with a shopping bag of about fifteen books. My mother has always been a reading machine, devouring books at a rapid rate, and leaving the leftovers to me. I'm usually about ten books behind her at a given moment, so there is always a pile of books for me to read around the house. But since the Kindle, I've been deluged with books. But that looks like the end of the line. I doubt my mother will ever buy another paperback again.
At first I looked at this as a sign of The Coming of Gozer, but it is so easy for people to buy an eBook with this device, they can't help themselves. It's not just easy, it's convenient to the point of books becoming an impulse item once again. Years ago, I remember as a kid supermarkets used to put books on the impulse racks. Over the years they seemed to have been replaced by candy and magazines. But at least where I grew up in New Jersey, books used to be on many of those racks. Most of them were romance novels, but some were thrillers and other genres. I imagine there are places where that still is the norm, but I don't see it often. In most cases markets and drug stores have a book section, but that is usually where the books stay. If you do not seek them out they won't find you.
With the Kindle, it's even easier than an impulse item. You type in a name, or a genre or whatever you want and zap, an 80,000 word novel is in your hand. It's so intuitive it's ridiculous.
I've heard people say these devices are the best thing to happen to authors since the printing press. Right now it is so cheap and easy to buy a book, it may effectively destroy the "second hand" book market. It occurred to me that many of the books my mother used to buy were used books. An author makes no money on a used book. I know in theory said buyer is supposed to then go buy a new book by that author. I agree that's valid on some level. However, the reality is that might not happen either. In which case the author was nothing but a pimp for the store.
Of course, stories of accidental discovery ... "I found this book on the beach and it changed my life" ...will not really have an equal in the eBook world. But on the flip side, authors will sell more directly. People like my mother will take a chance on an unknown author because it's so damn easy to do it. And why not? It didn't cost any gas to get it, it was only $2.99, and if it sucks you can delete it.The Kindle user sees little downside in buying a book they might have otherwise passed on. So authors will benefit in ways they might not have in traditional paperback, even if we lose some of the paper perks.
It's a weird new world and I guess we have to roll with it. We are not going to stop this snowball from gathering speed so we either get out of the way, or we jump into the icy cluster and hang on until it explodes into something else. It was my mother's reaction to Kindle that convinced me to eBook The Sweet Sixteenth - I wanted to learn the eBook process first hand before I was scrambling to catch up. Because if my mother can abandon paperbacks, anyone can, and everyone will.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Wasting The Day Away
Like many writers, I write every single day. I usually work on something in my current WIP, either editing or adding, but usually something. Today, I did nothing. I did not work on my current WIP, and I did not edit my current shopper. I guess sometimes we all have to step back and take a day off. Thanks to things like blogs and chat forums, we can still write these days even when we don't write.
Sometimes you just need to unplug from everything technology, at least I do. Maybe my age is showing. My niece is 23, and she has not been "unplugged" a single day in the past decade from what I can tell. Some piece of technology has been fused to her hand as long as I can recall... That reminds me of a book by my friend Kari Lee Townsend.
My point is (do I have a point here?) that today was not one of those days I needed to unplug from technology, I just needed to unplug from the intensity of crafting a story. Sometimes my brain needs to get out of character and back to me. I guess sometimes all that head-hopping should lead back to your own head.
So today I did just that. I hopped in my own head for a while, just long enough to remember why I'm a writer. I forget how exhausting it is to be in my own head. Because in your own head the real world comes screaming back. All the insanity that faces us daily on the news can be overwhelming, escaping into the written word is hard work but it's also fun. Which makes it even harder to understand why I wasted the day.
I guess the brain wants what it wants, and today it wanted mindless anti-stimulation. I guess I'll just have to make up for it this weekend.
Sometimes you just need to unplug from everything technology, at least I do. Maybe my age is showing. My niece is 23, and she has not been "unplugged" a single day in the past decade from what I can tell. Some piece of technology has been fused to her hand as long as I can recall... That reminds me of a book by my friend Kari Lee Townsend.
My point is (do I have a point here?) that today was not one of those days I needed to unplug from technology, I just needed to unplug from the intensity of crafting a story. Sometimes my brain needs to get out of character and back to me. I guess sometimes all that head-hopping should lead back to your own head.
So today I did just that. I hopped in my own head for a while, just long enough to remember why I'm a writer. I forget how exhausting it is to be in my own head. Because in your own head the real world comes screaming back. All the insanity that faces us daily on the news can be overwhelming, escaping into the written word is hard work but it's also fun. Which makes it even harder to understand why I wasted the day.
I guess the brain wants what it wants, and today it wanted mindless anti-stimulation. I guess I'll just have to make up for it this weekend.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Everyone can write. Right? Alright.
Writing is a hard thing to do well, we all know that. Some of us were just born with the gift, some of us worked hard to develop it, and some of us have done both. But the one common denominator is hard work. Talent will only get you so far, as is the case with anything you choose to tackle in life. Even the most talented among us have to work hard to craft a novel.
What makes writing unique, is that when you tell people you are a writer, many of them will blurt out how they themselves want to write a book. When I tell people I'm a musician, that I play guitar and sing, they never say "Oh I'm going to write a song and sell it." Why is that?
I guess the reason is that with writing, we all learn it growing up. We don't all learn how to play music or sing. The barrier to entry is far lower with writing because essentially, everyone can write to some extent. Telling stories on the other hand, that is not something everyone can do.
Writing a novel of 60,000 or 80,000 words is far more complex than whim writers want to believe. Of all the "non writer" people I've run into over the years who said "I want to write a book" not a single one of them has done it. A few have tried and quit after about 30,000 words but most never get that far. I used to know a guy who claimed to be a hardcore Sci-Fi writer. He wrote a 120,000 word story, sent it out to two agents, got an unflattering rejection from one, and that was the end of it. I don't know where that writer is today but he's never published anything. I don't even know if he's still writing.
I'm working on my seventh novel length story and that's nothing compared to some writers. Of those seven, only two have ever been shopped to agents. One of those is The Sweet Sixteenth that ended up as my pilot eBook program, the other is being rewritten. The rest of them are junk, practice, good old trunk novels. The point is writing one book is not even enough in most cases. You have to write many before you finally "get it" and rejection is going to come along the way.
Thick skin and determination are just as important as talent in this game. Rejection does suck, no two ways about it. But if you don't get back on the bike, you will never learn to ride. You have to be able to crash, get up, wipe off the blood and/or push your brains back into your skull cavity, and move on. You also might want to leave your teeth on the ground after the first crash, because they will get kicked in again. Just be like a professional hockey player and get your teeth fixed after you retire.
What makes writing unique, is that when you tell people you are a writer, many of them will blurt out how they themselves want to write a book. When I tell people I'm a musician, that I play guitar and sing, they never say "Oh I'm going to write a song and sell it." Why is that?
I guess the reason is that with writing, we all learn it growing up. We don't all learn how to play music or sing. The barrier to entry is far lower with writing because essentially, everyone can write to some extent. Telling stories on the other hand, that is not something everyone can do.
Writing a novel of 60,000 or 80,000 words is far more complex than whim writers want to believe. Of all the "non writer" people I've run into over the years who said "I want to write a book" not a single one of them has done it. A few have tried and quit after about 30,000 words but most never get that far. I used to know a guy who claimed to be a hardcore Sci-Fi writer. He wrote a 120,000 word story, sent it out to two agents, got an unflattering rejection from one, and that was the end of it. I don't know where that writer is today but he's never published anything. I don't even know if he's still writing.
I'm working on my seventh novel length story and that's nothing compared to some writers. Of those seven, only two have ever been shopped to agents. One of those is The Sweet Sixteenth that ended up as my pilot eBook program, the other is being rewritten. The rest of them are junk, practice, good old trunk novels. The point is writing one book is not even enough in most cases. You have to write many before you finally "get it" and rejection is going to come along the way.
Thick skin and determination are just as important as talent in this game. Rejection does suck, no two ways about it. But if you don't get back on the bike, you will never learn to ride. You have to be able to crash, get up, wipe off the blood and/or push your brains back into your skull cavity, and move on. You also might want to leave your teeth on the ground after the first crash, because they will get kicked in again. Just be like a professional hockey player and get your teeth fixed after you retire.
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