the deception glass

So I’ve been quiet. Or I have been as far as the e-ther is concerned. Has anyone noticed? Probably not. And fewer have probably cared. But such is life.

I have been a bit lax, though, I must admit, in recording a few more blog entries. And at least one is deserved.

Which of course you can take either way . . .

So. Deserved or not, here we are.

As sales of my YA/portal fantasy novel A Clash of Ichor and Blood roared off to a terrible start and then declined rapidly, I put up a bit of a promotional ebook short story on a couple of ebook retailers’ sites. It’s a piece called "The Deception Glass", and like A Clash of Ichor and Blood, it’s low-fantasy. And just what, I hear you ask, is low-fantasy? It’s essentially fantasy linked to a real-world setting, in the way that CS Lewis’s fantasies were, rather than set in the high-fantasy realm of Tolkien’s otherworldly Lord of the Rings. To use but two of the most famous examples.

"The Deception Glass" is just shy of 7,000 words, and comes with the first few chapters of A Clash of Ichor and Blood with it, to tempt the unwary into parting with the price of, oh, say a cup of tea and a half for the ebook . . . or a few notes more for a rather handsome and nicely designed UK trade paperback edition. Or US trade paperback edition for that matter.

If you are wise and lucky enough to be a Kobo owner (or at least have installed the Kobo reading app on your smart device of choice and/or affordability) then you can own a copy of "The Deception Glass" for free. If however, you are one of the crowd and have opted for the big river company Kindle e-reader (or app) I am afraid that – as of the moment – it’ll cost you money. Less than most places will sell you a cup of tea for, it’s true, but it’s still money.

Why does one cost money and the other not? Simply because Amazon doesn’t allow you to list books for free. Pretty much all the titles you see on there for nothing have been price-matched to a competitor’s price. So if someone gives a tale or book away for free on Kobo, it can take a while for Amazon to follow suit. If enough people get in touch with Amazon and say, Oi, it’s free on Kobo, then they might knock the price down to free. But I have no real say in this in relation to my tale.

It is my intention to put perhaps a slightly longer version of "The Deception Glass" into a collection at some point (yeah, yeah – always in the future with you, Lynchy. . .), but for now it’s my hope that someone somewhere might stumble across it, maybe download it, maybe even read, and perhaps – long shot – like it . . . and then buy A Clash of Ichor and Blood after reading it. They might even put up a nice review for it. Who knows?

If not, then not. But a boy has to hope.

Anyway, the image of A Clash of Ichor and Blood over to the right on this screen should have links to the ebook versions of the novels.

 Here's a link to the UK free version of The Deception Glass. (Click on this, no matter which country you are in, and theoretically it should take you to the Kobo free version in your own land. If that doesn't work, there are links in the Free Fiction section of this website.) Also, while we're at it, here's a  link to the UK Amazon version. The image of the short on the right hand sidebar should have links too. I sincerely appreciate any purchase, whether you pay for it or not.

In the meantime, what else have I been doing? Getting iller, slowly going about the process for getting checked for cancer (something which may well curtail the future plans I mentioned above, depending on the results, should I actually find the strength to get through the tests), somehow staggering over the line with a second draft of a new book that may or may not be called Tindermass if it is ever to see the light of day, and trying to look after people and myself as best I can. It ain’t easy, believe me. I had a nice few days away with my special one, up in the Lake District, and the sun was quite kind too. What does tomorrow bring? Time of its own, long or short.

Take care.

down the well

In a recent interview George R.R. Martin talked about life before the big success of his A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series. (That’s the Game of Thrones thingy, for those few of you not in the know.) He talked the usual stuff, characters, historical analogies, world building, the pressure to complete a big series, and so on; but he also talked about being a writer and how it used to be, before the bestseller charts and a hit TV show changed everything for him. It was good, and I enjoyed reading it. But the bit in the interview that struck home with me was when he said he’d spend a couple of years writing a book and then, when it came out, it was like he’d thrown it down a well for all the difference it seemed to make.

Well . . .

You don’t expect fame. You don’t expect riches and to be lauded with praise. (If you do, you’re really in the wrong profession, buster, because believe me, the statistics are heavily against you.) But when you put all that time in trying to make the best book you can, it’s nice when, now and again, someone actually reads your book.

It’s a rarer thing than you might expect. Book sales overall are not that large given the population of any particular country, and it seems there are fewer and fewer readers in the world, something that can’t be true given the need to be literate in a computer age. They’re out there, are readers (I’m one of them, and I assume you are, because you’re reading this blog); the thing is, they’re just not reading many of us.

Most of my readers have never heard of me. They pick my books up from the genre section in the library, read them – sometimes all of the book, and I suspect sometimes not – and then they return them and take someone else’s book out. They’re there for the genre, not me.

That’s fine. That’s great actually. On some level, it’s probably how it should be. People might find you, and suddenly take to you and read your other stuff after stumbling upon one title of yours that they like. They might not, because tastes differ, and just carry on going from genre author to genre author. And that’s fine too. It’s nice to be quietly anonymous while one of your books is calmly getting on with its business of being read without telling you. It doesn’t feel like there’s any pressure then.

Sometimes I sneak a peek, though, to see what’s going off. Now and again, as a sort of off shoot of a Google vanity search, I’ll dip into the online catalogue of a library and hunt for my stuff. It’s nice to see your titles out on loan. It’s also a little strange, to think that people you have never met are reading your books. It buoys up the confidence, gives you a little warm feeling inside.

But your books aren’t always out on loan. And for most of the time it still feels like you’ve dropped a stone into a large circle of darkness and are counting away, waiting to hear some sort of sound come echoing back up from deep down below, even if it’s only the crack of things breaking up when they’ve reached rock bottom, with no liquid dream to settle into. The book is published, and then it’s gone.

Is it worth the hard work and effort it took to get that far, though?

You know, for want of something better to do, I think it is.

Which is why I am here, standing slightly to one side of my usual place when I have a new book out, trade paperback and ebook in hand this time, looking down into a well that seems deeper and darker than any well I’ve dropped a book into before. Different well, different darkness, potentially a fathomless pit.

But maybe it’s a wishing well.

Maybe.

I just don’t know.

You see, I’m doing things differently, because I wanted to. Because I think I needed to. If you keep repeating the same actions and expect a different outcome, you’re going to be disappointed.  I’ve written a book, a sort of YA dark fantasy that might actually be a Crossover novel. It’s a tricky one to pigeonhole. I’m calling it A Clash of Ichor and Blood and keeping my fingers crossed that someone, somewhere, might read it. Maybe more than someone. Maybe lots of someones.

That would be nice. But I think it’s unlikely. Unless Chance intervenes, or Fate, whichever is less capricious; or a bit of friendly help sticks and makes a difference.

Still, you don’t know.

A Clash of Ichor and Blood is being published as a trade paperback through Amazon, and as an ebook through Amazon and Kobo. Hopefully it will make its e-way out onto other platforms at a later date. It doesn’t have a traditional publisher behind it. This time there aren’t likely to be any library sales. If anyone reads this book, then it may well be because I have given them a paperback copy or they have bought a digital edition at a very favourable price – see your local Amazon and Kobo store for details, folks – or they’ve found it on a pirate site for free.

The book is available now in its trade paperback format. It’s about 106,00 words long, which, given the font I’ve gone for and the size of the typeface, means it’s about 297 pages long. I’ve tried to price the book competitively, so that not only does it cost just a little more than half the price of many trade paperbacks these days, but it also hits the “free delivery” mark Amazon offers for postage of books. If you like your books physical, I think this is a good and nice thing that should bring a smile to your face.

If, however, you like reading electronically, on your phone or tablet via an app, or on an e-reader – which is my own preferred method of devouring ebooks – then Kobo and Amazon will have the ebook all set for delivery to you at what I hope is a fair and very competitive price. (I mean, come on – you’ll pay more for a fancy cup of coffee than you will for the ebook of A Clash of Ichor and Blood. How could you not buy it? It’d be crazy not to.)  The ebook is coming out this Sunday, on April the 15^th.

I hope you can get a copy of the book in one format or another. If you do, I hope you read it. I hope you like it. I hope that it was worth it, for both of us.

I wish you well.

(The ebook, incidentally, is available without Digital Rights management applied, meaning you can take the epub or mobi file and convert it to any format you like, put it on any device capable of reading your chosen format, and also give it away to friends and enemies. I’d prefer it if they bought a copy. But if they can’t afford it, or wouldn’t buy it other than for free, what the hell – let’s get the damn thing get read. I can always drink rainwater and eat flies.)

what i wouldn't give for kindle unlimited

It’s been a while since I mentioned my ebook novella What I Wouldn’t Give. It’s been a while since anyone else mentioned it too. And still longer since anyone bought a copy.

I’m not particularly surprised. The ebook novella was always an experiment for me, a way of learning how to format such a book, create a cover for it, and to publish it myself for as little money as possible. It wasn’t something that I was going to “market” like a professional. Hell, I doubt I’ll ever do anything like a professional; I rather suspect I’ll be a hopeless amateur the rest of my life. The plan was to simply get it up and available and see what happened. Anyway . . .

The easiest way to go about this was through Amazon, and so that’s where I went to do it. After all, there were plenty of “how to” articles floating around the internet, and some YouTube videos that helped as well; enough of them for me to grasp the basics and put out a no frills ebook.

Being a straightforward novella, What I Wouldn’t Give didn’t require me to insert a contents page or much of the jazzy stuff that can be put into ebooks these days, such as hypertext and so on. It felt like all I had to do was get the writing right, and format away. Simples, as the Meerkats say. All the same, I did a bit of interior work on the book. For instance, starting sections in Bold type, just to differentiate sections from what had gone before, and to make the text look interesting before you even started reading it. (You can catch up about that stuff here.)

It had been in my mind, back then, to make the novella available on other platforms too, after a while: Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and anywhere else that might offer a place to sell it. But that proved more complicated than I was ready for at the time. It was also going to be potentially costly. Where Amazon aced it over most of its competitors was by allowing you to list your ebook without paying for an ISBN or the near-mythical eISBN. (In some countries ISBNs are free; in the UK they are anything but free. And when the budget for the project is the change in your butt cheek pocket, this is a no-go area.)

That’s slowly changed and making use of the other platforms is now a real and desirable possibility. Though Kobo and others prefer an ISBN, to make use of all of their facilities, they now appear to offer in-store equivalents.  Enough to at least get you off the ground. Suddenly, “going wide”, as they call it, isn’t as costly as it once was. And given the dangers inherent when companies have such market dominance they are almost a monopoly, I think more and more writers want to spread the availability of their books, rather than find the terms of their agreements a little one-sided in any one particular company’s favour, and then wind up at the bottom end of the gig economy, out on the street with a Homeless and Boneless sign pencilled on a piece of cardboard.

But ever the contrarian (a word I may have just made up, or at the least misspelled) I have just signed the ebook up to Kindle Unlimited, making it uniquely available through Amazon.  Partly this is laziness, partly it’s me wanting to see if it makes a difference to the number of people who have read it. On Kindle Unlimited it’s possible to borrow the ebook for free, rather than pay the staggeringly high amount of 99p for it (less than a cup of coffee from your favourite coffee chain).

Despite mentioning the ebook in author biographies attached to short story sales – the one bit of marketing you could say I have done – sales of What I Wouldn’t Give have hardly been impressive, even though some kindly souls have put up some nice reviews for the tale. One of the mistakes I’d made was to discourage people from reviewing the title on Amazon; I hadn’t realised that the reviews also boost its visibility and store position and that it’s not simply down to sales alone. Told you I was a hopeless amateur. But it is what it is.

It’s my hope that the Kindle Unlimited offer might see someone else read the piece. If someone does, they might even be nice enough to review it for me.

To read What I Wouldn’t Give in the US, click here.

To read What I Wouldn’t Give in the UK, click here.

the bookstore business, and how to fail at it and the ebook store business at the same time

 It’s a strange business plan that says let’s sell ebooks online in our entertainment section of our website, and do them in epub form only -- while in our stores we’ll sell an ereader that takes mobi files. But that’s the course the British supermarket giant Sainsburys have been following the last few years. Not so surprising, then, that Sainsburys are closing their ebook shop down.

They’re not alone in making seemingly suicidal business decisions. For quite a while Waterstones had been selling the Kindle ereader in-store while selling non-Kindle epub format ebooks online.

If the Sainsbury’s decision to sell epubs and Kindles seemed like a company shooting itself in the foot, then Waterstones was shooting itself in the head.

After all, Sainsburys are a supermarket. They sell clothes, CDs, DVDs, stereos, homeware, fresh produce and food and detergents and all the other stuff that you’d expect. Books, too (though sadly the space for books seems to be shrinking in some stores). If they don’t do well in the ebook market and their traditional published books sales fall flat, well it’s a pity, but it’s not the end of their world.

Waterstones sells books, end of. Well, just about. They may sell a few Game of Thrones amulets and cups with some literary link or other, the odd t-shirt. But I’m sure you’ll agree that the mainstay of their business is books.

And yet someone thought it would be a good idea to put the biggest threat to the business’s livelihood in-store and encourage people to buy a product that, by definition, would reduce the sale of physical books. Not only that, but they invited in a company that sells books online, often at a steeply discounted price. Amazon’s range of books in stock is massive, often featuring import titles not readily available in the high street, and if you’re prepared to pay the postage, you can usually have the book delivered to your home in a day or two (or five to seven days for free if your order is over a tenner). By contrast, if Waterstones hasn’t got a book you want in-store, then you can order it from them, and in, say, a week’s time you may get a phone call telling you to come on in and pick it up from the store. Oh, and it’s there at the full retail price.

Given that, was it a smart move to bring in the biggest threat to your continued existence into the store? Not only that, Waterstones rigged up free wifi so you could bring your Kindle into the store and download ebooks from Amazon while you sat in one of their few comfy seats (often after you just looked on the shelves to see the book you were after was £8.99 for the paperback and the Kindle ebook was £3.99). Huh? It just felt like Waterstones didn’t know how to react to the threat of new competition and held their hands up in surrender.

Amazon is already the largest market shareholder in the ebook business in the UK. Its nearest rival (with the damp squib non-arrival of the Nook*) is Kobo. For my money the Kobo ereaders are superior devices to the Kindle ereaders. Formatting is simpler, the display options are considerably more advanced, and they don’t load your screen with adverts.

But all that’s by the by for the sake of my argument here.

The important part of Kobo’s business that needs to be emphasised here is that they sell ebooks alone. They’re not Amazon; they’re not selling physical books at steeply discounted prices. They’re not moving into the food business to threaten Sainsburys, and they’re not setting up bookstores in the high street to rival Waterstones.

In such circumstances, then, if you were going to partner up with a firm selling ereaders and ebooks, surely the natural partner would be Kobo.

The book and magazine retailer WH Smiths followed this plan, and seemed to have got it right. But they needed support. They needed publishers to get behind them, to offer up incentives for buying the Kobo from WHS. Tie-in vouchers or discount coupons with actual physical book purchases, that would encourage both physical and epub ebook sales. Tie them in with another high street retailer like Waterstones and there’d be a bigger presence and more brand recognition for the Kobo ereaders.

But none of that has happened. And now, coming up to the busy pre-Christmas retail season, what’s happened? WHS has stopped stocking the Kobo in stores. It’s possible a few of the bigger stores have them in stock, but I haven’t seen them.

There are some who argue that none of this really matters, and argue honestly and sincerely, because Amazon are doing such great things for writers. This is mostly true. Amazon has broken the shackles traditional publishing has placed on writers. It’s forcing traditional publishers to move on, to get with the future. But right now, Amazon are heading for complete market domination, maybe even a monopoly in ebook and ereader sales. At the moment they are fighting for every penny for their writers because there is some competition left. But will that change when they are the only business in town? Ask their employees in their “fulfilment centres”, on zero-hour contracts, no workers’ rights beyond the most basic. Is that the future for the writers who are so reliant on them too? I hope not. Just as I hope that the Amazon warehouse workers get a better deal soon.     

If you’re buying a new ereader for someone this year, the best ereader out there is the Kobo.

But the best format video device back in the day was the Betamax.

And if you were born before 1980, you all know how that ended. (If you don't, then you can learn all about Betamax here.)

If you want to buy a book, WH Smiths and Waterstones have a presence in most high streets across the country. And Sainsbury’s sell the latest bestsellers, often with a good discount. For now.

__________________________

* Barnes and Noble - a US book-chain even larger than Waterstones is in the UK - pioneered the Nook as a rival to Kindle. They’ve stopped supporting it now, which in itself is hardly going to endear their customers to them. No wonder that Barnes and Noble are, I think, on their third CEO in nearly as many years.

mad scientist journal, spring 2014 ebook

Anyone who's been reading this blog -- which I reckon amounts to two guys in the Australian Outback and a mule somewhere in the deep forests of Montana -- might remember I had a short story called "We Shall Make Monsters" up on the Mad Scientist Journal site earlier this year. You can still read that tale, completely free of charge, by clicking here.

But if you'd rather read the piece on your trusty e-reader, along with the other tales that appeared in spring of this year, then you can buy for very little money a copy from Smashwords here. Or by going to Amazon.co.uk here. In a few weeks' time, the tale should blow through onto the Kobo store. I'll put in a direct link when it's appropriate.

Jeremy Zimmerman and Dawn Vogel have done the editing and compiling. Big cheer for them and raise your glass in their honour.