Kevin's Watch

I created a coupon for the new book. This weekend, if you click the link for "SwanSong" in my signature below, and paste BG45X into the coupon box at checkout, you can get the book for 99 cents.

We now return you to our regular programming.

Cool! I'm looking forward to reading it!!

Thanks! I need to get a copy of yours too... Payday's Friday. I'll do it then, I promise.

I remember reading a portion of your first book online...IIRC, doesn't it start with a college professor teaching a class on feminism? Seemed brilliant, but I am no longer in the book reading mood Still, I've decided that if there can be paper copies ordered, I will get both. That way I can say I know an author reasonably well, at least online.

Book reading mood? MORE LIKE THE BOOK WRITING MOOD!

Oh brother, I actually looked at the plot of the books and neither match, I must have gotten you two confused? How embarassing? To be fair, I get people I know IRL confused nowadays...

Holsety wrote:Still, I've decided that if there can be paper copies ordered, I will get both. That way I can say I know an author reasonably well, at least online.

I can partly answer this one.

The Maiden's War is available in hard copy on lulu.com.

I do not know about Swan Song (yet).

Holsety wrote:I remember reading a portion of your first book online...IIRC, doesn't it start with a college professor teaching a class on feminism? Seemed brilliant, but I am no longer in the book reading mood

Thanks. That was my first book, The Maidens' War, as Menolly noted (thanks, Menolly!). The coupon is for my second book, SwanSong, which I published at Smashwords as an e-book, uh, a week or so ago, and should be available at other e-book retailers within the next few days. In fact, I just got done uploading it to the Kindle Store -- hopefully it'll be available there in a day or two.

Haven't yet gotten it together to publish a dead-tree version of SwanSong. That's next on the agenda, I guess. I need to investigate whether to use Lulu for this book as well, or use Amazon's CreateSpace. If I use Lulu, I can't link to it on the Kindle Store (altho I *can* link to it at Smashwords). But I can see an advantage to having all the dead-tree versions available in one place. But I'm likely to get more dead-tree sales at Amazon. Decisions, decisions....

EDIT to add: gods, I'm starting to sound like a marketing machine.

aliantha wrote: EDIT to add: gods, I'm starting to sound like a marketing machine.

A short time after my second full blown manic episode, someone told me that I sounded like a viral advertisement.

Well, there ya go. Clearly I need help.

aliantha wrote:I created a coupon for the new book. This weekend, if you click the link for "SwanSong" in my signature below, and paste BG45X into the coupon box at checkout, you can get the book for 99 cents.

We now return you to our regular programming.

Can I get a refund on the full price?

Stonemaybe wrote:

aliantha wrote:I created a coupon for the new book. This weekend, if you click the link for "SwanSong" in my signature below, and paste BG45X into the coupon box at checkout, you can get the book for 99 cents.

We now return you to our regular programming.

Can I get a refund on the full price?

If you'd bought one at full price, I might be persuaded to do so. Alas for you, Smashwords sends me e-mails when I make a sale...

Bought it today and looking forward to reading though it might take me a while as I don't have a real e-reader.

Bought Maiden's War since it's not e-book. (not that I dislike the idea of ebooks, just I don't really like actually trying to read 'em) Hope I get around to reading it since the plot seems interesting.

Thanks, you guys!

I'm in the process of figuring out this dead-tree publishing thing. Will let y'all know when it's available....

I'm still on the fence about e-books vs. physical books... I like the idea of e-books from multiple perspectives - environmental, not taking up space or gathering dust, general ooooh, shiny technology... But at the end of the day, you just can't beat the feel of a real book. And knowing me, I'd forget to charge the darn thing - being unable to read because I haven't plugged my book in would really suck.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I've had a Sony Reader for several years, but I still read a lot of dead-tree books, my bookshelves are still stuffed. If people would quit giving me paperbacks they're done with, it would be a lot easier for me to give up the dead-tree habit.

I tell you what, tho, I bought the e-book version of ADWD and have not missed lugging a doorstop around with me....

aliantha wrote:Yeah, I know what you mean. I've had a Sony Reader for several years, but I still read a lot of dead-tree books, my bookshelves are still stuffed. If people would quit giving me paperbacks they're done with, it would be a lot easier for me to give up the dead-tree habit.

I tell you what, tho, I bought the e-book version of ADWD and have not missed lugging a doorstop around with me....

I haven't read ADWD in WEEKS! I read about the first 100 pages and then gave up. My mind is just a blob of self-reference at this point, there's no hope left for me.

I'm not altogether convinced that paper books are more environmntally costly than computers. All the heavy metals and stuff in them, and then they only last 4-6 years whereas I've read paperbacks that were printed in the '60s; which if I put in the garden would soon be part of the earth again whereas a computer will be junk forever.

Anyway I used CreateSpace for Blackbirch Woods and Smashwords for the e-book. (It cost money to e-book-ize on CreateSpace; Smashwords was free. For Ardinéa I put it out as a freebie on Smashwords because I wrote it 10 years ago and I think it's a little silly, now. But not a bad read anyway.)

Anyhoo, I don't know that you would get more sales on Amazon than Lulu-- you only get what you work your butt off for.

Yeah, the environmental angle for e-books is kinda shaky, for precisely the reasons you name. And yet I do think that's where the publishing industry is headed. I think the publishing industry and the bookstores shot themselves in the foot by jacking up the prices on hardcovers while focusing solely on blockbuster books -- fiction by well-known authors and celebrity bios, that kind of thing. And it's obvious they were blindsided by the rise of self-publishing. It used to be that you had to sink tons of your own money into a contract with a vanity press in order to get your work before the public -- and even then, you probably only sold a few copies to your friends and family. Now, if you get a friend to help you with the cover art, you can publish your work on Amazon for free. It's a whole different ballgame.

And that's aside from the technology angle.

It'll be interesting to see where the industry is in 10 or 15 years. I think a lot of agents, in particular, will be looking for other work. Unless they can figure out how to make a living by inserting themselves between authors and publishers like Amazon.

deer of the dawn wrote:I'm not altogether convinced that paper books are more environmntally costly than computers. All the heavy metals and stuff in them, and then they only last 4-6 years whereas I've read paperbacks that were printed in the '60s; which if I put in the garden would soon be part of the earth again whereas a computer will be junk forever.

It's SOP for big-box booksellers such as B&N and the now-defunct Borders to consider mass market paperbacks as disposable. Once a month each store receives a list of what's not selling well enough, the offending books are pulled, and the covers are stripped off and sent back to the publisher for credit because it's cheaper than sending back the whole book. The rest of the book goes into the trash compacter (not recycling, mind you - gods forbid someone might recover something and read it without it having been paid for) - and that's hundreds, sometimes thousands of books going into landfill per store. Every month.

I completely agree about computers - tech waste is a scary, scary thing that's going to haunt us for generations - and at least books are biodegradable. But it's still an awful waste.

...and they're not biodegrading if they're thrown in dumpsters and hauled off to the landfill. I know what happens there. If you're lucky, eventually the mound of trash gets big enough that the municipality caps it thoroughly and turns it into a park. That's if you're lucky.