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Why I'm not getting excited about the Apple iPad [Feb. 5th, 2010|09:15 pm]
vyrdolak1998
[Tags|, , , , ]

Apple "unveiled" the iPad on January 27. It has been greeted with highly variable reactions from the customer base. Many devoted fans of the Apple Macintosh family of computers have been waiting eagerly for a "netbook" solution of their very own. The iPad doesn't seem to be that solution. I won't summarize the criticisms, but you can read one techie review here. There are people who can't wait to get their hands on the iPad, and hey--more power to them. But they seem to be less numerous than Apple hoped.

However, much is being said about the supposed impact of the iPad on publishing. The iPad is intended to be far more than "an e-reader," but it can be used as one. Apple is creating an iBookstore, like the iTunes store, through which iPad users can buy and download books. In advance of the iPad announcement, Apple negotiated deals with five of the "Big Six" publishing conglomerates to make e-books available in the iBookstore. Only Random House has held out so far. iBookstore e-books will generally be higher-priced than e-books sold through other venues, including Amazon's Kindle Store.

Apple's so-called "agency model" for acquiring e-books has contributed to some recent high-profile inter-corporate wrangling among Amazon and Big Publishers. But that's a topic for another post.

As a small publisher, I can't get interested in the Apple iPad for a very simple reason: Apple won't let me in. As far as I can see, Apple only wants Big Name Books from Big Name Publishers. We small press people can go blow. No information whatsoever has been made available to small publishers as to how we can become a part of Apple's new program. (Scouring Apple's website for clues gives a poignant new meaning to their corporate street address: "1 Infinite Loop.") With Apple, the message is clearly, "don't call us, we'll call you--if you're important enough for us to bother with."

This corporate attitude doesn't surprise me. I've had a beef with Apple since they first released the Macintosh in 1984. Until then, I rather liked them. I developed software for the Apple II series (IIe and IIc) in the early 80s. They were fun little machines--and they were open machines. You could pop off the cover and install cards in expansion slots--even cards from third party vendors, I seem to recall. You could get documentation from Apple and program away, without paying a big annual fee for "developer" privileges like you do now. Indeed, you kind of had to, because there wasn't much commercially packaged software available for the Apple II series.

The Macintosh changed all that. It was released as a closed system (leading to a fruitless "open the Mac movement") and the first model didn't have enough memory for its own operating system (leading to the release of the "fat Mac" with the minimal memory the Mac should have had in the first place). You can read a detailed history of the Macintosh here.

But along with the Macintosh, Apple adopted its permanent new corporate policy. Apple became, and still is, one of the most proprietary, territorial, homogenous, dedicated-singular-platform corporations around. Apple's attitude is: "we do it all for you, we do it better than anyone else, you don't need anyone else, and if you want our products and services, you can't use anyone else's." Apple, like Disney, has created its own xenophobic universe. Apple isn't interested in cross-platform compatibility. Your iPod will play MP3s but you can't play iTunes music on anything but an Apple product (either hardware or software.) Apple practically wrote the book on DRM. When it comes to technology, Apple doesn't believe in polluting the genome. In addition to this, Apple's pricing structure, across the board, is comparatively high, and you have no choice but to pay it, because there are no generic equivalents.

That's Apple's prerogative, of course. No one has to buy Apple products. And unlike other companies who took that approach in the 1980s--Digital Equipment Corporation, once the biggest employer in my area and now extinct, comes to mind--Apple made it work, spectacularly well. But what offends me about Apple is that they're such flaming hypocrites about their business model. They maintain this exclusionary, proprietory, superior stance, but at the same time, they put up this faux-populist pretense of being the free-spirited hipsters, the cool guys who are all about creativity and art and music. In fact, they're all about Big Corporate Interests, profit and the bottom line--even more than their much-maligned competitor, Microsoft. (Apple is also among the most litigation-happy corporations.)

That's why as a small independent publisher, I'm just following the news about the iPad for reference. Apple won't sell By Light Unseen Media's books, and iPad users won't be reading them--at least not on their iPads. In any event, Apple is not stressing the iBookstore in its iPad promo--it's buried halfway down the iPad Features page on Apple's website and Steve Jobs brushed over it when he gave his big presentation on January 27, even though that presentation was made at Digital Book World. I expect that the iPad has far more potential to radically change the periodicals industry--magazines and newspapers, things that people subscribe to, read, and discard--than book publishing.

I'm definitely not "boycotting" Apple. I have an iTunes account and Quicktime Pro, I buy iTunes and iPod products for my niece and nephew. My business model is to work with every vendor and distribution channel for By Light Unseen Media's titles that exists, without prejudice--if they'll let me. Apple isn't the only e-book vendor to cold-shoulder small publishers. After multiple queries, Sony finally replied to me about the Sony Reader Store...by telling me to sign up with Smashwords and quit bothering them. By then, I already had set up with Smashwords, a couple of months earlier, but By Light Unseen Media's titles still don't show up in Sony's store. Barnes & Noble's e-book store also will only take small press books via Smashwords, but they, at least, list our titles.

Aaron Pressman makes a good case for his thesis that Big Publishers really want to kill e-books altogether. It's a safe bet that bookstores, both indie and Big Box, would love to send every e-book to a shallow grave. What do readers really want? It doesn't look like anyone connected with Apple, Sony, or the Big Six publishing conglomerates could care less.

(cross-posted from BLU Media Blog)
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A small publisher's thoughts about Amazon and Macmillan's standoff [Feb. 1st, 2010|01:57 pm]
vyrdolak1998
[Tags|, , , , ]

Like everyone else who is seriously invested in the current publishing industry (as publisher, author or both), I'm following the latest skirmish in the e-book revolution. Although none of us rubes on the outside know anything more than we're being told, apparently Macmillan has been demanding that Amazon raise its Kindle prices, and apparently Amazon has responded by removing the "Buy" buttons for every edition (not just Kindles) of every title of every imprint that Macmillan publishes. This includes a lot of genre fiction, since Macmillan owns Tor Books. This naturally hurts authors and readers more than Amazon and Macmillan, and the shock waves are just starting to reverberate.

The e-book price controversy has been boiling for a while now, and I have to admit something: I just don't get it. I absolutely cannot follow the logic behind the arguments of the MegaConglomerate Publishers when they claim "low priced" e-books are hurting their profits. I am baffled when MegaConglomerate Publishers call $9.99 Kindles "loss leaders" for Amazon. The protests from these dinosaurs make no sense to me whatsoever.

By Light Unseen Media is a small press. We release every title simultaneously in hardcover (with dust jacket), trade paperback, and multiple e-book versions, preferably with no DRM if I can control that. We were among the first publishers to make all our titles available for the Kindle, back in 2008. Our books are available for the Sony Reader and the Nook via Smashwords and we published there as soon as Smashwords opened its publishers' portal for managing multiple authors. If Apple contacted me tonight we'd be signed up for the iBookstore tomorrow (I am not, however, holding my breath on that one). When I see a new way of reaching potential readers, I go for it.

I love bound books--love them with fervent passion. But I also love computers and do a lot of reading online and onscreen. I want to meet, not fight against, the expectations of the new generations of readers. I have no reason to feel threatened. So far, e-book publishing has been the most cost-effective, efficient, and profitable way to distribute our books--and I just don't believe that By Light Unseen Media's production costs are that different from MegaConglomerate, Inc. In fact, By Light Unseen Media risks far less money on print books than the unsustainable "traditional" model.

But don't take vague generalities for it. Let's crunch some numbers. Here are the expenses that go into releasing a By Light Unseen Media title.

Advance to author--$100
ISBN number--averages to $10 per number
Editing, book design, and cover design handled in-house, by me, cash outlay negligible. It's all built-in costs of labor and computer equipment, chiefly.
Print and order Advance Reading Copies--roughly $150 including proof copy and shipping
Ship Advance Reading Copies to reviewers--$25-$50 postage
Set up fees for hardcover and paperback editions--currently about $210
Proof copies of hardcover and paperback editions--currently $65, assuming I don't need to order more than one proof
Order short runs of hardcover and paperback editions for reviews, promo and direct sales--this is my biggest single expense, usually around $800 for the initial print run. As inventory gets low, I order more, but the whole idea is to minimize waste by printing small numbers at a time.
Mail out review copies and comp copies to author, advance readers, copyright office, etc--variable, but averages around $150 in postage.
Register copyright for author--$35
Expenses of promotion, marketing, advertising--variable because so much of it is free, aside from what my time and labor is worth. I'll spend maybe $50-$100 on ads

Now, after the above has been taken care of for the print books, what is the additional cost of producing the e-book editions?

Well, a couple of them get an ISBN number of their own, so that's $10. Kindle editions don't, because Amazon assigns Kindle books a unique ASIN. Kindle editions are proprietary and can't be sold anywhere else.

And that is all. It costs me nothing to produce an e-book edition. Oh, there's some labor on my part. I need to edit the book block slightly differently for each e-book, and create copies with certain specifications to be converted to the different e-book formats. But I'm very computer-savvy, so there's nothing to that, from my point of view. And it's a very small amount of work compared to the number of hours that go into editing the manuscript, laying out the print book interior and designing the cover. There's nothing new to produce: everything for an e-book is just being recycled.

Once the e-books are created and uploaded, what does it cost to reproduce and distribute them to readers?

Nothing. Nothing at all! If I sell an e-book through Amazon, or Smashwords, or By Light Unseen Media's Lulu storefront, or if a reader sends me money and I e-mail him or her a PDF, it costs me absolutely nothing. Whatever I make, whether it's the full price or some percentage, is pure profit.

I can't say that for print books. In order for By Light Unseen Media's titles to be available wholesale to bookstores and libraries--which they are--I have to give wholesalers industry-standard terms. That means a 55% discount on the cover price plus making the books fully returnable. The down side to digital printing (in another post, I'll explain why I never use the term "POD" and you shouldn't, either) is that it costs more per book. After I set a cover price that is within the average range, give Ingram its discount and pay the printing costs, my profit margin per bound book is less than $2.00, and I split that with the author.

The big difference between me and MegaConglomerate, Inc. lies in the expense of producing the print books. MegaConglomerate, Inc. is enslaved to the "traditional" publishing model, which is incredibly wasteful and rigged against the publisher at every point. MegaConglomerate, Inc. prints a large batch of books up front and sends them out to bookstores, which have carte blanche to return all unsold books for full credit at any time, regardless of their condition. MegaConglomerate, Inc. hedges against this by withholding author royalties against returns, sometimes for as long as two years.

MegaConglomerate, Inc. usually doesn't give a wholesale discount of 55%; no, the Big Boys have to give distribution companies and big box stores discounts of 65% and 70% off the cover price. (That's why those retailers can turn around and sell the books to you for such heavy discounts.) So, MegaConglomerate, Inc.'s profit margin per book is even smaller than By Light Unseen Media's, with the added burden of hundreds, or thousands, or hundreds of thousands of copies "remaindered" and sold off at a loss when the book goes out of print, which it may do in as little as three months after the release date. Over 90% of MegaConglomerate, Inc.'s titles never make enough profit to offset the advance paid to the author, let alone the costs of producing and printing the book.

How can MegaConglomerate, Inc. make any money this way? It can't! The entire "traditional" publishing industry depends on that tiny handful of blockbuster best sellers whose sheer volume of sales subsidizes the other 90% of the company's catalog, all its expenses, all its overhead, all its author advances, everything.

And this may be the reason that big publishers like Macmillan are fighting so hard to set a high price on the e-book editions of their biggest potential sellers. They're terrified of crippling those few golden geese on which their financial survival depends. If that tiny little upper echelon of blockbusters doesn't rake in enough money, fast enough, the whole house of cards collapses.

Which, I think, is very obviously in the process of happening.

What Macmillan and the other Big Publishers can't see is that e-books and print books have completely different markets. E-books don't cut into hardcover book sales because e-book buyers wouldn't buy a hardcover book to begin with. Unlike us small publishers, MegaConglomerate, Inc. is paralyzed by its own business model. It can't afford to change its methods and creatively target new markets individually. It treats every new market as another liability, another dependant to be subsidized by those blockbuster best-sellers.

MegaConglomerate, Inc. has no "wiggle room" in its game plan. If it takes one bad risk, it's out of business. By Light Unseen Media has no such problems because diversification is the foundation of our business plan. I'm in the business of delivering content by any means that people will pay for, and when I make money, so do my authors. That's why I have to stay as nimble as possible. When a new delivery method becomes available, I have to be ready to adopt it immediately. The Big Publishers can't do that, so their response is to do everything they can to block and monkeywrench innovations. "Class action lawsuits" are a favorite ploy in this war.

But aside from the fiscal insanity of the "traditional publishing" model as a whole, I absolutely refuse to believe that the Big Publishers lose money on $9.99 e-books (or $7.99 or $5.99 e-books) in an absolute sense. It's not possible to lose money on a product that has no overhead costs whatsoever unless you're doing something very wrong. The Big Publishers are trying to protect their status quo by ignoring their readers and screwing their authors. They forget that there are thousands of us small publishers who aren't afraid of change and know what readers and authors mean to our bottom line (everything).

Come to think of it, maybe I should just let the Big Publishers continue on their current suicidal path--it can only benefit me, after all! I guess I just care too much about all the readers and writers who will be caught in the implosion.

(Cross-posted from BLU Media Blog)
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Madness and Genius [May. 14th, 2008|05:41 pm]
vyrdolak1998

Everyone knows the cliche that creativity and "madness" are somehow linked, or separated by only a thin line. I spotted an interesting article on WebMD that calls this cliche into question.

Genius and Madness

Here are some excerpts:

There may be a link between creativity and mental disorders, but it is probably not in the way that you think. There is a widespread highly romanticized belief that madness somehow heightens creative genius among artists, writers, and musicians. And that may be because we romanticize the idea of artistic inspiration.

Even acknowledged creative geniuses find that endurance must follow intuition. Einstein's ideas were not worked out in a day. It takes a great deal of discipline, and often many bouts of trial and error, to work out an idea. Follow-through is critical to the realization of an idea. Discipline is not a hallmark of minds in the throes of emotional distress. "Despite the carefree air that many creative people effect," says Csikszentmihalyi, "most of them work late into the night and persist when less driven individuals would not."

Even having ideas can take a great deal of discipline. Robert Root-Bernstein is another long-time observer of the creative process. "If the writer doesn't sit at the computer every day," he points out. "The muse is not going to visit."

As Thomas Alva Edison once said, "Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration." Everyone who gets serious about creative work, like writing, knows that it's hard and usually drudging work--there is no way to have unaddressed mental health issues and succeed in a creative field. Sometimes the compulsion to create can feel insane, but that's another thing altogether.

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New article on BLU Media Blog [Dec. 20th, 2007|02:53 pm]
vyrdolak1998

For those who are interested in the publishing side of vampire writing and books, BLU Media Blog references a Salon.com article about the trials of independent filmmakers. The issues faced by independent studios are relevant to independent publishers, and to readers who enjoy genre and niche fiction, because the same megaconglomerates are putting the squeeze on all of us.

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Novel or novella--why should we care what the review calls it? [Dec. 19th, 2007|05:36 pm]
vyrdolak1998

The Scripps Howard News Service published an essay by Andrew A. Smith, "'Legend' has a long history in the comics and film," summarizing the visual adaptations of Richard Matheson's 1954 story I Am Legend. While it's a decent article, Smith makes a gaffe that I've seen in one or two other articles related to the new movie version. Smith insists on characterizing Matheson's book as a "novella."

According to Wikipedia, "A novella is a narrative work of prose fiction longer than a short story but shorter than a novel. While there is some disagreement of what length defines a novella, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000." The annual National Novel Writing Month participatory writing marathon classifies a "novel" as the equivalent of 50,000 words or more.

I don't have an exact word count for I Am Legend, but my copy has twenty-one chapters, 164 pages in the text body, and, I estimate from average number of words per line, from 52,160 to 58,680 words. The storyline covers three years of time with numerous flashbacks and there are several "peaks" to the plot. As far as I'm concerned, I Am Legend is a novel, not a "novella." It's listed as such in Matheson's bibliography of work, and it is not included in Wikipedia's list of important novellas.

Somewhere, someone called I Am Legend a "novella" and reviewers and columnists are repeating the error without checking the facts. Why should we care? Errors are made frequently in reviews--I read more than one review of Tim Burton's movie Sleepy Hollow that referred to "the original novel" (the film was based on Washington Irving's short story, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"). But these errors can be materially harmful to the author if they're actual misrepresentations and not merely the opinions of the reviewer. A work that is miscategorized could lose award nominations for which it is eligible. A full-length book labeled a "novella" might lose sales if buyers assume it's a short work and perceive it as over-priced. Errors about a story's content could hurt sales, cause potential readers to avoid the book, or create a pool of unhappy readers who bought the book and felt they were misled. As far as I know, accuracy in reporting is still considered to be a virtue, even in op-ed and review pieces. Authors need to be alert to what's being said about their works. Everyone has a right to an opinion, including a negative one--but factual errors have a tendency to become "common knowledge" and impossible to debunk if they aren't caught and corrected early.

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On writing (and thinking!) at length... [Dec. 19th, 2007|12:13 pm]
vyrdolak1998

From a thoughtful essay on Blogcritics.org, Criticism in the Internet Age:

"Reading a long article, though, is much better done in print. It's both relaxing and clarifying, something like what scientists theorize is the purpose of sleep - to impose some kind of calm sense upon the day's maelstrom of chaotic stimuli. If we stop reading (and, of course, writing) any nonfiction that's too long to comfortably fit in a blog entry, we will lose a crucial part of what makes us productive thinking beings. How can we absorb any nutrients if we don't digest our food?"

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A new review for Mortal Touch! [Oct. 11th, 2007|04:53 pm]
vyrdolak1998

The general review website, Curled Up With a Good Book has just posted a review of Mortal Touch!

The Review

The Conventional Wisdom in the small publishing world tends to argue that reviews don't help sell books. A lot of that C.W., however is focused intensively on marketing non-fiction. In the case of fiction, especially fiction that will be a series and for which reviews and "buzz" are cumulative, I think that reviews are very important. Even negative reviews can sometimes be better than none--depending on what the reviews are negative about. (Think about it: haven't you ever read a review of a book or movie in which the reviewer was critical of something s/he didn't like, and you were thinking, "hey, sounds like my kind of story?")

It's great to get reviews on general review sites, given the intense competition. I'm still waiting for some of the genre sites to post reviews, especially the several that actually requested copies. One genre site, LoveVampires.com, replied recently when I queried a second time. She explained that she is hopelessly backlogged with reviews, but she is going to list Mortal Touch in her website's sidebar during November. That will be a good boost toward holiday sales!

Building buzz...I never thought I'd envy bees. *sigh*

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Now available from this fine retailer! [Sep. 6th, 2007|12:46 am]
vyrdolak1998

Withywindle Books, a web-based retailer of science-fiction, fantasy and horror fiction, is now carrying books from By Light Unseen Media, with several signed copies of Mortal Touch in stock. This is a great online store--I was referred there by a friend, and when I checked out the website, I spotted an anthology of Shirley Jackson's fiction that I didn't have, and bought it! I can personally vouch for Withywindle's speedy delivery of orders. :-)

Cynthia, the owner of Withywindle Books, has also posted some comments about Mortal Touch on her blog.

Meanwhile, Amazon finally got the cover image up on the detail page for Mortal Touch, but has still not implemented the "Search Inside" feature--which is a serious pain in the posterior considering how long ago I uploaded the files for them. Grrf.

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good news and non-news... [Aug. 17th, 2007|12:13 am]
vyrdolak1998

Mortal Touch still doesn't have a cover image up on Amazon. The 700-pound gorilla of the book retail world doesn't move very fast. Today I e-mailed the contact person in Seller Central and asked how long I should normally wait for my "invitation." I got the initial e-mails on Sunday but Amazon does say that many things take "five business days." Amazon responded right away and re-sent the "invitation." This involved a confirmation number that I had to send back. I'm now waiting for the, uh, confirmation of the confirmation. Sheesh--it's easier to join a secret society than get into Seller Central!

On the plus side, Mortal Touch now comes up on title searches on the Amazon sites in Canada, Germany, France and the U.K. It may come up in Japan and China, too, but I can't read those sites sufficiently to run a search for English language books. Walmart.com doesn't have it; Target.com does, because they, like Borders.com, run in affiliation with Amazon. Wal*Mart is another 700-pound gorilla and they operate by their own rules. However, with my book now available in the U.K, from Amazon, resellers and abebooks (thanks to [info]madrigalist for bringing that to my attention!), I need to send a few review copies across the pond.

Last night I ran a Yahoo Yellow Pages search for local bookstores. Wow--if the small independent bookstore is dying out, it sure isn't obvious yet! I got something like 300 hits, just for stores in Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire (primarily), and they are by no means all branches of Borders and Barnes & Noble. So now I need to consider what approach to best use (I did the cold-call thing marketing FireHeart magazine--nationwide--and it's tough. But considering what my little FireHeart article has done for me, I can't say that I haven't reaped back the karma for those efforts!). Since Mortal Touch is available from wholesalers and most bookstores prefer to order from them, maybe a targeted mailing, with an offer to come in and do a workshop/lecture/signing, would be effective? With a follow-up phone call to each store after about a week? There's an author in upstate New York who's been pounding pavement up and down the Adirondacks with a local-interest ghost story book, and she's had remarkable results.

But this means I need to design a mailing, figure out what I could offer for presentations, and then get it nicely printed. Some more good review quotes for the mailing would be a huge selling point...so I'm back to waiting on the review copies I'm sending out.

The self-publishing e-list members, and various books, harp endlessly on media releases. I wrote one, back in April, somewhat despairingly. I needed one for my media kit for the pre-pub review copies--or so everyone said--but I was darned if I could make my book sound "newsworthy." That's hard, with fiction. I keep hearing, "Just saying 'I published a book' or 'Publisher X announces the release of Book Y' isn't news, is boring and will get tossed in the trash." I finally crafted a release and put it out on one of the many free media release websites, 1888PressRelease.com. (It's here if you're curious to read it.) Well...NOW, that news release comes up at the top of Google searches, and I went back and reread it, after a couple of months, and I thought, "gee, this is pretty good." So, I need to think of some "hooks" to write some more.

I need to figure out how to get more subject headings attached to Mortal Touch on Amazon--the ones on there seem to be derived from the BISAC codes I assigned it. There's no BISAC code for "vampires" or a trillion other "keyword" type topics. The thing is, I'm sure thousands and thousands of vampire book fen do exactly what I do: run regular subject and keyword searches on Amazon to check for new books coming out. If Mortal Touch doesn't come up on those searches, it's far less likely to be spotted by people who would buy it. I learned that from six years of updating my Amazon Associates vampire bookstore. Getting into the Search Inside program will probably solve the keyword issue, but I'm sure most people don't use the Boolean search box, but just the "Advanced Search" fill-in form.

While it's exciting to see Mortal Touch popping up with Internet retailers around the globe, and to see my book title and company name topping out Google searches, I still need to start selling books! Therefore, I am still in brainstorm mode as to how I can be priming the pump more in this direction.

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Further progress in getting my book out there... [Aug. 13th, 2007|10:00 pm]
vyrdolak1998

I have now sent out eleven books to carefully selected potential reviewers. I'm still waiting for replies to my queries to seven more. I've only had one flat-out refusal so far, but I am reading the review sites over and only querying or submitting to the ones that review books like mine, especially if they specifically state that they welcome small press and self-published books. I've only queried one newspaper so far, the Boston Globe, which to date has not deigned to answer. I'm going to have to check around with other regional papers because many of them no longer do their own reviews. They pull reviews off syndicated services and reprint them. However, regional papers might well do an interview or be interested in a media release.

Every single reviewer wants something different. Some want a "media kit" with a media release, other reviews you've gotten, and so on. Some prefer only a cover letter. Most prefer that books not be marked, rubber-stamped or defaced in any way, and I'm not doing that. One review site encouraged publishers to send autographed books to reward the reviewer! So...I did! Anything to increase the chances of a review! The only magazine I've sent a copy to so far is the Mensa Bulletin. You should have seen what they wanted! The review editor sent me a two-page "application form" that not only covers the usual information you put in a packet with the book, but asked why I specifically recommend this book to Mensans, and (for the author) why I wrote the book and what I think it has to offer readers. Fortunately, I had no trouble answering those questions with great eloquence. Somewhat more troublesome was the requirement to give a synopsis of 150 words or less. I had one a bit longer and one a lot shorter, so I had to edit down the longer one. Guess how long it ended up? 150 words. Exactly. That book went out today.

I did get a bit of a surprise. I queried a solid-looking online review site that I'd bookmarked some time ago. There was no indication anywhere on the site as to its location. The editor replied to my query saying she'd like to look at the book, but I'd need to mail a hard copy because she won't read electronic files. It turned out she's located in...a European country! I went back and looked at the site again, to make sure I didn't miss anything. Well...it seems very tacky to query a reviewer, get an enthusiastic response, and then say, "oops, sorry, can't send the book because you're not in America." Her website is accessible world-wide, and through Amazon, so is my book. So I sent her the book! Having done that, now I'm reconsidering some U.K. reviewers that I wasn't sure it was worth querying if I'm not yet listed with international Amazon branches.

A friend gave me the business card of a woman in a neighboring town who runs an online (mostly, she also goes to conventions and so on) bookstore for new, used and collectible fantasy, sci-fi and horror books. After reading her website, I queried her to see if she wants to try adding a few copies of Mortal Touch to her inventory--I'll sign them, to make them more salable. I offered standard 40% retail discount and full returns. She's interested! So we're going to try to get together this week and trade books (I bought one from her, she had a Shirley Jackson anthology I don't have).

Today I went up to the Nashua Borders and Barnes & Noble. Both stores now list Mortal Touch as available to order in-store, as well as online. That means anyone who goes into any Borders or Barnes & Noble store and asks for the book will be able to order it in. That's not as good as the book being in stock in the store, but it is the next best thing. It also means that if I can arrange an "author event" in any branch of either store, they'll be able to order in a batch for the event. While I was in Borders, which has a very comprehensive magazine inventory, I picked up several magazines that review genre books.

Amazon finally responded to my application for the Search Inside program. However, they're supposed to be sending me account login information for something called SellerCentral and I haven't seen it yet. I do have exacting and technical instructions for creating the PDF files they need. Still no Amazon sales, which is a bummer, although I'm sure the lack of a cover image on the detail page does not help.

Oh, and that galley that someone was selling on eBay? It sold. Someone bought it. Jeepers.

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