Skip to content

Month: January 2011

4

Published on 4 Comments on Digit Envy

Hot off the press from Amazon comes a late Christmas gift to indie authors everywhere. The company has announced that during the last 3 months of 2010 ebooks outsold paperbacks.

The trend continued this month, with 115 ebooks sold for every 100 paperbacks. It encompassed all of last year with Amazon selling 15% more e-books than paperbacks.  In July of 2010 Amazon reported that it had sold more ebooks than hardcovers. By year's end the etailer had sold 3 times as many ebooks as hardbacks. And yes, Virginia, that figure excludes free ebooks.

And you know what? Amazon sells lots of stuff. All kinds of stuff. If it's legal to buy and sell, it's probably sold somewhere on Amazon. Despite all of that, despite all of the gazillions and God-help-me trillions of items that Amazon sells now and has ever sold - you know what? The Kindle is Amazon's best selling item in its 16 year history.

What does it all mean to authors? It means that new indie writers will start getting directions that sound something like this - Yes. You know where those Castle walls used to be? Well, you go that way, and ...

It means that times aren't just "a-changing." It means that they've changed.
There are indie authors everywhere selling enough books to quit their day jobs. Guest blogging over at Joe Konrath's place, Robin Sullivan posted a list of VERY successful indie writers that she and Derek J. Canyon compiled of indie authors December, 2010 sales numbers.  There's more detailed info over at Derek's blog.

Okay. That was transference. It doesn't say that all the writers on the list have quit their day jobs. I believe that Konrath has (hero-worship much?) and he's mentioned that before on his blog. Yeah, it's the kind of fact that sticks with me. The list is of December sales numbers of some very successful indie authors. It may be just the ebooks on Kindle (I was a little unclear about that). Most of them never had a previous print deal with a major publisher. These are folks selling in the thousands every month. And yeah, if I were selling Joe's numbers, Stephen Leather's numbers (over 40,000 in December) or - Lord Love A Duck - Amanda Hocking's numbers (over 100,000 in December), then I'd surely quit my day job.

...continue reading "Digit Envy"

Published on

I had an experience last week that has me thinking about life in general.  The experience may not have been earth shattering for anyone else, but it sure means a lot to me.  I got my mojo back.

At first I didn't realize it was missing.  I was still writing, wasn't I?  Well, sort of.  I still wrote.  I still opened my laptop and kept plugging along on my WIP, The Duke of Eden. Okay, I was plodding than plugging but I was writing.  Every weekend and a couple of nights a week I made myself write.  Made myself write? Yeah, I did.  I realized that I wasn't writing for the joy of it. I wasn't writing because I had to write.  I wasn't writing because I couldn't NOT write.  That's when I knew it was gone.

But lots of things are gone these days. Perhaps life changes, reduces, contracts, but it goes on.  I think we've all learned to walk away from things.  We've let them go and kept walking because that's what we had to do.  So even if my writer's mojo had left me, I didn't need it.  I'd keep walking and I'd even keep writing.  I'd keep going forward until it got better.  Because if I kept going, it would get better, wouldn't it?

Except lots of time passed and it didn't get better.  I kept moving forward but I never got anywhere.  The holidays went by and I adored having my family together and my eldest home where he belongs.  But there was lots of time for me to write over the holidays.  I couldn't spend every moment in Zack's room staring at him sappily while he played World of Warcraft.  (Eventually he'd kick me out.)

When I'd get evicted from Zack-watching I'd go by and pester John and then stop in to pester my youngest, Sam.  All of them stay fairly ensconced at a computer somewhere. So I'd head back to the den where my Toshiba Satellite sits on a nice little folding table I got for Christmas a few years ago from my hubby.  I'd sit on my end of the love seat and spend more time watching TV than working on my book.  Whole days would pass with me cranking out a paragraph.  On a good day, I might write 2 paragraphs.  That should've been a sharp wake up call for someone who used to laugh at people who said a writer's prime was about 6 pages a day.

...continue reading "Sometimes You Have To Go Backwards To Go Forwards"

Published on

Last night's episode of Grey's Anatomy was called "Start Me Up." And it sure got me started. Pardon me for a bit while I crawl up on my soapbox. Because, you see, I think that "Start Me Up" included the biggest gaffe ever made by Grey's.

And yes, we're talking about a show where I've not missed an episode since it debuted as a mid-season replacement in 2005. That's more than a little bit sad, if you think about it, but loyalty is so embedded in my makeup that it may be as much vice as virtue. In all of these years, I've not seen the GA writers get it as wrong as they did last night - in one particular scene.

I'm talking about the scene where Teddy's hubby-for-insurance-only, Henry, was under the knife. Thanks to the quickie marriage and the brand new insurance, Henry can now have surgery for a recurring condition he's suffered from for years that causes repeated tumors. So newly-insured Henry, now Mr. Teddy,  is on the OR table while the Chief and Bailey are operating. Right in the middle of the surgery, a medical student, who's observing, makes a comment and it causes the docs to examine Henry's interior a little closer. And what do they find?

There's a big ole cyst on Henry's pancreas. Not just any cyst, this one is a big cancerous cyst that is about to burst and kill Henry. So what do the good docs do? They call in Teddy, Henry's wife, a cardiac surgeon herself, to find out how Teddy wants them to handle the monstrous cyst.  Does she want it removed?  CAKE OR DEATH?

Teddy and Henry, as noted above, are basically strangers.  She did a good deed by marrying him to get him insured.  Like the cliche says, no good deed goes unpunished and the Chief wants Teddy to crawl.  When the Chief demands her decision, Teddy sort of haltingly says they should remove the cyst.  Then it's time for a half-shell buffet featuring Teddy, common sense, and the Grey's writers good judgment and excellent reputations.  Because the Chief tells Teddy - not so fast, girlfrog.  You better think about this.

Chief tells Teddy that if the pancreas is removed or mostly removed, it'll likely make Henry a Type I diabetic.  Can Henry handle such a serious, such a volatile disease?  Does he have a good family support system?  Teddy doesn't know.  Then again, she doesn't know much about her new hubby.  That, of course, was the Chief's point.  Ultimately, she tells them to remove the cyst and Henry survives the surgery.

But let's back up for a minute.  Grey's writers crafted a scene where they asked if it's better to be a living Type I diabetic or a dead man with an intact pancreas.  WTF???  The Chief, while grilling Teddy, notes that Type I diabetes is a difficult disease to manage, so she should carefully consider whether they should operate or not.  Apparently, the Chief thinks that death is easier to manage than Type I diabetes.

Death never seemed like a manageable condition to me.

You see, I'm a Type I diabetic.  Millions of  living, breathing Americans are Type I diabetics.  I'm betting that, like me, every one of them considers Type I preferable to death.  Type I diabetes is a condition that can be managed.  Outside of some rocking paranormal romance novels, death is pretty much a condition that ends all management.

What makes this even worse is that this scene comes from a show that tries to be oh-so-conscientious about how it portrays G/L/B/TG issues, women's rights issues and even death penalty issues.  Coming from this show this scene looks like a big, obvious, flat-out insult to millions of American diabetics.

Type I diabetes may not look like cake - unless the other choice is death.

There's not much I'd carry a picket sign for, but if the American Diabetes Association wants to stage a protest over this one, I just might carry a sign.

Mine would read - No, I'm Not Better Off Dead.

Published on

It's the male again, pinch-hitting for Mary Anne who is in emotional turmoil after seeing our oldest son off to Orlando once again.

Thinking about our sons and our relationships with them made me appreciate a recent news story and its ties with universal and timeless themes woven throughout humanity's broad narrative tapestry much more.

No matter what else you think about the Bible, it can't be denied that it has been the most influentual piece of literature in mankind's short history. Its myriad stories collectively cover most (if not all) of Polti's 36 plots, and Jesus's teaching via parables allows even those of us who are mentally dense (read: me!) to access deep philosophical concepts.

The parable that is most applicable to Ted Williams, who was the "homeless man with the golden voice", is the parable of the prodigal son.

Initially, Mr. Williams' story didn't intrigue me that much, though it warmed my heart a little. All I had seen was this video (also embedded below), which went viral a few days after its debut.

From the news coverage afterwards, I knew Mr. Williams had given himself over to alcohol, drugs, and crime in the past, and had been sober for awhile but had been reduced to begging on the road, and had some job offers after being (re)discovered. It was good to hear, especially in this economy, that someone so down on his luck and trying to scramble back up from a difficult position in his life was able to get back on his feet again.

...continue reading "Compelling Stories – The Prodigal Son’s Redemption"

1

Published on 1 Comment on AOFM-MWU – Geeking Out – Linux

Hello kiddies, the irritated corpulent male here.

I decided to "geek out" on you fools. You see, I've had the Linux itch for a few years now, ever since I assembled a desktop computer out of spare parts for my parents and wanted to avoid paying for another copy of Windows XP. I had heard about Ubuntu being the easiest variant of Linux to install, and that it also resembled Windows the most.

So I tried to bust into the world of open source operating systems. Ubuntu installed easily enough, recognized most of the hardware with one exception - the modem.

My parents had (and still have) dial-up Internet access. They live so far out in the woods that the Deliverance Banjo Boy keeps telling them that they need to move closer to town. And if there's nothing else to know about Ubuntu, there's the fact that it requires a broadband Internet connection to accomplish anything with it, and that IT'S A HELL OF LOT MORE COMPLICATED THAN WINDOWS!

So it was a no-go for my parents, but I vowed that I would have my vengeance on little Billy Gates, oh yes. Vengeance. Raging, fist-shaking, snorting and drooling nerd vengeance.

At last, today, I have my fat geek vengeance. I have resurrected a laptop from that great computer graveyard - our garage - and now its undead carcass is stumbling around on the Internet with a dark, unholy free operating system powering its formerly lifeless appendages.

...continue reading "AOFM-MWU – Geeking Out – Linux"

2

Published on 2 Comments on Bringing the E-Revolution Home

My oldest son is 19 and threatening to turn 20, but I'm not sure I'll allow that.  I'd like to send both my kids backwards towards infancy if I could. Anyway, he thinks he'll be 20 in March, but I'm rooting for him to turn 18 again... then 17 then 16, then 15 then...  Anyway, Zack was the poster child for someone who'd be the ideal ereader owner. 

Zack is a sophomore at the University of Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando.  However, his home is in Myrtle Beach, SC.  During the school year he travels a lot - sometimes by Amtrak and sometimes by plane.  By plane he'll have layovers between connecting flights and by train he's riding the rails for about 9 hours.  And he's a reader from way back.  So on those long trips, books are how he passes the time.

Like I said, he's a reader, so books are also one of the ways (besides his computer generally, World of Warcraft, specifically and hopefully studying - at least occasionally) that he passes his time at home and in his dorm.  He has 3 full bookcases in his room at home and boxes more in his apartment/dorm at UCF.  Amongst the most important book to him are the bulkiest - the Twilight series, all of 'em.  Those are 4 of the biggest, bulkiest books on the planet - and Zack adores them.  He wants them with him at home, at his dorm, and traveling between the two.

Like I said, he was the poster child for someone who needed an ereader. That would've been true even if his Mom wasn't an indie author who likes her ereader - although it's only a beginner's model.  I wanted better for my son.  The ebook revolution has advanced and my son, the National Merit Scholar studying engineering on a full scholarship, well, he should have the best - or at least, the best for him out of the variety of full-fledged "real" ereaders.  Which one would that be?

...continue reading "Bringing the E-Revolution Home"