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Author: Mary Anne

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A quick "public service announcement" to readers looking to buy my work for Nook.  Quacking Alone Romances is in the midst of a transition with how work gets uploaded to B&N.  During the transition, until "Mr. Brick" beats out the bugs, some of the work downloaded may appear without covers.  Even worse, some of it may appear with a tiny little thumbnail size cover in the upper left corner of your Nook screen. 

Why are we transitioning?  Since indie work appeared in the Nook store, my books were delivered by Smashwords.  I stayed with the platform long, long after B&N opened a way for writers to deliver work directly to Nook.  I stayed with the platform even though the B&N "pubit" system allowed authors to keep more of the money they made.  What has finally convinced me to switch is the lengthy delay in getting money into my bank account.

I'm not blaming Smashwords.  Their system is their system and I'll still use it for Apple, Disel, Sony and KOBO.  But since B&N has a system that functions like Amazon's KDP, shows real time sales numbers, and pays monthly - economics have forced me to switch to Pubit and upload to B&N directly.

The work is formatted right - I think - and if it's not, please HOLLA at us by the email link on this site.  We'll get the covers right on the downloads too, but those pesky day jobs keep getting in the way...

Oh, and if you're a Cover Bug on B&N infesting a QA/Mary Anne Graham Romance cover expertly designed by John Graham -- you better look out.  Mr. Brick packs a nasty punch and he's hunting bugs.

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In today's economy most of us are on budgets that are beyond tight.  Never have we needed hope, optimism and a belief in the future more.  And never could we afford it less. 

Traditionally published romances average around $7.99 and new releases by some publishers top the $12 mark.  If you're trying to make a house payment and keep your lights on - how can you justify spending that money for a book?  Most of us can't these days.  We simply can't. 

Yet you can pick up many indie romances for as little as 99 cents.  I published The Duke of Eden on Amazon as a serial before I finished the full.  There are 3 parts of the serial up at Amazon.  Each sells for 99 cents and the full sells for $2.99.  It's easier to pick up the book in 1 installment, but if your budget won't allow it, then pick it up a piece at a time.  Most writers who sell serial stuff only put out little chunks, a chapter or so at a time, making the whole book much more expensive than just buying a regular novel. 

I didn't do that.  I put out big chunks of Duke and only charged 99 cents for each.  And when I published the full for $2.99, I left the serial up, even though it costs me higher priced sales of the full.  Why?  Because I get it. I'm with you.  I understand.  I'm in the same place you are with my budget and I refuse - I absolutely refuse- to unpublish the lower priced option.

Many folks haven't tried indie romance.  Somehow, they consider indie work to be inferior and unworthy.  Or that's what they've heard, anyway.  Well, in today's economy when traditional publishers don't consider your bottom line, maybe this is the best time to give indie romance a shot.  Lord knows, the news is full of gloom and doom.  Creditors are calling, nasty letters come in the mail and many of us are paying bills in chunks.

More than ever, people need regular doses of the kind of hope, optimism and happy endings that they get from romance novels.  Remember the old commercials that talked about "Miller time?"  Well - it's INDIE TIME. 

Most indie romance sells for $2.99 or less.  You can pick up A Faerie Fated Forever for free at almost every ebook site on the planet right now.  Don't let the high prices charged by traditional publishers deprive you of the hope and optimism that helps fuel you to keep on keeping on until it gets better.  And it will.  We all know it will. 

By the time things improve, I hope that indie romance has become your first choice.  Indie authors are doing some of the best, most creative, most cutting edge work out there. Once you go indie, you may not want to go back.

And why should you?

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There's a thread the indie authors at the KDP Forum have been watching.  It's a Kindle thread about hating indie authors - and no, I'm not linking it here.  Some of the posters are hoping that Amazon will ban indie writers.  I doubt that will happen, not just because Amazon makes a lot of money from indies, but because I think Amazon realizes that a varied marketplace is the best fit for a varied world.

Some folks like indies and some don't.  That's fine.  If you don't like indie authors, you shouldn't buy our work.  Fair enough.  I have no right to force my indie books on someone who prefers traditionally published work. But banning indies?  The group has no more right to deprive others who like indie work of it than I do to force them to read it.  Respect is a two-way street folks.

But reading that thread and then reading some of the reader comments on some of my work have caused me to go back and check a couple of things.  There are comments talking about grammatical errors and misspellings through a couple of my books.  I'll fess up to needing to fix Brotherly Love in which I kept spelling lose (as in my mind) with loose (as in my accounting methods). 

But the other books referenced?  There's a comment talking about all the typos and spelling errors in A Golden Forever.  I ran back over that one, and couldn't find the errors.  However, I ran across several sections where I'd used colloquial phrases or people who spoke differently.  In those sections the spelling is different.  But I really know that scared isn't spelled scairt. I just spelled it the way the character spoke. 

There are a bunch of places where I write the way the work flows and sometimes that's not grammatically correct.  But my B.A. is in English.  I underestand grammar and (mostly) I even remember the rules when I write. But I don't let 'em fence me in. Sometimes. I don't like. Fences, rules or people who. Avidly. Support. Either. 

There are surely misspellings in my work.  But I'm going to make it my mission to re-edit everything and to run it through a neat site that checks spelling, grammar, style and punctuation.  I've made enough on my e-books to finance that, and I'll do it because I don't want any of my "human errors" to keep people from enjoying my books.

Having said all that, I realize that there are readers who won't like my work for reasons as wide and as varied as today's virtual bookshelves.  Most of the time I write over the top and take it way past what readers anticipate or expect.  For stretches in my books a lot of the "action" is internal - a conflict a character is having with himself or herself.  I enjoy mind hopping. It's one of the reasons I read romance instead of watching it on TV - I don't just want to know what happenned, I want to know why it happenned.  Why it HAD to happen. 

Some readers don't like it as far over the top as I write it.  Fair enough.  Some readers love the trip and email me asking about the next journey.  Love that.  I'm gonna do the additional editing I can do and then have ErrNET follow behind to catch what I miss.  But the editing site will see some style choices as errors and I'll disagree and leave them in, just as they are. The style has to stay true to the work.

There are people who don't like any indie work.  Others just don't like my work. And there are some wild, free spirited readers who'll go over the top with me and yell because I didn't take 'em higher. You'll forgive me if I'm just a bit more partial to the last group.

Fences can only confine you if you stay on the ground and refuse to climb to see how high you might go.  And if you keep climbing, you might get to the top and jump off to find that you can fly.  I'll meet you there - flying over rules and reality, over borders and boundaries, past can't and must. 

If you're grounded in reality and rooted by rules, then my work isn't for you. You won't like it no matter how it's edited or formatted.  If you're a dreamer who opens a new reality with each book then you might like the view from over the top. I'm always happy to fly with readers who have spirits big enough and open enough and wise enough to know that limits are only figments of our imagination.

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Last week I linked to The Romance Reader's list of the Top 100 romance novels - as voted by readers. This week USA Today's HEA Blog was hanging out at the Romance at Random site and asking readers to name their favorite romance novel.

The responses are interesting. Go check 'em out and add your own faves to the list.  I couldn't pick just one so I didn't comment.  Also, I'm not in a real social mood - does that ever hit y'all?  Anyway, mine would be a tie between Kathleen Woodiwiss' "The Flame And The Flower" and Johanna Lindsey's entire Malory series, especially "Gentle Rogue."

Like I mentioned earlier, my mood and my muse are sort of in a funk right now.  So I don't feel especially bloggy either.  Hopefully, I'll recuperate.  So for now, I'll leave you with the new list to check and my link from the list I found last week. 

Why is everyone thinking about our all time favorite romances right now?  I'm not sure.  Maybe, we're all trying to work up some holiday spirit.  Maybe, we all need a strong dose of Happily Ever After to combat the economy that seems to get worse and worse.  

Or maybe - great minds and demented minds actually think alike.

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There was a very interesting NY Times article a few days ago written by David Streitfeld.   It discussed Amazon's bold steps in building its own publishing brand. The title of the piece spoke of Amazon writing publishers out of deals.  The publishers are "terrified and don't know what to do," according to Dennis Loy Johnson of Melville House. 

Amazon has been aggressively pursuing top authors. Even celebrities have seen the business sense of partnering with Amazon.  Director/Actress Penny Marshall got an alleged $800,00 advance for signing with Amazon to do her memoir.  Likely, Ms. Marshall also got a piece of the pie because Amazon is building brand loyalty by sharing the profits from the sale of books with the authors who wrote them.   It's quite sad how revolutionary that concept is and it's quite funny that the weapon of equity pointed straight at their P&L sheets so terrifies the traditional publishers. 

Some publishers have taken the war a step farther by punishing authors who dare to self publish material that is NOT UNDER CONTRACT.  That's right, Penguin supposedly canceled a new author's publishing contract because she dared to self publish some old work during the long - long - long period between signing a bood deal and the book actually appearing for sale. 

Hawaiian writer Kiana Davenport signed with Penguin and received a 20k advance for publication of her book "The Chinese Soldier's Daughter."  It was due to come out next summer.  During the interval, Ms. Davenport, mindful of lectures about the need to drum up publicity and build her "brand" self published an e-book of some of her old work on Amazon.

She says: 

When Penguin found out, it went “ballistic,” Ms. Davenport wrote on her blog, accusing her of breaking her contractual promise to avoid competing with it. It wanted “Cannibal Nights” removed from sale and all mentions of it deleted from the Internet.

Ms. Davenport refused to remove the e-book.  Penguin says it will pursue legal action if the author doesn't return the balance of her advance.  A lawyer with the author's guild who has represented Ms. Davenport, Jan Constantine, says that Penguin made an example of Ms. Davenport. The lawyer feels Penguin's acts are intended to warn published authors that for them, self-publishing is a risky business.

The writer felt she was being punished for sleeping with the enemy. 

The publishers could try beating Amazon at its own game by sharing some of the wealth and some of the control over the final product with authors.  I guess it's just that if you're used to keeping all but a tiny slice of the pie, you've come to consider the pie yours - rather than the creation of the baker who cooked it. 

Traditional publishers have put out some fine work from some amazing folks through the years.  But they should recall that authors talented enough to create such masterpieces are likely risk-takers by nature.  If publishers don't change their tune the best and the brightest are likely to dance away.

Oh and Amazon - yoo hoo-over here - over here.  **Waves**. 

Maybe I should try billboards???

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Do a quick-step boogle on over to the All Day, All Night Writing Divas  site - the other blog insane enough to allow me to post.  I've blogged about Pruning Your Twitter Tree.

You should check out the post because keeping your social media profile current is very important.  But - you should also check it out because my Darlin' Hubby has insterted some kick-ass artwork.

Come on over and check it out -- you don't want to disappoint the Crazy Duck Lady now, do you?

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Yesterday, about suppertime (dinnertime if you're not Southern), our internet connection got restored after a full day's absence.  In my ecstatic, gluttonous boogling around the internet after supper, I ran across The Romance Reader's list of the Top 100 Romance Novels.   It makes for fascinating reading. 

The list was composed from reader's nominations of over 1500 books by over 500 authors.  The books with the most votes made the list, which actually contains 109 books because there were several ties.  Although there appears to be a variety of books, the first thing that impressed me was further evidence of how loyal readers are to their favorite authors. 

I noted that several writers appear over and over again.  For example, the first book on the list is "Outlander" by Diana Gabaldon.  Four of her other books made the list.  I've got to say, I disagree with "Outlander" being anywhere in the Top 100.  I don't like the book.  I picked it up a few months back as a free read and made it all the way through, certain that at the end there would be some kind of amazing happy ending to make all the misery between the lead couple worthwhile.  It didn't happen.  I hear that there is some sort of HEA for the lead couple in a later book, but that's not good enough. If there's no HEA, then in my book, it's not a romance.

Again, Susan Elizabeth Phillips and Linda Howard appear several times and I heartily agree with both.  Linda Howard's "Dream Man" has a permanent place on my keeper shelf as does Phillips "It Had to Be You" - and her whole Chicago Stars series.  I love both of those books, but I don't think either one should be at the top. Other authors who appear a number of times are Julie Garwood (Love her stuff "The Secret" lives on my keeper shelf), Judith McNaught ("Whitney, My Love" also lives with me), Nora Roberts, Georgette Heyer, Amanda Quick, LaVyrle Spencer and Mary Jo Putney. 

For me,  the #1 Romance should be a tie between Kathleen Woodiwesses' "The Flame and The Flower" and Johanna Lindsey's "Gentle Rogue."  That was one of my first thoughts when I saw this list.  It led to the BIGGEST SHOCKER OF THE LIST - NONE OF LINDSEY'S MALLORY NOVELS MADE THE LIST AT ALL.  Only 1 of Ms. Lindsey's books made it - a scifi romance called "Warrior's Woman" which I've never read and which only came in at #68, tied with a bunch of others.

Who were the readers voting for this list?  In my book, James Mallory, from "A Gentle Rogue" is the perfect romance novel hero and the Mallory series taught me how series romance should be done.  Ms. Lindsey was robbed, I tell you, robbed.

My second shocker dealt with another of my favorites series romance writers - Julia Quinn.  NONE of her books made the list.  None.  Hello? What was in the Kool-Aid these people were drinking?

 My final and happiest shock from the list?  How very few of the books were "paranormal."  There was no horde of vampires, zombies or werewolves - Hallelujah.  The absence of large numbers of these books from the list gives me hope for the future of our genre. 

Mind you, I do think that more contemporary romance should make the list.  My WIP is a contemporary as are 2 of my others (Griffin's Law and The Billionaire's E-mail Seduction).  The next time anyone puts together a Top 100 list I hope it contains few to no werewolves, zombies or vampires and features a lot more contemporaries.

Peruse the list and let's be grateful to the good folks at The Romance Reader for putting it together- even if none of my books made it either.

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Amazon's publishing arm is partnering with authors to build a New City On A Hill - no walls involved.

The digital giant has been signing authors for its own imprint, with the latest being thriller author Barry Eisler. Eisler made big news not too long ago by turning down a $500,000 two-book deal from his traditional publisher, saying he was going to publish the books himself.  However, a better deal came along and Eisler was smart enough to take it.

Amazon approached Eisler with a "hybrid deal" allowing him to control packaging and some other aspects that mattered to him.  Az also fast-tracked the digital version of his book, which was published about a month after the manuscript was finished.  The paperback will follow.  Eisler thought that traditional publisher St. Martin's was just too slow, and it was even slow in getting him a draft of a contract.  In the 4 months it took the publisher to get the draft to Eiser, the publishing world changed.

Eisler says that publishers want to preserve "their own position, perks and profit — that's just what establishment players come to do over time." Legacy publishers, according to Eisler, often slow down the process deliberately, allowing them to earn interest on the money due to the writer which remains in the publishers' hands during their calculated delays.       

What mattered to Eisler were his readers because without them he couldn't make a living.  He said, " if I can find a way to get readers books that cost less and are delivered better and faster, I want that."  And Amazon was willing to throw out the rulebook and negotiate a deal tailored to what mattered to the author.  Overall in the Eisler deal, Amazon agreed to get the book out faster, cheaper, to pay the author more money and allow him to retain more control. 

Amazon helped create the new digital world and the company is in prime position to - deservedly - reap the benefits.  Moving at the speed of tomorrow, Amazon offers some authors a new path - publishing contracts built around the needs of the people who create the work.  Imagine, Amazon is actually willing to consider and adapt to individual requests from writers.

It's no longer a one-size-fits-all world and the Publishing Royals no longer get to make the rules.  In the new world order, the people who write the books now have choices about how they'll publish them and on what terms.  The power has truly shifted back into the hands that should have held it all along - to the dreamers, the creators - the authors. 

In the new Amazon City On A Hill writers work with publishers to get their work out to readers faster and cheaper.  It's a win/win for everyone except the publishing companies who refuse to throw out the old patterns.  In the new world there are no patterns for how a book gets published and there are no patterns for what kinds of books get published.  

Perhaps we've finally arrived at a place where a book will be as individual as the person who wrote it, as the company that publishes it and as the readers who will love it and make it their own. Each story is different for each reader. Now each publishing journey can carve its own path.

Traditional publishers best learn to respect the writers who've always made their buisnesses possible.  If they don't learn fast, they won't need to bother.

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I haven't blogged this weekend. First, it's been kind of busy otherwise. My youngest was 1 of 3 nominated for Freshman Prince at his HS in Myrtle Beach - Socastee High School. I've been running around for the past week being sure he had costumes for every day of spirit week and tending to details to get him ready for Friday.

Friday he was in the Homecoming Parade at school - thanks to John for being an ace driver and to my boss for loaning us his Miata so Sam could sit on the back, holding a SHS towel and wave it at the screaming crowd. And they were screaming - his name. Of all the Prince candidates, Sam had the most crowd support at the parade. So it shouldn't have surprised me so much at the football game halftime ceremony on Friday night when Sam - WON.

Yes, Virginia, my youngest is the most popular kid in his HS class. It's hard for me to relate to that. I was never popular at all. I wasn't even important enough to be unpopular. I was just sort of there. So having my youngest enjoy such popularity is just sort of - surprising. He does share 1/2 my gene pool, you know? And yet he achieved so much. Way to go Sam!

Other than that - I've been working on my new one: The Office Ink Spells Murder. It's coming along well, but needs some intense periods of work. Next weekend I'll be working on my blog for All Day, All Night Writing Divas - it goes up at 1 am or so next Sunday night - 10/17/11. So for my post next week, I'll give you a little taste of The Office Ink.

But this week, I thought I'd give you a different kind of taste - PIZZA. John found this great video showing a pizza vending machine. It makes you a fresh pizza while you watch. It reminds me of the Jetsons.

I only have one question. If pizza vending machines have arrived - then where's my flying car? George Jetson had one, dang it. Maybe the flying car is next.