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Category: The E-book Industry

Opinions/rumors/news in the world of digital publishing.

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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"

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Published on 1 Comment on Romancing Your Ereader Without Spending A Fortune

A big ole' welcome to all of the lucky folks who found a new ereader under their trees this year.  When you charged up that device and logged on to download your first ebook, a magical thing happened to you - you threw off your shackles.  Did you feel 'em fall away? 

I bet you didn't even know that up to the point of that first ebook download you'd been a prisoner for your entire life.  You'd been chained to the taste, the choices and the whims of big publishing.  You only thought you were deciding what you wanted to read.  In reality, you were picking only from the crop of what the NY castle dwellers decided was "acceptable."  But no longer.

Your ereader bought your freedom.  Now the world that the publishing royals fought and held away from you for so long is yours.  You just fired the gatekeepers.  There are no more literary agents or publishing companies between you and what you read.  You're now the gatekeeper and there is a bunch of fine indie writing you can enjoy that was never open to you before. 

But not all of the big companies fought the erevolution as hard as the NY royals.  And some of those companies are flourishing in the e-age and they should be rewarded by customer loyalty.  On our shores, the big e-winner is Harlequin.  Overseas, it appears to be a company that (to me, which means little in the scheme of things) looks a lot like Harlequin - Mills & Boon.  I know that Harlequin's opening its doors so early to the e-changes was likely a natural growth for the company.  Harlequin didn't require gatekeepers to the same extent as the NY royals.  Harlequin already took unagented submissions for a bunch of its lines.  Harlequin adapted before the e-age arrived and made further changes and now it's one of the reader's and writer's best friends.

Now that you've got that new ereader, you've likely also acquired a new hobby - filling it with free, or low cost ebooks.  Hopefully, most of those are romance ebooks - that's what I write, of course.  After you've gone to your favorite etailer and bought the entire catalogue of Quacking Alone Romances authored by yours truly, Mary Anne Graham, you'll be looking to add some other books to your device.

...continue reading "Romancing Your Ereader Without Spending A Fortune"

Published on

Some of the hot news this week promises hotter sales in 2011 for crafters of HEAs, like yours truly.  Yes, Virginia, Bowker says  it.  The New York Times says it. Even Smart Bitch Sarah Wendell says it. And if the Smart Bitches say it, then it must be true - "Romance is now the fastest-growing segment of the e-reading market, ahead of general fiction, mystery and science fiction, according to data from Bowker, a research organization for the publishing industry." 

Industry honchos say that the "discreet power" of the e-book reader mean that "romance novels are now enjoying a renaissance."  The popular wisdom is that e-readers allow their owners to read whatever they like privately, without displaying the covers of the books.  Romance novel covers have long been a platform for showing long-locked bare-chested lads with rippling abs embracing a longer-locked lady with a low cut bodice or a silk gown tight enough to show off her pebbling nipples.

Those-who-know-these-things say that lots of ladies have been hesitant to indulge in lovely, lusty tales because of these cover images.  In the NY Times piece a CFO of All Romance quotes e-reader customers who've said they can now indulge their love of romance novels - without having to "show my husband what I'm reading."  The switched.com piece says mass-transit commuters with e-readers are downloading romances in record numbers because they don't have to worry "about a fellow traveler casting a judgemental glance" at the book cover.   

I have trouble identifying with any of this.  I've never cared what anyone thought of my romance novels - covers and all.  Whatever romance novel I was reading accompanied me to college and law school classes.  The only time I ever had a professor object to a book didn't involve a romance novel. (At Francis Marion University one of my profs made me take me take James Joyce's "Ulysses" outside her classroom and made me promise never again to bring the novel back into her presence.  It turns out the professor wrote her doctoral thesis on the book and never wanted to see it again.)

And women worrying about telling their hubby they are reading a romance or being afraid to show him the cover?  Oh, please.  Who are these women?  Did they poll refugees from the 1950s?  If a woman is that concerned with her hubby's opinion of her reading material, then her marriage has far, far deeper problems than romance novels. 

Besides, in my household Mr. Quack designs the romance novel covers.  All of the earlier book covers were pretty non-offensive and gender neutral, but they were striking covers with very graphic images.  They're killer covers but they don't necessarily sell sex and lust.  We both adore the covers, but the one I'm writing now, The Duke of Eden (it's up as a serial on Amazon BTW), has a much more graphic cover.   Currently in Casa de Quack hubby and I have been talking about him doing some new covers for the earlier books that are more graphic.  Yes, we're talking about adding pebbling nipples and rippling abs. 

Why?  Because we've learned that sex still sells.  And Quacking Alone Romances is very much a joint enterprise.   What's good for the brand is good for our bank account.  And what's good for the brand is what sells.  Some of the very best-selling e-reading material is erotica of the kind that can make me blush - and that ain't an easy thing.  We've learned that the graphic covers grab the eye and we'll never get readers to press the buy button if we don't get their attention first.

...continue reading "Pebbling Nipples, Rippling Abs & Ringing Registers"

Published on

Hi folks, AOFM pinch-hitting for the crazy duck lady. She's busy on the laptop looking for Black Friday-Saturday-Sunday deals. Me? I just wait until Christmas Eve and buy jewelry. Or at least I used to when we had disposable income. Now I buy cheap plastic trinkets from China and hand those out with drunken ass-whippings, like all good daddies do.

It's not all bad this year, though. We were told the first Christmas after Oprah showed off the Kindle that it was THE YEAR OF THE E-READER-R-R-R. That was 2009 or so. At "under" $400 (did you ever notice that when retailers say something is "under" a certain price, that's the actual price?), it was AVAILABLE TO EVERYONE!

Until we get to $400 for a gallon of gas, (which is an entirely separate blog post) something at that price is not really available to everyone. Something has to pretty much be a household necessity to be priced at $400 or more, especially after the economic downturn of early 2009. And an e-reader is not a household necessity (unless you happen to be married to an insane duck lady with sharp metal implements within her easy reach).

So when Amazon et al tried to talk up 2009 as THE YEAR OF THE E-READER-R-R-R, they were full of it.

...continue reading "The True Year of the E-Reader"

Published on

It's tinfoil hat time again.  I snuck into Mr. Quack's secret room and borrowed one of his.  To get it I had to break the code to unlock the secret box where he stores the alien abduction/blocking government surveillance gear (most of it is multi-purpose).  Chasing the snark I sent him after won't take long, so I better make this post quick.

 For some time I've been checking my book and ebook sales with a fervor and dedication unmatched by most religions.  But as time passes it has perturbed me more and more that so few of those sales are for the paperback versions of my books available through Amazon's Createspace.  I sell a couple of paperbacks a month and that number should be much, much higher. 

CS now distributes paperbacks to other retailers, so my paper books are not just available at Amazon, they're sold at bookstores across the net - from Barnes and Noble to Books a Million and to scores of other retailers.  So the books are out there for purchase in lots of places.  Plus, not everybody owns an ereader (yet) but everybody can read paperpacks.  Everybody has bought paperbacks for years. 

So why is it that my ebooks far, far, FAR outsell the paperbacks?

It's the price.  CS is a POD (print on demand) company.  Under the old system, indie authors had to pay big up front fees and pay to have their books mass produced.  Then they had to market and sell the books themselves.  I understand that Dan Brown used to sell paperbacks out of his automobile trunk.  But under the new POD systems, there are no upfront fees and the company will market and distribute your books if you enroll in the "pro" plan for $39 per year.  So most folks - nearly all indie authors these days - have long ago dumped the old paperback companies and are going with one of the POD companies. 

It's a great idea in theory and it would be a great idea in practice - except for the price structure.  A writer could opt out of the pro plan and put the books up on just Amazon and charge a "fairly" reasonable rate for them.  But everyone wants their books out in more venues.  So we opt into the distribution system.  That comes with big old royalties to Amazon.  Under the structure, a paperback that a writer could buy directly for just over $4 has to be sold for like $16.99 to net a writer $2.75 in royalties.  Ouch. 

And you know what?  $16.99 is a hell of a lot of money to pay for a paperback.  So very few buyers purchase indie paperbacks.  They skim over them and wonder what kind of nut thinks their book is worth that kind of money.  Most probably have a vision of authors expecting the Brinks truck to drive to their house and drop off money.  The big price tag keeps sales of indie paperbacks low.

...continue reading "Is Amazon Feeding The Kindle By Starving Createspace?"

Published on

As I began editing Part 2 of The Duke of Eden,  the book I'm currently putting out as a serial exclusive to Amazon's Kindle, I'm thinking ahead to Part 3 and the overall length of the book.  And I've decided that this time I have a grand ambition - it's going to be a shorter book than the ones I've published previously. 

Why is that such a grand ambition?  Because for writers like me, the ones who get caught up in our own characters and their story, keeping it shorter is much harder than letting it conclude at its own pace.  But I'm gonna try to keep Eden shorter because I've decided that these days, there are a bunch of readers who prefer shorter books.

I was already thinking about this issue a few days ago when I read a post on Dear Author titled "Is Our Attention Span Getting Shorter?"  The author of the post noted that Harlequin category romances had started appearing on the USA Today bestseller list.  As we all know, Harlequins are shorter romances.  Within the Harlequin family of imprints, word counts range range between 50k to 75k, but generally hover between 55k and 65k.  Dear Author noted that one of the things the bestseller list appearances reminded them of was that more shorter books are being sold in the digital age.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good meaty, long ole' historical, but when I read the piece I realized that I've been reading a heck of a lot more Harlequins lately.  I've always enjoyed the books, but I have never bought as many of them as I do now.  Why?  Well, maybe shorter books do read better in an e-world.  You get in, you get the story, and you get out. 

...continue reading "Are Shorter Books Better?"

Published on

Today will be a brief post.  Blame it on the day job.  You know, the one that pays the bills?  I exist for the day when I can write full time, but this ain't that day (yet).  My boss - the trial lawyer at the firm where I do research and legal writing - is trying a big case next week.  I also have a brief due to the Court of Appeals next Friday so next week promises to be a real ole' humdinger.

Thought I'd post a brief mention about my great experiment on Amazon.  I'm playing with book blurbs or product descriptions again.  Or maybe I should say that I'm playing with book descriptions still.  It's sort of an ongoing battle.   See, my contemporaries - Griffin's Law and E-mail Enticement - haven't yet found their audience.  And I'm convinced that if I describe 'em just right people will check out the sample and then buy the ebooks for their Kindles. 

Oh, I know, everyone says that nobody reads contemporaries.  Everybody says that contemporary romances don't bloomin' sell as well as historicals unless Oprah picks 'em for her book club or Shonda Rhimes, Ron Howard, or Stephen King or Spielberg (or whoever) buys the movie rights.  I'm still waiting for the call from Oprah or a film mogul.  But despite that, I'm convinced that readers would enjoy the books if they gave 'em a shot.

I've been changing the descriptions of E-mail and Griffin's on sort of an ongoing and manic basis.  (I've been waiting for the guys at Amazon's DTP to call the rubber room police to come get me.)  First, I changed both to add the blog posts describing my process of writing each book.  Nada.  Just, nada.  Then I went back and wrote a pithy, catchy 3 or 4 paragraph description of each. 

You know what happened?  Yep, more Nada. 

...continue reading "Is Less Really More?"

Published on

To paraphrase Rev. Wright, some of my roosters have come home to roost. And we all know that there are good roosters and bad roosters.

The good rooster is my eldest, Zack. He's home for the weekend from UCF in Orlando, Florida where he's studying to be an engineer. He flew home on the rails, thanks to Amtrak and the Student Advantage program that gives travel discounts. We're looking into flying him home next time because Spirit Air has some good discounted rates and because I dearly love Amtrak, but their train schedules aren't what you'd call convenient. I had to get up at 3 a.m Thursday night/Friday morning to pick up the returning rooster from a train station a couple of hours away. I don't mind the trip - just the hour.

HOLLA at the Fall Rally Harley bikers and weekend visitors who were travelling to Myrtle Beach in the wee early hours on Friday morning. No, the woman whose car lurched randomly at one point wasn't coming home from a really good party. She was just sleepy. The kidlets (the newly retrieved oldest and my youngest, Sam) jolted from their comfy sleep to wide-awake and terrified consciousness and insisted that Mom visit the nearest convenience store for a good dose of caffeine.

I'm not so sure about the Spirit thing though. Their air fares look reasonable ($50.00 to fly from Orlando to Myrtle Beach) is a damned good looking rate. But sometimes the good looking ones don't turn out to be so good when you look at 'em close. The eldest pointed out that the fine-print on the Spirit site talks about fees and other charges not being included in the $50.00 fare. Those fees could up the cost considerably, making what looks like a good deal, not be such a good deal after all.

The one thing I can say about Amtrak after a lot of experience financing my son's trips home is that what you see is what you get. The round trip on the rails costs about $85.00 and the fare they quote is the full fare. There are no extra costs or charges (unless, possibly, you take a heck of a lot of luggage or something, but that's not a college kid problem). If Spirit offers a fare where what looks like a bargain turns out to be an actual bargain then we might give 'em a shot next time. Flying him right into Myrtle would be nice, but in my present economic circumstances, it'll only work if its nice and cheap.

My eldest is a rooster who's welcome to return home to roost any time. The sky is brighter, the air smells sweeter and life is better when all three of my resident roosters are roosting in their home coop.

The other rooster is a dose of cosmic karma, and it's a bad, bad, evil and downright nasty kind of rooster. It slapped me in the face this morning when I was boogling around my customized Google News page. A couple of years ago Mr. Quack and I were looking for an economical and LEGAL way to download some music to burn some CDs. For me, that means mostly songs of the 70s and 80s. Has any good music been written since the 80s? I think not. (Or mostly not. Charlie Daniels has a new one out called What This World Needs Is A Few More Rednecks.  I'm not too much on country, save for a few tunes and everything by Charlie Daniels).

...continue reading "Roosting Roosters"

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Published on 2 Comments on A Romance Novel By Any Other Name Would Still Read As Sweet

Earlier this week I read a piece about Danielle Steel's interview with CBS News in which she denies being a romance author.  I found the statement so shocking that I emailed a link to the story to Mr. Quack.  From trolling the blogosphere since that time, I understand that Ms. Steel's statement surprised a bunch of folks. 

It also reminded me of a USA today piece about a novelist who lives right down the road a piece from me, Nicholas Sparks. Mr. Sparks was pretty vehement about not being a romance novelist too. 

What do Danielle and Nicholas have in common?  They're both laughing all the way to the bank. 

You know what else they have in common?  People read their books for the love stories.  Instead of sneering about the romance genre, Steel and Sparks should be thanking romance readers for supporting their work and buying their books.  See, romance is the not-so-little genre that could.  In these down and out times when everybody is cutting back on everything, people are still buying romance.  Today more readers than ever before need something that will take them out of reality and sweep them away on an emotional joy ride.

...continue reading "A Romance Novel By Any Other Name Would Still Read As Sweet"

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Published on 1 Comment on HOLLA At Chapin Library – A New Future For An Old Friend

I have always loved public libraries. 

The library was always a little like church, wasn't it?  You had to be quiet and you had to respect the fellow patrons.  But you could stroll through the library on any weekend day and find tables of people with books spread out around them.  They were clearly working on some research paper or project.  You could walk the aisles and find a couple of friends chuckling quietly over the pages of some slightly scandalous book they were checking out on the sly.  Or you could have real fun and take a tour through the kid's section.  There you'll see the little boy tearing down the aisle back to Mom, excited to share his newly discovered book.

The public library has always been everyman's temple of knowledge.  And I was always every(wo)man.  Oh, I know that out there somewhere are folks who grew up rich or at least well off.  They rarely visited a library.  If they wanted to read a new book, they'd go to a bookstore and buy it.  Why borrow when you could buy? 

Well, I borrowed because I couldn't buy.  I grew up POOR - very, very poor.  Can't buy groceries, holes in the floor kind of poor.  Bill collectors calling kind of poor. There were many things that got sacrificed out of necessity - but books were never amongst those things.  Thanks to the public library, the wonderful world of books was always something I didn't have to sacrifice. 

Then life moved on and despite our poverty, my Mama (God Bless Her Soul) worked very hard to be sure I got an education.  I did college and law school.  If I ended up as a writing kind of "scholarly" lawyer instead of a rich ole' trial lawyer, well that surely wasn't my Mama's fault.  She gave me the world and even though driving terrified her, at least once a week she'd load me in the car and drive me to the library.  She never checked out a book that I recall, likely because her life was too full of taking care of 2 houses and her sick parents.  But she made sure I worked at my schoolwork and she made those weekly trips to the library for me to make sure that the world of books would be my world.

Things went pretty well after law school.  I was never rich but for many years I met one of my most important goals - I was never poor either.  That was true for most folks for a lot of years, I think.  We became a country of folks who could afford to go to the bookstore and buy.  During all those years the library was still there and I'd pass one and remember when.  But you know, it really is true - everything old becomes new again.

...continue reading "HOLLA At Chapin Library – A New Future For An Old Friend"