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My post - "So What If A Bodice Rips" is up at the All Day, All Night Writing Divas site.  It's a re-write of the one posted here previously.  But here people are used to my insanity.  Here, y'all expect it.  At the other site - not so much.

The other writing divas are much saner, normal folks.   I'm their monthly dose of over-the-top duck-borne daffiness. 

I wrote the post to start a discussion and expected it to arouse some passionate discord.  If you check the comments, you'll see that it has.  But I'm always game for more. 

So, boogle on over to read the post and comment --- agree, disagree or wander off on your very own tangent.  As y'all know, I also love a good tangent.

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Based on my sales numbers, it looks like B&N is eating Amazon's lunch. 

This is the first month I could make the comparison.  In the early days of November I first uploaded my titles to B&N's "pubit" system to sell directly on B&N.  Previously I was selling on B&N via Smashwords.  This month I have the B&N numbers.  This month, I can ask the question.

Are Amazon's sales eroding ?  Based on my sales figures there this month, it looks like the giant etailer is having serious, grave issues with sales.  During the same period, sales at B&N seem to be growing, growing, growing.  Yet Amazon is still investing in its Kindle platform.  Like B&N, Az is now introducing a tablet. 

Introducing a tablet makes sense at B&N where sales are on the upswing.  It only makes sense at Amazon if sales are on the upswing too.  Yet if they are - then either the reporting system is broken or sales are being underreported for a more sinister reason. 

I've emailed Amazon 2 or 3 times over the last couple of days asking the retailer to check the sales reporting.  So far, I've gotten no response.  Yes, it's a weekend but Az works 24/7 and if it's growing its ebook ventures and investing in a new tablet, then it has people working 24/7 too.  And if those people are worthy of a paycheck they should be capable of running the necessary testing of the system.  But, as noted, I've gotten no response.

From the KDP forum, I see that other authors on Amazon are experiencing the same phenomenon - the numbers show that they are selling more on B&N than on Amazon.  While that could be true, based on sales numbers historically from Amazon - I doubt it.

So my question remains - is B&N Outselling Amazon or is Amazon Underreporting Sales?  These days at Amazon the numbers aren't adding up.  It makes it appear that something's rotten in Denmark - err, Amazon.  And my history with the company leads me to believe that Az has traditionally been very accurate with its reporting. 

If there is a problem with the reporting system, if the push with Kindlefire and getting that platform up and out has strained Az's resources to the point where it will take a while to run the numbers and report them, then Az needs to explain that. 

If Amazon doesn't come clean about it's current problems a lot more people are going to start asking a lot more questions.  That won't be good for business and it will hurt the company's reputation at a time when Amazon wants America to trust the company to be its digital provider.

The etailing giant has a history of being very closemouthed about its business and its numbers.  That doesn't work so well anymore, now that people can compare Kindle with other platforms.  Amazon wants us to trust it with our digital dollars and the company has to earn that faith.

Amazon's got some 'splaining to do.

UPDATE:   This was published early Sunday, 11/13/11.  About an hour after it was published, I got an email reply from Amazon.  It claimed that they had "researched" my inquiry about the sales reporting system. Amazon says "there are no issues with reporting sales."  The conclusion? 

B&N is eating Amazon's lunch.  Either that or no one at Amazon tested the system. Between "researching" my inquiry and actually testing the system lies a gap as wide and as insidiously threatening as infinity.

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I'll admit to enjoying checking out my horoscope as cast by Jonathan Cainer.  BTW, I'm a Leo.  Too bad there's not a duck in the Zodiac. I'd have to change my birthday to get that sign!

Anyway, late yesterday I was checking Mr. Cainer's horoscope reading for today to see if it was going to be as tough as most of the days have been lately.  Cainer says Leos have been having a rough time because Mars has been boogling through our sign.  Thank goodness mean ole' Mars exits Leo at the end of the month because I've had about enough of him.

In the horoscope I just read Mr. Cainer was referring to this Friday's date.  If you check your calendar, you'll see that 11.11.11 is the date on Friday.  And according to Mr. Cainer, lots of folks think 11.11.11 is the day we can re-boot our lives. It's interesting to consider, isn't it? 

When I consider something, I Google it and when I googled this, I ran across  Numerologist's Nam Hari Kaur Khalsa's thoughts on the significance of 11.11.11.  Mr. Khalsa says as follows:

The date of 11.11.11 is one of the most powerful shifts in human awareness that we will experience in our lifetime. It is a rare opportunity to release lifetimes of karmic scripting and ancestral entrapment. Entrapment in the sense of the conscious and unconscious habit patterns which have us wondering why we can’t seem to actualize the life we really want to have, and know is possible. 11-11-11 is the cosmic birth date of humanities prayer for liberation from the rote, mundane, and monotonous. Many people are presently feeling, “I can’t go on like this anymore, I just can’t live like this another day.” 

And Mr. Khalsa says that Eleven is the sound current of infinity.  He suggests that "Eleven is the sound current of Infinity, and sound is one of the most powerful ways we can heal ourselves. Mantras contain a frequency of sound which is a healing force that is available to us all."

Mr. Khalsa suggests we channel the energy of the day by chanting a "Magic Mantra":   

There is one Creator of all Creation.  All is a blessing of the One Creator.  This realization comes through Guru's Grace.

The numerologist says  this is the “magic mantra” because it "can shift the flow of the psyche so powerfully that new opportunities seem to materialize out of nowhere."

Wouldn't you love a chance to re-boot your life?  For me, a re-boot would be having an opportunity to write full time.  When I'm writing and my muse is with me I feel like I'm channeling thunder.  I don't know if chanting the mantra will be magic or not, but why not try some possible magic?

I wish everyone a happy re-boot on 11.11.11!!!!!!!!!!!(11 exclamation points. I might as well make the most of the current of infinity.)

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There are folks who pride themselves on being open-minded and accepting.  I like to consider myself one of those folks.  However, within the live and let live tribe, there are a bunch of members who only accept something if it meets their rules and regulations.  They think they're open-minded but in reality, they're the opposite.  These are people who only want to accept what they find acceptable.  Yes, Virginia, I'm talking about card-carrying members of the PC Police.  I'm gonna call 'em the PCP because I think the name fits.  Lord knows, they often act like they're high on something.   

Too many of them are reader-come-latelys.  Yeah, they might've been well-intentioned enough back when they started reading romance.  But they hung around with the wrong crowd.  They listened to the wrong sermons and soon enough, they started believing them.  And the young PCP converts were tapped as missionaries - sent out to convert others and convince them that the only good romance, the only acceptable romance was new romance.  Older romance was written in the wrong style with the wrong plot elements. 

Yes,  Kathleen Woodiwiss and Rosemary Rogers (guided by talented Avon Books editor Nancy Coffey) created a genre.  It wasn't a genre where you might pick up a book on occasion and read it.  It was a genre that compelled readers to buy another book so they could start it the second they finished the last.  It was a genre that incited and inspired a generation of women.  

Perhaps that was all very well - then.  And those women who devoured romance novels like Christmas candy?  Well, they didn't know any better. Besides, Woodiwiss and Rogers and the writers who learned from them were all the readers had.  But this is a new day.  There are a horde of writers who've learned the rules and write the proper stuff.  If a writer is tempted to wander off the true path  -- she better not.  The PC Police will get her.

Do they have an APB out for me yet? 

...continue reading "So What If A Bodice Rips? Wait — Do The PC Police Have An APB Out For Me Yet?"

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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?