Tag: Arts

Do Amazon and Createspace rip off Indie publishers with failure to correctly report sales?

Published on by Jaye2 Comments

Outrageous! Sadly, though I can quite believe it. I don’t trust Amazon; I work with them only because I must.

I know I’ve other authors, indie especially, following this blog. Surely you’ve seen this happen as well. Make noise, look at the good it did Ms Hogarth with the Space Marines debacle! We’re writers, damn it, let’s remind Amazon why you treat bards ith utmost respect!

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jeanettevaughan

Guest post by John. R. Clark, Managing Editor at AgeView Press

When AgeView Press Indie pubbed the book FLYING SOLO in May of 2012, the author, Jeanette Vaughan  immediately began tracking sales.   She heard from excited friends and family who immediately emailed when ordering their copies.  The first sales were off of Createspace’s e-store with the title ID number given to the author.   Then, through Amazon, a week later, when the book went live on the site.  Finally on Kindle, when the ebook format was completed.

Initially, things appeared kosher.    People exclaiming that they had ordered the book, were showing up within a day or two on the electronic royalty reports with a reasaonable accuracy.    But by June and July, sales descrepencies were noted by the author from customers claiming that they had purchased the book directly through Amazon, not an Amazon affiliate.    Many of these sales were simply not listed.The author contacted…

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Romance is not porn.

Published on by JayeLeave a comment

A perfectly wonderful post.
Just as nudity isn’t sex, romance isn’t either — a romance needn’t have any erotic element at all. Even if it does, it doesn’t have to reach pornographic levels. There’s a reason Erotica is a separate genre, after all.

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Love, Lust, and Laptops

I feel like this should go without saying, right?

And yet, not a day goes by when I don’t read some tweet, some article, some inane facebook post by someone who has never even read a romance novel, decrying “mommy porn” or “mummy porn” or “porn for women.”

And then, just yesterday, I caught this little forehead smacker on the NPR book blog (hat tip to @sesmithwrites on twitter):

“The American Library Association and Barnes & Noble were among the groups named by conservative group Morality in Media in its “Dirty Dozen List” of “the top 12 facilitators of porn.””

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/04/02/175987431/book-news-american-library-association-barnes-noble-called-facilitators-of-porn

Okay, full stops between every word required this time.

Romance. Is. Not. Porn.

This comparison does a disservice to romance writers and readers, and it does a disservice to the hardworking men and women in the pornography industry and their fans as well.

So why do we…

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How does Amazon work, I wonder

Published on by Jaye1 Comment

I really must say, the ranking system on Amazon fascinates me in a morbid fashion.

It is, really, the personification of many of the reasons I actually deplore the degree to which digital technology has permeated our society. Only through the advent of complex computers could such Lovecraftian mathematical models and algorithms be achieved on an hourly basis.

Something that has profoundly improved my position on the top 100 lists, or the overall sales rank lists: not selling any copies for nearly 12 hours. This, in one case, increased my rank in one category by something like 12 places.

An example of something that hurt my sales rank severely: selling about 4 copies. This, in one case, lowered me by more than 20 places.

Some things observed by other authors: raising and lowering your price has profound impact directly related to the price change (raise price, improve rank); existence of a film version – an author helping to puzzle out this ranking model had books with and books without movie treatments and confirmed that despite equal or worse sales, the ranks for the movied tales ranked higher; reviews (quantity) – it would seem that no reviews is better than some, but if you have any several is best … number of stars irrelevant, 40 1-stars is better as far as can be determined than 8 5-star.

Something with strange weight within the algorithm: 1-star reviews. They seem to hurt more than a 5-star helps. The fact that rating is used at all in the ranking is unique to Amazon, which troubles many consumers and creators alike since Amazon does not discourage people from reviewing things that they have never used/owned/etc nor take issue with people saying so in the reviews; and there’s no way to flag for removal a review for a radiant heater that reads (regardless of how many stars) “I really don’t like duck sauce” – while I pray that such a review for such an unrelated circumstance is merely the construct of my own strange mind, I do know that people will review things unrelated to the product or its quality.

I’ve actually had to resist the urge to consult astrological charts to determine if ranking trends correspond to any stellar alignments; I’m fairly certain, though, that Mercury’s position relative to Mars has some profound bearing upon the Hot New Releases Top 20 for Mysteries.

Ah me, but the eternal question: if it weren’t for computers and the internet wold my work be published? Frankly, I’m not a fan of computers and the internet as a rule. They’re useful tools in moderation, truly. I’m fond of some of their applications, like email. While I agree with Louis L’Amour regarding people relying on word processors to do too much of their writing for them, leading to sloppiness, I still would be loathe to be transferring my manuscripts to typewriter instead of Pages. Still, I would happily renew my acquaintance with my postman and invest in a big, solid Underwood if I could escape the perversions wrought upon society by the virulent proliferation of computer technologies …I miss simple electronics, such as 1980s and earlier televisions & radios {wistful sigh}.

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Now & Forever ABCs (Aaron)

Published on by Jaye4 Comments

Aaron Sean Sala

4 February 1994
Methodist

Aaron is a dancer attending both of the same dance schools as Lauren.  They met shortly after Lauren started her lessons in dance and the two became friends as they have a great deal in common with regards to personalities and tastes.

Aaron is a quiet, gentle tempered boy who loves working with children and who plans to pursue a degree in education and who volunteers heavily with the children’s groups at his church.

He has a flirtatious side and can be outgoing when he wants to be — usually when he feels like tormenting Travis, to whom he is genuinely attracted.  Travis has never had a regular boyfriend, though he has been on a few dates with guys.  Normally his social life is platonic, and involves taking out various friends, male and female alike, for fun and charming evenings.

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Now & Forever ABCs (Allison)

Published on by Jaye2 Comments

Allison Zola Paradis

Born 26 November 1995
Zen Buddhist

Allsion is an artist.  It’s all she cares about, it’s all she wants to do.  She has little to no attention span for academia beyond artistic techniques and history.  Actually, Allison tends to have little to no attention span for much of anything except her friend and family, whom she loves deeply, and her adoration of horses and horse riding.  She’s a quirky girl with short chestnut hair and a propensity for dressing in whatever she pulls out of her dresser with barely a regard for how it matches.

Allison has been dating Jacob for awhile and, despite frequent arguments, the two actually get along famously.  She’s Zach’s cousin, the pair’s mothers are sisters, and growing up so close together has led to a deep friendship between them.

While Allison is the first person to explain that she isn’t too bright, it’s not really true.  She can be quite brilliant when she wants to be, but she does march to the beat of her own piccolo — her brain is quite off kilter from the reality those around her perceive.

Her artistic tastes vary widely, but her first great love is painting.  Any medium will do:  watercolours, oil, acrylic, airbrush, etc.  Her greatest loves are oil and watercolour.  Her style leans toward the photorealistic — and she has a profound admiration for many of the renaissance era painters — but she does them in rather fantastic and even surrealist scenarios.  For example, she might paint a pair of women in exquisite detail, even enhancing and refining their actual features, but they’re the centrepiece of a scene of some bizarre landscape out of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  Her works tend to make statements, especially if you take several of them together, but not always — some are merely inspired by some thought and are expressing it, these are often depictions of some aspect of Buddhist philosophy or mythology/legend.

She used to attend the same church as Lauren, and is one of Lauren’s oldest friends, but as the time to begin preparing for Confirmation drew close she began to question her Christian upbringing and faith.  She embarked on a spiritual quest for something that spoke more closely to her view of the world.  She tried Wicca for a few months, but eventually settled on Zen Buddhism where she finally found the spiritual peace she craved.

There is some suspicion among her friends that Allison might be bisexual; something to which she makes little to no effort to deny.  Though if she is, she has never acted upon it having only ever admitted to crushes on boys and having only ever dated boys — though, when in a teasing mood, her friends will often point to Jacob as proof since the boy is very effeminate in appearance and manner.

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Well … that’s depressing

Published on by JayeLeave a comment

Well, the one star on Goodreads was updated to include a review. They posted it on Amazon too.

I must say, it’s odd to see someone posting a one star review of something they say they didn’t finish. It’s typically considered bad form – unless the review was: This book wasn’t even spell checked, it’s unreadable. Technical merit, or more to the point a lack thereof, being a quite valid exception.

Still, it’s far less that which bothers me. It’s that it criticises the story for being what I say in the blurb. There’s something troubling about this. I know I can’t expect to please everyone, but I never expected it to come in the form of a complaint that the book couldn’t be finished and the elaboration on why was that it was a love at first sight story about high school freshmen … as stated in the description.  There’s also criticism of Lauren being both gay and Christian which I cannot comment on politely so shan’t try.

I think I could have been amused, but some people have said the review was helpful, and this was one of the worst sales days since it launched.

And that’s what awaited me when I woke up this morning … on my birthday. (Really, today was my really for real birthday – I thought of putting the book on special sale or something, but thought of it too late, sorry).

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Status update: Ready or Not

Published on by JayeLeave a comment

Well, Love or Lust is holding strong as an Amazon bestseller and hot new release (for category, but hey — it is a bestseller list — says so on the label).  Which is lovely.  Even climbing charts globally.  A ping on the German radar and some love from Down Under hath come my way as well — thank you.

In the meantime I’ve got back to work on Ready or Not and am nearly half through it.  So far it’s not quite the disaster I was thinking, but I also don’t think I’ve hit the bits I wrote during NaNoWriMo or Camp NaNoWriMo.

I’ve a horrible, sinking feeling when I consider what I can recall of them.  They’re actually great parts — by themselves.  I’m just terrified that, when I get there, they won’t fit and can’t be made to fit.  If that’s the case, then that’s about one third of the book down the drain and a lot of work to get to before I can have the next book out.

If I’m wrong — things are going well enough between my own read through and my editor’s pile of work to do that she ought to be sitting down to attack it with her mighty Red Pen of Death which I swear is filled with human blood — possibly magically siphoned from the author upon whose work she applies it — instead of ink.  We’ll have some lovely conversations regarding my dyslexia, my inability to grasp various minutia of English grammar and orthography and then I’ll give it one more read for ‘now how in Hell did this get by both of us!?’ moments.

Should the universe be benevolent and kind (please do stop laughing, please) I might have book 2 out by Christmas.  Realistically speaking, I’ll say don’t expect anything before Easter 2014 and I might even wind up so close to 29 June 2013 that I may hold off to release on the 1yr anniversary of the first book.

All told I’m impressed with this first half, really.  There’re some very touching moments, and a good tear jerker in there.  I’ve managed to have some really good humour bits.

For fun I’ll post the only part, aside from a poem from late in the book which has already been released here, I’ll give you a sample of the only other part I’m willing to present to the wider public:

Disclaimer

The story which follows contains people:  Tall people, short people, fat and skinny.  It will contain intelligence, stupidity, ignorance and knowledge.  It will contain people ambulating, masticating, respirating, and articulating.  It will contain people who are homosexuals.  It will contain heterosexual people.  It will contain males, females, and God help us all, humans.

It should be known that the author is not promoting anything.  This story is for enjoyment, entertainment and, if the author might be permitted a moment of vanity, inspiration.

Reading it will not make you gay, straight, masculine, feminine, feline, canine, richer or poorer (well, maybe a little poorer as I hope you bought a copy, but I hope not significantly poorer).  It will not make you smarter or stupider, more or less violent.  It will not send you to Heaven or Hell (I think).  It will give you super powers if read while being exposed to cosmic rays*.

If you like it, fantastic.  If you hate it, I’m sorry.  Just know that you’ve been warned.

Yours with love,

Jaye Em Edgecliff

*Please use cosmic radiation responsibly and only according to the direction of a scientific genius or similar.  Author cannot be held responsible for injury or disfigurement caused by exposure to strange solar emanations.

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Announcing: Love or Lust now available!

Published on by Jaye1 Comment

Love or Lust coverNow available in eBook and Print: Love or Lust the first of four books in the Now & Forever series.

A light-hearted, slice-of-life, romantic-comedy for young adults, Love or Lust introduces you to Lauren Conners, a ballerina, a Good Girl, studious, and sweet, and to Salencia Constellino, an exotic, irreverent cowgirl new to the little Washington town.

When the girls meet it’s love at first sight; sparks fly, angels sing, lightning and fireworks. But they attend the best school in the area, a Catholic secondary school, Immaculate Conception. It’s not just their school that brings trouble for the young couple. The young teens have their own inner turmoils and anxieties — especially Lauren, who always wants to think the best of people, but quickly learns just how petty people can get.

It’s an uplifting story, though, meant to inspire and give hope. The girls have supportive and loving friends and families. And, largely, the obstacles of life and of being teenagers are navigated with quirky senses of humour and strange misunderstandings.

In this book Lauren and Sally are first and foremost, young high school freshmen, fourteen years old and trying to make sense of themselves and the world around them. It is my hope that it might show people that we’re all human beings no matter who it is we choose to love. That homosexual, heterosexual, bixsexual, asexual, trisexual, or what have you, are still people; still feeling beings with hopes and dreams.

Print book us$17.99/£11.50/€13.75
createspaceamazon-logo3-150x73

eBook us$3.99. Available in numerous countries at proportionate price.
Currently in:
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Coming soon to:
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Sometimes it is, because it is.

Published on by Jaye1 Comment

When writing, sometimes a rose is a rose because it isn’t a geranium.

Recently I reblogged a commentary by Seanan McGuire about sometimes someone’s a character is gay because they’re gay. Honestly it’s true of so much of fiction.

In an edition of Little Women that’s put out by Barnes & Noble there’s a contemplation about the girls‘ generosity and selflessness that doesn’t once contemplate that the girls are … wait for it … simply good people! It even contemplates ‘their masochism‘ in giving up their Christmas breakfast to a starving family! They can afford to have a nicer dinner to make up for skipping breakfast, afford to spare this breakfast to one poorer even that they are and so elect, on Christmas, not to let a poor woman and her children go hungry and this is masochism?!

Besides the criticism I could make of such short sighted analysis, it makes a beautiful point – at times you need look no further than the words in front of your face to find the reasons for it. Call it masochism or call it charity the reason is before you: because that woman and her family was hungry, and the sisters were not – not in that context in any case. Why are they so pious? Is it competition with one another? Emulation of their mother? Well, perhaps somewhat the latter in the sense that she was a good Christian woman and taught the girls to be good Christian women themselves.

It’s behaviour, it’s race, sexuality, height, eye colour, hair colour, tastes in music, all of it comes down to basic characterisation. In Now & Forever, Lauren is a redhead. Simply because she has red hair. Salencia is half Italian because her father is born and bred in Naples. They story is unaffected by it, it just is. Or is there some impact on the story? A subtle one? I think so, actually. You get to know the characters a little. You now know just a bit more about them. This helps one understand them better. Identifying with the character shouldn’t have to mean that she is just like yourself, it should mean that the author has done a fair job of giving you proper insight into the characters’ motivations, thoughts, and feelings.

The biggest question, though, comes back to why? Why should there be some purpose or meaning behind these details? Why should Lauren’s eyes being green-hazel have any significance or symbolism? Why should the fact that one of Sally’s best friends in Colorado is a heavyset girl matter as more than a marker to show that she isn’t skinny? Is there some significance that Sarah is black, or that she’s a cheerleader? No. They are because they are. Lucy isn’t generic Native American to try to include any tribal groups of the United States, she’s Native American and generically so because she’s Lucy. Just as the March girls are pious and generous because they’re part of the March family.

Is there, at times, symbolism and purpose in fiction? Absolutely. Intentional and unintentional. I’m almost guaranteed to commit the latter a thousand times more often than the former, but in Pride and Predjudice you can’t go three words without hitting a deliberate symbol. Sometimes a character is something because they must be; Love or Lust and its sequels can hardly be a girl-meets-girl love story if one or both of them is a firm zero on the Kinsey Scale.

Personally I think one should avoid ‘there’s a reason …’ thinking beyond what simply must be. If you want to write a romance, you need to pick some characters who’re attracted to one another, but beyond that just let them be. If they wind up all Asian, all Agnostic goat herdsmen, or a group of magenta aliens from Ultharen, then so be it. It needn’t mean anything. This goes for readers and writers alike. See the story that’s before you, write the story that’s in your mind. We needn’t always over think the words and the works.

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Warning for Writers: Beware Tony Giangregorio and Open Casket Press

Published on by JayeLeave a comment

This is absolutely disgraceful.
Sadly, all too common. People like to prey on authors – it’s so hard to get published (traditionally speaking, of course) and regardless how one gets published just as hard or harder to get noticed and read …

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Stant Litore

I want to pass on a warning to young writers in the horror genre (and perhaps to readers, too). There is an editor and owner of several small presses — Tony Giangregorio — who has a long-standing reputation in the industry for not just editing but rewriting his authors’ fiction and then refusing to return or sell back the rights. He received a lot of bad press in May 2012 when he published an anthology having completely rewritten several stories submitted to it (one of them by noted horror writer Jonathan Maberry), but he is now back, publishing some mangled fiction under his Open Casket Press.

In the most recent offense, novelist Paul Johnson is currently distancing himself from a book published in his name by Open Casket Press, Survival Horror: A Zombie Story — because not only is the book poorly edited, but Giangregorio changed the location of the…

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