Tag: E-book

So much for agents?

Published on by Jaye11 Comments
George Takei on the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Pr...
George Takei on the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Pride 2006 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is thursday of the final week of waiting for agent responses. Sadly, as I recall, all the remaining agents are the sort not to guarantee a response one way or the other — only promise a reply if they’ll take the novel. Tomorrow I suppose I begin sorting everything out to self-publish Now & Forever.

My earlier post was a none-too-sublte attempt to garner some feedback to decide if I should keep searching for agents — I did recently find about an hundred more. So I’m asking outright for advice and opinions.

For those of you reading who aren’t authors and, therefore, (potentially) unaware of the grand dilemma here, please allow me a moment to elaborate. Those who already know exactly why this is a rough decision, feel free to skip down to the comments and throw in your voice on the matter.

For the uninitiated here are the pros and cons of publishing presented in juxtaposition between self and traditional publishing.

  • Self published I can have the book out tomorrow (though it won’t actually be until June, because I’m a perfectionist and want to tidy up a few things first, and will spend a lot of time agonising over the position of the pages in the print version). Traditionally published, it’s liable to be, at least, another year before the first book comes out — and regardless when I finish the other 3, assume at least a year between them
  • Self published I get 60-70% royalties, as opposed in the traditional model of approximately 2-5%, minus the agent’s 15% from that 2-5%. BUT There’re these lovely things called an advance where the publisher (with a little prodding from an agent) decides that the royalties for the first printing of the book ought to equal X and so cuts a cheque (though, these days more like 3, one on contract signing, one later on, and another even later than that) for that amount. Agent gets 15% of it, and I walk to the bank with something that’ll buy some groceries.
  • Self published has no true advertisement but word of mouth. I would, very literally, be relying on those who read or stumble on this blog, those who stumble upon and (praying to God) read the book to tell their friends and family about it. Yes, yes, Project Wonderful, Google AdSense, etc. Tell me, honestly, how often do you click those? Hmm? Not often, do you? Or you do, but how often do you buy? You’re not unique you know. Traditionally published books, don’t exactly get TV spots in the halftime show for the Super Bowl, but they are advertised and marketed to book buyers. Unless you get your paycheque from Barnes & Noble, or own a mom & pop bookshop you are not a book buyer — book buyers are the folks who decide what’s going to be on the physical store shelves, and then buys them. Tell me — how many books have you bought from an author you’ve never heard of from the bookstore versus an online retailer? Getting a picture?
  • Cover art. This one gets fun. As a self-pub author I control the art. I can say “this is amazing, this sucks, etc.” For those who don’t know, an author with a publisher has no say in the cover art (normally, some publishers might ask the author’s opinion, notice I didn’t say value or listen to it). Now, in all honesty this is both a thrilling and horrifying thing. The publisher would find a professional artist (not of my choosing, but hopefully someone with a modicum of talent) to make up a pretty cover for me that’s formulated and market researched to make people buy the book. Sadly, sometimes this means a cover that has no basis in the story whatsoever. Sometimes this doesn’t detract, and helps (Twilight is apparently a fine example of this — though, personally, I always walked right past those covers without a glance). The upshot, however, is that with a traditional publisher I get a, theoretically, unique cover design from a professional. By myself, I get whatever I can put together with a mix of photoshop bungling, some creative commons searching/begging for donated art from artistic friends/scrounging up hundreds or thousands of dollars to purchase some art.
  • Distribution. In this day of the internet, who needs think of distribution?! Just put it up as an eBook and it’s worldwide in 24hrs. Again, I ask, when was the last time you bought a book from an unknown author when you weren’t browsing the shelves of a bookstore? Distribution is important. And face it, it’s the biggest weapon in the arsenal of a traditional publisher, and one that most self-published authors have no means to enjoy. CreateSpace‘s book sizes will often be a mark against many stores carrying them — 6×9 is a trade paperback, yes, but many stores won’t carry the hardback and trades of an unknown. Good ol’ pocket paperback 4×6 or 3×5 is more likely to carry and isn’t offered. Lightning Source, Inc does, but that’s out of budget for many authors — and LSi, offers far better distribution options than CreateSpace ever comes close to.
  • Other promotion: as a self-published author I’m unlikely to be able to have ads for my books show up in any media. Some magazines do carry ads for books — notice how none are from self-published writers? Ever wondered how much that little ad cost? Books might be mentioned on some TV shows and radio programs. For example, in a hypothetical universe, I am picked up by McMillan publishing, their PR guy takes one look at my book, looks up at the TV and thinks, I got it! And calls up the folks in charge of Ellen’s show and gets the book mentioned there, interview with the author (way too shy to talk to a camera, but this is a hypothetical universe where maybe I wouldn’t be) and … you get the picture. Self published? I might be able to get George Takei to mention it on his Facebook page — curiously enough, in both of these cases it’s all back to word of mouth. In this case the mouths of a pair of celebrities whose opinions on such matters folks are wont to listen to. And, y’know, the Takei thing might not be such a bad idea now I’ve said it. Other promotion might also include reviews. Many professional reviewers won’t touch self-published, that’s right, they refuse it outright. So I’d be down to relying on GoodReads and Amazon Reviews. Hmm … there we go again with word of mouth.

And therein lies the problem. If you didn’t notice, the pros and cons are, actually, fairly balanced. I can reach my readership faster and with greater control of cover art, timing, pricing, etc. But I can reach more readers with a traditional publisher. The promotion and advertising — well, the biggest Truth in marketing is that word of mouth is the only guaranteed to work, everything else is guess work; educated guess work but still guess work.

If I knew that the release of my book on Amazon’s Kindle wouldn’t be swallowed by, and I wish I were exaggerating, 13 (I counted) pages of pre-orders going out nearly 15months! For those not in the know, self-published writers and many small press/indie press publishing houses don’t get this option with any online retailer except Apple’s iBooks — not even Smashwords is so respectful to its users. So I would be buried under the Jo Rowlings, the latest adventures of Drizzt, or Junie B Jones.

Round and round, it’s like watching my dog chase the flea that just bit his tail, poor thing, but I watched him just now and realise that it’s a perfect analogy to my problem. Shrug off the rejections by the agents and do it myself, or keep trying? Which has the greatest gain? True, I write for the love of writing, but I also live in a world that relies on money — I’m not going to spend a year or more carefully grooming 140000 words into an enjoyable tale and hand it out with a cheery wave. I’d like to, and if employers in this country felt obligated to pay enough to live on, I actually would — it’s save the headache — but they don’t so I don’t. In a sense, yes, this is about money, but it’s in a “I’d really rather be writing than answering phones all day” kind of way.

So, please, do comment — feedback helps. I have authors following, I know. If you’ve any anecdotes to share, please do. Readers? What’s your answers? Do you prefer to browse the samples of iBooks, Kindle, and Nook to decide who and what to buy? Do you browse past a dozen pages of pre-orders to see what you can get right now? How many of you talk to your friends and family about what you read — how many of you are excited enough by the prospect of reading Love or Lust to recommend it to them or even gift it to them?

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Self Publishing vs. Traditional Publishing: The Reader’s Perspective

Published on by Jaye2 Comments

I couldn’t agree with this more.

The major publishing houses are not great boon, but neither is self-publishing and vice versa. To the reader, the matter comes down to: a great book.

That said, there is the question of distribution. Unquestionably your book will be in more physical stores traditionally published than not. For those writing the applicable genres there’re things like the Scholastic Book Fairs to consider, where only select agents or select publishing houses are allowed entry — self-published is barred.

Still, self-published could compensate for that lack of visibility with a lower price … possibly.

It all comes down to luck and talent in proper alchemical proportions, I suppose.

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Jack Woe

The merits of self-publishing vs. traditional-publishing has been discussed at great length in various blogs from the point of view of authors.  Never, or very rarely has this been discussed from the point of view of readers; the people that ultimately buy the books.  This is my attempt to correct that.

This blog is inspired by The Trials of Self-Publishing: Why I Consider It a Last Resort and Eisler on Digital Denial.

Publication Snobbery

When I buy a book, I don’t consider the publisher at all.  Whoever published the book doesn’t matter.  This also means I don’t care if it’s been self-published.  Not one bit.  It does matter how well it’s written and edited — and that there aren’t so glaring grammatical errors I’m not sure what’s being said.

To dispel a myth, traditional publishers offer little protection from any of those points.  True, I can be reasonably sure…

View original post 1,608 more words

An interesting counterpoint

Published on by JayeLeave a comment

I’ve shared the meat and potatoes of John Scalzi‘s blog posts regarding certain questionable e-book imprints by Random House which included very strong opinions on royalty only publishing models.  This is a counterpoint, not to the ghastly details of Random House’s contracts (truly horrific), but to the royalty only bit.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

In Defense of the Royalty-Only Model for Digital Publication

John Scalzi, author, blogger, lame-duck (but by no means lame) President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, defender of working writers everywhere, and client of the agency I happen to work for, has been commenting this past week about a shift toward advanceless book deals and the gradual erosion of authors compensation in the digital marketplace (summary can be found here).

While John is mostly right (especially about Random House’s new Hydra/Alibi/Loveswept/Flirt “profit share” endeavor being exploitative) I thought he was perhaps a bit unfair to the royalty-only model, and I thought I might supply a counterpoint to his criticism, and also a bit of context about how the royalty-only model rose to prominence in the digital book sphere.

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The end is in sight!

Published on by JayeLeave a comment

Ready or Not (concept only)Well, I’ve reached the end of Ready or Not‘s chapter 20.  I feel like the next one or the one after should be the wind down to the end and then I can get started on the third book.

So far I’m not sure what to call that one.  I’m likely to be several chapters in before I’ve got a clear vision of a name.  At least the fourth book has a name:  Now & Forever.  I think I was planning to call it that all along, I’m not sure, but I am now.

I’m still waiting to hear back from Ms Lakosil to decide how I’m going to proceed.

Cover Official

Which does, by the way bring me to a perfectly related detail.  Love or Lust should be done editing in two weeks, maybe three.  I mean done done.  It’d be sooner, but I want to give it one more personal read through.  The lovely part of this is that the agency’s expected response is supposed to be 2-4 weeks which would put today the earliest I’m likely to hear back and the latest just about the time I finish my read through — just in time to decide what I’m going to do!

One thing I have decided to do, but haven’t got around to is tweaking the cover for Love or Lust to a less dark colour.  It doesn’t go as well with the second book.  Admittedly it won’t matter if I end up going with an agent and a traditional publisher, but I’m going to operate on the idea that I won’t be using an agent.  If I do self-publish the cover will be tweaked down to a shade of blue similar to the maroon that Ready or Not‘s cover has.

Sneek preview of the third book (and part of the second, I suppose):  image

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Further Opinions of eBook services

Published on by Jaye1 Comment

So far, both as reader and as writer I must say I prefer iBooks.

I finally got Google to work.  First off, there’s a sign up you must do, but the instructions are arranged so that it looks like what you do is go to http://books.google.com/partner, and the sign up using a link found there.  No.

Okay, there’s a sign up link below that link in the FAQ that is where you need to start — yes, you read that right.  Where one starts is with the second link in the instructions (sounds stupid yet?).  This takes you to a signup sheet where you fill in your info.  Now, important note:  If you’ve more than one gmail account (as many people do) be sure you’re currently signed into the right one!  It’ll take you to a Google accounts login, but it’s already too late, if it’s got a username filled in for you and is only prompting you for the password?  Yeah, that’s the one it used.

The interface is obtuse.  Most things are pretty straightforward, admittedly, but a few things aren’t.  For example:  say you write and self publish some work under pseudonym (something more than a few self-published folk do, especially ones who write multiple genres), you have to set up imprints.  And it has very poor help on what some of the odder of the fields in that screen mean.

I’m still toying with it, to be fair, but I must say it’s no real surprise to me why so many of the friends I know who have AndroidOS devices use the Kobo, Nook, or Amazon apps for ebooks instead of Google Play.  I wasn’t terribly impressed with the reader app, and have long since deleted it from my iPad, and never bothered with it on my desktop.

I’m also hitting a sticking point with Nook.  I contacted B&N’s PubIt help regarding problems I’m having with their service recognising an ISBN on a book I was trying to manage, and for another where the ISBN was recognised to display that or at least have it linked in some fashion for searches … the response was a rather unhelpful thing saying that all books get a 12-digit BNID and are identified by that.  Which is a total lie.  Example: Discount Armageddon.

True, I doubt that was put up via PubIt.  So, it’s possibly true of PubIt titles.  Which points to yet another place where an eBook seller is treating independent authors, publishers, etc. like they’re second class or worse.  That ISBN is important for people who might be looking for the ebook for their favourite device and lots of services for linking to things (e.g. Goodreads.com) use ISBN based APIs for this.

I’ll keep experimenting.  And if my own work goes up via PubIt I’ve some theories on what’s going on that I can play around with.  Still, so far, Nook’s a pretty sharp platform from a reader’s point of view, less impressed now with PubIt from a writer/publisher point of view (and less impressed with their customer support, even Amazon was never that unhelpful).

So to put it another way I have just decided that my first rank goes to Apple, second to Kobo & DriveThru Fiction, third goes to Nook & Smashwords, and dead last goes to Google and Amazon.

At this point I’m starting to wonder, rather much, if I shan’t take up the agent I submitted to if she should respond positively to my books (so far still waiting with bated breath and fingers crossed) in order to save myself money on aspirin.  Self -epublishing isn’t as hard as most people make it out to be, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t work and isn’t annoying.  Still, it’ll all come down to how insulting the terms would be if I went traditional publishing house to decide if I’ll be putting Now & Forever out myself or letting someone else do it.

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My opinions of eBook services

Published on by Jaye3 Comments

There are, these days, nearly as many places online to buy eBooks as there are ads for cheap genital enhancements.  Most are fly-by-night operations; here at breakfast and gone by brunch.  In all there are only a few: Amazon (Kindle), Barnes & Noble (Nook), and Apple (iBooks). Honourable mentions might go to Kobo, Smashwords, and Google Play Books.

On these I’d like to share my experience in dealing with them.

First, the good.  All are free.  All but Google Play Books is perfectly easy to use.  Google loses here because it’s been months and their sign up function to access the seller area to upload your book has been down (in fact I’ve just checked it and it still doesn’t work).

The bad.  Well, Google’s afore mentioned brokenness.  Smashwords’ meatgrinder is a nightmare as are other aspects of their required formatting.  And all but Apple treat you as something lesser than the big publishers (well, I suppose Smashwords, too, is an exception … but it’s hard to say so given certain aspects of their format guidelines).

That’s the point, in the end. All but Apple’s system feels amateurish, even a bit insulting in spots.  A trait I can, sincerely, overlook if I had full option services, but I don’t.

What options?

Well, how about the ability to arrange a pre-order?  Apple, yes.  The others?  No.

Promo codes for give aways?  Apple and Smashwords, yes, the others?  Not a chance.  Now to be fair, a not even big enough for honourable mention, DriveThruFiction.com, is also good for this.  Admittedly, Apple doesn’t give discount codes, it’s a free copy code, but let’s face it … when’re you going to want to give a limited audience sale versus a limited audience freebee?  If you want the book to be half price for a little while why not just lower the price for a few days/weeks?  Still, discount codes exist in some form with these.

Priority professional response to issues: Apple shines here. It took less than three hours to get a reply to a message about a technical issue I was having and it was detailed, and carefully written in the same way you might expect them to respond to the representative for Penguin Books.  Nook and Kobo were helpful, but less prompt.  Smashwords’ support I’ve no basis for sample.  Google is dead last, I’ve never heard back about the login issue and I’ve contacted them more than once.  Amazon … they’re not terribly prompt, except when they are, and while their replies are courteous and clear, they do not always strike me as having carefully read the message to which they’re replying nor do I feel very pleased with some of the rather severely dated shortcomings of their eStore (did you know Amazon doesn’t have a simple method to receive or even know about an update to an eBook you buy from them?  There isn’t.  You have to contact them and request the update be made available for download, then delete the item from your app/device, then redownload it.  Versus everyone else who you can just redownload from to get the update, and the other big boys having in device/app update alert).

All-in-all I find Apple to be the best, though once you get past its very old school look (and ignore that you could ask twenty people in a row and likely not a one will have ever heard of the place) DriveThru is pretty great too.

Nook’s PubIt is next best, it has far better preview functionality than Kobo and is rather more intuitive.

Kobo ranks third, it’s awkward to get to the WritingLife service which is their indie/self publishing service, and while not unintuitive is not exactly intuitive either. A mark in its favour is the ability to preschedule your publication, sadly this is an internal autoprocess and in no way a pre-order option.

Next is Smashwords and Amazon, both of whom are usable and have some things to recommend them, but I find them a bit … arrogant?  KDP has a lot of quirky loopholes, like the 35% vs. 70% royalty option and the radical way they differ if/when Amazon does a price match, the unavailability of the 70% at certain prices (for a feel of how really bizarre this is, all others are 60, 65 or 70% depending the store regardless of price).  I also really find the Kindle and its .MOBI to be anything but impressive.  Smashwords has a rather amateur feel, and annoyingly many arbitrary, utterly unnecessary requirements to get the book past their file quality, and admittedly unnecessary thing if you only want to use them and not their premium catalogue option (they act as agent and put your book on other services like iBooks) but it still gives you the error messages.  There’s also the fact that your book is made instantly available upon upload, which doesn’t seem a problem at first … until you realise you’ve selected the wrong file by mistake.  I also think they push their premium catalogue to an unseemly extent which gives them a cut of your sales though OTHER online book sellers, all of whom you could have set up with free and gotten full royalty or.

Last is Google.  I’ve said all I can about them.  I can’t seem to actually use them, and so they quite simply land at the bottom of the pile.

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Let there be samples!

Published on by Jaye2 Comments

Cover Official

Well, there’s a sample up for Love or Lust now.

It’s only the first two chapters, and that’s all I intend to have up, for the moment, but I might elect to add the third chapter too.

There is no downloadable ePUB or PDF sample.  That’s too much bother and will be left up to the various eBook retailers to supply.  The launch availability is currently iBooks, Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Smashwords, Amazon (print), and Createspace.  I’m considering putting up on a little place called DriveThru Fiction as well.  It looks easy enough to use, and I won’t say no to a venue that costs nothing to publish through since all it can mean is more sales.  If you’ve a favourite eBookstore you don’t see listed feel free to contact me or leave a comment naming it.

Ready or Not (concept only)I’ve also decided the cover for Ready or Not.  Mostly because that gave me something to do that felt constructive while I tried to decide what happens next in the story.  I do believe it’s about done as the girls are having an Easter break kickoff party in the part I’m currently working on.  Then it’s off to editing, working out a less placeholdery blurb, and then to the editor (yes, I edit things BEFORE I give them to my editor.  I happen to like the woman and would feel rather bad if she wound up in an asylum by any action of my own).

I’m starting to feel a little better about Book 2, lately.  I’m starting to think that the less cohesive, more anecdotal form it has taken so far might make it a good transitional tale.  Something to give a better feel for the characters and their normal lives.  In short, rather than one big slice of their life looked at from edge to edge as Book 1 is, Book 2 is more like several little slices and glimpses of time.  I don’t know.  I’ll get it typed, give it a few read throughs, then decide if it’s a mess or not.

Suffice to say I’m off my writer’s block and things are moving along well.

P.S.  Those paying attention will notice that Love or Lust‘s cover says “Jaye Edgecliff” while Ready or Not‘s says “Jaye Em Edgecliff”, that’s because the latter is what I’d prefer, but the former is what I have to do because of a quirk to the cover layout and Book 1 has a finalised cover versus Book 2 which has a cover I’m still playing with.

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Progress?

Published on by JayeLeave a comment

Sadly, no, not really.

Love or Lust is still being edited.  It’s moving along at a good pace, but apparently I make too many tiny punctuation errors for it to go what, by strict definition, could be called fast.  They might even be small enough most people wouldn’t notice them, but between my knowing how to do some of them right (typo, inattentiveness, or messing up when changing something would be how THOSE wind up wrong) and a certain sense of:   if I’m going to go through this kind of stress I might as well make sure it’s done right, it just wouldn’t do to leave them be.

Ready or Not is stuck in too many way.  Part of it is a long series of migraines.  Creative thought and migraines just don’t happen together, full stop.  Too I keep having life interfering with it, and finally I just can’t quite get a good handle on what happens next.

I should be set for a, relatively, simultaneous release on Kobo, Nook, Kindle, print, iBooks, Smashwords, and DriveThruFiction.  ‘Relatively’ just to account for Murphy’s Law, one of them, I just know, is going to take forever to put the book up in their store in some fashion and possibly require re-upload of the file based on some error it couldn’t have just kicked back when it first scanned the file during the initial upload.

All in all, I look forward to the release.  I hope to see mountains of reviews and lots of comments about it.

I should have some previews up very soon.  I’m really just waiting to decide where to cut it off at and then I’ll put it here (first few chapters are pretty much done, so shouldn’t be too much trouble).

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Good news!

Published on by Jaye1 Comment

No, I haven’t given up writing 😉

I’ve just got full, official confirmation that an ISBN is not necessary to publish to iBookstore.

Now, as Smashwords can provide mea free ISBN, and it’s logical to HAVE an ISBN, and I no longer must deal with Smashwords’ neurotic submission process (I’m pretty sure the language I used trying to argue with that damnable meatgrinder over something once borders on mortal sin) I’ll be publishing there as well … needless to say this is looking very up for Love or Lust to be in multiple markets from day one.

Now, I did notice that the method of delivering your OWN content to iBookstore requires one to have a Mac. You COULD just use Smashwords’ (or one of several other aggregators whose names I don’t know) or you could do the highly sensible thing and buy a Mac. I truly deplore Windows and find Linux to be far too much trouble for far too little benefit.

The book is editing swiftly. It feels very slow, but that’s because it is a little long. The Valentine’s deadline has made the fascinating whooshing sound that Douglas Adams was always so fond of them making (how, you ask, as it isn’t yet 14 February … my editor would have to achieve superhuman rates of reading and error correcting to make it by that date). A more accurate measure will be forthcoming as soon as I can give one to myself I’ll pass it along to you.

Look on the bright side, the longer she takes the better edited a story you’ll get! (Yeah, I know, that’s a pretty thin consolation and it’s doing little to make me feel any better too, but REALLY, a bit more patience and you’ll have it … just don’t ask about Ready or Not)

Decisions, decisions …

Published on by JayeLeave a comment

So the final editing of Love or Lust is well under way.  It probably won’t be done by Valentine’s Day, but it still might.  It is moving at a fair clip, but that doesn’t change that there’s about 140k words and 400-ish pages to get  through.  Too, I have to make a final read through just to make sure that the final buff and polish is done, so that date will likely be missed and was never a very resounding likelihood anyway.

That’s got me to thinking about a few things.

First off, section separators:  Also known as fleurons (and an hundred other things), they do give a certain flair to the page.  They’re also a bloody wretch to figure out how to do.  With Dingbats type fonts they’re a breeze in the PDF, but they start to become an unholy nightmare in the universe of the ePUB and Kindle editions.  Not impossible, mind, but nightmare.  An alternative is to just use a little graphic.  Dear God save me from things that ought to be black on transparent alpha layer but instead are scans complete with random not exactly white artefacts in the white bits!!  Photoshop and I had a lovely row about that.  I did make one.  It was kind of pretty.  Well, that is, until I tried to put it on the page.  That didn’t go too well. Still … I’d appreciate feedback on that.

If you click on the word fleurons above it’ll take you to an example image.  The alternative is good old fashioned asterisks.

The second bit of thinking was just a bit of fun inspired by how another author did a little pre-release promotion.  Seanan McGuire did a Discount Armageddon A–B–Cs thing that seemed kind of cute.  The more I think about it the less I want to do it.  So I probably won’t.  But just in case I do lose my mind and decide to go with this little touch of lunacy … well … you’ve been warned.

Solidly decided things:

  • Publishing, I don’t care if you use a publisher or do it yourself, is a good way to go completely mad with indecision, anxiety, self-doubt, and several other things that suddenly have escaped my vocabulary and are lost in the woods some place.
  • I love my cover art.  I’m, torn between ideas regarding it though.  I’m very much thinking to keep that layout and just change the colour scheme for each book, and then (naturally) the image.  The question is, do I keep finding girl/girl cover art (something I can absolutely do for Ready or Not but is giving me a touch of trouble for later books), or just keep finding pretty images (e.g. the 4th book maybe having a ballet slipper on it or some such).  Ah well, I’m not even done with the second book yet and feel like it needs heavy editing so I’ve plenty of time to consider and reconsider this.
  • The print edition will be somewhere in the neighbourhood of us$10.  Sadly, this is due entirely to length.  It costs more than the retail price of a novel half this size just to print the bloody things.  Which gives me a new found respect for some of the newest Terry Pratchett novels I’ve picked up being about us$10, but doesn’t explain some places charging that much for things like Light Fantastic or Wyrd Sisters!  The eBook, though, will likely be closer to us$4 or us$5.  Compelling enough arguments could see it as low as us$3 (just use the comments or the contact link), but current ‘wisdom’ says the higher price will attract more sales.  We’ll see.

Page numbers.   I’ve just realised I’ve no idea how I should like to do the page numbers.  Centered and unadorned at the bottom of the page?  Unadorned at the bottom corner of the page (obviously this thought is for the print edition only)?  Unadorned at the top?  If decorated, with tildes or a fleuron/dingbat?  Well, don’t ever let anyone tell you self-publishing is easy, or that it’s the lazy way out or any other such nonsense.  That said, going through a publisher is just as bad or worse — you may not have to decide a lot of this stuff, but then you have to worry that your first edition might have covers in “50 shades of mud” and “kept them out of the shops“, among too many other less amusing anecdotes by far too many other authors to mention.

I’ll always argue with someone who says writing is ‘hard work’ — I take issue with the work part.  The hard … that depends on perspective, writing is challenging in terms of telling a good story well and not losing your mind in the process.  Work it is not.  Publishing, on the other hand, I will doubt the sanity of anyone who claims is anything but work and be suspicious of anyone who claims it to be easy.

In other news Puppy Bowl is tomorrow!!  I’ll, alas, be missing it because a) I’ll be at work and b) I don’t actually have any TV service that doesn’t come via my DVD player.

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