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I really enjoyed the Draw yesterday... I hope to go back to doing that monthly. Even though it's time-consuming and tiring, it leaves me happier after than before I started. Let's hope, then! Right now I'm back to being up every 2-3 hours all night (and all day), so I'm a bit frazzled. I need more sleep to do this more often! Meanwhile, I am overwhelmed. I don't know how, but more books have sold and I am now at 56 ("60!" ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) dracosphynx promises smugly), and ten customer reviews, all of which made me sniffle. I... well. Like I said, I'm overwhelmed...! I'm putting together the flier at the same time I'm doing the bookplates, and had some discussion with the voices in my head: haikujaguar: Some of these reviews are so much! It's typical to put quotes from reviews on marketing hand-outs, but... it feels like I'm being excessively proud of myself.
The Calligrapher: Excessive pride would be pretending not to value the opinions of these others, or believing that you alone will sell this work, when in fact it is the kind words of others that will truly make the difference. Bow to that truth, and ask permission. I hope that made sense, since I haven't been sleeping much. But... um, I would be greatly honored if those of you who have written reviews, on and off Amazon, would be willing to let me put them on the flier, and whether I can attribute a name to your words. I understand if you'd rather not! But like I said... I would be honored. Well, I already am. But... you understand, probably. I wish I could go back to sleep. -_- Stardancer Home.Tags: books, marketing
Current Mood: zzzzzzzzz
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Dlane at DuskToday I printed out the manuscript for Shell to edit, something I'm hoping won't take very long (how many times have I edited this book by now?). While I'm not planning on releasing this one until autumn, at the rate I'm working I realize I have to start on it now. Some thoughts, then: • I worked out the price; looks like I can do a color cover, B&W interior on cream paper for about $7-8, the same you'd pay for a normal paperback. I am pleased!
• The cover is going to have to be "Dlane at Dusk" (above)... that's the iconic picture of Dlane, whether or not the book is told by someone else. I think, to make it work, I might do an Art Nouveau style frame for the title/author/back cover blurb.
• I'm not sure whether to use some of the old B&W imagery I've already done as interior illustrations or do new pencil pieces... I know I want to add some calligraphy and maps and other inserts, I'm just not sure about the drawings. If I do new ones, I have to start now, given how slow I'm working.
• I'm not sure yet whether I want to serialize this online or just have the first three chapters or so available. If I serialize every novel I've written (even discounting the ones I think are no longer viable), we'll be here years before we get to anything new.
• I do, however, want to drum up donations for this one so I have an "advance" to cover the time I'm going to spend working on putting together the interior. Not sure how I'm going to do that if I don't serialize it. Anyway, just the things I'm mulling over now while I still have plenty of time to decide. But I keep realizing that the trade-off for giving away all the control for these things to other people is... that I'm giving it away. Being able to choose whether to include illustrations and which, whether I want alien calligraphy in the book or not, whether to include maps, glossaries... to be able to give you the whole story, not just the writing part... really, I'm happier doing it this way and I think the product is better for it too. Hopefully those of you who bought the hard copy of The Aphorisms agree. :) Stardancer Home.Tags: books, jokka, marketing, the worth of a shell, writing
Current Mood: very tired
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Several people have asked me what I think of the Amazon POD thing. For those of you who missed the brouhaha, or who had it explained to them by Very. Excitable. People! here's my understanding of the matter, in a nutshell: Amazon owns a print-on-demand company. From that company alone, they are willing to issue orders without having any inventory. Every other print-on-demand company has to set up an Amazon Advantage account with them, becoming a bookseller, and supply them with inventory. So for the people who wonder what I feel about this, my first answer is: Who's surprised? Amazon wants to push the overhead for order tracking, shipping and sales for print-on-demand companies they can't control back onto them. That's a reasonable business decision. My second answer: I don't appreciate all the flailing and screaming being done about this. Amazon isn't refusing to work with other POD companies. They're just insisting they go through a lot of fuss and bother to do so. Is that good for those other POD companies? Of course not. But it's not censorship, and it's not going to form a monopoly overnight, unless those POD companies refuse to work with Amazon as a result. Which in itself is not a smart business decision, these days. Say what you will about Amazon: they give a lot of value. There's a reason so many people order from them. They're good. My third answer? If I went to a random person on the street and asked, they would neither know nor care if Amazon was "boycotting" other POD companies. They would care if they could get my book from Amazon with free shipping and search inside, though. Particularly if the alternative was some company's website store they'd never heard of and would have to make Yet Another Login to buy from. Now, having said all that, I am... let's say... mindful that the choices from here on out get odd or sticky. I've been watching Amazon slowly position itself to become an end-to-end supplier of content, buying Mobipocket, Booksurge, Createspace and issuing the Kindle. I'm not opposed to that, but it is a peculiarity: a publishing company, of sorts, without any editorial restraints. What will that mean to the changing publishing landscape? I've also noted that Amazon's POD house isn't signed up with any of the retail distributors, like Ingram or Baker & Taylor. This might just be a corporate bottom line thing (they don't want to deal with the overhead of responding to those requests), a book-cultural thing (the distributors don't want to deal with the same inventory management issues Amazon is trying to shake off), even a technological thing (the channels don't exist yet, or it's too hard to manage sales information in this venue, or there's no way to do so). But I don't discount the possibility that Amazon doesn't want the books it puts out by its POD house in brick and mortar stores, because it would drive sales away from Amazon.com. I don't know; I'm not in that driver's seat. But I'm curious to see what happens from here. The question for me is whether the physical presence of the books would make a huge difference to my sales figures. The authors doing the traditional route are going to think that's a ridiculous question, of course... but that's because they have 2000-10,000 books to distribute. With that many books wandering around, being in bookstores is naturally a plus, because you're going to see more customer passing your product. But I have no inventory, and my books would have to be ordered by a bookstore to be bought there, so there's no immediate gain. I pay no money; I take no risks... I also get no benefit. Things I think about. Sometimes I regret not publishing the old-fashioned way... but what publishing company with traditional distribution methods would have put out something like the Aphorisms? You know the answer to that already. Stardancer Home.Tags: books, marketing, technology, writing
Current Mood: watching
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Talking to myself mostly. I'd like to do a language post, maybe tomorrow. I'll have to keep that in mind. The Aphorisms of Kherishdar — Has already sold more copies than I planned... it won't be long before I'll be needing to buy two cups of celebratory drinking chocolate, and I haven't even had a chance to go buy the first...! o_O And there are three reviews!! (Thank you for those!) My plan was to wait for the Search Inside data to populate and for my review copies to arrive so I could send them out, and then do the big "It's available" marketing push. I'm still planning on doing that, but... wow, you all are getting the word out for me already! I'm grateful! The Admonishments of Kherishdar — I'm thinking of pushing this up to twice a week, mostly because I want to get this one out the door so I can work on the novel that I started before I embarked on the Aphorisms and the Admonishments. I don't want to linger on this project too much because... well, it's depressing. Black Blossom is about Shame and the Calligrapher meeting because they needed to, for their own health. Which means by the end of both these collections, they're not in great shape. I want to deliver them to their appointed place of "Everything works out." :) The Worth of a Shell — I want this to be my "novel of the year," which shouldn't be hard since it's already written; I just have to revise it and add some B&W illustrations/back- and front-matter. With that and the two Ai-Naidari collections, I think I'll call it a year in terms of making books available for you all to buy. I have to be careful not to just publish everything at once because that would be counter-productive. For everyone! The Website — Going pretty well, given that I'm starting the design from scratch. Art — My only hope for art this year is to finish four paintings. That's it. They're already chosen. If I get through those four, then I'll keep going. Um, this is four paintings in addition to the Admonishments illustrations. I guess I should count those. :P So: The Admonishments in the first half of 2008. Shell in the second half. Two paintings in the first half of the year and two in the last. With Black Blossom planned for the first half of 2009. That should be do-able for a new mom without being too much of a stretch. Stardancer Home.Tags: books, marketing, news
Current Mood: sleepy but coffeenated
Current Music: Baby Beethoven
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I had high-minded plans to paint tonight, but instead I got sucked into re-reading a really good book that I was planning to give a friend. Which is out of print, though it came out in the late 90's. Which I had to buy used, which put no money in the author's pocket, because I couldn't find a copy any other way. In absence of a legitimate paper copy, I tried to find an electronic version and couldn't. I went to the publisher's website, which lists no information on how to contact them to tell them there's at least one reader who wants to give them money for an e-book version. Or any version. Because no publisher would really care about whether readers want to buy copies of their backlists. For maximum frustration and prevention-of-sales, the publisher's website doesn't even tell me how I can contact the author, so I can at least give him money for a copy if he's got some extras in his garage. Compounding this problem, the author has neither website nor any web presence at all that I can find. Because a man who won the Robert Heinlein medal, two Prometheus awards, a Seiun award, a Sturgeon award and received five Hugo award nominations FOR HARD SCIENCE FICTION apparently doesn't do that internet technology thing. When I was researching literary contracts in hopeful preparation for the time I'd need the knowledge (and I did need it, if only to turn down three horrendous offers), one of the things drummed into my head was how important the reversion clause was—the clause that allowed an author to get back their property if the publisher wasn't selling it—and I believed it. But how, exactly, is this book making the author any money now? That used copy? I bought it for one cent.Try and tell me this industry isn't messed up. Please. Stardancer Home.Tags: marketing, new publishing paradigms, technology, writing
Current Mood: seriously irritated
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