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Monthly Archives: November 2010

Black Friday and Cyber Thanksgiving Deals and How to Buy Presents for Men

The explanation I had always heard for the term “Black Friday” that this was the time of the year that retailers were finally “in the black” (making a profit) rather than “in the red” (still paying off their investments and overhead).

Let’s just think about that for a moment. From January to November, that’s eleven months spent in the red. Even if your fiscal year starts in March or June (as some do), that’s still quite a few months in the red.

I don’t know if this is accurate or not. But it does make me feel a little better about still being “in the red” myself vis-a-vis my book. My fiscal year, so to speak, only started at the end of October. If you’d like a good Thanksgiving read, or something to enjoy while waiting in line with your kindle on Black Friday, you can click on my anthology Conmergence: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction or one of the other great books on the side of my page. I’m still trying to reach my own personal Black Friday moment. 🙂

Now let’s talk about something completely different, how to buy presents for men.

Every year I put a lot of thought into buying a present for my husband and every year it is a complete and utter bust. This year will be no different. The problem is that the only thing he wants are geeky tech toys, and he only wants them if they are on sale for crazy low prices, and he is the only one able to (a) know what version/brand/ram/whatever is the EXACT AND ONLY one that he wants, and (b) what price is low enough to be a GOOD price. If I buy him the wrong thing and/or at the wrong price, it just makes him miserable, and this is not the purpose of a present.

He doesn’t make it easy for me either. For instance, this year, he wanted something I could have managed to order: a Nook. Yes, the one electronic gadget I know something about, an e-reader. So what does he do? He bought for himself and it arrived yesterday.

Then he mentioned, casually, that he wanted Apple TV. And yes, you guessed it, told me he had ordered it already. Um, thanks.

Now, I’ve tried other types of things. Tools. Clothes. A candy-pooping moose. Once I bought him tickets to Wicked. When he objected that we couldn’t afford that, especially for THOSE seats, I proudly showed him the receipt showing the wonderful deal I’d found. He was happy that I’d started to think frugally. It seemed like this gift would be a winner.

We forgot to go.

Knowing we had an opportunity, and spent the money, and blew it, upsets me to this day, more so than if I hadn’t ever bought the tickets. (The human mind is strange that way.) So I will never do that again.

This is getting frustrating to me. If I buy him tools, he doesn’t use them, if I buy him clothes, he doesn’t wear them, if books, he doesn’t read them. He didn’t even eat the candy from the pooping moose.

So this year, I bought him… sheets. That’s sad, I know. “Hey, honey, I love you! Here’s sheets!”

Sad.

I found a good deal on Amazon (75% off). I know I can post it here, because my husband does not read my blog. (I am trusting the discretion of those of you in my family who do read the blog not to mention it to him.

My reasoning is this: (a) we need new sheets, and (b) I know he will use the sheets because I am the one who makes the bed.

Does anyone else have this problem? What gifts do you get for the person, not who has everything, but is nonetheless very, very hard to buy presents for?

Pathfinder – Booktrailer of the Day

Orson Scott Card. What can I say? The name is pretty much the sell here, isn’t it? So the trailer is smooth and professional, and though it has motion, mostly stays out of the way of just letting you know the author of Ender’s Game has a new book out.

How Your Book Is Like a Banana

I’ve been reading Dean Wesley Smith’s blog about publishing, and the Velocity of Sales vs The Long Tail. Traditionally, your book was sold as though it were a banana:

Now, understand, in a grocery store, produce is put out to be sold quickly and then is replaced before it spoils.

Over the last twenty plus years publishers and bookstores put out books and then yanked them quickly as if a book would spoil in a week or two. They treated books exactly the same as produce. And guess what, just as with produce in a grocery story, if a book didn’t sell, it was tossed away, destroyed.

This practice has become so bad that often a book will be deemed out of print within a month of the release date because it didn’t have the orders the sales force was expecting. Or it didn’t have the number of projected sales in the first week or so. Of course, it won’t officially go out of print until all the warehouse stock is gone, but it will have a do-not-reprint order on the book from almost week one.

But the one thing modern publishers and big bookstore have forgotten:

Books don’t spoil.

Treating books like bananas has resulted in a lot of lost book sales, canceled series and even ruined authorial careers. (It also explains why I couldn’t find all of the books of his wife’s Fey series.)

He concludes:

So what’s happening outside of traditional publishing?

Basically, a huge wave is happening. Many, many authors are figuring this new model out. Many, many small publishers are figuring this out, publishers who can turn their ships quickly. Many small publishers are springing into life to fill this void with a new business model and help writers.

…And as an old time writer, I haven’t been this excited in thirty years about writing new stuff. It’s a great time to be a writer. Finally our work will no longer be treated as produce and any reader who wants to find a story will be able to find it. Even twenty or thirty years from now.

On a related note, Ian Fleming’s James Bond E-Books will bypass the print publisher. It’s been predicted for a while now that Big Name Authors would figure out they could do better going straight to the source.

“Penguin accepted long ago that they didn’t have the digital rights. Of course they wanted to do it, but why would we? With a brand like ours, people are looking for the books anyway, so the publicity and marketing will happen. It also gives us greater clarity of sales, which books are selling and where. We are very lucky to have such a big brand.”

Indeed.

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1790

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/nov/08/fleming-estate-james-bond

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