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Ebook Formatter Uses My Book as Example

You’ve heard it before… the difference between an indie book which reads like a trad pubbed book and an indie book which reads like a vanity press heap of toad dung is all in how much effort you invest in doing the details.

The biggest priority is to have a good editor. I’ve found that having a team of Beta Readers as a follow-up is even better.

The next most important thing is to have a gorgeous cover which clearly communicates your book’s genre and subgenre.

Finally, there is the issue of internal formatting. I admit, I gave no thought to this for the first couple of years. I couldn’t afford to hire help, and I wasn’t able to do it myself.

However, as eReaders have proliferated, screen quality has increased, and the tablet market has exploded, internally attractive books–with features like hyperlinked Tables of Contents–have become more important.

My formatting is now done by “Tech Guy.” (He charges $50 an hour, if you’re in need of a formatter.) He now has a blog, Unclogged, for those among you who are suitably nerdy. 🙂 This dude has every eReader ever built, I swear, even those weird cheap brands that are so cheap, you’ve not only never heard of the brand, you’ve never even heard of the country where the brand is made. He recently posted about how to take screenshots of eReaders, and he used The Unfinished Song: Initiate, as his example. Check it out.

What is Amazon Author Rank?

You may have noticed that Amazon is Beta Testing a new form of ranking, which ranks the author, rather than the individual book. The logic, I presume, is that individual books may be relatively unimpressive in ranking, but if the author has many of them, the author is still selling well overall. At least, I think that the reasoning.

Here’s what Amazon has to say about it:

What is Amazon Author Rank?

Amazon Author Rank is based on sales of all your books relative to the sales of other authors. Amazon Author Rank shows how an author’s books sell relative to other authors. Like the Billboard charts, lower numbers are better. An author with the Amazon Author Rank of #1 in Mystery & Thrillers is the bestselling author in Mystery & Thrillers on Amazon. Amazon author rank is updated hourly.

What’s Included in Amazon Author Rank?

It’s the same approach we use with the book bestseller list we’ve had for many years – we look at paid sales of all of an author’s books on Amazon.com. It includes books in Kindle, physical and audio formats.

Where will Amazon Author Rank be seen on Amazon.com?

An Amazon Author Rank will only appear for authors in the top 100 overall or in the top 100 in a browse category. Amazon Author Rank will appear on book detail pages in the More About the Author widget, on an author’s Author Page and, on the Amazon Author Rank page.

Reading an Amazon Author Rank in Author Central

In Author Central, you’ll see your Amazon Author Rank over time. The chart will show multiple blue points and an orange point. The blue points show your best author rank of the day, recorded around midnight, Pacific time. They show only that one point in time, and don’t represent an average of your Amazon Author Rank throughout the day, but your best rank during the day. The orange point is a snapshot of your Amazon Author Rank right now. It’s taken at the beginning of the current hour, and is updated throughout the day.

My current rank in Science Fiction and Fantasy is about #2000-#2500. Alas, not good enough to show up on any page….

Self-published Ebooks 20% of UK Genre Sales

How terrible that we have a larger choice of reading material than ever before in human history!

The UK market is a year or two behind the US market in the shift to digital reading, though they are the second highest in the world, and UK ebook sales spiked 134% in 2012 to total £216 million. The impact of indie authors can be seen there too. Now, according to Bowker Market Research, an astonishing 20% of all genre sales go to indies:

Self-published books accounted for more than 20% of crime, science fiction, romance and humour ebooks sold in the UK in 2012, according to newly released statistics. The figures, from Bowker Market Research, show that while self-published books made up a tiny proportion – 2% – of all books purchased last year, this figure increases dramatically, to 12%, when print books are removed from the equation. When just adult fiction and non-fiction ebooks are looked at, self-publishing’s share increases to 14% of the market, and in the crime, science fiction, romance and humour genres, self-publishing took more than 20%, according to Steve Bohme, UK research director at Bowker, which tracks book-purchasing trends by interviewing over 3,000 book-buyers a month. Only 3% of children’s ebooks, by contrast, were self-published.

Of course, the obligatory Ritual Insulter of Indie Books, speaking for traditional publishers, in this case, Andrew Franklin, rushed to assure everyone that this in no way changes the fact that self-published books are “unutterable rubbish” that “don’t enhance anything in the world.”

But Franklin, we knew that already. ANYTHING women like to read is considered rubbish:

Bohme said that price was the reason most cited by readers for the purchase of self-published ebooks. By contrast, price was only the third most important reason for choosing to buy other ebooks, and books as a whole, behind “author” and “subject”. And Bohme revealed that women are more likely to buy self-published ebooks than men, with 68% of buyers of DIY ebooks female – more than the 58% of female readers buying books as a whole. Those who bought self-published ebooks were also more likely to be heavy readers, with the statistics from Bowker showing that 61% of buyers of self-published ebooks said they read daily, compared to 37% of buyers of books as a whole.

Franklin also added, as a warning to any would-be indie author, that, “the principle experience of self-publishing is one of disappointment.”

Aw. That’s touching. I’m sure those 2% indie authors snagging 20% of genre sales are weeping all the way to the bank.

Special Spice: Alliteration

A guest post by Rayne Hall

Several words close together starting with the same sound can either empower your writing or spoil it, so use this technique with thought.

Here are some examples of skilfully applied alliterations from famous books:

…the foam-flakes flew over her bulwarks…. (Moby-Dick by Herman Melville)

… the baked red ruts of the road…. (The Beaver Road by Dave Duncan)

A sliver of soft sunlight pierced a crack in the silk drapes (Panic by Jeff Abbot)

… tokens of the mitred, martyred St Thomas (Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin)

….the all-over tan, the tailored teeth… (How to Kill Your Husband and other Handy Household Hints by Kathy Lette)

Fires were a common occurrence, leaving more and more buildings blackened and boarded, and discarded drug paraphernalia clogged garbage-filled gutters. (Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich)

Alliteration is an effective technique for creating impact. If you want to emphasise a sentence, perhaps for an emotional revelation or a shocking twist, or make the reader remember a certain phrase, try alliteration to make the section poignant and punchy.

The English language is perhaps the best language in the world for alliterations. The earliest literature in the English language used a lot of alliterations (e.g. Beowulf).

Alliterations are highly effective for audiobooks, performances and reading aloud. It also works superbly in humour, in poetry, for public speeches, for slogans, headlines and titles.

Next time you’re stuck for a title for a story, play with alliterations. Examples: Pride and Prejudice, Famous Five, Sense and Sensibility, The Pickwick Papers, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The War of the Worlds, Nicholas Nickleby, The Wind in the Willows, Of Mice and Men.

In poetry, you can use a different alliteration for every line. Alternatively, you can use a different alliteration for every couplet (two lines) or stanza (paragraph), or you can use the same alliteration for the whole poem. Another option is to sprinkle pairs of alliterate words throughout the poem. A famous poem using frequent but subtle alliterations is The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe: http://www.heise.de/ix/raven/Literature/Lore/TheRaven.html

In prose, it’s best to use alliteration sparingly, no more than four words in a sentence, and not in every sentence. It often works well in setting descriptions, but not in dialogue.

Caution: strings of alliterations can be silly. This may be the effect you want if you write humour, but for most kinds of prose it’s better to use alliterations sparingly.

Some sounds have psychological effects on the reader/listener. ‘W’ is good for powerful nature and wild weather. ‘B’ is good for blunt bold aggression. ‘D’ is good for sadness and defeat. ‘J’/’Ch’ is good for jolly cheerful moods. ‘Sn’ can serve to hint at sneaky, untrustworthy people. ‘Tr’ suggests traps and troubles. ‘R’ creates urgency and speed and is perfect for fast-paced scenes. ‘S’ can create spooky effects, useful in ghost stories. ‘P’ hints at authority, force, masculinity or pompousness. ‘L’ suggests sensuality, laziness or leisure. Consider choosing alliterative sounds for their psychological effects.

How much alliteration you use is one of the aspects of your voice. You may like to use a lot, very little or none at all. Treat alliteration as a special spice: a pinch adds flavour, but too much spoils the meal.

About Rayne Hall

Rayne Hall has published more than forty books under different pen names with different publishers in different genres, mostly fantasy, horror and non-fiction. Recent books include Storm Dancer (dark epic fantasy novel), 13 British Horror Stories, Six Scary Tales Vol 1, 2, 3, 4 (creepy horror stories), Six Historical Tales (short stories), Six Quirky Tales (humorous fantasy stories), Writing Fight Scenes, The World-Loss Diet, Writing About Villains, Writing About Magic and Writing Scary Scenes (instructions for authors).

She holds a college degree in publishing management and a masters degree in creative writing. Currently, she edits the Ten Tales series of multi-author short story anthologies: Bites: Ten Tales of Vampires, Haunted: Ten Tales of Ghosts, Scared: Ten Tales of Horror, Cutlass: Ten Tales of Pirates, Beltane: Ten Tales of Witchcraft, Spells: Ten Tales of Magic, Undead: Ten Tales of Zombies and more.

Rayne has lived in Germany, China, Mongolia and Nepal and has now settled in a small dilapidated town of former Victorian grandeur on the south coast of England.

The Day My Son Discovered Death

I have three sons, who are six (almost seven), four (almost five) and three. Their usual conversations involve stories about dinosaurs and potty jokes. Yesterday, however, they startled me.

The boys were fighting–hardly unusual–but when I went to break it up,  my middle son turned to me and said, “Mommy, I wish you’d never had [Youngest Son]. You did a bad thing, Mommy! Because now [Oldest Son] loves him and hates me!”

I cuddled him and the other two boys crept near to hear what I would say. I was a little angry, I admit, because I knew exactly what had precipitated this outburst.

I said to my oldest son, “Do you see how upset your brother is? This is because of the comments you’ve been making lately, saying one of your brothers is great and the other is a bad guy. That’s not nice to either of your brothers. It turns them against each other, and that’s not fair to them. Imagine how you would feel if someone else said those things about you.”

I repeated some of his comments verbatim, but with his name, concluding, “How would you feel about that?”

He started crying.

Then I turned to my middle child and said, “Your younger brother loves. And you love him. Why would you let someone else destroy that? All of you are brothers. You all love each other. You’re all on the same team.”

Youngest brother was oblivious to the drama and enthusiastically threw himself on middle brother to give him a hug. Or maybe it was a tackle. Anyway, there were hugs all around, and the crises passed.

It was not forgotten, however.

That night, after the younger ones had fallen asleep, my oldest one started sobbing in his bed. I heard and went to check on him. He said his thoughts had made him sad.

“What thoughts?” I asked.

“I can’t remember the games I used to play before [Youngest Son] was born,” he said. “What if in the future I forget all the games I know now too? What about in the future when I stop living here and I don’t have a Mommy and Daddy anymore? And what about when everything goes away?”

Ah, I thought sadly. He’s discovered death.

Of course, the children already knew that if you are hit by a car, you will “die.” But they also know that zombies and sword-wielding pirate skeletons are “dead,” so it’s all kind of relative to them. My oldest, though, he figured out this year that there’s no Santa Clause or Easter Bunny, “It’s just parents.” He figured out, “Magic is isn’t real.”

And that includes not coming back as a zombie after death. Not coming back at all. Going away.

And he’s discovered, too, that death, the great going-away, is not just a one-time thing that happens to the body, but the slow robbery committed by time of everything familiar, even your self.

He hugged me and said, “I don’t want to stop being six years old. I don’t want to stop being me. I don’t want you to die. I don’t want you to leave me.”

Many times, a parent can comfort a child by saying, “What you fear is not real. You don’t have to worry. I will protect you.”

But sometimes, all a parent can say is, “I know. I’m sorry. I’ll always love you.”

“Even after you die?” he asked.

“Yes,” I promised, “Even then.”

Price Fixing Books Destroys Literature

Quebec is considering fixing book prices, joining nations like France, Sweden, Mexico, Argentina, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Switzerland, Israel, and Belgium.

The hearings on fixed prices for new releases are a direct result of lobbying efforts by the One Price for Books campaign, launched on August 22 of last year. Organized by a roundtable of major book industry players and backed by several high-profile writers and artists…. For the past 15 years, the industry has been requesting that lawmakers fix book prices.

The excuses given are the usual claptrap:

(1) “to prevent operators of big-box stores from cannibalizing small bookstore sales with deep discounts”
(2) “to stop the spate of bookstore closings”
(3) because the “book industry is fragile”
(4) “to protect its bibliodiversity”

These are thin disguises for the real motivation of the campaign, which is to stop competition from new formats (digital) and new authors (indies and small presses). When corporations scheme together to fix prices, the result is collusion and monopoly. When corporations (usually the very same ones) scheme with pocket politicians to fix prices, the result is… collusion and monopoly.

Make no mistake. The goal of price fixing is not to protect bibliodiversity. It is to crush bibliodiversity. The Big Publishers behind the campaigns for price fixing know this very well, of course. What’s frustrating is some authors are taken in by the prettified rhetoric.

To see why, examine this graph, which I’ve borrowed off the blog from Kevin McLaughlin (where it appeared in a different context):

Indie authors, it is well known, flourish by offering their books at low prices. Some indies mistakenly think that this is exploitation of indie authors. Wrong. Indie authors are unknown to readers. Low (or free) prices can tempt a reader to take a chance on unknown authors, or on books that might have more grammar errors or less than professional covers. For a new author, Big Publishers can buy coop and advertising and send out hundreds of galleys well ahead of publication, they can pay for speaking tours and fancy gimmicks, all of which makes the readers feel familiar and comfortable with buying the book. Indies can’t do any of these things, generally. They have one card to play, and that’s price.

The indies use price to even the playing field and lure readers into taking a chance. After the readers have been wooed, then everything changes. My latest release, STRAT, hit the Top Twenty in two genre charts after I released it, despite having no reviews on any bookselling site yet, because by now I’ve built up a modest readership who were interested in buying it. But I gained most of those readers by offering the first book of my Unfinished Song series for free. And even now, I’ve kept the price of STRAT low, to encourage readers who don’t know me to try it out.

Laws such as those proposed in Quebec are slyly but precisely aimed to knock players like me out of the arena. Take a look at the proposed law: all books would HAVE to have the same price in the first nine months after release. How many of those books in the green columns on the above chart would be there if the Big Publishers and their purchased politicians had their way? They are betting–not as many. That’s exactly what they are lobbying for.

It’s estimated that by 2016, 50% of the US book market will be digital. Europe and Asia are far behind. Why? In part because of collusion between Big Publisher and governments, of the kind being attempted in Quebec. In some European countries the taxes on ebooks are astronomical compared to the taxes on print books, leading to the absurd situation that it’s more expensive to purchase 0’s and 1’s than dead trees. As always, protectionism and monopoly leads to the strangulation of innovation, competition and new technology.

The people who gain are the big corporations, the 1% of authors who are already established, and the rich who can afford any price for books. The people who suffer are the little guys, the young, new and unknown authors, and the poor, who can’t afford to move into digital ereaders, which would vastly open up their reading vistas.

Finally, the other kind of diversity squashed by price fixing is the diversity of art itself. Niche markets cannot operate on economies of scale like big, popular genres. The rise of ebooks has not only allowed more authors than ever to make a living from their creative work, but it has expanded and deepened the diversity of topics, genres, and sub-genres that authors are free to explore.

When innovation is crushed by corporate and political collusion, literature as a whole suffers.

“Dad, I don’t care about money”

When I was about twelve, I remember having a conversation with my Dad about What I Was Going To Do With My Life.

I said, “I’m going to be a writer.”

After he stopped laughing, he said, “Okay, now be serious. What are you going to do with your life?”

He explained that only the most skilled of writers could actually make a living at it, and since I couldn’t even spell (still true), obviously, that did not include me. So, if I wanted to make any money, I needed to be “realistic” and pick a more lucrative career. I then retorted, alone with every aspiring artist everywhere and everywhen,

“Dad, I don’t care about money. I just want to be happy!”

😀

A lot has changed since then. Dad has come around to my point of view. He decided that after a life-time of towing the line, he only wanted to be happy, so he changed gender and is now a woman, and also finally published his secret fantasy novel.

Oh, the irony.

But meanwhile, now a parent myself, I’ve come around to my Dad’s point of view, that, really, all things being equal, making money turns out to be fairly crucial to that whole Feeding The Hungry Brood part of life. I don’t like telling kids that I have to cancel swimming lessons because I didn’t sell enough books this month. Not that I’m willing to give up on being a novelist. I just wish I’d had more advice about how to balance art and business along the way.

It’s been my experience that those who are pro-business scorn art, and those who are pro-art, scorn business. There are even few other authors, already successful, who are willing to explain in a calm and sensible manner that yes, you can make a living as a writer.

In fact, a lot artists, writers, poets, painters and such not only oppose making any money personally, the oppose the idea of anyone at all making money, they oppose the whole capitalist system.

I came across an interesting article by Robert Nozick seeking to explain why intellectuals oppose capitalism. In a nutshell, verbally smart kids do well in school, and expect to do well after they graduate…but often don’t. Even if they land a lucrative career in academia, they don’t become billionaires like entrepreneurs  with good coding skills. Then they get resentful.

That’s an interesting theory. I think it’s missing a few bits, however.

For instance, I didn’t exactly do well in school. In elementary school, I’d miss 18 out of 20 spelling words on the test and get an Unhappy Face on my report card. (My elementary school didn’t use Letter Grades because that might make us feel bad….uh, how do you think a seven year old thinks about a giant Unhappy Face and being made to stay in recess?) I took Algebra three times and never did get higher than a D. In college, I nearly flunked a course when I blew off finals to write a novel. I was possessed by my muse…what was I supposed to do? Wait to write it, and miss my moment of inspiration, which I well knew would never come again?! Pah!

I think that we humans have two standards to dealing with others. One is for dealing with family and close friends. A friend in need is a friend indeed. A fair weather friend is no friend at all. True love is in sickness and in health, for better or worse. You commit whole-heartedly to those you love. You love them whether they are poor or rich, sick or healthy, reviled or respected…. if you don’t, it’s not real love.

The second way is for dealing with total strangers. That’s where money comes in. If you are a decent person, you deal fairly with strangers, giving them value for their money, being honest in your transactions, and relying on mutual self-interest to ensure the other party will do the same. If someone cheats you, you never deal with that person again, and warn others against him as well.

Both systems of morality are important, but they are completely different. Imagine if you had the attitude that if your child lied to you, you wouldn’t ever do business with them again.

Parent: Did you wash your hands already already?
Child: (hides dirty, sticky hands behind back quickly) Yes!

Uh, that wouldn’t last long.

Anyone who has had a newborn in the house knows that if you didn’t love your children irrationally, you would behave like a lizard parent, just to get a full night’s sleep, and eat them in the first week.

My theory is that our artistic creations, art and novels and such, are the children of our mind. We must love them even if no one else can. Because if we didn’t love our art just as irrationally as we love our children, we wouldn’t keep at it for the 10,000 hours we need to produce works that outsiders are finally capable of recognizing as worthwhile.

The first picture you drew, the first story you wrote, the first work of art you tried to produce, no matter what the medium, was, I guarantee you, crap. Except, of course, to your parents, who stuck in on the refrigerator with an Alphabet magnet. If you were lucky, no one tried to inform you of the market value of those pieces until you were at least into puberty.

Because of that, we disdain and scorn making art for money. It seems…uncouth. Not real art. It would be like parents who said, “We’re going to have a kid to raise some cash.” Wtf…? They should be arrested! An artist or writer who says, “I’m only going to work on that project if it makes a lot of money” is the epitome of slime. (Never mind that there are plenty of them.) And the strange thing is, those who love their art actually achieve greatness more often than those who are trying to turn it into a cash-cow right from the start. So our scorn feels justified.

But once we have put in our 10,000 hours , and the work we produce no longer looks like scribbles, I’d say it’s time to put aside that scorn.

Not while we are in the throes of creation itself. That’s a process like childbirth, and really, the only thing to focus on at that point is to push that product our. (Ok, that’s a very maternal metaphor, so for you dads; hold onto your muse’s hand while she’s in labor, even if she almost breaks your arm.) (I’m not sure that metaphor was better… moving on….)

But at some point, we can put on our business hats without betraying our art. And we can be appreciative that we live in a free market society where we can sell our art on an open market, as opposed to ninety-five percent of history, where we would have had to sleep with our patron and/or praise tyrants you loathe to publish anything.

Art and business do not have to be enemies. They can be allies.

Anyway, that’s what you can tell Dad next time he asks you What Are You Are Going To Do With Your Life.

Barnes and Noble Firesale on Nooks

Rumor has it that Barnes and Noble is planning to give up direct production of the Nook. Microsoft might take it over, or a breakaway child-company.

The firesale on Nooks seems to lend credence to this rumor. The upside though is that you can get Nooks at incredible prices right now

Wouldn’t that make a great Father’s Day Present for dad or hubby? Hehehe. My husband got his three days ago, a little early! (He is the nook fanatic, and I’m the kindle girl.) I also bought him Daddy’s Little Princess… sequel to the equally poignant yet side-splittingly hilarious Vader and Son.

Of Mechs And Men

–>

Sulphurygenby *Shue13

Questions:
1. Will artificial intelligence ever expand, change, or overtake human intelligence?
2. How might we travel Faster Than Light?
3. What would be the biggest challenges to establish colonies on other worlds?
4. Has life evolved more than once? Do aliens exist? If so, how might they interact with humanity?
5. How will genetic engineering change what it means to be human?
6. What social, political, and military changes will emerge in response to new technology and new discoveries?

I’m going to talk about the decisions I made while building the STRAT universe, and explain them.

1. Artificial Intelligence

–>
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Chained tactics meant you stacked a decision tree with a long list of tactics, and the mechs followed that order of operations. You could program complex stratagems that way, creating traps and bluffs and long-term deployments. The downside was that if any of your planning assumptions were wrong, your whole decision tree would be hacked down at the root, and the long chain of tactics would be worthless, leaving the mechs helpless to readjust without direct oversight.

Freestyle tactics meant that you gave your mechs a multitude of short decision trees, and let them shuffle through the tactics randomly as they traversed the combat terrain, learning on their own which worked best. The drawback was that freestyle mechs took a while to learn what worked, so they could be sucker-punched by the other side. Worse yet, sometimes they learned wrong.

Mechs operating freestyle could screw you up royally, if they fell into a bad rut, which sometimes happened for no obvious reason. Sometimes they even turned on each other, or worse, on you. When you had your own mechs bite you in the arse like that once or twice, you tended to shy away from freestyle. But despite a few spectacular screw-ups, freestyle mechs usually beat chained mechs in most dust-ups. The longer and more chaotic the engagement, the more likely freestyle mechs were to triumph over mechs chained to a pre-ordained decision tree.

2. Faster Than Light Space Travel

ArthurBlue

3. Colonies in space

4. Aliens

5. Genetic Changes to Humanity

tman2009

 

6. Social Changes to Humanity

In the Future, We Will Look Like Zebra-Lemurs (5 Things To Remember About SF)

Nickelay Lamm predicts we will have huge, lemur-like eyes in the far future.  Presumably this will be driven by sexual selection from millennia of watching Anime. I added the zebra stripes. Because, really, who doesn’t love zebras?

5 Things To Remember About SF