Bone, Shadow Spinner, and Chocolate

I've mentioned before that I used to collect comic books. I've also mentioned that I've worked in comic book retail. One of the things I used to do was place all the comic orders. On one side, that's a pretty easy thing to do: You look at how many copies of, say, X-Men are selling each month, and you order that many copies. On the other side, it's incredibly complicated, because you have to be aware of what's going on in the series or if there is anything special planned so that you can anticipate any spikes in sales. You also have to know how well your back issues on the series are doing so that you can know if you need to order any extra copies to have available as back issues. There is a constant balancing of meeting the current demands of the store vs investing in the future value or hotness of an issue or series. Most comic book stores go out of business due to do over investment. It just doesn't matter if an issue goes from $3 to $30 in two months and you have 100 extra copies in the back if you don't have 100 people lined up to buy those copies. Most comic shops just can't take those kinds of risks.

Unfortunately, I've worked for people that didn't understand that.

At any rate, I was pretty good at picking good investments in comics, especially when it came to new titles, which was the hardest thing to do. That's where a lot of comic shop owners really messed up, too. A lot of them, in order not to miss some new series that makes it big, will order every single #1 issue every single month. Several of them. Just in case. Most of them, though, are just expensive toilet paper, and you spend way more covering your butt than you do off any individual series that makes it big. But, as I said, I was good at picking those, and I never picked a new #1 that wasn't worth looking at. Meaning, I never singled one out and said, "This is one you ought to get. It's going to be good," and ended up wrong.

Which is not to say I didn't have some times when I didn't take my own advice. My biggest regret is not buying this:

Bone came out at one of those points when I was pretty maxed out on my comic collecting. I'd seen some of Jeff Smith's work previously, though, from when he was doing comic strips in a college paper, and I knew he was good. So it was decision time. To add a new series into what I was collecting, I would have to drop one out, and I couldn't decide on which one to drop, so, reluctantly, I passed on Bone. However, I highly suggested that the owner of the store invest in Bone. The response was, "Why aren't you buying it, then?"

I should have bought it. That issue, 20 years later, is worth $300. The print run was so small that six months later, it was worth $50, and, a year later, $100. I should have bought it, and the store owner should have listened to me. In fact, he told me at the six month point on Bone that he highly regretted not listening to me. But those things happen. By the way, Bone is one of the best comic series I've ever read, and it was, wait for it, self-published. Yessiree, Bob, it was self-published.

That's why some store owners won't pass up #1's, because, unless it's a new X-Men or Batman or something, the print runs tend to be low, so, if it gets really popular, the #1 becomes relatively more valuable than the rest of the series.

And what does that have to do with anything? Well, for one thing, I just like to talk about comic books sometimes. And Bone was self-published. Jeff Smith went over to Image for a while, but he didn't like how that worked out and ended up going back to self-publishing.

However, what that really has to do with is that I just finished Shadow Spinner! Yep! Tiberius is now the star of his very own 50,000 word book! Hopefully, I will have figured out CreateSpace's new system and have it all formatted and stuff tomorrow so that I can order some proof copies. What's the big deal about proof copies? Well, like a comic book #1, they have a really low print run. So to speak. Well, considering that they limit you to only five proofs, it is really low.

And you still might be thinking, "What does this have to do with anything?"

Remember the Great Chocolate Contest and how I mentioned that there might be an extra special prize? Well, there will be an extra special prize. I will also be giving away one signed proof copy of Shadow Spinner as part of the prizes for the winner of the Great Chocolate Contest. Add that to the best chocolate in the entire world (that I've tasted), and you have, like, a no lose situation. I mean, if you win, you can't lose! Wait a minute... Never mind...

Both prizes might not go to the same person, or, then again, they might. It's all going to depend upon the entries and how good they are. However, Briane Pagel, because of his dislike of physical books, is automatically disqualified from winning  the proof copy, so that's good for all of you, because he's been letting it be known that no one else needs to enter since he's intending to win. (That sounds like a challenge to me!) Even if he does win, he can only win the chocolate, which will mean that someone else would get to win the book. Of course, there are all sorts of other things that could end up happening with that, too.

Remember, all short stories are due to me (email would be great) by February 6, the two year anniversary of The House on the Corner (and the 43rd anniversary of me). If you want to post them on your blog, do that, too! Let me know, and I'll link people over to it.

I'll have more info on Shadow Spinner and its current serialization coming up soon.

How much are you worth?

Writing a book is hard work. Despite what most people think, not everyone can do it. Like singing. Never believe someone that says, "Anyone can learn to sing," because it's just not true. Sure, anyone can learn to sing better than they already do, but that doesn't mean they can actually learn to sing. And, sure, anyone can learn to construct better sentences, but that doesn't mean they can learn to write.

For the writer, though, despite the amount of hard work that goes into writing a book, writing the book is the easy part. It's everything after where it gets hard. Really hard. Amongst all the hard stuff, like finding an agent, a publisher, or marketing your work yourself, there's one thing that can fall through the cracks. Sure, if you're fixated on traditional publishing, this is something that doesn't concern you, because the publisher will make these decisions, but, for those of us going it alone, pricing is something that can end up being overlooked.

I was reminded of how important this aspect of self-publishing is just the other day, but let me give some background, first.

When I first published The House on the Corner, I didn't know anything about pricing other than what I pay for books. It seemed reasonable to me at the time that people should be willing to pay for my book what anyone would pay for a book from a bookstore. Or from Amazon. I knew that wasn't really true, but it bothered me because, darn it, I'd written a book, a good book, and people should value that. Idealism often doesn't fare well when it comes up against reality.

At any rate, I ended up pricing House at $18.00 mostly because I had to. Amazon gives you a minimum price you have to charge based on the number of pages in your book, so I went $1 and change over what they said, which is my part of the profit. If you set it at the minimum, you don't make anything. This, of course, was for the physical copy of my book. You do a little bit better with the Kindle. But there was a wrinkle.

Because I'm an instruction reading kind of guy, I read all the "terms of agreement" stuff. One of the things it said was that I was not allowed to sell my book for a lower price anywhere else or they could choose to not allow you to use CreateSpace anymore. Although, this seemed reasonable to me, I also didn't want to risk having my book pulled, so I set my Kindle price at $18.00, also. See, in my mind, my book was my book.

But I was wrong.

To Amazon, your book through CreateSpace and your book on the Kindle are two completely separate things. Also, if I order copies of my book, the physical book, I'm allowed to sell them for whatever I want to, because I've already paid CreateSpace for them. In a lot of ways, it's all ridiculous, and it took me some months to work out the kinks. And, really, this is a much longer story, but my issues are not what this post is about; they're just to let you know that pricing is complicated. If you look up at my box for The House on the Corner, you'll see what the current prices are which took me months to get to.

And, before I go on, let me just say that I don't believe in $0.99 e-books. I think they are devaluing to the author. Writing a book is hard work, and a book should be valued at more than $0.99. Not that $2.99 is much better, but, hey, at $2.99 on the Kindle, I make more per book than I make for a physical copy through Amazon, so, yeah... $2.99 it is. Let me stress my distinction here: $0.99 is devaluing to the author for a book. An actual novel. It's a perfectly fine price for shorter works.

Which brings us up to the event that brought all this up. The other day, I set off to buy the next book on my list for my Unexpected Applause posts, but I didn't buy it. When I got over to Amazon to do it, I found that the author actually has the book priced at above $2.99. This wouldn't really have been an issue except that he has the physical book priced probably as low as he can price it which made me think, "If I'm going to pay that much for a virtual copy, I should just by the actual book." Not owning a Kindle (I use the app on my computer), I still much prefer actual books to e-books, because it's difficult to drag my desktop to bed if I want to some reading at night before sleeping. And I would hate to drop the monitor on my face if I fell asleep while reading like I did in college with a text book. Let me just say that that will wake you up in a hurry.

After staring indecisively for several minutes, I put the physical book in my cart, huffed,  and went on to the next book on my list (because I'm not actually placing an Amazon order, yet). I get over to the next book, and it's priced at the expected price of $2.99, but, when I look at it, it's hardly a book. When I say that it's hardly a book, I mean that the page count on the physical book is less than 100 pages. I huffed again. It's just $3, right, but I couldn't bring myself to pay that for a short story. Especially after reading the sample, seeing that it's poorly formatted, and full of punctuation errors. I don't know if the story's any good, but I couldn't bring myself to pay the $2.99 the author wanted. I would have paid $0.99 for it without a problem, but I balked at the additional $2.

Why?

Honestly, I really don't know. I've been thinking about this question for days, and I don't have a good answer. What I do know, though, is how you price your book is important. Perceived value is important. When I perceive something to be worth $1, yet I'm being asked to pay $3 for it, I won't do it. I totally understand wanting to hit the $2.99 pricing mark for the Kindle, because, frankly, you get pretty screwed by Amazon pricing at $0.99. However, if you want to price at $2.99, you better have a product that says "this is worth $2.99." And that's entirely subjective. Which is the problem.

I mean, it's so subjective that The House on the Corner sold almost as well when I had it priced at $9.99 as it does, now, at $2.99, and I made a heck of a lot more per sale that way.

I guess what I'm getting at is this: you have to decide how much you think you're worth. You also have to decide how much you're comfortable with selling. Then, you have to balance those two things out.  For me, the price of my physical book is pretty much what Amazon says it has to be. I mean, I could lower the price, but, then, it would be priced at something scewy like $14.23, so I figure $14.99 works. Because I believe that the price of the e-book should be low enough to make it worth buying instead of ordering the physical book, $2.99 works. And, like I said, I make more per unit than I do when someone goes to Amazon and buys a physical copy of the book.

As a buyer, the real issue for me is paying for something that isn't real. Isn't tangible. But, maybe, if I actually had a Kindle, I wouldn't feel that way about spending more for books on it. At any rate, all of this has made me start thinking from teh buyer's perspective again, which is what you have to do if you want to sell your book. You can't just decide "people should be willing to pay this, so this is what I'm pricing this at." You'll always price too high (a recent study actually proved this: people tend overestimate what other people will be willing to pay for something even though they themselves are not willing to pay that much). So... am I willing to pay $2.99 for an e-book? Yes, I am. So I feel comfortable pricing my e-book at that. Am I willing to pay $2.99 for something that is not book length? No, I'm not, so I will know to never price short stories or whatnot in that price range. Am I willing to pay more than $2.99 for an e-book? I don't think so. If I'm going to pay more than that, I'd rather own the physical book. Yes, I'd rather pay $10, $12, or $15 for a physical book that I can hold in my hand than pay $5 for an e-book. Maybe that's just me, but I do know that it is me, so I have to keep that in my mind, too. Maybe I'd be willing to pay $5 for an e-book if there was no physical book available. That's something I've yet to discover.

What I do know for certain, though, is that I don't want someone paying $15 for my book and feeling like they got ripped off. In the end, that's probably why $0.99 works for so many people. Even if it sucks, it was only a buck, so no big deal. I'm willing to run that risk at $3, but I'm not really willing to go beyond that. I suppose that's why Amazon has those price points set.

Yeah, I know I didn't answer any questions in this post. I don't have those answers. Hopefully, though, I've pointed out that there is a question. Don't just slap a price on yourself because that's the price that seems good or what everyone else is doing. Look at what you're offering and balance out the variables. When I go to buy your book, don't make me second guess myself because of your pricing. Hesitation is a killer.

Writing in the Slow Lane

It's 8:00am, and you're sitting in traffic. Again. To make matters worse, the car is overheating. You have the windows down and the fan blowing hot air out at you, but it's not doing any good. The temperature gauge just keeps going up and up. You turn the car off  in frustration. It doesn't matter; the traffic is at a standstill, anyway. Going nowhere. If only there weren't so many people all trying to go in the same direction as you... All these people travelling the highway of traditional publishing. The highway to being a published author. Hopefully, a rich and famous one.

You sigh and look wistfully over at the commute lane. You know, the lane that requires at least an agent as a passenger. Or a publisher. Or, even better, both. The cars in the commute lane just keep whizzing past. There goes Samantha Sotto in her Before Ever After VW van, and there goes Michelle Davidson Argyle in her little yellow Monarch beetle. And Michael Offutt is just pulling over into the commute lane with his new publisher. Those writers are getting somewhere, but you... you're stuck here in traffic with all of the other "aspirers." Just sitting in place waiting for some kind of movement.

You take the time to look around. Maybe you can sneak into the commute lane and make some headway, but, no, there's a publication cop just up ahead. You smack on the horn a few times, but it doesn't make you feel better, not really, and no one pays attention. You spy an exit up ahead, but, crap, it's one of those toll roads for a vanity publisher. Off in the distance, you see the self-publishing highway. There are some cars over there; they're moving slowly ahead, but, at least, they're moving. That has to be better than just inching along where you are. Right? Right?

You look for an exit before you realize there are no exits to the highway of self-publishing. That's a road you have to find for yourself. Yeah, there are some paths from some of the more adventurous, even some signs, and, way in the distance, you can see that there are some construction crews (like CreateSpace) working on some entrances to that other highway. But there are no exits from the one you're on. And the publication cops... well, they're waving people back and telling them it's unsafe to go that way. Uncharted. Dangerous.

What do you do? Stay the course? Inch forward? Hope to pick up a hitchhiking agent? There aren't many out there, and they seem to be really picky about what kind of cars they'll get into. And here's your car, overheating. Oh, it looks okay from the outside, but, really, when an agent takes a look in the window, will she really want to get in? You have already been turned down by several. And there's that road off in the distance. The other one. The one the publishers wish you couldn't see. What do you do?

heh heh I feel a "choose your own adventure" calling my name.
A. I stay on  the traditional publishing highway and hope for the best.
B. I dodge the publication police and head off road hoping I can find my way onto the self-publishing highway.
C. Well, I don't really have a C, but you should have one, so: I fork over tons of money to get on the vanity publisher toll road and never make any of it back.

Seriously, though, doesn't it feel like this sometimes? Like you're just sitting and nothing is happening. You're trying to move forward, but you're just not getting anywhere. Of course, the first obstacle is getting a manuscript written. You're not even on the highway until you've done that, you're just driving down the service road in envy. It's all hard, though, and the service road isn't a bad place to be. There aren't any fingers being pointed.

Anyway... I chose this particular example, because most people are still looking to traditional publishing. At least, the vast majority of the blogs I see are all talking about how to go the traditional publishing route. That's not me, of course, but it's still most people.

And I can still see onto the traditional publishing highway. I can see how zippy the people in the commute lane are, and, sometimes, it just feels SO slow over here. Almost like I'm having to get out and push my car along. And all I want is for things to just go a little faster. You know, doing that butt thing that kids do when they're trying to get their toy vehicles to move faster, but all they're really doing is causing them to rock back-and-forth.

All of this so I can say how different the experience is with this edition of The House on the Corner as opposed to the first edition (the one with no cover art). The first time through, I sold no copies by hand. It was all online and not many at that, but I didn't push it very hard, because I knew I was working on one with cover art (yea! Rusty Webb). This time, though, I'm having requests for copies from people that know me, and I already sold all of the copies I ordered initially, which surprised me, even though it wasn't very many. I've had to order more, and some of those are spoken for, so I'll probably have to order more, again, before this book signing event at the end of the month. But the e-copies aren't moving at all. That I find really surprising, especially since the previous price of my e-copy was $9.99 (yeah, it was too much, but I didn't know better, yet) as opposed to the current $2.99.

And all I want is for things to just go a little faster. But it takes a lot of work, and that part is slow. And a lot of perseverance, and that part is hard. Harder, even, than writing a book, which is hard enough. And reviews. It takes reviews. So, here I am, mentioning them, again, and saying how I'm going to do a post dedicated to the importance of reviews. And I am! It's coming soon. I promise. As I'm finding out, reviews are the most important thing! Along with how good cover art is the most important thing! And how writing a good book is the most important thing! The problem is that there really aren't any unimportant things. But, you know, since I've written a good book, and I have good (great) cover art, the next thing to deal with is getting some reviews. Then, maybe, things will move faster. Even if just a little.

Oh! and I almost forgot, I've tweaked the Brother's Keeper tab. It no longer contains the first chapter of the book but the prelude instead. No, it's not a prologue. It's more like an extended quotation that would go with the first chapter, but, because it is a little story in and of itself, I'm, for the moment, calling it a prelude.

I've also added a new tab: Tiberius. This has the first little story about Tib and will be the chapter one of this project. There's also a back story piece that I'm preparing as a separate publication as the audience isn't quite the same. Tiberius will be kid accessible (like The House on the Corner), but the short story that sets it up is most definitely not meant for kids. Look for that soon; it's called The Evil That Men Do.

The House on the Corner

So... The big news of the day, at least for me, is that The House on the Corner: First Person Edition is now available! Yes, I am excited. The proof looks SO good. Of course, Rusty Webb had a lot to do with that, since he did the cover art. The very spectacular cover art, I might add. Actually, not might add, because I did add it. I hope at least some of you will decide to pick it up and try it out. Currently, it's available through CreateSpace for $14.99 and for the Kindle for $2.99. You know, $2.99 isn't much. I'll have it set up for the Nook, soon, and I'm going to look at Smashwords, although I haven't used them before, so I haven't made any decisions about it, yet. Oh, and Goodreads. Which I'm on, but I only just learned I can sell through there, too, so I have to work that out. Autographed copies can also be available directly through me if you are PayPal capable. The book's supposed to be available through Amazon itself, also, but, for some reason, it's not showing up, yet. >shrug< It's better if you buy the physical copy through CreateSpace, anyway.

[Edit: The House on the Corner is, now, also available on the Nook for $2.99!]

Here's what I need from you guys... yeah, yeah, I know, but, really, there is something I need from you. I mean, other than just buying the book. It would be great to get some reviews. Preferably good reviews. :) Good reviews would be awesome. Especially on Amazon. So, yeah, this is what I'm asking: if you buy the book, read the book, like the book, please review the book. On your blogs would be great, but posting on Amazon and Goodreads would be awesome. Really awesome. Now, if you don't like the book, well... I'm not going to say don't review it. Because, you know, if you hate it and think it's the worst piece of crap ever written, it would be kind of wrong to just keep that to yourself. But I'm pretty sure it's not that bad. Of course, I'm biased. I mean, it's not Tolkien, but it's better than... well, I won't name names, but it's better than a lot of the traditionally published stuff out there right now. By "a lot", I might mean most.

Okay, I'll (mostly) be finished talking about The House on the Corner (for the moment).

As some of you might know, there's this blogfest thing going on. You know, this one:



Some of you are new followers from the blogfest, and I've picked up a few new blogs to follow, too, although I haven't had time, yet, to get around to as many as I would have liked. So far. It had something to do with trying to get the formatting finished for the Kindle edition of House. At any rate, I plan to spend more time making the rounds next week, now that I have the bulk of the work for House finished. Although, I didn't plan the timing, it seems to me that this is a good time for all of this (House becoming available for public consumption), since this is, theoretically, the purpose of the blogfest. Cool, huh? Interestingly enough, part of my participation in the Platform-building blogfest has included a re-evaluation of some of the blogs I already follow. What does that mean, you ask? It means I actually quit following some of them. I know! Horror of horrors! I exercised that "quit following" button. It's kind of a weird feeling. But! I just want you to know that I didn't do this indiscriminately. There were criteria. Things like it having been months and months since a post. I mean, if your not gonna post, there's nothing to follow anyway, right? Never responding to comments. And I don't just mean my comments. I mean if people leave comments but the author of the blog never responds to anything... well, let me just say you have to have a very, VERY interesting blog for me to follow you if you're not going to be involved with your followers. There were other things, but those were the main ones.

At any rate, the reason for dropping some is so that I have room to add more. heh Unfortunately, time is sort of finite, and I can only fit some many blogs into the time I have. Once I get that technology perfected for freezing time, I promise to follow everyone's blog. No, really, I do  promise! We're working on it. However, with the news that the Higgs boson particle probably doesn't really exist after all,  there may be some delays in the completion of the project.

Oh, and last (but not least), I received a blog award from Jennifer over at Serendipity's Library. The

I love Jennifer's blog. It always full of wacky fun, especially when she whips out Charlotte, the creepiest doll in the world. Check it out. I dare you.

And, now, I'm supposed to pass this one on to 5 other blogs with fewer than 200 followers and encourage them to do the same. So...

1. Has to be Rusty Webb. Even if he hadn't just done the cover art for my book, he'd be my pick for top slot. He always (well, pretty much always) has something interesting to say, even when he does things like title his posts "Most Boring Post Ever." And, really, he's just an all around nice guy who actually encourages dialogue in his comments.

2. Because she has a blog that is always full of useful information shared with excellent writing on the side, Alyssia Kirkhart over at Small World, Big Dreams. Really, her following does not reflect the quality of her blog.

3. Because she shares her Magic Eyes, Amanda Leigh Cowley. You'll have to stop by her place on the web to see what I mean.

And, well, actually, that's gonna be it. Everyone else I would award this to either already received it or has more than 200 followers. However, if I find 2 more blogs I think are deserving during the blogfest, I'll pass it on in a belated fashion.

That's it for me... for now, at least.