Some experts have said that the Kindle and other eBook readers will resurrect the Short Story.
Here’s hoping…
I teach Composition II: Analyzing Short Fiction at Austin Community College. I love short stories, but I haven’t written one in years. Mostly because, as every publishing professional will tell you, there is no market for short stories. Rather, there is a very limited market for short stories… a handful of magazines and even fewer anthologies.
This, however, seems to be changing.
Amazon’s Amazing Kindle (I’m a huge fan, as I have one myself and rarely read anything in any other format since I’ve gotten it) and other such eReaders might just be breathing fresh life into the Short Story.
Amazon has over 18,000 short stories available for the Kindle under Fiction>Short Stories.
Coming quite soon, there will be short stories available on the Kindle from Ethan, yours truly, and our BMP colleague O. M. Grey. Ethan and I have been talking about publishing the “Adventures of Fiana” and perhaps even one for Rowan in short story format for $0.99 each. Upon completion of the series, we would then make it available as an anthology.
If you haven’t yet gotten your Kindle – now is a great time. A brand new generation for a lower-than-ever price!
We all judge a book by its cover. More so than I ever thought.
As you well know, gentle readers, Ethan and I have been busting our tails for the past two years promoting our award-winning series Rowan of the Wood. People love it. Our fan base is growing. We do event after event, and things are going quite well for us! After all, we sold over 4,000 books in 2009. That’s 800% more than the average book sells in its lifetime!
Still, at every event we get these exact same questions:
“Is this a children’s book?” or “Is this a graphic novel?”
We sold as many books as we did because we were there literally selling each book. 85% of those 4,000 sales were when we were there to explain that it, although appropriate for children, is not solely a children’s book.
It’s the covers. They are beautiful works of art by Ia Enstera. We adore those covers! It’s been a pleasure looking at them every day. People comment on the beauty of the art constantly!
But the questions remain:
Does it make people want to pick up the book?
Is it reaching our target audience?
This is a difficult question, as our target audience is fantasy readers of all ages.
After doing this for the past two years, we’ve learned that our largest readership seems to be women from 15-85.
Seriously.
Kids do read the series and enjoy it. Teens read the series and enjoy it. Families read it together and men love it as well, but by far the largest percentage is women.
I think this is because of our dual protagonist: Cullen and Rowan. Cullen, a 12-yr-old orphan hero-type, pulls out their maternal instincts. Rowan, the handsome, love-sick Scotsman/Druid and his tragic story of love, speaks to their romantic side. They also identify with the antagonist Fiana and her plight.
This theory about the cover art was driven home when my long time friend and colleague O. M. Grey told me that a literary agent contacted her based solely on her cover and book premise. After reading the book, the agent loved her story and writing so much, she offered her representation!! Congratulations Olivia!
The response to her Steampunk book has been overwhelming, and it’s not even released yet! (It’s a great book, btw… I got to read it early!)
It’s been so great, that the publisher decided to do a pre-release special on the KINDLE! It’s sold more copies in 2 days than WITCH did in a month! And that’s all based on the cover and the premise! (**& it probably has at least a little to do with the popular Steampunk theme**)
It is a pretty awesome cover:
(I suggest you get it, actually. Quite a good read if you like steamy Paranormal Romance with Vampires… sprinkled with Steampunk & Mystery.)
So… we’ve decided to do an experiment. We’ve decided to go a different direction for the third book FIRE OF THE FEY, and we might even be changing the first two covers as well.
Read an eBook Week, March 7-13, educates and informs the public about the pleasures and advantages of reading electronically. <taken from their website>
If you have seen our art, read our books, or even had a conversation with either me or Ethan, you know that we are strong environmental advocates. We brought our own bags to the store before they sold them at the register, back when people would look at you as if you had grown a second head when you said “I don’t need a bag,” or “I brought my own.”
Now you get a discount for bringing your own bag. It’s the way it should be.
Hybrid cars are being produced by every major car company, doubling and sometimes quadrupling the gas mileage. It’s the way it should be. I wouldn’t drive anything else.
We supplement our electricity with solar power, create recycled art, and have been vegetarians for over a decade, the most environmentally (as well as animal) friendly diet one can have.
We make every consumer choice with Mother Earth in mind, constantly trying to reduce our own carbon footprint. It’s the way it should be.
So you can imagine how much I love eReaders and eBooks! Don’t get me wrong, I also love Love LOVE books, but with over 800 titles published every day in the US alone, that’s a lot of my beloved trees, too!
So, read an eBook this week. Give it a try. On your PC. On your Mac. On your phone. There are free eReader apps for nearly every smart phone (Kindle, B&N, Stanza, etc.) or splurge and get a Kindle, Sony, or Nook. I’ve got a Kindle, and I love it. It’s well worth the money.
Start reducing your carbon footprint today. Studies show that a paper book creates FOUR TIMES the greenhouse gas emissions than an eBook Reader, countless more times than an eBook. Plus, you’ll not only save money on books (eBooks are normally much less than their paper counterpart), you’ll also save trees!
During Read an eBook Week, Rowan of the Wood is FREE on Smashwords and Witch on the Water is 1/2 price at $0.99. The coupon codes are RFREE and RAE50, respectively.
Last month I did a blog series called Publishing 101, taking the reader through the four basic choices an aspiring author has to choose from.
In this series, I talked about the antiquated return policy in the book industry and how that’s hurting many publishers (and, in turn, authors). This came across the Twitter-wire today:
In the royalty statement shown, the author sold over 7,000 in a six-month sales period. In that same amount of time, over 10,000 books were RETURNED.
What a waste.
Which is why I’m getting myself a Kindle next week. Yep. Finally. Birthday gift or no, I’m getting a Kindle.
eReaders will not be the end of books, but I hope they will be the end of the over-printing-to-fill-bloated-bookstore-orders-just-because-they-can-return-them antiquated policy.
They say it’s the #1 item on Amazon’s Wish List this year, and I can see why.
How to Climb the Charts on YouTube (hasn’t worked), by Alan Lastufka and Michael W Dean
Beware, Princess Elizabeth, by Carolyn Meyer
AnansiBoys, by Neil Gaiman
Tantalize, by Cynthia Leitich Smith
Manifest Your Destiny, by Wayne W. Dyer
The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne
Night Pleasures, by Sherrilyn Kenyon
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, by JK Rowling
The Vampire Diaries: The Awakening, by LJ Smith
The Vampire Diaries: The Stuggle, by LJ Smith
A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle
Witch on the Water, by Christine and Ethan Rose**
The Looking Glass Wars, by Frank Beddor
A Monstrous Regiment of Women, by Laurie R. King
Soulless by Gail Carriger
By the end of this month, I’ll also have read:
Seeing Red by Frank Beddor
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
f you’d like to get any of those fine books mentioned, they are all available on Amazon (along with Rowan of the Wood & Witch on the Water!)
Next month, for my 40th Birthday, I plan to get a KINDLE 2
(finally), so I hope to be reading EVEN MORE!
** Yes! I know we wrote this, but it did take up reading time when we read it *again* for the final proof. So I should actually get credit for reading like 10 books for the amount of times I’ve read this one this year.
Yeah. I know I’ve still been lax on the “twice-a-week” video/vlogs. I’ll get back on the horse.
Since it is “Video Tuesday,” I’m tapping into my environmental core and recycling these two videos.
Here are my two Retro Diva vidoes: “Don’t You Want a Kindle?” and “Bellatrix on the Borderline.”
Now, when I made Bellatrix, I really thought it would have an even better response than the Kindle one… because it was both silly and on-topic with the (then) current Harry Potter trend.
But it wasn’t!
I’m not sure if people just didn’t “get it” for one reason or another (i.e., don’t know who Bellatrix is or isn’t familiar with Madonna… or Harry Potter) OR if it was something else.
So here are these two videos! Please post a comment below telling me which of the two you like better and why. What didn’t you like about the other? (too demented? esoteric?
I’m planning a few more videos. I have *LOADS* of fun making them, so that’s not the question, but I would love for them to be entertaining to my followers as well!
This issue keeps popping up on my radar. Even on Twitter, and through the recent #140 character conference, the question remains on what will happen to big publishing if they don’t change. At BEA, it was noted that big publishers are in greater financial dire straights than the little indie publisher. The NY Big Boys are still working on an antiquated business model that’s approaching its 100th birthday.
Times have changed.
The way people read has changed. The way people process information has changed.
The more I read, the less I want to find an agent and big publisher. Unless a publisher offers us a HUGE advance (like $500K or more for a 5 book series + a huge marketing budget & media connections/movie deal, all of which over 95% of their authors DO NOT get), I really don’t see what they can do for us that we can’t do for ourselves… except print larger runs (and accept larger returns) and take 95% of the money.
We’ll *still* will have to do our own promotions with our own money.
I think we’ll stick with the little guy for now.
We’ll continue with what we’re doing, marketing and pounding the pavement. Perhaps we’ll garner the attention from a big boy publisher who will offer us the above ($500K+, marketing budget, movie deal, media connections)… then we’ll happily say yes. Because we know they they won’t drop our book after 3mos if they’re putting that kind of $ behind it.
So, I’ve reprinted the below article with links intact. Please go to the site there and read the comments. I’d love to hear reasons why we should spend our time/resources actively seeking out an agent and big publisher … please. Convince me.
E-books are just in their infancy. Amid worries that Amazon carries too much clout in E and elsewhere, that’s how some people shrug off the antitrust risks.
Much will change in e-bookdom. And meanwhile Google is gearing up to compete more directly against Amazon.
But what about POD, traditional paper books, and many other tricky areas—not to mention Amazon’s vast collection of user comments on books? Or how about the Kindle and the use of proprietary format, along with Amazon’s dissing of the ePub standard?
Is it possible that Amazon’s combined resources do give it an unfair advantage over rivals—perhaps even worthy of notice from the U.S. Justice Department and similar agencies elsewhere?
Timely Time article
I read with interest, then, a Time Magazine piece headlined, “Is Amazon taking over the book business?” Yes, it mentions the Kindle, and it leads with an example of Amazon’s Encore program to refine and remarket Legacy (right) and other books from small houses.
Such moves would be smart ways to deal with the concerns that the Time piece raised about Amazon’s activities in a number of areas. Excerpt:
As numerous publishing journalists and bloggers have pointed out, Amazon has diversified itself so comprehensively over the past five years that it’s hard to say exactly what it is anymore. Amazon has a presence in almost every niche of the book industry. It runs a print-on-demand service (BookSurge) and a self-publishing service (CreateSpace). It sells e-books and an e-device to read them on (the Kindle, a new version of which, the DX, went on sale June 10).
Rachel at Bitten By Books emailed the results of the Kindle 2 contest this morning!
Just goes to show you, minimal entries can be the winner! Jackie entered early and racked up 160 entries.
Winner of the $25 Barnes & Noble Gift Card: Anthony @antgly
Winners of the Rowan of the Wood eBooks: CheriePie, Linda AK, Toni Smathers, Robin, & Logan England
A special thanks to @antgly, @nicholeadria, and @hockeyvampiress for there awesome videos. Each of them had well over 1000 entries and did over 5 videos each. Thanks so much for your effort and entertaining videos!
More special thanks to all the video entries. The video entries is what it was all about! You guys made this fun.
Next my thanks goes out to all those who purchased a book or an eBook to enter the contest! You guys made this contest possible. I hope you all enjoy the book!! Please let us know what you think.
Finally, thanks to everyone who entered, even once.
Well, Jackie, enjoy your Kindle 2! You have a whole lot of people jealous of you right now… including me!
As part of the promotion of our upcoming sequel 
