Amazon vs Macmillan

And here we thought up until the actual release of iPad, that the next big fight was going to be Amazon vs. Apple. Surprise! If you've so much as glanced at publishing-related news over the weekend, you've caught on to the huge fight between Amazon and Macmillan, which has resulted in Macmillan titles not being available for sale from Amazon at the moment.

The letter from John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan, to Macmillan authors, can be found on the Publishers Weekly site. Amazon, as is fairly typical for them, has refused to comment publicly about the fracas. Andrew Wheeler's account is quite thorough and yet remains clear.

Lots of people on both sides of this issue seem to see it as one of pricing. But, unfortunately, that is far too simplistic. It's about the whole setup of the publishing industry, about what makes a book a book, and about what, exactly people buy when they buy an ebook. Or, even, whether they're buying anything at all. eBooks, after all, aren't governed by the first sale doctrine. They're licensed by the purchaser, rather than bought, which is one of the things many people object to about them.

Here's the basic problem: Amazon is a retailer. They want to treat books, in all their forms, as products. When a retailer buys a product from a wholesaler or directly from a producer, they have the right to price it however they want. That's why you see markings on products that say MSRP--Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price. The "loss leader" has a long history in retail, and Amazon is looking at their $9.99 price for ebooks released at the same time as the hardcover as loss leaders. They are, after all, paying the wholesaler/publisher the full wholesale price for these items. That means they lose money with every sale, as is their right in our capitalist system.

For the first two years they were in business, Amazon lost money on every sale anyway. It was their business model. No one thought it would work, but it did, and they fully expect it will work again.

But Macmillan doesn't see books as retail products. It's not clear how they do see them, but that's not their fault--it's the fault of the publishing industry as a whole, which has never conformed to the rules of retail and doesn't see why it should now. Rather than consider changing to a traditional retail model, Macmillan wants to go to yet another new model, the "agency" model, wherein they would be able to dictate the prices for ebooks (licensed? sold? it's unclear). And those prices would be--according to Sargent--$14.99 for the ebook when the hardcover comes out.

But right now, the average cost for a hardcover book at the moment of release isn't much more than that. Because only a tiny, tiny percentage of people are actually paying full hardcover price. Most people are paying a discounted price. Starting with 30% off at their local Borders, or perhaps 40% if they have a coupon or something. So this is clearly a move designed to force readers to stick to the traditional media with which Macmillan is comfortable.

So here's a thought, if you don't like the fact that your books are being sold for $9.99 for the Kindle, don't produce Kindle versions. Not every book is available for the Kindle. Sometimes, that means I won't buy it, I'll just take it out of the library. Sometimes, I'll buy a paperback copy. (I don't do hardcover except for two authors: Margaret Maron and John Connolly.) If it's a textbook or research text, it's all irrelevant, since I only want those in print so I can mark them up.

I hear from publishers including Macmillan that the true reason they oppose the $9.99 price point is the fact that authors get a percentage of the retail price for which their book sells. But if that's really what publishers are concerned about, there's an easy change: change future contracts to say that authors get a percentage of the wholesale cost of the book. Then stick to your guns about what you charge retailers for your books, be they ebooks or paper.

Of course, that's only one of a whole slew of changes the industry as a whole would have to make in order to be both profitable and sensible. Don't even get me started on returns! Oy! And gazing into my crystal ball, I don't see publishers making those changes with any kind of alacrity.

At the moment, if both Macmillan and Amazon were run by grown ups I imagine all Kindle copies of Macmillan titles would be removed until they could come to some kind of agreement, but the hard copies would remain. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening soon, either.

[update]
Amazon has posted the following on their website:

Dear Customers:

Macmillan, one of the "big six" publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.

We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it's reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don't believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.

Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!

Power of Language: The Wrong Sort of Attention

I always think of the Power of Language tag for posts about words with clever, even unexpected impact, a perfect example being the guy who submitted his corporate performance review as a haiku. In today's case, we're seeing even fewer words, but they eloquently communicate a powerful subtext. I imagine it's something like:

"The dictation of the soul requires no proofreading!"

Eyeball amusements courtesy of the HuffPo. Go marvel at them all!

iPad? Surely, You Jest

Well, it's here. Or, the announcement is here. The product will be here in March. Or April, depending on the configuration you want.

If you've been prowling the web, you've doubtless been subjected to other people's reactions to Apple's new product, so you may want to skip mine. I promise, I won't be offended. But I'd love to hear yours, so even if you don't want to read mine, head on down to the comments and leave yours!

First up, the name. What kind of name is iPad? Really? Seriously? My initial reaction to the name was "jeeze, that's boring, and it sounds like IBM's ThinkPad of some ten or fifteen years back." Of course, that was before I read the comment on the name by Smart Bitch Sarah, who was much more to the point when she said: "The iPad, now available in Light, Maxi, and Super (8Gb, 16Gb 64Gb)?"

If you can't write on something with a pen (stylus), it's not a pad. And nothing in Apple's presentation or technology description indicates that this is a true tablet in that sense.

Now, I do think this device could easily take the place of a Netbook. I don't actually have a Netbook, mind you, because I just carry my MacBook with me. But this weighs a lot less than my MacBook. And it's pretty. Don't forget pretty. Apple does that really well, even if the keyboard dock does remind me a little of the Newton. (The fact that I even remember the Newton tells you just how long ago I began drinking the Kool-Aid. And I liked my Newton, which tells you something else about me.)

I keep hearing about this (and other products that are lcd-based) being the death of eInk technology, but I don't believe it. I have a real problem reading on backlit screens for long periods of time and I know I am not the only one. eInk is great precisely because it doesn't give me the headache of my own computer monitor.

There's not enough information out there on iBooks yet to tell what it will do. I am a huge fan of iTunes, but not of the iTunes store itself, wherein I can never find anything. Browsing is a disaster there. As I said when I looked at the nook, Amazon's website is far and away better than anyone else's as far as finding and choosing books. I would hope that iBooks has at least a better organizational system than my Kindle, which has no organizational system whatsoever (though that may change now that there's a Software Development Kit out there for the Kindle).

One of the nice things about a device like the iPad as an eReader could have been the ability to make notes. That's if the thing functioned as a real tablet and I could scrawl in the margins of my books, or at least type in the margins using either a physical or virtual keyboard. But nothing in the (admittedly brief) iBooks video shows anything along those lines.

So what's my feeling? My feeling is that if you're not a geek, this could be a great device. It's the perfect device to buy for your aunt or relative who's not computer savvy and just wants something to surf the net and pick up email. They can also read bestsellers on it if they want to, and watch videos, and check out pictures of the grandkids. That's who this device is aimed at, I think. It's made for light users, people who don't need a full-service machine. Or even a full-service eReader.

That said, it comes out in March, right around my birthday. So I'll probably get one to use as a Netbook. I'll let you know then what I think!

FBF: Portraits of Murder, ed. Alfred Hitchcock

The Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine has been providing us with excellent short stories since early in my childhood. (A long, long time ago.) I am always searching the short story section of various libraries for Hitchcock anthologies. I'm happily surprised that a number of them are still around. I am presently reading Portraits of Murder, an anthology published in 1988 by Galahad Books.

It contains 47 mystery short stories originally published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine between 1957 and 1976. Many familiar writers such as Margaret Maron, Lawrence Block, Ed Hoch, Harold Q. Masur, Clark Howard, and Bill Pronzini grace these pages.

As an avid short story reader, not to mention a short story writer, I am enjoying Portraits of Murder immensely. With so many stories in one volume, there are a wide variety of methods and motives between the covers. My recommendation is that any time you see an old Alfred Hitchcock anthology—grab it.

For more forgotten books, please visit Patti Abbott, keeper of all forgotten book posts.

Terrie

Six Sentences - Accepting Submissions for Publication

I know this is very last-minute, but if you’d like to give it a shot:

The popular “Six Sentences” blog is accepting submissions up until midnight EST on Sunday, January 31, 2010, to be considered in their Six Sentences, Volume 3 publication, scheduled for release this April.

You can check out the details here and their usual writer’s guidelines apply.

You may send up to three stories, and your work must be previously unpublished.

Active on Twitter? Why not follow Six Sentences? Come follow me, too!

Classes for Snowy Days

If snow, rain, or high winds are keeping you indoors this winter, here are some online classes to keep you occupied.

Writers Online Classes is offering two month-long courses this February.

• "Query Letters That Sell, Cover Letters That Wow, and Submission Packages That Shout 'Buy Me!'" Julie Rowe, February 8-March 7, $30. A romance novelist and freelance magazine writer coaches you in how to turn your fiction query letter into an effective sales pitch, your cover letter into a fabulous calling card, and your submission package into one that stands out from the crowd.
• "Purposeful Writers," Laura Baker, February 1-28, $30. An award-winning author and the co-creator of the acclaimed "Discovering Story Magic" course helps you hone in on your dramatic powers and use them to enhance your storytelling skills, build characters, and increase your novel's emotional resonance.

Writer University has an interesting class lined up for February.

• "Plotting Via Motivation," Laurie Schnebly Campbell, February 1-26, $30. With a Master's in counseling, Laurie Schnebly Campbell knows all about motivation, and in this class she guides you in plotting your book using motivation in addition to goals.

The RWA's Kiss of Death Chapter is once again offering its traditional two monthly classes.

• "You Stab 'Em, We Slab 'Em," John Foxjohn, a "Murder One" class, February 1-28, $15 for chapter members and $30 for nonmembers. Class description unavailable.
• "Deep POV: Myths, Methods, and Madness," Alicia Rasley, a "Killer Instinct" class, February 1-28, $15 for chapter members and $30 for nonmembers. The author of the Writer's Digest book The Power of Point of View discusses the myths of deep POV, the methods of getting into character and presenting the story, and the madness you might need to experience to truly get into someone else's mind and body.

For a quick intro to online writing classes, click here. For additional information on the above classes and to register, click on the names of the venues and follow the links.

Putting Out An eBook, Part II

Last Wednesday, the fabulous Peggy Ehrhart told us about how she decided to take on the responsibility of turning her first book, Sweet Man is Gone, into a Kindle version since her publisher had let her retain the electronic rights. However, when she took the original, simple steps Amazon recommended, she had a few issues, and she realized she needed to further modify the content to make the formatting come out right.

If you've been having difficulties with your own formatting for Kindle, or are just curious, here's what came next:

My Do-It-Yourself Kindle Adventure, Part II

Peggy Ehrhart

My attempt to modify my converted content required downloading and unzipping and converting to HTML and editing and rezipping and all kinds of other things that have mercifully faded from my mind. The result, when I previewed it, was a new Kindle version of Sweet Man Is Gone in which all the HTML tags were visible--in other words the text was interrupted frequently by passages that looked like this: [ link rel="“alternate”" type="“application/rss+xml”" title="RSS" href="%E2%80%9Chttp://www.peggyehrhart.com/feed/%E2%80%9D/"]

When you search for Help in the DTP, you are first referred to the DTP Support Forums, which are basically the blind leading the blind. There I learned that many people besides me had the random italics issue and no one had figured out how to solve it.

Now, though, I wished that random italics were my only problem. At least my text had been readable. I tried to go through the Modify Converted Content drill again, but the DTP wouldn’t let me download the new (really messed up) version of my book. And I was unable to figure out whether the really messed up version was what anyone in the mood to buy Sweet Man Is Gone on Kindle right at that moment would get for $9.95.

A last desperate search for Help on the DTP led me to a well-hidden email address for DTP-Feedback. That’s how I met (online) the awesome Mr. Muruganandham Malayalam, whose perfect and charming English ran along the lines of, “Hence, I kindly request you to re-check the tags for the text to be in ‘Italic’ style and make sure that these tags are properly closed.”

Muruganandham, as you have probably realized, is one of those very smart Indians to whom so many American companies have outsourced their technical support. My husband’s company outsources to India too and he often makes phone calls to his Indian office, so I was aware that Muruganandham’s day ended just as mine began. When I was emailing my pleas for enlightenment, he was sleeping. But there was always an answer waiting for me when I checked my email the next morning.

The reader is thinking, Didn’t his kind request that I re-check the tags solve my problems?

The answer is no, because my question about the misplaced italics had just been a test to see if anybody was on duty at DTP-Feedback. The reader will recall that at this point my problems went far beyond the misplaced italics.

Muruganandham and I corresponded for a week, every morning bringing a prompt email response in answer to my ongoing confusion. At last I threw myself on his mercy and asked whether he couldn’t just do the whole thing over for me.

And he did! When I got that email, I could have launched myself through cyberspace and kissed him, except that he would have been asleep.

So a reasonably decent Kindle version of Sweet Man Is Gone now exists—though I previewed the result of Muruganandham’s labors and found a few oddities, like a stray P> here and there, and some random symbols that look like the little circles used to indicate degrees.

But one of my friends who was an early Kindle adopter tells me that the books she reads on Kindle, even ones issued by the book’s original publisher, are seldom free from mysterious glitches.

After all, we’re witnessing the introduction of a new and revolutionary medium, like the people who were around as Caxton was churning out the first books printed in English, replete with that new concept, the typographical error. And scholars are still debating about which quarto of many flawed ones represents what Shakespeare really meant to say.

Long after my Kindle adventure I learned that a small industry has sprung up: tech savvy people who are willing to Kindle-ize a manuscript, for a price of course, but well worth it. Tony Burton is one of these people. He’s at tony@tonyburton.biz.

James Patterson, F.Y.I.

This past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine ran an in-depth article entitled “James Patterson, Inc.” It discusses his work, his process, his relationship with his publisher and the marketing savvy that has made him one of publishing’s most successful brands.

Whether you like his work or not, Patterson, a former copywriter and Chairman of the J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency, is a brand unto himself. He is one of world’s most prolific and popular authors, with the most New York Times' best sellers ever—a whopping 51.

I think you’ll find the article interesting and filled with information that’s helpful to know.

Two For Tuesday - Editing & The Daphne

Although I haven't finished my manuscript yet, I'm in the process of editing and finishing it at the same time. Thus, it mostly looks like this. Of course, not every page has such extensive changes, but what is apt to happen to me is that once I get into a work, I realize that I've got the tone wrong at the beginning, and that requires fairly comprehensive changes.

I print everything out and then start going through it. I wish I didn't have to, since it seems a terrible waste of paper, but that's the way it is. So here are a few sentences I changed this week:

"Cecile Sadler's girl, of course." She sniffed. "That's what Mayor Dobbs gets for hiring an outsider. Any son of the Hollow would have run her out of town on a rail."

I need to get the first several pages of this MS whipped into good shape because I intend to enter it into the Daphne du Maurier contest. Although the Daphne is sponsored by the romantic suspense chapter of Romance Writers of America, it's open to mainstream fiction as well as romance. You'll get nice, comprehensive scoresheets back if you do enter, which makes it a good contest for someone who wants to see what kind of effect their writing is having. The contest closes for entries March 15.

As to the sentences I read this week, they come from David Hosp's Innocence. There are more than two, but the paragraph is so compelling I wanted to give you the whole thing.

When busing came to the neighborhood in the late 1970s, Henry was seven. he was young enough that the first time he attacked a black boy with a baseball bat, he'd only been suspended. A six-month stint in the reformatory had followed the second attack two years later, and that was probably only because he'd shattered all of his second victim's teeth against a brick wall. The boy had spent three weeks in the hospital. By the time Henry was eighteen, murder seemed more like career advancement than a crime, but it was the horrific nature of the the murder that guaranteed him a lifelong stay in Billerica.

How about you? Did you read anything this week? Write anything? Let us know and we'll update the post as the day goes on!

Crystal Phares has descriptive sentences and a plea for help on her blog!

MTM: My Winter Residence, North Fort Myers, FL.

Drive straight on New Post Road, make a quick left onto Paul Revere Loop, then make another left onto John Alden Lane or Patrick Henry Way. If by now you think you’re in Massachusetts, you’d be wrong.

Welcome to my official winter residence, Old Bridge Village, North Fort Myers, Florida where I am now the proud owner of a house.

After two years of false stops and starts with winter rentals, I have taken the plunge and bought a small manufactured home.

Last year, I told you all about Old Bridge Village when I finally found a rental that I liked, after abandoning one that didn’t work at all. You can read that post here.

Old Bridge is a fantastic community designed for the over 55 crowd. Lots of activities to keep us happy and healthy—gym equipment, putting and chipping green, pools, hot tub, aerobics and games, shows and trips galore. Plus, and this is a biggie—we have WiFi in the clubhouse!!! So now if I have a problem with my DSL (which is a giant leap from the dial up in the rentals) I can take the laptop to the clubhouse and follow along with the rest of the Internet world. Here is an aerial view of Old Bridge. We are the white roofs in all those striaight lines leading to the Caloosahatchee River which flows into the Gulf of Mexico shown in the background.

Also, I have finally found a radio station that I can pick up on both house radios and on my car radio that plays music I like!!! Here is the link to WLOZ 95.3. I’m not sure what they call the music they play but I call it oldies with a beat and it works for me.

So, I am determined to be happy here. If I start to grumble about the monthly financial upkeep, or the fact that I have to have repairs made, or whatever, just remind me I could be renting.

For other My Town Monday posts, click here.

Terrie

Sunday Grab Bag

Here's the grab bag 'o links (signage via the awesome Oddly Specific blog):

Whether or not you like the new e-readers or various other mobile devices, I think we can all celebrate the big boost they've given to the hand modeling industry.

Despite our nods or winces over oddball birth announcements, it's after babyhood that strange given names matter. Right, Marijuana Pepsi?

A worthy and neglected novel bears a title unacceptable in modern usage. So, to bring it back into publication, do you change Joseph Conrad's words?

Using new technology and shopping online for personalized children's books.

A modern history of poisoning and poisoners.

The Big A's Brace for Impact in 3,2..

The e-reader marketplace is far from settled- yay! Many authors, publishers, and even device-makers themselves are not yet sure what they'll do with it, when, and how. And with more choices and capacity coming, the stew isn't going to stop churning anytime soon. In my personal and whole-hearted embrace of the opportunity inherent in dynamism-- and with no prejudice against any current device not mentioned herein-- let me offer a few items from the flux.

1) Douglas Preston is a huge mainstream thriller writer. At this posting, his latest, IMPACT, has collected almost as many one-star reviews as five-stars on Amazon. Why? The one-starrers are protesting the publisher's newly-instituted 4-month Kindle version delay (which, as you may have read here is a decision I find yutz-y in the extreme.) Read those reviews, and you'll find not just people saying they'll wait, but that they're irritated enough to find no-cost ways to skip buying the title altogether. Part of this delay is the result of internecine skirmish. Publishers are unhappy with distributor Amazon's pricing scheme. Even if Amazon eats the losses, publishers are concerned that the big Am has set the de facto value for what an e-title's worth, and that's under 10 dollars. (I won't bother ranting here about all the reasons I think consumers determine proper pricing. You're welcome.)

Another argument against the delay which I didn't mention before is the way it short-circuits marketing efforts to build momentum and buzz. Douglas Preston will, no doubt, thrive anyway because of his established readership. But again, and my own lowliness is revealed, what about the authors who are on their first or second books? If the marketing budget for them is small already, and people can't try out the author easily and for low-cost, and then the e-release is completely divorced from the calendar of other promotional efforts for the hardcover, doesn't that disserve the publisher's goal of growing that new author's recognition and readership?

2) As of June- perhaps, in part, to mollify said-perturbed publishers- Amazon will begin a new royalty split, 70-30 in favor of the content provider, provided certain terms are met for pricing and features. Probably more importantly, this brings the big Am pre-emptively in line with the big Ap, Apple, who offers a similar royalty split for its iTunes content and iPhone Apps.

3) The rumors are getting positively, frothingly head-popping, so it's possible that any second now, Apple will finally release its tablet (sort of a larger-format iPhone,) which it promises will subsequently enter the e-book market as a Kindle-killer.

3a) The Barnes and Noble reader, the Nook, still suffers from too many self-inflicted wounds to be a major factor, but there is a plan for upgrade and wider release. If you back-ordered it in November, you were supposed to get it by January...or maybe by this Feb 12th order date? If you're in music, you might say they're trying to fix it in the mix. Cinephiles could be fixing it in post [production.] The geeks are looking for a patch, but I hope those promises don't turn out to be vaporware.

4) Kindle is releasing its own developer kit, which will allow tech-heads to begin programming cool new stuff for the device. Oh, Apple tablet (or slate or pallette or whatever Steve Jobs ends up calling it,) I see your Apps, and raise you...uh, innovative active content! Amazon's gotta work on its names, too.

But, as has been the other Achilles' heel of the Nook, how to handle related increases in wirele$$ bandwidth demand when the device maker's paying for all the traffic is going to be a thorny question. And, did I mention, fascinating!?

Get your popcorn, sports fans! Things are really getting good!

Forgotten Book Friday: The Work of Irwin Shaw

Originally, I’d planned to write about one of my favorite books by Irwin Shaw, Nightwork. Not one of Shaw’s most famous books, it’s not exactly a traditional mystery, but it does involve a dead body and a whole lot of stolen money. But, as I began to think about it, I realized that Irwin Shaw, whose novels I’d read as a young woman, had written so much more that I’d enjoyed.

Shaw became best known for one of the first million-copy, best-seller blockbusters, Rich Man, Poor Man. It also became a huge TV hit, whose ongoing portrayal of the Jordache family irked Shaw so much that he felt compelled to write Beggar Man, Thief as a protest to the story line the show’s producers had taken.

Born in 1913, Shaw began his career as a radio scriptwriter and became a playwright, screenwriter and short-story author as well as a novelist. The Young Lions, Evening in Byzantium and Bread Upon the Waters are several of his other best sellers.

Nightwork tells the tale of Douglas Grimes, a night clerk at a cheap New York City hotel, who one evening discovers a dead guest and $100,000 in cash, which he decides to keep. Abandoning the city for Europe he meets Miles Fabian, a con man with a taste for the best and most expensive life has to offer. Miles takes charge of Douglas --and his money--and the story takes off from there. Ultimately, they part to face their separate fates.

I think it’s a good read from a very good writer and I plan to reread it very soon. You can go to wikipedia.org for more information on Irwin Shaw.

Memoir and Narrative Nonfiction Contest

Do you have a completed work of memoir, narrative nonfiction or creative nonfiction that is unpublished? Then this contest might just be for you.

The Guide to Literary Agent’s “Dear Lucky Agent” Contest: Memoir and Narrative Nonfiction just opened on January 19 and ends on January 31. This is the first “Dear Lucky Agent” contest on the GLA blog that will become a recurring online contest with agent judges and prizes. The details will basically remain the same, but the niche will change for each contest -- so keep an eye out for the announcement of your genre. I follow the GLA blog editor, Chuck Sambuchino, on Twitter.

This contest is for completed book-length works of memoir, narrative nonfiction or creative nonfiction. However, you only have to send 150-200 words; no more, no less. Also, to be eligible, you must mention or link to this contest twice via social media sites, or once on your blog and add Guide to Literary Agents Blog to your blogroll.

The first place winner will receive a critique of 25 pages of his/her work, by an agent judge, and will receive two free books from Writer's Digest Books.

Second and third place winners receive a critique of 10 pages of his/her work, by an agent judge, and one free book from Writer's Digest Books.

The agent judge for this contest will be Katharine Sands, an agent with the Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency.

Follow me on Twitter.

Putting Out An eBook: It's Not As Easy As You Think

Recently I was talking to fellow Sisters in Crime member Peggy Ehrhart and she mentioned that she had retained the electronic rights to her book and had produced a version for Kindle herself since her publisher did not. As most of the conversations we have about ebooks are rather abstract--will they take over the market? will DRM ever go away?--I assumed most people would share my interest in her experience, and asked her to write about it.

It turns out that Kindleizing a book isn't so easy and her story is rather long, so we decided to split it into two, with the basics this week. Tune in next week for further adventures with Peggy in Kindleland!

My Do-It-Yourself Kindle Adventure

Peggy Ehrhart

I hate to say no.

And the second time I had to say no when someone asked whether Sweet Man Is Gone was available in a Kindle edition, I decided to remedy the situation. Why go to the effort to write a book, find a publisher, and throw myself into a grueling round of promotion--but then ignore one obvious avenue through which Sweet Man Is Gone could reach an audience?

I signed my contract for Sweet Man Is Gone in 2007, several months before Kindle came on the market. Once Kindle appeared, many publishers began offering Kindle editions of books they also published in conventional format, but Five Star, my publisher, did not. For one thing, Five Star publishes primarily for the library market, and my contract gave Five Star only hardcover, trade paperback, and large print rights.

But Five Star authors have an active Yahoo group, and soon after Sweet Man Is Gone came out I began noticing posts from people who had created Kindle editions of their Five Star books.

Here’s the deal: Amazon has set Kindle up so that anyone can publish a book in the Kindle format and receive a 35% royalty on sales. That means many self-published books are available in Kindle editions. But this do-it-yourself Kindle creation is also available to authors whose books are published by respected MWA-approved presses, like Five Star.

The posts by Five Star authors who had created Kindle editions fell into two categories: “Oh, it was easy!” and “Oh, my God!” The categories correlated with gender, the men being the ones who found it easy. But I figured I could follow directions as well as the next person.

Amazon has created a “Digital Text Platform” (DTP) from which you launch yourself into the Kindlesphere. You find it online at https://dtp.amazon.com/mn/signin

If you have an Amazon account—i.e., an account that enables you to order books from Amazon, you log into the DTP using the same email address and password. Otherwise, you can open an account right there on the DTP.

Next you follow the instructions, filling in fields when prompted and uploading the file containing your manuscript. Amazon suggests you convert it to an HTML file but says that a Microsoft Word .doc file will also work. That’s what I used: the edited version of Sweet Man Is Gone that Five Star had emailed me for my records.

Things went magically well--too well. The file uploaded smoothly and quickly. Holding my breath, I moved to the final stage, Preview, in which a representation of a Kindle appears on the screen and you click through it page by page.

Things looked nice for the first three chapters, but in Chapter 4, I encountered an inexplicable patch of italics, several paragraphs long, where they didn’t exist in the original. The italics gave my protagonist’s thoughts and actions a curious urgency at odds with the actual content.

As I continued to click through the text, I encountered more italicized passages, scattered at random. I couldn’t let the Kindle version of Sweet Man Is Gone go into the world not looking its best, so I moved into the next phase of my Kindle adventure, the harrowing phase.

As the DTP puts it so blandly, “Once you’ve converted your content using the Digital Text Platform, you may want to make some changes.”

But in order to do this, you enter the realm called “Modify Converted Content,” where the instructions are suddenly worded as if aimed at an MIT grad.

[We'll have Peggy's experiences with "modifying converted content" next Wednesday...same bat time, same bat channel! So don't forget to tune back in!]

Two Sentence Tuesday: The Halls of Demi-Verbiage

As typical, my reading has been complete madness, but I've lately dabbled in an old Dean Koontz that was laying around the TBR, not earning its shelf rent. From ONE DOOR AWAY FROM HEAVEN:

The rosebush, however, responded perversely to tender care. In spite of ample sunshine, water, and plant food, in spite of the regular aeration of its roots and periodic treatment with measured doses of insecticide, the bush remained as scraggly and blighted as any specimen watered with venom and fed pure sulfur in the satanic gardens of Hell.

There are, I'm told, mighty mead halls of the great bards and scribes, where words flow like torrents of honeyed nectar into their waiting tankards. The tankards are big as horse troughs, for these are giants, but the foaming words never stop pouring and the bottom of the cups are never dry. My scribbling week hasn't achieved such legendary status. So, from the cracked water pistol of my own creativity, with all the momentum of a half-thimble of hamster spit, here are a few I've written this week:

The standards of a person's previous care and health were revealed in surfaces: hair, teeth, skin nails, the linings and whites of the eyes. Sometimes, by what her team was able to retrieve from her wish list of beauty supply provisions, she guessed which country lay outside the walls of her transport crate. During the end of today's flight, curled as compactly as a kitten, Frankie held a flashlight between her teeth to give her nails and cuticles serious, final attention.

Feel free to belly on up and toast us with your own 2-ish sentences, read and/or written, in the comments- cheers!

UPDATE: David Cranmer gives us a couple of old-fashioned bashings to the noggin, and Leah J. Utas frees her inner crap hound. You'll see, pupsters. Crystal Phares rejoins us with a journey from oxcart to atom bomb.

MTM: Lunch With Margaret Maron

Last week, I had the great pleasure of having lunch with Margaret Maron. She's here in my home town of New York City researching her next Deborah Knott book. But for those who've followed her writing for longer, there's an extra treat in this book--an appearance by Sigrid Harald.

There were four of us at lunch: me, Kathy and Clare of the Women of Mystery, and the inimitable Margaret. (I'm the only brunette at the table; that's Clare next to me, Margaret across from her and Kathy across from me.) The 2011 book will be set in New York City, where Deborah will be having a belated honeymoon. Of course, murder interrupts. Although Margaret herself lived in Brooklyn for years, she was in town last week researching the area where Deborah will be staying in the book: the upper west side.

Because of the area she's staying in, we chose to take Margaret out to lunch at a neat spot called The Café Luxembourg. We all ate way too much, laughed, and talked. We were supposed to discuss the upcoming book, but we didn't get to do too much of that. Instead, we chatted about everything else under the sun. We compared UPS and the USPS, we told stories about tending bar, and we talked about all the different places we'd lived. We even covered the problems caused by an increasingly tall population!

The one writing-related thing we did get to was a discussion of process. Apparently, what brings Deborah and Sigrid together in this book is a box given to Deborah to deliver to Sigrid. But Margaret herself doesn't know what's in the box--that's how she writes. How exciting! Another pantser! (In the writing world, there are plotters who lay everything out ahead of time, and pantsers, who write by the seat of their pants.) Yes, readers, it's a MacGuffin...or is it? I guess we won't really know until next year when the book comes out. But for the moment, the box's contents remain a mystery to all.

What's no mystery, at least to me, is that Margaret will manage to create another fab book out of whatever is in that box. You may remember that last summer, I reviewed Sand Sharks and mentioned that the Deborah Knott books seem to come in two flavors: higher levels of mystery vs. higher levels of character. I rather suspect that this one will fall into the latter category. Either way, I can't wait!

Do We Need More Punctuation?

Some "inventors" think we might all benefit from another version of airquotes/scarequotes or jk *just kidding* or emoticon smileys : )

And these titans of the modern era have invented the SarcMark, a twist on the @ and the ! which will indicate sarcasm to the reader (or viewer in subtitles). They'll allow you to download it to your fonts collection for a nominal fee, according to this Telegraph article.

Now I'm certainly one who gets misunderstood, or understood entirely too well, due to my own ineptitude and gracelessness. However, I'm not sure that more punctuation is the answer when more clarity, a less-snarky attitude, or more clearly over-the-top sarcasm might work as well. Besides, any of those methods have the side benefit of enriching my word power, which could come in handy for someone who'd like to be professionally read. If you've ever had an acquaintance that routinely says awful things followed by "just joking," you know that the addendum doesn't change your impression of what was said, it merely aims to provide post-verbal cover for the sniper from returning fire. And though sarcasm is pop-culture's currency these days, largely because of its ease, I also think most people will also be too lazy to add another symbol to highlight it.

Your thoughts?

Erma Bombeck Writing Competition

The Erma Bombeck Writing Competition is hosted every two years by the Washington-Centerville Library and the University of Dayton in Ohio. Over 1,300 writers from around the world participated in 2008 (I was one of them ~ I had a lot of fun with it. I posted my essay, "When I Was a Kid" on Women of Mystery last May).

The competition is for a personal essay of 450 words or less, in the categories of Humor and Human Interest. Entries are accepted online from anywhere in the world, but must be written in English and not previously published. There is a limit of one entry per person.

Four first place winners (a global and local winner for each category) will be awarded $100.00 and free admission to the Erma Bombeck Writers Workshop in Dayton (a $375 value). Honorable mentions will receive a certificate.

The deadline is January 31, 2010. Winners will be announced in March.

Let us know if you're going to give it a try! Good luck.

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Just in Case

I know many of us have charities dear to our hearts, but just in case you were looking for an established, well- run charity already operating in Haiti, the Haitian Health Foundation is on the ground and serving, even as they're still trying to discover the fate of staff members who were in Port-au-Prince at the time of the earthquake. New York's boroughs have the largest population of Haitians in America, and spreading out from there is also a large Haitian population in and around Norwich, CT, where the HHF is located, and from which they've been operating medical, educational, and community development missions for several years.

The HHF's clinic in Jeremie is miles outside Port-au-Prince, but therefore, its structure experienced only minor damage. They are expecting (and may already be experiencing) an influx of refugees and the injured who must be transported for safety and treatment out of the ruined capital. When I donated online, I received a personal response from the charity's executive director, Marilyn Lowney, explaining what they knew so far and what their plans were, which was unexpected and touching given all the demands upon them right now. Many local articles about this CT Haitian community and its organizations are also available from the News tab at the Charity Navigator link above.

FBF: The Moonstone

The Moonstone was written by Wilkie Collins in 1868 and published serially in All the Year Round, a magazine published by Charles Dickens. It is generally considered to be the first detective novel written in the English language.

The plot centers around a large yellow diamond that a young English woman inherits from an uncle on her eighteenth birthday. The uncle stole the diamond while serving in the English army in India. The diamond, which is extremely valuable and has great religious significance among the Hindu people, disappears from the young woman’s bedroom during a house party and is not recovered for more than a year.

The Moonstone has the ins and outs and twists and turns of a classic mystery novel. Although the resolution is archaic in some ways, it is still an enjoyable book and I really liked the justice in the epilogue.

For more Forgotten Books, click over to Patti Abbott’s blog and look over this weeks list.

Terrie

Books for a Better World

If you're getting a jump on spring cleaning or merely clearing some shelf space for the great books you got as Christmas or Hanukkah gifts, you might want to check out Better World Books.

Better World Books is, according to its website, "a for-profit social enterprise that collects used books and sells them online to raise money for literacy initiatives worldwide." As my friend Maureen McNamara said, it's "a wonderful website where you can buy new and used books at great prices, and there is no charge for shipping. But the best part is that all proceeds go to literacy throughout the world." So far, Better World Books has raised over $7 million for global literacy and saved over 31 million books from clogging up landfills.

Better World Books carries more than 6 million titles. And the books are good ones, not tattered copies of forgotten titles from 30 years ago. They're collected not only from individuals who send them in, but also in organized programs from participating colleges and libraries. Purchases are shipped anywhere in the United States for free and worldwide for just $3.97.

For more information on donating books and to buy books, visit the Better World Books website.

A Mountain of Crumbs - by Elena Gorokhova

This week, Simon and Schuster released A Mountain of Crumbs, Elena Gorokhova’s memoir of growing up in Russia in the 1960s. Elena has received numerous accolades from an impressive list, such as former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins, who says Elena has written the “Russian equivalent of Angela’s Ashes," and J.M. Coetzee, the 2003 Nobel Prize winner in Literature, who calls her memoir, “An enthralling read.”

But the praise doesn’t end there - it's just warming up.

Ursula Hegi, author of Stones From The River, says Elena’s memoir is “Brilliant and moving.”

Carlos Eire, the National Book Award-winning author of Waiting for Snow in Havana, calls A Mountain of Crumbs, “A diamond of a memoir.”

“Almost painful in its authenticity, this hypnotically readable memoir has the sweep and power of a great Russian novel,” says Bruce Jay Friedman, the Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and author of A Father’s Kisses.

Sergei Khrushchev, son of former Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev and senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, says: “An honest, captivating story of a girl from a middle class Soviet family, growing into a young woman, searching for her identity and unable to find it – someone the author, in the words of Turgenev, calls one of the ‘irrelevant people.’ In the spirit of Dostoyevsky, it is also an endlessly Russian quest for self-redemption, the writer’s attempt to justify her decades-old decision to leave the country. I advise you to read the book. It will give you pleasure.”

“Her memoir is proof that the human spirit can triumph even in the most repressive of times," says Edward Hower, author of The New Life Hotel and The Storms of May.

The late Frank McCourt, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angela’s Ashes, offered his tribute to Elena’s memoir: “What is it about A Mountain of Crumbs that makes it so damn readable? Is it the setting – the Soviet Union in the second half of the last century on the verge of disintegration? Is it the author’s way with the English language – her second language? Elena Gorokhova deftly moves us from the intimacies of family life to school, to university, to various bureaucracies with exposure along the way to ballet and theater. This is a rich experience – a personal journey paralleled by huge national changes and ending in a deeply satisfying portrait of peace in America. Those who have traveled from another place to America will find themselves in this rich memoir. Yes, rich is the word I’ve been groping for: Rich.”

Dwight Garner's New York Times book review is entitled: "In The Soviet Union, When Food Was Scarce, Hope Could Still Be Nourished."

A Mountain of Crumbs is an Indie Next Selection for January 2010. Praise for Elena’s memoir continues in the recent issues of Elle and More.

Elena will be a guest on the Leonard Lopate show today, live at 1 p.m. (tune into WNYC 820 AM or 93.9 FM). Her taped interview with Joe Donahue of The Roundtable (WAMC/Northeast Public Radio) will air at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, January 19, and her interview with Marjorie Kehe of the Christian Science Monitor will be featured in a forthcoming podcast.

I was fortunate to meet Elena Gorokhova in 2007 at the Southampton Writers Conference and I'm honored to be her friend. I admire her talent and I am delighted to share in the celebration of the release of A Mountain of Crumbs here at Women of Mystery. Congratulations, Elena!

Two Sentence Tuesday: Winning The Valentine!

M.C. Beaton's latest Hamish Macbeth novel, DEATH OF A VALENTINE, is being released in stores today, but 5 of you lucky creatures are already deep in the sweetmeats. The winners of our latest drawing are:

Kim Hammond

Joy Matkowski

Leigh Neely

Therese de Valence

and Jackie Houchin

*If you haven't yet received an e-mail from me to get your mailing address, check your spam folder. Sometimes, having "Congratulations" in the text is enough to trip its trigger. You can also use the e-mail link from our sidebar to contact me, and Congratulations to all! Thanks to everyone who entered for making this another fun one!

Since I requested verses on doomed love in the contest, my two "sentences" will be the lines submitted by winners Leigh and Jackie, respectively.

No flame burns as bright
As one lit in the heart and out of sight

Some lips are red.
Some moons are blue.
Hamish to wed?
Some say it's true.

As for my own writing this week, my doom is entirely due to my poor dedication. What's worse is that with all this neglect, I'm still not quite caught up yet on my correspondence and other to-dos. The very last two I scribbled are:

"I mean mad Julia Swain. It's her journal from the insane asylum you're holding."

Share any 2 sentences you read and/or wrote this week in the comments, or tell us where to link them, and we'll update throughout the day.

Update: So I didn't exactly update all day. But in the way better late than missed, fly on over to Leah J. Utas' blog to get Grimm and bloody. Yum.

M.C. Beaton Monday: Lochdubh, Scotland

To begin the 25th book in M.C. Beaton's series, Sergeant Hamish Macbeth, the most eligible bachelor in the Scottish village of Lochdubh, is getting married. And to his new constable no less, wee and pretty Josie McSween, who first fell in love with him from afar and got herself transferred into his jurisdiction a year before.

While Josie, who's been raised by her mother "on a diet of romantic fiction," we're told, is primarily assigned to checking on the old folks in the remotest reaches, the most beautiful woman in the highlands-- crowned with a genuine jeweled tiara as the Lammas Queen, after all--dies under terrible circumstances. Poor Annie had no shortage of admirers, but it turns out she knew it well and wasn't afraid of leveraging a conquest. DEATH OF A VALENTINE has plenty love and romance, but mostly the one-sided, twisted, and forbidden varieties. We also follow love's disappointments and frustrations to dissolution and tragic results.

Much of the book's humor, as ever, comes from Hamish's stubborn refusal to be improved or altered in any way and his flight from any woman who'd try. Josie is nothing if not persistent, always able to disappear into her imagination of what might be in the face of what actually is. I tended to read Beaton's criticism of romantic fiction as tongue-in-cheek, since many of her characters aren't behaving any more logically, even the ones who haven't been reading it, and loyal series followers have been tracking with Hamish's affairs of the heart for many books now. I've read a few of these, but not all. Still, I'd be quite surprised if he'd traveled these strange lands before.

As must be in every village mystery, people are not only as they seem, and they've been mightily affected by the temptations from the evil, neighboring city of Strathbane, a place to which Hamish is always trying to avoid "promotion." Not least of Strathbane's detractions is jealous Detective Blair, who doesn't seem to realize that Hamish will give over any credit or honors to be simply left alone in the village police station that also serves as his home. By the time we learn who killed Annie, there are twists and turns aplenty. All of the seven deadlies show up in multiples, including gluttony in the form of various substances' over-consumption. This personal malfeasance unravels other crimes and lives, and creates even more mayhem in characters' attempts at concealment.

The author doesn't dwell on the more graphic aspects or the aftermath, remaining brisk and matter-of-fact in the tale-telling, but there's at least an intellectually shocking amount of unhappiness and widespread decay. Amid this, those people who seem stable and nominally honorable treat their own dear loves rather carelessly. To be frank, Hamish isn't any better at cherishing anything, except perhaps his dog and wild cat, Lugs and Sonsie, respectively, and he will need the extraordinary efforts of his friends and even once-beloved to untangle the lovers' knots in this one.

The official release date is tomorrow, and you can win one of 5 copies we have by simply entering a comment, making sure it either links to, or contains, a valid e-mail address. To add fun to the thread, and because of our recent poetic bents, I decided upon a twist on the good-old roses are red... If you wish, in your comment, add any pithy rhyming couplet of your own on the subject of doomed romance, such as:

Valentine's is about the heart/And who'll you let rip it apart.

We'll collect them through midnight, then pick and announce the winners tomorrow. It's a quickie, so get coupling!

Two Sources/One Book

On Friday, as I often do, I clicked on the Criminal Brief weblog to see what Steve Steinbock has to say about the world of stories. Steve’s take on both writing and reading are always informative and frequently fun. This week he started with the announcement that he had just learned that we are not supposed to hit the spacebar twice at the end of each sentence. (Don’t worry, Steve, I didn’t get the memo either.)

Then he went on to tell us about a book he read recently called Blindness by the Portuguese writer Jose de Sousa Saramago. Steve describes the book as either “a thriller disguised as a parable or a parable described as a thriller,” and tempts us to read Blindness by describing the stylistic elements that Saramago uses. Click here to read Steve’s absorbing article.

A few months ago I marveled right here when I discovered that the Huffington Post had a terrific book section. True to my word, since last November I wander through the HP book section now and again. On Saturday, I came across Kenneth C. Davis’s article Twelve Months of Great Reads.

His premise is to pick a book he loves and align it with each month. For January he recommends The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, since Wharton’s birthday is January 24th.

For March he chose Alice Walker’s The Color Purple in honor of International Women’s Day, which is March 8th.

As a birthday present to himself, Davis selected The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro to celebrate the month of May.

And for November—wait for it—he singled out Blindness by Jose Saramago, whose birthday is November 16th.

So, I guess I’m going to have to find a copy of Blindness to discoverfor myself just what has mesmerized two men of such distinguished taste.

Terrie