Researchers Find Evidence of Non-Author Tweet Account

In a shocking announcement this morning, scientists at the Benton Coldwater research facility, deep underneath Geneva, claim to have captured evidence of a non-author twitter user. Though it may be many months before independent confirmation is provided, other research teams are already applying for grants that will help them do just that.

The team was startled when their twitter screen suddenly displayed that holy grail of researchers everywhere, a non-book tweet. ‘Thinking of getting some blueberries…’ the electrifying missive declared. “We almost missed it,” admitted senior researcher, Howard Anthidae, “but now that we’ve led the way, it will be up to others to re-create the conditions and prove us right or wrong.”

“Our lab under Sudbury may be just the ticket,” enthused senior Canadian researcher Tim Wharton. “Many have claimed such a user to be a theoretical impossibility, often going so far as to compare them to leprechauns, elves or honest politicians. Once we have the funding to buy a computer, we’ll get to work on filtering out the book tweets. We just do the pure science,” he added. “It will be up to the business world to figure out how to monetize it.”

Book Trailers - Are They Worth It?

Lately, everybody is putting up book trailers. They range in quality from a couple of stills set to music to a full production with actors and licenced music. Even some of the big publishing houses are springing for trailers when a new title comes out from an established author. I recently saw one for a writer whose work I have been reading for a decade now. I have to admit, I started hearing alarm bells when I saw it.

The bells weren't part of the soundtrack, they were in my head as I watched a couple of actors with bathmats strapped around their waists (they were supposed to be cavemen). They spent a couple of minutes wandering through the forest and starting fires. It was almost enough to scare me away from the book. If I hadn’t enjoyed her previous work so much, I probably would have passed on her latest title based on my impression of the trailer. I bought it and found it to be the worst edited thing I’ve ever read from a major house. My wife, also a big fan of this author was annoyed that we had paid so much for an eBook only to find that it was such a mess but I digress.

As I said, if it wasn’t an author that I’ve read before, I wouldn’t have bought the book. Maybe a decent or really good trailer would pull me in to read a new author, but a poorly made trailer would just scare me off.
I like the idea of doing trailers for my titles but it scares me to think how easy it is to chase away a potential first time reader. I have one for my ‘Black Ships’ short story  - ‘Metamorphosis’ and I can think of a few things that I would like to change. As an example, the text panel appears too soon after the title animation and messes up the pacing.

Fortunately, I created the animations using Blender, an open-source 3D animation program that allows me to go back and edit the environments and re-render.

I am still a new user to Blender but if anyone who sees the video has a comment or critique, I would welcome their input. I realize that it still needs work.

So the question that a lot of writers are probably asking is – “Do trailers do anything for the title?”
With bookstores closing, we need a new way to increase title visibility.

If the answer is yes, the second question is – “What kind of things are good for a trailer and what should we avoid?”

I think hiring someone to stumble around the woods in a bathmat is probably not going to help.
Showing faces probably takes away from the reader’s prerogative to imagine the characters.
Showing some of the architecture could help to set the mood?

Let me know what you think, and what you may have found from your own experiments.

eBook Cover Design Software

I’ve just finished loading “The Black Ships” on the Kindle Direct site and find myself at loose ends. I can’t get my head back into “Firebringer” just yet so I thought I would put together a quick post about eBook covers. After using Paint.net to do the cover for “Prometheus bound”, I had planned to use it for my latest release - until I discovered an amazing bit of open source software called Blender.

This really is more than just a piece of software, it’s a community. Though the program may look a little intimidating at first glance, there are hundreds of brilliant, helpful users who take the time to create video tutorials. Following the lessons from such visionaries as Andrew Price at his site Blender Guru or the insanely gifted crew over at Blender Cookie, I soon found myself creating realistic images from three dimensional scenes that I built with my own stubby fingers (I wasn’t born to play the piano – that’s for sure).

I’m not ashamed to say that I let my imagination run amok. I was deep in the midst of a complicated scene of a partially destroyed ISS habitat on the surface of Mars when I received a notice on my blog dashboard of a new post from David Gaughran. David’s blog is always worth a read and the post in question included a reminder of the importance of good cover design. He steered readers to Joel Friedlander’s site where, among other things, the importance of simplicity was stressed in the design of a cover that would display at less than an inch in height on the retailer sites.

I took another look at the complicated scene that I had spent an entire day building. It would never work for an eBook cover. I went back to the drawing board and came up with a simple concept – an orbital image showing the sun rising over Mars. Three hours later, I was looking at my new cover.

After I loaded the book, I realized that I could animate the cover. Ten minutes later, I had a short video version of the cover with some music and ambient ship noise. Sure, I can’t put that into the book itself (not currently, anyway) but I can load it to the video link on the KDP book page.

Meanwhile, I can use the various three dimensional models created while learning the software and generate video sequences from them to build a book trailer.

I’ll keep you posted on how that works out.

PS. Animated cover below, not much but it's a start.

The Christmas Season - One Hundred Marketing Channels and Nothing On

With Christmas just around the corner (and down the hall a bit), I find myself a little overwhelmed by the vast array of ‘Must Have’ gadgets. Just looking for an eBook reader is an exercise in frustration. If I want to use eInk, then I have to go with one of the walled gardens like Kobo, Sony or Amazon. If I want something less restrictive, then I have to pay three times the price to get an android tablet and load the apps that I want.

I almost fell for the marketing and bought an android tablet from one of the walled gardens but found that it was no different than it’s eInk brethren. Sure, you can surf the web but if you think you can install any app you want just because it’s running android, you’re in for a shock.

Buyer beware.

DVD’s are even worse. The latest transformers release is a pared down, movie only disc with no special features. The marketing team doesn’t even bother to come up with a catchy name for this obvious double dipping anymore. You will buy this AND the special edition, or Michael Bay will be very unhappy with you.

Not wanting to fall for this, I have made my own version by mixing random NASCAR crashes with scenes from “Blow down” where various buildings are demolished.  I feel the character development is on par with the original and the environmental impact is reduced because I don’t intend to burn it onto a disc.

Speaking of environmental impact, anyone remember the “Earth Day” version of Avatar? How exactly is it environmentally friendly to release a bare bones DVD on Earth Day when you plan to dangle an extended version in front of everyone’s face a few weeks later? They even expected you to throw the extended version in a landfill and go buy the 3D version when it came out. I hear that it comes with a free lunch with the director who will lecture you about your carbon footprint (you have been buying too many copies of the same movie, after all…).

I'm trying to take my lead from the folks who read indie novels. They tend to ignore the endless marketing and self promotion and do their own research. They prefer to rely on word of mouth, review blogs and random chance to find good books.

Who knows, if you ask around, you might just find out what your friends and family really want, rather than just getting whatever the local tech store tells you to buy.

Indigo Sells Kobo

I woke this morning to find this in my inbox - Kobo sold to Japanese company, Rakuten Inc. I am literally speechless (perhaps in part because I write in the basement and there is nobody to talk to down here). In a reporting period that showed overall decrease in revenues, sales in the Kobo division are up 219% over the same quarter last year. In their annual report for 2011, Kobo is front and center; part of their bold march into the future of reading.  This move comes as a bit of a surprise.

Indigo has seen some growth from their general merchandise which would explain why a quarter of their floor plans now seem to be filled with mugs, decorative globes and knick-knackery. In their latest release, they have indicated that they will be focusing more on this part of the business.  I’m not sure they can sustain mug and notebook sales if customers stop coming in to look for books.

In the interest of fairness, Indigo CEO Heather Reisman recently revealed in an interview with Canadian Business that she doesn’t believe they have the war chest needed to keep the Kobo division competitive. The new Japanese owners are talking about putting over a hundred million behind Kobo’s next phase.

Perhaps this is the right move for Kobo, with this new financial backing, they might be able to cut back on their backlog of pending titles. Publishers interested in doing short term sale prices would be able to do so without having to keep their titles off the Kobo shelves (pricing delays have been a bone of contention for some time now). As an owner of a Kobo Touch I have to say that it is a truly excellent product and I hope to see it succeed. Still, this all seems unfortunate for Indigo.

Even so, I wish them all the best (after all the acquisitions, they are pretty much the only place left in town where I can buy books).

And Someday, Our Way of Life…

Polybius stood beside Scipio Africanus as the general surveyed the burning carcass that was Carthage. As Rome’s greatest enemy went up in flames Scipio wept and grasped his companion’s hand. “It is a glorious sight,” the General explained, “but I confess a dreadful foreboding that the same fate will someday befall our country.”

He was right and if Polybius had not been an historian, we may never have known of Scipio’s moment of prescience.

His words are more than a famous example of ‘I told you so’, they are an immutable law of nature. Just as generations grow old and pass away, so do civilizations. Whether it is the Aztecs, the Babylonians, the Egyptians or the Romans; all great civilizations carry their ultimate doom within their genetic makeup.

The same is true of our current system.

Our economic systems are rotten at the core and the only thing our elected leaders can think of is to pour more money down the hole. They gave bailouts to the big corporations, allowing the chief executives to protect their hefty bonuses while the public get nothing. Meanwhile, Greece teeters on the brink, French banks tiptoe around the word ‘run’ and Germany is printing deutsche marks so they can be ready to leave the Euro at a moment’s notice.

The rampant consumerism that has propped up the system is grinding to a halt. Most of the driveways in my city are filled with the owner’s vehicles. This is because their garages are filled with jet-skis, ATV’s weekend motorcycles and last year’s LCD TV’s (gotta have LED now…). How much of that was paid with cash and how much involved a payment plan that still bleeds money from their accounts?

When the system finally falls apart, how far will we be knocked back?

I ask that question every time I look at my children.

The Sleeping Giant Awakes - eBooks and India - Pt 3

Back in July I posted about the potential impact that India would have on the eBook market if a device were offered with the right price tag. Then in July I continued with a second installment noting , among other things, the potential for the educational system.  

Imagine my surprise when I saw an article at The Passive Voice announcing that the Indian government has inked a deal with Montreal tech firm Datawind. I did a quick search and found a flurry of corroborating sources such as this article from PC World. The deal is for an initial order of 100,000 Aakash Android tablets at an initial price of $50 per unit though Datawind believes they can bring the price down with higher volume. The initial order is believed to be destined for a subsidised program at the nation’s universities.

As to volume, the government expects to buy eight to ten Million units before the current fiscal year end. That price is going to start sliding down to the sweet spot pretty fast.

Though the unit can handle web browsing, video and double as a cell phone, it can also handle eBook apps. Remember, were talking about the second largest population on Earth and with a unit price closing in on that magic 0.5% of per capita GDP, we are going to see a massive shift in how books are consumed.

Every now and then, I manage to anticipate the news. I just usually don’t get excited enough to write about it…

Death of a Salesman - Part 2 Bookstores Tired of Selling Books

In years past, I used to work for a company that sold general merchandise. It made the lion’s share of it’s revenue from groceries and by lion’s share – I’m talking about somewhere between thirty five and forty Billion dollars a year. I know, you’re thinking ‘Andrew, that’s pretty vague. A Billion here, a Billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money.’ Well, you’re right but I can’t be bothered to look up the exact numbers on their latest quarterly statements and l like throwing Billions around like candy.

Anyway, when my employer realized how much higher the profit margin was for GM, they decided to give it more space. They did this by building larger stores. People kept coming to buy groceries but they started to buy a lot more GM (bathmats, pillows, strollers, automotive, clothing, books…). Profits increased and shareholders were happy.

The reason I mention this is because of what I am seeing in the bookstore down the street. Over the last four years, I have noticed that the impulse purchase racks by the checkouts have been multiplying. At some point a couple of years ago they evolved, becoming heavy duty floor displays and they moved out onto the sales floor. Firmly established in their new habitat, they continue to displace the weaker species – books.

With eBooks doubling their market share every year, you would think they would reflect that in the pricing  but they don’t. Publishers often list eBooks for 60% more than the paperbacks. So you have the industry cannibalizing the eBook market to bolster sales of paperbacks even while reducing the square footage where those sales happen.

They are killing their business at both ends.

Frankly, when I see the type of impediment pricing I don’t think “I’ll just spend twenty minutes getting to the bookstore to buy the paperback like a good little consumer.”

I log onto Amazon or Smashwords and look for a new indie author (more on that in the next post).

We tend to assume that businesses know what they’re doing. In reality, this tends to be false. If you need further proof, then have a look at the bookstore down the street. They are slowly but surely getting out of the business of selling books. Roughly a quarter of their floor plan is dedicated to selling general merchandise, and that’s not counting the space taken up by the Starbucks franchise. Where books used to sit, we find coffee mugs, note holders, and various knick-knacks.

In another couple of years, this will reach a tipping point. People like to go shopping for books and sure, they might pick up a mug while they’re heading for the checkout but nobody will say; ‘Let’s go to the knick-knack store’.

A shame, really. They might have decided to pick up a paperback at the impulse rack by the checkouts.

Publishing to KDP using Mobipocket Creator

After I had finished converting my book at Smashwords, I decided to take a crack at converting for Kindle Direct Publishing. From looking around, I soon found that the best way to go about it (for me, anyway) was to use Mobipocket Creator  (free). Just so you don’t rush into this, be aware that you will need to do some HTML editing in order to get your table of contents and NCX to work. It that seems daunting to you, don’t give up just yet.

Before you decide to sit back and wait for the long heralded Smashwords/Amazon deal, take a side trip over to CJs Easy as Pie Kindle Tutorials and read your way through the excellent series of tutorials that are posted there. I’m not sure who exactly CJ is but from the profile picture It would seem that the author is some kind of sentient winnebago. Species aside, a determined KDP publisher will find everything needed to get their book ready to launch.

Some things to keep in mind first:

1 – Mobipocket wasn’t compatible with IE9 when I used it a couple of months ago. I had to de-install IE9 and that allows IE8 to get back to work (it was still there all along – just hiding in the shadows).

2 – You will need to save your book as an HTML  document and then clean up all the garbage that isn’t needed for your eBook (CJ can help you there as well).

3 – You will need to do a fair bit of editing in HTML (See CJ’s Tutorials) so if you feel comfortable with the idea, make sure you have a decent HTML editor. I used Komodo Edit (Free – open source) and found it very easy to work with.

4 – Use the kindle Previewer from Amazon to see how the book will look and work before you upload it. Use it to check the cover page as well as the functionality of the Table of Contents and the NCX. Make sure the progress bar shows at the bottom and go through each page of your book. This is your last chance to make your first impression.

This process took me the better part of three days, thanks largely to the issue with IE9. Had that not been the case, I probably would have converted Prometheus Bound in a day. If I had to do it over again (and I will in December), it would take an afternoon.         

If you feel up to it, then best of luck and be sure to leave a comment on CJ’s tutorial site; that winnebago worked very hard to share it’s knowledge with us humans!

Bonus without Borders - Fear and Loathing at the Bookstore

By now, everyone is aware of the continuing saga unfolding at Borders. The latest twist, just reported in Publishers Weekly gives us valuable insight into the underlying sickness that continues to infect our economic engine – greed may or may not be good, but stupid doesn’t go away when you put on a suit and tie.

At a time when rank and file employees are fighting to get their severance pay, their former employer is fighting in court to ensure that the top fifteen management employees get severance bonuses of $125,000 each. To put that in perspective, it’s two and a half times the annual salary of one of their store managers.

What makes them worth so much money and why do we continue to accept such bloated compensation as reasonable? Back in April, Bloomberg reported on how many millions would go to the top five executives based on how much money they could return to the shareholders. Does anyone really believe that executives are worth millions a year?

A surprising number of them turn out to be hopelessly inadequate and got there simply because they know the right phrases and when to use them. They talk about creating value and having passion for the job, but at the end of the day, they make a ton of bad decisions and end up jumping ship with as much loot as they can carry.

To carry the metaphor just a bit further, consider that those large severance bonuses are justified by all their hard work on behalf of the debtors (while employees fight in court for severance pay). It’s little different than the officers of a cruise ship ramming an iceberg and then taking one life boat each, brandishing their flare guns to keep the passengers from joining them.

They like to put their feet up, and they deserve it – don’t they?

Publishing an eBook with Smashwords

At Smashwords

Like so many aspiring authors, I felt that I had a really good idea for my debut story. After six years of trying to write part time, I finally took the plunge and began to work full time on the story. After so many years of struggling to get the story sorted out and find my voice, I was alarmed at how quickly everything was coalescing.

I really needed to find an agent. I had been putting it off because I had heard so many stories about how hard it was to find a good agent. The struggle to find a willing publisher would be even worse. I was starting to realize that finishing and editing the book wasn’t even half the battle. It would be years before my story ever saw a sale.

Then, as I surfed the various sites and blogs looking for advice I started to stumble onto authors like Joe Konrath and David Gaughran. David is an excellent author and recent convert to ePublishing. His blog and his latest eBook Let’s Get Digital is a highly inspirational resource for eAuthors. Joe is a well established author and one of the leading prophets of the eBook revolution. His blog, A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing is something akin to a masters degree in self publishing your work. This is where I first heard of Smashwords.

Smashwords is a game changer. For an author new to the digital publishing world, getting your book into the major retail sites can seem just as daunting as the traditional publishing process. Smashwords takes that headache off your hands by converting your file for you and shipping it out the major sales sites. They have an automated ‘meatgrinder’ program that converts your file into all the major formats, and human staff that vet the file. Once your file is shown to be free of major flaws (they aren’t editing it for you, just a review of cover quality and general appearance) your book ships out to major retailers. There is no charge for this conversion, they get paid by a commission of 15% for each sale. Not bad when you realize that a traditional author would be lucky to get 15% percent of the sale, let alone 85%!

Congratulations! Just like that, you are a published author!

Don’t go rushing off to buy that bottle of Champaign just yet. You still have to put in some work to get ready for the conversion. You still need to format your book. Fortunately, Mark Coker’s Smashwords Style Guide provides a comprehensive review of all that needs to be done in order to get your masterpiece into premium distribution.

Nonetheless, I did hit a few small snags.

The first was the page breaks. I had put in page breaks to keep the chapter headings at the top of the screen. The style guide warns that the breaks might be stripped out during conversion and that you should put a couple of hard returns before and after so that some separation will be preserved. My problem was that too many of my chapters were ending so close to the end of a page that I had empty pages between chapters. I fixed this by taking out the two hard returns that sat in front of the page break.

The next issue that I came up against was my navigation points. Despite trying to be careful, I somehow managed to double up on one of my bookmarks and ended up with an extra chapter tag that led nowhere. I spent the better part of a day trying to track it down (the engineer in me likes complicated problems). I finally accepted that I could blow away the whole index and rebuild it in an hour. Finally – success – sort of.

I failed my first vetting because I had colored text. I didn’t figure the dark grey text in my chapter headings would be an issue, but Smashwords is very clear about text needing to be black. Colors can disappear on some screens. I changed them and re-submitted.

I failed my second vetting because I had colored text. I was kind of confused by this one – I had selected the entire document and changed the whole thing to black font so what could I have missed? Then I looked at the very end where the ‘About A.G. Claymore’ links were. I had to change the hyperlinks from blue to black. I fiddled around for a few frustrating hours before I realized that they weren’t going to change colors unless I changed the underlying hyperlink style in Word.

Finally, I had a convertible document. It went back through the meatgrinder and into review status on my dashboard. Within a couple of days I was pleased to see my status upgraded to ‘approved’! The book is now for sale at all major retailers.

All you have to do to start the process is – well – start the process. The two or three days that I spent formatting the first novel will likely only take a few hours for the sequel.

The only question you have to ask is this; do you want a traditional publishing deal where your books might get a couple of months shelf time for pennies a sale, or do you want them to sell as eBooks for as long as you want, for dollars a sale?

Smashwords can help you with that, when you’re ready.  

Death of a Salesman - Legacy Publishers and eBook Pricing

 Looking through the Kobo site, I noticed a strange thing - the prices are upside down.

As an example, Robert Ludlum’s Bourne Objective (Okay, it’s really Eric Van Lustbader’s work at this point) sells for $14.99 as an eBook.  In a world where the vast majority of self published eBook authors are trending towards the magic $2.99 price point, this seemed like a real kick in the teeth. Out of curiosity, I decided to check what a paperback would cost. Going to their main site, I was stunned to see that the paper back retails for $10.00 – 67% of the eBook price. On the face of it, this doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Then I remembered David Gaughran’s analysis in let’s Get Digital. The big publishers are trying to protect the sales of their physical books. That means you pay for paper, printing, distribution and sales outlet overhead even when you’re simply downloading a copy of the file off their server.

So, what does this mean for the major publishers? With the deep discounts on physical books and the prohibitively high pricing on eBooks, it doesn’t seem like much will be left for the author. How long before the Van Lustbaders of the writing world look at the money they could be making if they left the big firms? It’s not like they need the ‘marketing reach’ of the traditional publishing houses. They are already known brands. They could move their stories as eBooks far more effectively if they weren’t up against the pricing policies of their publishers.

Having worked for a company with yearly revenues of more than $35 Billion, I have witnessed some breathtakingly bad decisions. The logic may have worked within the confines of the decision, but it often failed to account for the company’s health as a whole. This may be happening now with the big firms. They think chasing everyone away from the lifeboats will save the ship but there really is no saving the ship – those lifeboats are their future. Maybe it’s not the final straw for the legacy publishers, but it could be one of the nails in their coffins.

How long before we start to see an exodus of major authors?

Phone Scams & Hide-a-Beds

Skype Phone by re-ality
Under Attribution 2.5 Generic License

Another one of those calls – Because you are a valued (insert random company name here) customer you are entitled to receive (insert wildly unlikely reward here).  When I was working at a desk job, I often went along with it just to waste their time. I would ask a million questions and act excited while slowly giving out false credit card information. I figure I’m entitled to a little compensation: they are trying to rob me after all.

The last time it happened at work, I spent five minutes on the phone with the guy, trying to convince him to buy an old hide-a-bed couch that we had in our cellar. I was kind of amazed that he stayed on the line for so long. He kept telling me that he might be interested in the couch, but could he please have the information needed to sort out my credit card problem first. I finally told him that I had to go because I didn’t  think he was serious about the couch at all.

I even had someone claiming to be from the bank, except it wasn’t the bank that I dealt with. “A problem with my account?” I said, anger creeping into my voice. “The proceeds from selling the condo are in there,” I yelled, as my co-worker stuck her head over the cubicle wall with a raised eyebrow. “Are you telling me that you lost over two hundred grand of my money?” I could almost hear the heart palpitations on the other end of the line as my would-be thief imagined what he could do with all that cash. I kept him on the line for at least ten minutes while I went to look for my account information.

When I got back with a fresh mug of coffee I could hear him talking to someone in the background in hushed tones. I tapped the phone on the desk and they went silent. “OK, I have my statement here, what exactly do you need?” He was in the middle of telling me how I needed to give him the account number and online banking log-in when I cut him off. “Wait, did you say (insert random bank name here)?” When he confirmed that it was indeed that bank, I delivered the Coup de Grace. “Oh, I my account is with (insert MY bank name here). You must have the wrong number!” I sounded SO relieved. “You really scared me there!” I told him with the air of one who is re-living a frightening moment with an old companion – he hung up without another word.

It seems to me that the police don’t really seem to take this stuff seriously. They repeatedly claim that they aren’t able to do anything about it. Is it really that easy to hide from the police even when they have your phone number? Why do police shows like Law & Order – Elevator Inspection Unit always show someone sitting there with a pile of gear, tracing the bad guys call? Shouldn’t it be more realistic?

“Got the number, Captain! 555-1234.”

“Well, nothing we can do with it - our hands are tied.”

Kind of annoying really. With the money they blew on that tracing gear, they could have bought my old hide-a-bed for their break-room.

At least the Canadians have come up with a “do not call” registry. You send in your phone number and it goes on the list. Companies then have to subscribe to the list so they know who they can legally call. Even better, the scam artists subscribe to the list so they know who they can illegally call – no more random dialing for them! Personally, I can’t wait for the “Don’t mug me because I walk dark streets at night with tons of cash in my pocket registry” Should be a roaring success…

Anyway, I have to go. I’m helping the King of a small European nation move his cash out of the country. All I have to do is put enough seed money in his account here, so the Bank will give him a higher interest rate when he transfers his money.

Sounded like a really nice guy on the phone…