Flying Bombs heading for an e-book store near you

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Cora

My retro-pulp hero, the Silencer, is back. Hardworking pulp writer by day and steel-masked vigilante by night, Richard Blakemore keeps Depression era New York City safe from all sorts of criminal low-lives. After being almost executed for a crime he didn’t commit, Richard now takes on the very symbol of Dieselpunk retro-futurism, the Zeppelin.

Flying Bombs 1936: A madman calling himself the Master of the Air threatens to let death and destruction rain down upon New York City. No one take him seriously, until an airship taxi suddenly explodes the very next day. But was it an accident or sabotage? Police Captain Justin O’Grady and the masked vigilante known as the Silencer both investigate the case. But it’s a race against time, because the Master of the Air has already set his sights on a new target: The Zeppelin Imperator, the largest airship ever built…

For more information, visit the dedicated Flying Bombs page, which includes lots of background information and links about the history of airships.

Buy it for the low price of 2.99 US-dollars or Euro or 1.99 Pound Sterling at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Omnilit/AllRomance ebooks and XinXii.

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Indie Publishing Links for the Day of German Unity

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Cora

October 3 is the Day of German Unity, which commemorates the German reunification on October 3, 1990.

Since it’s a fairly new holiday and one that never really had an emotional connection for many people (I explain why here), there is not much of a celebration culture apart from the rotating official celebration which is held in a different state capital every year.

However, if you want to celebrate this day and are looking for a suitable read, then I have something for you: My novelette The Other Side of the Curtain is a spy story set in East Germany in 1966.

Bob Mayer compares how various writers’ organizations determine who is and isn’t a professional writer and how even the most successful of self-published writers are still excluded.

Indeed, I remember that when Amanda Hocking’s success was making waves this spring, someone called out John Scalzi, currently president of the Science Fiction Writers of America, on whether the SFWA would accept Amanda Hocking as a member. Scalzi’s response was something defensive along the lines of no, because that’s against the SFWA guidelines. However, considering how successful many indies are on their own, I wonder how useful a traditional writers organization like SFWA or RWA or MWA will be for them anyway.

At the romance site Dear Author, Jane Litte asks whether readers who buy an indie-published book at 99 cents then go on to buy the author’s other books.

I find it interesting that one of Jane’s complaints with the indie books she tried is that the author may have multiple books out, but since the books are in different genres, she doesn’t want to try them. The advice she offers is the old chestnut not to change genres and to use a pen name, if you have to. Ah, but the beauty of indie publishing is that we can write whatever genre catches our fancy and don’t have to bother with pen names except in very extreme cases.

Dean Wesley Smith wonders why some writers would not spend the time to learn about indie publishing. I wonder the same thing, when I see how many writers just let their out of print backlist languish, when it could be earning them money and gaining them new fans.

Because while there is a bit of a learning curve and the first few e-books take time, it’s not all that difficult. Not to mention fun. Never mind that there are plenty of great free resources out there for anybody who wants to give indie publishing a try. Actually that’s a subject for a future post.

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September e-Book sales figures – and a couple of links

Posted on October 2, 2011 by Cora

October has begun which means that it’s not just time for falling leaves, warmer clothes and the annual autumn fair but also for the monthly sales report.

In September 2011, I sold 14 e-books across all titles and platforms, up from 9 in August. The detailed breakdown is as follows:

Amazon US: 11
Amazon UK: 1
Omnilit/AllRomance: 2

My sales at Amazon US, which is the biggest market by far, have more than doubled compared to August, though overall sales are still low. But then, it is well known that most self-published e-books sell in low numbers in the first few months, then sales pick up. What is more, the best way to increase sales is to get more work out there.

I certainly followed that particular bit of advice, because I published two more novelettes in September, bringing the total number of available Pegasus Pulp titles up to 8.

My bestselling story continues to be Outlaw Love, which makes up a third of all books I sold so far. I have no idea why that particular story seems to sell so much better than all the others, particularly since Outlaw Love is the only story I have for sale that was not previously published, because the market for lesbian western short fiction is very limited.

There have also been a few new posts and developments on the hot topics of the day:

Paul Jessup is rather underwhelmed by Amazon‘s recent Kindle announcement, because – as he points out – neither the Kindle Fire nor the Kindle Touch are exactly innovative, since both copy existing Nook models sold by Barnes & Noble. I hadn’t really made the connection, but then I don’t pay attention to Barnes & Noble, because I can neither buy their stuff nor sell my stuff with them anyway. Come to think of it, it is telling that the Kindle Fire and Touch are only sold in the US, i.e. the only country where Barnes & Noble are a serious competitor to Amazon.

Jeff Vandermeer and his invisible pal Evil Monkey respond to J.M. McDermott’s posts about the digital future of publishing at SF Signal and on McDermott’s own site.

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I’m not a content-creating brand: Two additions to yesterday’s post

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Cora

I have a couple of additions to yesterday’s post:

First of all, Kristine Kathryn Rusch dissects the Mike Shatzkin post I linked to yesterday.

Interestingly, I had not made the connection between Shatzkin’s “content-creating brands” and indie authors, partly because “content-creating brand” sounds like an insult and partly because Shatzkin linked to a New York Times article about newspapers and news websites such as the Huffington Post publishing e-books culled from their online content. By the way – and I’m probably the only person on the planet who did not know this – the Huffington Post, though big and wealthy, doesn’t even bother to pay its “content-creating brands” for their articles. That’s right, one of the biggest online news/magazine sites, does not pay its writers.

Yesterday, I also linked to J.M. McDermott’s two part post on digital publishing at SF Signal. Now J.M. McDermott has posted a second addendum stating that no, he does not have any bias against publishing. He apparently felt the need to make that second addendum, because in the comments to one of the SF Signal posts he was accused of viewing the traditional publishing system as “the enemy” with a slight jab that his view might be coloured by the fact that he himself “was forced to go the indie route himself”. It’s also very interesting who the source of that comments is.

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A Big Day for e-Book News

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Cora

I missed the big announcement, because I was rather busy with this little thing called “real life”, but surely you have all heard the news by now:

Amazon has dropped the price of the regular Kindle to 79 US-dollars and introduces two new products, the Kindle Touch, priced at 99 US-dollars, and the full colour Kindle Fire (a.k.a. the Amazon tablet) for 199 US-dollars.

Once again, international Amazon customers lose out, because the Kindle Touch and Fire won’t be available internationally yet, including Amazon UK and Amazon Germany. However, lost in all the uproar is the news that Amazon Germany has dropped the price of the regular Kindle to 99 Euros and now offers the Kindle with a German language menu (as well as English, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese). Though Germans have to wait till October 12 to buy their new Kindle.

Today’s announcement goes a long way towards addressing the issue I discussed in my last post, namely that e-readers are still too expensive for many people. Though even the current price is still way out of range for the very poor. And people in other countries, particularly non-Western countries, will have to deal with the issue that with shipping costs and import duties, even the cheapest Kindle will still cost a lot more than 79 US-dollars, if Amazon even accepts orders from some countries at all. Still, it’s a step forward.

At these prices, I may actually buy one some day soon (right now I use Kindle for PC, when I want to read an e-book). Not the tablet, though, because I have no need for tablets. What is more, I will never give up on print books, because that’s my preferred format for reading (and American publishers had better damn well continue printing them). However, many indie books and books from small digital publishers don’t come out in print and this will make it easier to read them.

Besides, this announcement is very exciting for every author, whether traditionally or indie-published, because with the Kindle price drop there will suddenly be a whole lot of people with brand-new Kindles and nothing to read. Which means that they have to buy books.

In fact, if you have bought one of the new Kindles and are looking for something to read, why not consider one of my books. They’re inexpensive and quite good, if I dare say so myself.

Amazon has made another announcement today, that has been somewhat lost among all the news about the new cheap Kindles, namely that the Amazon Associates program now allows its users to open their own online store powered by Amazon. Thanks to Passive Guy for pointing this out. I have been planning to eventually sell my books via my own site for a while now and this makes it a lot easier. Indeed, I will very likely be playing with Amazon‘s aStore program long before I ever play with one of their Kindles.

So what does all this mean for the future? There’s a lot of speculation, but right now nobody seems to know for sure. Indeed, Mike Shatzkin discusses what we do or don’t know about the future four years into the e-book revolution.

Indeed, the only certain prediction we can make is that amount of “gloom and doom – Rejoice/lament, for publishing as we know it, the bookstore and the print book itself are dying” articles will increase. Case in point: Here is an article from a site called TechCrunch about the dystopian future of bookstores.

With excitement building over Amazon‘s new e-reader and tablet ventures building over the past few days, there have also been discussions of e-readers and electronic indie publishing in venues that don’t normally discuss these subjects. For example, the British tabloid Daily Mail or rather their weekend edition, the Mail on Sunday, has discovered indie publishing. The article isn’t bad by the standards of the Daily Mail, though there are some bloopers, e.g. Saffina Desforges is renamed Saffi Griffith for some reason. The comments are full of prejudice, but by Daily Mail standards they’re actually quite civilized.

Inspired by the Amazon announcements, the Guardian asks whether the new Kindles will stoke the fires of e-reading (I bet they loved coming up with that headline). The article mainly focuses on the Kindle Fire, i.e. the full colour tablet model, but it’s not bad otherwise and gives a nice shout-out to indie author Lexi Revellian.

Meanwhile, at SF Signal,J.M. McDermott has an extensive two-part post about the digital future of publishing. Part 1 is here, Part 2 is here. There is also an addendum at McDermott’s own site.

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Why we still need print books and mass market paperbacks

Posted on September 25, 2011 by Cora

First of all, writer Richard Parks takes on the eternal issue of e-book pricing. Basically, he believes that “professional” e-books will remain expensive, because publishers have expenses.

Fantasy writer Seanan McGuire addresses an issue that is all too often forgotten in the debate about print versus e-books and the “death of the print book”, namely that e-books and e-readers are inaccessible for most poor people yet print books, whether second hand or via the library, are not.

The MIT’s Technology Review, surely not a tech-skeptical venue, makes a similar point.

This is also part of the reason why the sheer glee with which some e-publishing advocate seem to greet the impending death of print or the impending death of the mass market paperback disturbs me. Because not only do I like print books, we also need print books for poor people in western countries who cannot afford e-readers and for people in developing countries where e-readers might be unaffordable (never mind unavailable) for a large part of the population.

This is also why we need to keep the mass market paperback format. Because mass market paperbacks are the cheapest format and therefore the format most likely to be read by poor people, including kids and teenagers who are strapped for cash.

I don’t come from a poor family – my parents are middle class and comfortably well off. Yet my reading, particularly once I switched to English books, was entirely mass market paperbacks to the point that I did not know there actually were fiction hardcovers in the US. And every single one of those mass market paperbacks was a significant investment for me due to import and exchange rate costs. I could never have afforded hardcovers at the time.

Finally – and this is something else that is easily forgotten – mass market paperbacks are often the only not to mention the cheapest format in which English language books are available outside the USA and UK, because mass market paperbacks are the lightest and cheapest to transport where physical books still have to be shipped. Of course, e-books will eliminate the need to physically ship a book to a distant location (or not, as the Amazon surcharge illustrates). But e-readers are still unaffordable or even complete unavailable in many countries around the world.

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Talk like a pirate, vote like a pirate, read like a pirate

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Cora

Arr, it be International Talk like a Pirate Day and at least in Germany, pirates have gone respectable and even entered the Berlin city parliament, as I blogged yesterday.

As for our political pirates, Der Spiegel, National Public Radio and the Washington Post all offer profiles of the new party, though the Washington Post mistakenly assumes that the Pirate Party has entered the German parliament when it’s really just the Berlin state parliament. Arr, there be a difference.

Deutsche Welle also has an interview with Pirate Party chairman Sebastian Nerz.

From political pirates to fictional ones: I’ve long had a soft spot for fictional pirates, which was likely caused by growing up with the legend of Klaus Störtebeker and watching way too many vintage swashbuckler films on TV. And of course, I’ve also written pirate stories as well as an (still incomplete) novel about science fictional pirates.

Two of my pirate stories are available again in e-book form, the fantasy pirates of Rites of Passage and the Errol Flynn inspired 16th century pirates of Hostage to Passion. Both are short reads, perfectly suited to bring a bit of pirate flavour to International Talk like a Pirate Day.

Rites of Passage

Teen pirate passion under the light of two moons

Buy it for the low price of 0.99 US-dollars, Euros or Pound Sterling at Amazon.com, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, OmniLit/AllRomance ebooks or XinXii

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An infamous English pirate and the beautiful Spanish hostage who touched his heart like no other

Buy it for the low price of 2.99 US-dollars or Euros or 1.99 Pound Sterling at Amazon.com, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, OmniLit/AllRomance ebooks and XinXii.

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Author versus Publisher – the Female Edition

Posted on September 18, 2011 by Cora

In the past week, there have been some interesting developments in the field of author versus publisher conflicts with agents caught in the middle. All of the current conflicts involve female writers for some reason:

A literary agent responds to writer Kiana Davenport, who had her publishing contract canceled when her publisher found out that she had self-published two collections of backlist short stories. Not only is this particular agent wholly on the side of the publisher, he also expresses himself quite unfortunately. Passive Guy, who actually is a lawyer in his offline life, takes apart his arguments here. The agent responds to Passive Guy here.

On a related note, last week the YA writing team of Sherwood Smith and Rachel Manija Brown went public with the fact that an agent had apparently offered them representation on condition of removing the POV of a gay character as well as references to that character’s gayness. The story passed quickly through the internet, other YA authors reported of similar experiences, a representative of the agency – who had not been named in the original post – claimed that it hadn’t happened that way at all, initiating a backlash against Sherwood Smith and Rachel Manija Brown. I blogged about the whole affair here and here.

On the whole, the experiences of Kiana Davenport and Sherwood Smith and Rachel Manija Brown and particularly the passive aggressive reactions of literary agents have not increased my faith in that particular profession at all.

More publisher vs. author conflict, this time without agent participation: British writer Polly Courtney publicly ditched her publisher Avon, a Harper Collins imprint, at the book launch party no less, because she was unhappy that Avon had slapped a chick lit style cover on her novel about sexism in the magazine industry. She is now planning to return to self-publishing for her next book.

The Daily Mail has also picked up the story, complete with tut-tutting disapproval about the fact (completely irrelevant to the story in question) that the author had once posted pole dancing photos of herself. The comments are full of the usual misogynism you can expect from rags like the Daily (Hate)Mail.

Now Polly Courtney is somewhat mistaken about the definition of chick lit, for chick lit is not just stories about young women in big cities looking for love and Mr Right – that would be contemporary romance. Instead chick lit specifically does include the issues facing modern young women in the workplace.

There’s a number of chick lit definitions out there. My personal favourite is this one given by genre pioneer Marian Keyes in an interview with The Guardian:

For Keyes, it is about the “dissonance between the self we present to the outside world and what is inside – the hopes, memories and longings that are rarely exposed”. Chick lit, like Sex and the City, she argues, has grown out of the socio-economic fact that women are not their own bosses but always subordinate to a more powerful man.

Based on the information from the two articles, Polly Courtney’s novels clearly fit into the genre as outlined by Marian Keyes. What is more, Keyes also complains about the bad covers, the fashion obsession and the fact that “chick lit” is a derogatory term and that those books are not taken seriously.

Indeed, the reactions that Polly Courtney received very much confirms these prejudices. Because while everybody applauded Barry Eisler when he walked away from his publisher, Polly Courtney gets called ungrateful and a bitch with a chip on her shoulder for doing the very same thing. It’s the good old double standard in action again.

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New Release: Hostage to Passion

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Cora

I have a new release to announce, Hostage to Passion, a historical novelette featuring pirates, battles at sea, swordfights, some ripped bodices, a five page sex scene and lots of romantic conflict. This is the first part of a two-part story. The second part will be coming later this year.

Hostage to Passion En route from Spain to the New World, the ship carrying Doña Rosaria is attacked by English pirates under the command of Sir Nicholas Harcourt, the infamous Black Falcon. Rosaria fears the worst, when she is taken prisoner, but Sir Nicholas proves himself surprisingly courteous – until he places a noose around Rosaria’s neck and threatens to hang her, should her wealthy uncle fail to pay a ransom in exchange for Rosaria’s life and virtue.
Sir Nicholas Harcourt has a reputation of being the most merciless pirate to prowl the Spanish Main. But his beautiful prisoner Doña Rosaria both manages to touch his heart and stir the fire of passion in his chest. Nicholas is resolved to have her by any means. However, he has also sworn to hang her on the deck of his ship, should her notoriously stingy uncle refuse to pay the ransom.
Can Rosaria resist her growing attraction to a man she knows is a pirate and a heretic? And would Sir Nicholas really hang the woman who has captured his heart?

For more information, visit the dedicated Hostage to Passion page.

Buy it at for the low price of 2.99 US-dollars or euros Amazon.com, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, OmniLit/AllRomance ebooks and XinXii.

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New Discussions of Eternal Topics

Posted on September 11, 2011 by Cora

The latest doom and gloom article comes to you courtesy the New York Times. This time around, it’s not publishing itself or the print book that’s declared dead but the mass market paperback.

If mass market paperbacks were actually to die out, I would be angry, because mass market paperbacks are my preferred format and have been for more than twenty years. I don’t like hardcovers except for reference and art books. I never buy fiction in hardcover, unless it’s a vintage book from the pre-paperback era. US hardcovers are even worse than European ones, because they are so bloody huge.

In fact, I thought for a long time that there were no hardcovers in the US at all, because the English language books I bought in the foreign language sections of German bookstores were all paperbacks. Even the art books were mostly trade paperback editions. Partly this was due to pure logistics, hardcovers are heavier and cost more to ship overseas than paperbacks. Besides, I read mostly genre (not always the same genre, but some form of genre fiction) and genre fiction was published almost exclusively as paperback originals until a few years ago. Even during visits to the US, I somehow managed to miss the fiction hardcovers, because they were mostly books I didn’t read.

So kill off the hardcover for all I care, but leave me my mass market paperbacks and I’ll be content.

And just to prove that gloom and doom is international, here is a German “end of books” article from the newspaper Die Welt.

Aside from the usual doom and gloom, the most interesting point about this article is that it mentions libreka, the e-book distributor/platform of the German booksellers’ association. I had never heard of libreka before (which doesn’t bode too well for their popularity), but I checked out their page. It’s difficult to tell how open they are to indie publishers (they do require an ISBN and are unclear about fees and royalties), but what’s interesting about them is that they distribute to Barnes & Noble which would make them an alternative to Smashwords for Non-Americans.

I think it’s worth looking into smaller national e-book distributors, provided the agreements, etc… are in a language you can understand. I will definitely look into libreka and I’m also looking into a Dutch e-book distributor, since the Netherlands has one of the higher e-reader penetrations (1.7 percent) in Europe.

Whether publishing and the book itself are dying or not (and personally I don’t think they are dying, though they’re certainly changing), the experiences of writer Kiana Davenport certainly suggest that many in publishing seem to believe that their industry is under threat. For what happened is that Kiana Davenport had signed a traditional publishing contract with a big international publishing house for her novel. Meanwhile, she also self-published two short story collections, which her publisher had previously rejected. Once the publisher found out, they threw a fit and eventually canceled Ms. Davenport’s publishing contract. Passive Guy, who is an attorney in his offline life, also offers his perspective on what happened to Kiana Davenport.

Kiana Davenport’s story also serves as a prime example of the old warning, “If you self-publish, you will permanently ruin your chances for traditional publication.” I’d really thought that those old chestnuts were dead and buried by now, but apparently they are still going strong in some areas. And while the old self-publishing stigma is fading, it is not quite dead yet. Indeed, at the Huffington Post, Bryan Young discusses the stigma of self-publishing and how to fight it.

E-book pricing is also an eternal topic. Hence, Chuck Wendig offers his thoughts on the 99 cent price threshold for e-books.

Dean Wesley Smith also weighs in on the issue of e-book pricing. So does Michael Stackpole.

Another perpetual topic is promotion and how to do it or not. Now SF writer Cory Doctorow discusses the book promotion at Locus Online.

On a related note, urban fantasy writer Lilith Saintcrow discusses the dos and don’ts of social networking for authors. I particularly agree on the Jane Doe, author, thing. I can accept people adding “author” to their name, when they happen to have an extremely common name and all the more logical domain names, usernames, etc… are already taken. But while John Smith, author, is understandable, John P. Hoppensack, author, is just pretentious.

Another topic of eternal interest are sales figures. Victorine Lieske has polled several indie authors about their sales figures and how they developed over time. Interesting data, which confirms what most people say: Books take time to gain sales.

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