Woot — finally got a theme that has a static home page with an integrated blog. I am a happy camper. So come here for all the latest news or whatever else is on my mind.
Why My Love for Scrivener Is Neverending…
I think I’ve commented a time or two about how much I love Scrivener, and how much it’s helped me as a writer. I can keep better track of my files, and it’s lovely to have all the chapters and all the research for a particular project all in one neat little package so I don’t have to hunt all over my hard drive for the pertinent information.
What I just discovered, however, is that Scrivener 2.0 has this unbelievably helpful feature where you can compile a project directly into a .mobi or an .epub file. That’s right — if I’m doing something e-only, I don’t have to mess around with laying it out in InDesign to generate the .epub file (which I then would have to import into Calibre to convert it to .mobi). I don’t think I need to spell out how much time this is going to save me. In addition, I think the .mobi file Scrivener produces actually looks better than the ones I’ve been making in InDesign/Calibre. You can set the spacing, enter all your meta-data, add the cover, and do all sorts of really neat stuff.
This is really going to streamline my production process, especially since I’m probably going to produce fewer and fewer print versions of my books. I don’t sell all that many, and the royalty I get off them is paltry, since I refuse to make the cover price correspondingly high so I earn a royalty similar to what I get from the e-versions. And any time saved on the technical end just means more time for writing!
In fact, I put together a book of my short stories yesterday and already have it up on Amazon. True, you can find the stories in various places around the web, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to have them all in one place, and I’m pricing the collection at just $1.99, which isn’t bad for almost 25,000 words. I just love the fact that in about an hour or so, I was able to format a novella-length book and test it on my Kindle app. This opens up all sorts of possibilities for me — and, I hope, for lots of indie authors who’ve been struggling with the formatting part of getting their books out there.
*Note: All this refers to the Mac version of Scrivener. I haven’t used the Windows version, but I’ve heard that, since it’s newer, it doesn’t have all the same bells and whistles. Still, it’s worth looking into. It’ll probably be the best $45 you’ll ever spend.
** And no, the people at Literature and Latte aren’t paying me to write this. 
Scratching My Head Over Smashwords
So it’s been almost two weeks since my month of freebies over at Smashwords ended, and first off, let me just say wow! over how many free copies of my stories have been downloaded. In the past I’ve sort of brushed off Smashwords, mostly because I really dislike the fact that they won’t let you submit an .epub file to upload books, but instead have to use a Word document and their clunky meatgrinder. However, since almost everything I uploaded was a short story, the formatting wasn’t quite as much work as it would have been for a novel or a novella.
What I’m finding very interesting is that, although it was the last story uploaded (on December 30th, to be precise), my novella Welcome to Skullcrusher Mountain has outstripped every other thing I put up there, including “The Queen of Frost and Darkness,” which wasn’t even one of my December freebies and has actually been on the site since early November. I’m not sure if this is because there are a lot of Jonathan Coulton fans hanging out on Smashwords, or whether, when given the choice, people are going to download a longer work (the longest of my short stories is a little over 6,000 words, while Skullcrusher is almost 25K). Maybe it’s simply because it’s the only story up there that has anything remotely approaching a “clinch” cover — okay, they’re kissing, not lolling half-naked on a couch, but still.
I have no idea what to make of any of this, but I have to say that it’s interesting at least to see which items perform best, and which perform the least well. For example, my Snow White pastiche, “Hunter’s Heart,” has the lowest number of downloads on Smashwords. Is that because it’s the shortest story (barely 2,000 words), or because people aren’t interested in fairytale retellings? On the other hand, of my paid work Breath of Life sells the best, and that’s basically Beauty and the Beast set in space, so there goes my theory about fairytales.
If anyone has any theories about this, I’d love to hear them.
New Year, New Look
I thought I’d start out 2012 with a new design for the website. Not that there was anything wrong with the other one, but it did have a sort of science fiction vibe to it. Since my planned releases for 2012 are steampunk romance, historical mystery/romance, and fantasy romance, I decided to overhaul things a bit and go for a look that was a bit more in line with my upcoming offerings.
Of course, I’d be lying if I said this was all for purely thematic reasons. No, I have a weakness for messing around in Photoshop and tweaking my web design. I find something zen about it, same as with twiddling with book covers. It’s a very different creative process from writing a book, but it’s still engaging parts of my brain. (Although sometimes hacking my WordPress theme’s CSS gets a little too close to homework for my taste.) And I suppose it’s also a way to distract myself from immediately diving into editing the first draft of my steampunk romance, which I just finished but which needs to marinate at least a leetle while before I start looking at it again.
So for now we’re all sepia and dreamy and vintage-y around here, and I plan to keep it that way for awhile. We’ll see if I can stick to that resolution better than some of my other ones.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Final Freebie Friday – Skullcrusher Mountain
Wow, December flew by. As in, literally flew. It’s the 30th? Yikes! Anyway, the fifth and final Freebie Friday story is now posted at Smashwords. This is a novella-length piece inspired by Jonathan Coulton’s truly amazing song, “Skullcrusher Mountain.” If you haven’t heard it, click on this link and check it out (the images in the fanvid are awesome, but my own version features a much taller hero). I’ll wait while you do that. Okay, now that you’ve heard the song, go download my story. Thanks to everyone for all the downloads — more than a thousand have gone out this month!
Bad Vibrations is FREE!
That’s right — now through Friday, December 30th, you can download Bad Vibrations from Amazon for your Kindle or Kindle app absolutely free! Get it here.
I’m testing the waters to see how this whole freebie through KDP Select goes, but right now it’s looking pretty good, as the book has only been up since around midnight and is already #33 in the Romantic Suspense category. We’ll see how it goes. I’m planning another giveaway with this title some time in February to coincide with the release of Heart of Gold, so if you miss it this time for some reason, you’ll have another chance to get a full-length novel for free.
Freebie Friday – Equinox
In the spirit of the holidays, this week’s Freebie Friday offering is a heartwarming Christmas tale…okay, not really. “Equinox” is actually science fiction horror, set in the same universe as Breath of Life…but that’s about all the two pieces have in common. If you want a feel-good Christmas story, then go to my Free Stuff page and download “Mistletoe Magic.” But if you’d like something creepy to counteract all the feel-good cheer around you, head on over to Smashwords.
Freebie Friday – Hunter’s Heart
Another Friday, another free short story on Smashwords! This one is “Hunter’s Heart,” a Snow White pastiche that first appeared in the Autumn 2010 issue of Dark Valentine. “Hunter’s Heart” is shorter than most of my short stories (I tend to be long-winded even when I’m writing short fiction, apparently), but I think it shows a side of the familiar fairytale that you might not have seen before.
Download it here at Smashwords.
Breath of Life Featured on Addicted to eBooks
My Beauty and the Beast–inspired novellas, Breath of Life, is one of the featured ebooks today on addictedtoebooks.com. There are lots of wonderful ebooks showcased on the site, so have fun taking a look around!
Some More Thoughts About Ebook Pricing
This past weekend I was out riding the rails with my husband (seriously…they have this wonderful $10 weekend pass on Metrolink here in Southern California where you can ride anywhere you want both days, all for just ten bucks), and he mentioned a book he’d been discussing with one of his coworkers. So he whipped out his iPod and located it on Amazon, and was about to download it to his Kindle app when he mentioned that it was $12.99.
“Thirteen bucks!” I screeched. “For an ebook?!”
He shrugged, and I gave all the reasons why it was highway robbery to charge that much for an ebook, especially when the hardcover version was only a few dollars more. At the time he gave in, mostly because we were talking and looking at sights, and he didn’t really need the book then. But the next day he brought it up again, and said, “If I’d bought it yesterday, I could be reading it now.”
True…and it made me realize people have very different expectations when it comes to books, “e” or otherwise.
I’m intimately involved in this process. I know how long it takes to write a novel, and how long it takes to format an ebook and upload it to the various venues where it’s for sale. (And let’s not go into the hours of promotion involved.) Because of the time involved in producing a book from start to finish, it’s almost impossible to charge a price that would guarantee a living wage for an indie author, or we’d be having to set prices at something like a couple hundred dollars per book, which is just ridiculous. What I’ve learned from talking with other indies and hanging out in places like the Kindle boards is that a high price is usually a kiss of death for an indie, since you’ve got to have a price point that’s attractive enough so people will still buy the book even if they aren’t familiar with your work. But for someone like my husband, who wanted a particular book then and didn’t care much what it cost, these sorts of considerations were irrelevant. He didn’t know that ebooks priced higher than five or six bucks tend to annoy those who purchase a lot of books or who are just casually browsing Amazon.
So yes, if someone really, really wants your book, they’re going to pay what you’re asking (within reason, of course). But if you’re trying to get someone who’s browsing a category and looking for something new, a price that’s much higher than the average isn’t going to look very appealing. I’m not a fan of selling full-length novels for 99¢, and I only do that for short-term promotions. I don’t think it’s a sustainable business model, especially if you’re someone like me who generally releases only two books per year. There also seems to be a backlash against those books in terms of people making comments along the lines of, “Well, you get what you pay for.”
I’d like to think my books are worth $9.99 or even more. But I’m not willing to charge more than $4.99 for an ebook, because I think that’s a fair price for something you’re basically renting and which doesn’t have any physical reality. Print books, of course, are an entirely different matter, and I don’t have much control over the pricing of those since it’s the production of the book and the cut I have to give to Amazon that eats up most of the list price. The author gets a pretty small cut in those cases. (It could be bigger, but I’m not about to start charging $19.95 for a trade paperback just so my royalty will be the same as what I receive for an ebook.)
In the meantime, I guess I should be glad that so many mainstream publishers are charging what I think are outrageous prices for their ebooks. With any luck, they’ll just drive more readers to us indies. And we’ll be ready for them.
Freebie Friday – The King of Elfland
It’s week two of my Friday Freebies in December, and this time I’ve put up “The King of Elfland,” which first appeared in the Summer 2010 issue of Dark Valentine Magazine — and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize! This is a darker story than I usually write, but that was part of the fun of doing the shorter pieces, as I could explore themes and situations that were very different from what appears in my novels and novellas.
You can download the story here. I’m actually sort of shocked by the response these short freebies are getting on Smashwords. Obviously there’s a large audience out there that’s looking for the sorts of shorter works that can be read during a subway or bus ride, or while waiting in a doctor’s office…or maybe while you’re standing in line at the mall, waiting for your child to get a photo with Santa. Whatever the case, people are definitely downloading ’em!
