Success! Level Up!

Is this the venue for this announcement? Well, why not? I just got an offer for my book Engines of the Broken World, which means very soon it will be bought by a publisher, which means that it will no longer be available. So if you should want to get a chance to read this worthy volume, head on over here and buy yourself a copy pronto.

Also, I get to now spell Author with a capital A. This was a big wad of XP to get all at once, and it totally leveled me.

Anticipation

The excitement grows here in Kindling Press land. Peter and I are working like madmen at getting an anthology up to snuff. We've got 10?11? contributions to the nautically Steampunk collection 20001: A Steampunk Odyssey to put through rounds of edits. I'm thinking we're doing something wrong, though. We're doing rounds and rounds of edits, and from what I can gather, that's not often the way of it. I am picking at some serious nits here. And we haven't even sent stuff to the copy editor yet. But I think the product is getting better and better and better, and that's the important thing. Well, that and getting it done on time (it's supposed to go live as an eBook on or around the 14th of September. Make a note.)

But that's not all. I'm also getting ready my next individual effort, a novella called Last Days of Atlantis. I've got a cover; I've got a document that's being looked over; I've got a plan to put it up tomorrow. Or Wednesday at the latest. So there's that.

But biggest and (to me) best of all, I've got a book with an editor, and it's going to an acquisitions meeting at a publisher this week, and if they like it, I get a contract. Which is superior, really, to What Has Gone Before. I'm very pleased, and pretty full of anticipation.

20001: A Steampunk Odyssey

We have an exciting thing going on.  We're working on an anthologie (spelling intentional).  There's this fancy little convention called Steamcon coming up, and it's a delightful event that's all about gears and fancy hats and Invention! and that ilk of things. My cohort Peter came up with the notion of putting together an anthology for it, and of using the previous alternative spelling, and a lot else.  Like doing most of the solicitation for submissions, and handling the early correspondence, and generally proving himself to be worth two or three of me in this regard.  I just wrote something for it, and felt like I was doing my part a bit.  But now we've come to the fun (read: hard) part of the process: the editing.  There's all these stories, you see, and we like them, but we'd like them more if they were better.  Which, strangely, doesn't happen just because I want it to.  Instead, we have to get in touch with the talented writers who've submitted, and boldly claim that we know better than they do what their stories should be like, and then insist they follow our every freakish whim.  Or something like that.  I'm pretty new at this whole editing-other-people thing, so maybe I'm doing it wrong.

Surprisingly, it's more pleasant than I imagined it would be.  Mostly, everyone is very open to the notion of changing things.  And when they do, it tends to be for the best, not the worst, as might be feared.  To be honest, I wish I was as good at paying heed and making changes when they are suggested.  With a month left to get edits done and do layout, formatting and cover design, I feel pretty strongly we're going to end up with a very good body of work, one that everyone involved can be proud of.

I think in the end though, that's not so much the point.  The point for me, and I think for Peter, is that we've given some good, new writers a reason to think they're good.  We're a first credit for a number of these folks, and that makes me feel just amazing, that I can be a part of that happening.  So 20001: A Steampunk Odyssey, while it's a lot of work, and will be a whole lot more, is pretty satisfying already, and only going to get more so.  I'm very happy we decided to do it.

Look for the ebook editions on or about the 14th of September.  Print to follow shortly after, we anticipate.  It's going to be well worth your time and your book buying dollars.

Bricks and mortar

Bookstores are some of the best places in the universe, estimating conservatively.

First there is the smell: musty, secretive, and mysterious. A hint of dust, laden with the memories of childhood books. Then, the sights: gilt lettering on leather spines, well-loved titles, favorite authors, classics. Tall shelves march in endless stacks until all is dim-lit and indistinct. Sounds are hushed, save for the tinkling bell at the door whenever a new patron enters. Perhaps the friendly bookstore cat will rub up against your leg.

It is true the ebook revolution has done wonderful things for authors and readers. We have more selection and lower prices than ever before. Opportunities for new authors and new media are burgeoning. And that's a good thing. But bricks and mortar hold a secret not to be neglected or forgotten in this age of electrons - a secret held we are pushed toward by the nudging of a furry feline head-bump, by the faded lettering on a timeworn leather spine, and by the scent of old, old books.

That secret is connection. Connection between reader and author; between reader and reader;between reader and book-as-book. But those things need not be lost simply because of the ebook revolution. Though harder to find, their value has only increased. They are there to be found if your eyes are open.

Have you made a friend through ebooks? I have. And I'd love to hear about yours.

[Special thanks to A Softer World for the picture. Go. Read. Connect. They're great!]

How much for those electrons?

Everybody knows there is a sweet spot.

In cooking, in driving, in relationships - everything seems to have its sweet spot, a point of diminishing returns beyond which extra effort does not produce extra results. Business is no exception. In the publishing business, book pricing is an art. Where do you set a price point to maximize profit? The trouble for traditional publishers is that there is fixed cost to produce a printed book ( or "treebook" as author Bill Jones calls them). But what about ebooks? Once you edit it and give it a cover, electrons are so cheap to produce (and reproduce) it begs the question: is there a non-fixed production cost for epub books?

Here's what former chemist turned computer scientist David Slusher has to say:

"Every single time I’ve heard anyone defend higher ebook prices, they cite the fact that “just because the publication is electronic, that doesn’t eliminate costs.” This fact is what I like to call “true but useless.” Yes there are costs associated, but all costs in ebooks are fixed. The publisher does whatever they need to do editorially, formatting wise, etc. When that is done, they push a file to Amazon/B&N/Smashwords et al and that is that. Whether there is 1 sale or 1,000,000 unit sales, the costs are identical. I’m treating promotion as a fixed cost although I can be argued on that. Regardless, the costs of promotion do not rise as a function of sales. They may drive sales, but if you sell 10x what you estimate, your promotion costs don’t expand ten-fold."

What this means is that ebooks can and should be priced differently than pulp books. How much less? That is still an unfolding question. According to David Slusher's analysis from 2010, $3-4 is how much an ebook should cost. Certainly there are many books both more and less expensive than that, and many of them do well. The curve is currently so broad the market cannot be pinned down to a standard price. But the idea that ebook production costs are non-fixed means we must change our mental approach to pricing them, understanding that the business model is so different they may not be compared with pulp books. In price as in so many other areas, ebooks are truly in a class by themselves.