publishing

Fun with Bookscan

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Did you know that Amazon.com lets authors look at the Bookscan numbers for their books? Of course you did. Did you know that Bookscan, which shows a fair portion of an author’s sales, doesn’t show them all? Probably.

But it’s still fun to look, right? Especially if you’re on deadline and have a massive amount of writing to do, and even less time than usual to do it.

Anyway, for quite a while the sales of Game of Cages and Child of Fire were going along at a steady pace. The numbers weren’t fantastic; HBO isn’t going to dump that Martin guy’s show for something made from mine, but it was steady and–best of all–not declining.

Then I did that guest stint at Charles Stross’s blog and those Bookscan numbers really jumped… for the length of time I was blogging there. After, they sloped back down.

But lately they’ve risen again, fairly steadily. I mean, the numbers are much nicer than before.

And I have no idea why. Am I being hilarious on Twitter? (all the spambots following me think so) This blog isn’t getting significantly more hits, and Google Alerts isn’t pointing me at any new reviews.

Which just goes to demonstrate that it’s true that authors don’t have a lot of control over books sale. Guest blogging did pretty well for me. This second surge? No clue. As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with me or anything I’m doing.

Randomness for 4/10

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1) Slow motion photography. Exploding cakes. Techno. I promise you that you will love this: Video. And it even comes with little stories! via @ChuckWendig

2) “I like big butts and I cannot lie, but is there some evolutionary reason as to why?” Sir Mix-A-Lot mashed with the modern just-so stories of sexual selection pressures. The comments are stone hilarious.

3) The sounds of Minecraft, as music. Video.

4) New Zealand brewer markets a “breakfast beer.” I’m not opposed to the idea of a (small) beer at breakfast, but this sounds god-awful.

5) “How I got a blank book onto the Amazon.com bestseller list.” via @victoriastrauss

6) Some posts on the resurgence of “epic” fantasy: One. Two.

7) Alternate Star Wars. What if George Lucas had been inspired by a Kurosawa film other than HIDDEN FORTRESS?

Randomness for 4/5

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1) So you want to get published? A flowchart. Is it just me, or are flowcharts made of awesome?

2) “Don’t you have any vegetarian meat?”

3) A big discussion on selling stolen IP in the Kindle format.

4) Advice for writers who suffer the pangs of jealousy.

5) Nerf guns painted and modified to have that steampunk look.

6) How slavery really ended in the U.S.A.

7) Black Gate is having a sale on their back issues. I have stories in issue #2, #3, and #10.

Ebook sales and the long tail

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This is an interesting article (found via @victoriastrauss on Twitter). I should already have knocked off working for the day, but I want to address this.

The article states that most ebook sales seem to be concentrated on bestsellers, not on the so-called long tail. The short version is that online sellers don’t market like works very well, while a physical store surrounds you with impulse buys.

Now, I know there are plenty of folks out there who impulse buy ebooks all the time, but so far the numbers seem to indicated that people buying online aren’t just snapping up books they’ve never heard of.

That’s my experience with online book buying, anyway. I use Amazon.com to buy things I already want, but I usually add them to my cart and buy them later, when shipping costs are reduced and my associate’s credit comes in.

With a physical store, I have this sense that I shouldn’t walk out without a new book. Even walking by one is like passing up on wonderland; there’s a physical yearning there that Amazon.com doesn’t provide.

Anyway, it’s an interesting point. How could the marketing be better?

Good news revealed

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A week ago (for you guys–I’m writing this the same day) I told you I had some good news that I wasn’t free to talk about yet. Well, I’m told the 29th is the day, so here’s the good news.

The Science Fiction Book Club is going to put out an omnibus edition of Child of Fire, Game of Cages, and Circle of Enemies as a Main Selection for their September catalog. The book will be called The Wooden Man: A Twenty Palaces Omnibus and the catalog will reach book club members in mid-August (although the book itself won’t ship until after 8/30/11… aka, the release date for Circle of Enemies. It’s also going to be offered online through the BOMC2.

It’s also going to be a “Sliver of Night Selection,” which is meant to highlight especially good urban fantasy novels, which means the omnibus will include a black satin ribbon bookmark.

Fancy! Almost too fancy for a scruffy guy like me, but I’m very happy they like the books. I hope their readers like them even more.

Yay!

Quick post

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I’m about to get back to revising The Unnamed Project but I thought I’d drop in here for a quick post.

I have great news! … which I can’t share yet. Yes, I know, I’ve become one of those tiresome writers who talks about all the awesome things they’re not allowed to talk about. This one won’t be too much delayed in announcing; the contracts should be all signed and ready very soon now.

Gluten-Free! For the first few days I was doing pretty well (and dropping a few pounds) but fell off the wagon. I put the pounds back on and my face is inflamed again. Annoying. I also tried out a few of the apps folks recommended but they were unsuitable for one reason or another.

I tried the free version of the Livestrong app, for example, but apparently there’s no way to put a food into it at quantities smaller than their minimum serving size. Apparently, everyone who has maple syrup eats a quarter cup of it at one go; no one ever just adds a tablespoon to their yogurt. It’s also annoying and I’m not sure if the paid version fixes this flaw.

Galleys for Circle of Enemies! are done. I’m going to make copies of them and then ship they back to Del Rey later this week. There are sections I wish I could iron out–not too many, but some–but I still think this book is the best I’ve ever written.

Science Fiction Conventions! I’m going to one. Norwescon, in this case. I bought a membership over the weekend because I figured I’m supposed to be going to Readercon later this summer and even (gulp!) be on a panel or something, so I should probably go to one as an audience member to see what they look like. I realize they’re not the same sort of convention, but what the hell. I have until the end of April to remember where I left my extrovert mask.

iPad! Finally, a gadget my wife will actually use.

Ebooks for 99 cents! Boy has this been bouncing around the internet for a while. Personally, I’m sure the price of ebooks will drop below the current prices, but I’m not so sure they’ll fall all the way to 99 cents. This indie author has an interesting take on book pricing, mainly because she isn’t interested in the 99 cent market. She doesn’t believe those readers will follow her to other, higher-priced books, and also that they’re kind of a pain in the ass.

Combine that with some other readers out there who say they avoid one buck books because they assume they’re crap, and you see a case for higher prices. It’s pretty interesting and things are changing quickly.

Christ, didn’t I say this was supposed to be quick? Time to work.

Randomness for 3/21

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1) Simpsons jokes, by season. via Bill Martell.

2) A James Bond script, written by Ben “The Shakespeare of Hollywood” Hecht. I especially love the idea of giving the name “James Bond” to different agents, just to mix things up. It explains the parade of actors in the role so nicely.

3) Seven massive holes in the Earth.

4) Read this wonderful story by Jane Rice, written in the 1940s.

5) Novels and novelists: imperfect competition

6) An interesting new format for physical books. (Ignore the seo crap about killing the Kindle).

7) Not a real ad campaign for the Smithsonian.

Put in a 22 hour day yesterday

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Ah, the joys of parenting a child with sleep issues.

Without getting into too much detail without his permission, as I mentioned before the time change hit him very hard. Yesterday he couldn’t get up until noon and last night I couldn’t get him to sleep until after 3:30 am. If it were my sleep schedule that went out of control, I’d set my alarm, get up super-early, be tired all day and go to be slightly early. Fixed!

For him, we may be forced to let him stay up all night one night so he can turn himself around that way.

On top of that, we’re squabbling over his assigned reading. I’ve given him a book that’s a second-world medieval-ish fantasy and he’s treating it like a plate of bitter carrots (“It has castles. I don’t like castle books.”)

Aside from the stress of having a fantasy writer’s child refuse to read traditional fantasy [1] there’s also the idea that he doesn’t believe that I, as his homeschooling parent, have the right to assign reading to him (book-length reading, at least). This… doesn’t work for me, as you might expect. If he’s griping about books written for popular readers of the modern era (with fantasy elements, which he loves) how’s he going to respond to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer?

Obediently, if I have anything to say about the matter. Of course, it’ll help if he’s well-rested and has been fed healthy food that he likes. We’ll see.

Finally, I got my royalty statement for the middle part of 2010 and… well, those numbers could be better.

[1] IT READS THE HOBBIT BEFORE BEDTIME. IT DOES THIS WHENEVER IT’S TOLD

The problem with the Nook

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While I wait for this endless software update to install, let me post a quick rant: My family and I checked out the major ereaders yesterday and there was one thing the Nook really had going against it: you can’t search by author’s name.

WTF, Barnes & Noble? When I typed my own name into the search field, I got endless returns of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch novels before I reached my own. Does that make any sense? What if I bought and read an author’s book, then went to buy the next one–shouldn’t that author’s name be a link I can click on to take me to the rest of their work?

Apparently, B&N doesn’t think so. That would sell too many books.

Christ.

Espresso Book Machine

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If you haven’t seen an in-store book printing machine in action, you’re in “luck.” I ordered a book from the Espresso Book Machine at the UW Bookstore in Seattle and took a really mediocre video of the process. Watch it here.

Handy with a camera, ain’t I?

The whole thing took about seven minutes, so I don’t think we’re at the place yet where book stores stocked their shelves with cover flats readers can carry to the register/print station. Not without 20 more machines running full time. And that doesn’t include the 15 minutes it needed to warm up the glue before the process could even start.

Also, there had to be a store employee operating the machines terminal for almost the whole time; I’ve done my best to edit her out, per her request.

Honestly, the most difficult part of the whole thing was taking my laptop out of the store to find a wifi signal, searching the specialized web site for the book I wanted to buy, and copying down the info I needed to take back into the store. Plus, the books were kinda spendy.

It’s early days yet.

I shot this over a year ago (Procrastinate? Me?) but ask questions if you have them. I’ll answer as best I can.