Things I Know I Know, v. 2.0

These are not my thoughts about Macmillan vs Amazon, though they are things that I started thinking more about over the weekend.  Some of them are only about me and e-books, some of them are about the broader picture.  They are things I think publishers should be thinking really seriously about (and I hope they already are!)

1. Why the iPad does not excite me as an ereader (emphasis on me).  One thing I only realized when I was thinking about the iPad and why (besides the backlighting and the battery life which are both also important to me) I wasn't excited about it as an e-reader is because, for me, the Kindle is a book.  It feels like a book, it reads like a book, I can carry it around like a book and it is not full of distracting other stuff.  It just happens to be a book where the pages can change to another book.  For me, the fact that it's a single use device is a feature.

There are other ways I think the iPad is really interesting and cool and full of future potential.  I also think it may indeed be a good e-reader for other people/casual readers/whatever.

2. This is an FYI for people who probably don't read here--There are lots of e-books on Amazon right now that are priced above 9.99.  Generally, about 30% of them.  In addtion, 9.99 is not a "fixed price."  Dynamic pricing has always been the norm for e-book pricing on Amazon.  Sometimes the pricing is *really* dynamic (as in, you better check today if you looked yesterday). 

There are certainly many other valid points to be made about Amazon and pricing, though I'd recommend spending a little time looking at the pricing of books before making them. 

3. Zero cost books are a publishers friend--no, seriously.  And frankly, right now, the Christian publishing houses are kicking everyone in this area.  Zero cost for a day or two then back to regular pricing, gets you on the Bestseller list for a long time past the zero cost days.  Zero cost for, say, a month for the first book in a series will usually put the later books on the bestseller list for a month or two or sometimes much longer.  That's advertising and as advertising goes it's a pretty good deal.

4. One thing I've been asking myself is what do I pay 9.99 for now and what (might) I be willing to pay 14.99 for--for an e-book? Because there are a lot of books out there and currently my buy now price point is less than 9.99.  This is one of the tough issues for publishers.  Just as there are a lot of paperback choices if i don't want to pay hardcover prices, there are a lot of 5, 6, and 7 dollar e-books out there.  And there is one other factor, which I realized last night:

As an example, I like Louise Penny's books, like them alot.  I'm happy to pay 9.99 for them and might be willing to pay more depending on the circumstance.  However, here's what I realized and here's something publishers need to also add into the complicated equation.  I bought the last Louise Penny book immediately when it came out--for 9.99. I started reading it last week--its price on Amazon last week was--7.99 (I can't buy it at all right now which is, I guess, ironic).  Because I can get books immediately when I want them as opposed to twice a year when I go to a big bookstore, there really wasn't any reason to buy that book until two minutes before I started reading it.  The reasons for not waiting (I might not be at the bookstore when I wanted it; it might not be on the shelves; I might have to wait for it to be shipped) are gone.  Unless I want to start reading it immediately (and there may still be some times when this is true), my incentive to get it at the initial release price is low.

What I'm saying here is that I think there will be fewer people buying e-books on the initial release date than there are buying print books.  Because their incentive to get it Right Now or even Soon will shift to When I'm Ready To Read It.

Okay, I keep typing and then erasing my thoughts on this because I want to talk mostly about the places were I disagree with people and not about the places where I agree with people and doing that will inevitably create or increase misunderstandings (almost certainly both mine and yours) and so is probably a conversation best had face-to-face.

But, my God, people are wrong on the Internets!

I know you're shocked.

When I have a bit more time, though, I do want to post some thoughts on books I'd pay more for than others and books I wish someone would write that I'm not seeing at all.

You know I was going to write a post about how Amazon and Macmillan can piss on each other all they want, because I can always go to the library, but that's a boring conversation about people who aren't very interested in me anyway.

So instead let's talk about something really important...

like DOGS!!

My dogs are doing great!  How about yours??

Billie has not had any seizures for 2 weeks.  YAY!  She had an acupuncture appointment on Monday.  I drove through a blizzard to take her (okay, it wasn't really a blizzard until twenty minutes after I got home, but there was plenty of blizzard potential, let me tell you!).  It was thirty-five MPH on the Interstate all the way back.

She is staring at me right now from the other side of the room because she thinks I gave Blue something to eat and didn't give anything to her.  But I didn't!  She is a wrong-head.

Blue is entered in a Rally trial in February.  I need to actually do some training between now and then.  He can do all the exercises (though the other day I realized that I haven't worked on pivots and I think he's forgotten how to do them), but we still do not work together very well.  This is my fault, of course, since I'm sitting on the couch typing right this minute instead of, say, practicing. Tomorrow, we'll go tracking, which we haven't been able to do in forever because it's been really cold and really icy.  But it's supposed to be decent tomorrow (where 15 to 20 degrees constitutes decent).

Blue: Why is this blanket so stupid!! (pulls on a loose piece of yarn)

Me: Stop!  You can move the blanket without eating it.

Blue: No, I can't!!  (Scrapes the blanket into a corner.  Falls off the couch.  Gets back on.  Lies down with a great audible sigh).  Stupid blanket.

I was going to write this semi-sad little post about how I haven't made much progress at all in the last decade.  But you know what, screw it.

I finished my novel this year. 

That's right.

I FINISHED MY NOVEL THIS YEAR.

And right now, as I'm getting ready to query agents next week, it is the Best Novel In the World.

Here is a snippet, which I am not putting under a cut this time because you know what?  I Finished My Novel This Year!

==

When Hallie finally left the Bobtail, the parking lot was mostly empty. The night air was cool, but not cold, a light breeze blowing out of the west, fresh air that didn’t smell of stale beer and electric lights.  A couple of boys in tight jeans and battered boots sat on a pickup tailgate in the south corner of the lot underneath a flickering light with a twelve pack between them.  One of them raised his can of beer at her, an invitation. And maybe if it had been another time, maybe if Dell hadn’t died, she’d have done it. 

Because sometimes beer and boys and stupid conversations were enough to get you by.

She waved at them and continued across the lot to her truck when she heard the slow crunch of tires on gravel behind her.

Shit.

“Everything all right?”  It was the Boy Deputy.  Again.

His left arm rested on the car door, his index finger tapping against the frame.  He was looking at her left arm, looking at the bracelet on her wrist again.  She shoved her hand in her pocket, like he diminished Eddie’s death with his notice.

“You all right?” he asked.  “Need a ride?”

Because that would be the topper to a perfect evening, she thought, showing up at home in the sheriff’s car again.  “No.”  She looked at him sideways.  “You want to test my breath?”

“You’re not drunk,” he said.  She couldn’t stop looking at him, which was annoying, though not actually his fault.  Only his short precision haircut saved him from being too pretty.  It was why he looked so young--because he was so pretty.  “I just thought,” he continued.  “That you might be, you know...shaken up.”

“I’ve been in fights before.”

The light was good enough right there that, though it shaded everything in blues and grays, she could see him raise an eyebrow.  “Really?” he said.  “And you look so innocent.” 

==

Thanks to all my writer friends for their help and support because if there's one big difference between last decade and this, it's that.  You all are awesome.  I couldn't get to the future without you.

I feel like Amazon is playing a giant game of Texas Hold-Em with publishers over e-books.  And, you know, what?  So far Amazon is the much better bluffer.

Let me start this by saying that I have a tremendous soft spot for Amazon.  When I was growing up we had a small (and really very good) public library, the rack of books at the drugstore and twice a year visits to the mall, which had one smallish Waldenbooks or B. Dalton.  I haven't lived anywhere that had a great independent bookstore, except one really terrific used book store in New Hampshire.  When Borders appeared it was great--but I still never lived in a town with even a Borders until a few years ago when a small one started here in Ames.  Amazon was this whole awesome, amazing world of books right there--good prices and good delivery and RIGHT THERE accessible to me.  I will never get over my first love of Amazon.  There are lots of ways to buy from independents online now, but Amazon is my go to place because they came to me first.

So here we are with publishers wanting to hang onto their business model even unto e-books and Amazon wanting to do whatever it is they're wanting to do.  Amazon says to their customers, we're going to charge you for the reader but you're going to get bestsellers for 9.99!  Publishers said, OMG NOOOOOO!!  Even though, currently, publishers get the same amount from Amazon for e-books and for hardcovers.  The same amount.  Publishers are, of course, worried that this will change in the future, for which I can hardly blame them.   

Publishers try a bunch of different things to hold onto their old business model.  First they say to readers, just let us explain our costs, then you'll understand.  Readers say, this is what we'll pay.  You figure out the cost thing (and, oh yeah, there aren't any returns with e-books, right?)  Then, they try to convince everyone that they are losing massive amounts of sales to book piracy.  Everyone (I'm assuming) laughs their heads off.  I can probably point to 75% of my acquaintance who have illegally downloaded at least one song, movie, or television show.  No one I know has ever illegally downloaded a book.

Publishers say, well, we'll release e-books later than hardcovers.  Especially big releases like Stephen King's Under the Done and Sarah Palin's book whatever-it's-called and Ted Kennedy's autobiography (which they actually said they were never releasing at all in e-book format).  Readers say NOOOO!! (some of them say, well, that's what happens with paperbacks, fine, whatever.  I will get it from the library or forget I ever wanted it or buy it later)  Amazon, too, says, fine, whatever.  Amazon then prices e-book pre-orders for Under the Dome and Ted Kennedy's book (and possibly others) at 7.99. 

So here is the big beauty bluff of the year: Amazon releases the news the other day that they sold more e-books than print books on Christmas Day (which is already being reported as sold more for the Christmas season. Beauty.)

How did this happen?

It's not difficult to figure out.  You know all those 7.99 pre-ordered books--Under the Dome, the Ted Kenedy autobio?  The ones the publishers held off on and released later than the hardcover?  The e-book versions were all released on Christmas Day.

Amazon probably lost money on every single one of those books (remember the publisher made the same amount on those books they made on the hardcovers) but I bet they could write it off as advertising and PR because that's what they got out of the whole thing--Amazon sold more e-books than print books on Christmas Day (or the Christmas season or whatever).  Basically Amazon is saying, you withhold e-books, we turn it into a PR bonanza for us.

Note that I think publishers and print books and authors getting decent money are all very, very important.  I think hanging onto old business models because you like them is not so important (actually I wish we could hang onto old business models, but no one cared about the old local store business model or the steel mill business model or the small family farm model or the model where blue collar workers made a decent wage so, you know, it sucks when it's your turn).

ETA: Note the second: I'm also not saying Amazon is or should win in this game.  I'm just saying that so far they are.

On her blog, agent Kristin Nelson says that she received and responded to 38,000 queries this past year.

38,000*.

That's mind-boggling.  That's over 100 queries a day.  Every day.  All year.  100.  On Christmas and New Year's and every single Sunday.

When I see people griping over a form rejection or the time it takes to get a response or getting no response at all, all I can think is thirty-eight freaking thousand, people!

You can say--well, lots of them are probably bad.  Yup, lots of them probably are.  An agent can probably tell in less than 30 seconds how bad it is and respond.  That's still 320 hours spent on query letters alone.  320 hours. IF it only takes 30 seconds to handle each one of them.  

How many new clients out of that 38,000?  6.

I don't think this tells you (or me) what the odds are for you (or me).  Because a lot of that stuff is REALLY bad.  Which you (or I) are not, right?  But it's still out there.  Still has to be gotten through.

Still thirty-eight freaking thousand queries.

*Yeah, I know every agent doesn't get that many.  But wow.

I feed Blue a dog food called Red Meat, Large Bites, which am constantly calling Large Meat, Red Bites.  Last time I even practiced in my car before I went into the store and still called it Large Meat, Red Bites when I told them what I needed.

So, yesterday I went to get some and actually said it correctly (YAY!).  I paid for it and took the rest of my stuff to the car and waited for them to bring it out...and waited...and waited.  I thought OH NOES!  They have run out (because they do sometimes, though then they sell me the smaller bags for the same price or deliver it to my house when it comes in or something equally awesome).  Then he finally came out with my bag of dog food and it turns out they've changed the package and changed the name to Red Meat Formula.

So, I suspect I was not the only person who had trouble with the name.

(and yes, this is yet another dog food we can all live on after the apocalypse comes)

I am currently torn between Chocolate Cut-Outs and Candy Cane Cookies (By which I mean the Candy Cane Cookie recipe where they are flavored with almond extract, NOT peppermint. You may think peppermint flavor is logical because they are 'Candy Canes,' but you would be WRONG!).

What about you?

...is Forward Momentum.

If I end up in command of a mercenary fleet, all I can say is you've been warned.

The thing that irks me the most about Twilight is the killing the predators thing.

Which surprises me because certainly there's a lot of potentially annoying stuff and, though I find much of it really pretty boring, this is the thing that actually annoys me. Because it's so...disingenuous (big bad vampires killing bunnies? NO! They must kill big bad things! Because they are MIGHTY!!). And it's geared to an audience who has no sense where food comes from or that rabbits and deer are potentially incredibly destructive or even that predators, being at the top of the food chain and all, are not usually all that numerous.*

"We only kill when there's an extra lot of grizzly bears..."

Ergh....

Yeah, annoying.

*(also, of course, a large part of the audience are reading it uncritically and, in a way, I envy them that).

Excellent tracking day today. It was cool (some might consider it cold) and damp. We were in a new tracking location (the old middle school and the Arboretum) which proved to be awesome. Hilly (which is not common here) and with very interesting tracking challenges. Blue got to cross a boardwalk go through a narrow pass between buildings and down steps. He hesitates on none of these things, which is awesome. Billie got to track a 400 yard leg. Both their tracks were fairly close to each other, which wouldn't happen in a test and they worked them out really nicely.

Fun was had and dogs were tired.

You know you want them.

Really, not much has been going on.

--Billie had two seizures last week, which was a bummer as she'd gone over nine months with no seizures. They were also both the same day so we have temporarily upped her phenobarb dose and her acupuncture schedule. Crossing fingers that this works (she hasn't had any since--a week and a half--so time will tell).

--sarah_prineas and the awesome Athena came to visit last week (with a brief cameo appearance by Sarah's daughter). We had lunch and went for a lovely walk while Blue flirted obsessively with Athena (Because she is a GIRL!!)

--Blue and I were in a dog show (Rally) last Saturday. We Q'd but we did not do well. Despite the fact that we have our Rally Novice title I am not convinced that Blue understands that when we are in the ring we are supposed to be working together.

--I've been working on short stories again, which is fun. Sometimes I look at them and I know exactly what has to happen in the rest of the story and yet I don't write it. I suck.

--I have done almost nothing this weekend except read books, walk dogs, and surf the Internets. Hmmm...not a bad weekend.

Since I've moved in I've had a closet light that consisted of a wire hanging down about a foot from a hole in the ceiling and a bare bulb. Kind of--what do they call that? Oh yeah, a fire hazard.

Also, for the last year I've also a light in the bathroom with a more or less non-working switch. Which was not a fire hazard, but was annoying.

I was not smart enough to take before pictures, but here are the afters (I also, while I was at it, changed out the ceiling fan in the bedroom because the old one was cheap and ugly and bought a new bedside table lamp:

Back in Iowa, that is.

No more car problems so apparently the front and rear of the car have decided to continue speaking to each other.

Beautiful weather going out, while there, and coming back, which was nice.

I got to see pretty much my whole family without driving all over the countryside, which was also nice.

Sometimes western New York seems excessively over-treed to me (yes, I've lived in Iowa a long time) but it looked quite lovely this year.

I finished The Name of the Wind and American Prometheus (finally!). I also read Front and Center and two-thirds of Bag of Bones. I listened to about three-quarters of Master and Commander on the way out and back.

Blue survived the kennel and the kennel survived him, though word has it he was obsessed with the Bull Mastiff in the next run over. Mostly with his tail. We don't have any in this house.

And that's about it for the moment.

Before the Internets that I am stealing from my mother's neighbors goes away, let me tell you a brief story about a car.

Yesterday I drove from Iowa to Toldeo, Ohio which is a fair long way.  The weather was very very nice though. 

So, about 8:30 I was leaving Indiana and entering Ohio, which involves stopping once at the toll booth in Indiana to leave and once at the toll booth in Ohio to enter.  As I was accelerating away from the tollbooth in Indiana my car clunked and jerked, then it clunked and jerked again, and then a third time.  Huh, I said.  I drove, like, sixty for a couple of miles and no engine ights came on and it wasn't running hot and it was no longer clunking at that point, so I said, what am I going to do, stop?  To which at 8:30 at night on the tollway, the answer is no.

So I got back up to 70 or so and drove on and thought, hmm...well, maybe it was nothing.  Then I stopped at the tollbooth into Ohio and as I was accelerating back up, it did the same thing, although this time I could tell that the gears were slipping, like a transmission problem.  Oh noes!

I kept driving because--tollway, night, dark.   I got to Maumee where I was staying and pulled up to that tollbooth and still had a gear slipping problem though it didn't seem as bad and I was able to make it to the motel (which was about 30 feet away).  I decided not to worry about the car until morning.

This morning I looked up the Subaru dealer for Toledo which conincidentally turned out to be straight up the road from where I was staying.  I callled them up.  They said come on in.  I did not say, I have a Rottweiler in the back of my car (though I did) because I figured we could deal with that if it was a problem.  I drove up and my car shifted fine every single time from every single light--of which there were a lot.  The  service manager came out and checked my transmission fluid which was what I hoped it was because that's easy to fix.  It wasn't.  He brought out the diagnostic thingy and hooked it up and got a code and went back to translate it.

The problem?  The rear wheel speed sensor wasn't sending information to the transmission so it couldn't tell how fast the rear of the car was going.  Apparently this is something the transmission likes to know when it's trying to figure out when to shift (you'd think it would imagine the rear was going about as fast as the front, but I guess not).  Then it reset itself automatically and now it's fine.  So says the onboard computer.  The Subaru guy didn't charge me anything.  He was very nice.  I'm glad I don't need a new transmission or something.

Now I am in (western) NY.

That wasn't very brief.
 

It came in at just under 84K.  Now it's going out to readers and I will not think of it for a month.

(Really.  No.  Seriously.  I'm not thinking of it right now)

It's all downhill from here.  Right?  Right?!?

One of the things that's entertained me as I write mega-million drafts of this novel is what things are elastic and what things are not.  What scenes go away and what scenes move around but never change their fundamental setting or emotional outcome.  What people are sisters, friends, or lovers.  How the setting never changes, certain interactions never change.  Explanations and verb choices and description becomes (one imagines) more specific and right.

Yeah, that's kind of fun, discovering what can be changed in the service of a better story and what can't.

( I haven't done a snippet in awhile, so here's one: )

--I think, maybe, I will finish the novel this weekend.  I estimate that I have between fifty and sixty pages left so it will be a bit of a stretch, but I am almost done!  I want to be done!  It is also a bit short, but life is not perfect and I can fix that.

--It looks like there are furloughs (6 days) and benefit revisions (2%) in my future.  I hope the citizens of Iowa appreciate higher education and other state workers paying extra taxes so the rest of them don't have to (though I'm sure that they do not).  We are also going to kind of, sort of close down over the Christmas break, which would be awesome if (and let's all cross our fingers) the kind of, sort of actually includes our office for real and not just, like, we'll pretend we aren't working, but really we will or, like, someone has to be there for 'emergencies.'

--I managed to take Blue for a walk tonight in the only thirty minutes it hasn't rained all day. 

--I bought new lights for the bathroom and the bedroom.  When they're finally up, I'll take pictures.  One of them is to replace the light in the closet that is currently a naked bulb hanging down from the ceiling.  I think we'll all be happy when that's replaced.

--Everyone, except me and six other people, is at World Fantasy this weekend.  Have fun!  Except for the logistics and the money and the travel, I really wish I were there.

Anyone with knowledge in that area care to weigh in on what's considered a good length for a not-YA novel these days?  I keep hearing that 100K is, if not an upper limit, then at least what one should aim for.  But what's considered short?  Or too short?

Thoughts?

In not unrelated news, I appear to be about 80 pages of (possibly extensive) revising from the end.