RIP Realms of Fantasy

According to owner Warren Lapine, Realms of Fantasy is going away again.  (Though he’s offering to sell the magazine if anyone’s interested.)

Realms of Fantasy was a big, shiny goalpost for me when I was trying to break in.  Finally selling “Deliverance” to Shawna McCarthy was almost as exciting as selling my first book.  I sold her a second story a year later — that was “Sister of the Hedge,” a precursor to my princess books.  Then she bought “Ours to Fight For,” another story I’m still incredibly proud of.

Their sometimes questionable taste in cover art aside, it was a beautiful magazine, particularly the interior artwork.

I had issues with a few of Lapine’s choices when he bought the magazine, but I appreciate him trying to resurrect it, and I’m sorry to see it go.  Again.

Experimenting with Kindling

Nifty First Book Friday news: Harry Connolly’s piece has been picked up and reprinted at Black Gate.  Congrats, Harry!

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I’ve talked a bit about e-books and self-publishing.  There are folks like J. A. Konrath who claim to make it work.  When I posted about my electronic royalties, Konrath was one of the first to jump in and say flat-out that $6.99 was too much, and I would make more if the books were cheaper.

I decided to experiment.  I’ve taken my mainstream novel Goldfish Dreams and have released it in Amazon’s Kindle store.  There’s no DRM, and I priced it at $2.99 for worldwide distribution. I’ve also uploaded it to B&N.  (The B&N version is still being processed.)

I intend to be 100% transparent about this, sharing sales and royalties and the rest.  I’m as curious as anyone to see what happens.

Here are the advantages I believe I have, going into this:

  • I’m a midlist fantasy author, so readers will (hopefully) have some confidence that I can write a decent book.
  • I’ve got a moderate online following.  At best guess, about 2000 people see the blog each day.  I don’t expect everyone to rush out and buy the book, but I suspect some will.
  • Goldfish Dreams is a rerelease of an out of print book from a small press, so it’s already been through the gatekeepers once, and has benefited from some editorial feedback.

On the other hand, this is a mainstream book, so I’m not sure how much my stature as a fantasy author will help.  And as a reprint of an out-of-print book, I lose the initial friends & family sales, because many of them already have the printed book.

My investment so far:

  • Steven Saus did the e-book conversion, because it quickly became apparent I would need many hours to teach myself and prep the files.  Steven did a very nice job putting the book together in multiple formats and checking to make sure everything was clean and ready to go.
  • The cover art is recycled, with permission, from an unused concept from the original print release.  I added a blurb from Heinz Insu Fenkl.
  • Setting up accounts on Amazon and B&N and getting the books uploaded took an hour or so of my time.

I honestly don’t know what to expect.  I imagine there will be some initial sales, but how many?  I couldn’t say.  And what will happen in the long term?  Will sales grow over time or die off?  I keep reading arguments about how e-books can be so much more profitable for authors.  Will I actually see a significant profit?  Your guess is as good as mine.

I am not going to start going all-out on advertising and self-promotion.  For one thing, I don’t have the time.  For another, that sort of thing gets annoying fast.  I’ll post updates about the experiment, but I’m not going to become That Guy.

Let the experiment begin!

Where to purchase:

  • Amazon
  • B&N – Forthcoming
  • Other suggestions?

Description: Eileen Greenwood’s first year at Southern Michigan University means freedom: freedom from the brother who molested her, freedom from the father who refused to believe her, and freedom from the sister who turned her back on it all. Eileen desperately wants to escape the past and live her life, but nightmares and flashbacks make it impossible to forget what she endured. Instead, she becomes obsessed with learning what transformed her brother into a predator.  In the effort to understand, she risks her health, her friendships, and her future. She will face both her own memories of the past, and a monster far worse than her brother … if she can find the strength to confront him.

First Book Friday: Seanan McGuire

Welcome to First Book Friday, an ongoing series exploring how various authors sold their first books.

Seanan McGuire, a.k.a. Mira Grant, is this year’s winner of the Campbell Award for Best New Writer.  She’s also a skilled musician.  Plus she draws awesome comics 🙂  Basically, Seanan is who you’d get if SF/F were a superpower.

Read on to learn how she sold the first of her many books, and the whirlwind that began with that first sale…

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In digging through my (relatively epic) email archives, the earliest fragments I can find involving a character named Toby Daye are dated early 1998.  Twelve, going on thirteen, years ago.  I was twenty years old.  The rules of urban fantasy as we currently know it were still sort of sticky and half-baked, and no one really knew what they could or couldn’t get away with.  I thought my decision to write in the first person was unique and would really stand out.  You know.  Crazy things like that.

After a few years of figuring out what the hell I was doing, I had a finished novel: Rosemary and Rue [B&N |  Mysterious Galaxy | Amazon], which, in its original form, didn’t look very much like it did when it finally got published.  I wrote a sequel.  I learned a lot from writing the sequel.  I re-wrote the first book.  I wrote a third book.  I learned a lot from writing the third book.  I re-wrote the first book.  I wrote…you get the picture.  By 2007, I had what I considered to be an awesome book, and absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do with it.  I was like the underwear gnomes.  “Step one, write; step three, PROFIT.”  Only I had no idea how to proceed.

I had started talking to the woman who would eventually become my agent, Diana Fox, in early 2007.  We’d been discussing the possibility of her representing me, and the fact that clearly, I still needed to do some work on Rosemary and Rue.  In December of that same year, I had one of those Legally Blonde “whoa” moments, and suddenly realized that I needed to completely re-write the book.  Diana asked to see the first sixty pages.  Then she asked for the whole book.  Then we spent about eight hours on the phone, ending with a formal offer of representation.  Whee!

I asked a friend of mine who was also an author if she would be willing to read Rosemary and Rue and give us a “shop quote” — something that we could use to pique the interest of editors.  She agreed, with that sort of cautious “um, maybe…” that is really the best defense of the published author being approached by their unpublished friend.  She wound up enjoying the book enough that she strongly recommended we try approaching DAW, as they would be the best fit for my work.  We approached DAW.  Thirteen days later (not that I was counting or anything), Diana called me at my day job and asked whether I had a minute.  I always have a minute for Diana.  I said sure.

She said “We got DAW.”

…the screaming eventually stopped.  And the real work began.

Everything about actually publishing a book was strange and new to me.  I had to meet my editor, learn how she worked, learn how to work with her, and learn the names of everyone’s cats (not entirely joking).  I had to come to terms, fast, with the fact that a) there were now a lot of things I didn’t control, and b) everyone in the world assumed that I did control them, resulting in my spending a lot of time explaining publishing cycles to my friends.  And most of all, c) the whole world was about to have the chance to meet my imaginary friend, and not everyone was going to like her.

A year ago, I had no books in bookstores.  As I write this, I have four, with at least four more coming.  It’s incredibly weird.  Sometimes, I still expect to wake up back in December of 2007.  But weird as it all is…wow, has it been worth it.

Bullying

A lot of good posts about bullying lately.  Seanan McGuire talks about her experiences.  Michelle Sagara talks about bullying as the parent of a child with Asperger’s.  Di Francis describes standing up to the bullies.

Bullying and suicide has been in the news a lot lately.  One Ohio high school lost four students to suicide in the past few years.  October 20 has been designated Spirit Day, to remember seven teenagers who killed themselves after being bullied about their sexuality/gender identity.

As I read through various articles, one of the first comments I saw said this was a sign of the times, and kids were tougher when he was a kid.  In those days, you either kicked the bully’s ass or you were strong enough to take it.

Bullshit.

If you think kids didn’t kill themselves over bullying in the old days, you’re a damn fool.  I say this as someone who 20+ years ago sat in my parents’ bathroom, having swiped one of my dad’s syringes and filled it with insulin.  I remember breaking out in a sweat when the needle broke my skin.  I sat there for a long time, hands shaking, struggling with whether to push the plunger home and end it all.

Bullying gets more attention these days.  We talk about it online, and it pops up in the news more often, but it’s nothing new.  For me, it started the first day of sixth grade.  I had gotten some “Hines Ketchup” comments in elementary school, but sixth grade is where things turned nasty.

I was a perfect target.  Small and skinny, with glasses and zero fashion sense.  (To this day, I despise the idea of fashion, and would happily live my life in blue jeans and T-shirts.)  I was one of the brightest kids in school, but my social skills lagged pretty badly.  Topping things off, I had been in speech therapy for years.

The bullying was mostly verbal, though I got my share of shoving, of books being knocked from my hands, and all the rest.  My next door neighbor ripped my book bag.  I was the kid who ended up in his own locker — ha ha, sitcom gold, right?  I usually managed to avoid actual fights, but that was it.

Teachers, bus drivers, and principals didn’t give a damn, as far as I could see.  My parents … I didn’t talk about it much, and I don’t think they knew what to do.  They called other parents once or twice, took me shopping for better clothes, but none of it really helped.  The common wisdom back then was “Just ignore them,” which was utter crap.

I was on the other side a few times, too.  In 7th or 8th grade, a friend and I picked on another former friend for most of the year.  There was a stint where I teased a kid about her weight.  Unforgivable, and I hate myself for doing it … but at the time, if my choice was to be bully or bullied, the former seemed the better choice.

For the most part though, it was 4-5 years of feeling alone and despised and hopeless.

I survived.  Things started to get better around 11th grade.  Today I look around at my children and their schools.  There’s more awareness, but I’m still scared.  My daughter hasn’t had much trouble yet.  She’s socially gifted in all the ways I wasn’t, and sometimes I envy her.  Well-liked without losing herself, gracefully exploring her identity.

My son reminds me of me.  He has Asperger’s, and has been in speech therapy.  His social skills have improved some this year, but I still worry.

I don’t know how to fix things.  But I know telling kids to toughen up only makes things worse.  It’s victim-blaming.  “It’s your fault because you’re weak.”

Bullshit.

Ignore them and they’ll go away?  Never worked for me.

Conflict is part of life, but no child should feel sick with dread every morning before school.  Nobody should have to hide and watch for the bus, emerging only when it starts coming down the street, because that’s the only way to avoid interacting with the other kids at the bus stop. Nobody should be pushed to the point where death looks like the only way to end the torment.

I wish there had been someone like Di at my school, both to stand up for me and to stop me when I was the one picking on others.  I wish I had known things would get better.  I wish people hadn’t looked the other way, hiding behind “Boys will be boys” and other excuses.

It has to end.

Giveaway: Huff & Brennan

For the past week or so, most of my brain has been going into trying to write up proposals for a new series.  I’ve got the first synopsis written, and my agent says it looks like fun.  The second book … well, I scrapped that one and started over yesterday, and I think I’m on the right track.  But I find myself skimping a little on the blog as I try to get these finished and submitted.

So this seemed like a good time for a book giveaway.  I’ve ended up with extra copies of Marie Brennan‘s A Star Shall Fall [B&N | Mysterious Galaxy | Amazon] and Tanya Huff’s The Enchantment Emporium [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy], and I’d love to find good homes for both of them.

 

To enter, you’re going to have to help me out with this synopsis I’m writing — leave a comment suggesting the weirdest/silliest/most bizarre twist I should add to my new series.

Yes, I know I haven’t told you what the series is about.  That’s what makes it fun 🙂  Be as creative as you’d like, and make sure you say which of the two books you’d like to win.  One entry per person, and this is open to everyone.

I’ll pick two winners at random on 10/20/10.

iPhone Apps?

Thanks for everyone’s input on my iPhone vs. Droid X debate last month.  After thinking about it, I ultimately decided to go for the iPhone.

People made a lot of good points about providers and coverage, but a few people also asked what I’d primarily be using it for.  It sounds odd, but I don’t actually use my cellphone for a lot of calling and texting.  I expect to use this more for web-based updates (Twitter/Facebook), e-mail, and as a convenient camera for taking pics/video of the family and anything else that looks interesting.

It was the camera that ultimately pushed me over to the iPhone.  The Droid has more megapixels, but in pretty much every comparison I found, the iPhone just took better pictures and video.

I’ve been notified that my shiny new phone should show up by the weekend.  So I should have just enough time to figure the silly thing out before heading to World Fantasy, which means I can finally be one of the Cool Authors posting updates and pics from the con.

For those of you who’ve used these things, what apps do you recommend?  What are the must-have additions, not to mention the fun stuff?

Sunday Stuff

1. Alma Alexander has been chronicling the Rebirth of a Novel, publicly rewriting an old manuscript.  She’s interspersing this with guest posts by various authors, including yours truly.  I talk about how I got started writing, and even share two paragraphs of my very first (very bad) unpublished novel.

2. Beth Bernobich’s debut novel Passion Play [B&N |  Mysterious Galaxy | Amazon] comes out this Tuesday.  Sherwood Smith and I talk about the book over on the Book View Cafe blog.  Some of the early buzz for this book has focused on Bernobich’s portrayal of rape.  We discuss that, the characterization, the Cool Stuff theory of fiction, and more.  (It’s a fairly long chat.)

3. A question for anyone in Denver, Seattle, or Portland.  My agent noticed that sales of the goblin books had spiked in these three regions, mostly in “nontraditional” venues.  I’m told this usually indicates a few supermarket chains, and stores like Toys R Us and Starbucks.  Has anyone out there seen Jig & crew popping up in Kroger or Fred Meyer or anything like that?  We’re curious where those extra sales are coming from.

4. More on e-book pricing.  One of the complaints that came up a lot in response to my e-book post was the ridiculousness of e-books costing more than hardcovers.  Writer Beware explains why this happens.  (Short version: it’s the effect of two competing sales models.)

First Book Friday: Alyx Dellamonica

Welcome to First Book Friday, an ongoing series exploring how various authors sold their first books.

Alyx Dellamonica‘s debut novel came out just about one year ago, but that’s not the cool part.

Alyx’s book just won the Sunburst award!  Her first novel beat out books by Charles de Lint, Cory Doctorow, Karl Schroeder, and Robert Charles Wilson.  How freaking cool is that?!?!

So here’s Alyx, to tell you how she wrote and sold her award-winning first novel.

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I finished writing Indigo Springs [B&N |  Mysterious Galaxy | Amazon] in 2003, in the summertime, and my wonderful agent, Linn Prentis, went to Tor Books with it right away.

This happened at practically the same nanosecond that marriage equality was breaking out across Canada. My partner and I had an August weekend picked out, but legalizing our marriage on the chosen day hinged on the law changing by July. If not, we’d need a Plan B… and, all along, we knew there were no guarantees. It would be wrong to say I never gave my novel any thought during that period, but it turns out that waiting to find out if your civil rights situation is going to change for the better can be somewhat all-consuming.

Then, when gay marriage did become legal in British Columbia in July of 2003, I went straight from second-guessing the Supreme Court into wedding plans.

Meanwhile, Jim Frenkel at Tor had accepted my book, pending some changes. A long back and forth began. It took awhile to finalize everything–I had 15,000 words to cut, for one thing, and there were elements of my bizarre magical world that needed more explanation. And again, life intruded–some major life challenges cropped up on my end in 2006… and 2007… and 2008. At times, the novel deal seemed unreal and far away. But contracts got signed, and money came, and my father e-mailed me every other week to ask when he could buy INDIGO SPRINGS in a Chapters. These signs of steady progress toward officially Being a Novelist gave me something to hold onto. (Now my father is in China, demanding to know when the book will be out in Mandarin.)

One of the coolest things about my first-novel journey was that Irene Gallo had spotted this amazing Julie Bell painting and liked it so much she went looking to see if any of their editors might want it for a particular project. Jim pounced on it immediately. He sent an electronic copy to me the week we finalized the deal, with a note that said something like, “If you don’t like it, we’ll get something else.” But I loved it! It is not only a beautiful painting, it’s very appropriate.

So, unlike most writers, I knew coming out of the gate that I was going to have amazing cover art. What’s more, because I did still have to tweak the novel, I had time to sync some of the details in the art with my narrative. Tiny things: my heroine, Astrid, is dolled up in the final third of the book, so it was easy to match the dress she wears with the one on the cover. There’s also a golden bowl in the painting, and by chance INDIGO SPRINGS has a ritual that features a bowl… voilà, suddenly that bowl was golden.

Writers hear cover art horror stories all the time: “They took my protagonist and made her Swedish, and also gave her an extra head!” Knowing all along that I had a stunner of an image was reassuring in its own right.  Then the design team got in on the process, and Oh My! Seeing what the painting became later, when cover proofs started reaching me, was like a huge, beautiful gift from the universe.

People talk about how slow publishing is, and it’s not unusual to finish a book and then wait years to see it in bookstores. The waiting can try your patience, there’s no doubt about it. But as it happened INDIGO SPRINGS came out at a time when I was entirely ready to enjoy the launch party, the good reviews, and the book’s overall success. Prior to that time, there’d been a lot going on in my life–tough, distracting, challenging stuff!–and in retrospect it feels as though everything has unfolded at just the right pace.

E-book Pricing

My post on royalties earlier this week generated some interesting responses, particularly with regard to e-book sales.  My e-book sales were, at best, 4.3% of my total sales (for The Stepsister Scheme).

Several people said my e-books were priced too high.  The printed book cost $7.99 (U.S.), whereas the e-book was available for $6.99.  If the price were lower, I’d sell more e-books.[1. Please note that I have no control over my book prices. Those are set by the publisher.]

Well … sure.  And if the price of the paperback were cheaper, I’d sell more of those.  That’s basic economics.

Beneath those responses is, I think, the belief that e-books just aren’t worth $6.99.  We’re still arguing over the value of an e-book, meaning both how much does it cost to produce, and how much are people willing to pay?

There’s an assumption that e-books should be cheap because there’s no printing cost.  But printing costs are only about 8-10% of the overall cost of producing a book.  Shipping and storage are also a factor, but the majority of the costs aren’t about the physical book.

For the sake of argument, I’m talking about professional, commercially produced books.  You have to pay the author’s advance and royalties, the cover artist, the editor, the copy editor, the typesetter, the sales force, and that doesn’t even get into distributor costs or the percentages taken by retailers.

“But then how do you explain all of those cheap/free e-books on Amazon, Jim?  If they can do it, why can’t you?”

I can, actually.  I’m planning to re-release Goldfish Dreams as an e-book, and it will be significantly cheaper than my other books.  This book has already been commercially published once, and the rights have reverted to me.  So a lot of the professional work has already been done.

When the rights revert to me for my other books, I may consider doing something similar.  Cheap e-books seem like one good way to keep an author’s old backlist in print.

But those initial production costs have to get covered somewhere.  Sure, I could skip straight to self-publishing for my next book and bypass the publisher, but I don’t have the expertise to produce a good product, and I don’t have the sales force or distribution to get that product out there.

One thing I’ve considered is that it might be cool if the e-book price dropped 50% a year or two after a book came out, assuming the book earned back most of its costs in that first year.  But then, why couldn’t you do the same with the print book?  (I’m sure there are reasons; I’m just letting my mind wander a bit now.)

I don’t know what the “right” price for an e-book is, or if there’s one correct, fixed price point.  $6.99 seems reasonable to me, but it’s obvious some people disagree.  I’m personally reluctant to buy an e-book for more than $10 … but if the alternative was a $25 hardcover or waiting a year for the paperback, I might go for the e-book.

I know this is an old and ongoing debate.  But I wanted to put a few of my thoughts out there as to why “Just make the e-books cheaper!” doesn’t strike me as the answer.

Discussion welcome, as always.

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Shirvell vs. Armstrong

For months, Michigan Assistant Attorney General Andrew Shirvell has been running his own personal crusade against University of Michigan student assembly president Chris Armstrong, who happens to be gay.

Shirvell started a blog called Chris Armstrong Watch, which he recently closed to all but invited readers.  He described the blog as “a site for concerned University of Michigan alumni, students, and others who oppose the recent election of Chris Armstrong — a RADICAL HOMOSEXUAL ACTIVIST, RACIST, ELITIST, & LIAR.”  The photo of Armstrong and a gay pride flag with a swastika photoshopped onto it is from one of his posts.

Shirvell has attended multiple meetings at U of M to protest, criticize, and attack Armstrong in various venues.  Armstrong has filed for a personal protection order, and the U of M has issued a trespassing warning against Shirvell.

All of which leaves me wondering, what the hell is wrong with this guy?  What is it about homosexuality which causes people to so completely lose their shit?  This is the assistant attorney general of the state of Michigan, and he’s facing a PPO and potential harassment charges over what?  The fact that Armstrong likes men?

I’ve seen some commenters suggest Shirvell is closeted himself.  I have no idea about the man’s sexuality, and I don’t care.  Could he be gay, and lashing out at Armstrong as a way to externalize his own conflict?  I guess so.  But many of these comments seem aimed at hurting/insulting him with the implication that he’s gay, and that makes me uncomfortable.

“Gay” is not an insult.  It’s not a weapon or a way to score points in an argument, even an argument against a bigot.  If Shirvell is gay, then this whole mess becomes more tragic … but it doesn’t explain where Shirvell developed this obsessive loathing for homosexuality to begin with.

I’m sure there are things people do in the bedroom (or elsewhere) that would squick most of us out.  For Shirvell, it’s homosexuality.  Me, well, there are certain fetishes that make me cringe a bit to think about.  But so what?  That’s my problem.

Here’s a radical idea for Mr. Shirvell.  If you don’t like homosexuality, don’t have sex with guys.  If I think the use of produce in the bedroom is icky, I should keep the carrots and cucumbers in the crisper.

Voila!  Problem solved!

Where the hell do you get off bullying consenting adults about what they do in the privacy of their own bedroom?  What messed-up logic makes someone think this is okay?  We’ve seen the results of this kind of bullying.  Is that the ultimate goal, to bully Armstrong and others like him to suicide?

I don’t get it.  With all the real problems out there, why would someone spend so much time and energy on this kind of pointless hate?

Shirvell has taken a personal leave of absence from his position.  He will face a disciplinary hearing when he returns to work.

I wonder if Shirvell’s disgust about homosexuality is as strong as my own disgust at the idea of a man like him representing me and my state.

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