RIVERS RUN is live.

I know I promised last week that Rivers Run would be available for purchase this past Thursday -- but Amazon was speedier than I expected. The Kindle version actually dropped Wednesday. Thanks to everyone who has already bought a copy of the book -- you're all my best friends forever. For the rest of you, here's the Amazon US link, and here's the one for Amazon UK. (I'm terrible about remembering to post links for the non-US Amazon stores. Sorry about that.)

I was hoping I would have good news tonight about the paperback edition. Alas, it's still in process. The explanation requires a bit of "inside baseball," so bear with me.

Up until now, I've been using CreateSpace for publishing my paperback editions. But Amazon has decided to shut down CreateSpace and bring all of its indie publishing operations under the KDP banner. I tried the KDP paperback setup for the hard-copy version of the Pipe Woman Chronicles Omnibus (a steal at just $18.99!), but the system was in beta then, and it was almost exactly like publishing via CreateSpace. So I figured getting Rivers Run through it would be a piece of cake.

Oh haha. KDP is using a different cover creation process.

I forget what my favorite CreateSpace cover template was called, but basically you took your cover image from your ebook, created a back cover image, and dropped both images into this template. The template had preset parameters for the spine -- the number of fonts and colors was limited, true, but I was always able to find one that worked, and that I could carry across a whole series.

That template is now gone. KDP has a sort of similar one, where you can drop in your ebook cover art and put the text of the blurb and bio on the back. But this time -- unlike nearly every other time, when I've forgotten to make the back cover image until I was uploading the book to CreateSpace (whoops!) -- I'd actually created the back cover art ahead of time. And I really liked it. I wanted to use it. But the only way I could see to do that was to download one of KDP's cover templates and -- shudder -- make my own spine.

For the paperback edition, of course. I still have an actual spine installed in my back.

Anyway.

I downloaded the template Friday night, threw together the paperback cover image, and uploaded everything. When I woke up this morning, I had an email from KDP saying there was a problem with my cover. Which I could have predicted, as this is the first time I've made a full cover from scratch in, -- oh, since SwanSong, I think, in August 2011.

So I fussed around with it and uploaded it this morning. I'm hoping this version will pass muster. Here it is -- isn't the back gorgeous?

Fingers crossed that KDP accepts it. I tell you what, every day's a new adventure for an indie author.

***
These moments of elemental spiney blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Indie author since 1965.

Before Seized... before SwanSong... even before The Maidens' War... there was Susie and the Talking Doll.

I included the story of this little book in my author bio on Amazon, but I've never shared it here on the blog. Earlier today, someone in a Facebook authors' group shared a photo of the first book he ever wrote as a kid, and it reminded me of my own first book. What's more, I knew exactly where it was. Or rather, I thought I knew; it turned out to be in a box on the bottom of a stack of boxes in the farthest recesses of my most inaccessible closet. It's no longer in pristine condition -- the bottom part of the cover has been lost over the years -- but I think it looks pretty good for having been written on a cheap, unlined tablet of paper more than 50 years ago.

I got the idea from Kenneth Barnes, who sat in front of me in second grade. One day he brought in a book he'd written. I have no idea what it was about -- robots or something, I suppose. But I remember looking at his book and thinking, "I could do that." So I did.

If I were to write a blurb for Susie and the Talking Doll, it would go something like this: "Six-year-old Susie tells everyone she is going to get a talking doll for Christmas -- and she does! Patty has a ponytail and a dress just like Susie's, and not only does this doll talk, she has a mind of her own. Together, Susie and Patty go on amazing adventures, many of which involve doing the jerk to Beatles records."

I'm not kidding about them doing the jerk -- the '60s version, obviously, not the hip-hop one. If you're unfamiliar with the dance, here's a video from "American Bandstand" that shows how it's done. (I found a video on YouTube from just a couple of years ago in which some guy tried to teach it, but he misses the point. It's not just about waving your arms up and down. If you do it right, your back gets a little hitch in it on the downswing.)

Anyway, what's interesting to me now about this book is how well I did with the mechanics of it. I used quotation marks and other punctuation correctly, and nearly all the words are spelled right. We hadn't learned about paragraphs yet, however, so each chapter is one long paragraph.

I'm fascinated by my prescience about certain things. I put the table of contents in the back of the book. That's something indie authors sometimes do these days so that the downloadable sample isn't taken up by front matter, although the reason I did it here is because I forgot to leave a blank page for it between the cover and the first page of the story. Also, as you can see in the photo, I priced this book at $1.00 -- just a penny more than several of my, uh, newer titles.

I will not be republishing Susie and the Talking Doll. The story needs heavy editing -- for one thing, there's not much of a plot -- and I'd have to find an illustrator, as the original pictures just aren't up to professional standards. (Interestingly, my drawing style hasn't improved much over the intervening decades.)

But there you go -- my very first foray into publishing. It's almost like I was meant to be an indie author from the start. Thanks, Ken Barnes, wherever you are.

***

On a sad note: For the past several years, I've been involved with an anthology group under the auspices of Five59 Publishing and its founder, Alan Seeger. I'm sorry to report that Alan died last week at the age of 58.

Alan had significant health challenges -- he was a paraplegic due to an auto accident -- but he was always upbeat whenever I talked with him online. He was tireless in encouraging new writers, and our anthologies were the better for it.

The last book Alan published before his death was the paperback version of 13 Bites Vol. V. He also wrote a sci-fi trilogy, the first book of which is called Pinball and which I enjoyed quite a bit. In addition, he co-authored several other novels and published a collection of essays. You can find all his books, as well as the Five59 anthologies, on his Amazon author page.

With Alan's death, indie publishing has lost a loyal and eminently capable friend. R.I.P., Alan. We'll miss you.

***

These moments of bloggy reflection have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

New Year, same old clickbait arguments.

Envy by Josse le Court - National Museum, Krakow |
CC 1.0

Welcome to 2017, which a whole lot of us hope won't be as bad as we think it will.

The Huffington Post must have had a slow week last week -- wait. Of course they did. It was the week between Christmas and New Year's; barring some huge breaking news story, everybody's on vacation. So anyway, somebody at HuffPo reached into the blogger slush pile last week and decided to run this submission that retreads all the old complaints about indie publishing: indies are hacks, and self-publishing is only fit for the elderly who want to pass along their life histories to their kids and don't want to take the trouble to learn how to write properly, and so on. You know, the usual stuff.

Predictably, the comments section lit up with indies taking umbrage. The author of the piece, Laurie Gough, had the grace in her responses to retreat a little, and admit maybe she spoke a little hastily. Still, some folks felt compelled to mention that Gough's comments might have been spurred by sales envy, as many indie books sell better than hers. The responses included this blog post, which advanced the usual arguments against attitudes like Gough's with a supersized side of insults.

Maybe it's because I'm getting over the flu (thanks, 2016, for that parting shot), but the whole thing is making me tired.

Look, we've been fighting this stigma since -- what, 2009? 2010? And you know what? We don't hear much about it anymore. That's partly because the complaints are starting to sound like sour grapes, like Gough's does. But it's also partly because trad-pubbed midlist authors are pulling their backlists from their publishers and self-pubbing those older books, and making more money now than they did before.

To recap: yes, many indies employ professional-level editorial staffs (including beta readers) and cover artists, as well as more dedicated marketing managers than your average overworked PR person at name-a-trad-publisher; yes, many indies have more education and experience as writers and editors -- paid experience, even! -- than the politicians and starlets who get the big-ticket contracts these days; yes, some indie books are terrible, but then so are some trad-pubbed books; and yes, in today's publishing world, getting a contract is mostly about luck -- unless you're an indie who works your butt off to maneuver your way onto a bestseller list, at which point agents who know a golden ticket when they see one will begin pestering you to let them sell your work to a "real" publisher.

Can we just stipulate all that?

And then, the next time somebody decides to publish one of these tired, disproven rants, can we all just not react? Because I suspect that if articles like these stop getting clicks, publications like HuffPo will stop running them -- and then we can put this pointless conversation to bed, once and for all.

***
I'm actually feeling much better today. Thanks for asking.

***
Writing news: Editing will commence shortly on Maggie in the Dark. In addition, just today, I finished a short story (epic fantasy!) for the next Five59 anthology. I'll let you know how that goes.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

***
These moments of retreaded ranting blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

She who expects nothing...

First and foremost, thanks to everybody who came to the Undertow launch party on Facebook yesterday! I had a blast, and I think the folks who came did, too. Best of all, I gave away all the prizes, including the door prizes. Congrats to Greta Burroughs and Illume Eltanin, who won the $5 Amazon gift cards, and to Chris Lewis, who won the $25 Amazon gift card.

It was so much fun, I'm thinking of doing it again when Scorched Earth is ready for release. Good thing I have a few months to rest up first.

***

I am not sure now where I saw the quote. Probably on a poster when I was in college. I don't think I owned the poster; it must have been a friend's, or maybe I just saw it in a store. But anyway, the quote is this:

It's meant to be funny, of course. I think the accompanying photo illustration was a woeful beagle with his head on his paws. But often, humor works because there's at least a grain of truth in it.

There was an article floating around Facebook a couple of weeks ago (which I can't find now, of course) about traditionally-published authors who are having trouble making a living from writing books. Several authors -- midlisters and literary writers -- were quoted in the article as saying they had gotten used to getting big enough advances from their publishers that they were able to support themselves on them. That allowed them to live and work as writers, without a day job; they could devote themselves to their art without having to worry about working for The Man in order to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads.

Those halcyon days are apparently over. Advances from traditional publishers have been shrinking over the past decade or so, as those publishers pour more and more of their resources into big advances to already-famous people to pen blockbusters (or, more accurately, books the publishers hope will be blockbusters). This means midlist writers who have gotten used to living off the income from their books are being forced to recalibrate. They're either cutting back their expenses or -- the horror! -- having to take a day job.

In short, they had come to expect that they could make a living wage from their work, but their publishers are disappointing them.

The implication of the article was that maybe society has lost something by not paying our creators of literature a living wage for their words -- that what we're seeing is the passing of a golden age for the life of the mind.

The truth is, though, it's not the first time the paradigm has shifted for those who work in the arts. During the Renaissance, artists and composers sought wealthy patrons who would support them. The artists turned out stuff their patrons ordered, and wrote or painted or sculpted their pet projects on the side. That sort of patronage eventually went out of style. In the centuries since, artists, writers and composers have largely lived hand-to-mouth in pursuit of their art. There's a reason, after all, for the term "starving artist."

Then when capitalism became the New Hotness, people began make a habit of quantifying the worth of the worker's produced goods -- an attitude that still exists today, even when we're talking about service workers. "Do novelists contribute as much to the general welfare as doctors or lawyers?" people want to know. "Aren't police more critical to society than people who write books? What about firefighters? What about teachers?"

Yeah, yeah, I get it. All these people deliver work that provides an obvious benefit to society. They may not be making widgets, but they do provide services that we, as a society, have deemed important: healing the sick, helping us get out of trouble, protecting us, teaching us. The impact of writers' work, and its contribution to the greater good, is much less direct.

And too, books require thought in order to reap their benefits -- and that's not something we seem to value these days. I mean, who wants to have to think? We're tired when we get home from work, for goodness' sake. We just want a beer (or two or three) and a diverting TV show (or two or three). We might read for ten minutes before we fall asleep, assuming we can stay awake that long, but that's it.

So what does this mean for indie authors? A lot of us dream about kicking the day job to the curb and making a living from this writing thing someday. We have some things going for us in that regard that trad-pubbed authors don't -- higher royalties per book sold, for one thing. But I do sometimes wonder whether our society isn't sliding back into another "age of the starving artist." And I think it's probably prudent, in any case, to have a Plan B in our pockets, in case this writing-for-a-living thing doesn't pan out.

***
These moments of introspective blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

The Kobo kerfuffle: my take.

Things are calming down in the IndieAuthorLand again, so maybe now I can talk about the most recent dust-up between indies and their sales platform providers without anybody lashing out at me.

It all started about three weeks ago, give or take a day, when an online magazine in the UK published a list of pornographic novels available for sale on Amazon. The mag followed up with a couple more articles that indicated other retailers were selling this smut, too. (I won't post a link to the magazine; I'm not interested in promoting this stuff.) Then the BBC ran with the story. In the ensuing backlash, a few retailers went overboard. WH Smith, a stationers' in the UK, shut down its entire website and promised not to reopen until all of its ebook titles were inspected and the offensive material was removed. WH Smith gets its ebook titles from Kobo; while Kobo runs its own self-publishing platform, Kobo Writing Life, it receives a large percentage of the self-published books in its catalog from Smashwords and Draft2Digital.

As a result of WH Smith's action, Kobo blocked access by UK customers to all of its self-published materials and initiated a review of all of its titles.  Those titles are coming back online now.

Amazon, too, pulled down a number of its potentially offensive titles. Apparently, some authors have had quite a fight on their hands while trying to get their work reinstated for sale there.

The whole thing generated a fair amount of heat but not a lot of light. In retrospect, it appears the online magazine made some unfair assumptions about the offensive material; for one thing, IndieReader says, many of the offensive titles weren't indie books at all:

The article portrayed the problem as (mostly self-pubbed) erotica and then featured books published primarily by internet marketers, not authors. Authors can easily spot these 'marketeers' because they study the erotica book listings in the course of their market research.... Internet marketers routinely outsource story production to third world countries and are known to publish hundreds of stories at a time. The quality is low, the covers are in-your-face graphic and the titles are keyword stuffed to the point that even Google gags on all the search terms. It's not an issue of genre, but a business model used by some marketers to extract profit with no concern for quality.

In addition, some of the books targeted by the article that are, in fact, self-pubbed aren't smutty at all.

A bigger issue is the difference in regulation of pornography among the US, Canada, and the UK. The US has an almost-anything-goes attitude toward porn, while UK lacks the kind of First Amendment protection that the US has, and the government there has plans to crack down on material it deems objectionable and keep it from being distributed to computers in the UK at all.

Still another issue, as I understand it, is that Kobo doesn't offer the same kind of tagging system that Amazon does. (Smashwords, for one, allows authors to tag their work to aid customers using the search function -- but Kobo doesn't put those tags in their listings.) And some authors of erotica reportedly misuse the tagging system, to the point where kids looking for books about, say, Daddy or babysitters can come across porn in their search results.

Of course, indies have complained about all being tarred by the same brush -- while books like 50 Shades of Gray never got pulled. Indies also had plenty of complaints about their First Amendment rights being violated, along with the requisite hair-pulling and clothing-rending about how this is the beginning of the end for us and will give (pick an online retailer) the excuse it's been looking for to quit carrying books by any indie author. (Never mind that Amazon, Kobo, and B&N all have their own self-publishing platforms -- so it ought to occur to anyone who takes two seconds to think about it that they aren't going to bail on indie books.)

I neither read nor write erotica, and I have no intent to ever start. However, I support people's right to publish anything they please, no matter how offensive. That said, though, erotica authors have to realize from the outset that they run the risk of their work never being carried by a major retailer. Just because the First Amendment allows you to say anything you want, it doesn't mean you ought to -- nor does it force a company to carry your work. Especially if that company is in a different country that has different anti-porn laws. If you want to make sure Amazon or somebody doesn't purge your work in the next round of oh-my-Gawd-no-porn-allowed!! insanity, tone it down.

And can we please take off the hair shirt already? Amazon, Kobo, and B&N have too much invested in their indie publishing platforms to discontinue them any time soon. No, indie publishing is here to stay.

But it would behoove Kobo, I think, to work on instituting tags for search terms. And it would help everybody if every indie author tagged their work honestly.

***
Thanks to the few, the proud, who picked up copies of Fissured last week during its free days. This week, Tapped will be available for free starting Wednesday.

Also, in case you missed it, my Indies Unlimited pal Melissa Bowersock interviewed me on her blog this week. And I think I forgot to mention (bad author!) that another IU pal, Lois Lewandowski, let me play on her blog a couple of weeks back -- and even let me post a recipe for chocolate mint meringue cookies (gluten free and stupid easy! Even I can make them!). Enjoy!

***

This moment of news-like blogginess has been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

The first flaw in Kernel Mag’s anti-porn campaign? The article portrayed the problem as (mostly self-pubbed) erotica and then featured books published primarily by internet marketers, not authors. Authors can easily spot these ‘marketeers’ because they study the erotica book listings in the course of their market research, an expertise that no media outlet has developed.
Internet marketers routinely outsource story production to third world countries and are known to publish hundreds of stories at a time. The quality is low, the covers are in-your-face graphic and the titles are keyword stuffed to the point that even Google gags on all the search terms. It’s not an issue of genre, but a business model used by some marketers to extract profit with no concern for quality.
- See more at: http://indiereader.com/2013/10/banning-books/#sthash.hA8AQkxm.dpuf

The first flaw in Kernel Mag’s anti-porn campaign? The article portrayed the problem as (mostly self-pubbed) erotica and then featured books published primarily by internet marketers, not authors. Authors can easily spot these ‘marketeers’ because they study the erotica book listings in the course of their market research, an expertise that no media outlet has developed.
Internet marketers routinely outsource story production to third world countries and are known to publish hundreds of stories at a time. The quality is low, the covers are in-your-face graphic and the titles are keyword stuffed to the point that even Google gags on all the search terms. It’s not an issue of genre, but a business model used by some marketers to extract profit with no concern for quality.
- See more at: http://indiereader.com/2013/10/banning-books/#sthash.hA8AQkxm.dpuf

How trad publishing is like broadcast news.

Yes, all right, I'm posting a day late this week. I was out of town last week, attempting to wrap up some stuff at my mother's old house (which I may blog about at some point, once I can write about it without needing to throttle someone -- look for that post in about twenty years, I think); with stop-and-go traffic, my daughter Kitty and I didn't get home until 10:00 last night. And I still had laundry to do. So the blog post got pushed to today.  Sorry about that.

To help us all calm down, here's a picture I took on one of our first days at my mom's house. People tend to think of Indiana as nothing but corn and cows -- okay, and the Indy 500 -- but a sliver of the northwestern corner of the state has frontage on Lake Michigan, and that's the part of Indiana that I'm from.  Kitty and I took a break from sorting stuff at Mom's one night and walked down to the lake to see the sunset. I got this shot with the camera on my phone as the sun was just touching the water.

Some folks are getting amazing shots from the lakefront near the Michigan City lighthouse of buildings in the Chicago Loop. (Chicago is 35 miles from Michigan City if you go straight across the lake.) Alas, either it was too hazy or my camera wasn't good enough -- we could see the buildings as shadows on the horizon, but I couldn't get them in a shot.  Ah well.

Anyway...calm thoughts and cleansing breaths.  And then we can get all riled up again.

***
Last week, I wrote about how many women of a certain age are going the indie author route, and speculated as to why that was so. Kathryn Treat asked me in the comments what my own reasons were for going indie at this time of my life, and as my response to her lengthened, I realized I ought to just do a post on it.

To understand my reasoning, it helps to know a little bit about the business of broadcasting.  And the first thing you need to know is that almost nobody you hear or see on your local news broadcast is getting a fabulous salary.  The money is concentrated in the hands of the owners (which today probably consists of the shareholders of a large corporation), the sales staff, and a few stars.  In radio, that usually means the guys you hear during morning and afternoon drive-time, which are the most lucrative dayparts for advertising sales.  In TV news, it would likely be the anchors.  Behind these folks are the reporters, editors, producers, videographers and writers, as well as office staffers who never make it on the air, and trust me when I say that they are not making much. During salary negotiations for my current day job as a legal secretary at a big DC law firm, HR asked me how much I'd made when I worked as a tape editor at Mutual/NBC Radio News. I screwed up my courage and was honest with them, even though I was worried they would refuse to match it.  Not only did they match it, but on my first anniversary I received a 13 percent raise -- to bring me up to the market average for legal secretaries. Yes, that's right, folks! You can make more as a secretary than you can in the glamorous world of network radio.

The word "glamorous" is key.  Station owners are able to keep salaries low because of the coolness factor of working in broadcasting. In essence, you're getting paid partly in prestige. And if you complain about the size of your paycheck, management may well remind you that if you no longer want your job, there are hundreds of people out there who would take it in a heartbeat -- because it's so cool to work in radio.

Contrast that, if you will, with the world of traditional publishing.  Who's making all the money? The stockholders, of course, and the C-level managers (CEO, CFO, etc.), and the big stars who get lucky and sell tons of books.  But midlist authors are equivalent to the reporters, videographers and writers in a broadcast newsroom: they provide the bulk of the content, but they're getting paid partly in prestige.  And just like in broadcasting, traditional publishers have a slush pile full of eager wannabes to pick from when a midlist author gets cranky about her pathetic royalty checks.

Once I figured that out, my interest in chasing a traditional publishing contract waned rapidly.

And too, my kids are grown, and I'm about six years from early retirement.  I have the time now to write, and many of the skills (it turns out) to make a go of self-publishing.  And so here we are.

***
Before I stop, I'm pleased to announce that the first chapter of Seized is included in First Chapters.  This book is a compilation of the first chapters of 22 books by indie authors.  Some of us are bestsellers, some are award winners, and all of us have been Indies Unlimited minions at one time or another. 

Several of the books represented here have been Rursday Reads. If you've been wondering whether to give one a try, now's your chance to check out a meatier sample than you would get with the "look inside" feature.  And it's only 99 cents. Such a deal!

One more thing: Annealed goes free at Amazon this week from Thursday through Saturday. If you haven't yet collected the set, now might be a good time. Just sayin'.

***
These moments of comparative blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Late update (sorry!).

I'm a day late and short on time for my weekly blog post.  Sorry about that.  When I was supposed to be posting here, I was driving home from Toronto and the World Fantasy Convention.  I'm relying on you guys:  the next time I blithely suggest that driving to Toronto for the weekend would be doable, please remind me that it takes 12 hours, no matter what Mapquest and Google Maps promise, and tell me not to do it.

Ahem.  Anyway.

We weathered Hurricane Sandy just fine, without even losing power.  But my heart goes out to friends and others in the New York/New Jersey area who have lost so much from the storm.  I hope the power comes back on and life gets back to some semblance of normality as soon as possible.

The Toronto trip has put me way behind on NaNoWriMo, as I knew it would -- but I did get in a couple of writing sessions (although the second was cut very short by a bout of food poisoning -- it's okay, I'm fine now).  So I am only, by my calculations, about 5,000 words behind where I should be today (ack!!).  Hoping to catch up by the time I go to bed tonight.  Although I also need to unpack, do laundry and clean the house.  I did have a lot of time to think about book 4 while driving, which is all to the good.

A full convention report will have to wait 'til next week, when I'm not behind the NaNo 8-ball.  But I had a great time (despite having to talk to Ralph on the big white telephone), and I even sold a couple of books.  I will tell you, as a sort of teaser for next week, that the publishing industry's take on indies has changed markedly since last year's convention. Let's just say I was smelling a lot of dinosaur breath this year....

Have a great week, everybody.

***
These moments of brief blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Indies and ethics.

I'm writing this way ahead of time, so things have probably cooled down by now.  But earlier this month, there was a kerfuffle in the indie world over some popular authors who had done some pretty unethical things to promote their books. 

One guy, RJ Ellory, was caught writing glowing, five-star reviews for his books and posting them on Amazon under an assumed name.  Not only that, but he would use the same assumed name or names -- oh, let's call these alternate identities "sockpuppets" for short, since everyone else is -- to leave scathing, one-star reviews for books that he considered to be his competition.

Ellory is not the only guy engaging in this kind of stupidity.  A historian named Orlando Figes was caught doing the same sort of thing in 2010.  A well-known UK thriller writer named Stephen Leather has admitted to doing it, too -- and says he doesn't see a problem with it, if it builds buzz for his books.

Perhaps my favorite story, though, is that of John Locke, whose name has been held high as one of the few indies to sell millions of books.  He even wrote a book entitled, How I Sold One Million E-Books in Five Months.  Turns out he paid big money to a shady guy whose business it was to round up people to write glowing reviews of many Amazon products, including e-books.  I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I would guess Locke left this part of the formula for his success out of his how-to book.

In response to these bits of news, a group of authors (full disclosure: the group includes Graham Joyce, and I'm a big fan of his work) posted a petition online and encouraged others to sign it.  The petition says, in part, "We the undersigned unreservedly condemn this behaviour, and commit never to use such tactics."  I signed it.  I even put a link to it on my Facebook page.

Then, Joe Konrath -- whose blog I typically enjoy, particularly when he's bashing the traditional publishing business -- wrote a series of posts critical of the No Sockpuppets Here petition.  At first glance, Konrath seemed to be complaining that other authors were piling on, either out of some misplaced sense of judgmental superiority or out of jealousy that they hadn't sold as many books as the guys who had been outed.  But then later, Konrath admitted that he was personally acquainted with Locke and Leather, and in fact had discussed collaborating on a project with Leather.  So then it appeared he was sticking up for his buddies.

Well, okay.  I'd stick up for my friends, too, I guess, to a point.  But I have to tell you that I don't see anything wrong with having a personal code of ethics and sticking to it.  And I also don't see anything wrong with calling out someone who behaves egregiously.

Konrath is right that these guys didn't commit any crimes, and maybe he's right that no other authors were hurt by their actions (although you've gotta wonder about the effects of those fake one-star reviews).  But for gods' sake, please tell me this isn't our only yardstick for ethical indie behavior.

And in a world where indie authors' marketing options are limited, trashing the credibility of Amazon's star review system with sockpuppet reviews hurts all of us.
***
I'm Lynne Cantwell, and I approve this blog post. 

September Social Splash.

I got involved with what ultimately became The Indie Exchange almost a year ago. Now that it's a year old, they're throwing a little shindig over at their place. There are prizes involved, so if you're interested in that sort of thing, feel free to stop by. The info is below. Good luck! (And yes, I'll be back tomorrow with your regular weekly post.)


Incredibly, The Indie Exchange - or Adopt an Indie as it was originally known - is now a year old. The planning for the first event started in September 2011. In January 2012 the decision was taken to make it an all round service to readers, bloggers and authors. From an event supporting dozens of authors, the Indie Exchange has grown into a 800 member strong - and growing - group. To celebrate, we're inviting you to our best ever giveaway: The September Social Splash.

Main prize: $100 Amazon voucher

Second prize: $10 Amazon voucher

There are so many ways to win - just check out the Rafflecopter below. You can complete as many actions as you like to enter the draw and be in with a chance of winning the $100 prize.


Thank you to all our members and visitors for making The Indie Exchange such a success so far!


Visit The Indie Exchange: Website ** Facebook Group ** Facebook Page ** Twitter

Happy Birthday The Indie Exchange

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Penguin bought WHAT?!?

It was just a couple of weeks ago when I did a post about Author Solutions (also known as ASI) and what a sleazy operation it is.  To recap (in case you're too time-pressed to click the link), Author Solutions is the umbrella company for a host of vanity presses, including AuthorHouse, Xlibris and iUniverse.  Essentially, all of these companies are in business to separate would-be authors from their money.  They charge huge fees upfront to "edit" your work, then pester you mercilessly to pay for additional services.  Then they do the bare minimum to "market" your work.  And then they pay you pennies on the dollar in royalties.

I also mentioned that Author Solutions was owned by Bertram Capital, which looked to me like a venture capital firm -- the sort of outfit that takes an under-performing company (i.e., one that isn't making enough money to satisfy its shareholders), tweaks it, and then sells it for more than its investment.

Well, sooprise, sooprise, sooprise, as Gomer Pyle used to say.  The news this week is that Bertram has sold Author Solutions to -- brace yourself -- Pearson plc, which owns the Penguin Group.  Yup, that's right.  The company whose well-respected and award-winning author stable includes Toni Morrison, Patricia Cornwell, Garrison Keillor and the Dalai Lama now owns a pile of, uh, bad-smelling stuff.

David Gaughran has written a great piece about this at IndieReader.com. But I think one of his best observations is in the comments below the article.  Author Solutions boasts that it publishes 150,000 authors and 190,000 books.  Compare that, David says, to Smashwords, which has been in business for a much shorter period of time, and yet has published 140,000 books by just 40,000 authors.  If you had to guess, who do you suppose has the better customer satisfaction rating?

Speaking of Smashwords, Mark Coker was the first commenter on the PublishersWeekly.com article about the sale:

While Pearson is smart to develop a long tail strategy that includes self-published authors, the challenge with ASI is that its business model is entirely dependent upon blinding the eyes and stealing the dreams of unsuspecting authors. It earns 2/3+ of its revenue selling services and packages to authors, not selling books to consumers. That's a recipe for parasitism and exploitation, and in the long run as indies wise up, it's not a sustainable model.

Hear hear, Mark.  And thanks for the Indies Unlimited plug in your reply, too.

Going back to David's post for a moment, he mused about why Penguin would want to own something as unsavory as Author Solutions.  The answer, I think, is that traditional publishers simply can't tell the difference between vanity publishing and indie publishing.  I read a blog post not long ago (and wish I could find it again so I could post the link -- sorry) by a literary agent who was complaining about the terminology used by the indie author movement.  She chided us for calling ourselves "indie" and suggested instead that we use the term "self-published", because it's better understood in New York publishing circles.

The comments generated by that post made entertaining reading, and I believe the agent got an education.  But if her attitude is any indication, the Big Six consider "self-publishing" to be synonymous with vanity publishing.  Apparently many in the trad publishing business lump Smashwords, Kindle Direct Publishing, PubIt, CreateSpace and Lulu (and others) in with Author Solutions and others of their ilk.  If it didn't come out of trad publishing, in other words, it's just one big slush pile of steaming crap.  Viewed in that light, Penguin's purchase of Author Solutions makes perfect sense: if this "indie publishing" thing is going to undermine their core business, they need some skin in the game to stay viable, and purchasing an existing company in, you know, that end of the industry is just good business sense.

Are you gonna tell 'em?  I'm not gonna tell 'em.
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I'm Lynne Cantwell, and I approve this blog post.

Big news! and: pity the poor introverted writer.

First, as always, the news.  I am excited to announce that I'm now a contributing author at Indies Unlimited.  I've been following this website over the past few months and have been quite impressed by the depth of knowledge about writing and indie publishing, as well as the world-class snark, the contributors there display.  So I was very grateful when the Evil Overlord himself extended me an invitation to join them.  I understand I will be receiving payment in spoonfuls of gruel, which is more than one typically receives for online contributions, so I'm pretty pumped!  But seriously, I've agreed to contribute a blog post each month.  I don't know yet when my debut staff post will hit teh intarwebz, so watch this space.

In addition, I'm continuing as a monthly contributor to the Indie Exchange through December.  It shouldn't be a problem, as it appears I'm hardly ever at a loss to come up with 500 or so words on something-or-other on the spur of the moment (to which those of you who have been following this blog can attest, for good or ill).

All this stuff about guest blogging actually segues nicely into this week's post, which is about promotion.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch, who has been traditionally published for years and is now going indie for her backlist books, wrote a provocative post on her own blog recently about the difference between indies and trad publishing.  Within it was this piece of advice:

Publicity doesn’t work for books. It really doesn’t. All it does is get your name in front of a reader who might then glance at your book....So indie writers who promote their book instead of writing the next book are wasting their time. The more books you’ve written, the more books you’ll sell.

As you might expect, a lot of indie authors beg to differ -- including me.  While Rusch's strategy has worked for her, I think new indie authors have to spend some time promoting themselves.  Rusch is coming into indie publishing with a successful traditional career behind her; her name is already known, and her readers will likely be ecstatic to discover that a whole lot of her out-of-print titles are available again.

But before your readers can find you, they have to know what they're looking for.  That means that concurrently with the publication of a first novel (and the next one, and probably the next several after that), an indie author is going to have to drum up interest by getting his or her name out there.  The marketing phrase for this is "building your brand."  It means writing blog posts and doing giveaways and maybe even doing personal appearances.  At the very least, it means talking to people.

This is tough for many writers.  I'm speculating here, but I think it would be fair to say that those of us who gravitate to a career that locks us in a lonely writer's garret for hours at a time are probably introverts.  Interacting with other people tends to exhaust us.  We recharge our batteries by spending time alone.  So this whole idea of having to interact with people, to meet them and smile and flog our books without seeming to, is daunting, to say the least.  Rusch's advice sounds like just the ticket!

Not so fast.  I wouldn't trust the notion that an author -- any author -- can simply sit back and wait, and do no promotion at all.  Keep in mind that Rusch herself has a blog.  She's making sure you know her name, isn't she?

Rusch is right about one thing -- the more books you've written, the more you'll sell.  JA Konrath has talked about this numerous times on his blog: someone who reads and enjoys one of your books is likely to buy more of them.  Some readers (I'm raising my hand) will even search out every book ever written by an author they particularly like.  So the longer your backlist is, the better the chances that you'll sell more and more books as time goes on, and as more and more readers discover your work.

So I'm sorry to tell you that there's no magic formula and there's no promotion-free pass.  Keep writing, for sure, and keep turning out professional-level work.  But you can't quit building your brand.

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I'm Lynne Cantwell, and I approve this blog post.