Month: May 2011

It's Hard To Figure Out Pricing For Ebooks From Anecdotal Evidence

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This post, by Mike Shatzkin, originally appeared on his The Shatzkin Files blog on the Idea Logical Company site on 4/25/11.

The Wall Street Journal wrote last week about what we have been concerned about for some time: how hard it will be for publishers to sustain book prices as supply (of books) rises faster than demand because of all the self-publishing being done.

WSJ built their story around John Locke, whose thrillers are 99 cents and who earned well over $100,000 in March selling them on Kindle. Locke himself put the pricing in perspective. If his books are 99 cents and most ebooks from big publishers are $9.99 and up, he doesn’t have to prove he’s as good as they are; they have to prove they’re 10 times better than he is!

I can tell you this. I’ve read one of John Locke’s books. Nobody I can think of is ten times better than he is. By his own criterion, he could readily sell for $2.99 (and be earning a higher percentage royalty) because nobody is three times better than he is, either.

Meanwhile, on a much less signficant level commercially, the ebook of The Shatzkin Files is now out from Kobo for $3.99. How did the price get set? Kobo said, “let’s put it there.” Their first thought was that it should be $4.99 but then they suggested scaling it back because, after all, the entire body of content in the ebook is on this blog, which is available free. (This establishes that anybody who buys the book is paying for the convenience afforded by the container, not for the content itself.)

I don’t know what the dilutive impact on “real” ebook sales is of The Shatzkin Files, but it is, like John Locke’s material, additional competition for books that are issued by legitimate publishing houses. It is more supply competing for the same demand.

Trying to understand the actual impact of price is very difficult. Amazon tells us that books on which they control the prices are seeing share growth over books on which the publishers control the price. That is shorthand for “99 cent and $2.99 books by self-published authors are growing share over $9.99 to $14.99 books published by the big agency publishers.” That would tend (and is certainly meant) to suggest that pricing high (and ignorantly) is hurting the big publishers’ and big authors’ revenues, but we can’t actually draw that conclusion from the data.

Read the rest of the post on Mike Shatzkin‘s The Shatzkin Files.

How To Become A More Self-Disciplined Writer

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This post, by Jody Hedlund, originally appeared on her blog on 4/29/11.

All five of my children have learned to play the piano (or are still in the process). While none of them are musical geniuses, I firmly believe learning to play the piano is a gift I’m offering my children. Not only are they getting a solid foundation in music, but even more valuable than that, they’re getting an important lesson in self-discipline.

According to Merriam-Webster, self-discipline is: correction or regulation of oneself for the sake of improvement.

There’s just something about learning piano (or any instrument) that forces a person to correct and train oneself for the sake of improvement. It fosters self-discipline, which then carries over into other areas of our life.

Like my children, I also took many years of piano lessons (not that I play well anymore!). But in the process of learning piano (among other activities), I practiced self-discipline over and over. And now self-discipline is one character quality that has helped me enormously in my writing career.

Here are a few lessons I’ve learned about growing in self-discipline as a writer from piano lessons:

Concentrated increments can help us be more productive.

Rather than 5 minute practice sessions scattered throughout the day, my children practice piano in 20 to 30 increments (depending on their level). The larger chunk of time is more productive because they need a few minutes to warm up their fingers before the songs begin to flow.

 

Read the rest of the post on Jody Hedlund‘s blog.

5 Links For A More Balanced Writer's Life

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This week I found myself having nightmares about conspiracies and daydreaming about a long vacation at some remote beach. That’s when I realized my life was once again out of balance.

Who among us hasn’t felt like they were running uphill at full speed for days on end? It’s a common experience, especially if you’re trying to balance more than just a small family and your writing career. For most of us we’re balancing a day job, family (and all those household things that go with it), volunteer activities and a host of other responsibilities as well as launching (or maintaining) a writing career.

Yet even in the midst of all those responsibilities, and maybe even because we have them, it is important to find a balance between them and our peace of mind. The following 5 links can help you achieve a better balance.

1. Downshifting: The First Day of the Rest of My Life, by J.D. Roth: J.D. shares his personal journey from being a regular 9-to-5 Joe with huge debt and lots of wasted time to being a problogger with finances in great shape and no time to finding a balance between his new self-employed status and having time to do nothing.

2. 10 Tips on Leading a Balanced Life, by Allen Galbraith: Although this post is written for the 9-to-5 crowd and those self-employed in businesses other than writing, there are some helpful tips nonetheless.

3. 5 Tips for Better Work-Life Balance, by Jen Uscher and Miranda Hitti: These tips are more generalized (and also more focussed on 9-to5ers) but, again, some of them are helpful, especially when it comes to family and household responsibilities.

4. WE ARE NOT ALONE: The Writer’s Guide to Social Media, by Kristen Lamb: This book is specifically for writers and is a great tool for learning how to manage marketing via social media so that it doesn’t become a time suck.

5. Sensitive (Mental) Health: HSPs and Burnout by Elaine Aron: This very short article is specifically for highly sensitive people, though I think some of it applies to non-hsps as well.

Balance is attainable, even if for a brief period. What are some tips you’ve discovered on maintaining a balance between your writing career and the rest of your life?

 

This is a reprint from Virginia Ripple‘s The Road To Writing.

Theme And Meaning In The Pretverse

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I took a series-writing course to help me get my ducks in a row. The type of series I’m writing is a series in which each story technically stands on it’s own, but they are all linked. I write them in a particular order and number them merely because there are some things happening in the background that cause everything to make more sense. But you could enjoy the front story of each book all by itself, or in any order you choose (And some people may prefer it that way to have sort of a ‘puzzle-piece’ experience).

[Editor’s note: strong language after the jump]



In the series-writing course, it is suggested that I should come up with the “worst possible outcome” for the series, and then come up with “any” solution, no matter how stupid, because it will help me figure out a way to “wrap it up” when the time comes.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that my series doesn’t work that way. And it helped me to come up with the underlying theme of what I’m writing, what’s most important to me to convey.

While I have all these different romances and species, everybody is at odds: human (the ones that know), magic users (really humans, but a little upgraded), demon, angel, gods, vampires, therians, guardians.

There are so many different conflicts and there really is no one “group” that we are all supposed to root for. We’re just supposed to “understand where they are coming from and what motivates them.”

In most books/series we have an idealized reality that doesn’t help us understand humanity any better. Even villains we can “understand”, we still understand they are “the bad guy”. And the heroes we understand are the “good guy”. It’s very polarizing, because it doesn’t help us get any closer to understanding our own humanity.

In the Pretverse, if one character we like “wins”, it can mean greater conflict and challenges for another character we like. I’m not sure the point is for us to “save the world” here. I think the point of this series, the theme I want to express is:

There is no utopia. There is always struggle. But in the midst of that there is love, hope, and pockets of happiness to be found and enjoyed.

Somehow I doubt that the afterlife is a boat ride of pure eternal bliss, and if it was, it might be as sterile and boring as the heaven in the Pretverse. When we’re in high school many of us can’t wait to get out. But when we get out in the adult world, we come to find, much to our chagrin, that it’s just like high school again. All the shit we hated about high school, we hate about the “grown up world”. Well, what if Heaven (or whatever afterlife scenario one envisions) is still high school? What if dying doesn’t make problems go away and we still have to grow and change and fix things and deal with set-backs and disappointments. If that’s true, then what does it mean?

I think maybe some people haven’t really thought out the whole: “perfect happiness forever and ever” issue. And it’s something I want to explore with the Pretverse.

So… toward that end, I don’t WANT some giant awful thing everything in the series is building toward, then they overcome it for peace and puppies at the end of the series. The background conflicts aren’t there to be “resolved forevermore”. They are there because that’s the point. Love and happiness in life happen in spite of the background drama. The world will never be perfect and everything will never be wrapped up neat in a tidy bow, but despite that, each couple finds their happiness. And the hope is, that you will also find yours.

 

This is a reprint from the Weblog of Zoe Winters.