Publetariat

J.A. Konrath: eBooks And The Ease Of Self-Publishing

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This article, by J.A. Konrath, originally appeared on The Huffington Post on 10/16/10.

October 19th is the release date for "Draculas," a horror novel that I wrote with Blake Crouch, Jeff Strand, and F. Paul Wilson. How four guys were able to collaborate on a single narrative is an interesting story, but not as interesting as the way "Draculas" is being released.

Though together we have over sixty years of experience in the print industry and have worked with dozens of publishers, we’ve decided to make "Draculas" a Kindle exclusive. Not only that, but we’re publishing it ourselves.

The choice to circumvent Big New York Publishing was easy. We all have print deals, and probably could have sold this project to a major publishing house, but the reasons to go the indie route instead of the traditional one were numerous.

First was an issue of time. We wanted "Draculas" to launch before Halloween, but we’d only finished writing and editing the novel in September. There was no possible way a major publisher could go from first draft to live within three weeks. But we did.

With Amazon’s assistance, we were able to put up a pre-order page and a free teaser last month, though we’d only written the first few chapters by that point. Like a traditionally published book, this allowed us to build buzz and accrue some advance sales.

Based on some of my experiments on Kindle, we’re pricing "Draculas" at $2.99–something no Big Publisher has done for a new release (except for AmazonEncore, who is releasing my thriller novel "Shaken" next week at that price point.) We’re also releasing it without DRM (digital rights management), which is another thing no publisher will allow (except for AmazonEncore.)

 

Read the rest of the article on The Huffington Post.

Write For All You're Worth

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On Twitter, I try to retweet links of value to writers. Since I know many writers are constantly on the lookout for paying gigs, I follow @writersjobs and frequently retweet the help wanted ads they post. Mind you, @writersjobs isn’t actually placing any of these help wanted ads, they just post links to the ads on Twitter to provide an easy, centralized gig list for writers.

Today, I was disheartened and even a little sickened when this ad showed up:

Ghost writer needed to write 10 blog posts. Will pay $.01 per word for 200-250 word posts. You choose the topic. All 10 posts must be on the same topic. Topic must be legal and PG. Must be original posts – plagiarized posts will not be purchased. Looking for one writer. Long-term projects available for the right person.

Bring on the number crunching…

I think half an hour per post is a pretty realistic estimate of the time involved, if you count the time spent coming up with the concept, writing the rough draft, and editing and polishing. At a penny a word, the maximum-length blog post will net you—wait for it—two dollars and fifty cents. Write one more and you’re rolling in five dollars an hour; that’s about 40% less than minimum wage, and that’s before taxes, too. You can’t even argue that this is a resume builder, since it’s a ghost writing job: someone else is going to take the credit for your work.

I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.

Look, I know tough times call for desperate measures, beggars can’t be choosers, in times of crisis we all wear different hats, and lots of other cliches. But writing is a skill, writing well is a hard won skill, and even people who mop floors and flip burgers for a living are entitled to a minimum wage that’s mandated by law. Yet although this gig will obviously pay less than either of those jobs would, the person who’s hiring intends to be picky about selecting the "right person" for "long term projects".

The "right person" in this case is a fool who’s willing to be taken gross advantage of, but I have no doubt he or she is out there, writing an eager email to apply for the job this very moment. And it’s because of that writer that ALL of us, and our work, are being devalued faster than Detroit real estate.

Take a gig that pays minimum wage if you must, but do it knowing you’re earning no more than you would working fast food or retail at the entry level—less if you play by the rules and take self-employment taxes into account. If you’re good, you can and should command better pay. And "command" is exactly the right word for it.
 

This is a cross-posting from April L. Hamilton‘s Indie Author Blog.

eBook Pricing Goes Outright Insane!

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This post, from Mike Cane, originally appeared on his Xblog on 10/16/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

I downloaded a free Kindle book this morning and happened to look at the list of other books The Kindle Store said were somehow connected to it.

One had an interesting title: The Information Officer.

So I went to look and had my first shock.

 


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What?

There’s no “This price was set by the publisher” notice, so why isn’t this $9.99?

It made me wonder what other eBookstores were selling it for — and that’s when the eBook pricing insanity kept increasing in scale!

Here it is at Kobo:


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Here it is at the Sony Reader Store:


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At this point, I turned to a shortcut, Inkmesh, which will do the eBookstore dredging in one go.

It had Powell’s Books listing it for a whopping $26.58 — which is $1.58 over the “digital list price.”

So I went to Powell’s via the link but it apparently had some crossed wires, because I wasn’t seeing the listing for the eBook version. I had to search for that. And then I got this:


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Three things:

1) This is a book from Random House. This is not one of the five publishers that have formed a trust to fix prices. So why is this price so damned high, even at The Kindle Store?

2) This book was published in February! That makes it nearly ancient in Internet Time!

3) Does Random House really think someone with a $99.99 device is going to pay near one-fourth of its price to read one book?

Random House is creating its own Long Tail here.

Sensible people are going to look at that price and pass it up. That will mean lower sales. That will help kill the career of the writer. And since the book will probably never go away — because ain’t no way in hell will Random House ever revert those rights to the writer now that their paws are on them with an eternal eBook version — it will just sit there, receding into the distance, falling into the Long Tail.

And now here’s where the Big 6 of print publishing reveals its contempt for us, how they all just spit in our face:


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It’s cheaper as a paperback!

Update: I got sloppy and didn’t check. As someone points out in Comments, the paperback will not be available until March 2011! I should have gone instead with my original argument of used hardcovers and library loans.

And here’s the final kicker, the kick in the teeth, the spiteful insult.

I downloaded the Kindle sample and this is the eBook’s cover:


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You don’t even get the appealing cover the cheaper paperback has!

This is because Random House has had a policy of stripping the covers from its eBooks! (As do several other publishers.)

Pay more and get less!

Tell me how that isn’t having contempt for all of us eBook buyers!

Never in the history of American business has one industry done so much to guarantee its own failure.

Defining Value Outside the Hippie Commune

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In a perfect world, everything would be free. We would all voluntarily give of our time to help each other and make things and share things and it would be great. No one would be poor because everyone would be doing their fair share, and poor wouldn’t exist. Everyone would be valued and warm and loved and safe and fed and sheltered and protected.

But back to reality.

We don’t live in a hippie culture where everything is free. We live in a culture where everything costs money. Work is compensated with MONEY. Is it crass to mix art and money? Maybe for those who don’t do it and don’t know how much work it really is to produce something to distribute to the masses.

If you aren’t a writer, I would like you to do an experiment for me. I would like you to sit down in a chair every day and crank out 1,000 words of original fiction with a coherent plot. After you’ve done this for a month I want you to come back to me with a straight face and ask to pay 99 cents or nothing for the fiction you consume.

Once you’ve done it for yourself a few times, you’ll want to actually be paid for it. Writing isn’t play time. This isn’t a masturbatory activity for me. If I was independently wealthy, I still wouldn’t give it all away for free because I believe my work should be monetarily valued. And also because if I gave it all away for free, I would be helping to breed more entitlement into people, making it harder for others to make money.

The only reason I’ve ever given anything away for free or sold it for 99 cents is to build a platform and build trust in readers so they would give me a chance. It was never a permanent strategy. If I didn’t need to make money, I would have priced it higher to begin with and if people bought it, great, and if they didn’t, fine. To make a living as a writer one has to attain a certain level of exposure. Sometimes that exposure costs something. If I hadn’t needed to make some money I might not have set my prices so low “ever”. And if people didn’t like it, they could just not read it. But I didn’t have that luxury.

And now I know sales and sales ranks will drop some as a result of higher prices, but I think I have to be willing to suck it up right now. Because I can’t sustainably make it on 99 cent e-reads, no matter how big my backlist got. Plus I would resent the hell out of readers having to sell so much just to scrape together a barely-above-poverty-level income.

Outside the hippie commune in the real world, where most of us live, value is defined and shown through money. Monetary value isn’t the only type of value but it’s the most important to continued survival in our culture. I realize that creative endeavors have more than “just” monetary value. There are all kinds of kittens and rainbows and puppy farts forms of value that can be placed on a creative work. And that’s great.

If something I wrote is one of your favorite books, that’s awesome and I’m flattered, but you still need to compensate me for it. I provided a service. I entertained you. If I didn’t properly perform the service and you don’t feel sufficiently entertained, if you bought it on Kindle you can get a refund. If you bought it in print, you can resell the book to someone else and not buy anything from me again.

But you do need to compensate me because I did work. And work, in this culture is paid for. Financially.

I cannot pay my electric or gas bill on your praise. Praise is awesome and I love when someone loves my work but I still have bills. Right now my husband pays most of our expenses, but I still have some financial responsibility. I’d also like to get out of the crappy house I live in and into someplace nicer. I would like to own a car. If I am not monetarily compensated (fairly) for my work, I can’t do that.

Sure, readers don’t think about an author’s bills or financial situation when they buy a book. They don’t buy it so I can pay my electric bill. But if they don’t buy it I have to do something else to make money and I’m not going to write in addition to another job. One job is enough for me, thanks. We find it absolutely unacceptable to begrudge a doctor or lawyer or anyone else fair payment for their work. Authors should be able to make a fair wage. We’re working, too. We shouldn’t all have to write as a second job or small income-producing hobby.

So if you do place “any” value on my work at all, even if it’s the kitten and puppy fart kind of value, paying me is how you show that. Monetary value in this culture is inextricably tied to all other value because it’s how we show our appreciation for work well done. It’s how we build trust and show that we don’t take other people’s work for granted or think they are our slaves here to entertain us and do our bidding for nothing.

So it is fair for an author to set a certain price for their work and tie the price they charge and others are willing to pay into the value for that work? When there are traditionally published authors easily selling books for $6 and more on the Kindle, then an indie author asking for anything under $5 shouldn’t be controversial. In fact, once they have the platform, selling the same as NY pub authors are able to sell at, should be the norm.

It could be argued that NY books are overpriced on Kindle. And maybe they are. Some of them, however are selling at higher prices, which is a clear indication that their fans place a higher monetary value on their work.

I will always be a writer. I can’t help but be one. Most writers can’t. But, what I can do is control whether or not I share that work. And many other authors feel the same way. If we aren’t compensated, we won’t work. Does this mean that the whole world should collectively stand up and give a damn? No. There will always be someone willing to be taken advantage of just to get readers.

I just am not one of those people anymore. And I regret that I was one of those people for as long as I was, because it just made it harder for others to make money.

Here’s another writer with the same views. He’s a bit of an ass… but… he’s right:

 

This is a reprint of a post from Zoe Winters‘ blog.

Writing in Different Genres – A Writer's Tool Belt

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One of the fundamental parts of being writers, I think, is knowing your purpose for writing. Now, I’ll admit this is made much easier when your freelancing gigs keep you covered up in short informative articles or web content. That makes it simple. Yet, like any writer, you have this basic sense of purpose informing your choices on how to present those words. The issue is really one of genre. I’ve haven’t actively thought about this in a while other than some idle thoughts about switching over and writing some fiction rather than nonfiction. That’s really it.

Thinking It Over

On this fundamental level, all of us, as we prepare to writing something, should consider the purpose of their writing. There are some essential questions that help you determine this if you don’t already know intuitively. (This can differ with each writer and also how much experience one has.) What sort of questions? Well, for starters, are you writing for the purposes of entertainment? Or do you want to strictly inform the readers? Then again, you could be writing to persuade the reader of your viewpoint or position.

The act of deciding the purpose of whatever it is you’re writing has a close relationship to the purposes of reading something. What do I mean by that? Essentially, when you’ve defined the purpose you influence what types of choices you make about the form you want to use.

This is really where genre comes into play. It is a crucial decision since it can affect how the writing is received by your readers. Whether you are writing in the form of a story, a poem, a letter, or an essay, you may already have some clue about the ways these different literary forms are interpreted by the audience – and what ones work together the most effectively with your chosen subject matter.

Some Considerations

What I’ve realized is that you may not always get the genre right the first time. You may have written a story when a essay would have been more effective given your topic. Or, perhaps, in your effort to express your feelings simply by stating the facts as you see them or shaping them into a persuasive essay, you missed the pleasure of sharing your feelings in a poem or the lyrics of song.

Genre is something that typically has unique structure. It will serve you well if you can become knowledgeable of these distinctions so you don’t mistakenly mix them. The results could be atrocious. There are a variety of genres and categories that you will encounter during your time as a writer – provided you are still learning as much as you can about the craft you’ve called your own. (I’m talking to freelancers and novelists alike.)

A Starting Point For Further Study

It may be good to look at least six categories or genres that are a part of the writing life. Check them out. I’m offering them in no particular order but I do hope that you do some additional study of them individually.

1. Descriptive writing involves the careful choice of precise language, noting the sensory details and using metaphors and similes to make real, but powerful comparisons. You might be in the realm of essays and certain poetic types here.

2. Expository writing involves the synthesis and collation of information. You point here is to strive for objectivity. Often this genre will manifest as a report or a how-to article. You might also use elements of the expository in an essay or a treatise.

3. Narrative writing is storytelling. This is about creating your own tales, rewriting familiar ones in your own voice, and most of the time you’ll start dealing with elements like plots and characterization. This is the realm of the tried and true story arc – the beginning, middle, and end that make up every story created by human beings.

4. Poetry writing is the art of creating word pictures and using stylistic devices like rhyme and rhythm to express strong emotions or ideas. Poems come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.

5. Journals and letters offer a less rigid format for self-expression through words than some of the other genres cited here. Now this doesn’t mean that a letter cannot be a full formed essay if you choose to treat it that way. Still, letters – especially when handwritten letters were the rule rather than the exception – could be a very deep and intimate outlet for communicating. Journals and letters alike can be a mode for sharing news, record notes, explore new ideas, among other things.

6. Persuasive writing is all about trying to convince the reader to change their opinions and sway them with logic, moral appeals, and emotional language. You are wanting them to side with you. Effective persuasion in the written form is accomplished through a combination of a clearly expressed position that is supported by various examples and evidences.

Write On

I’ve come through this short exposition on genres with the belief that even I should take some time to look over these familiar genres and think through the ideas that I have to determine how they might be best explored. There are so many ways to express yourself as a writer. Now, that you have some fodder for your thoughts and ideas, I recommend you get started right now. Don’t hesitate.

 

This is a reprint from Shaun C. Kilgore‘s site.

Member Blog: 10 Steps to a Better Story

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I edit a lot of fiction, and I see a pattern of common problems in manuscripts from novice writers. The most important involve the bond between story and character. If you want an agent,editor, or reader to get past the first few pages, here are 10 things to keep in mind.

1. Make your main character want something. Desire is the engine that drives both life and narrative. Characters who don’t want anything are rarely interesting.

2. Make your main character do something. Your story can start with a character who is the victim of circumstances, but afterward the character needs to move quickly into action. Readers like characters who take charge.

3. Let your readers know the story’s premise early. If they get to the end of the first chapter and still can’t answer the question—what is the story about?—they might not keep reading.

4. Get conflict into the story early. It doesn’t have to be all-out bickering or deception between characters, but let your readers know things will sticky.

5. Skip the omniscient POV. Let the reader experience as much of the story as possible through the eyes of your main character. This is how readers bond with protagonists. If you shift POVs, at least put in a line break.

6. It’s okay to tell sometimes, instead of show. Not every character reaction has to be described in gut-churning, eyebrow-lifting physical detail. Sometimes it’s okay to simply say, “Jessie panicked.”

7. Introduce characters one at a time with a little background information for each. Too many characters all at once in the first few pages can be overwhelming.

8. Don’t overwrite. Nobody agrees on what constitutes good writing, so trying to make your writing stand out will probably work against you. The best writing doesn’t draw attention to itself; it just gets out of the way of the story.

9. Avoid word repetitions when you can. Read your story out loud. You’re much more likely to hear the repetitions than see them.

10. The components of a novel that readers care about most are, in order: story, characters, theme, setting. If you have to sacrifice something, start at the end of list. Never sacrifice the story for anything else.

 

This is a reprint from LJ Sellers‘ Publetariat member blog.

The Podpeople Invite You to the Goodreads Indie Page 99 Group

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This post, by PodPeople‘s Cheryl Anne Gardner, originally appeared on Self-Publishing Review on 10/12/10.

Ford Madox Ford said, “Open a book to page ninety-nine, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.”

As many of you know, we are all about the Indie book community, not in a fluffy bunny sort of way, but in an honest advocacy sort of way, and we are always looking for new reviewers and new content. We have recently started up our My Story column again, and we have also begun a new promotional column which follows the theme of the Page99 Book Test in light of the startup of Page99Test.com .

Those who know me and read my regular column know I agree with Ford Madox Ford. I have never been a first page “hook” person. The real writing is in the middle of a book. I’ve always believed that, so in the coming weeks The Podpeople will be featuring the page 99 of submitted Indie titles. We hope to make this a regular thing, and we ask our readers and Indie author supporters to spread the word. As a secondary part of this project, The Podpeople are now sponsoring a group over on Goodreads where independent authors of all kinds can post their page 99s for the Goodreads reader community. Details and Rules for posting can be found on the group homepage and are the same for submitting here to the blog:

Please add your book to the shelf, include a purchase link for the book and the following information in the body of the post:

Title:
Author:
Genre:
Copyright Notice: Date, Copyright holder’s name, and rights reserved.

Please provide the cover copy from the back of the book as well, or the book description if it’s ebook only and a good quality jpeg of the cover if you want it posted on the blog. The books must be for sale, include a link to your preferred sales site or sites. All Genres are welcome. No erotica. We would like to keep this a rated G/PG-13/R group. Use your discrection, please.

Read the rest of the post, which includes information about how indie authors can have their books featured both in the p99 GoodReads group and on the PodPeople site, on Self-Publishing Review.

Fiction Workshops: The Advanced Writer

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As you grow in craft knowledge you will probably need fewer readers in order to get the same information from your feedback. Where before you may have needed the weight of opinion to convince you that a problem needed addressing, long experience will tell you almost immediately which reader concerns are important — either because they are outright mistakes, or because the resulting effect was not what you intended.

Too, as your craft knowledge grows, you may be able to get as much out of a one-on-one response as you do from a workshop. Part of this is that you won’t need to learn the basics, and part of it is that you will know how to ask focused, craft-based questions of your readers.

As always, the goal in doing so is never a defense of your work, but rather trying to determine whether and why an intended effect failed, or why a reader was brought up short by something you wrote. Unless the issue is one of editing (typos, syntax, grammar, etc.) the issues readers report are almost invariably sourced not at the location of the confusion, but somewhere else in the story. Learning how to identify the source of a problem from feedback about the effect of a problem is the goal, and being able to do so consistently is a practical definition of mastery.

When you have reached this level of expertise you will still need readers, but you will probably not need a formal or large workshop in order to gauge your own work.

 

This is a reprint from Mark Barrett‘s Ditchwalk.

Marketing Monday: Are You Wasting Your Time?

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It goes without saying, though obviously I’m going to, that I enjoy blogging. It’s a form of writing and writing is what I do. But I recently had to re-evaluate whether blogging was worth my time after reading The Blog Tyrant‘s post “Why Blogging is a Waste of Your Time.“

It all comes down to “why are you blogging?” At first I thought it would be a good way to make a little extra money, but I quickly found that a free blog doesn’t generate income (at least not easily). And I wasn’t willing to commit money to this endeavor as so many others have. I admire people like Darren Rowse of Problogger who have spent money on their blogs and have shown that you can make a go of being a professional blogger. I just don’t think that being a problogger is what I want to do at this time, though I do plan on using his 31 Days to Build a Better Blog eBook often.

I then decided it would be a better way to reach an audience and maybe help a fellow Independent Authors. The problem with this was that nearly all the advice out there says you must blog everyday. I believe having a blog is a great way to build an author platform, but I was finding myself working more on my blog and less on what I really wanted to do — write books. I rebelled and stuck with weekly postings. Still, I felt like this blog thing wasn’t working like I wanted.

Enter Blog Tyrant. I wasn’t convinced that blogging was wasting my time until I read these words:

Your goal is to make money online to give yourself a better life. Blogging might not be the best way to do that. It might be a distraction that you use because it is easy, available and popular. But perhaps you would be better off doing something else? [emphasis mine]

Perhaps my time would be better served by not blogging. How right he is. I am an Independent Author, not a ProBlogger. It’s time I began acting like that as I travel down The Road to Writing.

P.S. I’ll still be blogging. I just won’t be obsessing about it quite so much. :) What about you?

 

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

Amazon's Digital Text Platform Does Not Do Audio?

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I uploaded my ebook, ROOFMAN: Nail-Banger, Librarian & Spy, to Amazon’s Digital-Text-Platform and saved it as a draft. The book contains 63 minutes of audio in 32 mp3 files embedded into the chapters.

Everything was good to go until I found out that DTP does not do audio! Their tech support said I will have to remove all my audio links. That means that if I publish with DTP without the  audio I will be putting out an inferior product. My book is a nonfiction account of my adventures as a double agent for the FBI against Soviet intelligence in the 1980s. The embedded audio is from secret recordings I made of secret agents — including the FBI.

I know the Kindle does play mp3 files, so I can’t understand why DTP can’t integrate my text and audio into their device.

At the moment my ebook is in pdf and all the images and audio work really well on lap/desktops. I assume they will read equally well on i-Pads or other tablet computers.

In my opinion, if Kindles and other e-readers do not support audio capabilities in enhanced ebooks they will soon render themselves obsolete.

 

 

Views from Sandhausen – A Major Shift (Epiphany) – Part 2

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To continue my story from yesterday, I’ll describe the activities and sources of my “Epiphany”.  In continuing my research I stumbled upon a couple of sources, and the talented folks who feed these resources.  Joanna Penn, Carol White, Judy Cullins,  Jane Friedman and others, I discovered that I was about to make a serious error.  Congruently, the LinkedIn group Book Writing, Self Publishing, and Marketing for Business People rather forcefully convinced to cancel my order with the (best in class) Publish on Demand (POD) company that I was about to jump into bed with.  Since I had done (and paid for) almost all of the front end work, it didn’t make much sense to those would should know.

 

 

Another major influence was Mark Levine’s landmark book; The Fine Print of Self-Publishing clearly shows that going my own way, to become my own independent Publisher, was my best course of action.  I wanted to retain ownership of my own ‘production’ files, I did not want to pay an exorbitant mark-up on individual book printing, and if you think about, the splendid list of services that they sell in increasingly more expensive packages, really are not possible without a major emphasis on ‘template’ and ‘cookie cutter’ tools.

So, with heart in hand, I asked for a refund and they agreed to reverse the charges on my credit card.  I have no ax to grind with AuthorHouse.  It was simply a matter of my personal ignorance, and the approach that I took in Part One of this dissertation.

(By the way, I am keeping a diary!).  It doesn’t make sense to learn all of these lessons and skills and not to write a book about it).  So, with a completed and ‘ready to go to publishing’ book in hand, I’m back in learning mode, beginning to leverage my aforementioned friends as well as a few good resources. 

Primary in this list of resources is The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing: Everything You Need to Know to Write, Publish, Promote and Sell Your Own Book by Marilyn Ross (Author), Sue Collier (Author). 

On the cover front, my friend Becky Macri, author of PIP: A Very Special Little Caterpillar (which is selling like crazy in its first full week of release, provide me with great feedback on our cover.  I’ve run it by several people who should know, and they LOVE it.

OK, enough dithering; back to studying and being my own Publisher.  What have I done??

Cliff

The Seven Secrets To Ebook Publishing Success

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This post, by Mark Coker, originally appeared on The Huffington Post on 10/6/10.

In July, the Association of American Publishers reported that for the first five months of 2010, eBooks accounted for 8.5 percent of a trade book sales, up from about 3 percent for all of 2009.

Whether you’re a self-published indie author or a large traditional publisher, the opportunity to reach readers with books has never been greater.

How do you reach these readers? Obviously, the first step is to release all your books as eBooks. But then what?

This past weekend at the Self Publishing Book Expo in New York, I presented my Seven Secrets to eBook Publishing Success. I embedded the presentation below for your Powerpointing pleasure.

The presentation builds on a previous presentation (and blog post here) I gave at NYU on how the rise of indie eBooks will transform the future the future of publishing.

For the SPBE session, I added new material, including the all-new seven secrets plus one bonus secret that covers how authors can maximize the virality of their books.

 

Read the rest of the post on The Huffington Post.

Five Lessons From My Ebook Experiment

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This article, by Shane Richmond, originally appeared on the Telegraph UK site Internet department on 1/26/10.

As someone who reads a lot and loves gadgets I’ve been intrigued by e-books and e-readers for some time. I decided to conduct an experiment: between October last year and the beginning of January this year I read books only on an e-reader, not on paper.

I felt that I needed to spend some time doing this so I read ten books – nine of them on a Sony Reader Pocket and one on the Amazon Kindle. I would have liked longer with the Kindle but Amazon’s review units have been in high demand so I had to make do with one title.

The result of the experiment? I’m back to reading books on paper. I’ll explain why in a moment but here are five things I learned from my e-reading experiment.

1. The weight is a nice advantage
E-readers are remarkably light, weighing less than all but the flimsiest paperback. You can hold the book and turn the pages with one hand. Admittedly, holding a book is hardly the most awkward task but an e-reader is definitely more comfortable to read in bed or lying on a sofa. More importantly, the fact that e-readers can store hundreds of books makes them ideal for travel. I took mine on a few trips last year and it was great to have all my reading with me, in one lightweight device, instead of cramming a selection of titles into my luggage.

2. Page turning is less irritating than you’d think
One of the first things you notice when you start using an e-reader is the small delay in turning pages. The gap between pressing the ‘next page’ button and the screen refreshing to show the page is one of the limitations of e-ink displays. The Sony Reader Pocket seemed to turn pages more slowly than either the more powerful Sony Reader Touch or the Amazon Kindle. However, you do get used to the delay. You get into a rhythm of pressing ‘next page’ a moment before you finish the last line of text and the reading experience remains smooth. It sounds far from ideal but it didn’t really bother me.

Read the rest of the article on the Telegraph UK site.

The Usurper by Cliff Ball

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The Usurper is my 3rd novel.

Gary Jackson is raised to hate. Hate the United States, and everything it has ever stood for. His mission is to destroy the country from within, allying himself with America’s enemies, and one very powerful and malevolent billionaire, to accomplish the deed. Once elected to the highest position in the land, Gary puts his lifelong goals to work, and puts the USA onto the path of ultimate destruction. He stops at nothing to rid the USA of his political and spiritual enemies, until a small group decide they’ve had enough, and they want to stop him. Will they succeed or will the United States be relegated to the dustbin of history?

"A cold-blooded, Clancy-esque political thriller; The Usurper is sure to entertain." –Nurture Your Books – nurtureyourbooks.com/?p=919

Tom Clancy meets The Manchurian Candidate – Kindle Nation Daily

Available on Kindle, Nook, both for $2.99, and on Smashwords, Apple, Sony, Kobo

and in paperback on Createspace, along with Amazon

6 Tweets To Promote Your Online Fiction

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This post, from Bryce Beattie, originally appeared on his How To Self Publish A Book site on 9/27/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

I’m just going to assume here that you post fiction on your blog, and that you want more exposure for it. With that extra exposure, hopefully you’ll sell more books. Here’s five ways to promote your fiction using Twitter.

Oh, wait, before we get down to brass tacks here, let me just make sure you’re starting from the right spot. You need a Twitter account, and you need to make sure it is public.

One more thing – if you are looking to use your fiction as a way to gain readers and hopefully fans, you are almost always best off writing a serial of some sort. The hope is that readers will come back to find out what happens next.

Tweet #1 – Five Second Fiction

This is where you tell a whole story in a single tweet. And you don’t even have a whole tweet to do it, because you have to put #5secfic in your tweet. I’m pretty sure you get bonus points for working a pun into the story.

So that fans can discover your *ahem* longer pieces, make sure you have a link to your website/blog in your twitter profile.

Examples

#5secfic Bubba put down the wrench and put the baggie in his pants, giving new meaning to the term “Plumber’s Crack.”

#5secfic If only Jim had at least sent flowers he would still have a windshield and all of his left shoes.

Tweet #2 – Pimp My Story

Every Saturday, kira at EpiGuide puts together a digest of recent releases in of web fiction serials. To participate use the hashtag #pimpmystory when tweeting about your latest chapter.

Example

The Journey of St. Laurent: In Chapter 38, it’s finally time for UFOs vs Survivalists. http://bit.ly/dqCuzM #pimpmystory

For the complete skinny on “Pimp My Story”, check out the official rules: http://www.epiguide.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14866

Tweet #3 – Tuesday Serial

This is another way to promote the most recent chapter in your online serial. To participate here, sometime during the week tweet about the latest installment of your epic alien romance story using the hashtag #TuesdaySerial, then on the next Tuesday, go visit http://tuesdayserial.com/?page_id=1527 and submit your entry following the instructions on that page.

Example (of the tweet)

The redone and expanded Chapter 38 of The Journey of St. Laurent is up http://bit.ly/dqCuzM #TuesdaySerial

For complete details, visit: http://tuesdayserial.com/?page_id=7

Tweet #4 – Friday Flash

Here’s what you do. You write & post a piece of flash fiction (about 1,000 words or less) then you tweet about it using #FridayFlash. You can also submit it to the weekly collector: http://www.jmstrother.com/tiki-view_tracker.php?trackerId=2 (just click “insert new item”)

Example:

#FridayFlash A New Year’s Revolution http://bit.ly/9uM7Fo

Tweet #5 – Web Fic Wednesday

This one is a little different. This is one you can’t do yourself. You have to write something good enough for somebody else to tweet about it. They just put the hashtag #WebFicWed and a link to your site or a page with some of your fiction.

Every week, the #WebFicWed links are digested and posted by JanOda on http://www.ergofiction.com

Don’t be lame and start a new twitter account just so you can suggest yourself. Seriously. Although, I think it would be fair to mention somewhere on your blog/website “If you like this fiction, please tweet me for #WebFicWed”. I guess I’m not so awesome, because nobody had ever tweeted me up for this.

Example:

Check out J. Dane Tyler for #WebFicWed. Great short horror stories. http://jdanetyler.wordpress.com

New! Tweet #6 – Very Short Story

Thanks to Anke for pointing this one out.

Just like #5secfic, except you use #vss.

Example:

Jon looked down to see the laundry gnome dancing in his washing machine and burning socks. He closed the lid and went back to bed. #vss

Bonus Tweets.

Here’s another few general use hashtags that readers search for when discovering new fiction. Just sprinkle them in whenever you tweet about your stories.

#webfiction

#weblit

#fiction

#nanofiction, #microfiction, #TwitFic – like unto #vss & #5secfic

Now stop reading this and go write some fiction.