Ray Sullivan SciFi Zone: June 2012

Thursday 28 June 2012

More Cut Price eBooks

A few months ago Smashwords, the indie publishing website, ran a month long promotion, with participating authors offering their eBooks at discounted prices, some for free. It's a great idea, it puts a load of books of every genre, in front of readers at the same time. If you've been cruising past a couple of titles, wondering if they are worth investing your three or four dollars in, then it gives you the opportunity to road test one or more of them for less.

Well, they're doing it again. From midnight 1 July Pacific time (don't ask, I lost that plot a long time ago) for one month they are running the Summer/Winter sale. Why Summer/Winter? Well, Smashwords is an international eBookseller and they've noticed that as those of us in the northern hemisphere are loading up eBooks to read on the beaches, our southern friends in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and many, many other fine places are looking for something to curl up with to while away the long winter nights.

Lots of authors take part. Some put one or more of their books on the sale for free as a loss leader, to let you see what their writing style is like, while others discount one or more at 25%, 50% or 75% of their normal Smashwords selling price. I'm taking part too, so you need to note the following code if you've been deliberating over downloading one or more of my books, but felt they were a little pricey. To keep things simple, I've opted for the 50% discount code for the four paid for books:

Book Title and Link	Coupon Code
Parallel Lives	SSW50
The Journeymen	SSW50
Skin	SSW50
Digital Life Form	SSW50

My parody on the writing style of Dan Brown, The Last Simple, is already discounted at $0.00 and is automatically included in the promotion, apparently.

You need the coupon code to get the discount at checkout. I'm fairly certain that it will be the same code for any book listed at a 50% discount, but check out the author page of your favourite eBook author before entering it, just in case.

If you fancy a browse through the books on offer, Smashwords are going to put a link to the various contributing books on the Smashwords homepage.

All of the above books will still be for sale at Apple, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, WH Smith, Kobo, Sony and many other eBook sellers at the normal prices, so if you want to pay full price, you can. If you've never bought from Smashwords before, here's some tips:

You will have to register with them. I forget the specific questions, but I don't recall them being too intrusive. Then, when you have chosen a book or books and make your way to checkout you get the chance to enter any promotional codes applicable. Then download. If you're downloading to an iPad then it just pops the book onto the bookshelf, it's that easy. If you are using a Kindle, then it's slightly fussier, but it's not too much of an issue. You download onto your PC - try to select a location you can find again - then connect your Kindle to your PC. Once you've connected using the USB cable your Kindle will be detected as a disk drive - drag the book into the part of the Kindle drive that your other files are stored. I can't comment on Kobo, Sony etc devices, but I expect the process will be similar to either the iPad or Kindle.

So, set your diary to check out the Smashwords Summer/Winter sale. It's on for a month, however authors are permitted to pull their books out at any time - some may set a threshold of cut price sales for the promotion. If you've been looking at a specific book, check it out early.

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I can be followed on Twitter too - @RayASullivan
or on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me

To find out more about my ancestors visit my sister’s website http://sullivanfamilyhistory.angelfire.com/

Visit my books on Amazon (for Kindle owners) and Smashwords (for access to all other formats and access to Apple iBooks, Barnes and Noble, Sony, WH Smith, Kobo and many other good ebookstores.

Digital Life Form is available on Amazon.com in paperback for $7.99

The Last Simple is available on Amazon.com in paperback for $5.99

The Journeymen is available for $8.99

Skin is available for $9.99

For quick access to the various Kindle, Kobo, WH Smith and Smashword links please use the table below to view my books.

To View My books In....

Wednesday 20 June 2012

A Picture Is Worth What?

A thousand words, apparently. But a thousand words is worth at least as much, in my opinion, and often more than a picture when choosing a book to read.

I get the idea; when surfing for books to download or buy from a store I have to say that the cover image does play a part in helping me to decide whether to stop awhile or to cruise on. So does the title, probably to a lesser degree. The author's name may influence me; like all creatures of habit I return to authors who have provided me with reading pleasure before and, critically, I fast-forward past those who have let me down previously.

But the real lever on my wallet is the blurb, the several hundred or more words that give me a flavour of the book's worth. I reckon that the blurb is the hardest piece of writing in any book - it has to be concise, gripping, capable of placing the reader in the middle of the action and all without revealing too much of the plot, especially the ending. The phrase 'and he dies at the end' probably would ruin the degree of expectation we want to experience in a good read.

I've written a few blurbs in my time, and I can confirm that they are blooming hard to write. Sure, I've agonised over the odd paragraph in my books, modified a passage one way, then back again. I've even come close to the old adage of spending all morning deciding to put a comma in and all afternoon deciding to take it out again. But that blurb; you just have to write it, re-write it and then leave it a few days before returning. You don't even get the luxury of writing the one blurb, either. Smashwords insists on two versions to satisfy the different requirements of their channels.

The blurb is probably the true constant in book publishing, from the far right of conventional publishing to the radical left of self published books. All books need a decent blurb. Taken to it's extreme point, nobody but an absolute fanatic is going to buy an otherwise unknown tome without some indication about the content. So it is disappointing to report that Amazon seem to think that book buyers might just make that extreme leap of faith. Over three weeks after they ported my four paperback books from the US Amazon site and still only the German Amazon site has the blurb attached.

I've got to the point where I periodically email Createspace once a week just to confirm there's someone at home. They've confirmed that 'in some cases, metadata and pricing information is not updating on the Amazon Europe websites', Well, apart from the point that I alerted them to this problem, it isn't quite accurate - the Germans seem to have managed it fine.

Hopefully they will sort out the issue soon - I certainly don't feel inclined to promote my books while the critical blurb is missing. When they do, they could send me a picture. But really, all I want is seven small words - 'your blurb now appears with your books'.
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I can be followed on Twitter too - @RayASullivan
or on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me

To find out more about my ancestors visit my sister’s website http://sullivanfamilyhistory.angelfire.com/

The Last Simple is available on Amazon.com in paperback for $5.99

The Journeymen is available for $8.99

Skin is available for $9.99

For quick access to the various Kindle, Kobo, WH Smith and Smashword links please use the table below to view my books.

To View My books In....

Tuesday 12 June 2012

Createspace Paperbacks Don't Export Too Well

If you've followed my earlier blogs on the Createspace paperback Print On Demand (POD) process you'll know that I've sung their praises several times. The process of uploading the text files, designing the covers and setting the prices have all seemed to be fairly straightforward, and the finished product is good.

And you'll also know that I was very quick to jump onto the news that Createspace had set up UK and EU printing facilities, enabling European authors the opportunity to get their books listed in paperback form in their home country. Obviously it also provides an opportunity for US and Canadian Createspace authors to be listed in the EU. The production costs appear similar across all the locations, incredibly given the turbulence in Europe right now, but the postage cost advantages are significant.

But not all is peachy in the Createspace UK and EU world.

When I uploaded my books to the US site I jumped through some hoops - formatting for paperbacks was a learning curve I've harked on about before, what with wrestling with page numbers, headers and footers. However, once I proofed each book - now much easier and cheaper with electronic proofing - I ended up with a product that was perfectly acceptable. When I was satisfied with the end result I pushed the go button and a day or so later the book, the image, the blurb and the price all popped up on Amazon's US site.

Then the nice people at Createspace launched the UK and EU printing presses and invited us to make our books available over this side of the pond. It sounded like a fair proposition, I didn't have to do any more formatting, the blurb was written, the cover decided on. All I had to do was agree to let them make it available on the UK and EU Amazon sites and set the prices.

So I checked the UK site eagerly to see if the books appeared and, to be fair, they did in quick succession. However they were built up over a ten day period, so anyone looking for new releases on the various sites would have seen the title but no image, then the image popped up, then a few days later the links to the Kindle versions. They even found the few reviews that are linked to the Kindle versions and added them to the page.

Which is all very good, but they didn't attach the blurb, the part of the page that tells you what the book is about, that hopefully draws you in and makes you think about reading the story. So I contacted Createspace, who investigated and within a week had strong-armed the UK site to upload the blurb to Digital Life Form to help any prospective purchasers to decide on whether they wanted to read the book or not. But in flagging the problem I sent links to the US and UK Amazon Digital Life Form pages for comparison and the Createspace Guys and Gals obviously missed the general point because Skin, The Journeymen and The Last Simple remained blurb-less. I'd noticed that this appeared to be the case with the EU sites with the exception of Amazon.de - with typical Germanic efficiency the German site had uploaded everything including the blurb. The French, however, left the blurb out but decided to discount the books - thanks for asking, guys!

So I went back to Createspace and pointed out the problem, not just about my books but the more general problem. The way I look at it, there's a certain opportunity presented when a book first hits the listing, one that's been squandered in my case, but there you go. Ultimately, though, if casual browsers keep running into books listed without descriptive blurb and they are predominantly Createspace published titles then they will draw a reasonable but negative conclusion about Createspace books.

I have recommended to Createspace that they should do the book building off-line, ensure all components are in place, then launch the new title. OK, if it must take ten days to upload something over here that appeared within thirty hours in the US, so be it - but let's make sure it's fully formed and operational so that UK and EU consumers don't get a jaundiced view of the product.

I'll interrupt my summer off blogging again if and when Createspace sort out the blurb on my books.

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I can be followed on Twitter too - @RayASullivan
or on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me

To find out more about my ancestors visit my sister’s website http://sullivanfamilyhistory.angelfire.com/

The Last Simple is available on Amazon.com in paperback for $5.99

The Journeymen is available for $8.99

Skin is available for $9.99

For quick access to the various Kindle, Kobo, WH Smith and Smashword links please use the table below to view my books.

To View My books In....

Thursday 7 June 2012

RIP Ray Bradbury

I wrote the blog entry below last December, and feel it deserves to be re-posted. Ray Bradbury was in all probability the first Sci-Fi writer I read. It is with great sadness that I learn of his passing and I believe that his publishers treated him shockingly in his final year of life. Ironically, with his passing, my suggestion below that almost nobody would pay $9.99 for an eBook version of Fahrenheit 451 will be proven wrong, such is the way of the world when someone great passes on.

Ray will be missed, by me for one. RIP.

Fahrenheit 451, an iconic Sci Fi story about a United States that has outlawed books, written by Ray Bradbury in 1953, has been published as an eBook for the first time, pretty much against the author's wishes. The publishers, Simon & Schuster have allegedly told the author's agent to either allow eBook versions of his works or there would be no contract at renewal, and ultimately Mr Bradbury has agreed. The eBook is retailing at $9.99 (£6.35 in the UK).

This raises a number of issues, in my mind. First and foremost, Ray Bradbury is publicly against the eBook concept, in fact, from reading quotes he has made over the last few years, he's a bit anti-technology. That's fine, it's his opinion and I think it should be respected. And let's be honest here, Fahrenheit 451, icon that it is, is unlikely to sell more than a few copies at $9.99 for an electronic copy when there are potentially ten million paper copies in circulation. OK, a large amount will have been recycled years ago, but a quick look at eBay shows that there are dozens of copies for sale right now for much less than the asking price of the eBook version.

What this represents is virtually the blackmailing of an author to include eBooks in the distribution options. I very much doubt that any newly signed author could avoid having to agree to such terms, but Mr Bradbury has been selling books, earning a living for himself and the whole publishing machine, for half a Century. My guess is that Simon & Schuster stand to gain much more than Mr Bradbury out of the deal. First, I doubt if the economies of electronic publishing will be reflected in larger royalties per sale to Mr Bradbury. Second, it could remove the impetus for Simon & Schuster to produce print copies of any of his books now the contract has been signed, unless it's a new book.

This is happening increasingly in cases where the author has passed on but the book is still in copyright - the estate of the deceased author are being railroaded into e-published versions, by all accounts.

Should we be concerned? Well, I personally sympathise with Ray Bradbury - his books are probably his pension and without a deal that's a big issue to him. However I'm not certain that he's going to sell a great deal of books in any format - as I've said, the eBook price is high and the incentive to produce print copies is diminished.

But it's a changing world out there. I firmly believe that in ten years, probably much less, virtually all reading - of books, newspapers, magazines - will be electronic. e-Readers will become faster, more functional and cheaper. Formats will standardise, making economies of scale easier to achieve. I see a world where every schoolchild carries his or her schoolbooks on a school-provided and populated e-Reader, with textbooks procured as ebooks on a licensing deal that sees the owners of the work compensated. No more dog-eared, out of date books covered in wallpaper (do they still do that in schools, or am I showing my age?)

But the cost will be the decline, then disappearance of, bookshops and newsagents. Will we need physical libraries when they could be virtual? I'm sure all people who love reading will miss browsing bookshops, but realistically they will have to go, or at least find a new way to trade. I'm sure the demise of candle shops was lamented when electricity started to take off, but nobody complains about it now. Not even candle makers.

So I truly sympathise with Ray Bradbury, it sounds like he's been treated shockingly. If he wasn't so resistant to the medium he might have done what other mainstream authors have chosen to do and told the publishers to stick their contract where the sun don't shine - and self published on Amazon, Smashwords, Apple, Kobo, Sony.

In the meantime I'm working on a story about a world where eBooks are banned. Does anyone know the auto-ignition temperature (in degrees Celsius, please) of a Kindle?