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How I Spent My Snow Day

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Before we begin, you know how I said I didn't think it was possible to unsubscribe to comments once you subscribed? Well, I was wrong. You can unsubscribe very easily, apparently. When you receive an e-mail, there's a link you can click on to manage your subscriptions. However, on the site itself, if you're subscribed to a certain post, there will be a link that says something along the lines of Manage Your Subscriptions, but if you click on that it won't work. So you can only unsubscribe from the e-mails you receive, not from the website. Get it? Got it? Good.

Now, as many of you know there was something of a blizzard here on the east coast last week. Almost all businesses were closed. I got to stay home from work. Which should have been nice and relaxing, but I decided to do some writing. Only it wasn't writing, per se, but the other side of writing, if you get my drift.

Anyway, last year I posted a sf thriller novella called The Silver Ring online. It was something I'd originally written in high school and set aside to collect virtual dust until last year I pulled it back out and reworked it a bit. It's a fun little story that I revised specifically for online reading (30 very short fast-paced chapters) and I've been experimenting with it off and on ever since.

A few months back I downloaded the Aldiko ebook reader onto my cell phone. I absolutely love it. It's linked up with Feedbooks and Smashwords to download books instantly onto your phone, or you can download books (the epub format) elsewhere and then import them via a USB cable. When I first downloaded the reader, I scoured through both sites looking for books to download. The books ranged from classics to bestsellers to self-published crap. As you may know, Cory Doctorow is a huge advocate of giving away e-books for free, and so of course I downloaded three of his books. I also have downloaded issues 2 and 3 of Electric Literature. Those downloads were not free. Each cost me $4.95 from Smashwords. But I really like the journal and I think the cost is more than reasonable.

Some costs, however, are not.

The books uploaded onto Feedbooks are completely free to download. Readers go to that site knowing that whatever is there they can download without any problems. Smashwords, on the other hand, is a mixed bag. Some books are free to download. Others are not.

What's nice about Smashwords is that for each book they show you the approximate word count. It's fascinating to see just how much some writers charge for certain works. Like this e-book, which is roughly 38,000 words and costs $4.99. Then you have this e-book, which is roughly 150,000 words and costs $15.00. Or you have this e-book, which is roughly 1,700 words and costs $0.99.

It goes on and on.

The big debate right now is just how much e-books should cost. Personally, I think e-books should cost as much as they need to cost. Yes, I think they should be cheaper than the print version of a book, but just how cheap? At what point does the publisher (and author) start losing money?

I have no problem with paying for e-books, but when I do, I look at them just like I would a regular book I would find at the bookstore. Meaning, I really have to be impressed with the description to purchase it, or if I have to be a fan of that author's work, or something. I'm not just going to buy it to buy it.

And let's be honest here -- most of the authors putting their stuff on Smashwords (not to mention the Kindle Store) are not authors who have a huge following. Yes, yes, Joe Konrath is making thousands of dollars a month on his e-books, but he's Joe Konrath. You can't compare apples with oranges.

For the rest of us though -- the under published, if you like -- what is our option if we want to post something on a place like Smashwords?

We can make our books free to readers who are more likely then to download them, or we can charge some kind of fee and hope and pray that some readers who have probably never heard of us before will take pity and purchase our book.

Sure, money is nice and everything, but having people -- a lot of people -- download and read my stuff is even nicer.

The final phase of The Silver Ring experiment went into effect last week during the blizzard. I spent hours on the computer formatting the manuscript to upload onto Feedbooks. I'd decided I liked Feedbooks best, because with the epub format they actually manage to separate chapters. And besides, people who go to the site know that whatever is there is free, and they are readers, gosh darn it.

Unfortunately, after hours of staring at the computer screen, my little novella didn't seem to want to upload properly. It would upload and I could publish it, but then it would disappear after a half hour or so. I tried contacting Feedbook's support and got no real help. Then I said to myself Screw it and tried my hand at Smashwords. This worked much better and the novella was uploaded in no time at all.

As right now gaining readers is more important to me than gaining a few bucks in my PayPal account, I made The Silver Ring available at Smashwords for free. I purposely did not tell anybody about it. I did not mention it on Twitter or Facebook. I obviously didn't mention it here on this blog. I wanted to give it a week and see what would happen.

As of this moment (1:00 AM eastern time on Wednesday) The Silver Ring has been downloaded on Smashwords 177 times. That may seem like a somewhat impressive number, but remember that just because a book is downloaded does not mean that it's read. However, according to my nifty Smashwords dashboard, the novella has been linked in 5 member libraries, which is basically five people who have added a hyperlink in their library profiles to my novella. Not a big deal, perhaps, but it's still something.

Over the course of a week (six days, really, as I didn't completely upload the novella until early Thursday morning), I received a few Google Alerts about the novella. One was for this site, listing the novella as a free read. Another was for this ebook sample. Then on Monday I received an e-mail from someone who runs this website asking if I would be interested in allowing them to post a PDF of the novella to their site so their readers could download it for free.

As I made the novella free to a number of formats (that's the great thing about Smashwords, the book becomes available in pretty much every format) I decided to tweak the version I have in the Kindle Store. If I could, I would make it free to download, but as an author you can't. The lowest you can price it is at 99 cents. So I figure if people are going to pay for something that I'm pretty much giving away for free elsewhere, I should reward them with something a little extra. So I added a bonus short story to the Kindle edition. Not much, but it's something. Remember, it's not like I'm looking to make a lot of money here, and I could just delete it from the Kindle Store, but it's nice having the book linked at Amazon as it's, well, Amazon. Plus, I changed the product description around to this (not to mention made it so the file was not DRM enabled):

A young man finds a mysterious silver ring that holds extraordinary powers -- a ring that the darkest evil in the universe wants for its very own.

This Kindle edition contains a bonus short story.

(Download the novella for free at Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/9764)

Anyway, I've talked enough for this post. If you're interested in downloadingThe Silver Ring onto your ebook reader, please do. It's completely free, after all, so what do you have to lose?

The Distinction Between Love, Like, Indifference, And Hate

Thinking back on last week's post about the Sheep Effect, and wondering about these people who absolutely love or hate everything, I started wondering what exactly the distinction is between love and hate. Obviously it's different for everyone. Two people can say they love (or hate) the same thing, but that level of love (or hate) can vary. Does it even need to be explained? Maybe not, but here's how I explain what I mean when I say I liked, loved, or hated something. When I say I liked a book or story or movie or whatever, it means just what it sounds like it means: I liked it. I enjoyed it for what it was. It didn't disappoint me and it didn't overly thrill me. I was content. If it's a book, I'll give it three stars on Goodreads.

When I say I really liked a book (four stars on Goodreads), it means I really liked the book. It's something that I would recommend to others. Something I might, who knows, maybe even read again (which is saying a lot, because life's too short to read the same books over and over when there's just so many out there).

When I say I loved a book (five stars on Goodreads), it means that I absolutely loved it. Something about the book floored me so much that I can't stop talking about it. Basically, it's a book that I wish I'd written and you can bet your sweet bottom that I recommend it to everyone.

And, of course, there is indifference and hate (two stars and one star on Goodreads, respectively), and those should go without saying. In fact, most of these books I don't even bother to finish reading, or if I do, I skim the rest of the book hoping to gain some kind of hidden knowledge within its pages. Almost every time, there is none.

But of course that's just me. I am a tough critic. In fact, out of the 451 books I have rated on Goodreads, my average rating is a 3.04 (that's out of five). For the most part what I read I like. If I start something and know instantly I won't like it, I won't waste my time.

When I get a friend request on Goodreads, I always click on the button that compares this potential new friend's books with mine. It's always interesting to see the difference in ratings on the books that we've read. Again, every person is different. There is no right or wrong way to judge a book, ya know?

Speaking of which, nobody should be judged for what they like or dislike. That goes without saying but I figure I might as well say it anyway. I might not like to read James Patterson, but that doesn't give me any right to look down on the guy purchasing five James Patterson novels at the bookstore. At least he's reading, which is more than I can say for a lot of people in the world. It's ridiculous when people criticize others for reading such-and-such a book (You want to read the latest Sweet Valley High? Go for it). Nobody should be ashamed for reading what they do (unless it's western robotic erotica; now that's just nasty).

A few weeks back I was talking to someone about what they had been reading recently and they were hesitant at first, not wanting to tell me, until finally prefacing it with a "I know this is going to sound weird" and then said they'd been digging a lot of YA lately. I didn't even blink. I told this person there's absolutely nothing wrong with YA, that some of the best writing out there is in fact YA. (Which is it.)

So what about you? What does it mean when you love, like, are indifferent about, or just downright hate a book?

(Note that I recently installed a new plugin that subscribes readers to comments. This was something I'd always thought was lacking on this site, along with threaded comments, which I'm also working on getting. This is a relatively new plugin, from what I understand, and at the moment I don't think there's anyway to unsubscribe yourself from any particular post once you have checked that box by the comments section. So just keep that in mind.)

Talk About An Angry Customer

For this week's Freaky Friday Fun, I present to you an individual who went into Wal-Mart, grabbed a metal baseball bat from the sports section, and then strode into the electronics section and destroyed a number of TVs. (You'd be lying if you said the urge didn't come over you when you're in Wal-Mart.) The official clip is from the AP, but it's a tad long and boring, so embedded below is a more suped up version. Have a great weekend. And for those of you on the east coast, stay warm.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJs0M7hfXy4

The Sheep Effect

This post is apt to piss some people off, which I guess is a good thing, considering that the people who do get pissed off are those I'm directly addressing. Then again, there's the chance that what I'm talking about doesn't even exist, in which case nobody will get pissed off.

What am I talking about?

Why, the Sheep Effect, of course.

(Yes, yes, I'm attempting to coin a term again.)

You know what it is, though. It's pretty obvious. Simple peer pressure. It's not just a grade school or high school thing. Peer pressure stays with us throughout life. And, wouldn't you believe it, it even happens in writing communities.

Quite recently I read a book that I'd heard so many good things about. Everyone, it seemed, loved it. Everyone but me. I just didn't get what was so great and special about it. Someone I know found out I wasn't completely knocked over by the book and asked what my problem was.

"How can you not like that book?" this person asked. "It's amazing!"

"What's so amazing about it?"

"It's just so good!"

"What's so good about it?"

"Aw, man" -- this person waving a dismissive hand -- "you just don't know."

I decided it best not to pursue the point. Maybe I just didn't know. Maybe sometimes we just love a story or book or movie or a piece of music for no other reason than because we do. There doesn't have to be a reason for it. Right?

Now I don't consider myself a member of any real writing community. I try to keep a toe in as many different ponds as possible to know what's going on in any particular water. But in every writing community it always seems to be the same thing: people fawning over a particular book or story or writer that I just don't understand. Sure, the book or story or writer isn't bad, per se, but I can't see what the big fuss is about. My theory, of course, is that a lot of other people don't find them great either, but they don't want to be left out and made to look like an idiot so they go along with the flow.

Yes, just like sheep.

A more prominent example of this is Oprah's book club. Now for the record I like Oprah very much. I like how she tries to raise awareness of books to her vast audience. But what I'm not thrilled about is how her vast audience gobbles down any book she gives them and immediately claims it's a "masterpiece." Because I've read some of Oprah's picks. Some, I thought, were great. Others, I thought, were ... not so great. But of course that could just be me. We all have different tastes. Or at least we should.

I could keep going with different examples of this ongoing phenomenon (like where the majority doesn't like something and so everyone else doesn't like it either, even though there's nothing wrong with it at all), but I'm sure you get the point. Keep in mind I'm not saying it's not all right to like something without knowing why you like it. There are books and movies that I love without really knowing why I do. But I know in my heart that I really do love them and not just say I do because everyone else does and I don't want to look foolish. Or that I don't like a book or movie or story when everyone else does.

I could end here with a challenge to everyone who reads this to take more of a stand in what you like and dislike. But then if the majority did that, we would all be sheep. Wouldn't we?