OK, I’ve decided. I’m taking my first two books away from Smashwords for wide distribution, and publishing them through Draft2Digital instead.

Why? Because Smashwords recently sent me an email telling me that I needed bigger cover images to be in their premium catalog. I went into Photoshop and blew up the images I had to the size they asked for, and re-uploaded them.

Now one of the two is failing inclusion in the premium catalog, based on some fussy aspect of internal formatting. Which I didn’t change. It’s been in the premium catalog since 2009.

I once directly challenged Mark Coker in the comments on a Passive Voice post about the fact that Draft2Digital is so much easier to use than his service. His response was “it’s not really that hard”. But, Mark, it’s harder than it needs to be, and harder than your competitors. Maybe consider that a problem for you, as well as for the customers who are giving you this feedback?

Draft2Digital also pays me when I reach a much lower earnings threshold ($10 instead of $50, I believe). (This isn’t actually the case, when I checked. It’s $10 for SW too, but they pay quarterly rather than monthly.)

So, while I’ll leave City of Masks and Gu up at Smashwords itself – at least until I get my next payout – I’ll be using D2D for the broader distribution. I can’t be bothered fussing with Smashwords’ silly system for the small number of sales they bring in.

Literally epic. As in epic poetry – a form that’s been out of style for a couple of centuries, now used to tell an SF story. Is old the new new?

Originally shared by David Brin

Something is missing. Sure SciFi has taken over popular culture, leaving grownup/literary SF (that explores deep ideas) seeming a bit of a revered grampa. But what’s truly missing is connection to our past. No, not silly-feudal fantasy, that bears no relation to our ancestors’ real challenges and grueling lives. Rather, the oral rhythms and voluptuous wordplay of true, epic poetry!

       Now that tradition – beloved of our forebears – has a pulsing, with-it revival in science fiction!  Frederick Turner’s wonderful Mars colonization canto led the way.  Now he expresses some of our deepest fears… and can-do spirit of hope… in “Apocalypse” wherein he puts into throbbing iambic beat a blending that other SF poets aimed for with the Rhysling Awards and that some of the best hip hop guys* have stabbed-at. Only Fred creates an epic so fluidly readable you’ll call it a compelling novel… that just happens to sing.

Baen Books will start a ten-week electronic serialization of the poem on its very popular subscriber website. Ilium will simultaneously issue the book in inexpensive but handsome hardback and paperback editions.

http://frederickturnerpoet.com/?p=441

* (Hip-hop scifi? Gift of Gab and Blackalicious, especially their excellent pop-rap song “Powers,” which is joyful and stunningly original. Follow Gift of Gab over to The Mighty Underdogs doing “Droppin’ Science Fiction!” Sci-fi rap!  Seriously!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isL-M4_Mftk

For a while now I’ve been setting up trackable links using the Pretty Link WordPress plugin to see whether people will click through from one of my books to the Amazon buy page for another book. I put these links in the back of each book, pointing to the others in the series, and use a naming convention so that I can tell what the source book and target book are.

Today, I was setting one up and had a look at the report (the plugin tracks the number of clicks on each link). The numbers are small – all my sales-related numbers are small – but people are clicking the links. The biggest number is from people clicking through from my first Auckland Allies book to the second, which makes sense, since I recently did a free promo on the first one.

If you’re interested in tracking such things, the plugin is free and easy to use, or you could use another service such as bit.ly.

tl;dr: Managers will get in trouble for approving something that fails, but not for rejecting something which, if they’d approved it, would have succeeded.

Also, peers are much better at evaluating your work than you are (you think it’s better than it is) or than your manager is (he or she is looking for the flaws in it).

Could we apply that to publishing? If so, other writers are going to be better than you, and better than publishers, at evaluating whether your book is likely to succeed.

What this article fails to mention is that indies have been publishing series books in quick succession for some time. I know Lindsay Buroker is currently experimenting with the effects of bringing out a trilogy within (I think) a few weeks.

Another, even more comprehensive, report from Hugh Howey and Data Guy.

The good news: there are thousands of authors earning a living wage from writing, some of whom seldom or never appear on the bestseller lists. The bad news: this still represents a relatively small percentage of authors. But it appears that the advent of ebooks has grown the total market and made it possible for more people to make a living out of writing.

The other news: There are still reasons to pursue traditional publishing (either with the Big 5 or a small press), but, except for a very small number of authors, earning more money is no longer one of those reasons. This becomes clearer with every report they release.

Focussed on trad pub, not surprisingly given the source, but with a few useful hints on reasons that editors reject manuscripts – which also apply to readers if you’re indie.

Originally shared by Steve Turnbull

SURVEY FOR PEOPLE WHO READ …with a prize

I’m not selling anything, it really is just a survey. I want to know your reading habits, likes and dislikes. If you finish it you can also have a chance of winning a prize.

Feel free to spread it around… http://bit.ly/whole-story

They trained an AI on romance novels to make it better able to “respond” to people.

Give me your comedy stylings in the comments.

A little while back, someone (I think in the Writers’ Discussion Group community) posted about babelcube.com, where you can put your books up for translation. Translators can look through the books and offer to work on them, and you split royalties. 

I thought I’d give it a try, and loaded up City of Masks. I’ve now got an offer from an Italian translator – appropriate, since it’s set in a kind of mad version of Shakespeare’s Italy.

We’ll see how that goes. If it turns out well, I might put other books up on the service.