AMAZON IS THE BORG

 

 

You thought the Big Five were bad for Publishing?

     They were just Big Business.  Big Business has no conscience.  It only has hunger ... for more.


Chuck Wendig, author and blogger, had an interesting article:
http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2014/03/04/diversify-your-publishing-why-amazons-acx-royalty-change-matters/

DIVERSIFY YOUR PUBLISHING: WHY AMAZON'S ACX ROYALTY CHANGE MATTERS


Once upon a time, the Big Six had a monopoly of sorts. 

Amazon came along with Kindle and KDP and the Big Five no longer had us by the throats.

B&N came up with the Nook and Apple with its iPad.  We had places to go with our ebooks.

Amazon commenced to do what it does best: crush its competition.

Now, the Nook is almost a ghost.  Apple is but a shadow of its former self.

With Audible's exclusive contract with Audible, ACX is basically a monopoly for audiobooks ...

Hence, ACX now gobbles 60% of the royalties which really are but fees they charge for distribution.

Ah, where are you going to go with your audiobooks now?  Nowhere.

Unless you want to invest $3000, that because of Whispersync you will never earn back, your audiobook days are over.

Oh, well, you weren't going to do audiobooks anyway.

 

As I wrote:

Nook is almost a ghost.  Apple's ebook store is a shadow of its former self and is harder to get into than KDP.

And we bragged so much about Amazon, Kindles are dirt cheap and most ereaders do their reading on Kindles.

People with Kindles find it hard to use them on any other platform.

KDP gave only 35% to authors when it was the only game in town. 

Then, a week before the iPad came out, it gave authors 70%.

 

Now, to get that, you must make your book EXCLUSIVE to KDP.

Amazon is floating the idea of raising the price for Amazon Prime to $119.  Ouch.  You'd have to order 17 things a year from them just to have that price make sense.

Amazon is grumbling publically about its profit margins.  In trying to undercut Apple's iPad and other competitors, Amazon has not made much profit over these past five years.

That has to change for it to remain solvent.

Rather than angering their entire Amazon Prime stable of users,

Amazon would much rather just undercut self-publishers.  I mean where would we go?

And in a few years, we may not be given a choice ... just the boot.

Amazon wants to rival, then crush Netflix and Apple. 

It wants to be the only game in town so that it can prune and weed its inventory and merely have Large Names with their Large Profits.

As Chuck so quaintly put it:

Amazon no es tu amigo.

Amazon bought Goodreads — for the member list, not to sell them books.

 If a company does well coming up with some other ease of use approach to e-books, Amazon will either try to buy it or wipe it out of existence.

Amazon is steadily squeezing publishers for all sorts of fees and increases in their share of the monies,

the smaller presses the worst because Amazon is a bigger part of their sales.

For a smaller house, Amazon’s total discount can go as high as sixty per cent, which cuts deeply into already slim profit margins.

Author publishers were good advertising for the Kindle.

As for the Kindle, the issue isn’t whether Kindle customers can buy titles from elsewhere, but will they bother.

The Kindle’s success is based on ease of use, which has been Amazon’s advantage.

Now that Amazon is moving on from e-readers to numerous fronts into the tech and media worlds, e-books are already in the back seat of their attention.

By 2010, Amazon controlled ninety per cent of the market in digital books—a dominance that almost no company, in any industry, could claim. 

Now, after the Apple reversal in court, it has a 65% dominance and climbing back up.

Mr. Bezos originally thought of calling his company Relentless.com—

that U.R.L. still takes you to Amazon’s site—before adopting the name of the world’s largest river by volume.

It seems preposterous now, but Amazon began as a bookstore.

In 1994, at the age of thirty, Mr. Bezos, a Princeton graduate, quit his job at a Manhattan hedge fund and moved to Seattle

to found a company that could ride the exponential growth of the early commercial Internet.

(Mr. Bezos calculated that, in 1993, usage climbed by two hundred and thirty thousand per cent.)

Books are easy to ship and hard to break, and there was a major distribution warehouse in Oregon.

Mr. Bezos saw Amazon selling books as a way of gathering data on affluent, educated shoppers.

The books would be priced close to cost, in order to increase sales volume.

After collecting data on millions of customers, Amazon could figure out how to sell everything else dirt cheap on the Internet.

Before Google, and long before Facebook, Mr. Bezos realized that the greatest value of an online company lay in the consumer data it collected.

Two decades later, Amazon sells a bewildering array of products.

Book publishers’ dependence on Amazon, however unwilling, keeps growing.

Amazon constitutes a third of one major house’s retail sales on a given week, with the growth chart pointing toward fifty per cent.

Amazon is a venue.

 

Venues raise their rent. 

 

Be prepared.

 

IF IT'S NOT SEX, DON'T BOTHER

I swear, if I see another bare torso eBook cover, I will swear!

 

SFUMATO!  Yes, I did spot another such cover.

 

The author's prose is fun, thrilling, and filled with danger.  Let's call the book THE EVIL PIE MAKER.

 

It is a supernatural thriller/romance not erotica.

 

Does the cover show an evil pie?  No.  A woman?  No.  A hint of danger?  No.

 

Just a good looking guy with a better looking chest, no eye contact even.

 

Sigh.

 

If the story is just sex that's erotica not romance. 

 

I am drawn to romances where lonely kindred spirits meet (no, it doesn't hurt if each party is attractive)

 

But shallow "tustles in the bustle" do not appeal to me. 

 

I want a love that lasts, that warms the soul though both are parted from one another.  Miles do not matter when two hearts are one.

 

Of course, I am probably in the minority ...

 

but all these bare torso eBook covers are beginning to look the same to me.

 

Shah Wharton:

http://shahwharton.com/2014/03/why-i-suck-at-book-marketing-why-you-do-to-indielife-iwsg-amwriting/

 

wrote a great post:

 

WHY I SUCK AT BOOK MARKETING ... AND YOU DO, TOO.

 

She says it is because WE SELF-PROMOTE not BOOK PROMOTE.

 

And some important WHY'S need to be addressed:

 

WHY did you become a writer? 

 

WHY DID YOU WRITE THIS BOOK?

 

WHY WOULD A READER BE COMPELLED TO READ YOUR BOOK?

 

We need to draw to us a group of like-minded individuals who get caught up in the answers to those questions ... who have those answers murmuring in their hearts.

 

Can you answer WHY SHOULD ANYONE BUY MY BOOK?

 

If not, that is why your book marketing is failing.

 

Does the WHY of your desire to be an author

and the WHY A READER WOULD FEEL COMPELLED TO READ YOUR BOOK draw a number of like-hearted people?

A bare chest tells me nothing special about your book or you.

  "Oh, another 'Passion's in Fashion' book" I just say.

Stephan King ages ago said: “It seems to me that every book – at least the ones worth reading – is about something.”

Can you hear a Hans Zimmer theme playing in the background as you read your climatic end chapters where mad gods dance in the night sky ...

your bruised heroes stand their ground, knowing they are going to die but it does not matter ...

for they will die together, taking the Dark Ones down with them,

And something greater than they will survive?

Is all the self-promotion, the generic tease covers nothing but digital Spam?
 

What is the WHY of your desire to be an author?
 

WHAT IS THE UNDERLYING MEANING TO YOUR BOOK?
 

What do you think of bare torso covers?
 

THE MOVIE I WILL NEVER SEE ...

... ON THE BIG SCREEN.



Not because I do not want to see it.  I do!

But it does not contain fast cars, explosions, and hot women -- and in my city only movies with those essential elements need apply to our theaters.

I had to wait for the DVD release of MIDNIGHT IN PARIS:



Wes Anderson, (not to be confused with Wes Craven!), possesses a distinctive sensibility and a consistent visual style.  I hope you like his work as much as do I.

In THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL,

you will meet eccentric characters possessed by a kind of madcap melancholy, soulful and silly in equal measure.

A phrase occurs twice in the film describing the hotel's charismatic concierge, M. Gustave. Portrayed by Ralph Fiennes:

 A thoroughly ridiculous man and at the same time “a glimmer of civilization in the barbaric slaughterhouse we know as humanity.”
 
In the real 1930s, places like the fictional Zubrowka, were on the brink of inconceivable barbarism and unprecedented slaughter.

M. Gustave's energy and appearance are based upon Stefan Zweig:

On February 22, 1942, the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig and his second wife went to the bedroom of a rented house in Petrópolis, Brazil.

They lay down—she in a kimono, he in a shirt and tie—after taking an enormous dose of barbiturates.

In his suicide note, he spoke of “my own language having disappeared from me and my spiritual home, Europe, having destroyed itself.”

He concluded, “I salute all my friends! May it be granted them yet to see the dawn after the long night! I, all too impatient, go on before.”

 Ernst Lubitsch,

the filmmaker who left Berlin for Hollywood in 1922 and whose name connotes a peerlessly suave and humane comic touch is a strong influence in this film.

In two memorable movies, Lubitsch, without losing his sense of humor, confronted contemporary totalitarianism: in NINOTCHKA (1939), with Greta Garbo as a Soviet agent in Paris,

and in TO BE OR NOT TO BE (1942), with Jack Benny as a Polish actor performing for the Nazis.

Those of you who have read my HER BONES ARE IN THE BADLANDS know of my fondness for film and history ... and courage/humor in the face of terrible danger.

Perhaps it is but a dream, a whimsy ...

but I like to think lightheartedness and laughter can oppose the heavy hand of political oppression.

Perhaps I like THE GREAT BUDAPEST HOTEL

 because it, like my DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE and HER BONES ARE IN THE BADLANDS,

makes a marvelous mockery of history, turning its horrors into a series of graceful jokes and mischievous gestures.

Perhaps it is but escapism. I think of it as literary revenge on reality.

What revenge do you take on reality in your writing?

ARE YOU EXCITED?

 

April 4th: THE WINTER SOLDIER!
 

 

Piecing together the entire story of "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" is like trying to solve one of those classic '70s spy thrillers,

 

which is appropriate, considering that's the type of film Marvel is shooting for this time around.

 

Joe Russo:  (Co-Director)

 

"The heart of the movie is how SHIELD got a character with a code like Cap to work for a clandestine organization which has a very subversive agenda.

 

If you watch "Three Days of the Condor," the first ten minutes are all about Robert Redford being as charming as possible,

 

and then the next 80 minutes are about, “Is that charming guy that you really like going to get killed by some really gnarly people?”

 

 

Guess what?

CAP has Robert Redford in his movie!

 

And judging from the voice over,

an aged Peggy Carter is in it as well.

 

Are you excited to see this one?

Are you excited about any movie
coming out soon?

Any book?

END OF DAYS REVIEW & THE LAND OF FANCY

http://www.amazon.com/END-DAYS-ROLAND-YEOMANS-ebook/dp/B0082ZJD08/

Shelley Freedman surprised me with a great review of END OF DAYS:

Was it the words themselves or the voice enacting them? This, the End of Days, made me sigh as I heard the last words of the novel.

I took my time with this story. I got to know the many characters. I sided with good over evil. I shared the downfalls and the triumphs.

Roland's words were so gracefully linked together; so well immersed in a fluid of old tales and the mind's eye of New Orleans today. I was there.

I listened to Francene's words and heard the voices all come alive. I smiled at the crugly voice of Maxine, the accents and distinguishing mannerisms for all the players, real, ghoul, other-worldly.

Roland has a unique way of drawing you into his world and Francene perfectly embraced his picture bringing it all to life. I look forward to finding out what happens next (or before ;o) ...

What an excellent way to start the day, right?  Thank you, Shelley!

Howard Pyle's THE TRAVELS OF THE SOUL

 

{This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1923.}

 

The American illustrator and writer Howard Pyle was born on this day in 1853.

 

Those of you who have read THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH or listened to its audiobook know

 

 that Pyle is one of the artistic heroes of the young gypsy who often draws in his style.

 

Pyle was widely respected during his life and continues to be well regarded by illustrators and fine artists.

 

Vincent van Gogh, a contemporary artist working in France, wrote in a letter to his brother Theo that Pyle's work "... struck me dumb with admiration."

 

He is credited with creating the sytle of clothing for Pirates that have come to be associated with them and copied from Errol Flynn to Johnny Depp.

 

Pyle wrote The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, first published in 1883, an immediate classic, and never since out of print.

 

In its preface, Pyle wrote of the land of the imagination from which all authors draw their inspiration:

 

What is it? 'Tis the land of Fancy, and is of that pleasant kind that, when you tire of it—whisk!—you clap the leaves of this book together and 'tis gone, and you are ready for everyday life, with no harm done.

And now I lift the curtain that hangs between here and No-man's-land. Will you come with me, sweet Reader? I thank you. Give me your hand.

What is your inspiration? 

 

How would you describe the world of your novels?

 

R.I.P. MAUKIE THE VIRTUAL CAT

 

Maukie will die this March 28, 2014  :-(

 

His own land of fancy (Widgetbox) is saying good-bye to the Net on that date.

 

If you have liked playing with Maukie

in my sidebar,

 

Play with her while you can!

Sigh.

 

It seems I cannot keep even a cyber cat alive.

 

I have come to think of her as alive.

I am silly I know but I am depressed.

 

4 KEYS TO SUCCESS THAT WILL DEFEAT YOU!

 

 

I am weary of reading advice that novice authors might haplessly gobble up, written by snake-oil salesmen like John Locke

(Of the LET ME BUY AS MANY FAKE REVIEWS AS I CAN and tell the world reviews are the secret to success in eBooks.)

Here are

4 KEYS TO SUCCESS THAT WILL DEFEAT YOU:

1.) TARGET YOUR GENRE BEFORE YOU START:

a.) If you force yourself to write what is hot at the moment, by the time you finish your novel your genre may well have cooled to an Ice Age.

b.) You might Google “Google Keyword Tool.”

This tool will show you how many Google Searches your idea or genre is getting monthly, before you write your book.  But that number will change come the completion of your book.

c.) Write what amuses you.  You will have fun.  It will show.  And the reader will have fun, too.

2.) TITLE YOUR BOOK WITH SEARCH ENGINES IN MIND:

a.) Sounds good, but do you know how many eBooks with ZOMBIE as part of the title there are out there?  You want to stand out as original not as a copy cat.

b.) Do you really want 50 SHADES OF LUST in your resume?  Perhaps in your memories ....

c.) Search Engines are good to keep in mind when you list your categories and key words in your book description on Amazon.

  (This is where the Google Keyword Tool should be used.)

d.) Remember THE KEY WORD that is hot today in titles may well be HO-HUM in only 6 months.

e.) MYSTERY, DANGER, HUMOR, ORIGINALITY

Those are the things that are eternal in good book titles.  Wouldn't you pick up books with titles like

RIGHT TURN ON DEAD or THE MORTICIAN'S BRIDE.

f.) SHORT AND SNAPPY are guidelines for you to follow on titles, too.

3.) OTHERS HAVE BECOME MILLIONAIRES, YOU CAN, TOO!  BUY MY HOW TO BOOK!

a.) Take that brown paper bag you brought home from the market and breathe into it slowly until you come back into touch with reality.

b.) Understand that anyone who has found the secret to making millions would be too busy making MORE millions to write an ebook telling you her secrets.

4.) YOU NEED A BLOG OR A WEB PAGE

a.) As an unpublished author, you need a blog/web page like a fish needs a bicycle.

b.) Having a internet presence is nice;

using your time to write three books before publishing the first one is Essential.

c.) Say lightning strikes, and readers love your book. What is the next sentence they speak after saying, "That was a great book"?

d.) "Man, I hope she/he has another book for me to buy!"

e.) In the year it takes you to write another book, their interest in you has faded. 

Have an inventory of books for readers to gobble up after discovering you.

f.) AFTER you've published your first book, then put up a web presence that is humorous, helpful, and down-to-earth.

Yes, it used to be conventional wisdom to build an audience for your book by blogging first.  But that wisdom has retreated into the convent of the past.

Now, when everyone is jumping up and down on Twitter, Facebook, and blogs, screaming: "Look at my book!"

You must look Beyond What Once Worked.

g.) Readers go to Amazon or Google looking for a book and type in the Search Box the kind of book they want to read.

THAT IS THE TIME YOU WANT TO DIRECT ATTENTION TO YOUR BOOK!

i.) The person is in the mood to BUY.

ii.) The person wants to read the genre you write.

iii.) If you put the correct KEYWORDS in your category and Key Word sections in the book description of your Kindle book,
 
iv.) AMAZON or GOOGLE ( not your blog) will direct the reader with money in her hands and the desire to read to your book page.

HOW COOL IS THAT?
***
Hibbs, the cub with no clue, cannot wait to see this movie!

 

***
For those interested in Google Keyword Search, here is a great tutorial.

You will have to adapt it to your use of selecting keywords for describing your book on Amazon.

IWSG_THE SILK ROAD of WILLIAM FAULKNER'S GHOST

 

William Faulkner, ghost, here.

Alex Cavanaugh has established this fine tradition:

Writers supporting one another as do the stones in an arch bridge -
http://alexjcavanaugh.blogspot.com/

Roland is off bringing rare blood to the ailing, so I am here to stand in his stead:

Why do I title my support article, THE SILK ROAD?

The Silk Road (from German: Seidenstraße) or Silk Route

 is a modern term referring to a historical network of interlinking trade routes

across the Afro-Eurasian landmass that connected East, South, and Western Asia

 with the Mediterranean and European world, as well as parts of North and East Africa.

 Extending 4,000 miles, the Silk Road got its name from the lucrative Chinese silk trade along it, which began during the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD).

Trade on the Silk Road was a significant factor in the development of the civilizations of China, India, Persia, Europe and Arabia.

Though silk was certainly the major trade item from China, many other goods were traded, and various technologies, religions and philosophies,

as well as the bubonic plague (the "Black Death"), also traveled along the Silk Routes.

The path you take in the quest for your novel is the Silk Road for you.  It is both a short path and a long one:

from the head to the heart

to the fingers.

But most writers run afoul of a roadblock from the head to the heart. 

Or if they traverse that perilous plain, they will find only staleness at the end of their fingers.

My advice for that?

Get it down.

 

Take chances.

 

It may be bad, but it is the only way you can do anything good. 


The Silk Road to your novel will demand bravery of you.

You cannot swim for new horizons until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.  

It will lead you places you never expected to go, bringing you wisdom or the death of your dreams,

depending on the choices you make, the people with whom you converse.

We writers are a lonely group as the ghost of Samuel Clemens pointed out yesterday. 

Dreams have only one owner at a time.

That's why dreamers are lonely.

We are drawn to those who understand the fire in our souls ... even though sometimes we deny that attraction.

In the '20's, two cities called out to yearning writers:
Paris and New Orleans.

I told myself I was going to New Orleans to get a job on a ship going to Europe. 

I was lying to myself.  Why, we lie so much to ourselves, we could do it for a living.

I wanted to be with people with the same problems and interests as my own,

who would not laugh as I told of what I was trying to accomplish with my prose as so many of the Philistines did back then.

To succeed on the original Silk Road, you had to learn the languages of the nations along that route.

 

Your own Silk Road will demand you learn the languages of those of whom you write.

It helps if you like people, for you will listen beneath their words

to the aches and longings that they cannot or dare not bring into the light of conversation.

I spent a lot of time with my uncle. 

And every 4 years, he would have to barn-storm to get re-elected as judge. 

I did not nor do I care about politics.  But I cared about the lined faces I saw in my uncle's audiences.

Theirs were not regional problems. 

A man from there had the same struggles

as do we all:

the struggle against his own heart, against the hearts of his fellows

And the struggle to stay the course of the truths by which we must all live.

 

Truth.


That is a much mocked word in this relative world of today.

"Oh," people say, "what makes something a truth for you does not work for me."

Really? 

Courage, honor, compassion, pity.  Not for you?

We do not practice those to be good

but practicing them has allowed us not to pass away as with the Mastodon despite our fragility. 

One is honest, not to be good, but that is how we get along with one another, to know where we stand in regards to those around us. 

Without compassion, the weak would not endure to grow strong enough to stand on their own.

Love like truth is beyond reason.

 

You don’t love because, you love despite;

not for the virtues, but despite the faults.

 

To get anywhere along your Silk Road of writing you need a compass.  Here is the one I used:

Unless your characters are in trouble,

it is your novel that is in trouble.

And not just trouble alone.  The struggle to endure must rivet the reader. Why is a reader riveted?

Because he has grown to care about the protagonist due to some resonance that character strikes within the heart of the reader.

Not that the protagonist must be a saint, for who relates to perfection? 

 

Indeed, maybe the hero has no morality at all, only an integrity to stay true to what he believes to be facts of human behavior. 

But your hero will do what a man or woman will naturally do,

not what a man should do, but what he will do ... maybe what he can't help but do.

Labor to bring your page to life:

The aim of every writer is to arrest motion, which is life, by the artificial means of prose 

 

and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. 

 

As a writer, always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors.

Try to be better than yourself.

I do not expect you to remember what I say here, only to perhaps be hit like a tuning fork by something that spoke directly to you.   

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects,

longer than knowing even wonders. 

If you take nothing else from this lesson of mine, take this:

The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews,

the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews.