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"Advances" in publishing...

Monday, April 13, 2009
An article in the New York Times made me think. It talked about book advances and how they've changed, how the amounts are influenced.

The article talks about how 7 out of 10 books don't earn out their advance. That means the author never gets a royalty check, if I'm not mistaken. Also, that it takes so long to get a book to print that can really hurt an author financially because of the time involved. Not to mention you share part of that with an agent.

Wow. I mean, I know I don't get advances currently from my houses, and I'm not exactly making Stephen King money, but I'm making average evil day job equivalent pay from my writing. Two of my houses pay monthly, one pays quarterly. I consider myself damn lucky, believe me, because I know a lot of writers aren't making enough to quit their evil day jobs, and this is what I do full-time for a living now.

Convince me again why, exactly, traditional publishing is better than e-publishing? I mean, for a "new" writer without an established backlist, unless you're extremely lucky, it's difficult to get into a "regular" publisher. Yeah, it happens, but in the mean time, I'm not sitting there with my writing not making me money. So I'm still not sure why there are some writers who look down their noses at e-publishing when it's a viable alternative if someone is serious about having a writing career. I've met some great people, I love the publishers I've signed with, and I'm developing a reader base who've really blessed me by reading what I write and buying more.

My writing makes me money. Period. It makes me money that allows me to work from home. It makes me money that pays my bills and I have fun doing it. No, "dead tree" books aren't disappearing, but then again, neither are e-books.

#amazonfail & #glitchmyass

Sunday, April 12, 2009
Remember how I said I was a Twitter twit? Weeeelll, having something hit really close to home changed all that.

Amazon.com, in their infinitely short-sighted wisdom, has apparently decided they are going to delist the sales rankings of a LOT of GLBT-themed books. And yes, mine among them. But not just erotica and fiction, I'm talking NON-fiction books on the topic as well! And not just GLBT but other "adult" material

Insanity.

Twitter has blown this up in Amazon's face in a HUGE way, spreading the word like wildfire. Today I have spent far too much time on this, but I've learned about hash tags (#amazonfail) for searching Twitter and what RT means.

I've also learned that someone at Amazon should get their ass handed to them on a silver platter. How would you like to be the guy who's got to make that phone call to the CEO and explain their "glitch" has apparently made them look like a bunch of gaybashing homophobes?

And it's not just GLBT books, but books on things like disability issues and feminist topics are also disappearing from sales rankings and search lists. This means if you type in a topic and aren't specifically looking by title/author, you probably won't find a "delisted" book.

That's like Amazon.com telling you it knows what's best for you AND it will tell you how you find books you're looking for. But it won't openly tell you that it's hiding books from you for your own good.

This is a great time to jump on the Twitter bandwagon!

Tweet, Twit, Twa...never mind...

Friday, April 3, 2009
I admit it. I'm a Twitter idiot. I mean, I'm pretty good at deciphering php and css code, can build and tweak templates for my website, finally figured out how to use Facebook (then the *&^%$s switched it around and I'm RElearning it), etc, etc, etc.

Twitter, not so much. I've got an account, but at first I couldn't figure out how to get my phone approved. (Turned out it wasn't good enough to use the area code, I also had to punch in a country code, go figure?) I even think I have two followers. Couldn't figure out how to follow them, however.

I have a BlackBerry, for chrissake. When I swapped out phones and had problems, I figured it out so I didn't lose all my data. I am NOT a technotard, I swear I'm not. But something about Twitter defies me. Maybe it's too simple for me? *LOL*