Teel – Page 49 – Teel McClanahan

Here is a thing about eBooks

I want to read Let the Right One In, preferably on my iPhone. Mandy and I watched and enjoyed the film together, then she checked the book out of the library, read it & loved it. I didn’t get around to reading it when she had it out, so I re-requested it (it’s a very popular book & there are only two copies in circulation in the Phoenix library system, so it took a while) and it came in a couple weeks ago and … I still didn’t get around to it. I’d like to try reading eBooks (I basically never have), on my iPhone, and I’d like to see if having the book always available, in my pocket, makes me any more likely to actually get through it than merely having the huge block of paper lurking around the house, taunting me about not reading it.

Also, Mandy loved it so much that she has stated that she would like to read it again. So:

1) I could go to a book store and buy the book (the paperback is broadly available, on account of the movie), or just order the paperback from Amazon for … looks like $8.88 used or $10.85 new (or the hardback for $9.90 used / $14.69 new) … then we’d own it & I’d be able to read it and Mandy would be able to read it over and over, and we could even lend it out if we wanted to.

2) I could buy the kindle version from Amazon for $9.99 and read it on my iPhone. And only my iPhone. And Mandy can’t read it again without us buying or borrowing it again.

I can’t find the book as an eBook anywhere else (though admittedly I’m not experienced at trying – where do YOU look for eBooks?), so this may be the only e-option for this title. Amazon’s DRM means that I can either pay twice for the two people in my household to be able to read the one book, or buy the paper book and then a totally unrestricted number of people can read it. Let me rephrase: I can buy the electronic version for $9.99 and I’ll be the first and only person ever allowed to read that copy OR I can buy a paper copy for $8.88 that’s already been read by an unknown number of people and I can be one of many people who are allowed to read that copy in the future.

There is a reason publishers like DRM and dislike used books, and it has nowt to do with readers.

I believe that publishers should do everything they can to encourage reading as much as they can in every possible way that they can. I believe that anything publishers do that discourages reading, or that fails to encourage reading, is working against their own best interests. I believe that the amount of money society spends on reading material relates directly to how much people are reading – so that the best way to increase spending on books is to increase reading. Duh! Please, Macmillan, encourage me.

video: Publishing Revolutions

I’ve just finished a new video, on some of the exciting changes taking place in the publishing world (I recommend you watch it in High Quality & full screen, if possible):

If you watch it a couple of times (once to absorb everything I’m saying, then again to absorb the production techniques) you’ll see that … at the beginning of working on this video, last Monday, I had never done any 3D animation and only a modicum of modeling (mostly in SL), and had never used Kinemac before. (I bought the Macheist 3 bundle earlier this year, for access to that and BoinxTV, mostly.) As I worked for about a week and a half on this video, I became more and more experienced with the software, more aware of what it was capable of, and more comfortable doing more advanced things with it. So at the beginning, the big 3D text is pretty neat, but by the end I have an entire bookcase of individually hand-animated books leaping in and out of a box.

There’s things I’d like to change about it. Not just improving the animation in the first half, either.

On Demand Books is now saying they’ll have two million titles available by years’ end, rather than one, for example. Plus, I feel like I may have represented the kindle more strongly than the iPhone – while I believe the 41million iPhones/iPod Touches in circulation worldwide, each with hundreds of individual book apps and at least 4 different major eReader apps, each with robust eBook catalogs and (coming soon) in-app purchasing will do significantly better and reach wider and have more of an impact than the roughly half-million, all-US-based kindles.

I’m already working on the script for the next couple of videos. More thoughts on what it means to have over 1400 new titles published every day. More thoughts on print on demand. Something about eBook pricing.

new eBook pricing – an experiment

Speaking of mood swings and mental instability, here’s another post about my books – with a totally different perspective from the last one. After reading a post about the results another author has had with experimental pricing, and considering the matter, generally and in terms of my recent frustrations, I’ve decided to try a similar pricing scheme. So, at least for the remainder of the summer, the eBook versions of my books will no longer be priced according to parity of margins.

I’ve reduced the price of the Kinde versions of all my eBooks, and then all the Smashwords versions of my eBooks, to under $2 each. Forget What You Can’t Remember & Lost and Not Found, for only $1.99 each. Dragons’ Truth & More Lost Memories for only $1.75 each. And on the Kindle, each of the first three books of the Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past series for only $1.50 each.

The Kindle versions, of course, can only be read on the Kindle. Sorry. The versions at Smashwords can be read on most any device – your PC’s browser or word processor (.txt, .rtf, & .pdf), the Kindle and other Mobipocket-compatible eReaders, Palm devices (.pdb), Sony eReaders (.lrf, etc.), iPhone/iPodTouch (via Stanza)… pretty much anything. And yes, for reasons I’ve stated clearly before, there are still free versions available for those of you who either 1) can’t afford to pay and/or 2) refuse to pay.

This is an experiment. Tell your friends. Twitter about it. Link to it. Set up an affiliate account at Smashwords & take a cut of every sub-$2 sale. ($0.15 here, $0.18 there, repeat hundreds or thousands of times & it adds up!) Copy it. Compete with it. Blog about how you think I’m devaluing my content. Blog about how you think I’m building my reader base. Blog about how you think Amazon’s 65% cut is terrible and I’m a fool for even publishing a kindle version. Or ignore it. If unit sales increase over the next couple of months, which is what I’m hoping for, great! I’ll keep the prices low. (Sub-$2 low? Maybe…) If, by the end of the summer, unit sales haven’t changed (or haven’t changed enough that my significantly lower per-eBook take gets close to my current -relatively low- sales numbers), I’ll put them back up. Maybe put them up to a $9.99 price point & see if “fitting in” increases sales. Maybe split the difference.

So give one (or all) of my books a try. The prices are low enough that it’s worth the risk of not liking my writing – but if you like to think, I think you’ll like my books.

Update: In super news, it looks like Amazon updated the list prices of my books without updating the actual “kindle prices”… ie:

No idea if/when they’ll get this corrected, but I’ll keep an eye on it. Theoretically, this means that if you buy one of my books for your kindle right now, you pay ~$7 and I get ~$0.60. Wheee!

doubts about my writing

I never used to have doubts about my writing. Not real doubts. I knew I wasn’t writing big-L Literature, the kind that stuffy academics write theses about and debate the meaning of for centuries. I also know I am certainly more than able to write above the level of a lot of mainstream, popular (populist?) authors – better than most of what makes up bestseller lists, for sure. So many books that sell so many copies are so bad… I never used to have doubts about my writing.

Not until I began getting abusive / vitriolic / 1-star & 2-star / two-line “reviews” for my books more easily than I can make sales, I didn’t.

For every supportive, helpful reader who actually takes the time to write a blog post or post a review that’s actually composed of complete sentences and which displays a clear grasp of the English language, there seem to be two half-incoherent slams someplace else. Then there’s the occasional coherent review by someone who clearly read the book & just didn’t like it. Fine, alright, that’s easier to deal with – though it certainly contributes to my newfound doubts. These few low-star reviews are often the only ones on a particular site -the people who read/listened-to my books and didn’t hate them don’t seem to bother rating them & if there are people that love them, they show up less than haters- and it sometimes gives my books a “1-star average” right out of the gate.

So I’m beginning to have doubts. Is my writing good enough? What can I do to improve it? Should I be writing at all? Why can’t I seem to “engage” my audience / build a “community” / get much feedback at all? What about the idea that every single one of these “bad” reviews I’ve seen is by someone who clearly a) didn’t understand the book, or b) wanted it to be something I didn’t want it to be? Should I try to have a thicker skin? Should I subvert all my intentions, and perhaps even my passion for writing, to appeal to genre readers / mainstream audiences? Should I give up on writing what I want, the way I want, just so my books are easier to market? Easier to understand? Easier to blurb? Should I disingenuously start “participating” in book blogs & book communities I have no real interest in, in hopes that doing so will net me more readers & better reviews?

Maybe my writing really is bad. Maybe my narration (of the audio versions of my books) really is awful. Maybe my books aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on or the space they take up on your iPod or your eReader. I get a surprising percentage of returns of the kindle versions of my books – though I don’t really know what behaviour that reflects, on such a device. Maybe I should give up, pack it all in, turn everything off at Lightning Source, and just do art. Maybe I should get a ‘day job’. (Maybe I should slit my wrists.)

It’s not a good week / month / et cetera for me, right now. The depression, right now, is making basic functionality fairly difficult. I’m not sleeping right, except when I don’t want to be. I’m eating too much, except when I have no appetite for days. I even, finally, fell behind schedule on the podcast. The first 77 episodes were all on time, then episodes 78 & 79 were a day late, each. Today … today I definitely need to edit the next episode. Tomorrow’s episode. I don’t want to be behind, any more. I don’t want to be a terrible author. I don’t want to be hated and/or ignored. Right now, I feel that way. Right now, I feel like shit. Not engaged in Phoenix’s “Art community.” Not engaged in the “Podiobooks community,” not really. & I don’t really feel I know how to engage. I don’t know how to be part of a community. & when I think I’ve seen a glimpse of the how, it feels like … well, that’s not something I want to do. In the same way you probably don’t want to have hundreds of cockroaches crawling all over you & under your clothes & into your mouth, I get squeamish at the thought of forcing myself to do “community.” I get nauseous about the way professional marketers do their work. I recoil from the idea of creating what will sell instead of creating what I’m inspired & driven to create.

And this post, this isn’t cohesive, it doesn’t come to a point. I’d probably cut most of this out of a book. Actually, based on how the book I’m working on now is going, I’d probably throw the whole thing out & try to start again from scratch. I’m not blind to the fact that this post lacks focus, lacks a central idea, lacks a resolution. I’m also aware of the fact this this “blog” is really just a personal journal. This is my thoughts & feelings as I’m thinking them and as I’m feeling them. It’s not a marketing tool. I’m not trying to win keyword wars & earn money from ads. This is a journal. This is me.

T-Shirts, now online

I need to re-take those photos… well, probably get some photos of the shirts being worn/modeled by people, really… but I’ve finally got the T-Shirts I’ve been screen printing listed on wretchedcreature.com. I’ve decided that, for now, Etsy is not for me. They only integrate with Paypal for payments, right now. Paypal has stolen hundreds of dollars from me in the past, and attempted to steal more than that, again, and if I have the choice to avoid doing business with them, and with eBay -their parent company- I do. (I still refuse to sign up for Skype.) Instead, I use Google Checkout for sales of my books on modernevil.com. It’s now also integrated into wretchedcreature.com – at least for the shirts. After spending some time at the post office & on USPS.com, I’ve decided that I’m not going to overcomplicate my shipping fees – $3 per item is close enough to what most of my products cost to ship domestically, and too low, if anything, rather than too high.

But you want to see the shirts, yes? Just follow these links (really, you could just follow one of them, and then use the navigation on that site from there – no need to come back here):

I’ll also have all these shirts available with me in a variety of sizes at the Phoenix First Friday Art Walk, every month, and I also accept credit cards in person. (Though I prefer cash.)