The Captain And Lime

I’m working on a table of contents for Ring of Lightning. If it works, I’ll probably (sigh) go in and construct one for my other books. I’m also trying to figure how to create the book as one HTML file. I’ve learned some new code in the process, like how to force a page break in HTML…which might make format conversion easier in the long run. We’ll see how that translates to mobi, et al tomorrow.

See…I’m trying to do good by youse guys!

They aren’t very big, they’re kinda tentative, and it’s just the mohawk, not the five-step mohawk, but this is huge for me!

You have to understand, I’ve been working at this for five years and for five years of trying every exercise I could think of to strengthen various parts of my body, all my back edges have been positively terrifyingly unstable.

The mohawk is one of several ways a skater has of changing direction. The easiest CoD to recognize is probably the three turn…which also finally came off the wall yesterday. The three turn is all done on one foot and involves a change of direction and edge. For instance, a left forward outside three turn would mean you glide forward on your left foot on an outside edge, then, with a quick shift of your body, you flip around to a back inside edge. Since edges make curves, this results in the tracing of a 3 on the ice, hence the name.

Curiously, while the body is involved in that flip, most of the salient action takes place in the foot and ankle, a subtle, quick little shift of weight from the outside of the heel toward (but not quite to) the ball of the foot where the blade’s “rocker” is.  There, you literally “rock” your foot over to the inside edge as you give what is by that time a very natural twist to your body and settle back off the rocker toward the heel…but not as far into the heel as you were with the forward outside edge, because now you’re going backward, and if your weight gets too far into your heel, you’re on your head.

This happened to me a lot, because I couldn’t stabilize my back edge, because the foot and ankle were too weak. I’ve spent hours exercising my stupid feet, but until I got my magic shoes, nothing seemed to make a difference. They’re still a long way from strong, but they’re definitely improving!

The other key to a smooth shift is core strength. You don’t need ripped abs, but you need balanced strength between front and back and side to side so the twist of your body doesn’t send your center of gravity rippling all over the place. That’s the other thing these shoes have subtly improved.

Mind you, I’ve done a lot more exercises than just the shoes, but as I say, I’ve been doing those for years. The shoes are the “what’s unusual” between five years of struggling and finally getting those moves off the wall.

Oh, yeah…the mohawk. The mohawk involves a change of direction and feet but not edge. I’m working on inside mohawks. You do a forward inside edge on one foot, bring the other foot in to the instep of your gliding foot in a turned out position, then, with a quick twist and check of your body, you transfer your weight to the opposite foot, going backwards.

Anyway, I have serious hopes now that I’ll finally be able to begin seriously thinking about testing this year! Spins. Jumps…they all become possible, once you can do back edges! YAYAYAYAYAYAY!

Ja ne!

In the past few days, several people have sent me emails with links to various people’s articles on this hot ebook topic. This is a very good thing, or I’d have had no idea what Lynn was talking about when she called last night and warned us about incoming visitors from Kindle Lists (Welcome, BTW!) in response to the excellent post she made on the AvsM situation. I thought, perhaps, I should move the Christmas decoration removal down a notch with a few, more relevant, comments.

My initial reaction? I can honestly say, I don’t really give a damn. Sort of like a baseball game between the WhiteSox and A’s, it’s interesting to watch the action, but I don’t care who wins unless it affects my Mariners’ chances of getting into the playoffs. But toward the end of the season, it might make a difference, so I observe without getting emotionally involved.*

There are many articles out there written by people who do care, people whose lives are directly affected by this new little standoff in the development of the ebook publishing business, and I encourage you to check them out. I’ll let them discuss the pros and cons as they see them (and you’ll find published writers on both sides) but if you want a really interesting take on what might well be the real truth behind Macmillan’s current actions, check out Lynn’s blog. She worked with Macmillan (TOR) through some seminal times and has done an excellent job of extrapolating her experiences with the company and their attitudes from that time to this most recent move.

At this point, Macmillan and Closed-Circle aren’t even in the same league, not economically and certainly not philosophically.  Macmillan is . . . the Yankees, if you will, we’re … let’s call us the Evansville Otters, in the Frontier League. (OK, Baseball metaphor is growing decidedly thin, but you get the picture.)

Macmillan is following a marketing paradigm designed around supply and demand. S&D is a perfectly valid capitalist philosophy that really came into its own with the mass production of product that came into its own in the 20th century, taking serious hold with the Model T and assembly line production. It is not a given of the human condition. (Okay, marketing majors, I know this is a gross over simplification of the philosophy and its origins and influences, but bear with me.)

Basically, this involves charging the most for a given shirt to the people who come into the store first, and the least to those who take a gamble and wait for the “40% off last marked price” remnants. Those who wait run the chance of not getting the product. Those who absolutely must have it, pay a premium for that guarantee.

The problem with this philosophy is, in ebooks, or even PoD, Supply is a big fat zero in the marketing equation, because the supply is, literally, infinite. Demand can afford to take its time, knowing that that sale rack is going to be well-stocked. Demand can wait, but will it? In this case, companies like Macmillan are using the S&D pricing philosophy, but what they’re really tapping is the herding instinct, or perhaps we should call it the mob mentality. Or perhaps the desire to be part of the “in” group. Call it what you will, it’s the urge to be on the same page, as ’twere, with all their friends, not to mention the “cool people” of the world. S&D practices used this way are taking advantage of the “I want it now!” mentality created by S&D marketing in the first place. And they have endless stock with which to do it, for zero cost to them.

It might well work.

Then again, it might not. Hold that thought.

Another necessity for S&D pricing to work depends on availability, which is in turn regulated by limited physical options: a dead-tree bookstore can only hold so much product.  When the vast majority of that space is taken up with NY Publishings’ “Created Best Sellers,” or just NY Publishings’ monthly batch of “spaghetti” (see Lynn’s post) those books which require time to develop a readership are ditched, stripped and depart the reading pool, never to be seen again. Heaven help you if you’re a writer who writes long complex—series—novels (see three hands raised in CC). Chances are, unless you’re a best seller, you’ll never see all those titles on the bookstore shelves at one time.

Another factor that drives S&D in the dead-tree realm is a reader’s access to other readers. Readers, for the most part, love to discuss books. Good books stimulate ideas and questions, and readers need other readers with whom to hammer out those ideas. This means that when a book touched a reader, that reader is going to recommend the book to their friends, who will rush to that limited-space bookstore to find it. Good luck with that on anything other than best sellers.

Ebooks have none of those limitations. Now, those shelves are infinitely expandable. Now there’s space not just for the new book in the series, but for all the previous books so new readers can catch up with the action. Now the community for any title is only a google search away. Now, any book a reader recommends to their friends can be available.

I have to wonder, will a philosophy based on S&D really survive in this environment? As more and more people learn that there is, in fact, no shortage of a given product, will they increasingly opt to wait for the “40% off last marked price” rack? As people learn that, when they find a new book they simply must share with others, that there’s a worldwide community discussing that book, will they be less anxious to pay that premium? Maybe instead they’ll go looking for “something different” and find that in an ebook that all their friends can download and read at the same time.

Closed-Circle is thrilled that the internet and ebooks has given us this chance to add our backlist and new works to those infinitely expandable shelves. CJ, Lynn and I want to work with the people who want to read our books. We want to make them available to those who never even knew they existed…because of NY’s “Rorschach” marketing practices (more on that tomorrow). Since we made the decision to make this leap of faith, we’ve been working literally around the clock to find a way to bring you a quality product at a reasonable price that will pay our bills while we write more books.

I can’t speak for Carolyn or Lynn, but the way I’ve figured it, at least at this point, I will charge the “new book” price (as set by, yes, Amazon’s successful marketing department) of $9.95 until I reach what I consider a fair “advance” in dead-tree publishing of $40,000 dollars. Considering each book has taken me at least a year and a half of full-time plus overtime writing, plus a cover, plus all the ebook manipulation, I think that’s a fair enough wage. To put this in perspective, this is about 4,000 copies, which is all Warner’s fancy big machine ever managed to sell of my first novel. (More on that in the upcoming Rorschach marketing post). At this point, if I manage to sell 4000 copies of my new titles I will be tickled pink. At that point, I will cheerfully lower the price of the product to the “backlist” price of $5.00. If the time comes that I have a reliable 8,000 readers, the issue price will go down to $5.00 and remain there. If I become a million dollar seller, my price per book will plummet. In other words, I don’t ask to be a millionaire, only to pay my bills doing something I love and am pretty darned good at.

Does this mean that the “first comers” are still paying a premium? In fact, it does. I don’t see any way around it. Thanks to NYP marketing practices and promises, I’m so far in the hole financially and spiritually, I’ve got to do something to catch up. I’ve set my backlist at the lower price so people can get some idea of what they’d be paying for. I’ve even offered an entire novel for free download.

I have to admit, however, that I don’t look for that 4,000 mark to be reached any time soon.

OTOH, I’d be thrilled to be proven wrong I want readers. If I can get them, I’ll find some way to compensate those who’ve helped me reach them. If that involves sending out 4,000 freebies of my next book…I’ll do it.

We are, after all on the same team.

*A brief note:

At first, I qualified this abrupt statement with “I do care who loses…and that’s the authors” but in actual fact, I’m not sure that’ll be the case. We could well be looking at a case of “any publicity…” In this case, the authors are the clear victims and their readers will be out there on the internet, raising awareness. It’s possible that at least for the next few weeks, being a Macmillan author could be the best thing ever for your sales. Because those ebook versions will return. Eventually. The trend will not be stopped. And if Macmillan continues to play dead-tree hardball, there’s nothing to stop the authors from doing what Lynn, CJ and I have done with Closed Circle and writing new stuff and publishing it themselves. Sure, it’s a lot of work. Sure it’s frustrating to be doing covers or working out the glitches in ebook formats rather than writing, but we can get up of a morning and not have to worry about clicking on our book’s URL and finding it DOA.

Ja ne!

and Efanor is in mourning. I told him it would all be back next year, but I don’t think he believes me. :D

I think we might have picked up a bit of a bug at nationals. Every joint in my body is aching, and Carolyn says she’s sore as well. Also have had a niggling headache for two days now. Ah, well….not debilitating, just annoying.

Edits on Ring of Intrigue are going well, and an idea for a short story is percolating.

And the fishies were out in the middle of the pond this morning.

Life is good.

Film at eleven.

Who was it that decided kitchen appliances must be pretty? I buy a toaster for one reason: to toast the edible substance upon which I then place my peanut butter. I don’t need an object d’art for my countertop.

This morning, I was cleaning the kitchen and because we are planning on going back on strict atkins for a couple of weeks, I decided to tuck the toaster away in a cupboard. First, however, I needed to clean out the crumbs. Being the lazy sort that I am, this normally consists of upending it over the garbage can and shaking, but this time, more drastic measures were required.

Somehow, one of the skinny, low carb buns we use had crept way down to the bottom and lodged sideways under the elements. Obviously, this was a recent escape attempt, since it was not a blackened corpse…not to mention we hadn’t burned the house down, but it was dessicated to the consistency of rock, so I couldn’t break it up with a knife either.

Extrication would have to happen from the bottom.

So…I go looking for a removable tray. And looking. Several minutes later…still looking. Now, I’m not exactly mechanically inept. I’m looking all over for buttons to push, levers to flip or twist…finally, just breaks in the plastic contraption that constitutes the bottom of this object that might indicate a removable baseplate.

Nothing. Is that even legal? I mean, talk about a fire hazard!

Finally, I find a hidden dip in the plastic, a faint fingertip sized indentation which, low and behold, facilitated the removal of a slender metal shelf, which slid out smoothly, scattering crumbs all over the floor rather than into the aforementioned garbage can…and left the dessicated corpse inside the toaster, still lodged between the elements and the perforated plastic bottom portion of this contraption, which apparently exists for no other reason than the little feet (which could easily have been on an open plastic addition), and completely ineffectual electrical cord control tabs.

Well…at least I can now get at the expletive deleted chunk of no-longer-edible substance with the most immediately available tool (I am, afterall, a card-carrying member of the tool-using species Homo sapiens) a nut-pick that was sitting on the counter, for some reason unknown, but it was there, so it got utilized. Another several minutes chopping that chunk of rock into pieces small enough to squidge out the small opening in the side, and finally, I have a clean toaster.

Now all I have to do is spend the next fifteen minutes cleaning up the mess I created cleaning the toaster.

Next time I need a peanut butter fix, I’m taking it straight out of the jar.

With a spoon.

Another tick off the “todo” list. CC finally has a new flyer. If you’d like to help us out by printing a handful and putting them up (in legal places :D) or putting them out at a convention, you can download the pdf at the Closed Circle freebies page.

It should print fine at the “fast draft” setting.

Thanks everyone!

Tho you wouldn’t know it to look at it, except the index is a little bit smaller, and the background now fades much more prettily on the main CC site theme. But the files are much smaller and load much faster.  I’ve been meaning to do this and got reminded by one of our wonderful guests. Sorry. Didn’t mean to make you sit for an hour while the single page downloaded. Anyway, next time you visit the store, refresh your screens and you should get the new images in your caches.

Ja ne!