Joanna Penn runs a website called The Creative Penn, which is all about writing, publishing options, promotions and so on. I’ve mentioned her on this site before and you can find a blue print for her Author 2.0 Platform on the Links page.

She’s just released a new podcast talking all about marketing and promoting your book. Whether you’re a self-published newbie starting out or an established author, you will need to promote your book. The authors that can rely on their name for sales are few and far between. Just look at how busy Neil Gaiman is promoting himself and his work. He’s as successful as he is not only because he’s an awesome writer, but because he gets himself out there.

Jo’s latest podcast is an hour long and a really good short course on things to think about when it comes to promoting yourself and your books. In the podcast she answers all these questions pretty well:

* Where do I start in making myself known as an author?
* Is having a logo important for my brand?
* Is it necessary to have your own blog as an author? How do you create one and what should be the topic?
* How can we promote fiction books online? What are the best giveaways to help promote books?
* I have accounts on Twitter, Facebook and other sites, but how do you break through mid-level success?
* How do you promote with no money?
* How can an unpublished writer generate a following that would impress a publisher?
* How do you know if there is a market for your book?
* How do you market yourself without seeming arrogant?
* How do you put together a marketing and promotion plan for your book?
* What is the best way to draw traffic to my site?
* Is it a good idea to create a teaser ebook about my non fiction book?
* How do you manage your time so Twitter does not become a time suck?
* What programs do you recommend for submitting articles to multiple places?
* Is cold calling necessary or is email marketing enough?
* What are the best and cheapest ways to create a book trailer?
* How do I do a press release and what is the most effective way to use them?

You can find the podcast here. She even gives me a little shout-out at around the 38 minute mark. How kind.

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There’s been a bit of a shit fight (to say the least) lately between Amazon and MacMillan. It basically centres around an argument about ebook pricing and who controls what. Rather than me just repeat all that’s been said already, go and read:

NY Times article on why Amazon pulled MacMillan titles.

Cory Doctorow’s thoughts via Boing Boing.

This post by L E Modesitt Jr which looks at the situation from an author’s point of view, and has some interesting discussion in the comments.

And here, John Scalzi’s call for author support.

The fight will continue. The face of publishing is changing and there’s going to be a lot of wrangling. I’m going to watch, but I can’t be bothered to comment. I’m nobody, so my opinion will be ignored anyway. I’ll wait and see how it all plays out and then make the best of it. This is one of those situations where the big boys are playing. The rest of us can weigh in when the dust settles a bit.

But in the meantime, it’s authors that are hurting. Especially new and midlist authors, whose sales and income are being drastically hit by all this. It’s from this angle that I’m posting now. My good friend and great author, David B Coe, has a new edition out today, via Tor. So he’s a direct victim of all this right now.

The Horsemen’s Gambit, Book II of Blood of the Southlands, is being re-issued in paperback today. If you’re a fan of David’s work and you want to get hold of this but usually shop at Amazon, there are other options. Pick up the book from any of the places listed below and show Amazon that you won’t stand for them fucking with authors.

Buy The Horsemen’s Gambit:

Direct from MacMillan.

Barnes & Noble.

Borders.

Books-A-Million.

I’m a massive fan of Amazon, but I don’t like the way they’re dealing with this at all. It’s always worth remembering that there are many more stores out there than Amazon if you want to get your books online.

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Meh.

I’m tempted to leave this post at that, just a single word. But if I’m honest there is more to this iPad thing than that. Fundamentally, Apple have gone to great lengths and enormous fanfare to release what is essentially a big iPhone without the phone or the camera. Sure, it’s a swish looking thing – Apple products always are. And the interface would be awesome, just like the iPhone, because Apple know how to meld man (or woman) and machine.

But is this iPad really anything spectacular? The thing that annoyed me the most watching a news program last night was the closing comments on the brief coverage of the iPad launch:

“The new iPad will allow people to read books electronically.”

They made this sound like it was a new thing. Like we’d never read an ebook before. Seriously, Apple are masters at convincing people that the emperor is wearing a fine ermine robe. I read ebooks regularly on my iPhone. The Kindle is going gangbusters in the US and has recently rolled out internationally. My books sell better in ebook formats than print formats by several orders of magnitude. And so on and so on.

So now, due to the massive media arse licking that Steve Jobs always seems to elicit, there will be thousands of people thinking that Apple has made ebooks a reality at last. Good grief, they’ll cry, are we living in the future? (Well, it is 2010, but still no flying fucking cars).

To be optimistic about it, regardless of how annoying it is, the iPad being touted as the new thing in publishing is good for writers. It’s not the new thing in publishing by a long way. We’ve been hammering out the pioneer trail through digital books and all associated stuff for several years now. But, Apple does attract its fanboys and fangirls. The latest Apple device is the must have gadget every time. The marketing behind it is terrifying.

When I heard that Stephen Fry had endorsed the iPad with talk of how great it was to use I felt the Earth shift on its axis. When Fry, the God-Emperor of Twitter, and Jobs, the Witch-King of Technology, combine forces, the future of humanity is theirs to toy with.

Steve Jobs, mind-controlling the masses

But, this can only be a good thing. Publishing is going digital. It’s a simple as that. You might remember this post I made back in August. It’s just a matter of how it will happen. Print books will still exist – Print On Demand technology will be the new vanguard of print – and speciality editions will still be popular with bibliophiles like me. It’s just a case of what becomes the standard for digital publishing.

The Kindle and its e-ink brethren tried to lead the way taking electronic reading from a computer screen to a hand held electronic book. As similar as possible to paper in every way. Then handheld devices like the iPhone shattered the calm of the library.

Sure, a Kindle is a great ebook reader, but an iPhone is a great ebook reader, and a phone and, most importantly, a web portal. The iPad has taken that concept and made it bigger. Too big, in my opinion, but we’ll see if new physical sizes emerge – remember the iPod gave birth to the iPod Nano. I’d like to see an iPad Nano, halfway in size between an iPhone and the current iPad.

Anyway, the point is this. The iPad has full internet activity and a brilliant user interface. You can go straight to your news media source, read the top stories, click on a picture to see the video, listen to the latest single from Current Pop Sensation And The Plagiarists and so on. It’s an interactive media source along with being an ebook reader. That’s where the allure lies. Remember the post I linked above where I talked about convergence. That’s what is needed.

For me the iPhone offers that convergence and the iPad is just an iPhone that won’t fit in my pocket. And it doesn’t have a phone or a camera. And, true to Apple form, there’s no USB connectivity, no expandable memory card ports, no access to the workings of it and a truly shite battery life. But it’s the latest thing from Apple, it’s slick and you feel all Star Trek when you use it. People will buy it. When they do, due to very clever and aggressive action from Apple with regard to getting publishers on side, they’ll suddenly see ebooks as the future. Not because ebooks are the future, not because we’ve been saying that and making them the future for the last few years, but because Steve Jobs said so. All hail the Techno Messiah. It’s a little bit sickening, but what the fuck. More people will be buying ebooks. For writers, embracing the digital publishing revolution, that’s no bad thing. It’s also going to shake up the podcasting and vodcasting world, so watch out for explosions on that front as well.

I won’t be getting an iPad. Not least because it sounds like an electronic monthly item for women, but mainly because it doesn’t really offer anything new yet. It just offers what’s already there in a bigger format. But it won’t be long before the iPad and competitive examples are as ubiquitous as the iPod. Think back to 1995 and going to buy the latest album on CD. Could you imagine having your entire music collection in digital form on something smaller than a pack of gum in your pocket back then? Now it’s the norm. It won’t be long before commuter trains are filled with people holding flat shiny screens, flicking their finger across them now and then to ellicit an electronic swoosh as they turn the “page”. And that’s only the beginning.

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It’s been a while since I posted a quote of the week. However, sitting there this morning, reading the Sydney Morning Herald while enjoying my wife’s wonderful poached eggs, I did laugh when I read this one. (By the way, I wasn’t eating my wife’s breakfast. I was eating the eggs she so kindly made for me. She was enjoying her own breakfast. Aaaaanyway.)

Here in Australia, Senator Nick Xenophon is calling for an inquiry into the tax-exempt status of the Church of Scientology. He claims that it’s not a religious organisation but a criminal one. (At the very least it’s a very dangerous cult.) You can read plenty about the whole Xenophon thing in various places online.

In support of Xenophon’s campaign, Gerry Armstrong, a leading critic of Scientology, is coming to Australia. Armstrong is a guy that was a Scientologist and decided to write a biography of L Ron Hubbarb (the Founder of Scientology) to put to bed all the lies and misrepresentations about the science ficiton writer that once claimed the true path to wealth was through starting a religion.

Not surprisingly, when Armstrong began investigating all these “lies” to refute them, he found the opposite to be true. Armstrong says:

”There was all this material about him that had been discovered and I thought getting a biography published would be a a way of taking care of all the black propaganda, rumours and lies that had been published about him.

”Of course I discovered that the lies that I was trying to debunk were actually the truth and that Hubbard had lied to me and to all of us Scientologists and to the whole world.

”His whole history was a lie. His education, his military record, the antecedence of Scientology, his inveiglement in the occult prior to his creation of Scientology, his family, his daughter, his wife, his expeditions.

”He claimed to be a nuclear physicist – that had a lot of significance to me. The truth was that he flunked the one course in molecular phenomena. He never made it out of second year university. He was not a physicist, he was not a civil engineer, he was not a doctor, and he claimed to be all these things.”

He tried to have the church correct its records and the church in turn sued him. They lost the case with the judge deciding:

”The organisation clearly is schizophrenic and paranoid, and this bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its founder. The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background and achievements.

”The writings and documents in evidence additionally reflect his egoism, greed, avarice, lust for power and vindictiveness and aggressiveness against persons perceived by him to be disloyal or hostile.”

And then we come to the bit that really made me chuckle. In defence of all this Armstrong business, the church brushes it off claiming that Armstrong is a “disgruntled apostate.”

You think? It’s not like he was disgruntled and made up lies. He discovered all the lies and became disgruntled. There’s a fairly significant difference there.

Anyway, I’d like to see the Church of Scientology investigated for its tax-exempt status, but I won’t hold my breath. It would pave the way for all the other cults (like Islam, Catholicism and so on) to be investigated for their tax-exempt status.

While we’re on the subject. Well, I am anyway, I’d be surprised if anyone else is still reading. I have a plan for a better, fairer relationship with religions. Instead of automatically giving them tax exempt status, which is grossly unfair and anachronistic, have them pay tax and fill in a tax return like every other person and business. Then they can claim all their charitable acts back, same as any other person or business. It’s bollocks to consider their very existence and everything they do as charitable.

Just some food for thought.

For a good round up on what Scientology is all about and how it operates, here’s a fairly short yet detailed article, also from the Sydney Morning Herald today.

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Not be mistaken for anything to do with flash fiction, Genre Flash 4 is a PDF magazine listing “The best Australian genre fiction and true crime.” It’s a 24 page magazine that lists all sorts of genre fiction novels and true crime books by Australians, along with a run down of the content, where you can find them and so on. It’s an informative little package.

There’s also an interview with Fiona McIntosh and an article called “A Passage To Neverland” by Stephen Lord.

Full colour, very slick and absolutely free. It’s worth a look. Also, if you can think of any book stores or libraries, reading clubs or anything along those lines that might be interested, please pass it on to them. The beauty of a PDF zine like this is that it’s easily shared. (Obviously, it goes without saying that my own books are listed in there, so that’s another reason I’m so keen for you to share it around!)

So find out what’s hot in “Crime, Mysteries, Thrillers, SF, Science & Speculative Fiction, Fantasy & Horror”.

Get your copy right here!
(Right click and Save As to download a copy – it’s about 1.7MB.)

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I saw this over at Locus Online today. Apparently Google is launching its new phone with an Android operating system and calling the phone the Nexus One. Philip K Dick’s estate are upset about it claiming that Google is appropriating Dick’s work (his novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep which was used as the basis for the best film ever made, Blade Runner).

Clearly the term Nexus One is a reference that everyone with a basic SF knowledge will associate with the Nexus 6 replicants in Dick’s work. Google apparently (according to the Dick estate) have a habit of acting this way.

From the Locus article:

Isa Dick Hackett, daughter of PKD and president of Electric Shepherd Productions (the company the estate set up to manage PKD’s film rights), says “Google takes first and then deals with the fallout later. In my mind, there is a very obvious connection to my father’s novel. People don’t get it. It’s the principle of it…. It would be nice to have a dialogue. We are open to it. That’s a way to start.”

Bloody fair enough too. I hope something is settled on this to everyone’s satisfaction. I’m a big fan of Google but they are starting to develop a bit of a school yard bully reputation. They’ll probably sue me for saying that.

However, more startling to me was the revelation in that article that George Lucas’s company Lucasfilm Ltd. owns the word “droid” – it’s a registered trademark of the company. Apparently they invented the word. Motorola released an Android OS phone last year and called it the Droid, but they dealt with Lucasfilm and are using the term under licence.

How bizarre.

EDIT: This post caused a bit of conversation on Facebook and a friend of mine there, Andrew McKiernan, pointed out the following:

I know the PKD are serious, but I’m not sure if you are Alan. A Nexus is ‘a means of connection between things linked’, and considering that the Nexus One is Google’s first phone, and a smart-phone designed to act as a hub for phone/internet/email etc, I think the name is perfectly suitable and acceptable without any SF connection. Having said that, I wonder what the life-span of a Nexus One phone is, before it dies?

Also, ‘droid’ wasn’t a cromulent word until Lucas used it in Star Wars. Nexus has always been a word.

To which I replied:

If it has a built-in four year lifespan they’re fucked.

Call me cynical, but a piece of tech using Android software called a Nexus is deliberately courting the nerd vote in my book. Or perhaps I’m just a cynical nerd that thinks about these things too closely. I’ll grant you that Nexus is certainly not the same as Droid, which is an entirely new word.

It’ll be interesting to see how the case goes, but I don’t think the PKD estate are likely to win it.

Incidentally, I’d also like to applaud your use of the word “cromulent” in everyday conversation. Well done, sir.

All worth bearing in mind.

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I love it when comments on packaging says things in completely bizarre ways. You’d think that a lot of thought would go into the wording on products, particularly when it’s just a single sentence here and there. I bought this today:

Apparently I need to have a shower or something before I can eat it:

I know, I’m a pedantic bastard.

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I was tooling around in some antique shops recently and, as I always do, I gravitated to the bookshelves. You may remember the treasure I discovered this way a little while back. I wrote about that here. I didn’t find anything so exciting this time, but I did pick up this book.

The thing that entertained me about this was the complete lack of faith the publisher appeared to have in poor old Dr Cronin. You can see from this page that Dr Cronin is not a new author:

So The Citadel here is his fifth book. He must have some track record of sales. Even so, you can understand a slightly cautious approach in the initial print run. Maybe do a small run, see how it goes, follow it up with a second, bigger print run if it’s successful.

This, however, smacks of a complete lack of confidence on the part of Dr Cronin to sell his books:

Five print runs in July alone! Not only that, with this book flying off the shelves, they still didn’t take a chance on a big print run. Five more print runs the following month. Ten editions in two months? This is either a book so wildly successful that the publisher simply couldn’t keep up, or the publisher was seriously negligent. There were further editions in October and November that year (1937) and another one in January 1938. Which is the one I found. I wonder how many more there have been since.

I was tempted to buy the book and see what it was all about, but I didn’t. I’m inclined to go back and get it, though, because it’s stuck in my mind. I wonder if it is actually brilliant. Anyone have any idea? Or anyone have any insights into the mulitple monthly impressions? Am I completely misinterpreting what’s happened here? Leave comments if you know.

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My independent press, in conjunction with Gryphonwood Press in the US, is running a Halloween special where we’re offering all our books in ebook format for nothing, just for Halloween.

Here’s the announcement from the Blade Red Press website:

Here at Blade Red Press we’re very pleased to announce a special offer in conjunction with our good friends, Gryphonwood Press. On October 31st, to celebrate Halloween, both Blade Red and Gryphonwood will be offering their entire catalogues for free in ebook format at Smashwords. The beauty of the Smashwords store is that all books are available in every ebook format, including Kindle-friendly .mobi. That means that you can get any book from Blade Red Press or Gryphonwood Press, in any ebook format, for nothing. Free. No catch, just free.

Here’s the press release for this promotion:

Publishers Provide Halloween Treat!

October 29, 2009 — Ebook lovers will be getting a special treat this Halloween. On October 31, Gryphonwood Press, along with Australian-based Blade Red Press, will be giving away their entire catalog of electronic books for free. The giveaway includes popular speculative fiction titles in a variety of sub-genres, as well as thrillers and an anthology of short fiction. “There is something here for every reader,” says Blade Red’s Alan Baxter.

Books will be available through ebook distributor Smashwords in multiple electronic formats, including Kindle-compatible. Thriller author David Wood sees this as an opportunity for authors from both publishing houses to broaden their readerships. “Ebooks are an integral part of the future of publishing, and I’m excited to be a part of this promotion.” Visit the websites at Gryphonwood Press and Blade Red Press for details.

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http://gryphonwoodpress.com
http://www.blade-red.com

To take advantage of this offer you’ll need to enter special coupon codes at Smashwords. For coupons for all the Gryphonwood titles, check this page of the Gryphonwood blog.

For our titles, use the following codes:

RealmShift by Alan Baxter – DK99C
MageSign by Alan Baxter – HH65A
Ghost Of The Black by Alan Baxter – Already free at Smashwords.

Maggots Of Heresy by Michael Fridman – Already free at Smashwords.

You can find all the books under the relevant publisher’s page at Smashwords:

Here’s the Blade Red Press page.

Here’s the Gryphonwood Press page.

So go and treat yourself to some free ebooks for Halloween. And tell your friends!

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Amazon seem to have finally started catching up with their backlog of emails and I’m happy to say that the Kindle editions of RealmShift and MageSign are available again. The price now matches the Smashwords and DriveThru price of US$2.89 each. That’s less than a cup of coffee! It also looks like they’ve kicked in this bloody stupid region coding plan, so if you’re looking from Australia, for example, you won’t see pricing information and there’s a nice green box telling you that you can’t have a copy. Of course, in that case you just go to Smashwords and buy DRM-free Kindle compatible editions from there. Seriously, Amazon just do not get it sometimes.

However, there’s also talk of Amazon rolling the Kindle reader out to other countries very soon, at least including the UK and Aus. When that happens, given that we have no amazon.com.au, I’m interested to see how they handle this situation. Time will tell.

You can find the Amazon Kindle editions of RealmShift here and MageSign here. Tell your friends.

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