Read an Ebook Week

So, this is officially Read an Ebook Week. I'm not sure how the brick-&-mortars feel about it, but I think it's pretty neat. Many indie authors are offering their books for free at Smashwords, or slashing their prices by 50%.

I, on the other hand, just raised my Kindle price to $1.49.

I either just shot myself in the foot or practiced smart pricing. Time will tell.

So why would I do such a thing?
For one thing, it was time. Faking It and Ordinary World have been selling at 99 cents for at least six months now. They sold over 37,000 units for January and February combined. Sales have been slumping for the last few weeks (I thought perhaps this was due to the Olmypics, but I've seen no improvement). As far as I can tell, the sales have plateaued. It's time to raise the price, even if only by 50 cents.

For another thing, the book's value added has increased significantly thanks to the success of the last two months. I still have to wrap my brain around the magificent thing that happened. I may still be an indie author, but I'm no longer an unknown author (at least not to 37,000 readers!). Besides, several reviewers admitted that they would have paid more for my books. When I hear that, I know I've got something of value. Those in business will tell you to give customers what they want. If they're willing to pay more, then charge more. Besides, I always thought they were worth more. I think they're worth more than a buck-forty-nine, but it's a reasonable raise w/out price-gouging.

Third, with Amazon doubling royalty rates in June (provided authors set base prices at 2.99), I'm gradually preparing for that. With my writing partner's approval, I'm planning to charge Why I Love Singlehood 2.99 right out of the gate once it's ready (and can now do so thanks to FI and OW's success). I'm curious to see what other indie authors do come June, and how Kindle readers respond. Will 99-cent books disappear? Will this be a factor as e-reader prices come down? Time will tell.
But Elisa, why not give your book away for free? It's Read an Ebook Week, after all...
I respect authors for being so generous, and if I was going to do such a giveaway, I would do it for one day only, perhaps (I gave away lots of print and e-book copies of FI and OW to lucky winners throughout the blog tour last month). Call me a greedy capitalist (and I know several who will), but I believe in charging money for my books. Yes, I have always maintained that I wanted a readership more than I wanted royalties. But I believe as self-publishers we should also be entreprenuers. That is, we should sell our product for a price. That's just me. Feel free to disagree, and give a boatload of books away this week. I'll still support you.

The hardest part about being a self-publisher is just that: you are no longer just an author engaged in the process for the love of writing. The moment you decide you want to sell your book, your creation becomes "product", and you are the "publisher" (not to mention marketer, distributer, and seller). You have to take the risks that any businessperson will take. You will undoubtedly make mistakes. The smartest businesspeople see mistakes as stepping stones to future successes. The rest see mistakes as failures.

So to indie authors and self-publishers, don't be afraid to take a risk or make mistakes. But, learn as much as you can about the business to minimize your mistakes (or, at the very least, the consequences).

To the rest of you, try an e-book this week! You can go to Smashwords to check out all the free or reduced books this week (including mine), or download Barnes & Noble's e-reader software to your computer for free (you don't need a Nook), and check out their catalog of free ebooks. Finally, don't forget that you can download the Kindle app to your iPhone, iPod Touch, or Black Berry if you don't own a Kindle.

And, as always, a heartfelt thanks to every single reader who purchased and read my books, regardless of what you paid (or didn't pay) for it.

Happy reading!

a new horizon

It's seems that I've shared an opinion about the Harlequin Horizons debacle everywhere but on my own blog. And although the conversation seems to have faded into the back of the fridge along with the leftover turkey, I thought I'd put my two cents here anyway.

In a nutshell, Harlequin, publisher of romance novels galore, attempted to get a piece of the self publishing action by partnering with Author Solutions to form Harlequin Horizons. Rejected by Harlequin? Well, for approximately 600 bucks, you could have your romance novel published through this press instead.

But wait, hold on. Apparently there was a little bait and switch going on. Because the moment you're roped into thinking you've got the Harlequin name attached to your book (and they've got your money), Harlequin fills in the rest. Oh yeah, but we won't distribute your book. And we won't support you at conferences, readings, etc. And we won't list you with our regular Harlequin authors. You'll have the HH name, but it's not really us.

In other words,
Come here come here come here...
Get away get away get away.

Suddenly, everyone went batshit. The literary agents went batshit. The Harlequin authors went batshit. The Romance Writers of America went batshit. Words like "slush pile" and "not good enough for the real Harlequin label" were being tossed around like Fabio's hair in an ocean breeze. Worse still, the words "self-publishing" and "vanity publishing" were being interchanged the way one might interchange the words "dinner" and "supper".

We even got into a debate about it on Stacey Cochran's web show "Book Chatter."

At the end of the day, it was literary agent Nathan Bransford who made the most sense:

Setting aside this controversy for a moment and the specifics of Harlequin's operation, let me just say that in principle I don't think publishers facilitating self-publishing is necessarily such a bad thing. However, there should be complete transparency, fair pricing, total disambiguation between traditional publishing arms and self-publishing arms, and every good faith attempt made to educate writers about the difference between the two. This industry obviously needs new revenue streams, and provided that the publisher's program is genuinely nonexploitive and transparent I don't see the problem, and I don't see why publishers should continue to cede ground to self-publishing companies when they have every capacity to provide the same service. It just has to be done correctly.

YES! Rock on, man.

P.S. Harlequin took so much flak that they removed their name from Horizons. But the damage has been done, and there are a few things that have left a bad taste in my mouth.

No doubt, Harlequin's model was flawed and unethical. But I can't fault them for doing what other publishing companies are failing so colossally at: trying to cash in on the independent publishing market. Sadly, they're going the same route as the music industry, having learned nothing from their mistakes. As my brother said about the music industry, "They are trying to respond to a way of life that doesn't seem to be controllable." I don't have an accurate source to back up this next quote, but I read that "For the first time since figures have been kept, print-on-demand titles outpaced traditionally-published titles in 2008."

And yet, the RWA, literary agents, and traditional publishers continue to marginalize independent authors like myself.

By interchanging "self-published" with "vanity published," this Web 2.0 model (as Stacey Cochran loves to call it), and authors who take advantage of it, continue to be stigmatized beyond measure. Nevermind that my Kindle sales of Faking It outnumber my print sales by 90%, and that I've been ranked in the top 2000 Kindle Store sales all month. Nevermind that two of last year's bestsellers in Japan were written on cellphones.

Agents constantly blog about how they turn down good writing all the time. One even recently wrote about how disappointed she was to turn down a high-quality piece of work because she had no idea how she would be able to sell it. And yet, in the midst of the HH frenzy, all I kept hearing about was "slush piles" and "authors not good enough for Harlequin" -- whoa -- double standard? Way to raise us up and smack us down! Despite the major success I've had this month, this little voice of shame echoed somewhere in the back of my mind, "You're still a sub-par author. Without a contract from a major publishing house, without your book in a brick-&-mortar Barnes and Noble, no one will ever take you seriously."

How wrong that voice is.

What does it say about the state of traditional publishers if they're turning down good work because they have no room for it, or can't sell it, and then resent those same talented writers for finding their own way of doing what the traditional publishers insisted they couldn't?

The music industry is down to about four major corporations trying to dictate what music product is most marketable, but fans aren't buying it anymore. Is seems that the publishing industry is stuck in this same hole.

I'm not saying that traditional publishers are bad, or anything like that. But more and more I'm questioning the validity of the notion that signing with an agent and a traditional publisher is far more preferable than independently publishing. If nothing else, it's six of one, half-a-dozen of another, as far as pros and cons go. Trashing either option is not wise, but I think criticism is important so that both can work to produce the best quality product that makes money for authors and publishers alike, and serves the consumer.

There are plenty of crappy, self published books out there. About as many crappy, traditionally published books, I'm guessing. The average run of a book isn't in the millions, like Stephen King novels or whatever Oprah's peddling. No, a successful run is considered 5000-10,000 copies sold. The average is probably even less than that, I'll bet. It no longer matters whether the book was published by Random House or Lulu.com.

So here's my final word, in sum. I applaud every author who has landed an agent and traditionally published. The majority of you worked damn hard for that. But I also applaud every indie author who used a POD and then pounded the pavement to bring their book to the masses. The majority of you worked damn hard, too. Nathan Bransford said the rest of it for me, but dammit, every author, regardless of where or how he/she published, deserves some respect. And dammit, at the end of the day, every book, be it an e-book, a POD, or a traditionally published hardback, should be valued by the quality of its content, and not the place from where it came.

To all you readers, writers, agents, and editors: make it about that, and everybody wins.

readers before royalties

I just had a great month of Kindle sales for Faking It; setting the price at 99 cents has attracted more readers and occasionally put me into the Top 100 special categories rankings (makes for good bragging rights for my parents and strangers, but Amazon rankings are a little tricky; still, it's nothing to frown at, either...).

When it comes to Kindle and e-book sales, however, I kind of feel like I'm both biting the hand that feeds me and selling myself short. I've discussed on this blog how I feel about tactile books and how much I love and support independent booksellers. I know they lose business to the Kindle, and I don't want to see them go away. But as a self-published author, I'm not only a writer, I'm a businessperson, and the bottom line is that I sell books on Kindle and am building a following. Am I underselling my talent by charging so little? Many might say yes. But I look at the bigger picture; I think from the end. Guys like Ray Bradbury and Stephen King used to sell stories to magazines that paid a penny per word, and that was after numerous rejections. Heck, the Beatles weren't exactly staying at Hamburg's version of The Plaza when they first started out.

The money will come -- it already is coming. So are the readers, and the reviews. So far, so good. Most important, I'm having fun.

There's a saying: "Do what you love; the money will follow." Don't listen to those that say there's no money to be made as an author, and don't ever sell yourself short, literally and metaphorically. Know what you want, make a plan, and visualize your plan manifesting itself. Most of all, love what you do, and do it as if it's already raking in the bucks. Do it for your readers, and remember: you're one of 'em.

One more thing: more than any other time, self-published authors have several channels of distribution and communication to get their books into the hands of readers. Take advantage of as many as possible, but be patient.

what's in my bookcase

I'll start by saying this: it's not the books you see in this photo. Believe it or not, I try to organize the books in my bookcase according to Ba-Gua map of feng shui. The uppermost left-hand corner hold the books on motivation and leadership (including the ever-popular The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which most find to be laughable in this day and age now), my favorites from the my middle twenties, when I wanted to become a motivational speaker (who knew I could have my moments as a teacher)? This represents the Money and Prosperity Gua.

The upper right-hand corner hold all my books about love and relationships (aptly suited for the Love and Relationship Gua); I outgrew and gave away many of the ones I had worn out in my early twenties, but there are a few that have stayed with me, Deepak Chopra's The Path to Love being one of them.

The upper middle consists of romantic comedy and chick lit books (by Jennifer Weiner, Helen Fielding, Marian Keyes, to name a few), to signify Fame and Recognition or Reputation(my own book is there as well).

The center left part of my bookcase contains my coffeetable books and books one healing, optimum health, and mind-body connections. This represents the Health and Family Gua (coffeetable books don't necessrily fit that desciption, but they fit nicely on that part of the shelf). My coffeetable books are mostly pop culture-oriented (Patrick Nagel, Absolut ads, Sesame Street Unpaved, to name a few).

On the center right, more coffeetable books, and a collection of books (eight) of collections of the comic strip Mutts, one of the best comics ever. My twin brother bought me every single one, and I'm sorely missing Book Nine and counting. This section represents the Gua of Creativity and/or Children. I figure that nurturing my inner child fits this description.

The lower left corner houses photo albums -- of course, it would seem that those would be more appropriate in the family section, but they fit better in this corner, which represents knowledge and self-cultivation. I used to keep textbooks from college that I believed to be worth saving, but I've since moved them to a different bookcase. The photo albums qualify, however. Know Thyself.

The lower right corner is a bit of a hodge-podge right now. It's supposed to be for Helpful People and Travel (you'd think Bill Bryson would do well there), but right now it houses the Twilight series that my friend Susan loaned me, and the books of independent authors I've supported since I've become an indy author myself.

The lower-middle part of my bookcase represents Career. Oddly enough, I've got all my Duran Duran books from when I was a teenager there. Might have to change that.

And in the center, I keep books on religion and spirituality, memoirs (Alan Alda, Tony Hendra's Father Joe, and Michael J. Fox, to name a few), religious-themed novels (My Name is Asher Lev, The Red Tent) and my Bible, for that part of the bookcase represents the Center Gua. Know Thy Self.

Of course, I've conveniently left out the books that sit on my end tables (Richard Russo's novel is just begging me to pick it up), writing desk, dining table, and anywhere else I have a free space. And the second bookshelf, the smaller one that houses textbooks left over from grad school and desk copies of composition books, not to mention my thesis, has no such order.

You might think me crazy to organize one's bookcase in such a manner (and you might be right), but I rather like it. There's something fun about it. Feng Shui literally means Wind and Water, but it's really all about balancing -- namely, balancing the energy of your home, and your home is a metaphor of your life.

For me, "Books" equal "Home".

What's in your bookcase?

Jennifer Weiner responds

So I sent the previous post to Jennifer Weiner via Facebook, and with her permission, here's what she had to say in response:

It was a tough call -- be myself or be polite? In the end, I acquiesced to the bookstore's request because it was an afternoon event, and because there were little kids there, and as a mom of little kids myself, I get that you don't want to innocently wander into a store on a Sunday afternoon and hear NC-17 material. But it hurt to swallow all those effbombs...and in the future, I will know to insist on either reading after 7 p.m. or reading offsite, where the seating isn't right next to the Curious George display.
But you got it right -- no easy answers.

And she hopes to see me in Raleigh -- open invitation, Jen!

The post has prompted some interesting comments, both here and on Facebook. Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts and opinions, and if you haven't, please do! And thanks again to Jennifer Weiner for taking the time to read the post as well as respond to it. I'm honored!

what would George Carlin do?

Here's one George Carlin would've loved:
Bestselling author Jennifer Weiner, while on tour for her newest book, Best Friends Forever, was recently asked by a Massachusetts bookstore to refrain from using profanity. The author obliged (and her fans asked her to compensate by signing personal profane inscriptions in their copies), but it's got me wondering if the bookstore has the right to make such a request, and if it's in an author's best interest to deny it.

I've discussed (and defended) my use of profanity in my novels as a matter of word choice. As a writer, I am conscious of every word I put on the page. Every word needs to have purpose. Not some. All. If I use a curse word, I question its purpose: Does it suit the personality of the character? Does it lend something to the emotion or action of the scene? Does it generate a bigger laugh? Does it plain sound better? There's a difference between the words "crap" and "shit" even though they're synonyms. Ditto for "screwing" and "fucking". What makes me choose one over the other (or neither) has nothing to do w/ decency or possibly offending my reader.

An editor requesting an author to make changes during the drafting process is totally different from a bookstore asking an author to make changes after the book has been published. If a bookstore asks an author to censor him/herself at a reading, they are, essentially, asking that author to change the meaning of a character, thought, scene, etc. How can this be? It reminds me of Ed Sullivan asking Jim Morrison or The Rolling Stones to change their lyrics when they performed on TV, or shooting Elvis from the waist up because his dancing was "too sexual". They obliged (although Jim Morrison demonstratively rolled his eyes in front of the camera and deliberately defied the request). We've come a long way since Ed Sullivan, or so I thought.

But perhaps the real issue isn't one of censorship but money. Why book these authors in the first place? Jennifer Weiner is an extremely popular author (I'm still waiting for her to come to Raleigh!). She packs a bookstore. Best Friends Forever hit #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list. If a bookstore denies her appearance because of her book's content, they lose money. If she refuses to censor herself, she stands to lose money should she choose to refuse to appear otherwise, or the bookstore refuses to let her. Both could stand to lose customers either way.

To defend the bookstore for just a moment, I can understand them not wanting to do anything to potentially lose a customer. They need their customers desperately. And I can understand Weiner wanting to please her fans by being there (and they got what they wanted in the end).

I once did an open mic reading at a bookstore where we were asked to "keep it clean" in case little kids came in. I changed one curse word, and I can't tell you how much I regretted it, how much I cringed when the different, less effective word came out of my mouth. The moment didn't impact the reader the way it was supposed to as a result. And it was a key moment. worse stil, it made me feel and seem like a bad writer who made a bad word choice. If I could've done it over, I would've kept it intact and taken my chances.

And yet, if my novel broke wide open and I started doing readings across the country, and someone asked me to censor my work, would I cave? I'm a new author, itching to sell books and make a name for myself (not to mention make money)? Is that sacrifice worth it? Or such a trade-off akin to selling my soul?

What's the answer? Should bookstores have the right to ask authors to change content due to political correctness? Should authors refuse to do so? What would Geroge Carlin do?

What would you do? As a bookseller or author?

from pain to pleasure: an opportunity

Next week I get my head back into academic mode (reluctantly) and prep my fall semester courses. I like to do this in July so that when August comes I can relax and not spend my remaining vacation time stressing over last-minute prep, which really does affect my stress levels well after the semester starts. This time I'm also determined to do a spring semester prep as well for the aforementioned reasons.

I'm constantly trying new things in the classroom -- new assignments, new texts, new peer review approaches, you name it. This is partly to keep the class fresh (and avoid plagiarism cases) and partly to keep trying to make it better. It's easy to fall into a rut, especially in the wake of budget issues and the lure of the novel. Teaching always presents an ocean of opportunities, though, which is one of the reasons why I still love being in the classroom.

I finally got Emma Walton Hamilton's book Raising Bookworms. It's a must for any parent or teacher. For those who don't know, Hamilton is a Sag Harbor resident (which means I already like her) and daughter of Julie Andrews. She's done quite a lot for the Sag Harbor community. And while she explicitly states that she's no reading specialist, she offers some excellent suggestions for parents and teachers alike to foster reading as enjoyment as opposed to a chore.

And for the overwhleming majority of students, unfortunately, it's a chore.

Raising Bookworms doesn't address the college-age student (the book stops at "middle school and beyond"), but I think it's not too late to reach out to the college student. Obviously, there's no getting around the fact that academic reading is indeed a chore, and much of it is tedious, sometimes even exasperating. And some of it (I'm talking about the scholarly writing, not the student writing) is not well written. I can very easily comiserate with my students when it comes to the pain of reading thanks to academia (and I'm lumping K-12 in that term at the moment). Despite teachers' passion and parents' well-meaning intentions, reading is taught and fostered as anything but pleasure. All too often, my students use violent metaphors like "tortured," "forced", "drilled", "grilled", and "shoved down our throats" to describe their reading experiences throughout childhood and school. But I've been trying to figure out how to reverse the trend. Hamilton talks about counterbalancing what kids read at school with what they read at home. In other words, balance the pain with pleasure.

This I get.

I get reading as a chore because reading (more specifically, evaluating) student writing is quite a chore, and can be especially tedious when students are all writing the same thing, more or less, or the writing is problematic. And while there are some days where when I come home all I want to do is sit in front of the boob-tube, usually I find that reading even just a few pages of a novel -- something light, usually, actually relaxes me. And audiobooks count, by the way! I almost always have an audiobook to keep me company during my commute to and from school. (Makes a great companion on road trips, too!)

And so, as I plan my fall courses, I'm thinking about proposing a semester-long extra credit project: The Pleasure Reading Project (or something like that). Students would keep a reading journal (filled w/ more than summaries -- I'm not interested in reading book reports -- hated them as a child, hate them now) and explore ways of counterbalancing their rigorous academic reading chores with more pleasurable alternatives.

The goal is not simply to get them reading for reading's sake, but also to use that pleasure reading to augment what already interests them, and make connections to what they're already learning. For example, if one of my female students tells me that she loves shopping, might Sophie Kinsella's Shopaholic series be something she'd like? Would my student-athletes enjoy sports journalist Mike Lupica's sports novels? Would a set of mystery books appeal to engineering students' problem-solving skills?

An opportunity for research exists here. Part of the project involves going to bookstores and the campus library, interviewing booksellers and librarians, peruse shevles, observing patterns of behavior (when looking for a book that interests me, do I judge by cover? title? genre?), etc. Or, conversely, learning about how some authors use the research process when writing their own novels.

I also want them writing, of course. In grad school, I was a staunch advocate of journals in theory, but never quite got them to work in practice. This, however, might do the trick. This kind of reflective, meta-cognitive practice will not only make them more aware of their reading and writing habits, but will reveal other connections as well, I believe. Like sports and music, writing is practice. And being exposed to more writing styles can influence their own.

Ultimately, the outcome of the project is to produce better thinkers. I'm not looking for total conversion here. At the very least, I'd like students to see that reading doesn't have to be a chore -- not 24-7, anyway.

My intention is to persuade them to do the project not for the grade but for the oppotunity. It's also an opportunity to really think about what they're doing in college. My guess is that we take education more for granted than any other abundance in this country. And yet, for all the talk about how great and important education is, we are a country with an aversion to education. Maybe reading is the key.

Am I being idealistic? Probably. But hey, I can try.
Why? Because I've been there.