C. Litka's Blog, page 26

My SPFBO 9 Experience

I regret to report that if you had any money riding on Beneath the Lanterns making it to even the semi-finals of the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off No. 9, you've lost your bet. Once again, all I got of one of these contests was the thrill of hope and anticipation, the agony of defeat, and a nice review. Not that I'm complaining, mind you, as it was a thoughtful and positive review. You can read the review here or on the Goodreads page for the book here. Statistically, making it to the final 10 was a 1 in 30 chance and winning the contest was a 1 in 300 shot. But given that part of the fun for me of writing this story was avoiding all the fantasy tropes I could think of, the odds were likely a wee bit longer. 

For the record, I did write Beneath the Lanterns as an attempt to widen my readership by appealing to fantasy readers. You can read my thoughts on how I came to write the book here in two parts; Part One and Part Two  Suffice to say that it is a post-apocalyptic story with its science fiction backdrop so remote in time and unexplored in the story that it reads as a fantasy story. Mark Lawrence did a similar thing in his first fantasy series setting it in our post-apocalyptic world, and he's the founder of SPFBO, so I think it passes muster as a fantasy. Still, I must confess that part of the fun of writing this story, as I said above, was tweaking the nose of fantasy expectations. For example, it is probably the only fantasy book written in this century where no character dies in the story. Heck, there's not even a real sword fight, not to mention you'll find no dragons, no folklore beings, no teen princesses/assassins, no evil kings, no epic quest or endless battles, no nameless evil to fight, and no magic system in it. It is not modern fantasy. So, in short, I have only myself to blame for Beneath the Lanterns washing out of SPFBO 9. I can live with it. In the end, it is far more fun to have fun writing what you want rather than what you think readers want you to write.

You may recall a previous past blog in which I reported that I volunteered to write one quarter of a four part short story for the blog that was reviewing my book for SPFBO. The complete story has now been published and you can find the final part here along with links to the first three parts, if you care to read it. I wrote the third part, followed by Jean Gill, who took the story in her own way with her own twist, bringing it back around to the beginning. I haven't looked back on my manuscript, but I have a vague feeling they tweaked my ending just slightly to make her ending work. In any event, I told you how I would've ended the story in that blog post so you can compare it to Jean Gill's and decide which one you like better. 

One final note; I didn't bother to enter a book in the science fiction version of the contest for self published authors (SPSFC), this year, as I have in the last two years, nor do I have any plans to do so in the future. It appears they received only 221 entries this year, short of the target 300. (Compare that to the fantasy version that filled its 300 slots in something like 47 minutes.) I'm not surprised, since there didn't seem to be a great deal of interest in the SF version of the contest outside of the authors who had books entered in the contest - if that. So, with little to gain, and a risk of receiving a bad review, entering another of my books didn't seem to be worth the bother. Besides my most straight SF book would be my space opera, The Bright Black Sea, and it is way too long for the science fiction version of the contest. Though I must say that the fantasy version routinely has books of that size. fantasy being fantasy. The fantasy version of the contest is six year older, and since there is a much larger fan base for fantasy, there seems to be a lot more involvement and interest in the contest - at least amongst the reviewers. Even so, I didn't see any bump in sales from it either. I suspect that for any book to see a significant jump in sales it would have to be one of the 10 finalist. 

I will offer some more thoughts about my experience in the SPFBO in the coming weeks.

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The Saturday Morning Post (No. 13)

This is the third installment of my reviews of P G Wodehouse's Blandings Castle Saga. This time around we have four books.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Full Moon by P G Wodehouse  B
In this installment of the saga we have Lord Emsworth's sister Hermione Wedge (who looks like, and is often mistaken for a cook) and her husband Colonel Wedge along with their beautiful but dimwitted daughter, Veronica staying at Blandings. In London we have another of Lord Emsworth's sisters, Dora Garland whose daughter, Prudence, intends to elope with Galahad's godson, Bill "Blister" Lister who is an artist that has just inherited a pub outside of Oxford, one that Freddie Treepwood used to frequent back before he was sent down from Oxford. Prudence wants Bill to give up being an artist and become a businessman and run the pub, for which they would need money to make it modern. Bill has a face like "a kindly gorilla," or as a Victorian era novelist would say, "a magnificent ugly man." Freddie runs into Prudence on his way to sell Aunt Dora on Donaldson's Dog-joy and learns that she and Bill are going to get married at the Registry office that day. She invites Freddie to be their witness. Freddie then runs into Tipton Plimsoll, a young American chain store owner who's been on a several month long spree after inheriting the chain stores, and he invites him to the wedding as well. Before the wedding Tipton sees a doctor about some spots on his chest, and is told that he is in grave danger of alcohol poisonings, and is on the brink of a breakdown where he could start seeing things unless he stops drinking... What he ends up seeing is the ugly face Bill, here and there before the wedding, a wedding that doesn't take place because Aunt Dora caught wind of Prudence's unknown lover, and whisked her off to Blandings, "I ought to mention that all the younger generation of my family get sent to Blandings when they fall in love with the wrong type of soul mate. It's sort of Devil's Island." Freddie also invites Tipton there to affect a cure, and Bill gets invited down by Lord Emsworth, with the help of Galahad, to paint a portrait of the Empress of Blandings. Learning that Tipton Plimsoll is very rich, Aunt Dora and Colonel Wedge want Veronica to marry him... but Tipton learns that Freddie and once been briefly engaged to Veronica, and even though Freddie is happily married, he knows how easy marriages come and go in America, and thinks the worst of their now merely cousinly comradery, as well as still being haunted by Bill's face, as he's at Blandings as well... And so it goes.

Pigs Have Wings by P G Wodehouse

Wodehouse stories tend to have complicate plots, so let's break out the set up for this story as an example. The usual suspects; Lord Emsworth, Galahad, Aunt Connie, Beach, and the prize fat pig, the Empress of Blandings are all in attendance. The story opens with two guests on hand, Penelope (Penny) Donaldson, the younger sister of Freddie's wife and the young and rich Orlo Vesper who Aunt Connie is pushing Penny to hitch up with. However Penny met Jerry Vail, on the boat from America to England and fell in love with him. However, he is not well off; 

'Well, he gets by. He's self-supporting.' (says Penny)

'What does he do?' (asks Galahad)

'He's an author.'

'Good heavens! Oh, well, I suppose authors are also God's creatures.'

'He writes thrillers. But you know the old gag. "Crime doesn't pay... enough," We couldn't possibly get married on what he makes, even in a good year.'

'But your father, the well-to-do millionaire. Won't he provide?'

'Not for an impecunious suitor. If I were to write and tell Father I wanted to marry someone with an annual income of about thirty cents, he would whisk me back to America by the next boat, and I should be extremely lucky if I didn't get interned at my old grandmother's in Ohio.'

This Jerry Vail, however has a chance to get in on a new health spa for the rich scheme, but he needs 2000 pounds... Penny asks Galahad, but he explains that as the younger son, all he gets a meager allowance.

Also in attendance at Blandings is the new pig girl. Monica Simmons. (The old pig man won a football lottery and retired.) She was hired by Aunt Connie, and is the niece of their neighbor, Sir Gregory Parsole, who is the owner of a formidable rival pig that he just purchased from Kent, that intends to enter in the Fat Pig contest to be held in a few weeks, there being nothing in the rules to prevent him from entering an importing a fat pig. Sir Gregory has recently got engaged to one Gloria Salt, who thinks he's too fat, and has him exercising. Disliking exercise, he takes up the suggestion of his Butler to try a weight reducing concoction called Slimmo, and orders half a dozen economy sized bottles of the stuff while Beach was in the shop getting a bottle of the stuff for himself. Beach brings news of this development back to Blandings. Putting two and two together, Monica and Slimmo, sets off alarm bells with Lord Emsworth, Galahad, Beach (both of whom have money wagered on the Empress of Blandings) and Penny. They decide to call in professional help to guard the Empress in the form of Maudie, Beach's niece, who is running a detective agency left to her by her late husband. And it seems that, in her youth Maudie, was an acquaintance of Sir Gregory in his poor, wild youth. 

The plot thickens, when we learn that Sir Gregory's fiancée, Gloria Salt, is not only an old friend of Jerry Vail, but until recently had been engaged to Orlo Vesper, who also happens to be an old school mate and friend of Jerry. Gloria has been invited down to Blandings and asked by Aunt Connie to find a suitable private secretary for Lord Emsworth. Gloria invites Jerry to dinner dangling the hope of landing the 2,000 pound loan he needs. Given the prospect of a chance to get the money, he cancels a previous agreed dinner date with Penny who was up to London for a day. Over dinner Gloria informs him that according to Hugo Carmony, Lord Emsworth's private secretary in Summer Lightning, if he learns to love and talk up pigs, he may be able to endear himself with Lord Emsworth after a few weeks in Blandings, and touch him for the loan of 2,000 pounds which he needs, so he accepts the post. And of course, seeing that Penny, Orlo, and Gloria all staying at Blandings Castle... the fuse is lit.

Service With a Smile  by P G Wodehouse  B

The story opens with one Myra Schoonmaker, the daughter of an American millionaire friend of Aunt Connie who has her staying at Blandings on account of an "unfortunate love affair" i.e. falling in love with a poor London East End curate the Rev Cuthbert "Bill" Bailey, along with the always rude Duke of Dunstable. We also have a new private secretary, Lavender Briggs for Lord Emsworth. As the story opens, Lord Emsworth has to go up to London for the opening of Parliament. When Myra learns that Aunt Connie will also be away from the castle for a day, she calls Bill and arranges to get married at of London's the register's offices... but over the phone Wilton Street is mistaken for Milton Street by Bill, and they end up standing each other up, they think. Bill Baily is an old friend of Pongo Twistleton, who along with his Uncle Lord Ickenham, were with Bill when Myra failed to appear at the Milton Street registry office. It seems that Lord Ickenham was a good friend of James Schoonmaker during his youth in America, so he has a great interest in the happiness of both Myra, and the Rev Cuthbert who he approves of, and so, when he meets Lord Emsworth as they return their costumes from the opening, he accepts Lord Emsworth's invite to Blandings, and his "friend", Bill, under an assumed name, of course, with the idea of mending the rift in Bill and Myra's love affair... And so it goes. We also have the Church Lads camping around the lake on the castle ground, much to Lord Emsworth's annoyance, the handsome, nephew of the Duke also arrives as Aunt Connie's alternative to Bill Bailey for Myra. He is an artist recently fired from the Mammoth Publishing Company who now needs a thousand pounds to get into his brother's onion soup stall business, plus a plot to, you guessed it, steal the Empress of Blandings. In short, a Blandings Castle Saga novel.

The Practice of Selling Ebooks for Nothing

The practice of selling ebooks for free is dates back to the early years of Kindle, and beyond. There are four ways to use free ebooks to promote one's work. They all are designed to attract readers, with three of them also hoping to promote the sales of the author's other books at their full retail price.

The first method of using free ebooks is to offer an usually full priced ebook for free for a limited time; usually three to five days. You can only do this on Amazon when you are in the Kindle Select program on Amazon, and only for a limited number of times. I am unfamiliar with this program, so I can't really go into its details or how well it works from personal experience. I believe you can do this on other platforms as well. What I can say is that this method, with its brief widow of opportunity, offers the greatest incentive to hit that BUY button. I know I've collected a number of ebooks because of the nature of the sale; get it for free now, or forever hold your peace.

I believe that popular authors of books can sell thousands to tens of thousands of ebooks even in this limited window. There is a discussion of this on Reddit here. The main takeaway is :

"I f you're going for a 5 day freebie, you're going to want to crack the top 100 overall free. That's usually circa 1500 downloads in 24 hours for the bottom end with the #1 position requiring 20k+ (and sometimes much much more; a really good freebie can nab 100,000 downloads in a day with a BookBub+ stack)."

The top 100 referred to above is the overall Free Ebook list. Getting into the top 100 in various genre and sub-genre requires much less books sold. To get these types of numbers, you also need to couple the free promotion with paid advertising.

Reading through the other posts, it is clear that these promotions usually do not produce immediate, if any/many positive results to sales, ratings and reviews. The reason is that the incentive is to pick up the book now, not necessarily to read it now. I suspect that most of the free copies sold end up on the reader's thousand book long TBR list in their Kindle account. If you have to spend money advertising, advertising your free copies seems to be a questionable practice.

Speaking as a publisher, not as an author, I have to say that us publishers are concerned with only one number; sales. We don't care what people do with their books after we've made the sale. A sale is a sale. Any sale that leads to more sales is a bonus. And when you are selling something that costs you nothing, the conversion rate doesn't matter.

For a more typical result of free ebooks, here is an account from a self-publishing author, Ron Vitale. He writes in his blog:

In 2021, I gave away nearly 25,000 free books (I spent more than a thousand dollars on newsletter ads), but I didn’t make my advertising money back. In 2022, I gave away more than 5,600 books, but spent $0 in marketing on my fiction. So I wasn’t surprised to see that I earned so little on my fiction books this year (around $175).

I’ve had several readers in the last few years who have thanked me for the free ebook that I gave away through my newsletter, but they then apologized that they wouldn’t be able to get to reading it because they had hundreds of other free ebooks on their Kindle.

Free books used to work for me, but the publishing business has changed dramatically over the last few years, and I’m pivoting away in a different direction.

Ron Vitale offers the first books of his three fantasy book series for free, which is the second method of selling free ebooks. As you can see they earned him around $175 last year. Since they are still free when writing this post, he hasn't pivoted yet. (What do you pivot to?)

However, using the first book in a series to promote the series is a very popular reason for selling books for nothing. It's usually accomplished by listing the books for free in the other ebook stores and then getting Amazon to price match that price; i.e. make them permafree on Amazon as well, where you normally can't list your books for free, except for those brief sales. Because the book is always free, it lacks the urgent incentive to pick it up now, so you may sell less of them in the short run. On the other hand, because it is always available, readers who do take advantage of the free price are more likely actually interested in reading the book now than those who are grabbing it up during a short, limited time sales window to add to their TBR pile while the book is free.

How well the free first book in a series works depends on a number of factors, the two most important factors are, one how accomplished the author is and how polished the book is. And two, does the book work for the reader. I've picked up a number of free first in a series SF books - all highly rated - and I have to admit that not only did I not continue on with any of the series, but I don't think I ever got more than halfway through any of them. They didn't work for me. But I would never have even tried them without the free ebook. The alternative, as I talked about last time, is paying Amazon, or Facebook, or some promotional email company money to feature your books, and from what I can gather, you can't expect a great return on your investment going that route either.

The thing is that the conversion rate of that first free ebook in the series to go on to buy the retail priced books of the series need not be high to be successful. With a free ebook you are casting a wide net, reaching readers who would otherwise not be willing to pay for the book. It is up to the free ebook to convert them, and the better the book is, the more it will convert. But, as I said in my last post, ebooks are free to produce, so it costs nothing to give lots of them away to gain even the occasional conversion. All in all, unless you are happy with the number of books you are selling, you likely have nothing to lose by making the first book in a series free.

It only takes a couple of minutes to change the price of an ebook, so you are never locked into any one way of pricing your books. Indeed, without experimenting with price, you'll never know what works and what doesn't. Well, you may know what doesn't work. And if your price is working, you don't need to experiment.

A third way authors utilize free ebooks is to offer an ebook for free on their website, usually as an inducement to sign up for their newsletter, i.e. to get a email address to market to. I think a lot of authors offer a free novella or short story related to one of their series. The downside is that the author still has to get a reader interested enough to visit their website - probably by advertising/promotion - and then have the site set up so that a visitor is able to download a file on request.

The fourth way to sell free ebooks is to sell all or most of them for nothing all of the time. This is a rather radical approach, but there is a case to be made for it. Luck is often involved in the success of a book. The chances of getting your book into the hands of a book bellwether; i.e. someone who can create the buzz needed to sell books increases with the number of your books available, and the ease of acquiring them. The more books you have, the more likely lightning will strike one. The easier it is for a book to be read, the more likely lightning will strike one. Just say'n.

I've taken this approach from the beginning of my publishing business in 2015. As a writer, I want my work read and hopefully enjoyed. As a publisher, I want to serve the needs of my author-self, i.e. getting my books read. While lightning has not struck any of them, I have sold over 77,000 books and grossed something like $600 on the non-priced-matched books on Amazon without spending a penny on advertising nor have I lost money publishing my books. I have no way of knowing how many books I would've sold at any price or how much money my publishing business has left on the table by selling them for free. But I do know that I'm not writing the type of books that fit into the best selling mainstream of any genre, nor am I writing them fast enough, so I don't lose any sleep over the money I might've left on the table by sharing rather than selling my work.

People will say that no one actually reads free books. Of course not all the books I've sold have been read. But then that is true of paid books as well. I once read that half of the paid books on readers' kindles had not been read. And when you see stacks of paper books on avid readers' TBR pile awaiting to be read, it is clear that a lot of people buy books with good intentions, but may never get around to reading them, at least anytime soon. And, as I've said before, we publishers don't care what people do with the book after we sell it; a sale is a sale. Now, ideally it would be nice if they did read them, like them, and then go on to read more of our books. But if unread books are the cost of acquiring readers, it's still a bargain.

Offering all your books free is not a popular option. Indeed, I know of only one other author who publishes all his books for free, and that is Michael Graeme. No doubt there are others, but, as I wrote about in the first installment of this series, I have a feeling that most authors feel like many readers; i.e. the price of the book reflects the value of the book. Nevertheless, pricing your products below competing products is a marketing 101 strategy. Companies sell products at or below cost - loss leaders - to attract buyers so as to sell them other products at a profit. Hell, why do all the ebook retailers carry free ebooks at all - even Amazon? They don't make any money on the sale of a free ebook, so free ebooks must bring some other value to their table. My guess is that value is that free ebooks enhance their catalog by inflating the number of books they offer, which in turn, entices customers to their store who will also buy non-free books. And as I will point out one last time; an ebook costs nothing, and can be sold at a price of nothing without losing money and that sale serves a purpose, promoting the sale of the other books by the author, or, in my case, expand my readership, which is why I write books. Oh, and perhaps to add a little joy to the world.

So to summarize; unless authors have been hired or are under contract to write a book, no one owes them any money for doing so. They can ask for money, but it will be the market that determines the value of their work, not them. Selling ebooks for free is a no-cost and widely used way to attract readers, introduce your work, and perhaps sell more non-free books. A free price will not, however, automatically make them more visible to the broad market; only active promotion and paid advertising will do that. However appearing in the smaller, but still significant marketplace of free ebooks, they will be much more visible due to the fact that this is a much less crowded market place. The fact of the matter is that there is no good, cheap, and efficient way to sell books. Traditional publishers choose a limited number of books to promote each quarter, ("lead titles") and let the rest sink or swim. (Most sink.) These days deep pocket indie-publishers dominate the self-publishing marketplace, and unless you have both deep pockets and expertise, and have written a well researched mainstream book, any paid advertising will likely be no more successful in promoting your work than free ebooks would, and cost you a lot more.

So, there you have it; the philosophy, theory and practice of selling books for free. For readers, I hope you understand better why I sell my books for free, and any authors reading this, I hope I've given you something to think about.

The Saturday Morning Post (no. 12)

This week I review two books about my favorite year and place in history; London 1940. There is something, looking back in safety and never experiencing it, that I find so romantic about that summer of the first year of World War ll as viewed from London. It was an epic time, and the people who lived in that year knew it. Reading the accounts of that time, as I have, I think it is fair to say that they knew that whatever was to be, they were living history. Unless you care to believe in reincarnation, I have this sense of the time from reading the accounts of the people of that time. There are two SF books by Connie Willis, Blackout and All Clear set in Britain in this time period, and when I started reading the first, Blackout, I found that her picture of Britain in the summer of 1940 did not seem right to me. It is hard to describe, but I didn't recognize the Britain I had come to imagine in my mine, despite the fact that I could pick out scenes and incidents in her book that I had come across in my research as well. Despite high hopes for it, I DNF'ed it. 

The primary source for my London in that eventful summer is Colin Perry's Boy in the Blitz that I discovered nearly 50 years ago in the University of Wisconsin library, and made a photo copy of it years later, which I still have. I've read at least parts of it off and on over the years. In addition to Boy in the Blitz, I will be reviewing Virily Anderson's Spam Tomorrow, an account of her life during the entire war in and about London and Britain in ebook, another book from the Furrowed Middlebrow collection by Dean Street Press that I purchased.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Boy in the Blitz by Colin Perry  A

As I said in the intro this books is composed of the journal entries and letters of the 18 year old Colin Perry, who was working in London and living south of London in Tooting. It covers the period from Monday 17 June, 1940, soon after the fall of France and the Dunkirk evacuation, to Tuesday 5 November 1940 when he joins the Merchant Marine. On 17 November, he sailed on the H.M.T. Strathallan, destination unknown, as a ship's writer i.e. a clerk. He was later to become a ships' purser. In often daily entries he recounts "what was going on in my mind and of the sights I saw about me. It contains, therefore, no after-thoughts only the youthful, untrained outpouring of a proud and totally insignificant Londoner."  The fact that you are reading the words of a bright, articulate young man who didn't know what tomorrow would bring as he writes his entries, brings an immediacy to the story that can not be found in accounts written looking back on an event. 

As I said, this is an unique period. Britain stand alone facing the all-conquering German army stands 10 miles from Dover. A German invasion is expected almost daily. German airplanes are flying overhead, dropping bombs, sometimes apparently at random. Increasingly the sirens sound, becoming a nightly affair as does drone of German bombers overhead, the whine and thump of bombs landing near and far, while the the searchlight probe the sky and the antiaircraft guns rattle and roar. And still, every day, Londoners go off to work in the city, heading down to bomb shelters several times a day as the raiders fly overhead. London suffers damage, people are wounded and killed, and many made homeless, but on a scale that will be dwarfed latter in the war, in such actions like the fire bombing of Dresden, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and as such, I find that this first year of the war has a sort of steampunk feel to it; a brief interlude where World War l evolved into World War ll proper. Distance dulls the death and terror, but the romance of a nation a city and a people standing up and defying the triumphant Nazis remains. This book, I think, captures that perfectly.

The ebook version adds a bit of biography, some photos, and outlines Colin's adventures at sea during the war, a welcome addition.

Spam Tomorrow by Verily Anderson  B

This is a memoir of the author's experiences in World War ll, published 11 years after the end of the war. The book draws on her extensive diaries of the time. It begins in 1939 with her marriage. At the time she was a member of F.A.N.Y., First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, a female volunteer organization dating back to World War 1 that wore military uniforms, but were not part of the military. They performed a variety of functions, Verily being a driver for various military and medical vehicles.She performed these duties until she suffered a long term illness, and was released for medical reasons (more or less) In 1940 she had her first child, and suffered serious after affects that had her laid up ill for many months.
The story goes on to tell of the hardships of life in Britain during the blitz, and the nearly six years of war. Since her husband worked for the government, they lived in London, off and on, depending on what they could find and afford, and the effects of the constant bombing on their life, often taking in other mothers to share expenses. 
Anderson is an entertaining writer and tells an interesting story of her struggles of often ill health, raising a family, and getting by with a war raging, often overhead. It introduces many people, from her siblings, cousins, to American soldiers training in England for D Day. If you have any interest in World War 11 on the British home front, it is an authentic window into that world, written not long after the events described.

The Theory of Selling Ebooks for Nothing

The theory of selling ebooks by offering them for free is simple; it eliminates nearly all the friction involved in buying an ebook. The potential reader sees the book and the free price, and if the book sparks any interest at all, they move their cursor to the BUY button and click. Bingo! Sale closed. 

Of course you've made no money on that sale, but on the plus side, you haven't lost any either. The only thing you may have lost is the opportunity to sell that book to that customer for money. You can judge how likely that prospect was for yourself. On the plus side, you have created the possibility of that reader enjoying the free ebook and going on to buy more of your books with higher price tags, books that they would've purchased if they had not sampled your free ebook.

The fact that copies of ebooks cost the author nothing to produce means that they can be sold for nothing without losing money. Oh, there is often some fixed cost associated in the production of an ebook, but that cost is fixed, i.e. it is the same whether one sells one book or a million, so there is no way to attach a set cost to individual books, as it will vary by the number of books sold. You might as well just look on it as the franchise cost, the price of starting your publishing business.

In practice, free ebooks are most often used to sell the other books that an author is offering for more than nothing, i.e. a form of advertising. Since giving free ebooks away involves no out of pocket money, you can give away a million free copies to a million readers at no cost. On the other hand, active advertising can cost money, and a lot of it, if you want it to be effective.

In advertising you pay either every time someone sees your ad, as in Facebook ads, or every time someone clicks on your ad, as in advertising on Amazon. You can also pay to place your book in various book related newsletters like BookBub. I've never advertised any of my books, so I can say nothing about how effective, or not, advertising is from personal experience. I do, however, believe that some sort of promotion and/or advertising is, in 2023, essential for commercial success in indie publishing and for it to be effective, a fairly large advertising budget is required. Even so, free books have a place in that effort as well.

Advertising is only one factor in the formula for commercial success in indie publishing, and I think I can say that advertising alone will not be successful unless you are promoting a book that is on point for the target market. Even so, the ads themselves will often cost more than the royalty the sales brings in. Ryan Cahill, a best selling indie fantasy author spends something like a thousand dollars a month on ads. He has said that he probably loses money on each book he sells from one of his ads. Nevertheless he feels they are worth the money spent since that book sale often leads to sales of his other books. (Pro tip: don't advertise your book before you have several books to sell.) Ideally what advertising and other promotional activity does it to build buzz that gets people interested and talking about your book. It is readers who really sell books. That said, you also need ads to continuedly keep your books on reader radar, since with so many books to choose from, readers can easily forget about yours. For that reason, if you want to be a commercially successful author, you will need to run ads continually - as well a produce books every few months... Free ebooks alone won't do it.

However, if your goals are less lofty than making a living as a self-published author, or your budget is limited, the ease of selling a book for nothing may be a good way to expand your readership. Still, there's a catch, there's always a catch. And that catch is that free ebooks do only half of what paid advertising does; while it can can put a book into the hands of a reader more readily than a book with a non-free price, what it can't do is get your book before the eyes of potential customers. Readers still have to find your free ebook to buy and try it. The big advantage of paid advertising is that it places your books before the eyes of potential buyers. A free price alone won't make your book any more visible. Or maybe it will...

There are readers, and lord knows, I'm one, who are accustomed to reading books without having to pay (or pay very little) for them. We borrow the books from the library. We pick them up at yard sales for next to nothing. And we shop for free ebooks on all the major ebook retailers. I have a feeling that we are a distinct sub-category of readers - a distinct market. And while it is obviously not a lucrative market, it is still a fairly substantial market. What is important about this market is that there are far fewer ebooks in this market to compete with. Your free ebooks are far easier to find in this market than a retail priced book in the paid market. There are millions of ebooks on Amazon, but the free ebook market probably has only 100,000 ebooks at any given time. Amazon even offers lists of 100 free books for almost every sub-genre, making your books far more readily visible to these bargain readers. Most other retails also list free ebooks by genre, making discovering your book a simple matter of scrolling through a dozen web pages of the appropriate list. Plus, many of these free ebook readers are avid readers, hence the necessity of acquiring books on the cheap. They will take the time to scroll through those pages to eventually come across your free ebook, And they might even spend money to read your full price books, if they are impressed enough with your free ebook. Anything is possible.

All of which is to say that free ebooks, when considered their cost, i.e. nothing, and the possibility that being free will bring them to the attention of more potential readers makes them a good method of promoting an author's work. And because of that it is one that many authors use.

In next week I will conclude my manifesto with "The Practice of Selling Ebooks for Nothing." I'll take a closer look at the ways and various outcomes of selling ebooks for free. Stay tuned.

Oh, by the way, shown above are some free ebooks: Links to the various stores that offer them in the right hand column.

The Saturday Morning Post (No.11)

This is the second installment of my reading of the entire Blandings Castle Saga by P G Wodehouse. This time around we have three novels and a collection of six Blandings short stories.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Summer Lightning  by P. G. Wodehouse  B

Galahad is engaged in writing his Reminiscences. Galahad "in his day had been a notable lad about town. A bean sabreur of Romano's. A Pink 'Un. A Pelican... Bookmakers called him by his pet name, barmaid  had simpered beneath is gallant chaff. He had heard the chimes at midnight. And when he had looked in at the old Gardenia, commissionaires had fought for the privilege of throwing him out. A man, in a word, who should never have bet taught to write..." He has tales to tell of the youthful excesses of the now staid and respected nobles of the land, and Aunt Connie wants the manuscript destroyed before it can be published and they are shunned by everyone who counts.

Hugo Carmody, having lost his money running an ill fated nightclub with Ronnie Fish is now Lord Emsworth's private secretary and is in love with Millicent, a niece of Lord Emsworth, via his late brother Lancelot, who has control of her money. Meanwhile, Ronnie Fish, who Lord Emsworth is also a trustee of, is in love with a chorus girl by the name of Sue Brown, though his mother, Lord Emsworth's sister Julia want him to marry Millicent. After the wreck of the nightclub Aunt Julia took Ronnie to Biarritz to recover and there they met a Miss Schoonmaker who Aunt Connie has invited down to Blandings. Back in London Ronnie picks up Sue Brown in his two seater and arriving at his London residence meets Aunt Connie had come calling. Thinking quickly, he introduces Sue as Miss Schoonmaker.  And so, Sue Brown joins the ranks of guests of Blandings sailing under false flags. In the meanwhile a private detective by the name of Pilbeam, who has made unwanted advances towards Sue Brown, has been hired to steal Galahad's manuscript by their neighbor Sir Gregory Parsloe who hopes to be selected to stand for parliament and fears that if Galahad's reminiscences are published his chances would be nil. And I'm just scratching the surface here...

Heavy Weather by P. G. Wodehouse  B+

In this case we have Monty Bodkin, who has to hold down a job for a year to receive his sweetheart's father's approval to marry her, plus Ronny Fish who needs Lord Elmsworth to release some of the money held in trust for him so that he can marry his true love, the ex-chorus girl Sue Brown, a wedding apposed by his mother, Julia Fish, one of the many sisters of Constance, Lord Elmsworth, and Galahad. Julia and her sister Connie hope to browbeat Elmsworth into not giving Ronnie the money and nix the marriage. And then there are those memoirs of Galahad, featured in the last novel, which would cause an outrage amongst their peers. He had agreed to suppress his Reminiscences in that novel, but the publisher who had purchased the rights, Lord Tilbury, hopes to steal them and publish them, as originally promised... And being Wodehouse, it get pretty involved...

"The Crime Wave at Blandings"  included in Lord Elmsworth and others by P. G. Wodehouse  B 

This short story sees the tentative return of the Efficient Baxter as a tutor to Lord Emsworth's grandson George, who is staying at Blandings for the summer and whom Aunt Connie thinks is running wild. Lord Emsworth sees, no doubt correctly, that the hiring of Baxter for the summer is the narrow edge of the wedge to get him back into the house as Lord Emsworth's private secretary, something Aunt Connie has always wanted. The crime wave of the title revolves around people for various reasons, including Lord Emsworth, shooting Baxter in the butt with George's air rifle.

Uncle Fred in Springtime by P G Wodehouse  B

The next installment in the Blandings Castle Saga, was written six years after Heavy Weather in 1939. We have all the usual suspects, plus a new cast of guests and imposters, including the return of the Efficient Baxter, who used to be Lord Elmsworth's super efficient private secretary, and whom he believes to be crazy. We also have the Duke of Dunstable, who does actually appear to be potty, Pongo Twistleton, who owes 200 pounds to a bookie and doesn't have it, his Uncle Fred (Lord Ickenham) who's wife is out of the country at the moment so he's free to help his nephew, and Sir Roderick Glossop, the familiar "brain specialist" who is invited to Blandings to observe The Duke of Donstable... and well, you get the idea... 

The Philosophy of Selling Ebooks for Nothing

This will be the first of a three part series I've written about the philosophy, theory, and practice of selling ebooks for free. Seeing that the subject turned into something of a manifesto, I guess I have a lot to say about on the subject. Perhaps because it is the founding principle of my publishing business, and compared to similar author/publishers, my work is read by so many more people without having to give up much, if anything, in the way of revenue. I think it works.

The principle philosophical question that needs to be addressed is the connection, if any, between the subjective and objective quality of a book and its value as expressed in monetary terms. Or to put it more plainly, the fairly common perception that high quality commands high prices, low quality, cheap prices, and whether this relationship applies to art in general, and books in particular. Spoiler; I am going to argue that it doesn't.

Writing is an art, and art is often judged subjectively, i.e. whether it appeals to the viewer or listener of the individual work. There are, however, certainly objective standards that can be applied to judge how accomplished the art or artist is. In writing these standards can include, spelling, grammar, and story structure. However, in the name of art and originality, even the objective standards of any medium can be successfully challenged. In short, anything goes in art, especially if the size of the appreciative audience is not a consideration.  

It is uncontroversial to say that some readers and some writers equate the price of a book with the artistic quality of the book. It is hard to say just how many do, and at what conscious level, but I suspect this is a fairly common attitude. Indeed, I will suggest in my upcoming essay "The Practice of Selling Ebooks for Nothing" that when it comes to readers, you can divide the market into those that won't buy a free ebook, and those that only buy free ebooks - with some overlap and exceptions. As for authors, when I see the fact that authors are seemingly content to sell a handful of books a year, I have to believe that many authors also feel that there is a connection between the worth of their work and price in money they feel they must charge to reflect that worth. Clearly, I'm not one of them.

"If an author doesn't believe their book is worth anything and is just giving it away, why should I believe it is any good?" is a common response to a free book. To  answer that question the first thing one needs to accept is that every value of the quality assigned to a book is subjective, and because it is subjective, the value of the work, as expressed in dollars and cents, is a quantum value; it varies with how much each individual reader enjoyed the book. Nor is there any agreed on standard level of payment for the entertainment value of a book, making it impossible to assign any sort of objective value to a book in dollars and cents. While there may be a perceived relationship between the quality of a book and its price, when one actually thinks about it, it is clear that there is none. A reader can pay $30 for the hardcover version of a book, only to DNF it, because they hated it. The price they paid had no relationship to their subjective enjoyment of the book. Or to take another example, does the quality of a book go down, when it goes on sale? Quality and price are two different things.

The same logic applies to self-publishing authors who get to set the price of their books. They are free to price their work according to the value they believe it represents, so if they feel that there is indeed a connection between value and price, their price should reflect the value they perceive in their work. But do they? By and large, no, even if they think price should reflect quality. At least I don't think so. And why don't I think so? Because they price their ebooks significantly less than traditionally published ebooks by traditionally published authors. If they truly believed that price equaled quality, then what does the fact that self-published books are generally priced between one third and one tenth of the price of traditionally published ebooks? Are they saying that their work is only 33% to 10% as good as the traditionally published books? Maybe, but I doubt it.

What self-published authors realized, even if they do not acknowledged it, is that price is actually a tool of marketing. Sadly, self-published books are a victim of the price equals quality mindset. Because of the perceived inferior quality of self-published ebooks as a whole, self-published books usually cannot command the price of traditional published books, even though self-publishing authors have the ability to price their ebooks the same as traditionally published ebooks. Instead, self-published ebooks compete with traditionally published books and authors by offering books at a lower price, making them, ideally, a better value for the money. This lower the price need not reflect an acknowledgement of lower quality of work. Lowering the price of their work to be able to compete does not lower the quality of their writing. It is simply marketing.

And I might add that just as there is a distinct free book market, there is a self-publishing market that is distinct from the traditionally published book market. In both cases there is, of course, some overlap, but the important point is that a publisher can target a market that will generate the most sales, and that price is a key tool in doing this. Put a price on your book, and you won't sell to the free book readers, put a traditionally published price on a self-published book, and you won't sell to the self-published market, and likely not to the traditionally published market either. Once again; price is merely a marketing tool.

Given this lack of real connection between quality and price, and given that price is a tool of marketing, not a measure of quality, selling books for nothing can, and should be looked on by readers and authors as a marketing decision, not as any sort of a measure of quality.  Experience has taught me that there is a distinct market for free books. Readers are readers, and that this market is worth considering if one wants to be read and especially if an author's books are not in the mainstream of commercial fiction.

Next week my manifesto continues with " The Theory of Selling Ebooks for Nothing." Stay tuned, you won't want to miss it.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 10)

In this installment of the Post, I am going to review two works; Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness and C J Cutcliffe Hyne's The Further Adventures of Captain Kettle. Why these two books? you ask. At least you do rhetorically so I can tell you why.  

Why? Because when I was doing my research on Hyne for a previous blog post, the Wikipedia article on him mentioned that: "Conrad .. read Pearson's (the magazine Hyne's stories appeared in), and borrowed whole phrases, key episodes, and images from the Kettle stories for Heart of Darkness." Now borrowing incidents from other writers appeared to be somewhat common back then. I know that W Somerset Maugham was accused of borrowing a scene for his story The Moon and Sixpence, and he said so in the preface of the volume I read. He had also been accused of using real people in his story Cakes and Ale. So it would appear that a little borrowing was no great scandal, You can read about the similarities here.  I glanced over it, but I was more interested in the fact that here were two writers writing about the same time and about the same place, one of whom is still remembered today while the one is forgotten. Why? Again. 

To find out, I reread them both of the stories.

 My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad  C

I first read this book in high school, and I remember two things about it, those being the image of a solitary warship off the shore of Africa firing its cannon into the jungle with no seeming effect or purpose. And of course the punch line, "The horror, the horror." 

The story is drawn from Conrad's own experiences working on a riverboat in the Belgium Congo in 1890.

The story, such as it is, has Charles Marlow relating his experience in Africa as a riverboat pilot on an unnamed river. He is sent up stream, and spends several months slowly repairing the steamboat he was hired to command. At this station, he hears of a company agent, Kurtz, who appears to be something special, even to those who dislike and suspect him of being some sort of idealist when it comes to the natives. He appears to have some sort of great magnetism that attacks people to him. Marlow's steamboat eventually reaches Kurtz's station to find him dying, and against his will, they carry him - and his ivory - back down the river. On the journey back, Marlow also falls under Kurtz's spell, to the extent that when he presents the last of Kurtz's papers to Kurtz's fiancée, when asked what his dying words were, he tells her that he uttered her name, rather than "The horror, the horror" to protect his reputation.

The short novel or novella reads as a very surreal, dreamlike, indeed, nightmarish account of rather disreputable Europeans rotting away and dying in the steaming disease-ridden climate. all in pursuit of the fortune in ivory and sundry other products the jungle produces. It highlights the casual exploitation of, and cruelty to, the natives. It involves a lot of naval gazing by Marlow as he slowly travels deep into the heart of darkness to discover that the high minded, idealistic Kurtz, had descended into the savagery of the land. Kutz had becoming worshiped as a tin-god of a tribe whom he lead on raids against other tribes to steal their ivory. Ivory which he intended to take out of the Congo to make his fortune. Somewhat surprisingly, besides offering a few of incidents to illustrate how ill treated the Africans were, they play only a small role in the story. They are portraited a savages with an almost childlike simplicity which is ruthlessly exploited by the disreputable collection of Europeans who have ended up in King Leopold of Belgium's private colony in along the Congo River for one reason or another. Most of whom die there in the hostile climate. 

I think it is important to add that Conrad never identifies the exact place in Africa his story takes place, even though he was a a riverboat captain on the Congo and worked for King Leopold's private colony/business. Nor does he ever mention the fact that King Leopold himself established the colony and company that ruthlessly exploited the natives of the Congo mostly to acquire ivory. One might argue that this is perhaps to make the story more universal. But it seems to me that he may well have not cared, or dared, to point a finger at someone who should've had fingers been pointed at, as Leopold & Co.'s treatment of the natives was outrageously brutal. I see this as being morally cowardly. Indeed, the Belgium government took over the colony from "Leopold & Co." in 1908 due to the excessive cruelty and exploitations of the natives that was the practice in the Belgium Congo under the King's company during Conrad's time in the Congo.

Still, this story, and Joseph Conrad, have endured which speak to it and his lasting qualities. It is, however, as you may've gathered, not to my tastes. Too highbrow for me, I fear.

Free Gutenberg edition of The Heart of Darkness: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/526

Further Adventures of Captain Kettle, aka A Master of Fortune: Being the Further Adventures of Captain Kettle by C J Cutcliffe Hyne  B

This books is a collection of short stories that appeared in Pearson's Magazine in 1898, the first four of which concern Captain Kettle's adventures while employed by Leopold & Co. in the Belgium Congo, first as a river pilot and then as a riverboat captain. Hyne was a world traveler and had visited the Congo before writing these stories, so they also include some first hand knowledge of the locale.

And as always when talking about the Hyne's Captain Kettle stories, I must mention that he employs a great deal of racist language and racist stereotypes in the descriptions of the non-white races and non-English nationalities he describes, which to some degree or another, likely represent the view of the author as well. It would seem both Hyne and Captain Kettle believed that the British race was superior to all other races and all other nationalities. There is also a tread of anti-Semitism in the writing as well, which was common in Britain at the time. Let me quote one passage describing the passengers of an immigration ship bound for America to illustrate this attitude. "The emigrants - Austrians, Bohemians, wild Poles, filthy, crawling Russian Jews, bestial Armenians, human debris which even soldier-coveting Middle Europe rejected..." However, Hyne presents Captain Kettle as a complex and contradictory character, who is "that master of ruling men at the expense of their feelings..." but once he rules them, he looks after them as well, as we shall see.

The first of the four relevant stories, "In Quarantine," has a desperate for work the 38 year old Kettle - he had a wife and three kids to support - signing on to be a pilot for the lower Congo River, piloting ocean going boats up the river to the Capital of the Free State or Leopold & Co. 

"Here is my wife's address, sir. I'd like my half-pay sent to her." 

'She shall have it direct from Brussels, skipper, so long as you are alive - I mean, so long as you remain in the Congo Service."

His first experience on arriving in Banana is traveling along with the pilot of the Lower Congo, Nilsson, piloting a Portuguese steamer, in a hurry, up the Congo River that smells like crushed marigolds. The reason for the haste is that the native passengers are restless, fearful, and dying, because there's sickness aboard, which turns out to be smallpox. Indeed, two very sick passengers were said to have died of it while Kettle and the pilot were taking a meal in the mess room - though it was pretty clear to them, that they were not exactly dead when they were sent over the side of the ship with iron bars attached to their legs. The small pox is discovered when the ship arrives in harbor and the ship sent to the quarantine station with all aboard until the disease runs its course. As the ship's captain takes to his cabin and stays drunk, Kettle takes charge of the ship, cleaning it up and keeping order. At the end of the outbreak he carries the last dying native and locks him along with himself just to make it fair, in the captain's cabin for a night as revenge for the murder of the two native passengers. The next morning the ship's captain, in fear, decides to swim for the shore and goes over the side, and never surfaces, "Guess a crocodile chopped him." The story illustrates this important feature of Captain Kettle, whatever his opinion of the blacks and other people he looks down on, he still places a value on them as people. 

In the next story, "The Little Wooden God with the Eyes," sees his servant killed and eaten by cannibals during a visit to a native village while he is staked to the ground to be eaten alive by ants. Freed by a missionary/gun trader, he drives the natives from the village in a rage for killing his servant. And when Kettle gets sick, it was Nilsson's native wife, "Mrs. Nilssen who tediously nursed him back to health. Kettle had always been courteous to Mrs. Nilssen, even though she was as black and polished as a paten leather boot; and Mrs. Nilssen appreciated Captain Owen Kettle accordingly." In this story we also meet that missionary who decided that gin and guns paid better than missionary work but ended up being chopped, i.e. eaten. "Chop" is a word used for both food and the act of eating in the pidgin English used as the lingua franca of the coast. 

In the third story, "A Quick Way with Rebels," finds Captain Kettle a riverboat captain, and after getting ambushed by rebelling native troops and the riverboat stranded on a sand bar because the loss of power due to a bullet hole in the boiler, Kettle convinces the Belgium army officer to let him take overall command of the expedition. He repairs the steamboat's boiler with the bullet hole in it while under fire, and then frees his steamboat from a sand bar. The attack on the steamboat echoes an similar incident in The Heart of Darkness, though the reasons for the attack are different. In this story, Kettle takes the steamboat down river to collect wood for the boiler, and to be use as protection from gunfire for the crew and soldiers they are carrying, and returns to exact some sort of revenge for his crew members that they had killed, black and white in the ambush. However, when they return to base the Belgium army officer Kettle had superseded gets the base commander to order the arrest of Kettle, and probably hang him as a "rebel" for disobeying him. Kettle will have nothing of this, disarms the people trying to arrest him, and together with an English doctor, Dr. Clay, and the 50 native troops onboard the steamboat, take the steamboat up river to escape.

And in the last relevant story, "The New Republic." the story begins, with "The fighting ended, and promptly both the invaders and the invaded settled down to the new course of things without further exultation or regret. An hour after it had happened the capture of the village was already regarded as ancient history..." Kettle has a new scheme, setting up a new state in the heard of the Congo with the help of the black crew and soldiers, some 70 all told who had been "dragooned" into obedience with little trouble, as Hyne asserts that if the natives are fed, and led, they are "quite content to work, or steal, or fight, or be killed as that master sees fit to direct." 

In any event Kettle is intent on setting up this new state where natives are treated not as equals of white people, but uplifted from their savage life to something like the European ideal of civilization, though "it's understood that we run this country for our own advantage first."

"What other object should white men have up-country in Africa?' said Clay. "We don't come here merely for our health."

'But I've got a great notion of treating the people well besides. When we have made a sufficient pile - and mark you, it must be all in ivory, as there's nothing else of value that can be easy enough handled - we shall clear out for the Coast, one-time"

Which means, like Kurtz, they set out to acquire as much ivory as possible by stealing it from the surrounding villages as they built this "New Republic". Unlike Kurtz, Kettle and Doc Clay awe the natives with Kettle's accordion and Clay's banjo playing and singing. Kettle, a very church-going man ashore, also set out to preach to his citizens, though Clay could hardly keep a straight face, given what they've set out to do. Their Congo New Republic ends not with Kettle dying, but with Doc Clay's death. His leg was mangled by a falling tree in a sudden storm, and though he instructed Kettle on how to amputate it, which he did, he could never quite recover, and slowly died with Kettle at his bedside. By refusing to leave Doc Clay's bedside his New Republic falls apart as a result of an intrusion of Arab slavers and Kettle's refusal to take to the field to deal with them. Kettle then must make his way slowly to the coast traveling through the jungle by being a traveling minstrel, entertaining the natives with his accordion playing and singing, a story that must await the pen of Captain Kettle to be written, in blank verse with hymns and songs he sang at each stop.

So there you have it. Two treatments of a similar incident. One a study in moral collapse, the other as a series of extraordinary adventures written as light entertainment. I think that Hyne's stories, despite their intent, are more authentic, in that he is far more descriptive of the place and the people, as viewed by an Englishman of the era. Conrad did not even care (or dare) to mention Leopold & Co by name, while Hyne does, and he also includes pidgin-English phrases to give the story a more authentic feel.

The remaining stories cover Kettle's return to the sea, with him ending up having to take on 650 people from a burning liner, which involved tossing some of the cargo over the side of his ship to house them all - and earning the disfavor of his owner and customers, which eventually gets him fired to become a farmer. Though, like Sherlock Holmes, his retirement is short lived, and nine more books follow.

Free Gutenberg edition of A Master of Fortune; Being Further Adventures of Captain Kettle; https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12556

The Man behind the Curtain

How often, dear reader, do you pay attention to the "man behind the curtain," when reading a story? A story, like the Wizard of Oz, requires a man or woman behind a curtain to create the illusion. Often, but not always, the author behind the curtain wants to remain hidden behind the curtain, keeping the reader's attention on the story they are weaving. The best succeed in getting readers' hearts beating fast with excitement, skin crawling with creepy things, and shedding tears at the death of fictional characters. In short, making things real in the moment with words alone. If that isn't wizardry, I don't know what wizardry is. 

Of course the success of  this depends on how skillfully the author is and how engaged the reader is in the story's premise, but it is still a rather amazing accomplishment, when done. But the magic doesn't work on every reader, not completely, anyway.

I must admit I've never shed a tear while reading a book, or never got so wrapped up in a story that my heart raced or ever took a "scary" scene seriously. (Though I'm not a horror story reader, so that I don't tempt fate in this regard.) This is not to say that I don't get emotionally involved in a good story - though it takes a good story - but at some level, I think I'm always aware that I'm reading a story, not living it. I'm always aware of the author working behind the curtain, perhaps because I am one myself, and have been one most of my life. I don't think this distracts from my enjoyment of a well written story, it may even enhance it, but I am never entirely immersed in the premise of the story. So how does this being a writer reading a writer work?

On a basic level I would imagine most readers recognize certain story patterns as being artifacts of the style or fashion in fiction when it was written, but forget about them when reading the story. Take for example the opening scene in a lot of contemporary SF & fantasy books. These stories often immediately open with - without context - an action scene with lots of drama and violence. Sometimes its a prologue, and sometimes it's a scene out of story order which has to be walked back once the story really starts. But you see it all the time in contemporary fiction because it is thought to "hook" the reader - in the case of traditional published book, this reader is the prospective agent or editor - into reading the rest of the story. I, however, see starting a story by jumping immediately into some sort tense action as an artifact contemporary commercial storytelling. I see the writer behind the curtain writing it that way because they have been told that is what they need to do to hook an agent, an editor, or a reader. The same can be said, at least for me, for stories that jump around between multiple points of view - another popular motif these days. While many readers find this technique interesting, I can't help but see it as an artificial construction of the author to tell a story in a contemporary way. The popularity of these techniques gives them a level of invisibility to readers. But as someone who has, over the last decade, read various "how to" write advice pieces, (which I read far too late ever to take to heart) I've often encounter these prescribed patterns. Thus when I see them, they immediately bring the author out from behind the curtain for me. It's an "Ah-ha!" moment; they're doing this because it's what so-called experts, agents, or editors have advised them to do. I see the man behind the curtain pulling levers. This awareness of techniques - of authors manipulating the levers - often takes me at least a bit out of the story.

I'll use an actual example of this from the book, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. Many readers of this book often cite it as one of their favorite books of all time. In it, one of the main characters dies. If you've seen the TV mini-series you know who. Many readers say that they are so sad that they shed tears over this incident, even if they had seen the series of TV. In my case, however, it just made me angry. Angry enough for me to stop reading the story at that point. So why did I react this way? Because it felt like a cheap trick by McMurtry designed to manipulate my emotions. I saw him as deliberately pulling levers to create an emotional response, which, I will readily admit is something authors regularly do, and readers expect. It may well be justified, and obviously works within this book for most readers. But you see, I'd made the mistake of reading the prequel novels,  Dead Man's Walk and Comanche Moon prior to reading Lonesome Dove, so that I did not see this death, and all the others in this story in isolation. I was painfully aware that in the prequel books (written after Lonesome Dove) McMurtry introduces a great many named characters, has them do stupid things, and then kills them off. It seems like nine out of ten named characters never make it out of one of these books alive. So I was well aware of his technique of introducing characters only to kill them off when I was reading Lonesome Dove. I could seem him at it once again in this story, killing off many minor characters along the way, just as he had in the prequels. And so it goes... But when he pulled this stunt on my favorite character in the books, it was a bridge too far. He had finally flogged that mule to death. It was clearly McMurtry who had killed him, not the native Americans in the story who did the deed within the story. McMurtry was no longer behind the curtain, and, like Dorothy and her friends, I was no longer impressed. The magic of storytelling was gone.

While this is the most dramatic example an author visible behind the curtain, I can cite other examples. Charles Finch in his The Last Passenger, inserted random explanations of this and that into his Victorian era mystery story, perhaps to recreate the timeframe, but which struck me as merely trying to impress the reader with his Wikipedia-sourced tidbits of Victorian life. In the fantasy book The Lefthanded Booksellers of London, it seemed that the author was using Ready Player One's formula of inserting all sorts of trivia from the culture of the time period into the story, I suppose to world-build, but struck me as just that; random trivia. Every time I encounter a handsome 6'3" square jawed hero I cringe. And all too often when sampling SF stories I see Star Trek or Firefly, or Star Wars lurking behind the story from which the author drew their inspirations from. In short, I am often struck by the things the authors do in writing their stories - especially in modern stories - that take me out of the story, or at least keeps me a arm's length of it.

And yet, seeing the author at work is not always bad. There are stories I read just to watch that little man behind the curtain do his or her stuff. Indeed many of my favorite authors and stories fall into this category. These are the books that I enjoy how they are written - how they pull the levers. I enjoy observing just how these authors put words together to tell their story as much or more than the story they are telling. These are writers I can read over and over again for their wordsmanship rather than the story, i.e. authors like my often mentioned favorites; P G Wodehouse, Raymond Chandler, Patrick O'Brian, and Jasper Fforde to name a few. When reading these stories, I can both admire the authors' skillful manipulation of these "levers" and still enjoy the stories they produce without any disconnect. Though even at this level, it is not always the case of me enjoying their magic. Gene Wolfe springs to mind. He is often held up to be one of the great American literary writers, whose style and depth of writing is admired, though less widely known because he wrote in genre fiction - SF & fantasy. In the one book of his I tried to read, I found his obvious manipulation of the levers of writing too self-pretentious, deliberately obscure, and too literary for my simple tastes.

So, to sum things up, it seems that I can't help but look on stories with the eyes of either a writer, or a critic. To some degree or another, I peek look behind the curtain. The question I have is the one I posed at the beginning of this piece; how do you read stories? Are you also aware of the author behind the curtain as you read the story? Or can you completely lose yourself in the story? Can the story be everything in the moment for you? Drop a line in the comments below to enlighten me. I am very curious about this.

The Saturday Morning Post (No, 9)

This is the first of a series I plan to post chronicling my reading of P G Wodehouse's Blandings Castle Saga. This instalment reviews the first three books in the saga, beginning with the 1915 Something Fresh, aka in America, Something New. In this review and subsequent ones I will be using the covers done by the artist Ionicus whenever possible, as he is my favorite Wodehouse artist. 

The series includes 10 novels, and nine short stories spread out over four short story collection written between 1914 and 1972. I am missing only one short story, "Birth of a Salesman." in Nothing Serious.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Something Fresh (a.k.a Something New) by P. G. Wodehouse  B

This is the first Blandings Castle book written while in America in 1914 and it set the pattern for the series. It opens with an introduction to Ashe Marson, a 26 year old enthusiast of physical health who is living in a London boarding house, making a meager living by writing the monthly adventures of Gridley Quayle, Investigator for the Mammoth Publishing Company, a job which he finds like being "chained to some horrible monster." Early on he meets a pretty girl by the name of Joan Valentine who just moved into his boarding and discovers that she is a "comrade in misfortune" a fellow writer who writers a short story every month for Home Gossip magazine from the same publisher. Joan has done a number of things since her wealthy father died included working on stage, and is more or less broke as well. Being a can-do person, she urges Ashe to act if he is so dissatisfied with his job.

We are then introduced to Freddie Treepwood, the younger son of Lord Emesworth, who is engaged to Aline Peters, the daughter of a wealthy retired American business man. He fears that letters he sent to Joan Valentine when she was on the stage might be used to sue him for breach of promise and wreck his change of marriage, so hires a rather shady fellow to visit her to recover those letters (which she had already destroyed). Meanwhile, his very absent minded father visits the home of Mr Peters who shows him his collection of Egyptian scarabs. Mr Peters is called away for a moment during this process, leaving Lord Emsworth alone, who absently pockets the very valuable scarab that he had been when Mr Peters was called away holding, and leaves with it. Mr Peters believes that he stole it, and wants it back, and is willing to pay $5000 to recover it. Ashe, remembering Joan's urging to do something else if he hates writing the Gridley Quayle stories, answers a newspaper ad and is hired by Mr Peters to accompany him in his visit to Blandings Castle acting as his valet to steal the scarab back. Joan, an old friend of Aline Peters from her more affluent days, also wants to collect the reward and travels to Blandings as Aline's maid for that purpose as well. We also have staying at Blandings, one George Emerson, who is in love with Aline and urges her to ditch Freddie. And with that, we have the pattern of the saga set; people visiting Blandings Castle as imposters for various reasons with various star-crossed lovers in need of money. 

Wodehouse plots are very intricate, so I won't go any further into it, save that we meet several of the regulars in this first volume, including Beach, the butler and Lord Emsworth's private secretary, the "Efficient Baxter." Lady Ann Warblington is the sister of Lord Emsworth living with him in this story, but she is replaced by the formidable Aunt Constance Keeble in all subsequent stories. This story is also set in the spring, while all subsequent ones are set in an endless summer. Market Blandings is said to be 5 miles distant in this story, when in latter books it is a more convenient, and walkable, distance away at 2 miles.

Up until this story, Wodehouse had been selling his stories to lower paying magazines, but he sold this one to George Horace Lorimer of the Saturday Evening Post for "the stupefying sum of $3,500." As he wrote in the preface; "I had always known in a vague sort of way that there was money like $3500 in the world, but I had never expected to touch it. If I was a hundred bucks ahead of the game in those days, I thought I was doing well." He went on to sell the magazine rights of many of his stories to the Saturday Evening Post for decades to come. He would not write another Blandings Castle book until 1922, eight years later.

Free Gutenberg edition of Something New: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2042

Leave it to Psmith by P. G. Wodehouse  B+

Leave it to Psmith marks the fourth story the character of (Rupert or Ronald) Psmith appears in. He made is debut in 1909 as a sidekick character for Mike Jackson in the school story "The Lost Lambs" that Wodehouse wrote for The Captain magazine and later published as the novel Mike and Psmith.  (Available on Gutenberg.) He then appeared in two more stories for the Captain, which were published as Psmith in the City (1910) and Psmith, Journalist (1915) before appearing in this story. Wodehouse has said that Psmith is the only character drawn from real life, a school mate of this cousin - one of the sons of Richard D'Oyly Carte of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, either Rupert or Lucas.

In this 1923 story, the second in the Blandings Castle saga, we find Psmith... Never mind. I had written a hundred plus words and had just scratched the surface of the set-up for this novel. Wodehouse books are constructed like clockworks, as one of the characters would say, "wheels within wheels," and to just describe the various various wheels without even setting them into motion would make for an essay in itself. Let's just say that Aunt Connie sent Lord Emsworth to London to collect a Canadian Poet, and returns with Psmith, pretending to be that poet because he wanted to follow a girl he had just met, who had been hired to catalog the Blandings Castle library. Freddie Treepwood needs money, and so does Aunt Connie's husband, Keeble, who is dominated by Aunt Connie, to the extent that he can't call his own money his own. They devise a plan to steal Aunt Connie's valuable diamond necklace to get that money. Keeble would replace the necklace, of course, but use the proceeds from the stolen one to help out his step daughter and her husband who just happen to be old friends of Psmith... And so it goes... As I said, wheels within wheels... All the usual suspects are present, including Aunt Connie's protégé, the Efficient Baxter as Lord Emsworth's private secretary whose suspicion must be foiled...

In Something Fresh you see the beginnings of the Wodehouse's musical comedy without music style, and in Leave it to Psmith, it is almost perfected; snappy, intricately woven, tightly paced scenes that have all the characters pursuing their various schemes, however ineptly. 

In this novel Lord Emsworth sister Lady Ann Warblington is replaced by the formidable Lady Constance Keeble, aka Aunt Connie, and I don't believe Lady Ann appears again, though Lord Emsworth seems to have a lot of other sisters to produce the necessary nieces and nephews, including Julia Fish, and Lady Charlotte, who is said the be even a tougher egg than Lady Constance. Aunt Connie's husband makes his only appearance in this story, and in later stories she is said to be widowed.

Free Gutenberg edition of Leave it to Psmith: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60067

Blandings Castle, (a.k.a Blandings Castle and Elsewhere) by P. G. Wodehouse  B

There are a dozen short stories in this collection, of which six are part of the Blanding Castle saga, to wit; 

"The Custody of the Pumpkin" concerns Lord Emsworth prize pumpkin and Freddie's secret new girl friend, Aggie (Niagara) Donaldson, who is sort of a cousin to his gardener Angus McAllister. When Lord Emsworth learns of this, he fires Angus because he won't send Aggie away. But he soon comes to regret it for his pumpkin's sake - this story being before the pig, Empress of Blanding, takes center state as Lord Emsworth pride and joy. In this story Freddie elopes with Aggie, who turns out to be the daughter of a millionaire of Donaldson's Dog-Biscuits fame. And much to Lord Emsworth's relief, Freddie is off to America to help his new father-in-law sell dog biscuits.

"Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best" In this story, set eight months later, Lord Emsworth has grown a beard and Freddie is back in England selling dog biscuits and is on the outs with Aggie because of his effort to sell a movie script by taking out a actress to dinner.

"Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey! in which the Empress of Blandings makes her first appearance as a contender for the silver medal in Shrophshire's 87th annual Agricultural Show's Fat Pig class. Just ten days before the show Lord Emworth's pig man gets locked up in jail, and the Empress is off her feed, sending Lord Emworth to London to find a substitute pig man. Meanwhile his niece, Angela has broken off an engagement with Lord Heacham and intends to marry a neighbor, James Belford, who is back from spending several years in America where he worked on a in Nebraska farm. Lord Emsworth tries to discourage James, but in explaining his concern for the Empress, James explains that the pig is pining away for his jailed pig man and probably misses his special afternoon call for dinner, because "Pigs are temperamental. Omit to call them, and they'll starve rather than put on the nose-bag. Call them right, and they will follow you to the ends of the earth with their mouths watering." He teaches Lord Emsworth the "master word", i.e. the title of the story. And, in the end, when Lord Emsworth doesn't get it quite right, uses it to get the Empress to feeding again, thus winning the hand of Angela in marriage.

"Company for Gertrude" in which Freddie, still in England promoting his father-in-law's dog-biscuit business works to get his aunt Georgiana, the owner of "four Pekes, two Poms, a Yorkshire terrier, five Sealyhams, a Borzol, and an Airedale" to try Donaldson's Dog-Joy biscuits figuring that her patronage would be good for business. Freddie meets an old university friend, now  Rev. Rupert "Beefy" Bingham, who wants to marry another niece of Lord Emsworth, Gertrude, but doesn't have enough money to satisfy Aunt Connie. Gertrude is in exile at Blandings Castle. "The family seems to look on the place as sort of Bastille. Whenever the young of the species make a floater like falling in love with the wrong man, they are always shot off to Blandings to recover." Freddie sends Beefy to Blandings to get on Lord Emsworth's good side, since Lord Emsworth has the power to hire ministers for several churches in the countryside. If Beefy could land one of those, he could make the case of being able to marry Gertrude. 

"The Go-getter" continues the story line in "Company for Gertrude" taking it to is  happy conclusion, with various alarms and excursions involving dogs.

"Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend" In this story, Lord Emsworth is expected to attend, in top hat and stiff collar, the "August Bank Holiday Saturnalia at Blandings Castle" i.e. the Blandings Parva School Treat. Upset after another confrontation with Angus McAllister about paving the yew alley with gravel, and having to wear a top hat and stiff collar, he is in the process of judging the cottage gardens of Blandings Parva, one of the event's contests, when he meets a young girl of 12 or 13, one of the London Air children that had been sent to the countryside from London's East End for a time to experience nature. She commands a dog to stop growling at Lord Emsworth, and goes on to say that she had picked some flowers from "up at the big 'ahse. Coo! The old josser the plice belongs to didn't arf chase me. 'E found me picking 'em and 'e sharted somefin at me and came runnin' after me, but I copped 'im on the shin wiv a stone and 'e stopped to rub it and I came away." Lord Emswoth's "mind was so filled with admiration and gratitude" on hearing how she treated McAllister right just after his tussle with him, takes her under his wing, showing her his garden, letting her pick all the flowers she wants, and treats her to a very fine meal, sending food more for her brother. A very sweet story.

Enough for now, more Blandings stories soon.