Jim C. Hines's Blog, page 183

iPhone Apps?

Thanks for everyone's input on my iPhone vs. Droid X debate last month.  After thinking about it, I ultimately decided to go for the iPhone.

People made a lot of good points about providers and coverage, but a few people also asked what I'd primarily be using it for.  It sounds odd, but I don't actually use my cellphone for a lot of calling and texting.  I expect to use this more for web-based updates (Twitter/Facebook), e-mail, and as a convenient camera for taking pics/video of the family and anything else that looks interesting.

It was the camera that ultimately pushed me over to the iPhone.  The Droid has more megapixels, but in pretty much every comparison I found, the iPhone just took better pictures and video.

I've been notified that my shiny new phone should show up by the weekend.  So I should have just enough time to figure the silly thing out before heading to World Fantasy, which means I can finally be one of the Cool Authors posting updates and pics from the con.

For those of you who've used these things, what apps do you recommend?  What are the must-have additions, not to mention the fun stuff?

Sunday Stuff

1. Alma Alexander has been chronicling the Rebirth of a Novel, publicly rewriting an old manuscript.  She's interspersing this with guest posts by various authors, including yours truly.  I talk about how I got started writing, and even share two paragraphs of my very first (very bad) unpublished novel.

2. Beth Bernobich's debut novel Passion Play [B&N |  Mysterious Galaxy | Amazon] comes out this Tuesday.  Sherwood Smith and I talk about the book over on the Book View Cafe blog.  Some of the early buzz for this book has focused on Bernobich's portrayal of rape.  We discuss that, the characterization, the Cool Stuff theory of fiction, and more.  (It's a fairly long chat.)

3. A question for anyone in Denver, Seattle, or Portland.  My agent noticed that sales of the goblin books had spiked in these three regions, mostly in "nontraditional" venues.  I'm told this usually indicates a few supermarket chains, and stores like Toys R Us and Starbucks.  Has anyone out there seen Jig & crew popping up in Kroger or Fred Meyer or anything like that?  We're curious where those extra sales are coming from.

4. More on e-book pricing.  One of the complaints that came up a lot in response to my e-book post was the ridiculousness of e-books costing more than hardcovers.  Writer Beware explains why this happens.  (Short version: it's the effect of two competing sales models.)

First Book Friday: Alyx Dellamonica

Welcome to First Book Friday , an ongoing series exploring how various authors sold their first books.

Alyx Dellamonica 's debut novel came out just about one year ago, but that's not the cool part.

Alyx's book just won the Sunburst award !  Her first novel beat out books by Charles de Lint, Cory Doctorow, Karl Schroeder, and Robert Charles Wilson.  How freaking cool is that?!?!

So here's Alyx, to tell you how she wrote and sold her award-winning first novel.

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I finished writing Indigo Springs [B&N |  Mysterious Galaxy | Amazon] in 2003, in the summertime, and my wonderful agent, Linn Prentis, went to Tor Books with it right away.

This happened at practically the same nanosecond that marriage equality was breaking out across Canada. My partner and I had an August weekend picked out, but legalizing our marriage on the chosen day hinged on the law changing by July. If not, we'd need a Plan B… and, all along, we knew there were no guarantees. It would be wrong to say I never gave my novel any thought during that period, but it turns out that waiting to find out if your civil rights situation is going to change for the better can be somewhat all-consuming.

Then, when gay marriage did become legal in British Columbia in July of 2003, I went straight from second-guessing the Supreme Court into wedding plans.

Meanwhile, Jim Frenkel at Tor had accepted my book, pending some changes. A long back and forth began. It took awhile to finalize everything–I had 15,000 words to cut, for one thing, and there were elements of my bizarre magical world that needed more explanation. And again, life intruded–some major life challenges cropped up on my end in 2006… and 2007… and 2008. At times, the novel deal seemed unreal and far away. But contracts got signed, and money came, and my father e-mailed me every other week to ask when he could buy INDIGO SPRINGS in a Chapters. These signs of steady progress toward officially Being a Novelist gave me something to hold onto. (Now my father is in China, demanding to know when the book will be out in Mandarin.)

One of the coolest things about my first-novel journey was that Irene Gallo had spotted this amazing Julie Bell painting and liked it so much she went looking to see if any of their editors might want it for a particular project. Jim pounced on it immediately. He sent an electronic copy to me the week we finalized the deal, with a note that said something like, "If you don't like it, we'll get something else." But I loved it! It is not only a beautiful painting, it's very appropriate.

So, unlike most writers, I knew coming out of the gate that I was going to have amazing cover art. What's more, because I did still have to tweak the novel, I had time to sync some of the details in the art with my narrative. Tiny things: my heroine, Astrid, is dolled up in the final third of the book, so it was easy to match the dress she wears with the one on the cover. There's also a golden bowl in the painting, and by chance INDIGO SPRINGS has a ritual that features a bowl… voilà, suddenly that bowl was golden.

Writers hear cover art horror stories all the time: "They took my protagonist and made her Swedish, and also gave her an extra head!" Knowing all along that I had a stunner of an image was reassuring in its own right.  Then the design team got in on the process, and Oh My! Seeing what the painting became later, when cover proofs started reaching me, was like a huge, beautiful gift from the universe.

People talk about how slow publishing is, and it's not unusual to finish a book and then wait years to see it in bookstores. The waiting can try your patience, there's no doubt about it. But as it happened INDIGO SPRINGS came out at a time when I was entirely ready to enjoy the launch party, the good reviews, and the book's overall success. Prior to that time, there'd been a lot going on in my life–tough, distracting, challenging stuff!–and in retrospect it feels as though everything has unfolded at just the right pace.

E-book Pricing

My post on royalties earlier this week generated some interesting responses, particularly with regard to e-book sales.  My e-book sales were, at best, 4.3% of my total sales (for The Stepsister Scheme).

Several people said my e-books were priced too high.  The printed book cost $7.99 (U.S.), whereas the e-book was available for $6.99.  If the price were lower, I'd sell more e-books.1

Well … sure.  And if the price of the paperback were cheaper, I'd sell more of those.  That's basic economics.

Beneath those responses is, I think, the belief that e-books just aren't worth $6.99.  We're still arguing over the value of an e-book, meaning both how much does it cost to produce, and how much are people willing to pay?

There's an assumption that e-books should be cheap because there's no printing cost.  But printing costs are only about 8-10% of the overall cost of producing a book.  Shipping and storage are also a factor, but the majority of the costs aren't about the physical book.

For the sake of argument, I'm talking about professional, commercially produced books.  You have to pay the author's advance and royalties, the cover artist, the editor, the copy editor, the typesetter, the sales force, and that doesn't even get into distributor costs or the percentages taken by retailers.

"But then how do you explain all of those cheap/free e-books on Amazon, Jim?  If they can do it, why can't you?"

I can, actually.  I'm planning to re-release Goldfish Dreams as an e-book, and it will be significantly cheaper than my other books.  This book has already been commercially published once, and the rights have reverted to me.  So a lot of the professional work has already been done.

When the rights revert to me for my other books, I may consider doing something similar.  Cheap e-books seem like one good way to keep an author's old backlist in print.

But those initial production costs have to get covered somewhere.  Sure, I could skip straight to self-publishing for my next book and bypass the publisher, but I don't have the expertise to produce a good product, and I don't have the sales force or distribution to get that product out there.

One thing I've considered is that it might be cool if the e-book price dropped 50% a year or two after a book came out, assuming the book earned back most of its costs in that first year.  But then, why couldn't you do the same with the print book?  (I'm sure there are reasons; I'm just letting my mind wander a bit now.)

I don't know what the "right" price for an e-book is, or if there's one correct, fixed price point.  $6.99 seems reasonable to me, but it's obvious some people disagree.  I'm personally reluctant to buy an e-book for more than $10 … but if the alternative was a $25 hardcover or waiting a year for the paperback, I might go for the e-book.

I know this is an old and ongoing debate.  But I wanted to put a few of my thoughts out there as to why "Just make the e-books cheaper!" doesn't strike me as the answer.

Discussion welcome, as always.

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Please note that I have no control over my book prices. Those are set by the publisher. ↩

Shirvell vs. Armstrong

For months, Michigan Assistant Attorney General Andrew Shirvell has been running his own personal crusade against University of Michigan student assembly president Chris Armstrong, who happens to be gay.

Shirvell started a blog called Chris Armstrong Watch, which he recently closed to all but invited readers.  He described the blog as "a site for concerned University of Michigan alumni, students, and others who oppose the recent election of Chris Armstrong — a RADICAL HOMOSEXUAL ACTIVIST, RACIST, ELITIST, & LIAR."  The photo of Armstrong and a gay pride flag with a swastika photoshopped onto it is from one of his posts.

Shirvell has attended multiple meetings at U of M to protest, criticize, and attack Armstrong in various venues.  Armstrong has filed for a personal protection order, and the U of M has issued a trespassing warning against Shirvell.

All of which leaves me wondering, what the hell is wrong with this guy?  What is it about homosexuality which causes people to so completely lose their shit?  This is the assistant attorney general of the state of Michigan, and he's facing a PPO and potential harassment charges over what?  The fact that Armstrong likes men?

I've seen some commenters suggest Shirvell is closeted himself.  I have no idea about the man's sexuality, and I don't care.  Could he be gay, and lashing out at Armstrong as a way to externalize his own conflict?  I guess so.  But many of these comments seem aimed at hurting/insulting him with the implication that he's gay, and that makes me uncomfortable.

"Gay" is not an insult.  It's not a weapon or a way to score points in an argument, even an argument against a bigot.  If Shirvell is gay, then this whole mess becomes more tragic … but it doesn't explain where Shirvell developed this obsessive loathing for homosexuality to begin with.

I'm sure there are things people do in the bedroom (or elsewhere) that would squick most of us out.  For Shirvell, it's homosexuality.  Me, well, there are certain fetishes that make me cringe a bit to think about.  But so what?  That's my problem.

Here's a radical idea for Mr. Shirvell.  If you don't like homosexuality, don't have sex with guys.  If I think the use of produce in the bedroom is icky, I should keep the carrots and cucumbers in the crisper.

Voila!  Problem solved!

Where the hell do you get off bullying consenting adults about what they do in the privacy of their own bedroom?  What messed-up logic makes someone think this is okay?  We've seen the results of this kind of bullying.  Is that the ultimate goal, to bully Armstrong and others like him to suicide?

I don't get it.  With all the real problems out there, why would someone spend so much time and energy on this kind of pointless hate?

Shirvell has taken a personal leave of absence from his position.  He will face a disciplinary hearing when he returns to work.

I wonder if Shirvell's disgust about homosexuality is as strong as my own disgust at the idea of a man like him representing me and my state.

Analyzing the Royalties

One of the many things my agent does for me is to take my royalties information from DAW and track it all in a nice, convenient spreadsheet.  This allows me to better indulge my data fetish, examining trends and playing with numbers until my wife reminds me I'm supposed to be going grocery shopping instead of spending all afternoon on the computer.

Last week I received the spreadsheet for my royalties statement through June 30, 2010 — right before Red Hood's Revenge came out.

This is my fifth royalties check from DAW.  (They come out every six months.)  As of June 30, I had five books in print, four of which had earned out their advances.  I'm still waiting for the reserve against returns to go away on Mermaid, at which point I expect that one to start paying out as well.

To me, this royalty statement — particularly the graph I put together below — illustrates the importance of a backlist.  You can see how the royalty checks have grown pretty steadily over the past three years as I've continued to write and publish books.  This latest check will be about ten times what I got back in June of 2008 (point 1 on the graph below).

Some authors who get that bajillion-dollar advance for their first book.  I'm not one of them.  The slower but steady approach seems to be working for me though, at least so far.

Those books will eventually go out of print.  But DAW is pretty good about keeping things in print for a while, so I'm hopeful this trend will continue.

Another interesting data point came when I compared print sales to electronic.  I believe e-books are growing, and electronic sales are likely to take up a larger portion of overall sales.  For the moment though … well, take a look at the breakdown of total sales per book:

I've had the best electronic sales with Stepsister Scheme (don't ask me why).  For that book, e-books make up about 4.3% of the total sales.  I don't really have enough data to say how much or how quickly those e-book sales seem to be growing.  For now, while I definitely appreciate the extra royalties, they're not yet a significant factor for me.

Another interesting point from that second graph: total sales of Stepsister are a little lower than sales of Goblin Quest.  Likewise for Mermaid.  This threw me for a second.  After all, the weekly sales numbers for the princess books are great, so why are the goblin books selling better?

The answer is, the goblin books have been selling longer.  Goblin Quest came out in November of 2006.  Stepsister came out in January, 2009.  Meaning in a year and a half, Stepsister Scheme has sold almost as many copies as Goblin Quest did in just under four.

And now it's time to save this post and go get groceries.  Questions and comments are welcome, as always.

Anniversary

Seven years ago today, I married an incredible, smart, kind-hearted, patient woman, someone I love, who also happened to be my best friend.

The picture below is not from that day.  The actual wedding was in May the next year, but we were legally married in October.  As it turns out, it takes a little of the stress out of the whole wedding thing if you've already been married half a year.  However, this is one of my favorite pictures from the whole marriage/wedding thing, and I believe it best captures that sense of becoming a family.

Marriage is not what I expected.  It's not what the movies led me to expect. It's not always easy, and it's not perfect.  (Though we're getting closer … I got her hooked on Buffy, and I think I've successfully gotten her into Doctor Who as well.)  But looking back, asking her to marry me was the best decision I've ever made.  Hectic as these past seven years have sometimes been, I wouldn't trade 'em for anything.

Happy anniversary, Amy!  I love you!

(A pic from the October marriage day is behind the cut.  I posted this one partly because it's a nice picture, and partly because people occasionally ask what I looked like with long hair…)

First Book Friday: John Levitt

Welcome to First Book Friday , an ongoing series exploring how various authors sold their first books.

Today we have John Levitt, whose lifestyle incorporates both the high-flying luxury of the author and the nonstop partying of the rocker, for approximately 400% more awesomeness.  (Check out his band's page on MySpace.)  In a world full of cat-loving authors and readers, John dares to write urban fantasy with a dog on the cover.  Because that's just the kind of guy he is.  He's also on LiveJournal as johnlevitt.

Um… okay, so both kids have been sick this week, and my intro-writing skills are a bit overtired.  Anyway, here's John!

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I'm one of the few people who has not one, but two first book stories. Not really, of course — there can only be one first book, but for all practical purposes I have two.

My first novel was published back in 1989. I'd spent some years previous to that as a police officer, and I used to tell my friends various "war stories," which seemed to entertain them. So I decided I'd write a book about my police experiences.

Back in those ancient days, it was a lot easier for a first time writer to get published. Most publishers still took unagented submissions, and getting an agent wasn't the holy grail it's become today. Besides, I knew someone who knew someone, and a casual word was all it took for an agent to take a look at the ms.

He liked it, and tried to sell it for me on a handshake agreement. No contract, no forms, just a simple verbal agreement – fraught with danger now, but back then was a simpler time.

He couldn't sell the book – everyone liked it, but didn't think it would sell, because it was about police work in Salt Lake City, not L.A. or Miami. But the editor at Doubleday passed reluctantly, and mentioned that if I ever wrote a novel, he'd love to see it.

How hard can that be, I thought? Ah, the arrogance of the clueless. But I wrote one, a thriller titled Carnivores, and it sold to St. Martin's Press. I was happy, but not overwhelmed. I assumed getting a novel published was honestly no big thing. A year later, I sold a sequel. As I said, a simpler time.

Then, for various reasons, I quit writing. Fast forward to 15 years later. I'd always been a reader of fantasy  and had in mind a desire to write a modern fantasy, a book combining magic and mayhem, P.I. noir with odd creatures and black magicians. I started it on a whim, not knowing if there was any market for it, and then discovered that not only was there a market, but a complete sub genre called urban fantasy.

So I finished it up, and went about finding an agent. I had no doubt about finding one; I assumed it would be easy. I was a published author, I'd gotten a rave review from Publisher's Weekly and an enthusiastic blurb from Steven King himself for Carnivores. I researched agents, found the one I thought best suited for me, and dashed off a query letter.

I got back a very nice rejection note, saying though my credentials were impressive, the idea just didn't grab her. I was actually shocked; that's how naïve I was about how the business had changed. So I reworked the query, and sent it off to my second choice, and got an enthusiastic request for a partial. This was more like it. Except, this agent passed as well – just didn't grab him. About this time I realized things  might be a bit more difficult than they used to be.

It took me about 8 months and numerous rejections before I landed my agent – but as it turned out, she was the perfect agent for me in every way. She helped me polish Dog Days [B&N |  Mysterious Galaxy | Amazon], an urban fantasy, (pointing out where she thought I'd gone astray), and submitted to five houses – three rejects and two offers. And this time, I was properly thrilled. I went with Ace, who offered a two book deal, then another two. And I've been writing ever since.

Thursday Links

1. A Michigan school is refusing to allow a transgender student to be homecoming king.  Even though this student received the most votes, he is listed in the school's records as female, and therefore the school administration says he is ineligible.  Personally, I hope the school gets idiot-slapped for this.  But I keep thinking to myself, those kids elected an openly transgender student as their homecoming king.  I can't imagine that happening when I was in high school 20 years ago.  Change is a slow thing, but this gives me hope … for the kids, if not for the adults.

2. The Sorting Hat: Which Kind of Activist Are You?  Yonmei's piece explores the different approaches to confrontation and activism, and touches a bit on what I talked about in Anger vs. Reason.  Only Yonmei uses Harry Potter references, and came up with a much more entertaining post.

3. Getting Published is Not a Crap Shoot.  I've said this before, on many occasions.  Writer Beware says the same thing.  I take this as official proof that I'm right, so from now on, anyone who refers to publishing as a lottery, crap shoot, or any other gambling metaphor shall immediately be booted in the head.

4. Empire Strikes Back Chess Set, by icgetaway.  Because it is awesome.  This is a sequel to his Star Wars chess set, which I linked to a while back.  Click the pic or link for the full photo set on Flickr.

Diabetes Details 9: The Diagnosis

Previous diabetes posts are available by clicking the diabetes tag.

I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes on October 31, 1998.  That's right, the day I learned my pancreas was a lazy quitter and I'd have to monitor my carb intake for the rest of my life, I got to make my way through a hospital packed full of Halloween candy for the other patients.

My father was diagnosed with the same thing when he was 24 and a half, midway through grad school, so I was familiar with the disease.  In October of '98, I was exactly 24 and a half years old, and was just starting my second year of grad school.  (My son is not allowed to go to grad school until he's 25.)

The symptoms had started a few months earlier.  I started feeling a lot thirstier, and drinking much more.  Milk, water, orange juice … I even tried a few wine coolers.  (This brief period is the only time in my life I drank anything with alcohol.)

The trouble, though I didn't know it, was diabetic ketoacidosis.  As my pancreas cut down to part time work and prepared for retirement, my blood sugar rose steadily higher, throwing my body's pH out of whack and causing any number of nasty side effects.  My body kept trying to flush the crap out of my system, and to do that, it needed fluids.

Of course, the fluids I was drinking had a lot of carbs … which means my blood sugar just kept on climbing.  And all that fluid had to go somewhere, meaning I was constantly running to the bathroom, day and night.

In addition to the drink-n-pee cycle, my mood went downhill.  I was teaching freshman English at Eastern Michigan, and I remember ripping into one of my students I thought was disrespecting me.  When my roommate left his dirty dishes in the sink, I did them … swearing and slamming things around hard enough I'm surprised I didn't break 'em all.

Mom talks about my father going through the same thing.  She says she was relieved when he was diagnosed, because if he had continued acting that way, she wasn't sure how much longer she would have put up with him.

I also lost weight.  A lot of weight.  No matter how much I ate, my pancreas wasn't producing enough insulin to use that food.  I dropped from over 150 pounds down to about 130.  (For comparison, I was about 160 pounds in this picture.  130 on me is not healthy.)

When I finally figured out something wasn't right, I headed home.  I went out to dinner with my family, then used my father's glucose meter to check my blood.  Normal blood sugar is about 80-120.  The meter's range went up to 600.  Mine was too high to read.

Dad said he had already figured out I was diabetic from the amount I drank that night, and how often I went to the bathroom.

The nice thing is that after I went to the hospital, I felt better within a day or two.  Insulin is amazing stuff.  I had no idea just how bad I had been feeling until I was better.

I've kept the disease under pretty good control for 12 years now, in no small part because I remember how miserable I was back then, and I have no desire to go through that again.

I'm very comfortable talking about the disease, so questions and comments are more than welcome.  (With the understanding that I'm not a doctor, and I can only talk about my personal experiences.)

For those who are interested, the American Diabetes Association has a list of diabetes warning signs .

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Insulin/syringe photo by starrynight.