Moe Lane's Blog, page 498

Publishers need to accept the concept of price points in Kindle.

Yes, I’m shouting into the wind. But this is my blog, so I’m exerting my privilege to do so.

The basic issue here is that, yes, most publishers want people buying physical books, presumably because they’ve spent a lot of money on the physical infrastructure necessary to make physical books. Unfortunately for them, we live in a time where adequate books can be published cheaply on-demand, and digital copies can be published more cheaply still. The publishing industry has been at war with Amazon for decades over this, and the best it’s been able to do is manage a slow, grinding retreat. And if Amazon goes away, I guarantee that smaller, more specialized e-publishing companies will rush in to fill the void*. The technology is here, and it will be used.

In the meantime: if you are a midlist author**, or you are the executor of the estate of a deceased author, you are leaving money on the table if you let the established publishers define your e-book prices. Here’s an example: WASP, by Eric Frank Russell. I’ve never read it. I hear it’s extremely good. I’m not paying nine bucks for it. If you’re in charge of Russell’s estate and you’re wondering why you never see the royalties for e-sales that you were expecting, that’s why. That book should be five bucks. Possibly four. It’d definitely sell better… which would be the problem, wouldn’t it?

I mention all of this against personal interest, mind you. I’m a self-published author who benefits from the artificially-high prices of my competitors (and hopefully future competitors). But we’re all bozos on this bus.

Moe Lane

#commissionearned

*Or the global economy will collapse. But if that happens, the publishing industry will have other problems to deal with, like the effective end of civilization above the regional level.

**There are several authors who I will tolerate paying extra for their e-books. But that’s an all-that-the-traffic-will-bear kind of situation.

‘Walk Like An Egyptian.’

Walk Like An Egyptian, Bangles

#commissionearned

The ‘Completely Mislabeled’ MEET CUTE trailer.

MEET CUTE is not a romantic comedy. It is a horror movie.

I just wanted to establish that for the record.

Moe Lane

PS: To be fair, most voluntary time travel movies are horror movies.

So *that* was fun.

My local computer guy is fortunately still alive, and in business – the latter at least can be a bit of a craps shoot, these days – and was able to diagnosis the problem. Basically, my non-SSD drive decided to commit suicide. Thankfully, all of my creative work, including my books and ongoing writing projects, is on the SSD, because I was apparently smart several years ago and put them on the drive less likely to embrace the void*. Running around to resolve all of this ate up the day.

…Which wasn’t actually so bad. It was a nice day out to go driving around, and there’s plenty of greenery where I live.  The hard part was internalizing the idea that I could just, you know, leave. I wasn’t on-call. The freedom was almost alarming.

Moe Lane

*I have since made sure that my creative work has been freshly backed up on an external hard drive.

Let’s see if *this* publishes.

Chrome and WordPress REALLY don’t like each other anymore.

Reminder: DUTIES on pre-order, TALES FROM THE FERMI RESOLUTION on super-sale.

I’m not gonna be cheesy and imply that buying my books right now will help me out financially, seeing as how my computer may be in the middle of a catastrophic breakdown. That’s silly (I can afford to replace it), and more than a little offensive. No, I’m going to state outright that buying my books right now will help you in your own personal journey to be the best you you can possibly be. Which is still cheesy, but it’s affirmative cheesy, so that’s all right.

DUTIES! Now on pre-order!

TALES FROM THE FERMI RESOLUTION! Now on 99 cent sale!

My computer isn’t working.

Won’t boot up. So I’m doing this off of my new Chromebook, and there goes the morning. Light posting until I can go see my computer guy, assuming that company survived the pandemic…

PS: On the bright side: I can apparently post fine from here. I had to switch to Microsoft Edge on my PC because Chrome for PC didn’t like WordPress anymore…

The CYBERPUNK 2077: PHANTOM LIBERTY DLC teaser trailer.

Joke’s on you, CD Projekt Red: I’m gonna play it straight up. Without visible irony. “Phantom,’ my red-blooded NUSA [expletive deleted]…

09/08/22 Snippet, BUZZ ON THE STREETS.

Exegesis!

Patreon!

Out on the street, we went on a bit of an amble. I didn’t have anywhere to be and neither did Lucas, and the sidewalks of Cin City are always good for a free floor show or two. Besides, you never knew. Somebody might be following either one of us, if only on general principles.

Lucas gave me a sidelong look as we walked. “Gotta admit, Tom, I was expecting you to try to wheedle one of the items for your… what do y’all have?”

“What what do we have?” I said. “Offices? Apartments? They’re usually the same place.”

“I meant more like, you know, a temple or something.”

“Ha! Nah, we don’t need those.” I waved in the direction of the docks. “We got Mount Jeanie, instead.”

“I thought people didn’t live there, though.”

That earned him a stare. “Of course people don’t live there! It’s an iceberg, Lucas. It’s cold. I mean, we’ve got a couple of buildings on it, but that’s just for the look of it.” Not to mention the odd dramatic showdown with a demon from the Christian Hell, but hopefully I’d never have to do that again.

RIP, Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, and other realms and territories.

A long life and reign, and both were memorable. My condolences to her family and nation.

The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon.

The King and The Queen Consort will remain at Balmoral this evening and will return to London tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/VfxpXro22W

— The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) September 8, 2022