Mike Jastrzebski's Blog, page 69

Ramblin' (Wo)man

It's a real book!

by Christine Kling

"Lord, I was born a Ramblin' Wo-man

Trying to make a living and doing the best I can."

But it ain't easy. Oh Lord, it ain't easy.

Okay, so this blog is all about folks who want to "quit your job, move onto a boat, and write." The way we sailing writers intend to make a living is by writing, so you hope you are going to make enough money to support yourself in some sort of minimalist cruiser's lifestyle – and for most of us that means at least one or two cold beers and a little rice and beans as we hang on the hook for free, right?

So, today, I hope you won't mind if I talk dollars and sense.

That was no typo. I do mean sense, because it seems to me that there is no sense at all to this world of pricing for ebooks – and giving them away for free. I mean, we are trying to make a living here, right? And pricing of books is essential to this.

I wrote last week about my struggles with the print version of CIRCLE OF BONES. For me, getting a print version is all about trying to accommodate my readers, and when I uploaded the final beautiful layout of the print version, I discovered that if I made it available to bookstores, I would have to price it at a minimum of $19.00. For a paperback. I'm not kidding. That seemed crazy to me, so I took it out of the Expanded Distribution and priced it at $14.99. That was the best I could do. It's a fat book, after all, and paper is really expensive. There has to be some middle ground where we sailing writers can make a few pennies off the work and still offer it to the public at a reasonable price. Books produced by the POD (print on demand) technology are more expensive, and I had the audacity to write a long book. Long means fat and means lots of paper – hence a steep price.

My answer to the questionI posed a few weeks back, "Are sailors cheap?" was ultimately, yes. Paper costs lots of money, and that's one reason why so many sailors are early adopters of the ebook technology. And I admit, I like getting stuff for free as much as the next guy. But how am I going to make enough money to keep me in beans and beer if I'm giving away my writing for free? So I priced the print version of CIRCLE OF BONES at a point where I make about a buck a book.

The writer Zoe Winters writes this about ebook pricing, "It also attracts too many one night stands. People who will drive by, click on the buy button, but won't respect you enough to tell others about it (for the most part) and maybe not even enough to read it in the first place. "

So the question concerning ebooks becomes, do I want fans or do I want one-night stands?

Frankly, even as a former hippie, I must admit, I have never been a fan of one-night stands. And if I am going to be really frank, I'll admit that I know this from experience.

But then I look at all my fellow writeonthewater bloggers like Mike J and C.E. and John Urban all of whom have climbed way up the rankings, sold thousands of books, and made huge fan bases for themselves by pricing at 99 cents and/or giving away books for free. I wonder if I am crazy to hold my price for CIRCLE OF BONES at $3.99. Granted it has only been a couple of months, but I am not selling anywhere even close to what these guys are doing.  And I admit, I have been considering changing my stand – but in the end, I've decided, I just can't do it.

I do understand the marketing value of giving products away as loss leaders. And I also understand the Amazon ecosystem of algorithms that means that if you give away tens of thousands of books, once you put it back at the original price, it will then appear on thousands of pages under the "People who bought this book also bought this . . ." and that will lead to increased sales. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I believe in this book that took me five years to write, and I hope that with time, people will discover it, talk about it, and the book will find more readers. I have to keep the faith.

I have recently started the process of getting the rights back to my Seychelle books and I intend to re-publish them myself. I might be a lot more willing to put the first book of that series on sale at a bargain basement price or maybe even give it away for free. Because, the point is, I want to keep writing and cruising. I don't want to be forced to go get a job as a Walmart greeter. I have the idea for the next Cole and Riley book, and an idea for a new Seychelle book, and an idea for a new Young Adult series about a girl who is half human and half mermaid – and I want to have the time to write all these books.

And most of all, I want to get back on board my boat and head off for the Bahamas in a couple of months, because like the Allman Brothers say when it's time for leaving, I hope you'll understand.

Fair winds!

Christine

Author of CIRCLE OF BONES
Available for Kindle and Nook

 

p.s.

Kudos to the Allman Brothers who just won a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammy Awards for 43 years of making music. Has it really been that long?

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Last minutes…

C.E. Grundler

Procrastination is defined as the act of replacing high-priority or important actions with tasks of lower priority, or doing something from which one brings enjoyment, and thus putting off important tasks to a later time. I have my own definition for procrastination – a luxury, and one I rarely have.

My life has a way of expanding to consume whatever time exists. Family, both human and four-footed, obligations, an old house, writing, not to mention an old boat… if it's not one thing, it's another. My days start well before sunrise and extend well into the night, with a few hours of sleep in between. As a rule, I usually have more things to do than time to accomplish them in, and I tend to operate on a 'Which first is first?' approach, forging ahead from project to project. That's just the way it is.

The other day a friend asked me if I need to wait for inspiration in order to write, and I'll admit, that did amuse me. Inspiration? I don't need no stinkin' inspiration! I've seen writer's block described as the time when the voices in your head won't talk to you. I guess I'm lucky that way… my voices won't shut the f*** up, and the minute my fingers hit the keyboard, the words come. I'm not saying they're always the right words, or even good words, but they come and I let them flow, then sort them out later. That's what revisions are for. Inspiration is nice, but aggravation, frustration, elation… they all work. Even boredom. In fact, once I start writing, my mood tends to reflect whatever fills the page, rather than the reverse.

In the end, I'll admit that much of what I write, and my life in general, winds up being last minute. And yes, that includes these posts. Since I've begun, the truth is a good 95% of them have been written the same morning they're posted. But it's not that I'm procrastinating – it's just that my days, from dawn to dusk and beyond, are nothing but a series of non-stop last minutes.

 

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Concussions On The Water

(Photo courtesy of Team Oracle – Americas Cup Trials)

Concussions to the head have become a hot topic. Football, hockey, and soccer players are learning of the peril of brain injuries. And yes, concern about concussions has reached those of us at Write On The Water. After all, we live in an environment of swinging sailboat booms, sliding cockpit hatches, and low ceiling berths. And even land-based writers eventually fall victim as they navigate through an unlit house after hours of late night writing.

In some cases, these hits to the head get recognized only years later. Such is the case of a noggin knock I had back in the 80s when I was replacing the stem on our old wooden sailboat, Factor X.

The original stem, installed in 1946, had rot near the waterline which suggested that the old curved piece of oak needed to be replaced. Removing that piece of wood was no easy feat. First, I sanded down the most forward planks that overlapped the stem. Next, I used a chisel to chip-out the bungs. (On land they're called wooden plugs; ship builders call them bungs, primarily, I believe, because this allows them to use the noun bung-hole.) Finally, I removed the old screws. To give you a sense of this undertaking, let me just say that this required a matter of weeks, not hours. For every screw that twisted out easily, four more would spin in place, requiring all kinds of alternative efforts at extraction. In all, there were probably seventy-five to one-hundred fasteners embedded by salt, corrosion, and age.

The part of this job I recall most involved some very large screws near the stem's crown, set inside the toe rail. There I stood, on the top of a tall step ladder, ten or twelve feet in the air, as I worked on getting those damn screws out. They weren't budging. Screwdrivers, needle nose pliers, vice grips – nothing worked. Finally, I resorted to a small eighteen inch crowbar.

I remember pulling hard on that metal crowbar. Really hard. So hard that my body was arching back as if I were leaning into a Triple Lindy. Still the screws wouldn't come out. But if persistence is a quality that serves a writer, it definitely aids a boat builder. I pulled even harder and really put my back into it.

The next moments seemed to happen in slow motion. I can't say for sure, but I believe the sun was out and the day warm, and at this otherwise uneventful moment I stood at the very top of that step ladder and yanked with all my might. My hands were at head height and I pulled. As it turned out, the resulting force was sufficient to remove the entrenched screw. In fact, it was so sufficient that the bronze fastener started coming out with ease and now all of that backward leaning energy was about to send me falling from this high perch. In an instant, I shifted my weight forward to avoid a fall. I managed to stay on the ladder. That was the good news. The bad news was my head managed to come into instant contact with the crowbar. The entire sequence went something like, whoa, whoa, bang, whoa, wobble, wobble, wow.

This event took place quite a while ago, but if memory serves me I first checked for blood, then for witnesses. Seeing a little of both, but not too much of either, I staggered down the ladder and took a break.

Later that day, I got back up and eventually all of the fasteners came out and the stem was replaced, and in time (lots of time, actually), the boat was ready for the water. Looking back at this, I am now thinking that there just might be a need for wooden boat helmets, or perhaps writers' helmets, or even sailing helmets. You think I jest? Take a look at the future.

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(Courtesy of Sailnet.com)

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Todays blog

Sorry, Michael Haskins is ill today but he assures me that he will be up and running in time for his next blog two weeks from today.

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The Storm Killer free results

By Mike Jastrzebski

Sunday was the final day to get The Storm Killer free through Amazon. As I sit down to write this blog I've given away over 12,000 copies of The Storm Killer.

During the past four weeks I've given away over 28,000 books between my four titles. What strikes me as interesting is that The Storm Killer and Key Lime Blues (A Wes Darling Mystery) which were my first two books, were also the most downloaded of the four books.

Key Lime Blues (A Wes Darling Mystery) was downloaded over 11,000 times, Dog River Blues (A Wes Darling Mystery) was downloaded about 3,500 times and Weep No More was downloaded only 1500 times.

As for sales, so far this month I've sold 915 copies of Key Lime Blues, 398 copies of Dog River Blues, and 51 copies of Weep No More. Prior to this weekend I sold 53 copies of The Storm Killer and I'm looking forward to seeing what will happen now that the free offer is over.

If this past week's sales of Key Lime Blues is any indication it should be a good week. I'll post my sales next week.  The real question is will my sales be up or down in the coming weeks in comparison to my sales before I started giving away books.

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Back at the beginning

I rapped my ring against Aspara's hull, hoping to magnify its sound and attract the attention of a pod of a dozen dolphins several hundred yards off our bow. Sure enough, a few seconds later, they were breaking the sea's surface just five feet off our beam, so near I could tell one from another by their markings. Dolphins are curious creatures, but they also are hunters. And when it was obvious we had nothing to feed them, they went on their way. Still, it was a magical five minutes while they swam around and under our boat. This particular January day, I was sailing on Tampa Bay out of Apollo Beach with my friends Kathy and her brother Chuck in Chuck's 32-foot Roughwater sailboat. This sailboat (only 70 were built, in Taiwan) is a narrow-beamed, strongly built blue water cruiser with lots of teak. More than one boater commented on its attractive, classic lines as we sailed by.

This was back in 1998. I had arrived from Canada to take a live-aboard sailing course in St. Petersburg. There was a good reason for learning advanced sailing on Tampa Bay as opposed to a similar course in Canada: most of the water in Canada is too solid to sail on in December!

The course was conducted on board a four-cabin, 46-foot Hunter sailboat which, as classrooms go, is pretty pleasant. My fellow students were Mel and Susan from Wisconsin. Our ages ranged from 47 (me) to 64 (Mel) and experience from limited (Susan) to more than 50 years (Mel). Rick Meyer, our instructor, was a "Magnum, P.I." look-alike with a great sense of humor and limitless patience. Considering the Hunter was nearly twice the length of any boat I had ever sailed, Rick's patience indeed was a virtue.

The goal of this course is to teach students in the six-day course how to competently sail a large cruising sailboat. Boats of this type are available for charter at several locations on Tampa Bay and throughout the Caribbean, making the course attractive to many of us who boat on the Great Lakes and wish to charter down south in the winter. Others, such as Mel and Sue, are moving up to a larger boat and take the course to increase their ability and confidence. Charter firms look at this type of training as qualifying you to charter one of their vessels without the need for an onboard captain.

Mornings consisted of lessons and tests on sailing, safety, boat maintenance, navigation and other skills involved in cruising aboard a large charter-style sailboat. We learned basics such as checking the raw water strainer and engine oil, and far more complex skills such as man overboard drills, or how to turn the vessel within just over its own length using a back and fill method.

The liveaboard cruising course is the highest level you can take using your sailing experience to qualify you – more on that later. During the course, you are tested for the US Sailing's Basic Keelboat and Basic Cruising Certification.

During afternoons we sailed to various locations on Tampa Bay and the nearby Gulf of Mexico to hone our skills. We learned sail trim, boat handling under sail and power, anchoring and the ever-challenging docking. Take it from me, if your own vessel is a smaller one, handling a large, very expensive sailboat in a crowded marina is a challenge.

We all spent turns botching our approaches with Rick coaching us until we got it right (see patience above). Best of all, no gel coat was lost during our attempts although the nerves of the folks in the boat beside our slip were doubtless rubbed raw.

Mealtimes were generally onboard with everyone lending a hand. The galley was well stocked and, since Mel was somewhat of an amateur chef, we ate quite well. And, of course, we swapped tales and discussed the day's experiences over sundowners in whatever quiet bay we had anchored out in.

Susan's experience with sailing was actually quite limited, so much so that she was frightened by the boat's heeling in a 10 knot breeze. Rick explained to her that this was normal for a keelboat, that it was nothing to be afraid of and that she would simply have to get used to it. He then kept her at the helm, patiently coaching her until she relaxed her white knuckled grip.

A couple of days later, while drinking coffee below, the three of us watched her smiling as she competently helmed the boat without assistance in a brisk following breeze – smiling to herself in pleasure at her achievement, not knowing we were watching. It was a pretty special moment for all of us actually.

(originally published in the Tampa Tribune)

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Readers

Print cover by Robin Ludwig

Most of us who have chosen to become writers have done so because we are first and foremost – readers. We have had that experience of getting lost in a story, of falling in love with a character and his or her creator, of entering a world we then longed to return to. And then, we too wanted to create those worlds, characters, stories.

I remember when I was in the seventh grade and I fell in love with science fiction and writers like Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein. I announced then to all my friends  that I wanted to be a science fiction writer when I grew up, and I wrote stories in journals and notebooks, but never shared them with any readers. I didn't like my stories enough and I didn't think anyone would want to read them. As I grew older, I stopped reading as much science fiction. It has only been recently that I've realized that part of the reason for that was because there was not nearly as much good science fiction being published. Once the bigger New York publishers decided that science fiction wasn't selling in the best selling numbers like romance and thrillers, the sections in the stores for science fiction and fantasy dwindled and in a self-fulfilling prophesy, so did the readers.

But something remarkable happened when the Kindle made its debut and authors started self publishing their work, skipping all the middle men and gate keepers and going directly to readers. Science fiction and fantasy has begun to thrive again.

As we watch what is happening in the publishing business with this "democratization of publishing" we can always look at the music industry that is about ten years ahead of publishing in this revolution. Remember back when we were kids and we all listened to Casey Kasem and America's Top 40? (Showing my age, aren't I) Kids all over the country were all listening to the same music that was played over and over on the radio. Only a few top bands and singers ever had albums that became bestsellers. Enter Napster and then the iPod and iTunes and soon young people were listening to all sorts of different music, and while the big groups weren't making the millions off CD's anymore, thousands of new young bands and groups were finding their niche audiences and making a living making music. Today, most people have more music on their iPods than we ever had in our vinyl collections. If you feed people the same stuff all the time and that's all they know, they'll continue to buy it because people have a hunger for music. Give them variety, and they'll buy even more.

And readers have a thirst for stories. As publishing companies became divisions of multinational corporations and editors were forced to search only for mega-bestsellers, midlist authors (like me) got pushed out of the business and the choices for readers grew more and more narrow. Most paper books are now sold in places like Walmart and Costco where readers are given the print equivalent of America's Top 40, and if that's all that's offered, that is what they will buy.

But in the world of ebooks, rather than narrowing the readers' choices, ebooks are expanding them. I did a search tonight and found that Amazon has over 3 million ebooks available. Give artists the ability to cut out the middle man and take their work directly to the consumer, and the consumer discovers the incredible breadth of choices they have.

Yes, some of those choices (books) are truly awful, but I believe those will fail in the marketplace as they should. Just like folks are able to find cool stuff on YouTube and iTunes (amid all the garbage), people will find the good books out there in cyberspace by searching the best seller lists, reading book reviewers/bloggers, and listening to word of mouth from friends.

I've been thinking about readers a great deal this week as I've been working on the print version of my new book Circle of Bones. I've been struggling (as usual) with my own DIY version of preparing the manuscript and cover and knowing all along that the book is going to be very expensive because the book is so long and paper costs. I'll probably not be able to make any money off the sales of these books because to build in any profit for me would make them far too costly. But I know that I have fans, readers of my prior books, who don't have ereaders yet and who want to read my new book in paper. I'm going through all this for them. And if some of them read the book and share their enthusiasm with a friend or two, maybe they will they will buy an ebook or two, and I'll make my wages from them.

So while I was toiling to get this print book up on Amazon's CreateSpace, I got an email from a bookseller sharing a link to an article from a Washington Post blog about things that writers could do during book signings to help their careers. The author of the article was a bookseller (and incidentally an author who was also pimping her book with this brilliant ploy to get on the good side of booksellers) who was outlining some of the do's and don'ts of author signings. She was encouraging authors to do everything possible to schmooze with the booksellers. She wrote:

"If you are nice to them, they will always think of you fondly, and your book is more likely to be one they recommend. This is not bribery, mind you, it is basic human decency. (Note: some authors do bring candy, which is maybe bribery, but also thoughtful and delicious. I am prone to such bribery myself, and would encourage the trait in others.) The morning after your event, when everyone's names are still fresh in your mind, write a thank you note to the bookstore. This should be obvious, but many authors seem to have been raised in barns."

Now I know that my new print book will not be accepted into most bookstores because I have joined the ranks of the self-published – not because of the quality of the book, but because of its origin. What I found interesting about this article that was supposedly telling authors about how to get booksellers to hand sell their books – is that it said nothing about writing a good story that booksellers will want to recommend to their customers. This article painted a portrait of a bookseller who cared less about the quality of the book she hand sold, but rather thought that chocolates and thank you notes for her would be good reason enough to convince her customers that a book was worth buying. Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this picture?

Now, don't get me wrong, I love book stores and I have worked in two different stores and spent many hours (days probably) cruising the aisles of many a little bookshop discovered in a small town (especially on my recent trip down the waterway). But I don't think anyone will disagree with the statement that the paper book business has not been healthy for quite some time. The business model is broken if even the very last link to the reader cares less about finding a good book for a reader and more about getting lobbied properly.

This afternoon I got an email from a reader. He wrote:

Hi Christine, Just finished the book. Very, very good. I really liked all

the references to nautical things that are part of my life. Really draws you

into the book because I can identify with so many things.

I am loving this new world of being an Indie author – a world where I can take my work directly to the reader with writing and designing my books all on my own – a world where I can ignore my former agent's advice to stop writing about boats and such. I think the print cover above for Circle of Bones is better than any cover New York ever designed for me.  And I will always be a reader first.  I write my nautical books because I can't find enough books with all this sailing and boating in them, so I've got to write them.  For those of you who are writers out there, why do you write? Is it also because as readers you can't find enough books of the sort you like to read?

Fair winds!

Christine

Author of CIRCLE OF BONES
Available for Kindle and Nook

 

Book cover design by Robin Ludwig designs. Check out her book cover portfolio!

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A quick apology…

C.E. Grundler

Just as Richard Jordan was posting about how life sometimes steps in the way of blogging, a friend of mine called with an emergency. I dropped everything — my posting included — and only now returned home. This late in the day, I've decided to save my post until next week. On the bright side, that puts me ahead of schedule — a rare thing indeed!

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What to Write About?

I feel my recent posts both here and at my home base have been in a dismal down spiral of ever less thought out and more poorly written boilerplate blogging. And I will not name any names, but I have seen some awfully last minute posts by my colleagues here at WOW. I am not an excuse maker, so I am trying to rectify how to maintain writing commitments while being crunched by time with other affairs. In Orwellian fashion, I know Mike J is watching and reading, so there is no escape… (do not stare into his eyes!)

Thinking about time pressures makes me realise the stages I go thru when writing a post. Because I have not had as much time to complete the writing process, I realise at the deadlines I have been left in my pre-writing decision making. How do I choose what to write about any given week? This week I am left with many options still in play. It reads like a what-is-what in my life during the last week:

- My preparations for exhibiting at the Miami Show.

- A sci-fi story idea where Google Maps is not only live but films every moment of everyone's life.

- Surfing the waves off Fort Lauderdale.

- TrawlerFest comes to Bahia Mar.

- Choosing a culinary torch to sear meat with.

- Finally getting a copy of a scholarly journal to see my article in print.

It turns out this week I will not get any farther in developing one of these topics. I am off on the road to Fort Pierce today.

Read about the differences between Miami, Lauderdale, and Stuart for yachts for sale in my blog this week as well as an offensive joke to University of Florida sports fans.

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KDP Select update

By Mike Jastrzebski

Just a brief update today on my free offerings through Amazon Prime. The free offer on Dog River Blues (A Wes Darling Mystery) ended last Monday. The total free downloads were 3,322 copies over five days. Prior to the free offer I was selling between 8 and 10 copies a day. Since the offer ended I've been averaging 17 copies per day. Sunday I ran a sponsorship with Pixel of Ink. Sales are up substantially but I will not be able to tell how the free offer affected sales going forward because of the sponsorship.

Friday, the 3rd, I ran Key Lime Blues (A Wes Darling Mystery) for free for two days. During this time the book was downloaded 10,613 times. It's too early to judge sales but I will post early results next week.

Sunday I also listed Weep No More free for one additional day. Next week The Storm Killer will be free Friday the 10th through Sunday the 12th.

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