Elle Casey's Blog, page 16

Donating New Books to Libraries Through Amazon: A Worthy Cause for Book Lovers

I was just informed about this website, www.FilltheShelves.org, developed and managed by some indie writers I know online.  I am writing this post to encourage my readers who have a little extra cash and who want to support school libraries to do what they can to donate a book or two (or more!) through this site.

How it works

In essence, each library needing books signs up with the website.  Then the library goes to Amazon and creates a wishlist of books for its school.  The website then provides people like you who want to help a link to the library’s wishlist.  You click on the link on the website, and get brought to Amazon where you can click to add books they want to your shopping cart, buy them, and have them shipped directly to the school.

The website touches no money.  It does make money on advertising affiliate links, but then they use that money each month to buy MORE books for the schools.  They do this work of managing this website and signing up more libraries for free, for the love of reading. Yay, you generous indie writers!

Some of these libraries are nearly EMPTY of books.  It’s horrible!  You can see pictures of their shelves on the websites with just a few books on each.  It’s just an outrage to me that a hugely progressive and well-off country like the United States has this going on.  We need to feed our kids’ minds and imaginations, and one of the best ways to do that is with books!

I became a writer only after being a reader.  My love of reading started as a child with big book with pictures in them and continued on with classics like The Phantom Tollbooth and The Hobbit.  You’ll find books just like these on the wishlists.  Won’t you help feed the minds of future readers, and maybe help one of them someday, become a writer too?

If you know of libraries in need of new books, please send them to the site to sign up too.  It’s FREE!

Sea Wenches: A Trilogy

I just received some artwork for my upcoming series Sea Wenches, and I just had to share.  Ana Fagarazzi is the digital artist who is the incredibly talented girl behind these images.  The series isn’t out until the first quarter of 2013, but I’m so excited for it, I’m posting this now.

A little teaser

Three girls, sailing the seas, thwarting the efforts of ships full of pirates, each using a special talent all her own and all together sharing a secret that no one can ever know.

~A violinist who plays so sweetly, her music can enchant and enthrall ~ A master of games, whose slight of hand and ability to read any tell empties pockets and minds ~ and ~ A fortune teller and seer of truths who can reveal even the most unsavory details of a man’s life, exposing his vulnerabilities and stripping him down to nothing ~

Clash of the Otherworlds: Book 1 PUBLISHED!!!

I just hit the “Publish” button, y’all.  Clash of the Otherworlds: Book 1 is up on Amazon and will be available for purchase in the next 12 hours.  When I have the live link, I will Tweet and Facebook it.  Hugs to all of you who have been impatiently waiting for it!!

UPDATE:  Here is the live link for the book!!  www.amazon.com/dp/B009JT9XXI .  It won’t work until the book is live for sale, but that’s where you’ll find it when it is.

 

Ebook Lending Versus Ebook Piracy

I haven’t posted in a while, totally focused on getting my next series out, Clash of the Otherworlds.  Good news is, Book 1 will be ready soon!  Bad news is, my web site has become very boring.

I thought I’d kick things up a notch my talking about a somewhat controversial subject: ebook piracy.  Another author cautioned me about posting anything, saying pirates can be hackers who will get into your business and life with the sole purpose of destroying you – and he would know, since he worked for the government as a hacker himself.  But I decided to do it despite his sage advice, first, because if we don’t talk about the problem and try to find solutions and educate the public, the problem will just keep getting worse, and second, because I never listen to anyone anyway.

File sharing … Harrrr, me maties…

I recently found a site offering pirated copies of my books (again) and another with members of the site asking for others to email him or her pirated copies of my books.  I think this person got the first book free during a promotion and liked it enough to try and find the other two books in the series, albeit for free.  While I appreciate having a new reader and a fan, I don’t appreciate that they like my work enough to keep reading it, yet don’t feel the need to support me by investing in it, even when I give them some for free.  Does this make me greedy?  Read on…

After I contacted the internet service provider of the site to get the offending posts taken down, I was confronted with the attitude from the owner about ebook authors being “greedy” and how piracy should be allowed, presumably to punish authors for not giving their work away for free.  I read other posts on this site, posted by members arguing that ebooks should be allowed to be copied and shared just like lending, buying, and selling used paperbacks are.  They even say that authors should thank them for pirating and sharing their books because it gains them new readers.

Here was my response:  “Say what, now?”

If you go on these piracy/ebook-file-sharing sites, you’ll see long posts from angry readers who honestly feel that they’re entitled to make copies of an author’s book and give it to thousands of people for free; they’re angry because authors have had file-sharing sites shut down for copyright infringement.  They argue that they get new readers for the authors through their actions.  Authors should thank them, I guess, for stealing and giving our stolen merchandise to other thieves.

And yet, I fail to see how having thieves of my work gets me new sales of my work.  If a person steals book 1, isn’t he going to go steal books 2 and 3 and so on?  Why would a person ever pay for a book if he has no problem stealing them and there are other pirates out there willing to provide him what he wants to steal?

Splitting hairs … uh, no.

Some pirates like to call themselves “ebook sharers” and not pirates, but common sense and the law says they are one and the same.  I’m calling shenanigans on any person out there calling himself or herself a file-sharer while also denying being a pirate.

NEWSFLASH:  You are a pirate if you copy a copyrighted ebook and give the copy to anyone else without the copyright owner’s permission.  You are also a pirate if you receive one of these copies.

Ebook pirates refuse to acknowledge that making a copy of an ebook is different than selling a used book or giving a used book to someone.  The pirate-minded don’t get the difference: that when you sell or give away a paperback book, there is still only one copy of the book out there and that copy was paid for at some point – and once given away, cannot be re-read by the original purchaser.  This is obviously not the case with a copied ebook, where the original buyer keeps his copy and gives a free one to anyone else who finds it online.  The author is only compensated for one copy, not the thousands illegally copied.

Constitutional law tidbits

The former law student in me, who got a special thrill studying U.S. Constitutional Law (which I’ve since learned is studied all over the world as a shining example of law designed to promote freedom and intellectual advancements), wants to point out the reason behind copyright protections.  Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the Constitution is known as the Copyright Clause and empowers the US Congress “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

I’m going to repeat one part of that:  “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts…”

Here’s the deal, in a nutshell:  People create useful things (books, medical devices, medicines, etc.) because they can earn a living from it.  If they cease to earn a living from it because no one pays for it, they have to go get jobs that take them away from that activity, so they can survive.   Then the creation of great things ceases.  No more great books, no more artificial hearts, no more life-saving drugs, and no more slankets.  Do you just read that?  No. More. Slankets. People.

The Founding Fathers knew this, and so made it a priority to ensure U.S. Citizens and the United States of America could excel in the sciences and the arts by making it possible to earn a living from it: aka “copyright and patent protection”.  And it’s worked!  Some of the best literature and most advanced science comes from countries where intellectual property protections exist, and where the creators of those works are protected from the free sharing of their work, being financially compensated for their time so they can keep doing what they do best.

Digital age = Digital pirates

But the digital age has added a wrinkle to these protections, not because the law is no longer valid or no longer applicable to our society, but because the law has become much harder to enforce against determined thieves who operate from their living rooms in secret, hidden behind their computer’s nearly anonymous IP address.

Enter the pirates.  They feel as though they are somehow entitled to ebooks because they are easy to copy and send via the Internet.  Many say they don’t have enough money to buy books (or music for that matter, because ebook pirates are often music pirates as well); and so, because they cannot afford it, they should be able to steal it.  And make no mistake, when a person takes a pirated copy of someone’s work, it’s stealing.  It’s not just me saying so; it’s the law. So even if you are not the copier, if you receive a copy, you are a pirate too.

Give me those pants, dammit.  I want them.

I often wonder if these pirates have the same attitude at Target or Macy’s.  Could you imagine?

“I cannot afford those pants, so I’m just going to take them and not pay for them.” 

or this:

“I cannot afford those new fancy pants at Macy’s.  Luckily, my friend stole a pair for me.  I’m so happy to wear my stolen pants.”

I’ll bet most of them wouldn’t say this to themselves.  Most realize that if they cannot afford the pants, they cannot have them and that it’s wrong to take stolen merchandise … that they must save the money and buy them when they can afford to or just learn to live without.

But why?  Why would they steal an ebook but not a pair of pants?

Maybe because it’s easy to get caught stealing pants, and the stealing process is harder.  You have to get that pesky security tag off the pants and get past the guard at the door or the cashier, that bulky thing in your purse easily giving you away.  But the crime is the same, isn’t it?  The person is taking something he or she did not pay for, and the person who owns the right to sell it wants to receive the money for it – and in fact, expects to and is supported in this expectation by the law of all civilized nations around the world.  Gah!  Can you feel my righteous indignation yet?!

Greedy bastard authors

I’ve heard from one of the companies hosting one of these file-sharing sites that ebook authors are greedy, so they should be punished by having their books copied. (Yes!  The owner actually said this to me in an email!)  But I look at the industry and I see the opposite – ebook authors are not greedy.  They offer the best bargains in reading out there!

Ebooks are usually a minimum of 50% cheaper than paperback books, so ebooks make reading more affordable.  Printing is expensive, as is mailing heavy books.  Greedy would be charging the same for an ebook as you do for a paperback, and there’s only one group of industry players doing that – the Big 6 Publishers, not indie authors like me and many others.  And not all of those Big 6 do it, nor do the violators do it for all their books.  Sometimes it’s just the ones like J.K. Rowlings’ work (Shame on you! $17.99 for an ebook!)

Lending ebooks

So, what’s the solution?  Well, it’s easy.  Aside from more frequent and stringent punishment of violators, and better education of our youth (by far the biggest group stealing ebooks), it’s ebook lending.  Ebook lending is not file copying, it’s file lending, and it’s perfectly legal per Amazon’s terms and conditions, something all authors who host their books there agree to if they accept the larger royalty option.  You can go to lending sites like www.LendInk.com and find books to borrow and put up your own purchased copies to loan.  It’s like loaning out your paperback, because while your book is being lent, it is not available on your e-reader for you to read.  It disappears for 14 days from your library while the other person has it, and then it reappears in your library after the two weeks expires.  No one is copying the file and no one is violating the copyright.

Ebook lending is a win-win, for the author and the readers.  The authors get new readers who might buy their other books, and the readers on low incomes get to try a book before they decide to purchase anything.

File-sharing sites exist to make income from their ads on their sites.  It would be SO easy for them to become lending sites, I don’t understand why more of them don’t do it.  Maybe because there are more pirates out there than people trying to do the right thing, so if they switched, they’d lose ad revenue. (Ironic, isn’t it?  I’ll bet they expect to be paid for having those ads on their sites.)

Hope for the future

I, for one, hope that changes in the near future and more pirate sites transition over to legal operations that support both authors and readers.  I’d love to be able to write full time, and the only way I will be able to do that is if people buy my books and lend them, not make copies and give them away.

So I ask again:  Am I greedy?  Personally, I don’t think so.  But apparently there are pirates out there who disagree.

**This rant is now over.  We will be back to our regularly scheduled programming next week.** 

 

 

 

Apocalypsis: Book 3, Exodus is PUBLISHED!!

It’s here, y’all! Published a week early.  (Who rocks the party?)

Click here for the Amazon.com version

Click here for the Amazon.co.uk version

The Changing Publishing Landscape: Where’s the Slush Pile Now?

I don’t profess to know the publishing industry inside and out.  I’m just a reader and small-time self-published author.  But I’m seeing some things coming down the pike, things that are already here, really, and I got so excited and scared about it, I decided to write a post.  And here I be.

Publishing used to work like this:

Writer slaves over a manuscript until it is beyond perfect.
Writer queries agents, using the format they require, paying very close attention to every last detail.  Better do that, or the agent will throw it in the trash and never respond.
Get rejected, sometimes hundreds of times, because the book you proposed, while well-written and compelling, will be too hard to sell.  It doesn’t fit the mold.  Publishers rarely take risks.  They buy what is already selling.
Eventually, maybe, if you are lucky, an agent will agree to read more of your work.  You send them more.  It sits in a pile of other manuscripts.
Or, try and skip the agent and send your manuscript right to a publisher.  Your manuscript sits in a slush pile, along with a few thousand others, probably never even being read.
If you get an agent, and the agent likes your manuscript, the agent tries to find someone to publish your work.
Maybe if you’re lucky, like lottery-winner lucky, the agent sells the book, and you get someone to pay you a $5,000 advance for it.  That is probably the only money you will ever see from it.  You’ve earned less than minimum wage, and you’re expected to market the hell out of it, usually on your own dime.

Publishing is now starting to work like this:

Writer slaves over a manuscript until it is beyond perfect.
Writer pays someone to do a cover.
Writer uploads it to Amazon.com, itunes, Kobo, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, etc.
Writer starts selling books.  Sometimes, a LOT of books.
Writer keeps 35%-70% of the retail sales price as the royalty.  This often equates to much much more than minimum wage.
Writer gets a phone call…

The old-guard publishing industry is top heavy, with huge fixed expenses they cannot support anymore – big, expensive offices in New York City, lots of travel and perks, personnel, marketing costs, yadda yadda yadda.  They’re struggling to hang on to all of that, resisting the change that must come if they are to survive.

Or are they?   Hmmmmm…. there are some strange winds blowing through Amazon ….

Something’s been happening recently.  Maybe you’ve read about it in the paper.  Several indie authors who’ve found success with self-publishing have been wooed and won over by some of the Big 6 publishers and offered very lucrative advances – sometimes even in a bidding war with several publishers vying for the right to re-publish their already self-published books.  Maybe you’ve heard the names:  John Locke, Amanda Hocking, Jamie McGuire, Sara Fawkes, Hugh Howey, ohhhhh, there are many.  I’m tired of writing names.  Moving on.

Guess where the slush pile is now?  Yeah.  You got it.  It’s at Amazon.com!  And when your book rises in the Best Seller lists and has staying power, you’re gonna get a call from an agent wanting to represent you and publishers wanting to buy the rights to publish your book.

Why?  Why is this happening, dammit?  Because it’s a no-risk proposition!  The publisher already knows the book can sell.  They can tell exactly how much it’s selling by looking at the book’s ranking.  Anyone who’s been in the Amazon game long enough can figure out pretty accurately how many units are being sold in a day by that ranking, right there on the product page.  No need for insider information.  It’s almost too easy.  Like shooting fish in a barrel, people!

Can you picture it?  I’m the publisher.  I’m the guy who used to slog through slush piles, or talk to agents who swore they had a book I’d love.  Now I just hop on Amazon, click on the best seller list, look at the book’s ranking, read some reviews, and keep an eye on it.  If it still looks good, or better, in a few months, I pick up the phone.  “Hello?  Self-published author?  Do you have an agent?  We’d like to talk to you about your book…”

So think about it … We just cut out how much money in expenses for the publishers?  Gajillions.  And that’s a pretty accurate number, folks.  I did the math.  They no longer have to pay advances to authors whose books don’t sell.  They no longer pay artists, editors, secretaries, copy boys, and all those other people to support books that might not sell!  They are in the no-risk game now.  Before, they’d sign up a stable of authors, and only a couple would hit it big.  The rest would end up either marginally successful or as total flops (aka “financial losses”).  Publishers act like they know how to pick winners, but any visit to the book store will show you they pick a whole hell of a lot more losers than winners.  But not anymore!  Fish. In. A. Barrel.

The best part of this whole situation is we no longer have publishers or agents or editors or committees telling us which books we can read, which books will be popular, which books will sell.  We (the readers) get our choice of all the books that all the writers wanted to publish, and we’re deciding which are the cream that should rise to the top.  We are separating the wheat from the chaff.

Some argue it’s too arduous of a task.  That we need those gatekeepers to weed through the garbage for us since we only have so many hours in the day.  Pish posh, I say!  When you find a good book, through a promotion or a Facebook post, you tell your friends!  You Tweet about it!  You post a link on your Facebook!  You, the reader, decides who is worthy of the big book contract.  Vote with your reading dollars.  Vote by telling your friends and family.  Vote by tweeting.  Vote by leaving a 5-star review, telling us all the reasons you loved the book.  Vote, vote, vote.  You decide.

Amazon’s self-publishing and ebook revolution has empowered readers.  Now it’s up to the readers to seize the day, and spread the word about books they like.  Get in that slush, pile, people, and pick the next best seller!

Now, I mentioned at the beginning of this post that I get scared when I think about this stuff.  Mainly because things have changed so much, so fast, I have no way of predicting what might happen in the future.  And I make a living selling my books on Amazon, so I’d hate to have to go do something else to support my family.  I love writing too much to do that.  I hope the readers keep voting for their favorites by reading and talking about what they’re reading.   No matter what, everything is in flux, and what’s happening today might not be happening next year at this time.  But it sure is exciting, no matter which way you look at it – with excitement or fear.

Book Reviews: Tips From a Reader Not a Writer

Book reviews have as many styles as books do, seems like.  But as a reader, I have certain opinions about how a good review should be written.  A good review in my opinion is one that helps me decide if a book is for me and if it’s worth spending part of my book budget on.

Now, don’t get me wrong … I love the short ones that say, “Loved this book!  It was awesome!”  As an author, they make me feel like a million bucks.  But today I’m speaking as a reader.  And as a reader, I want to know more.

Here’s a little “how-to” I came up with after reading several really helpful reviews on Amazon.  They don’t have to be long, just well-considered.  If you have other tips, please feel free to add them below as a comment.

READ THE BOOK.  This should go without saying, but the reviewer should have read the book before leaving the review.  Now, if it sucked so bad that it was impossible to get through, that should be mentioned, and a review for that book can be done fairly.  But at least say why you didn’t get past chapter whatever.  And I personally always give a book at least two chapters, sometimes three, to catch my interest, just to give it a fair chance.  Sometimes backstory is necessary, and often the first chapter or two can be slow.  Unfortunately, some people have been known to leave bad reviews for books they’ve never read or have even tried to read.  Some have even left bad reviews for books that are not yet even issued as ARCs (advance review copies) !!  That’s just hateful behavior and has no business being a part of the reading community.  It helps no one, including the person who got a sick thrill out of doing it.  (karma, ya know?)  And a person leaving a good review for a book he or she has never read is just as bad.
GIVE DETAILS ABOUT YOUR IMPRESSIONS.  AVOID SPOILERS.  I want to know what you were thinking as you read the book.  Were you moved?  Angry the way things went down in the end?  Was your heart racing?  Did you have a hard time connecting with the characters?  Are they still in your head even after the story has been read and you’ve moved on with your life?  Tell me these things.  And if you must leave spoilers (plot details), please, leave a spoiler alert, and make it obvious.  Like this:  *** SPOILER ALERT ****.  If I think I’ll buy the book, I won’t read the spoilers, so I appreciate a warning.


MAKE NOTE OF THINGS YOU ESPECIALLY LOVE OR DISLIKED.  There are certain things that bug me in books.  For example, I’m not a fan of books written in first person POV, present tense (past tense, yes).  In fact, I’d go so far as to say it makes me crazy to read them and I will generally avoid them.  I really have to battle through a book written that way to finish.  That being said, I have read two books done in this style recently: Jack Sheppard’s Marlowe Transmissions and Susan Ee’s Angelfall, because they were such dang good stories written by great writers.  But in the review, I will mention that I am not a fan of this style, in case someone else out there is like me and wants to consider that before buying.  If you have a pet peeve that’s present in the book, share it.  Personally, I don’t downgrade a book’s rating because the author chose this method of telling the story.  I just mention it in the review.  I will also mention humor, because I like humor in my books.  And I will mention kick-butt heroines because I’m partial to them.  I’ll also talk about specific passages that highlight something I liked, like an author’s almost poetic style (ex: author, Kary English, in her novella First Call).
MAKE IT ABOUT THE BOOK, NOT THE AUTHOR.  Before I became a writer, I never would have thought to put this on my list.  But since I recently received a pretty hateful review that seemed more about me than the books (from a complete stranger), I include it now.  Readers can get passionate about things they read.  It’s a compliment to an author to know that a reader is so involved in the book and with the characters that he or she feels personally slighted when things don’t go the way they think they should.  But a book review should never include anything about the author personally.  If you are one of those particularly emotional readers, write your review and then let it sit for a day or two. Go back and re-read it before you post it.  Make sure it doesn’t come off as rude, mocking, or insulting.  Why?  Because even though it is your right to be rude and insult people as you please (First Amendment and all), it doesn’t serve the purpose of helping other readers find good books, which is the point of a review.  And you lose credibility as a reviewer when you do something petty, aimed at the author and not the work.
IF IT’S A SERIES, TRY AND REVIEW EACH INSTALLMENT.  Often if there is a series of books, readers will review the first one and the last one, including information about all the books, not leaving reviews for the middle books at all.  It’s more helpful to readers to see each book’s merits and drawbacks individually, since they don’t yet know the books.  You probably will like each book or dislike each book for different reasons.  Tell me about it.  I might buy the whole series right away based on these reviews.  I might skip it entirely if enough people say the middle of it stinks.
READ OTHER REVIEWS BEFORE YOU WRITE ONE.  Sometimes when I’m ready to write a review, I think I’ve got all the things I want to mention right on the tip of my fingers.  I type it out and think it’s perfect.  Then I’ll read someone else’s review and I’ll think, “Oh, damn!  I wanted to mention that thing too.”  It can be something you agree with or disagree with.  But you can sometimes make your review more thorough by looking at others to remind yourself about things you read.  You also can provide a counter-point raised by another reader or lend support to another reader’s observation this way.
EXPLAIN YOUR STAR RATING.  This might seem strange, but I like it when someone explains their stars for me.  If you’re a person who never gives 5-star ratings to anyone unless they write a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, include that information about you.  It gives me a basis for comparison.  It helps me as a reader to know why you didn’t give a book you really enjoyed 5 stars.  So many times I read reviews for books I’m thinking about buying and the reviewer raves about the awesome story, characters, surprises, emotions, blah, blah, blah … and then they give it 3 stars.  ??  What?  Or even 4 stars.  All I need to know is: Why it didn’t earn the perfect score?  Tell me: “The pacing was a little slow,” or “I couldn’t connect enough with the main character”, or whatever.  Even if it’s “I never give 5 stars to anyone because no one is perfect,” that’s fine.  Tell me where your head is when you assign a rating.  If you don’t, I’ll wonder if you left out the one bad part that would keep me from wanting to buy the book.

I’m sure there are more tips out there, probably some obvious ones I’ve missed.  If I think of them, I’ll add them in comments below, and I invite you to do the same.

Everyone knows the review and comment system at Amazon isn’t perfect.  Several authors and retailers have put up sock puppet reviews (fakes) using false accounts or by having people they know who didn’t read the book or use the product put up 5-star reviews.  Shoot, you can go on that website Fiverr.com and pay someone $5 to put a 5-star review on your book.  This just emphasizes even more the need for a genuine, well-done review, written by someone who really read the book or used the product.  And if you follow the advice above, I think it will be pretty easy for anyone to tell it’s the real deal.  The fake ones are usually pretty easy to spot, when you see they didn’t do anything I’ve mentioned here.

Sneak peek at Apocalypsis: Book 3, Exodus is UP!

Check it out!  Publish date: August 31, 2012.

www.ElleCasey.com/sneak-peeks

Dream Book Tour … Would anyone come, other than the crickets?

Even though I don’t have a publisher to put one together for me, I’d still love to do a real, live, in-person book tour.

A really sweet fan of mine who posts on Facebook from time to time, mentioned seeing me at a book-signing some day, and it got me thinking.  I mean, if I keep selling bunches of books, why not have a book tour?  How awesome would that be?  REALLY awesome, I think.

So here are the Elle Casey Dream-Book-Tour stops.  I figured I’d have to zig zag my way across the country and stick with big cities so people could come from surrounding areas.  Since I’d be footing the bill, I’d pretty much be counting on eating hamburgers and staying at budget inns of some sort.

Orlando, FL
NYC, NY
Chicago, IL
St. Louis, MO
Austin, TX
San Franciso, CA
Seattle, WA

I would totally do this, if I didn’t have that one haunting thought, plaguing me in the back of my mind: Would anyone come?  Or will the only sound in the bookstore be *crickets*…

 

Apocalypsis: Book 2, Warpaint is PUBLISHED!

Come one, come all.  I’ve gotten my 8th book up on Amazon.com/.co.uk/.de/.fr/.it  !!

I hope you like it.  Be sure to leave a review if you can.