Kyell Gold's Blog, page 28

On Ender’s Game and Separating the Artist From His Work

Because it’s opening tomorrow and this is likely to come up, here are some disorganized thoughts on Orson Scott Card and Ender’s Game.

I loved the book when I read it. I studied it in college, in fact. Great story, the weird video game thing (which I assume they will leave out of the movie) and the brilliant deception and so on. In the years since, I have modified my thinking on it slightly (thanks in large part to John Kessel, whose essay you should all read), but still: cracking story, Gromit.

Am I going to see the movie? Nope(*). I want to make two things about that clear: one, my decision has everything to do with Card’s politics, and two, I’m not going to judge anyone who makes a different choice. Don’t come up to me guiltily and apologize for seeing the movie. It’s your choice. Similarly, don’t harass me for not seeing it; that’s my choice.

* Okay–I won’t pay to see the movie. If it comes on TV/Netflix in a while, sure. If a friend rents/buys it and sits me down to watch it, sure.

There is kind of an ongoing discussion about separating the artist from the work that has gone on pretty much since there’s been art. I once mocked James Lileks for saying he was going to remove all of Sheryl Crow’s music from his iPod after she criticized HRH G.W. Bush in the wake of 9/11–”you do realize she’s still got your money,” I said to the computer screen. And yeah, I’m not going to throw out my copy of “Ender’s Game,” nor of “Speaker for the Dead” (“Xenocide” is a terrible book and deserves to be burned). Lileks was doing it in sort of a petty “that’ll show her” way, but if he’d just said “you know what, listening to her now reminds me of her political speechifyin’ that upset me so much,” I would’ve understood a lot better. The artist, in this case, tainted her work with her outspoken politics.

This is why I’m having trouble separating “Ender’s Game” the movie from Orson Scott Card the loud homophobe. Because Card has put himself in the spotlight as an advocate against gay rights, because he cannot shut up about them, I can’t stop thinking about them whenever I think about him.

He released a statement a while ago that we shouldn’t boycott the film because of his anti-gay views–not because we should separate the work from the man, but because gay rights activists have “already won,” so his anti-gay-marriage stance is “moot.”

Well, sorry. This is a situation he created, and that’s my reaction to it. You guys can all go make your own peace with the situation, and like I said, I won’t judge you. In the long run, it probably doesn’t matter all that much. It’s true that thousands of other people worked on “Ender’s Game” and will profit from your $7-12 movie ticket; it’s a safe bet that most of them are not as bigoted as Card (yay gay Hollywood). It’s true that the author himself will see very little of your ticket money and that you can donate to a marriage equality fund as sort of a “tolerance offset.” But if “Ender’s Game” succeeds, there will be more Card books in the movie pipeline. I don’t think they’d go for “Speaker” next; I think “Ender’s Shadow” is the more likely sequel if “Ender’s Game” does well. And Card will continue to profit and use his money for whatever he wants, which is his right as an American.

But he won’t be getting any more of my money.

E-Books And Pricing

Last year, I had a few people–not many–tell me that $5 was the “sweet spot” for e-book prices. Mind, these were not the people actually interested in buying my books. These were people who had studied their market and concluded that $5 was the optimal price. I had one conversation with a fellow author who was dismayed that my higher prices had not hit this sweet spot, who was unconvinced by my observations that my books were generally pretty price-inflexible. He assured me that after six months of dropping my prices, my excess sales would more than make up for the lost revenue.

I have talked a little bit about my rationale for pricing. It is set partly by Amazon and partly by what the market will bear. By and large, my books are specialty items and people seem to understand that. If I could get a Tom Clancy audience for my books, I would happily sell them at $4.99, all of them, because umpteen million times 70% of $5 = enough to keep this fox in chicken for the rest of my life. As it happens, my audience is generally in the high hundreds–very very low thousands for the OOP books–and the difference between 70% of $9.99 and 70% of $4.99 is a couple plane tickets to conventions, which are part of my job and a lot of fun and people seem to like it when I show up in person to things. And you guys, my fans, seem pretty cool with the prices–I’m sure you would be happy if they were lower, but I almost never ever hear bitching about prices. (*) I am really grateful for that, and trust me, I appreciate it.

* For the audiobooks, Audible/ACX sets the price and I have nothing to do with it. I wouldn’t have put Bridges at $19.99 when it’s half the length of OOP, which is $24.99, but I can’t change it.

$9.99 isn’t that bad a price, comparatively. It stands out in the gay romance field because a lot of those books are disposable/interchangeable and priced at $4.99 or $2.99 or even less. That’s fine. I don’t want my books to be lumped in with disposable gay romance books. It stands out in self-published (which these aren’t really except the e-books sort of are because my publisher didn’t want to do them when I started doing them) and some small press. But $9.99 is also lower than a lot of contemporary fiction books. Look at Amazon’s top ten sellers in the Kindle store, and $9.99 doesn’t stand out as an unusually high–or low–price.

One of the things about price is that it has indirect effects as well as the obvious direct ones: the price you set your books at influences how people think of them. If you price your e-book like a cheap e-book, then people will think of it as a cheap e-book. If you price it at $9.99, then yes, perhaps fewer people will buy it. But the ones who do will be making a considered decision to buy it and will actually take the time to read it (you hope) rather than shoving it into a pile of $1.99 books they bought on impulse. Think of how you feel buying an unknown $1.99 book. If it were really good, you’d be surprised, wouldn’t you? How many $1.99 books do you think you’d need to buy to find that “diamond in the bargain bin”? (I specify “unknown” because my fans–and every author’s fans–will go seek out their books and knows what they’re going to get, and I’m not just talking about furry book buyers here.) Now think about a book you’d spent $9.99 on, perhaps on the recommendation of a friend, or because the blurb looked interesting. You have higher expectations for it, don’t you? More likely to try it out and make sure you get your money’s worth?

Why is that important, you ask? Doesn’t the money spend the same?

Yes. But what’s important about it is that the person who takes the time to read your book and likes it will seek out more of your books and buy them. The person who tosses your book into their “$1.99 folder” may never read it, and may not even recognize your name the next time one of your books pops up. I’m trying to build a fanbase, which is a slow process. But I want the people who buy my books to want to buy them.

What’s more, my books are mostly erotica, all furry; these are not going to get plastered on Amazon’s front page. They are specialty titles, as I said above, and the people who buy them generally have been seeking them out. Which means that they are largely price-insensitive. Yes, $9.99 is more than $4.99. But it’s not that much more if it’s something you know you want. Hell, I spent $9.99 just to get a book I love and already owned in electronic format so Kit could read it. And I am pretty proud of my books. If you ask me why my books are twice as much as most gay romance novels, I will respond that I think they’re worth it (I have read a bunch of gay romance books). You might disagree; that’s fine. But I don’t think it’s an unfair price.

Which brings me to this year’s experiment. The Argaea books are old and were not selling all that much, and thanks to Google setting prices at a discount, had already been dropped to $7.99, which I felt was fair because they’re old and don’t have art. So fine, I said, I will drop the price to $4.99 and we will see if my sales at least double. I was assured they would, although it might take up to six months. I was highly skeptical because of all the reasons outlined above, but I am a scientist and was open to experimentation.

When I dropped Volle and Prisoner’s Release to $4.99, I made an announcement. When I dropped Pendant of Fortune and Shadow of the Father, I didn’t. They have all been $4.99 for 5-6 months, and here are the results of my entirely scientific experiment: I was right. When I made the announcement about Volle and PR&OS, they got a boost in sales, about double normal for that month. Then they went right back to their regular numbers and haven’t budged since. Pendant and Shadow didn’t even get that boost. (*)

* If you want to go get them, you can still do that…I am leaving the books at $4.99 for the moment, at least on Amazon, because I am too lazy to change it (I think iTunes let me put an end date to the sale, but I’m mad at them because of Divisions anyway), but if at some point I get the money to put the art in those books and republish them, I will likely bump the price another few bucks, because art!

I’m posting this not to do the “ha ha I told you so” dance (okay, not just for that), but to offer my own experiences as helpful data points for other people. You might not be writing furry books, or erotica, and your audience may be broader than mine; you might be writing even more specialized work. All I’m saying is: this appears to be working for me. I’m sure that the author I talked to experienced a boost in sales when he dropped his price. But he’s not writing my books, and I’m not writing his. Books are not interchangeable commodities, and if you take nothing else away from this post, please at least remember that.

 

Listen to me! Read Bridges, I mean.

The first audiobook I recorded, way back in February, is now available for sale! I spent a day up in the Sound Cage (now sadly decommissioned) and powered through the entire story of Amir, Fin, Hayward, Carmila, and Kinzi in a day. And now you can hear me struggle to give the characters distinct voices (something I hope to get better at) while reading the words the way I’d intended them to be read (I did manage that). B-Hop was a great director and he put in a ton of work on the post-production, so if I sound good, it’s probably his fault.

Anyway, here! Behold the grandeur!

I may continue to try to record the Cupcakes myself as they are small and manageable and do not require me to spend hours scraping my throat raw in a studio. Although for “The Mysterious Affair of Giles” I really want to get a woman with a great British accent to read it.

Same-Sex Marriage In New Jersey

The New Jersey Supreme Court, which had previously ruled that same-sex couples must be granted the same rights as heterosexual married couples, ruled in September that civil unions no longer satisfy that ruling, and that New Jersey must allow couples to marry starting October 21. The state said, “hey, we’re appealing, can we hang on until you rule on the appeal?” and the court just said, “Nope.”

You should read the decision, not just because of the great line “when a party presents a clear case of ongoing unequal treatment, and asks the court to vindicate constitutionally protected rights, a court may not sidestep its obligation to rule for an indefinite amount of time.” (This was in response to the state saying, “let the democratic process take its course.”) And not just because the court strongly hints that the state’s appeal is going to fail (one of the criteria for granting a stay is if the plaintiff makes a strong case that their appeal will succeed, and the court said several times that the state did not make that case).

What’s interesting to me is that this kind of takes the U.S. Supreme Court decision in June–which said, you recall, that because SOME states allowed same-sex marriage, those couples were being denied federal benefits, and that was unconstitutional–and turns it around. The court found that because NJ couples in civil unions could not get the federal benefits that married couples could, those couples were not being served under NJ’s constitution’s equal protection clause.

So while the U.S. Supreme Court seemed to leave marriage to the states–if you allow same-sex marriage, we’ll honor it, and if you don’t, we don’t care–this decision actually looks at it from the state level as part of a union. In effect, NJ is saying that because its same-sex couples don’t get the benefits they could get if the state allowed marriage, they are being discriminated against.

It’ll be interesting to see how many other states follow this line of reasoning…

Isolation Play Audiobook On Sale!

If you have been waiting for more of Savrin’s dulcet tones paired with my Dev and Lee story, wait no longer! Isolation Play is for sale on Audible now, soon coming to Amazon and iTunes!

Savrin continues to do a great job with the characters and the story, and is working on Divisions as you read this. We are hoping that I can send him the text of OOP4 around the time it goes to press, so the audiobook will come out close to the print version.

(I’m still waiting on Bridges but hope it’ll be up soon…)

Self-Published Erotica Being Removed From Online Stores

Hey, I just got wind of this today and found a pretty good summary of what’s been going on that you can read if you’re interested. Short version: some people in England complained about rape stories being sold on W.H. Smith’s Kobo store; WHS took down their entire e-book store, while other retailers are doing all sorts of things from nothing (Apple) to removing all self-pubbed books with certain keywords (Amazon) to removing all self-pubbed books (Kobo UK).

The above link also leads you to petitions you can sign, and other actions you can take. For the moment, I think my books are okay, and of course you know you will always be able to buy them at www.baddogbooks.com. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t speak up now. For my part, I have very little interest in any human erotica, much less the kind these guys are targeting, but you know how many steps it is from these stories to the kind I write? Yeah, like a little shuffle to the side. So speak up now and let’s let the major retailers know that there are a lot more people who support freedom of expression, even with books we don’t necessarily want to read, than there are whiny people who can’t just skip past a listing in an e-book store.

(Selena does accurately point out that the retailers need more parental controls, something I agree with, but that’s not the issue. This is like, oh, I don’t know, shutting down an entire government over a single law they don’t like.)

Offline a couple days…

For the next couple days I will be on the road in cell phone-unfriendly country, mostly (may be able to push out some tweets in the evenings and from pockets of cell coverage). Shoot me an e-mail if you need to reach me and I’ll answer when I get back to the Internet. I’ll post Camouflage maybe Monday night instead of Tuesday morning to make sure it gets up. People have started messaging me and commenting if it isn’t posted promptly, which I really appreciate. As I tweeted earlier today, I am thinking about starting to record the episodes I’ve posted to read on the Unsheathed RSS. Hope people will enjoy that!

On The Road Again

I’m no sooner home from RainFurrest than I’m back out on the road, this time as a hanger-on to Kit’s work thing. It’s fine; I get to travel again and read “Red Devil” to him (he likes it so far). So I’m here at a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf (

When I get back, I’ll probably take a few days to refine short stories to send out again, and then I’ll dive into editing OOP4 and writing OOP5. I’d hoped to get the latter written before the end of the year, but that’s not going to happen, so I’ll shoot for getting OOP4 edited.

Also I have been feeling like I really need to write just something short and porny, so look for that to come up on FA in the next few weeks, I hope.

(Of course, if it goes the way the last “I’ll just dash off something short” did, I’ll be posting segments of it for the next six months. )

Switching Costs and Gay Rights

The whole Barilla flap mostly went under my radar, though I registered it with a little annoyance; I like their lasagna noodles because they have a great recipe on the back. If you missed it, the Chairman of Barilla group (Guido Barilla) announced that the pasta company would not be using gay couples in their advertising because they don’t agree with gay relationships. “If gays like our pasta and our advertisings, they will eat our pasta; if they don’t like that, they will eat someone else’s pasta.”

What possibly escapes Mr. Barilla is the concept of switching cost. You guys are all smart and understand it, I’m sure: how much does it cost someone to change brands? I will say that there is not a whole lot of pasta brand loyalty in my family, nor have I ever seen pasta brand loyalty in anyone else who buys pasta. “I always buy Barilla pasta because…” is not a sentence I have ever heard anyone start. Pasta is cheap and bought anew every time you want some. That means that the switching cost is…the difference in price between your brand and another brand. Pennies, probably.

You know who does get it? Bertolli. If you can’t read German, the text accompanying the photo says “Pasta and love for all!” See, when switching costs are low, what you want to do is avoid giving reasons for people to switch away from your brand. Car manufacturers can survive recalls and bad publicity–to an extent–because the millions of people who own Car X are not going to immediately run out and trade in their car. If Honda suddenly announced that they were not going to feature gay people in their ads, I’d be upset, but I wouldn’t stop driving my Honda (I might take the identifying “H” off, though).

Barilla’s just pissed off a bunch of people (lukewarm apology notwithstanding), and Bertolli happily jumped in, basically saying, “Hey! Looking for another pasta brand? Here you go!” Easy for people to make that switch, given the reason to do so.

(Now, I’m sure there are a bunch of people who also have said, “Christian straight-people pasta? Sign me up!” So in the end, it may not be very harmful, and honestly, probably it won’t have much effect on sales. But I’d like to think it’s changed at least a few minds.)

Divisions is a Rainbow Award Finalist!

For “Divisions”

I got a very nice notification this morning (or maybe yesterday as I was driving home): Divisions has made it to the final round of the Rainbow Awards in the Erotic Romance category. You can see the official notification and all the other finalists on Elisa’s blog–check out Dev and Lee there among all those humans. The competition might be stiff (ha) but it’s really cool and completely made my day.

Now the finalists are being read and judged and the winners will be announced in December. I’m reading as a judge in this round, but not in my category, of course. Looking forward to seeing some of those titles!

(And that Lesbian fantasy “Fox Run” might be interesting…)