Harry Connolly's Blog, page 52

Another strike against Smashwords

On July 8th, Smashwords said my short fiction collection would be distributed to Kobo’s ebook store. As of yesterday, that still hadn’t happened (just like last year). So, I canceled Smashwords distribution and uploaded directly through Kobo, which meant the books were available for sale in less than 12 hours.

Three and a half weeks: nothing.

Anyway, the book is now available on Kobo, too, for you international epub buyers.

Cover Art

Writing and physical pain

Last night I was trading tweets with a writer who has been having serious pain for a long while, and we joked about how much it would help her to know my wife.

And it’s true. My wife does sports massage (as I’ve mentioned before) and she takes away pain for a lot of people. Folks fly from the east coast so she can work on them, because they just can’t find anyone as effective where they are. She’s worked on sports stars, rock stars, and movie stars, along with office workers who went from never doing any kind of exercise directly to Crossfit, and who can barely walk around.[1]

Anyway, I mentioned this to my wife and she immediately responded with “Where does she live?” because obviously her first idea was to work something out with this author. Sadly, the answer was “Not nearby.”

After that, her next recommendation was this book: Pain Free at Your PC by Pete Egoscue, although she said Pain Free for Women: The Revolutionary Program for Ending Chronic Pain is even better.

It’s been a few years since I glanced into these books and I can’t find them now, almost certainly because they were loaned out and never returned, but I remember them as being fairly free of woo-woo [2] but heavy on recuperative movement. And I don’t mean “My wrist hurts; I have to do wrist exercises.” It’s more focused on healing specific issues through changes in the entire body.

Also, anyone who is having chronic soft tissue pain right at this moment might find some relief doing a vasioflush, which is really just the alternating application of cold and heat, described in more detail in this post I wrote for Charlie Stross’s blog.

Obviously, these recommendations will only work for people with soft tissue pain: posture problems, overuse of certain muscles, muscle imbalance, muscles that are very weak and tight, that sort of thing.

You don’t have to live in this kind of pain.

[1] And, frankly, after twenty years of doing the same thing every day, she’s become a bit bored with it. She would write a book if her learning disabilities didn’t make that all but impossible. I’d help her if my work load weren’t so heavy. She would teach if she had any inclination to be a teacher (and if teaching in the massage world weren’t so filled with weird guru types). It’s a shame, because she’s extremely good at what she does, but it’s a physically demanding job and she doesn’t have anywhere to go next.

Of course, if The Great Way does really well, she won’t have to worry about that anymore, but no pressure on me.

[2] Woo-woo is defined here as “You must align your energies with the universe” -type talk. And while the two books I’m recommending here are fine, some of his later work is less helpful.

A little non-spoilery talk about darkness, grimdark, and Guardians of the Galaxy.

Actually, I plan to spoil a few of the scenes right at the start. If you’re the sort of person who prefers to know as little as possible about a movie before you see it, maybe skip this post. If you’ve been hearing stuff like this:

That's the sound of grimdark being over"@io9: Guardians of the Galaxy Crushes Box Office Records With $94M Opening: http://t.co/bIrZmo3yX0"

— Kameron Hurley (@KameronHurley) August 3, 2014

and are curious why GotG is considered the super-fun movie that might finally turn the culture away from over indulgent grittiness, well, I Have Thoughts.

If you aren’t sure whether you should see the movie: it’s fun and funny. It’s not deep, but it’s darker than people on Twitter have made it seem. The villain and his plot are not particularly arresting, but the movie has enough going on that it doesn’t really matter.

I Have Thoughts: There’s been a lot of talk about how much fun GotG is, especially compared to the poo-faced, color-bled Man of Steel, but what people seem to be forgetting is how dark the movie really is. It opens, after all, on a little boy forced to go to his mother’s bedside as she’s dying of cancer. I mean, it’s a really dark and difficult scene, which culminates in a Close Encounters-style abduction. (And no daddy issues! Finally, a movie without daddy issues! I can hardly believe it. Thanks, Marvel.)

The followup to that is set on a ruined planet. A (not so) mysterious figure moves through the ruins, using a device that’s part map, part video projector, which shows the vibrant city–and the children who played in it–before it met its doom. It’s damn somber.

Then the figure presses play on a cassette player, a pop song begins to blare, and he dances his way through the wreckage.

In fact, it was that long shot of the tiny person dancing in a ruined landscape that won me over. That was the moment when I knew the movie had me.

Because yes, the characters crack jokes (funny ones, even) and they respond to problems in amusing ways, but setting itself is pretty dark. A prisoner gets his head crushed with a hammer. A gigantic skull floating in space filled with people mining the organic matter. Characters who have been experimented on in ways that are indistinguishable from torture. The difference is in the characters themselves: they’re smart enough to see beyond the awfulness and grasp at hope. They make jokes. They make plans. They decide to fight even though they have no hope.

Contrast that with the dimbulb Clark Kent of Man of Steel, who doesn’t even try to move his hyper-destructive battles out of a heavily populated urban area, and who can’t find a way to deal with Zod other than killing him.

So, don’t expect GotG to be light, cheerful fare. It has more than its share of darkness. The difference is that it also has clever, dedicated protagonists who are capable of prevailing in the end.

Nicole Perlman, co-writer of GotG, on bringing the movie to life

Via Emily Blake (aka @Bambookiller) on Twitter, Nicole Perlman details her contributions as the first credited female writer of a Disney Marvel Movie (the only other one is Jane Goldman, who is credited on the recent X-Men movies). Basically, the film happened because of her. She had the chance to adapt any comics she wanted and she picked Guardians of the Galaxy because she’s a space nerd who has always wanted to work on big adventure thrillers.

Read that article. It’s interesting.

[Added later: I had no idea that people are trying to erase Perlman's contribution to the film, claiming that nothing she wrote is in the final film. Assholes.]

The funny thing is, all that outer space bullshit is perfect camouflage for a movie about superpowers. You have all the high tech gadgets you want and alien physiology creates a fantastic excuse for outre abilities–no radioactive spiders needed.

That’s part of the reason Blade was such a successful franchise for Marvel after so many failures: the superpowers weren’t. They were just vampire abilites.

This is why I think Dr. Strange is a natural for the screen, provided they don’t make the plot a bullshit “Stop the ritual!” chase, which never works. He’s a grownup Harry Potter; it’s easy.

Anyway, Marvel has tried many times to make outer space happen in a big way and it never really lasts. For whatever reason, space stuff doesn’t play well in comics. Sure, you can have the odd adventure off-planet and more than a few alien characters, but comic book series set in outer space just don’t last.

However, they’re a natural for movies.

I only wish I’d gotten to see Glenn Close, as Nova Prime, wearing that helmet. Hey, Robert Redford said “Hail Hydra,” didn’t he?

California Bones by Greg Van Eekhout (Goodreads review)

California Bones by Greg Van Eekhout


My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Tremendous fun for fans of heists and magic, set in a modern day Los Angeles unlike the LA in our world. It’s twisty, creepy, and I’m off to take a shower after reading about people dunking themselves in nasty canal water.

First in a series.

Recommended.

Grab a copy right now.

That new Amazon press release.

John Scalzi jumped on it before I could. I could have written a similar post but I’m sort of tired of the whole business and I wanted to work on my book. You can read Amazon’s original post (on their Kindle message boards, which still seems weird) right here.

Which isn’t going to stop me from offering up one or two additional points that Scalzi didn’t cover.

First, people are talking about this release as though it fully identifies the source of the dispute between Amazon and Hachette, but we don’t know that’s true. I don’t doubt that it’s part of the dispute, but the PR piece opens like this:

With this update, we’re providing specific information about Amazon’s objectives.

A key objective is lower e-book prices.

It’s not “The key objective is….” It’s not “The sole remaining disputed contract point is….” It’s “A key objective is…” That suggests there are more, some of which might not sound so sympathetic if they came to light. Is Amazon planning to raise co-op fees? Do they want POD rights from publishers for books that aren’t in stock? Are they pushing for some form of exclusivity, as they do with KDP Select? We don’t know, so lets not pretend that this is the sole source of conflict between the parties.

Second, Amazon does not seem to understand windowing, which is where publishers release an expensive edition first, then lower-priced editions later. That’s why books in hardcover will be followed a year or so later by a mass market paperback. An author’s superfans will buy the expensive version right away because they can’t wait; more casual fans wait for the price to drop. So, when Amazon says this:

We’ve quantified the price elasticity of e-books from repeated measurements across many titles. For every copy an e-book would sell at $14.99, it would sell 1.74 copies if priced at $9.99. So, for example, if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. Total revenue at $14.99 would be $1,499,000. Total revenue at $9.99 is $1,738,000.

it shows they don’t understand that those hypothetical 74,000 sales are not necessarily lost, not if the ebook price drops at a later date. Maybe you won’t catch all of those readers, especially since the lower price comes well after the initial marketing push, but you’ll definitely capture some of them. Long term, those numbers don’t work.

Self-published authors and ebook readers *hate* windowing. Just mentioning the word calls up the threats of torrents and warnings of obscurity, but indie authors fuck around with the prices on their books all the time. When they do it, it’s just to drive sales, hey, not big deal. When publishers do it…

Third, several of the commenters in Scalzi’s post are arguing that Amazon will not try to drive ebook prices down below the $9.99 cap they’re currently arguing for. In other words, once they get this price cap, they’ll stop.

Even if you believed that (and I’m not convinced myself), holding prices at a specific cap for the long term is driving prices down, because inflation.

Anyway, let me tack on the usual disclaimers: I sell books on Amazon. I buy books from them sometimes. I self-publish my own work through their site and they represent the bulk of my sales. I’m not picking sides in the Amazon/Hachette dispute, just picking over publicly stated positions. I’ve worked in their first distribution center at a time when I really needed a job. Long term, I support a diverse publishing and bookselling market. Short term, I’m glad Amazon’s shareholders are beginning to demand that Amazon show a profit; the ability to operate at a loss has been one of the company’s biggest advantages.

Randomness for 7/30

1) A People’s History of Tattooine.

2) Batman’s mask would be good protection for Bruce Wayne’s secret identity, according to SCIENCE!

3) Scully likes Science (remix). Video.

4) Enjoy some pix of the world’s largest aquatic insect.

5) Hugo-winning author Lawrence Watt-Evans has been posting the openings to his many works in progress. Instructive.

6) “The Denny,” an advanced bicycle prototype designed for dark, hilly Seattle.

7) CG Deadpool test footage. I’d happily watch this.

Are there special instructions for helping your favorite authors?

I was just asked about this recently: a reader wanted to know where was the best place to buy my fiction (gratuitous plug) so it would be of the most benefit to me. The answer is simple. It doesn’t matter.

(I’ll talk about what does matter at the end of this post.)

I mean, yeah, it sort of matters a tiny bit. For my self published work, some vendors pay slightly more or slightly sooner than others. For the traditionally published work, I’m sure Del Rey makes slightly more or less from different stores (I’m not privy to the details of this) and anything that helps pay back my advance is an unalloyed good.

But there’s a flip side: saying “Buy from [Vendor], please!” will give a lot of people pause. Maybe they don’t have access to that store because of where they live, or the file formats don’t work, or they’ve had a bad experience there. Simply by directing people to one store over another, I would lose a certain percentage of potential readers for whom that’s not feasible. The perfect is the enemy of the good, after all.

Besides, the real differences in pay are negligible. The benefit to me from selling a piece of self pubbed fiction in one store over enough is less than the tip I leave for the baristas who sell me coffee.

When The Great Way becomes available, things might be a bit different. Amazon owns POD pubisher CreateSpace, but books made at CS and ordered through Amazon have a *much* smaller profit to me, undoubtedly because of all the extra handling. When the time comes, I may write a post about that.

But for now, let me say not only does it not matter, but I would encourage any reader of any author’s books to not worry about it. Do whatever is most convenient. Readers is what authors need most, so go ahead and buy the books however you like (or borrow them from a library).

Because what’s really important is not identifying which vendor pays the most, it’s generating word of mouth. The best thing any reader could do for the authors they want to help is to talk about the work, express their enthusiasm, write reviews, tweet, post Facebook updates, whatever. Hell, even buying a copy of a book for a friend (as long as you honestly think they’ll like it) is nice.

This is true for obscure authors like me and the top bestsellers. Share your enthusiasm. Write about it. Talk about it. Nothing helps us more.

Eating Authors

Hey, you guys. I wrote an essay for Lawrence M. Schoen’s “Eating Authors” series, in which writers describe a memorable meal. Check it out.

25 Pages for 5 Bucks

Apropos of nothing, here’s a guy who posts a 25-page Kindle SF novel under the name “Stephen King” and he has more reviews than my own recent work. Of course, most of his are one-star recriminations, but I’m not sure if Amazon is comfortable forwarding his share of the sales.

Maybe I should publish as George RR Martini. ::clinks glass::

h/t @EvilWylie on Twitter.