Scott Nicholson's Blog, page 17

Kindle Lending Library and Amazon prime membership

The big bubbling news of Amazon is the launch of the Netflix-style pool of ebooks rolled into the membership. Not trying to be a know-it-all since I am the world's dumbest genius, but this was an inevitable move that I predicted last year. I just didn't expect it to happen so soon. The initial pool of books is around 5,400 titles as of today. Expect that to blow up very soon, because of the other big development in the rumor stage: Amazon is looking to let self-published authors opt in to the library. I don't know anything of substance but The Passive Voice works off of an "informed tip" to explore the issue.

For readers, it is an amazing deal. Most Amazon customers would have Prime anyway, just to get the movies and the free shipping and the other benefits. Now you basically get 12 free books a year--and good ones, not just stuff an indie author made free (not that there is anything wrong with indies, but you will not see The Hunger Games free elsewhere.) More reading is always A Good Thing.

The biggie for writers will be: (1) compensation and (2) exclusivity. Amazon may well be worth the exclusivity. Obviously, I feel that way, having signed two books with them and happy to do more. A big library moves Amazon even further ahead of the other ebook markets, by orders of magnitude. It's the compensation question that's more of a concern, particularly long term.

One rumor is a payment fund by which writers will be compensated for checkouts. This is a good idea, but the size of the pie and the total number of slices are still uncertain. Even $100,000 a month is not very much if 100,000 authors are splitting it (I'd guess there are at least half a million indie authors at this point).

But writers ultimately write to be read. Back in the Stone Ages of pre-2009, we spent a lot of energy trying to get our books onto library shelves and getting noticed by readers. While discoverability will still remain a challenge, I like my odds a lot better when it's on a free digital shelf. Maybe those readers will connect and go on to try (and maybe buy) other books.

I write each book for one reader--the reader whose ideology may be changed, whose inspiration might blossom, or who might need those few hours of entertainment and escape. I don't know who that is. So I have to work as hard to reach as many readers as possible. The Prime lending library helps accomplish that mission.

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If you have Prime, you can check out my Fear books (Liquid Fear and Chronic Fear are both releasing Dec. 20). I don't see a function to be able to "pre-checkout" but it's on the list of those available for loan. Maybe I'll have more there soon. Keep watching the skies.

Stop Government Control of the Internet: Oppose HR 3261

(Are you  opposed to government control of the Internet, such as the oppressive first step of HR 3261 (Stop Online Piracy Act)? Feel free to pirate, steal, borrow or copy any portion of this post and use it in your own letter to your U.S. Representative and editor of your local newspapers. Such letters are best personalized, in your own words, and politicians in particular value handwritten or personally signed letters, which they equate with active voters--but perhaps you share some of my ideals and are welcome to my words. Value and protect Internet freedom, or soon you may not be able to read this.)
Dear U.S. Rep. ________ and Editor:
I am writing to express my deep alarm at HR 3261 (Stop Online Piracy Act) and any government intrusion into the Internet use of United States citizens. It is not only a horrible precedent blithely couched in the guise of an economic security measure, it is opening the door to further government control of our speech, thoughts, and communication—indeed, the very fabric of our free society.
As someone who makes a living selling original digital content, I have no worry over people "stealing" my content or even selling it for profit. In fact, most of my books are easily available in illegal torrent streams, and I don't give it a second thought. Digital piracy is a very negligible threat, largely exaggerated by the fear and hysteria of industries that are afraid of change. Even if the United States could police its own servers, the illegal content would still leak from cracks all over the world. The only possible outcome would be bigger government, higher taxes, and repressive control of our speech—and once the government has its prying eyes deep inside our Internet, do any of us really expect the government to turn a blind eye toward anything else it might not like?
What is the TRUE threat is the government making any move, however well-intentioned, into the public's largest and most immediate discussion forum. The Internet is the biggest tool for free speech in our civilization's history, and any regulatory shadow cast over it stands in direct contradiction to our First Amendment and, indeed, the foundation of the democracy we claim to espouse and defend.
I don't lose sleep over Internet theft. But I lose a lot of sleep over the idea of Big Brother reaching into my computer and telling me what I can't read, see, or believe. Say "No" to HR 3261 and value individual civil liberty over despotic government growth. Thank you.
YOUR NAMEYOUR TOWN---

Nora Percival: Self-Publishing at Age 97

Yesterday I helped my 97-year-old friend Nora Percival publish an ebook. We're still in the upload process, and it was a great reminder of how wonderful the digital era is. While Nora is still hale, hardy, and bright at age 97, she has little incentive to wait years to look for publishers of her set of memoirs covering her parents' relationship in Russia, immigrating to America in the 1920s and growing up in the Great Depression, and the new book The Whirligig of Time about working in a World War II defense plant.

While a few of her books were already out for Kindle and in paper from small press, we're reformatting the files to make them cleaner and I will also be building a three-set memoir omnibus for her. She's most excited about getting to see the real-time sales data, as she has just started blogging and using Facebook, too. We also adjusted her prices to more realistic levels--her list of Kindle books is here.

I don't know anything about whether authors are better off using a traditional publisher, doing it themselves, or looking for other distribution options. But in this case, for this one author, there's absolutely nothing wrong with a little instant gratification. After 97 years, she's earned it!
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German Covers and Life Ain't Too Shabby

It may not have been the best day ever, but it was typically cool. The morning started with signing a contract to publish The Skull Ring in Chinese, followed by sending a notice of a rights reversion for the book that shall be Creative Spirit (formerly The Manor), followed by receiving the translated file of Crime Beat (Ressort: Verbrechen in German), followed by writing some of the current thriller in progress, followed by helping the neighbor dress a deer. Plus I found my daughter's glasses that had been missing for a week, and I found where my wife has been hiding the cookies. I am so grateful to have such rich and abundant blessings (and the abundance is going to my belly if I eat too many cookies.)

You can help me out by weighing in on these covers (the base image is the same as the English version, so it seems simplest to just re-use it, although I could also go back to the drawing board completely if you hate them both)

The Unofficial Scott Nicholson Ebook Predictions for the Future of Publishing: Updated

Just for giggles, I thought it might be fun to go back to some of my "Predictions for the Future of Ebooks" I made in September 2010 at Debbi Mack's blog (complete post is here). I will give myself a grade from A to F based on what has happened since and where it may be trending. Even though the predictions were fairly tongue in cheek, they were based on what I knew at the time. As usual, I only learned that I don't know very much! Feel free to chime in with your own predictions.1. The Kindle will deliver the knockout punch to the Nook, Sony Reader, and Kobo e-reader by Christmas 2011. GRADE: F. I clearly botched this one, but I do believe Sony and the Nook are about at the end of the road, and Apple has still not entered the ebook market. Kobo has made great worldwide steps and looks to emerge as Number Two behind Amazon's Kindle.2. By December, many of the indie writers who jumped on the $2.99 pricing bandwagon for e-books will drop to 99 cents in an effort to drum up numbers.GRADE: B. Most indie writers do price their books at 99 cents, although an increasing number of the more successful indies are moving to $3.99, and it seems to work. Apparently, the $2.99 price point, like the 99 cent price, has become for some readers a warning sign that the book is indie. An author who charges more is worth more, even if it's the same author! Why didn't I think of that?3. The Big Six group of publishers will be down to the Big Three in five years, and Amazon will be a bigger publisher than those three survivors put together. GRADE: B. Still too early to tell at this point, but Amazon is trending up up up. I've been impressed by the transition big publishers have been able to make, steering the massive ship just in time to avoid a head-on with the glacier, but I still believe scraping the bow will be enough to sink her. Still, we can't discount the huge cargo of backlist she's hauling.4. Small publishers with identifiable markets will adapt better than large publishers who have no identifiable markets, because publisher brands are meaningless to the average reader.GRADE: C. Again, it's early, but a lot of small presses have done very well in the ebook era, thanks to low overhead and in the joy of ditching the whole bookstore distribution system that always freighted them with a disadvantage. But publishers have not lost their writers as fast as I thought they would, and there seems to be plenty more writers willing to board the sinking ship, just to say they were there when it happened. A small but vocal core of readers also seems to be demanding protection from those pesky indie authors and their millions of unedited books (while big publishers scan paper copies and dump out inferior formatting in far too many cases). I only give myself "average" because publishers have done better than I expected (for now).5. In five years, there will be about 200 bookstores in the United States, centered in the major cities.GRADE: A. And you can say good-bye to Barnes & Noble, which has pretty much gutted its shelf space to start selling Nooks and carpets and toys and beanie babies and iPads. (I guess it depends on at what point you stop considering B&N a "bookstore" and start calling it a "general merchandiser.")6. In five years, there will be 10 million e-books for sale at Amazon.GRADE: A. I'm sticking with this one. Ebooks passed the one million mark early this year and, at the rate at which indie authors are befriending me on Facebook and the frantic rush of veterans to get their ebooks out (not to mention everyone turning their short stories and articles and blog posts into ebooks), I'd buy stock in this prediction.7. The publishing industry won't exist in 10 years. Instead, we'll have 20,000 cottage industries supplying digital content, very few beyond the hobbyist level.GRADE: C. I believe something calling itself "the publishing industry" will still be around, but it will be fairly unrecognizable-- about on the order of what "record labels" and "movie studios" are now--a few big power brokers but tons of tiny cottage industries. And those agents are doing a pretty good job of turning themselves into epublishers, although I still don't see what advantages they can offer over doing it yourself.8. In five years, even the e-book bestsellers will sell for 99 cents. Most of the rest will have no value. GRADE: B. I'm sticking with this but downgrading myself because it's going to be difficult to determine "value"--because advertising will make a big impact on book pricing.9. The 20 surviving novelists still getting published in print in 10 years will make out like bandits.GRADE: A. I'm sticking with this one. And I'll bet half of those bestselling authors will be dead, with the names farmed out. For the record, the complete prediction was based on rack presence in retail stores, not POD or those antique specialty shops we'll nostalgically call "bookstores."10. The authors unfortunate enough to have been moderately published in New York this decade will be the worst off in 2020, when most sales are digital and they have signed clauses that basically grant their e-rights in perpetuity. GRADE: B. I've observed an interesting phenomenon with the authors who have signed major deals and kept publishing their own books. Their own books sell better than the major releases! Even at lower prices, they earn far more money. So they are using their major publishing deals as LOSS LEADERS!!! That is something I hadn't expected. But those authors locked in at 9.99 retail prices with publishers who have forgotten them will be lucky to ever see a nickel in royalties. And yet people are STILL querying agents, signing contracts, and banking their futures on someone else's needs.11. The Big Three will have some spin-off revenue in enhanced digital books, but only for the brand-name authors who died and didn't have heirs smart enough to start their own publishing companies.Grade: C.  Well, Pottermore is attempting to launch, and Pattersonville, ClancyPants, and Cusslerland can't be far behind, but the only people who get even remotely excited about enhanced ebooks are the middle players who want to "intermediate" themselves into the production process. For money. That no reader wants to give them.12. In a desperate survival attempt, publishers will move to a subscription model, similar to the Netflix model, where consumers pay a flat monthly fee for the books they want to read. Grade: B. I knocked this out of the park with Amazon, which last week announced it was rolling its own lending library into its Prime subscription (which is basically Netflix without the bad management). But I am flubbing on the feet-of-clay publishers taking advantage of their one main strength: an actual library of content. 13. By 2013, 85 percent of the writers who published their rejected manuscripts in 2010 will give up for good, retiring with $200 in net profit and a good story for the grandchildren.Grade: C. I am already seeing dramatic announcements of "I'm quitting" from writers who nobody knew had even started. But it seems like a lot of writers are earning at least a little bit, and since there's no overhead, there's no reason to quit. If nothing else, 2011 will be remembered as the year shameless self-promotion crested into a tsunami and flooded every social media stream. And way more people are entering the game ("Gee, I hear you can make a million on Kindle. I'm going to start writing!") than are leaving it.14. The smart writers who are dumb enough to stick with it will earn their money through content advertising, product placement, multimedia branding, and tireless promotion.Grade: Incomplete. I still think ads are coming, presaged by Amazon's Prime library and the reduced-priced "Kindle with bargains," but it is still too early in the evolution to pat myself on the back or kick my rear.15. Half of these predictions will be wrong, and no one will be able to tell which ones they are, because this blog post will be stored in a free e-book that no one ever reads.Grade: C. I don't think I've put this in an ebook yet because it will date badly one way or another. Sorta like the guy walking around with a "The End is Coming!!!" sign. Even if you're right, you're still an idiot.16. I will still be writing in 20 years, and no one will care about my predictions. Grade: Makeup Test. Depends on how many people drop by to read this and comment.Final Grade: Pass. By following what I believe, I've managed to carve out a career, so my predictions are working for at least one person. Okay, I admit, I graded myself on a curve. What can I say? I'm the teacher's pet.
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Amazon's covers for the Fear series: Thomas & Mercer rocks it

[image error]
Don't look now, but here are the covers for Liquid Fear and Chronic Fear, from Amazon's Thomas & Mercer imprint. After winnowing through a few choices, I really like this unconventional thriller presentation. But if we continue the series, we may run out of face!
The paperback or audiobook of Liquid Fear can be pre-ordered at Amazon or Barnes & Noble, or bug your favorite bookstore to stock it. Chronic Fear can be pre-ordered for Kindle, paperback, and audio or for audio and paperback at Barnes & Noble. Release date is Dec. 20!

Sean A. Lusher: Where Do Your Ideas Come From?

[image error] Something really weird happened to me recently and it led to a revelation that every other author has probably had, since I'm pretty far behind the times. Or, I might be somewhat unique and this doesn't happen to most people.
There's this drain in my laundry room that my washing machine drains into. It looks disgusting, the water stagnant and black, with some unknown green mossy substance growing in it. The sight has always creeped me out. The mossy stuff, though, is recent. And I found myself muttering, "What is that?"
As soon as the words left my mouth, I had an intense burst of ideas. Almost like a vision. A scene painted itself in my head, and, just like that, I had the groundwork for a new novella. It was as if the idea was locked in a box inside my head, and I just happened to find the key that unlocked it.
And that really got me thinking. Because, while not all my ideas are born of this manner, enough are to make me realize that this has been happening to me for years. I just never questioned it before. Well, I began to question it.
See, I've noticed that a lot of bigger name authors always skirt the edge of questions pertaining to where their ideas come from. I've always found it weird, until I began to realize a lot more about the publishing industry, human nature and the world in general.
It seems obvious now that ideas are generated from inspiration. And inspiration comes from a huge variety of places, but usually from other media. Books, films, art, etc. Personally, much of my inspiration comes from video games.
I think that a lot of authors feel awkward about admitting just where exactly they get their ideas from because, well, if you're a good author then generally you read a lot of books and, in turn, the books inspire you.
But everyone seems to forget that old saying, the sincerest form of flattery is imitation. Combine that with the fact that in our age of instantaneous information transfer and it becomes nearly impossible to be truly original. All you can do is put your own spin on the idea and deliver the best piece of work you can.
Now, personally, I'm super paranoid about imitation. There are some projects, what other people have told me are great ideas, that I'm still stalling on because I think they too closely resemble other, more official, pieces. With how sue-happy America is currently, well, it just gives me that much more of a worry.
But I wonder, am I a minority or do lots of others share this fear? And, if so, how many great pieces of work are we losing out on because the author is worried about ridiculous copyright infringement laws? Since my wife assures me that I'm being crazy and overly paranoid, as I'm wont to do, I haven't scrapped those ideas and still plan on using them. Someday.
Another reason I think we're afraid of fully admitting where our ideas come from is because we feel we might lose credibility. I mean, there's already enough people out there who think that writing isn't a 'real job' and doesn't even deserve payment. Why give them more ammo by admitting your latest idea came from watching an old episode of Scooby Doo?
In his book of short stories, Smoke & Mirrors, Neil Gaiman, the best living author I've ever read, gave a short explanation of each story. In one of them, he admitted that the idea came when a fan mistakenly asked him if he had written the script for a Baywatch reboot. (Neil had actually worked on the recent release of Beowulf.) And it was a great piece, too, made greater by learning its hilarious origin story. But, even then, at the end of it, he states, "Look, I don't give you grief over where you get your ideas from."
But I think it would be better to 'cite our sources', so to speak. It's a way to help people understand what they're getting into. For example, if you say, "Well, my latest book was inspired by Stephen King's Duma Key and the video game Alan Wake." Right off the bat, anyone who read Duma Key and played Alan Wake will have an idea of what you're talking about and might be that much more interested in seeing what you've got to offer.
Ultimately, I think everyone needs to be more open and free with where they gather their inspiration. The writing world would be a better place.
Author Bio: Sean A. Lusher is a horror/mystery author planning on expanding into more genres. He lives in Columbia, Missouri with his wife, some roommates and a few cats.
His novella, Liberation Road, is available for sampling at Amazon. His blog is This Thing Called Writing.###

Slow Zombies and Halloween

We hardcore horror fans think of Halloween as "Amateur Night," since we're 365/24/7, but there's no reason not to throw some extra monster love at the end of October.

While I prefer ghosts as my favorite supernatural entity, if you take it to the level of creatures, I have to give zombies the nod over their fang-bearing, red-eyed brethren in arms. The Night of the Living Dead ranks in my Top 10 pantheon, and last year I even participated in first zombie walk  I just love the relentless nature of the living dead, their relatively calm persistence, their focus on the prize. As you may be able to tell, I am a fan of the Slow Zombie.

I remember watching Fulci's Zombie on back-to-back nights in a theater in Chapel Hill, NC when I was in college. It's the only movie I've ever seen twice in a theater, and I have no idea what I was thinking. I even went alone to that second showing, so I must have been seeking some private connection with the horrors that unfolded (or maybe I just dug the groovy synth soundtrack). I enjoyed 28 Days Later but I find most modern zombie movies are too jokey and self-referential and attention-deficit-disordered, as if zombies have now jumped the shark (cue that really cool scene in Zombie where...well, just watch it).

I guess it's hard to keep fresh, and NotLD definitely borrowed from the The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price. Even the old-school, Haitian zombie movies like I Walked With a Zombie captured an atmosphere of dread., instead of the shock-horror that modern audiences expect. I hate to sound like a grumpy old geezer ("Quit playing on my lawn, you kids!") but I would love to see a revival of the slow zombie, where the experience was less that of a shoot-em-up video game and more like, "It doesn't matter what you do, we're gonna get ya."

But, heck, I guess I'd still take a bad zombie movie over a good romantic comedy any day. Got any suggestions for good Slow Zombie movies?

(Zombie Bits, my Z collection with bonus material from Jonathan Maberry, Joe McKinney, and Jack Konrath, is available at Amazon, BN, Apple, and Kobo. The Murdermouth comic is still in development as I seek ways to raise funds for it.)



Thanks for sharing your list!
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Sean Platt: Yesterday's Gone serial ebook project

Sean and I have crossed paths here and there over the years, and when I found out about his serial ebook project, I had to know more. So here is Sean, in the digital flesh.
Hi Scott! Thanks for having me, it's great to be here.
1) Why a serialized fiction project?
Serialized fiction is something my writing partner David Wright and I have been interested in for a long time. In fact, we started our first serialized project more than two years ago at our website, Collective Inkwell. It was a horror novel called Available Darkness.

We published a new entry each Friday and developed a decent sized audience in a reasonably short time, but life nudged its way to the front and we both got busy with the immediate needs of life which forced us to pause the project. We resurrected it earlier this year and published it on Kindle and print this summer.
But our new project, Yesterday's Gone, was an entirely different beast from day one!
By mid-summer, our small imprint had published five titles. Unfortunately, those five titles were in four different markets. We knew we really needed to fix this. It's difficult to hit critical mass on Kindle without multiple titles. But just because someone loves your book about vampires, doesn't mean they're going to love your book about how to build an online writing business.
Yesterday's Gone was designed from day one to capitalize on the all-too-easy to click Kindle consumer phenomenon. This serial was a way for us to get six high quality titles to market that would keep readers at the edge of their seat, leave them wanting for more, and hopefully telling their friends about all the fun they had reading.
2) Did you choose a post-apocalyptic story because of the nature of the project, or was that always in the plans?That's a great question! Full credit for the premise goes to Dave. We were already discussing doing a serial, but to his way of thinking, it would be easier to get our first season to market if it was set in a world where we wouldn't end up drowning in research. With a post-apocalyptic setting, we essentially built ourselves a giant sandbox where we made all the rules.
Of course, there were still a ton of things to research and we had to make sure our dates and times all lined up, and that locations in our story matched locations on the map. This was especially difficult while doing some of the larger scenes in New York and Times Square, but was still significantly less work than it would have been if we were writing something set in the real world.
3) How does the collaboration work? Back and forth for each chapter, or write and rewrite?Dave and I have been writing together for three years now. We met during what was the first few weeks for each of us online. Our collaboration is natural, organic, and wonderfully fluid. A project of this scope would've been impossible without it.
As far as Yesterdays Gone specifically, we started by writing the "pilot." We decided there would be six characters and that each of us would handle the POV for three of them. Once finished, I sent my work to Dave and he pieced them all together.
For episodes 2-6, we each stuck with the characters we started with, following the same process, where I would write my three POV's then send them to Dave for arrangement. I polished his copy and sent it back. Dave excels at structure, and I'm slightly better voice so that rhythm works really well for us.
4) How many episodes will you do, and what happens after they are finished?There are six episodes in the first season, and right now we have at least three seasons planned, though if the audience is asking, we'll definitely deliver more. We're not sure six episodes is the perfect number for a season. Seems like there's a lot to experiment with there. The next serial we have planned will have a different number of episodes and a slightly different page count for each one, almost for sure.
Dave's been getting the episodes to Kindle one at a time, but we've been fast-tracking the entire project since there isn't the big built-in audience that there will be for Season II. Once we're in the second season, we'll launch each episodes anywhere from a week to a month apart, depending on audience feedback.
5) Do you see other possibilities for invention and experimentation with form in the digital era?Absolutely! I am thoroughly in love with where self-publishing is right now, and I think experimentation is everything. We have many, many plans, in multiple genres. And we can't wait to explore them all.



We hope you enjoy this trailer, and will share it on Facebook, Twitter and email. You can start with the pilot of Yesterday's Gone for just $.99 or get the entire season for $4.99, which is a super great deal!
If you're a reader who likes the extra goodies (like exclusive chapters and sneak peeks), or an author who wants a behind-the-scenes look at the writing and marketing process for this project, sign up to be a "goner," here.

Thanks for having me at the Haunted Computer, Scott. 
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Griffin Hayes: Malice and dreams

Where do writer's come up with their ideas? I'm often asked this question and almost exclusively by non-writers. They ask it as though I were an acrobat from the Cirque du Soleil and they wanted to know how I managed to balance thirty teapots on my head without dropping a single one. The rather mundane answer I normally give has the tendency of wiping that look of incredulous awe right off their faces. For me, story ideas rarely come nicely prepackaged with a tiny pink bow on top. It's a sloppy, Darwinian process where crappy ideas (hopefully) get munched on by stronger, more elegant ideas. More often than not, a single novel is really a series of ideas, all meshed into one. 
Predominately, the source of my inspiration comes from dreaming. These are snippets mostly. Tiny fragments which don't seem to make a whole lot of sense on their own, but when connected to two or three other fragments, begin to take on the distinct shape of a story. 
Another place I mine for novel ideas - because mining is exactly what we do - are what I call my 'what ifs.' It's something I do everyday and some of the coolest books and movies out there were born from this process. What if you were the last man on earth in a world filled with vampires? (I am Legend). What if the devil opened a shop in a small town? (Needful things). The list could go on and on.
I've seen this play out in my own work countless times. My novel Malice is a revenge story about a witch, condemned and executed hundreds of years ago, who has returned to even the score. The dream part of the equation came to me one night when I dreamt that an old hag was crawling along the floor, trying to get me. I could see her dirty fingernails tearing at the carpet and in her wake was a long trail of gore and revolting slime. I woke up from that one thankful it was only a dream. [image error] The 'what if' part of Malice came when the following question popped into my head one day: what if someone was being hunted for a crime from another life they had no memory of committing? 
Now apart, those two pieces didn't mean a whole hell of a lot. But together, that's when something sinister began to take shape. 
So in a way the process is about swinging an imaginary pick-axe, scooping up the loose chunks that gather at your feet and squeezing them together to see how they fit. 99.9% of the story ideas I've had are terrible and rightfully end up in a sort of mental dustbin, just where they belong. It's that .01% that I keep my eye out for and when you find those rare gems, you just hope you're wise enough to rub away at the edges and recognize that beneath that rough surface lies something worthwhile. View Malice at Amazon for Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Malice-ebook/dp/B005QCC122  Link to Griffin's blog:http://griffin-hayes.blogspot.com/###