What Are you Reading? Showing 951-1,000 of 16,523

[Jordan]

I will comment that some bookshelves on GR do double duty. For example, my bookshelf "MM" can mean MM Romance, as that's primarily what's on that shelf, but for me, it also includes books where the main character happens to be gay, or the nonfiction topic covers something to do with being gay. Rather than create a million shelves, of which I already seem to have half a million, I try to use them as a broad subject. If a topic comes up where I have more books than intended originally, then I might create a new shelf. But my MM shelf will likely always be doing double duty.

Uh, point is, how people shelve things doesn't necessarily point to how they perceive a book before or after reading it.

[Karen]

ttg wrote: "Speaking of books, I stopped by the University Book Store today prior to the reading event tonight with Ginn Hale, Astrid Amara, Laylah Hunter, and Angela Benedetti, and they had the books out that..."

Love seeing this. Need a like button here for sure!

[Josh]

Hj wrote: "Josh wrote: "In fact, not too long ago I read an article on how Amazon is slowly and very quietly raising prices on text books and a lot of non-fiction. ..."

My heart sank when I read this (as I h..."

I phrased that badly. It's not that the prices of the books have increased. Amazon has stopped offering those deep, deep discounts. They still offer the discounts, but now the discounts are moving more in line with what other vendors offer.

[Josh]

Ame wrote: "Calathea wrote: "Josh wrote: "Ame wrote: "The other thing that pisses me off is when authors write an ordinary length novel... cut it down in maybe 5-6 chapters and sell it off for the prize of an ..."

The rise of serialization, I guess?

[Josh]

KC wrote: "Ame wrote: "KC wrote: "Ame wrote: "K.Z. wrote: "BTW, it does make me nervous as a writer to hear people grousing about the cost of digital books, which is why I asked for your input. But what puts ..."

Correct.

It also matters whether you give Amazon an exclusive. My Japanese, Indian, and Brazilian royalties are only 35% because I will not make any of my titles exclusive to Amazon.

[Josh]

Susinok wrote: "Anne wrote: "I can see that point. I guess some readers, like me, will follow an author we like across the genres, while many who like to stick to one or two genres for their reading will not. And ..."

Part of it is puzzling. Like mystery readers who love the AE books but aren't interested in even trying the H&Ms.

But sometimes it's a matter of genre. I can understand that a mystery reader might not be interested in a fantasy novel.

It doesn't mean the author shouldn't branch out, but you have to be braced for readers not interested in following you into new territory.

[Josh]

Charming wrote: "K.Z. wrote: "Here's an interesting little discussion thread about ebook pricing: http://www.goodreads.com/user_status/.... Do you have a spending limit based on a book's length? Do you th..."

Yep. Lots of people feel like this.

And I agree that while the average quality of free stuff is not high, when free stuff *is* good, it is absolutely as good as paid stuff.

[Aleksandr]

Lots of people are experimenting with different formats and different ways to make money. Some will work, some are dead ends. I've spoken to a couple authors (outside the genre) who do serialisation and say it allows them to make some money from a story before it ends up getting pirated. I thought that was an interesting thought.

[Josh]

I think the main thing about book pricing is yes, everyone likes bargains and most people do have to consider their budget.

And on the other side of the coin, professional authors have to make money in order to keep turning out professional quality books, and books will rise in price like every other commodity on the planet.

That's pretty much it.

There are people who are more concerned with price than quality, and they have lots and lots of stories and authors to choose from. It's a good time to be a reader.

And it's a good time to be an author as well because there are many options for publishing your work and most readers expect and are willing to pay the price of mass market paperback for their ebooks.

Some people will never be happy -- there's no point worrying about them.

[Josh]

One interesting thing though. About a month ago I dropped the prices of a couple of very old titles.

I am now selling FEWER books at the reduced price.

My other sales stayed steady, the reduced price books sell less.

So guess what? I'll give it one more month and then I'm raising the prices back up.

[Aleksandr]

Interesting. I'm looking to self-publish a story that's not commercially viable any other way and have been doing calculations how much it'll cost me and how to price it at the expected rate of sales. I know that low-balling in the genre can work, but I also know the numbers of "bestsellers" in this genre versus "bestsellers" in other genres.

Absolute break-outs in other genres sell millions of copies. Break-outs in our genre sell 10-20k. Many books will never break 1,000 copies. Many will never break 100. So priced at, say $.99, a book might only ever bring in $30 or so. Not enough to even pay a proofer.

[Josh]

Aleksandr wrote: "Interesting. I'm looking to self-publish a story that's not commercially viable any other way and have been doing calculations how much it'll cost me and how to price it at the expected rate of sal..."

By the time I finished paying for Man Oh Man, pricing the ebook at $9.99 was a steal for readers. I wasn't even going to do an ebook because I think text books don't work well as ebooks, so that was mostly a courtesy anyway.

[Charming]

Josh wrote: "One interesting thing though. About a month ago I dropped the prices of a couple of very old titles.

I am now selling FEWER books at the reduced price.

My other sales stayed steady, the reduced ..."

That is really interesting. Maybe people want the good stuff and figure the lower prices indicate bargain bin quality? More people need to do this experiment and test my hypothesis. :-)

[Ame]

Josh wrote: "One interesting thing though. About a month ago I dropped the prices of a couple of very old titles.

I am now selling FEWER books at the reduced price.

My other sales stayed steady, the reduced ..."

What titles and where?

[Charming]

K.Z. wrote: "Charming wrote: "I really don't think you are well-advised to scold your readers for liking freebies or assume out loud they are buying a Mochaccino every day with money they should be spending on ..."

I hope I didn't sound scoldy toward you authors. I was really trying to express my attitude as a reader, but re-reading it, it sounds kind of ... pointed.

[Aleksandr]

Josh - I can imagine. I do hope it does well. :) Producing a book, especially a novel, is a four-figure investment. To be honest, that alone will ensure that the selfpubbed book I want to do will stay below 40k. I just can't afford to produce it to acceptable quality on projected sales of <500 copies.

ETA: FOUR figures, not five. The heat here in Berlin makes me damn near incoherent.

[Josh]

Ame wrote: "Josh wrote: "One interesting thing though. About a month ago I dropped the prices of a couple of very old titles.

I am now selling FEWER books at the reduced price.

My other sales stayed steady,..."

I "permanently" dropped the price on The Dark Horse, Out of the Blue, A Limited Engagement, The French Have a Word for It, and (I think) In Sunshine or In Shadow.

There may have been one or two others? Anyway, they seemed old enough to justify the drop in price. But if it's going to hurt their sales, I have to rethink that strategy.

[Josh]

Charming wrote: "Josh wrote: "One interesting thing though. About a month ago I dropped the prices of a couple of very old titles.

I am now selling FEWER books at the reduced price.

My other sales stayed steady,..."

That's what I wonder. Have people become leery of the .99 - 2.99 price point? Are the books so old that they would have dropped in sales this month anyway? But it sure seems like a coincidence!

I'd definitely like to hear from others in our particular genre on that point. Maybe there's some variable in my case I don't recognize.

[Josh]

Charming wrote: "K.Z. wrote: "Charming wrote: "I really don't think you are well-advised to scold your readers for liking freebies or assume out loud they are buying a Mochaccino every day with money they should be..."

:-)

You're fine!

Ebook pricing is a surprisingly heated subject.

[K.Z.]

I just started Anne Brooke's A Dangerous Man. I absolutely love her "darker" work. Can't help but wonder, though, if a lot of readers in our genre avoid it, regardless of how exquisitely written it is.

That's truly a shame. Twenty of her pages easily outshine 200 of some other m/m stories I've read -- maybe most m/m stories I've read (or tried to read).

[Josh]

K.Z. wrote: "I just started Anne Brooke's A Dangerous Man. I absolutely love her "darker" work. Can't help but wonder, though, if a lot of readers in our genre avoid it, regardless of how exquisitely written it..."

Yeah, what attracts readers remains an eternally fascinating mystery.

[Susinok]

Josh wrote: "That's what I wonder. Have people become leery of the .99 - 2.99 price point? Are the books so old that they would have dropped in sales this month anyway? But it sure seems like a coincidence!
..."

There's that weird dynamic of "you get what you pay for" thinking happening here, I bet. Just a few years ago there was a .99 to 2.99 boom, and almost all self-pubbed ebooks on Amazon were at that price. I think a lot of people got burned with badly done self-published books at that time and it made them leery of those price points.

Though I look over backlists all of the time. It annoys me to see a bunch of books published years ago for the same prices as newly released stuff today. But... if I want to read those books... I'll pay it.

[Josh]

Susinok wrote: "Josh wrote: "That's what I wonder. Have people become leery of the .99 - 2.99 price point? Are the books so old that they would have dropped in sales this month anyway? But it sure seems like a coi..."

That could be it. A "sale" seems a safe bet but a permanently low priced book maybe seems like it won't be of the same quality as the author's later work?

It was a surprise, which is why I'm giving it another month in case it's some kind of fluke.

[Susinok]

Josh wrote: "It was a surprise, which is why I'm giving it another month in case it's some kind of fluke...."

Maybe mark them as 'sale' somehow?

[ttg]

Josh wrote: "Charming wrote: "Josh wrote: "One interesting thing though. About a month ago I dropped the prices of a couple of very old titles.

I am now selling FEWER books at the reduced price.

My other sal..."

Is there any need for more outreach about the sales? Sometimes people sit on something in their TBR list, but don't always know that a title dropped in price. ($2.99 for the Dark Horse is a great deal.)

Personally, I don't know if you need to go below $2. You have such a varied backlist of excellent titles that range from $2.50 (like for some of your wonderful Christmas stories) to $3-$4 (like Fair Game or Snowball in Hell or Come unto these Yellow Sands) to just over $4 (like with H&M) or the over $5-$7 like AE, etc. Those are very affordable prices for stellar work.

It's great to experiment (and could be interesting to try making one short story free forever and seeing how people download it), but I don't know if you would have to do as much playing around with the below $2 pricing as some newer authors do.

$2 or less pricing can be great though, especially for trying new writers. Some fave $2-or-less novels for me are A Reason To Believe and Knight Errant. Also, the $2.99 price-point is also pretty easy on the "buy now" button, and some great indie books at that price are Gives Light, Cited to Death, or our own Fanyon Lou Harper's Dead in L.A..

But yeah, I don't know if you, Josh, need to mess with the lower prices since you offer so many choices at different price levels. (Those Christmas stories are a steal.)

[Antonella]

K.Z. wrote: "I just started Anne Brooke's A Dangerous Man. I absolutely love her "darker" work. Can't help but wonder, though, if a lot of readers in our genre avoid it, regardless of how exquisitely written it is."

That's a great book.

I really feel (not only see) the train wreck coming down, but I'm so invested in the characters that I can't bring myself to finish it...

[Calathea]

Antonella wrote: "K.Z. wrote: "I just started Anne Brooke's A Dangerous Man. I absolutely love her "darker" work. Can't help but wonder, though, if a lot of readers in our genre avoid it, regardless of how exquisite..."

Sounds good. I put in an my keep-in-mind list. :)

[Josh]

ttg wrote: "Josh wrote: "Charming wrote: "Josh wrote: "One interesting thing though. About a month ago I dropped the prices of a couple of very old titles.

I am now selling FEWER books at the reduced price.
..."

Thank you.

I keep experimenting and trying different things -- sales and price points and so forth. But I think basically I just need to PUBLISH SOMETHING. :-D

[Karen]

Josh wrote: "I keep experimenting and trying different things -- sales and price points and so forth. But I think basically I just need to PUBLISH SOMETHING. :-D "

No argument with that from this group, but meanwhile we've been having a good time with your backlist and Haunted Heart. :-)

[Karen]

The pricing discussion is interesting and topical. I'm a book impulse buyer, at least with ebooks and ordering print copies of my favorites. I spend more time browsing in my local bookstore, but then there's no m/m or much other romance there... which is a good thing for my wallet if not otherwise. Thinking about it, maybe not such a good thing for my bookstore. I wonder if I could convince them to ditch the self-help shelves in that back corner? ;-)

Meanwhile I'm waffling over an $8.99 ebook. I guess $7.99 is my low-hesitation limit, with a few exceptions (e.g. Man, Oh Man!).

[K.Z.]

Antonella wrote: "That's a great book.

I really feel (not only see) the train wreck coming down, but I'm so invested in the characters that I can't bring myself to finish it..."

I felt the same way about Junction X and The Brothers Bishop. Yet, bleak books that are so utterly compelling -- in terms of writing, plot, setting, and characterization -- just pull me along. I can't put them down, even if I feel almost sick with apprehension.

Now that's a sign of superlative writing.

[Aleksandr]

Junction X is one of my absolute favourite books.

[Jordan]

Question for those who have read Wicked Gentlemen: how do you pronounce Belimai out loud? Is it BelAmEE or BelimY?

I just got a new fish and thought he looks like a Belimai, which, if spelled a little different, means "handsome friend" in Old French according to my baby name book. But I'll need to be pronouncing it right at work. Lol.

I promise pictures as soon as I can get him into his official tank either tomorrow or Tuesday. He's a beautiful blue and aqua color.

[KC]

Jordan wrote: "Question for those who have read Wicked Gentlemen: how do you pronounce Belimai out loud? Is it BelAmEE or BelimY?

I just got a new fish and thought he looks like a Belimai, which, if spelled a l..."

I pronounce it Belimai (like: belly-my, with the stress on the last syllable). We could ask Ginn :-)

[K.Z.]

In my head, it's always been bell-i-my (pronounced the same way as the pronoun).

[Antonella]

K.Z. wrote: "In my head, it's always been bell-i-my (as in the pronoun)."

For me too.

[K.Z.]

Aleksandr wrote: "Junction X is one of my absolute favourite books."

Mine too. That's why I bought the print edition -- something I always do with books I've placed in my "greats" pantheon. Frankly, I think Erastes was possessed (in the best possible way) when she wrote it. :)

[Josh]

Jordan wrote: "Question for those who have read Wicked Gentlemen: how do you pronounce Belimai out loud? Is it BelAmEE or BelimY?

I just got a new fish and thought he looks like a Belimai, which, if spelled a l..."

I think I must pronounce it totally wrong. In my head it's Bel-am-ay

[Antonella]

Two heads, three pronunciations...

To make short work of this I asked Ginn ;-).

[Ame]

This is my proplem with Black Dagger Brotherhood names.... I usually have no idea how to pronounce them!!

[Jordan]

*smacks forehead* thanks Antonella! I should have thought of that.

I've been saying it with a double e on the end.

[Johanna]

Congrats on the new fish buddy, Jordan! Does Belimai have black fingernails fins? :-)

[Johanna]

I did some shopping in Helsinki today and bought Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane. The blurb sounded promising and it has a lot of positive reviews on Goodreads. Have any of you guys read it?

[Johanna]

Lou wrote: "Johanna wrote: "I did some shopping in Helsinki today and bought Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane. The blurb sounded promising and it has a lot of positive reviews on Goodreads. Have ..."

Cool. By the way, I thought that you might like my print copy's cover art, Lou:



I think that the way the water sort of transforms into a starry night sky is lovely. The cover also feels velvety to fingers and the shades of blue are beautiful.

[Antonella]

Update about Belimai.

Ginn says:

Well, my feeling is that each person can pronounce his name as they want. That said, when I created him he was "Bel-eh-may" in my mind. My editor referred to him as "Bel-a-my" and I've grown to like the sound of that, as well.

But I wouldn't take offense at any particular pronunciation.

[Anne]

Johanna wrote: "I did some shopping in Helsinki today and bought Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane. The blurb sounded promising and it has a lot of positive reviews on Goodreads. Have any of you guys ..."

I have been thinking about it, so please tell what you think after you have read it?

[KC]

Johanna wrote: "I did some shopping in Helsinki today and bought Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane. The blurb sounded promising and it has a lot of positive reviews on Goodreads. Have any of you guys ..."

I'm at sample stage. I do want to read it at some point, but probably not very soon. Let us know what you think :-)

[Antonella]

Johanna wrote: "I did some shopping in Helsinki today and bought Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane. The blurb sounded promising and it has a lot of positive reviews on Goodreads. Have any of you guys ..."

Till now I've read 4 books by him and I loved them.

Review of the new book from ''The Guardian'':
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/...

As he was answering Guardian readers' questions, Neil Gaiman said that he listened compulsively to ''Love at the Bottom of the Sea'' by The Magnetic Fields when he wrote the book (Neil Gaiman takes over the Guardian books site - video).

From that album you can listen to Andrew in Drag, the story of a straight guy falling for another man. So we get even more back on topic!

[Johanna]

Antonella wrote: "Johanna wrote: "I did some shopping in Helsinki today and bought Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane. The blurb sounded promising and it has a lot of positive reviews on Goodreads. Have ..."

Thank you, Antonella!!! :-)

[Jordan]

Thanks Antonella! What a great answer which was not as I expected.

Jo, I've never heard of that band but just had a gamble at Andrew in Drag. What an interesting song! And the music video is fun to watch too. Thanks for sharing that little bit.