Robert E. Howard Readers discussion
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Jim
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Sep 02, 2013 04:19AM
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My daughter & her boyfriend (Erin & Josh) went to an SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) event this weekend. http://www.sca.org/
These people are recreating the past prior to the 1700's. Josh originally got into it just for fun & has been learning to fight with a broadsword, Conan style. He says the armor & all is incredibly expensive, though.
This weekend, they learned all kinds of neat skills. Erin is now 'braiding' (actually it's more like weaving) wire around a dowel to create neat jewelry & got to play with some glass crafts. She learned more about weaving on the Inkle loom I made her, too.
Josh started fiddling with blacksmithing & is enthralled. I can't do much of that any more. It's too much for my bad arm, so I'm going to give him my forge & some of my other tools. We're planning on playing with it today.
Does anyone else belong to the SCA or know anything about it? Seems pretty neat. I want to go to one of the events just to see some of the craftsmen. There are some very talented folks & they even give classes. I'd be really interested to see some of their carpentry.
I used to go and watch them down here but never joined. Just never had the time to give to it properly.
Marg got a new horse today, a 15.1h black Quarter horse. He's 4 years old, green as grass, but brave & nice. Chip is being a jerk, as usual. Pics are here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?s...
No name yet. What's a good name for a dark horse. Single syllable preferably. It's easier to call & cuss with.
;-)
Jim wrote: "Marg got a new horse today, a 15.1h black Quarter horse. He's 4 years old, green as grass, but brave & nice. Chip is being a jerk, as usual. Pics are here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?..."
"Shade"?
Marg picked Indigo, Indy for short. It's a color of Blue, her favorite horse that we had to put down this year after having him for 20. She says Indy reminds her of him, but thanks for the suggestion.I spent an interesting 20 minutes this morning herding a small family of skunks off my property, a momma & 3 kits. Cute little critters. Speedy, our old pony, helped me out, although he got a little too close & one kit turned around & attacked us. I pushed Speedy back & the little bugger sprayed me across the shins. I was in shorts, so a bit of dishwashing liquid made me presentable in short order.
Jim, you're from Kentucky, ain't you? I was just there a couple of weeks ago. My brother owns a buncha land south of Maysville. While traipsing around the woods and fields, I encountered a number of critters - lots of turkeys, a few deer, and some kind of groundhog/gopher/muskrat thing. I didn't see any skunks, though. Later, when we were at my brother's cabin, we ran into a copperhead. The scaly serpent was making for a drain pipe underneath the house, but we slew the beast just before it reached the opening.
Yes, I'm just north of Frankfort, about 2 hours from Maysville. I have a small farm out in the sticks. Next time you get out this way, you & yours are welcome to drop by.
Thanks for the invite, Jim. I try'n make it to Kentuck at least once every year, so I may very well drop by sometime. I have a great affinity for the frontier history of the area where you dwell. When I read about the history of places like Frankfort, Lexington, Boonesborough, Bryan's Station, Harrodsburg and Stanford, I can't help but to recall Howard's epic Conan tale, "Beyond the Black River". I am certain R.E.H. borrowed heavily from Kentuck's frontier history when he wrote that story. In "Beyond the Black River" he even makes mention of men going off to the salt licks for salt!
I recently looked up my book stats & was amazed. I've read over 180 books so far this year! 20% or a bit more have been audio books.5 star - 30 books
4 star - 70 books
3 star - 57 books
2 star - 20 books (about 10%)
1 star - 8 books (about 4%)
What a fantastic year, so far. My average is above 3 stars, which means I've really liked most of them. I give out 3 stars to enjoyable books that just don't have much to recommend them except entertainment; Sookie, Parker, & a lot of other series fall into this rating. Since I snatch up any new ones & read them greedily, it's obvious that I like them a lot.
Of the 1 & 2 star books, a total of 28, I didn't bother finishing half of them, so I really didn't waste much time at all on books I didn't enjoy this year.
There has been a lot of criticism of GR this year for the Amazon buy out & now their new review/shelf policy, but numbers like this tell me that it is working very well for me, as are my friends' reviews & recommendations.
Fantastic year! But surely not 180 paper books? How many ebook, online books?Im having the opposite year from you, my worst book reading year ever. 20 books with few graphic novels which means i have read 15-18 real books.
From my avreage year of 90-110 books per year. Way down. I can atleast make my challenge of reading 5 Howard books this year.
I don't track book formats except to distinguish audio books, Mohammed. Otherwise, the written word is the same to me no matter how it is presented, although I don't track my heaviest reading - articles or instructions dealing with computers, networks, & such. I also don't track books that I read from new authors for a review unless I can give them 3 stars or better, either. I've gotten a lot more of those each year & have read a couple of dozen this year, but only posted reviews on a quarter of them.A few of these were short stories, so shouldn't count as books, but others were bricks, so it probably evens out. I thought page counts might help me track my reading, but they're poor across different media. Audio books sometimes have a page per CD or none at all.
Taking a look at pages read compared to books:
Year-Books-Pages
2013-185-22,276
2012-133-30,339
2011-126-37,871
2010-117-32,454
2009-150-44,837
2008-55-18,883
2007-22-7625
I joined GR the end of 2007 & didn't really track books well in 2008. I've read 35 more books this year than in 2009, yet have about half the page count. My home reading habits haven't changed much in over 30 years, so that tells me the page count is worthless to me.
I do keep track of the books I read each year by genres, but not by stars.
Charles, GR keeps track of them for you, else I wouldn't know any of that info, either. Just go to your books & scroll down past the listing of your shelves to the 'stats' link. In there you can see all the books you've read, how they're rated, pages counts & even a pie chart of your shelves. If you click on details, you'll see just the books for that year. It's interesting to do.
Jim wrote: "I don't track book formats except to distinguish audio books, Mohammed. Otherwise, the written word is the same to me no matter how it is presented, although I don't track my heaviest reading - ar..."I agree the written word is the same and didnt mean to sound like paper books are more real than audiobooks, ebooks.
I was thinking like what stopped me from reading more than 110 books in a year was that i only read in paper format and getting new unread books, to refil took time because i had to buy or loan books from the library. I sometimes wish i could read books other than in the habit of sitting and reading at home or in the local library.
I dont care about page counts either other than to make difference that i read a book or short story/novella on its own. I usually list short stories read in one short story collection.
Im envious and glad to see you enjoying yourself. Because who doesnt want to read 100 books that are good enough to rate 5-4 stars like you have read. Thats the great thing about reading many books in a year, the chance of reading quality books often :)
Oh, I didn't think you did, Mohammed. I just couldn't really answer your question, but it would be interesting to track. I might start doing it. It was only this year that I started tracking which books were in audio format. (Now that I think about it, the percentages are off since my audio shelf isn't exclusive from genres & I don't have a 'paper' shelf, either.)I don't read a lot of ebooks. I also prefer paper, so just have my old Sony ereader. It's far better than reading on the computer & handy since a lot of books are only in eformat now. That's especially true with new authors & the freebies I get.
Not too many short stories are listed singly as books, but it is happening more often as they come up either as ebooks or audio books. Our library system lets me download both formats for free, so I'm getting more of them all the time. It's really nice. Even ignoring the ones with DRM still leaves quite a few. A few of those are ones you'd probably like. I've listened to a few murder mysteries by John Lutz that were read by Stacy Keach, who played Mike Hammer in the TV series.
Yes, 100 4&5 star books is a blessing, but most of the rest were 3 star reads & that means I liked them well enough to keep reading them - even actively sought them. Even 2 star reads are OK, so that means I enjoyed over 95% of the books I read this year, a fantastic average given how many books are out there.
I have seen some eps of Mike Hammer and enjoyed Stacy Keach in the role.You sounds like me in how you feel about the books ratings. 3 stars are usually books i enjoy but not strong enough for 4-5 stars. Its only 1 stars i dont finish and regret reading. 2 stars is ok. Like you i stopped reading books that were 1-2 and dont feel its worth to waste time on them.
Did you see with GR the % of the books you rated 5,4,3 stars and so on? You didnt count yourself? It would be interesting to see which of those ratings i read most in an avreage, good reading year for me.
I figured out the percentages based on the number of books in each star category, which GR does give to me. There are 26 books per line on my browser, so easy to count.
Did you hear that BuzzFeed has banned negative book reviews? http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/30/opi...
Wow. That's not cool. Not every book is going to appeal to every taste... and if I know someone's taste is similar to mine, I want to know if that person didn't like a book. How can people make informed decisions if critical thinking is not allowed to be applied to books fairly?
That was my reaction, too. I often look at negative reviews to see if any of my pet peeves show up - lack of punctuation being the main one. A lot like artsy books without it, but it drives me crazy. People who like or don't mind it don't think to mention it or might bury it in a long review, but it's usually obvious in a poor review.
Pretty ridiculous of Buzzfeed, if you ask me.
I wonder if it will last. I've never really used them before, certainly won't now.
I'm biased from a small indie author perspective, and agree with Buzzfeed. I had a short story that almost no one read, and then it garnered its first review -- a negative one. I doubt the reviewer even understood the nature of Space Opera ... adventure in space, not much depth, etc. And that review hung on and hung on and hung on until another writer took a crack at the tale and liked it. Can't help but wonder how many readers kept held on to their .99 when they might have enjoyed the story.
A solution to that is to give the story away to some people for a review, John. I do that for authors fairly often, although of the dozens I read (or start to) every year, only a handful get a public review because I can't give them a good one. I let the author make the call on a 3 star review, but won't post a 1 or 2 star review for a new author because I agree with you in part. When I can post a review, I post it in many places for them & recommend them to friends. I sometimes buy the books I've been given & then buy others by that same author, although not always in a timely manner. (It's getting worse. Too many authors I know, not enough time!)The problem is that you authors don't realize how many books readers have available to them now. It's a crap shoot for a new author to even get my attention. They have to hit me in the right mood, time, & then hook me somehow. Free is good, but there must be an excellent blurb & it helps a lot if a friend here on GR has also liked their work.
I've tried to help a couple of authors with their book blurb. OMG! That has to be one of the hardest pieces of writing I've ever attempted or even thought about!!! I never realized it until I tried it, but it's about impossible. Everyone should try it for their favorite book. Read it a month later & see if you would buy it or thought it was still a good blurb. Bet you don't!
If I didn't buy another book the rest of my life, I'd still have plenty to read. I could do so just on free offers & private requests here on GR. I post about one public review in 5 or 6 & I turn down more books than I attempt to read.
Gutenberg has over a million old, free books online. Many are classics I want to read. Other sites have a lot of aspiring writers giving away free books & then there are special offers run by book sites. Baen & some well known authors give away their older works free just to hook readers. That's how I started reading David Weber's books & wound up buying his entire Honor Harrington series.
Well known authors that I've been reading for years sell their new ebooks cheap, Barry Eisler sells his for $3.99, J.A. Konrath for $2.99. Many are available from the library in electronic, audio &/or paper formats for free.
I still spend $10, $20, or more (sometimes much more) on a few books, though. The $10 ones are usually authors I've collected for years & like having in paperback like L.E. Modesitt Jr. or Donald Hamilton. I support some authors like Janny Wurts by preordering their new books in hardback, so spend $20 or $25. Then there are the collectibles like REH's or KEW's work. We all know how much we'll spend on those books!
;-)
Last year I read an amazing amount for me - over 200 books. Many were in audio format (free from the library) since that allows me to stay busy. I don't know what I spent on books, but it was more than I should have. It always is & yet I didn't buy many books that I 'wanted'. I often put them in my cart & then wait a month or so. If I still want them, I buy them, & then they sit on my TBR stack until I can get to them. I just put a few up for swap because I still haven't gotten to them after several years & don't want to read them any more. IOW, I wasted my money.
Another hurdle new-to-me authors face is other new authors. Every idiot with a computer seems to think they're writing the next great thing. Half of them can't spell, yet they often seem to be the most vociferousness. I belong to about a dozen groups & I don't think a day goes by that I don't see a new book posted, often for free. I don't even bother reading most of these posts any more. I probably miss some good books, but so many are just awful & I'm hit with the messages so often that I've tuned them out like commercials on the TV.
I'll bet other readers are in the same boat as I am. We have far more to read than time. This puts authors in the unenviable position of selling to a glutted market. Worse, self-published authors are trying to write & market their wares. Marketing is rarely part of their skill set & it takes up way too much time that they should be spending writing.
More published works is always a good thing. Sometimes their latest work is in a genre or has a blurb with a tone that doesn't work on a particular day, but something else they've written does. Too many new authors self-publish one work & that's it, so it's hard for me to take them seriously. While there are some great authors who have done that, they're the exception, not the rule.
I do not envy authors today. I know some who have made their living as novelists for years & they're having a tough time. Breaking into the game seems about like winning the lottery. Readers are going to pay for this. Quality authors aren't going to be as likely to publish or be published or will just be lost in all the chaff.
Well, that was LONG. Beware pushing buttons.
;-)
You've nailed it. So many reasons why writers and books struggle, and so many writers who haven't done the truly hard work of preparing themselves. I too skip over many, many free books, and maybe some would be good but I can't squeeze out the time.
Jim wrote: "The problem is that you authors don't realize how many books readers have available to them now. ..."Jim, you're The Man, but any writer who's been at this gig longer than a year or two is painfully aware of how many choices are out there, book-wise. And on top of that, there's television, video games, etc. to contend with.
I split my time between being a writer and a reader, which means I don't pay much attention to the 'hey, I've got a story' posts either. But as a writer, if you don't try to publicize now and then you're dropping the business aspect of the deal.
To your point about having more than one work to promote, I'm getting some insights now from a book on e-publishing where they say the same thing. You'd be surprised what catches on sometimes that the writer really didn't think would sell. And then, yes, readers will often try something else by the writer.
Charles, can you go a bit more into what you mean by authors not preparing themselves? I think I agree, but I also don't know everything they need to do. For instance, I know quite a few that have spent big bucks on an editor. I'll read the book & be amazed at how poorly it seems to flow &/or how many obvious mechanical mistakes there are. I'm not particularly good at those mechanics, either. On the one hand, they seem to have prepared. On the other, they needed to do more.John, you're right that an author has to stay in the eye & mind of the public. There's such a fine line there, though. I wonder if the terms 'promote' & 'publicize' shouldn't be dropped from Indy author's vocabulary & rolled up into 'marketing', a subtle but real difference. The P words always seem to go with another - Pushy - which is a turn off.
The one indy author that I've known to make it to being published by one of the Big 6 was a marketing guy originally. While at times he was pushy, he fell on the marketing side of the line more often & managed to make his books popular enough to climb into the big time. I think multiple books help stay in the marketing area. This guy did it by saying he had all 6 books planned out & kept to a publishing schedule. To my mind, that excused some of his continuing posts since they were news, not rehashing. He kept his works in my awareness without turning me off. One day, people were in the right mood & had the time, so he got read by enough of them to catch on & it spread like wild fire.
I don't know. I'm in a rush - need to get outside to go ride with Marg & give the goats their medicine - but would like to hear what you all think about the subject, if I made any sense.
To me, preparing ones self to self publish means doing the hard work of learning how to write before you put up a book. A professional editor is the last thing in line before self publishing. First comes long years of reading and paying attention to other writers' work, especially that which moves you or which has stood the test of time in a particular genre. Second is practice, practice, practice, rewriting your own stories until you are sick of them. Then there is actively studying what other writers do, reading books about writing, learning as much grammar and punctuation as you can. Then there comes submission to actual magazines and publishers. You try your stuff out on the open market, see if you can get into magazines. Once you've done these kinds of things, then you are likely to have an idea about what it takes to please a reader, and an idea about how to construct a story that works. After that comes the professional editor. And finally, lots and lots of luck. Because even professional level material is not necessarily going to sell in the modern marketplace.
Jim wrote: "A solution to that is to give the story away to some people for a review, John. I do that for authors fairly often, although of the dozens I read (or start to) every year, only a handful get a pub..."Well said, Jim.
Charles wrote: "To me, preparing ones self to self publish means doing the hard work of learning how to write before you put up a book. A professional editor is the last thing in line before self publishing. Firs..."Well said, Charles.
Jim wrote: "John, you're right that an author has to stay in the eye & mind of the public. There's such a fine line there, though. I wonder if the terms 'promote' & 'publicize' shouldn't be dropped from Indy author's vocabulary & rolled up into 'marketing', a subtle but real difference. The P words always seem to go with another - Pushy - which is a turn off. "Agreed, Jim. So many of us hate marketing/promoting/etc but we don't want to write in a vacuum either. I have tried to be cool about it and not break group rules. ie. post in the Author Promotion thread, etc. I suppose one nice thing about 'making' it would be a change in the promo efforts.
So I'm also trying to get some short stories into websites that may help get some name recognition. One of them is the estimable Weird Tales. What a thrill it would be ... same place REH was pubbed!
But there is no breath-holding in this game.
I completely sympathize with you, John. It's a shame that marketing people don't work on a percentage - or do they? I guess if you count publishers they do, but most authors have told me that most publishers do very little marketing for most books. A few are really pushed, but very few. One told me it was akin to the number of high school athletes that make it to the pros.I've heard that marketing packages for self-published books are prohibitively expensive for most. Heck, most authors can't afford a decent editor. The problem is that both are really required. Most authors just aren't of the correct temperament to sell their product. Oh, there are a few, but usually the better the artist, the less likely they are to be good at sales in my experience. Different personality types.
Self-marketing leads these artistic types into reading their own reviews & they become manic-depressives. It's really horrible to watch. Anyone who's been on GR for any length of time has probably seen some pretty memorable author-reviewer clashes. I've come to the conclusion that authors shouldn't read reviews of their works. They should have someone do it & report overall stats & important themes in the reviews only. That's got to be tough, too. There's that vacuum. Authors are performing & need some positive feedback.
Again, I don't envy authors! It's a seriously tough gig.
You've pretty much got it, Jim. But then, there's no living without writing either.
Never heard of that site before. Why credits & not money? I have a lot of credits on BookMooch & PaperBackSwap, book swapping sites. Is it something like that crossed with Ebay?
That's an interesting site. Thanks! Like Jim, I'm not sure what to make of the credit aspect. They may just be wanting to get around fees, sales taxes and all of that, which makes sense. Sell your stuff for credits, and get other people's stuff. All about the credits, no taxes! LOL. Just my thought into why they went this way.
PM me with your email address or whatever I need to use as a reference R_mills. I might just do it.
I knew I liked paper books better than ebooks & thought that I got more out of them. I put it down to some deep seated prejudice on my part. Something deep down in my brain just kept rejecting etext as a real book or something. After all, I do still print out some bits of tech manuals, but usually only those parts that I plan to annotate. Well, it's not just me. Research suggests that recall of plot after using an e-reader is poorer than with traditional books
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014...
I read a lot and these days I read quite a bit on my Kindle e-reader, although not as much as in print. I like the e-reader quite a bit. It's nicest feature is being able to increase the font size for my eyes. I haven't noticed any difference in recall of information in the two formats. I suspect there might be if people are reading on phones or pads in which they are also surfing the net or checking email. But otherwise I doubt there's any real difference.
Studies in the field of education also show students retain less with e-readers than with actual textbooks. Basically, most of us are used to fire-and-forget transactions done electronically (email, texts, not-so-credible blogs, etc), so our brain seems to regard anything electronic as forgettable, but if we see something in a physical book, our mind says - ah, this was edited, and somebody thought it was valuable enough to bind, publish, and distribute... it has value, so the brain retains it.Basically, the brain regards electronic text as unvetted and without as much value, since it took less effort to create.
I don't doubt that the research is finding some differences. But there are many complexities to control for. The "diminishing" pages as tactile feedback is interesting. I would not have thought that would have anything to do with it. And there could be other explanations, I imagine. Though it's interesting. The fragmented reading habits of e-publications may be a big part of it. This is what I've suspected as the major culprit explaining the differences. I thought that might settle out as people gained more experience but the technology is changing too fast for any kind of saturation. For me, I read plenty of fiction on a dedicated Kindle e-reader and, anecdotally, don't notice any differences, although I've not specifically measured for them either. There are definitely likely to be context specific cues, though, and some of that may shake out over time as people gain more and more experience.
I'm listening to The Digital Divide: Arguments for and Against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the Age of Social Networking right now & some of the essays address the fragmentation of reading & thought. It's interesting, complex, & not at all sure. Humans are weird critters, our minds amazingly plastic.
That sounds like a fascinating book, Jim. I'll look for it.
Jim wrote: "I recently looked up my book stats & was amazed. I've read over 180 books so far this year! 20% or a bit more have been audio books.5 star - 30 books
4 star - 70 books
3 star - 57 books
2 star..."
How the heck do you read 180 books a year? My goodness! I wish. I don't have the time.
Bobby wrote: "JHow the heck do you read 180 books a year? My goodness! I wish. I don't have the time. "Audio books. I 'read' over 200 each of the past 2 years. 2/3 of them were audio. My commute, mowing the lawns & fields, & doing other chores all become time to read. I had to clean up a bunch of branches the storms brought down. I clip my mp3 player to my shirt & read while I cleaned up. I'd pause it when I had to use the chainsaw, but otherwise it was 2 hours of reading time.
I can't imagine! Sounds like a dream come true!!
The most expensive books sold on AbeBooks this year. This should make you feel better about what you spent on books this year. http://www.abebooks.com/rare-books/mo...
Robert E. Howard Readers
Books mentioned in this topic
Pride and Prejudice (other topics)The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (other topics)
Conan the Usurper (other topics)
Conan the Adventurer (other topics)
The Chronicles of Conan, Volume 20: Night of the Wolf and Other Stories (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Ayn Rand (other topics)Barry Eisler (other topics)
Janny Wurts (other topics)
David Weber (other topics)
Robert E. Howard (other topics)
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