Digital Delta: Charting a course through the changing world of publishing.
Scrivener for Windows: Beta begins
Oct 25th
OK, I’ll confess: I’ve had minor Mac envy for a couple of years now. Why does writing software seem to be one of those narrow bands where Macs just get all the coolest toys? The real workhorse Windows word processors like MSWord all port over to Mac just fine, but try getting some of the specialist noveling packages for PC, and you’re in trouble. Oh, there’s some PC programs as well, but little out there that compares well with Storyist and Scrivener.
I still want Storyist. It is one of the first – perhaps the first – word processing/noveling package that exports direct to both epub and Kindle. You can use it to outline. Use it to draft. Use it to revise. Use it to pretty up your work. Then use it to export to PDF for Createspace or Lightning Source AND hit both of the major ebook formats. All in one program.
Darn Macs. 
But on the plus side, Scrivener finally released a Windows version. It’s in beta as of today, open for free download. The open beta has been timed to match NaNoWriMo, so it will run through the first week of December. Then in January/February, the full release will be available. They *are* offering a half-off coupon for anyone who finishes NaNoWriMo this year, however (writes 50k words of a novel between November 1st and 30th), which brings the cost down to $20 instead of the usual $40. For now, we have the beta – and it IS a beta. Can’t stress that enough. There’s a list of features that have not been implemented in the Windows version yet. But the core features are all in place, and they want to get the bugs out of those as they tackle the last bits.
What’s so cool about the program? Well, it doesn’t release to ebook formats (yet – that feature is planned for next year). But it does have a very flexible set of tools for outlining and writing. Some programs (Storyist is one of these) have heavily templated outlining systems, designed to help you work through the outlining process in a systematic and consistent manner. Scrivener is nothing like that. It’s more like… Imagine you were using a binder for writing your novel. Inside the binder is a bunch of folders. Inside each folder you can have sub-folders, and paper inside any folder. Also, every folder has an index card stapled to the front.
So you can summarize sections (chapters? scenes? you make the call) of your work on index cards, and then write about them inside the page sections. You can shuffle those sections around however you want, either before (while outlining on the index cards) or after you’ve typed the full ms. You can view the index card just for the work you want – or all of them in a mass either posted to a “corkboard” or in an outline form.
Don’t want that mess on your screen as you type? You can go to a black screen around your typing page, so there is nothing there but you and the words.
So it’s a tool that allows outlining – but in a free form manner. It’s one which encourages some organization, but doesn’t dictate how one has to organize. Instead, it gives you tools and multiple ways to use those tools. I rather like that approach. I might not want to use the same outlining system for two different novels, and I don’t want to have to write new templates every time I start a new work. The open nature of Scrivener is appealing to me.
Haven’t played with it much – yet. I’ll be using it to write this November though, so I’ll post a review once I’ve worked with it a bit more.
Priced NOT to sell (retraction)
Oct 22nd
Retraction: I originally wrote this article based on some information I was given which it seems was incorrect. I had been informed that large publishers operated under the same rules for Kindle publication as smaller/self publishers do via DTP, and wrote this article discussing why then publishers were charging above $9.99 for books even though they were earning less (as would be the result for a DTP publisher). However, that information was in error. Rather than running under the same publishing rules as Kindle DTP, I’ve discovered that instead larger publishers at least are offered the 70% royalty rate for all books, regardless of price. My apologies for posting data that was incorrect. I do try hard to verify information before I post it, but this one got away from me.
And Vermont’s new NaNoWriMo “municipal liason” is…
Oct 19th
…me.
The old ML had an attack of life and had to quit, after the deadline to apply as a new ML had already passed. So we sat for a couple of weeks, no one really sure who would be organizing kickoff, the “we did it” party at the end, and write-ins during the month of November. Finally, I just sent a letter to the Office of Letters and Light folks (the ones who run NaNo), and asked if they’d consider placing someone now, even though the deadline for new MLs had already passed.
So they offered me the job.
Since I hated to think we’d be missing an ML completely this year, I accepted. So, I’m now the ML for Vermont, responsible for organizing some events, and generally helping folks achieve the goal of writing a 50,000 word novel in thirty days. While getting my own done, of course!
Going to be an interesting month for sure. =)
“Draculas” Review
Oct 18th
Note: I had the opportunity to receive a reviewer’s copy of the entire novel, not just the opening chapters. So I’ve seen the entire work. This review is based on having read the whole book. I’d like to thank the authors (J.A. Konrath, F. Paul Wilson, Jack Kilborn, and Jeff Strand) for giving me the opportunity to look at their new work before it was released to the public – and note that no, they’re not paying me to write this.
I’ll start off with the short review I posted on Amazon for the book:
I don’t have nightmares. Haven’t since I was very young.
That said, I had the interesting experience of opening this book at about 1am, and reading it until after 3am before finally being able to set the rest aside for the next day, and heading off to get some sleep.
I didn’t have nightmares. But I had some lurid dreams, and recall waking up inside the dream at least twice to comment on the action.
Draculas is a thriller in every sense of the word. At times morbidly humorous, at others darkly terrifying, it is a roller-coaster ride of a novel. From the first scene, it’s almost impossible to put this book down – you want to keep going, and going. I should warn you, though – this book is not for the faint of heart. There’s blood, death, terror, monsters, heartbreaking moments, and heroic efforts in abundance.
These are not “glittery” vampires. They are not sexy, seductive, or glamorous. The creatures in Draculas are monsters, in every sense of the word.
If you’re ready for a read that feels like it has rocket engines powering it as it speeds along, definitely give this book a try!
So, what the heck is so cool about this book?
For starters, there are four ace authors who’ve collaborated on this project. And these four, all previously published, are releasing the book directly to Kindle. All by itself, this is pretty exciting, because we’re seeing first-line work from known novelists (i.e. people who could command decent advances for their work elsewhere) going direct to ebook.
That aside, this is just a book worth reading. From the opening on, it’s not just gripping – it grabs you by the throat, shakes you around, and won’t let go. The pace is rocket fast. The writing, despite being made of four voices, flows together seamlessly. And each segment leaves you wondering what will happen next, before flitting to someone else in just as much mortal danger.
Two warnings. As I said above, this is not a book for the faint of heart. It’s outright grisly. Bloody. Violent. And if that sort of thing turns you off, this is probably not a good book for you. There are plenty of other novels out there designed to cure insomnia.
This one is designed to trigger it.
And, this is not an attempt at the next Great American Novel. It’s fun, fast, and wild – but its not going to be taught in lit classes next century, I think. That’s OK, for me – it is a good escapist read, impacting the emotions in the way that sort of book does.
Well worth the price itself, the novel also comes with extras – about how the authors got their team together and then worked on the story together, short fiction, and snippets from other novels they’ve written. The extras are the whipped cream on top that just makes the whole package that much…more.
For horror fans, thriller fans, people who have just come to hate the shiny/sexy vampire and are ready for something different, “Draculas” is the book to buy.
Hobbit – the movie…
Oct 17th
Yup, “The Hobbit” finally got a green light for production! Planned as a 3D release, filming should start early next year. Peter Jackson (the director from the Lord of the Rings films, for those who didn’t know) has agreed to do the directing. The film is due to release in two installments – the first half in 2012, and the second half in 2013.
More here.
Fear
Oct 16th
Well, better late than never! I went to Albacon last weekend. It’s an annual SF&F con in Albany, New York. To be more precise, I went to the Friday of the con, which was all writing workshops. I had prior obligations which kept me from staying longer than that, unfortunately. And it was unfortunate, because I had a good time, got a couple of new books, and learned a few new things.
The panels were decent. I learned about the glory that is Vistaprint, with a panel of folks advocating grabbing every freebie they offer, as often as they offer it, so that you’ll have free “loot” to pass out to people at cons for book marketing. And there were some other fun bits as well. I had some very nice chats with some very nice people. The experience level of the speakers seemed to be spread across as wide a range as one could imagine – from authors with only a book or two in print, through folks who’d been writing professionally for decades.
Naturally, I was a bit curious how people were reacting to the change in the industry, the growth of ebooks, and the new direct markets available to authors. So I tentatively broached the subject in a few conversations. And then a few more, to get a better feel for reactions.
It was obvious from the start that very few people at the con had thought about ebooks – and I mean at all. No one I spoke to owned an ereader. The most charitable seemed to think of ebooks as some sort of odd fad. The more hardline answers were from people actively disliking ebooks – because of piracy, because they were new, because they threaten bookstores (which are the goal of every good author, after all…), and because in the end, ebooks are just not really books. When I broached the “what about Amazon predicting 50% of the market being ebooks by the end of next year?”, the reaction was…fear.
People are afraid of change, and afraid of the unknown. And writers – even writers of fantasy and science fiction – seem to be no better than most when it comes to handling this fear. I had a long chat with one person, at length addressing my guesses about where change is taking us, and at length addressing various concerns. By the end of it this author was willing to entertain the idea that there were possibly opportunities here, that these changes were not just disaster. And this was a smart writer – a rational thinker.
But we’ve been sold a line. We’ve been told that the bookstore shelf is our Nirvana, that the publisher is the One True Way to get there, and that those who tell you differently (like vanity presses) are snakes in the grass, luring us from the course which will lead to success if only we follow it long enough. And maybe it was true when it was first told. But it isn’t anymore. And it will continue being less true as time goes on.
A few weeks ago, I had Dean Smith telling me that publishers were probably in no long term threat, because most authors wouldn’t be able to make the switch. We’ve been raised, from our first stories, the first Writer’s Digest magazines we read, the first classes or panels we attended, the first writing books we read, to believe the Holy Canon: thou shalt write a book; thou shalt revise the book umpteen times; thou shalt send book off to as many agents as required to get one; thy agent shall then get thee a publishing deal, after which thy books shall be on bookstore shelves.
Except that now we have really competent, experienced authors saying that agents are often more trouble than they are worth, even in traditional publishing. And we have other authors pointing out that there are ways to get published that skip the agent and publisher entirely, going directly to the bookstore. I disagreed with Dean, when we talked about this in his blog comments – I said that I thought writers would adapt much more quickly than publishers. I’m not so sure I do, anymore. The Holy Canon has been drilled into so many people, for so long, that I think it’s begun to be seen as Truth, instead of as a way most folks happened to do business. The business is changing. If we want to seize the opportunities that represents, and not be taken advantage of as things move forward, writers need to be ready to move with the times. We can’t do that if we disbelieve the changes we’re seeing because we hold blind faith in an outdated business model.
Kindle Singles – New short market opening up?
Oct 13th
Amazon just announced a new line for their Kindle platform, yesterday. Called “Kindle Singles”, the idea seems to be to release short works at a lower price. Here’s the press release:
Less than 10,000 words or more than 50,000: that is the choice writers have generally faced for more than a century–works either had to be short enough for a magazine article or long enough to deliver the “heft” required for book marketing and distribution. But in many cases, 10,000 to 30,000 words (roughly 30 to 90 pages) might be the perfect, natural length to lay out a single killer idea, well researched, well argued and well illustrated–whether it’s a business lesson, a political point of view, a scientific argument, or a beautifully crafted essay on a current event.
Today, Amazon is announcing that it will launch “Kindle Singles”–Kindle books that are twice the length of a New Yorker feature or as much as a few chapters of a typical book. Kindle Singles will have their own section in the Kindle Store and be priced much less than a typical book. Today’s announcement is a call to serious writers, thinkers, scientists, business leaders, historians, politicians and publishers to join Amazon in making such works available to readers around the world.
“Ideas and the words to deliver them should be crafted to their natural length, not to an artificial marketing length that justifies a particular price or a certain format,” said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President, Kindle Content. “With Kindle Singles, we’re reaching out to publishers and accomplished writers and we’re excited to see what they create.”
Like all Kindle content, Kindle Singles will be “Buy Once, Read Everywhere”–customers will be able to read them on Kindle, Kindle 3G, Kindle DX, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, Mac, PC, BlackBerry, and Android-based devices. Amazon’s Whispersync technology syncs your place across devices, so you can pick up where you left off. In addition, with the Kindle Worry-Free Archive, Kindle Singles will be automatically backed up online in your Kindle library on Amazon where they can be re-downloaded wirelessly for free, anytime.
To be considered for Kindle Singles, interested parties should contact digital-publications@amazon.com.
There’s already a great writeup on some of the potential of this new format here.
But what I wanted to talk about is the direct application to fiction writers. First off, we’re not sure that there is one. The press release seems to be talking more about non-fiction than fiction. That said – the format seems like it would work well for fiction. With books moving gradually toward the $3-5 range in ebook format, and a lower limit of 99 cents for even short works on Kindle DTP, it can be hard to sell short fiction for the Kindle. A number of folks have tried, putting either single short stories or collections of several short stories up at the 99 cent rate, but sales have been much lower than we’ve been seeing for full length novels.
It seems like consumers see a hundred thousand word novel selling for $2.99 as a good deal, but balk at a ten thousand word story for 99 cents. Which isn’t illogical.
So if writers can put short stories up for an even lower rate, we might see a boost in short fiction sales. How much? Hard to say. I think we’d need to see some experimentation in pricing. But at some point, a story simply becomes so inexpensive that it’s an easy impulse buy, and should sell very well. For instance, if you can place a story for 25 cents, and keep 70% like we see with the main DTP program, then you’re keeping about 17.5 cents per sale. If you sell 100 copies of each such story per week, and write a new one per week, by the end of a year you’re earning out over $900 a week just writing one short story a week. And don’t forget – the readership is expanding exponentially, literally millions of new potential readers added every month. And sales tend to increase over time, not decrease – we’ve seen that even with short fiction being offered for 99 cents. Lastly, we’ve seen strong evidence that the more writing you have for sale in the Kindle store, the more likely any of those works is to sell. Every purchase of any writing links the buyer in to all your other work, and links that purchase into the “customers who looked at/purchased this also looked at/bought” system. Powerful marketing tools.
There’s a possible downside here, as well. It sounds like Kindle Singles will be listed separately from the longer Kindle works, in their own section of the website. One idea I had considered was serializing a novel – releasing, say, a 120,000 word novel in 20,000 word segments, one per month, over a six month period. Sell each segment at 99 cents, and the income per book sold is solid. More importantly, you end up with six different works out there for readers to find – and you keep one work with your name on it in the “released in the last 30 days” category for a full six months. Again, powerful marketing tools. But with the Singles program opening up, I have to wonder if people will be interested in buying 20,000 word serials in the regular Kindle store. I suppose we’ll see.
On the plus side – and this is a huge plus! – the Singles program could revitalize a dying short fiction market. I write science fiction, among other things… And I know the genre’s history. The birthplace of SF’s popularity was in magazine short fiction and serialized novels. Over time, those magazines fostered the career of hundreds of writers who went on to write famous novels. Today though, there are barely a handful of science fiction short story markets remaining. Despite that, it’s still common to hear old writers advice novices to seek out short fiction publication, then work on novels. Once good advice, it’s not anymore – usually, it’s harder to get a SF short story published today than it is to see a novel in print!
But Kindle Singles could change all that. If there is a good market for short stories out there, I think this launch could be the way to find it. Short story writing could regain its standing as both an excellent entry to the field, and even as a medium that a complete career could be build around.
Will it work? We’ll all have to wait and see. I’m already thinking about short story ideas though, for the first time in a long while!
Father and son team launch spacecraft.
Oct 13th
OK, this is pretty wild and too cool not to post about!
Apparently a father and son team used a weather balloon to launch an iphone and video camera up 100,000 feet above the surface of the Earth. At that altitude, the balloon exploded, and the foam “craft” began to descend again, using wings and a parachute to slow entry. It survived – taking video the whole way, and was recovered using the GPS on the iphone.
So, Apple can now advertise that really, REALLY – no matter where you go, even if you’ve frozen to death in the nearer reaches of space – your iphone will still work…!
I think this is a pretty amazing little experiment. Talk about a way to get a kid interested in space exploration. Maybe we should encourage more of this sort of thing!
Here’s the video they put up:
We’ve moved!
Oct 12th
As you’ve probably already noticed, if you were reading the site before this weekend, I’ve moved the website to a shiny new URL – http://www.kevinomclaughlin.com. The old site (http://www.kevinwriting.com) is still active, and will be until January – happily redirecting anyone who hasn’t updated their bookmark yet. But this new site name will be the permanent new home.
In some part, this decision was based on my wife hating the old name. That doesn’t mean I changed sites merely to maintain matrimonial harmony though. My wife has an uncanny grasp of knowing when something sounds wrong or feels off. She might not always be able to tell me why something feels off, but she’s rarely wrong in her perception.
In this case, it’s all about branding.
I started reading a bit of Seth Godin’s articles on marketing. He’s got quite a few interesting comments. Two things caught my eye:
1) Brand names become more powerful as they become less generic. “Nike” is a good brand name. “The Athlete’s Foot” is not, and not just because it suggests a fungal infection. When the company by the latter name first came up with their brand, it was OK – because a funny/punny name was a good idea back then, since it kept it in the shopper’s memory more easily. Today, Seth insists, brands should be focused around search engine optimization. If you Google “athelete’s foot”, you tend to get a bucketload of links about fungus and how to remove it. If you make it “The Athlete’s Foot”, you get some links to the company – but not everyone will think to do so. So his suggestion is to avoid a brand name built out of commonly searched words – you know, like the fairly common name “Kevin” and the very common word “writing”.
2) He also mentions that using your own name as a brand can be powerful, for certain types of business. It has the negative side effect of not being transferable to someone else if you want to quit (no selling the brand away, usually), but that isn’t a major obstacle to a writer, who can’t really sell the writing business anyway. So for an author, whose sales to a large degree rely on name recognition anyway, using one’s own name to “brand” a website is more effective than not. It’s also not so good if your name is really, really common (especially in your field!), but on searching Amazon, I found that there was no author listed as Kevin O. McLaughlin. There was a Kevin McLaughlin that isn’t me, but no one with a middle initial O. So that’s how I’ll be releasing books there – and tying that name directly into the new website should make both easier to find.
New site, and new articles coming soon!
“Professional Author” in the Era of Ebooks
Oct 5th
I’ve been reading the Dean Wesley Smith and Joe Konrath’s blogs quite a lot lately. Both of them have (to varying degrees of severity) expounded on how publishers just don’t “get” the new media, and are not making the appropriate changes for the times. We’re already seeing the results of that, with hundreds of authors eschewing publishers and agents and self-publishing direct to ebook instead. And the trend could accelerate, with Amazon now predicting that ebooks will outsell paperbacks by the end of 2011. Publishers are having trouble with the changes, scrambling to catch up. Agents are on the verge of making the endangered species list.
But it seems to me that authors are not all making the transition very well, either. Perhaps nowhere is that more clear than in writers’ “professional organizations”. Last night, sparked by an idea, I cruised around a few of the websites for these organizations. The published policy for the Authors Guild, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, and Novelists Inc. all stated about the same thing:
Not published by a traditional publisher with a substantial advance and royalty setup? Don’t bother applying for membership here.
I had to shake my head at this a little. You’d think that writers, at least, would be more on the ball.
Until fairly recently of course, that all made sense. A professional writing credential was one where people paid you money – either a lump sum for a short work, or a lump advance and royalty for longer ones. There have always been vanity publishers who would print an author’s work for a fee. Those have never been considered professional writing credits, and I think that’s a valid argument (although there are probably viable exceptions among vanity press authors, as well). But with e-publishing, everything has changed.
The SFWA specifically excludes self-publishing from being allowed to qualify an author for membership. Now, let’s ask this: which work is more professional, the new author who publishes through a traditional house, sees $4000 in advances, has a 5000 copy print run which sells 3000 copies? Or the author who puts their work up on Kindle, and over the next year sells 10,000 copies of their work with a net profit of $20,000? Money aside, I would suggest that the book that is three times as popular with readers is probably the writer you want as a member.
It’s not even that hard a change to make. Simply set minimum standards of ebook sales (either number of books sold, money earned, or some combination of the two), and the author who wants to join under ebook self-pub must be able to show evidence of having passed those standards. But none of the organizations I listed have done this. I’m a bit surprised at the SFWA, to be honest – with John Scalzi at the helm, I figured the SFWA would be moving on this already. And…maybe they are. Maybe this whole thing is just hurtling along faster than they had thought it would, and they’re trying but haven’t caught up. Maybe they’ve already even “exempted” in a few authors for e-self-pub works. But the site still doesn’t show that they’re aware it’s a problem now, and is going to be a bigger one in the future.
In the long run, I’m not that wrapped up in this issue. Interested and mildly amused (writers of the future, caught “fighting the last war”?), yes. For myself (planning to self-pub to ebook next month), my plans may not win me membership in these sorts of organizations, but that’s not really on my agenda. If I am making good sales (income) and reaching lots of readers (entertaining with good work) then I’ll be happy. My own sense of legitimacy comes from “do people like reading what I write?”, not from joining a writer’s club, regardless how well known it is. And I think a lot of the new generation of writers that I belong to feel the same way.
Besides, when I think about it – any organization that doesn’t change is signing its own death warrant. Or at least, its own statement of obsolescence. If the old communities don’t keep up, the people riding the wave will found their own groups that do.
