Payhip

I spotted a new indy publishing platform, Payhip, which allows authors to sell direct to their fans and followers using a link. Readers can buy using Paypal or credit cards. Evidently they charge a flat 5% fee for each sale once its made and then pay the author immediately (disclaimer: I did not read every single page on the site, so if you want to use them do check them out thoroughly.)

I don't indie publish for profit, so naturally I'm not the best judge of the service, but it looks pretty straight forward to me. According to their FAQs they ". . . support ALL file formats. Including EPUB, PDF, MOBI, AZW and many more."

Since Amazon.com and other host sites are charging a lot more than 5%, this could be a more attractive alternative to writers who simply want to sell direct from their web site or blog versus getting lost in the glut of the booksellers. I really like the idea myself -- this would be the sort of site I'd prefer to use if I ever decide to go indy. Are any of you all using Payhip, and care to comment? Let us know if you want to share.

Waiting at the Finish Line

I always have at least one reward waiting for me at the novel finish line, and this time around it's Lucidity, our blogpal Raine Weaver's latest release, which is available in most e-book formats at all the major online retailers (also currently on sale at Samhain for $3.15.)

Here's the official copy:

He’s found the woman of his dreams—in the midst of his worst nightmare.

Carlotta Phelps never considered herself special, except for a peculiar ability to control the course of her dreams. Other than being a handy cure for nightmares, it’s a pretty worthless talent. Until she’s recruited for the One Hundred, a team of lucid dreamers whose combined visualizations have been proven to affect reality.

With a giant asteroid hurtling straight toward Earth and the scientific technology to avert it uncertain, the dreamers are the fallback—the last line of defense. And the man who’s been assigned as her bodyguard is messing with her focus, big time.

Ex-Special Ops soldier Parker Munroe has no idea why he’s been assigned to protect the luscious, gentle-eyed Carly. She’s a frustrating temptation, but he’s a hard-core realist. The only power he believes in is brute force.

Then he learns that his charge, who practically lives in lacy negligees, wields an awesome power—and an even bigger responsibility. She and her kind are being hunted by an enemy he can’t even identify, against which all his skill with weaponry is useless. If he can’t find a way to protect her, the world is as doomed as the heart he’s already lost.

This one had me at Hello. I mean, come on -- a lucid dreamer, an ex-spec ops bodyguard, and a planet-killer asteroid hurtling toward Earth? I am so reading this.

Also, I don't know who is doing Samhain's art lately, but whoever is responsible for putting together this gorgeous, classy cover should be given a raise. A very large one.

The eBrush

Published in the June 18, 1881 issue of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper (click on image to see larger version):



Just what made Dr. Scott's Electric Hair Brush such a Marvellous Success!!? Was it producing a rapid growth of hair on bald heads, or ending nervous/bilious headaches in 5 minutes? Was it curing dandruff and diseases of the scalp, stopping premature grayness, preventing baldness and soothing the weary brain? Or was it the cordial indorsements provided by the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Rt. Hon. W.E. Gladstone, the Mayor of Saratoga, or the effusive Mr. Pliny F. Smith, who would not take $1000.00 for his eBrush if he could not replace it?

The promises in this ad, which in 1881 probably sounded absolutely believable, are rather astounding. After all the germ of all life is electricity -- says so right on the back of the handsome handle (made of a new odorless composition resembling ebony!) A combination of substances producing a permanent electro-magnetic current which acted immediately upon the hair glands and follicles sounds so important and scientific, doesn't it? And look, actual royalty indorsed it! Had to be the real deal.

Or maybe not.

I'll tell you the secret that made Dr. Scott's eBrush such a success. It was the $3.00 sent in by every hopeful bald, graying, headache-prone and dandruff-ridden person who read this ad and believed it. And when they got their brush and it didn't produce anything but a little static electricity, which is really all it was capable of producing, they still felt the tingle. That little buzz was likely just enough to keep them hurrying to the mirror every morning expecting to see a head full of long, glossy hair.

We all want something, and every now and then some eBrush-type salesman will come along and tell us how we can get it. It will be cheap, easy, and there will be plenty of VIP indorsements assuring us of how amazing it is and how beautifully it works. They make it sound so wonderful because they're compensated to do that, just as this newspaper was paid to run this ad. Trust me, if we're not the ones forking on the three bucks for this secret to Marvellous Success!!, someone else is.

I can guarantee you, the only person Dr. Scott's electric brush really worked marvels for was Dr. Scott. Same goes for every other quack out there selling similar eBrushes.

In a hundred and thirty years, someone will look back at a page from our time, and chuckle over whatever is our version of Dr. Scott's eBrush. They'll talk about how silly we were for believing in such an obvious fraud. And then some of them will slap down their hard-earned credits for something that preys on their hopes, and feeds on their dreams. Because just as if anything sounds too good to be true it usually is, there will always be people just desperate or hopeful enough to believe it's true anyway.

Keep your eyes open, your brains working and check the facts thoroughly before you buy into anything anyone tells you. And please don't base your decisions on what the Dr. Scotts out there are telling you; judge things for yourself.



Okay, not like this.

The 8-Track Mentality

I just read a vastly entertaining article making the rounds of NetPubLand in which a Big Important Author ridiculed e-books. It seems the evil that is e-books once more threatens the very fabric of our society. Or, at least according to Mr. Big Important, readers are damaging it by wanting e-books.

I really should be on his side. I love print books, and I have a pretty extensive personal library of them. The e-books I purchase are those I can print out at home. Print is my reading preference, hands down. Thing is, I don't expect the rest of the world to limit themselves to writing, publishing or buying only print books to accommodate me. Why would I?

For that matter, why does it have to be either/or -- print book or e-book? I write both, I publish both, and I want both for my readers. I don't believe print will ever become obsolete, but so what if it does? Maybe they'll invent an e-reader that suits me (they've finally got small tablet touchscreens; now all they have to do is something about the weight, the slippery casing, the glare from the screen and all the non-book crap on it.)

Whether we like it or not, the world moves on.

Big Important Author's mistake is that he is clinging to an 8-track mentality in an MP3 world. Think about it -- how often has the way we listen to music changed in the last forty years? 8-track tapes were all the rage when I was a kid, and then cassette tapes came along. The 8-track people were horrified. CDs then replaced cassettes (I was a bit put out by that; I had my entire music collection on cassette tapes. But I got over it eventually.) Now MP3s are replacing CDs, and I'm sure the format will change yet again in my lifetime. As long as I can buy new copies of all my old Coldplay, Linkin Park and Staind albums again, I won't bitch about whatever format they're in.

And despite all these technological changes to how music is delivered to the consumer -- many more changes than the Publishing industry has weathered -- it hasn't damaged the fabric of our society. Music is still here, still wonderful. We still listen to it. Music continues to enrich our lives, and we still love it.

Why would books be any different?

Storytellers have been in business since prehistory. Before there were books we used to sit by a fire and tell our tales to the tribe; do you think any of those storytellers would be pissed to know that their descendants started writing them down on scrolls and carving them into clay tablets? Would they despise the monks who often spent their entire lives working in scriptoriums and illuminating them page by page?

For that matter, how about Gutenberg and his invention of mechanical movable type printing? Gutenberg was the Steve Jobs of his time, agreed? So should he have been roasted over the tribe's fire for his temerity to bring book production out of the Dark Ages?

Anyone who truly belongs to our ageless clan of scribes knows it's the story that's important, not how you tell it, or with what you tell it. It doesn't even matter who tells the stories. As long as they're told, there will be someone who wants to hear them.

I don't want to have an 8-track mentality in an MP3 world, so Big Important Author's tirade was actually good for me. I'm going to get out there and have a look at the latest crop of e-readers. I'll also check and see if there is a better type of monitor for my computer that would allow me to read comfortably from it -- that might be a good compromise. And as the world moves on, hopefully so will I.

One Week Only

Although writers almost never have any input as to the cover price for our books, every now and then we're given the opportunity to participate in a reduced price sale that is not covered by the terms of our contract. I got my chance the other day when one of my publishers asked if they could nominate my YA title for just such a sale. I gave them the green light, and to make it a very good sale I suggested they go with the lowest price possible.

My publisher agreed, and the sales people picked my title, and everyone was okay with the big discount, so if you're a Kindle owner and would like to save 90% on the Kindle edition of my YA debut novel After Midnight, head over to the Kindle Store sale page and get it now for just $0.99. This sale is only good for the next week, so if you're interested don't wait too long.

Still 100% free for everyone: Dark of Heart, my e-book novella set in the After Midnight universe, which you can read online, download, print out and share for non-profit purposes.

News & Sold

Many of you have been asking if/when several novels in the StarDoc series that are currently out of print would be converted to e-book format and made available for purchase. Thanks to my agent, I finally have an answer for you. To quote the publisher:

Our ebook team is putting the following titles in the queue for conversion: Endurance, Shockball, Rebel Ice, Plague of Memory and Blade Dancer. They should be available in a couple months.

I think that covers all of the series that wasn't in e-format (and Blade Dancer, which is a standalone set in the StarDoc universe, is a nice bonus.)

Also some good news for my German readers: my publisher has just made a foreign rights deal for two more of my Darkyn novels; Night Lost (book four in the series) and Evermore (book five) as well as two of my Jessica Hall novels, Into the Fire and Heat of the Moment.

Last but not least: the final outcome of the idea that became a proposal for three books that became a contract negotiation is this: I've accepted an offer from NAL for the entire trilogy.

Naturally it's not final until it's in contract form, and signed by me and everyone else, but all the major details have been hammered out, so unless something radical changes it's a done deal. Did I mention what I'm planning to write? Maybe you can tell from the (unofficial) series title and theme icon I just put together:



The first novel in my new Darkyn trilogy is tentatively scheduled to be published in Spring 2012.

Scribd.com Gets Greedy

It's been brought to my attention that Scribd.com has begun charging people to download my free e-books hosted on their site. To get around my copyright and the free distribution notice I've placed in each e-book, they are using an archive subscription scam to make their money (this also neatly avoids them having to pay me any royalties on the profits they make.) Evidently all the money they've been raking in from the Google ads they've posted on my e-book pages hasn't been enough for them.

I was not made aware of this new policy by Scribd at all; a reader kindly brought it to my attention. If you have free stories or documents hosted on this site, chances are they're doing the same to you.

I immediately contacted Scribd.com and demanded an explanation, which they provided at their leisure. Basically they washed their hands of any liability and ethics by telling me it was my problem, not theirs. In order to prevent Scribd from further profiting from my free books, I have to remove each e-book individually from their archives (for instructions on how to do this, see Scribd's instructions here.) As I discovered this morning this is going to take a considerable amount of time for me to accomplish, and it's not a permanent solution; they tell me I'll have to check the documents regularly to see to it that they aren't arbitrarily returned to the archive, where Scribd can then again start charging people to download them.

I find the situation particularly ironic, as anyone can bootleg my work on the internet with no problem, yet when I try to give it away for free, greedy people still try to make a buck off it. Writers just can't win.

Honestly, I do not want to deal with this garbage right now, and I'm tempted to delete the entire library this morning and say the hell with it. However, I've been giving away these books for ten years, and I'm not going to allow the greed of others hoping to make a surreptitious buck off my name to defeat me.

I may still have to take down my library of free reads. For now I will be researching other options, removing my free e-books one by one from Scribd's archive scam, and see if I can find a solution that doesn't cost my readers anything or make my head explode.

In the meantime, please do NOT pay Scribd.com to access or download my free e-books. If you are asked to pay ANYTHING for any of the thirty e-books I have on Scribd, and you can't wait until I find a solution, contact me at LynnViehl@aol.com and I will personally send you a free download of whatever you'd like.

Added: I think I've found a solution, but I still have to test it out and make sure it works. Unfortunately I have to finish some revisions to meet a deadline first. Please be advised that I will be removing my library of free e-books and documents from Scribd.com as soon as I get everything transferred over to the alternative site and make sure the links work. This will happen probably within the next couple of days.

Added 9/2/10: I've temporarily transferred my free library over to Google Docs, which allows anyone to read them online or download them in .pdf format for free. I tried to delete my documents and account on Scribd, but despite numerous attempts their web site was unresponsive, so I've contacted them and told them to take it down. Hopefully they will do so quickly; in the meantime please use the Google Doc links listed on the Freebies page here and please do NOT pay Scribd.com anything to access my free e-books.

Don't Swat Ten

I'm home, and at the moment trying to catch up on work stuff, but I should get back on schedule soon. Meanwhile, here are:

Ten Things You Can Have for Free

Freeware caution: always scan free downloads of anything for bugs and other threats before dumping the programs into your hard drive.

20 Tips* for Writers, a free e-book from author Doug Clegg that offers some tongue-in-cheek writing advice and probably explains why we writers are so wired all the time. Don't swat the fly.

7 Sticky Notes is "a good 100% free desktop notes software that creates Sticky Notes directly on your Desktop. It has a really good-looking realistic sticky note appearance for ultimate user experience and it offers amazing and cool features that makes 7 Sticky Notes at the same time powerful, simple to use, reliable, and light" (OS: Windows 7)

Desktop Fun from How-to Geek.com: Free Abstract Art, Castle and Dragon wallpapers.

Freebie Notes is "a great little program for users who just want sticky notes with an alarm timer. With Freebie Notes you can create notes displaying on your desktop. Your notes can be displayed immediately after creation or in the certain moments of time. You can create notes of custom sizes and colors and set different types for your notes" (OS: Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/7)

LettersFall 2.0 Beta is a freeware educational/fun words game that looks like something both kids and grownups would enjoy (OS: Windows XP/Vista/7)

Ever wanted to build your own online e-zine, but you aren't a whiz with HTML or JavaScript? Check out PLWorx's freeware NetEZine.

Also from PLWorx, NoteWeb allows you to organize your notes into notebooks, and "Add, edit, delete, search, sort and filter different types of data including plain or rich text notes, hyperforms, sketches and web pages. Notes are indexed and stored in "notebooks", so that it's easy to keep your information organized. You can also store keywords and links to other notes, URLs or external files with each note (OS: Unspecified but it looks like Windows.)

This one is a heads-up for my UK pals -- author Terry Pratchett is having a first novel contest (terms/conditions/rules may be found at his web site here) with a publishing contract grand prize that includes a ₤20K advance.

Jonathan Feinberg explains how my favorite online generator, Wordle, came into being in this free .pdf chapter excerpt from Beautiful Visualization by Julie Steele and Noah Iliinsky.

Yea Chess allows you to cross virtual knights with your computer, and has "a simple interface and powerful and quick artificial intelligence. You can adjust the skill of the computer and save games" (OS: Windows XP/Vista/7)

Free E-book

I'm still off somewhere writing and editing, but I thought I'd post a heads-up for The Wicked House of Rohan by Anne Stuart*, a short story prequel to her upcoming historical trilogy that her publisher is offering for free in various formats for a limited time here.

There is some hoop-jumping involved; to get the e-book you have to register for an account with the publisher, put the e-book in your cart and then check out like you're making a purchase. I tried it out and they don't ask for financial info or charge you anything, so it's a legit freebie. The Adobe version downloads to Adobe Digital Editions and is not print-enabled so I can't read it, which was disappointing, but it probably works on most gadgets.

*Freebie info swiped from Jennifer Crusie's blog, where there's also some copy about the story posted.

Stats

According to Scribd.com*, over the last twelve hours 818 people have taken a look at Rain Lashed*, my free Kyndred novella e-book that I posted yesterday:



At the time I checked 124 people had also downloaded the e-book, also a very good number for the first day -- probably the best I've had so far for a freebie.

Along with the complete, original novella in Rain Lashed there are two excerpts in the back -- one for Shadowlight and the other for Dreamveil, my Kyndred novels in print -- and a complete bibliography listing all my public work, my weblog and my other freebies, aka a shopping list for anyone who wants more.

Not counting my labor, the only expense I had for this e-book was the cover art image, which I purchased from Big Stock Photos for one dollar. I didn't have to print the book, package it, ship it or otherwise distribute it; Scribd.com hosts the e-book for free, and when it does well, they also promote it.

While novellas are a shorter form, it still takes time to write them, and I spent the better part of six months working on this one whenever I had a few minutes. At one point I had to set aside the story completely for a couple months to deal with other issues that demanded more of my time. It was nice to be able to finally be able to get back to it, finish it and make it into an e-book.

I can't promise you that a free e-book will turn your print work into an instant bestseller, but think about these stats. How often do you get the chance to show your work to 818 interested people in half a day, and it only costs you your time, your creativity, and maybe a dollar?

*Note 9/3/10: Since Scribd.com instituted an access fee scam to charge people for downloading e-books, including those I have provided for free for the last ten years, I have removed this document and temporarily transferred it to Google Docs here. See my post about this scam here.

More Free Ten

Ten Things You Can Have for Free

Freeware caution: always scan free downloads of anything for bugs and other threats before dumping the programs into your hard drive.

Desktop-Reminder is "a freeware task planner for Windows to manage your tasks and other to-dos’ in easy way. Always during start of Windows it lists all tasks, which are urgent for that day. In case, there is additionally time of day in task defined, according notification message will be shown, when the time comes" (OS: Windows XP/Vista/7)

Ease Pdf to Text Extractor is "a free software designed to extract text from Adobe PDF files. It does NOT need Adobe Acrobat software.It processes at very high speed and you can convert multiple PDF files to text files at one time. The program is freeware, which means that you can use it either persionally or commercially for free. Convert PDF documents to text format, Fast, Accurate, Free . Batch conversion of multiple PDF documents to text files. Support all Windows platforms" (OS: Win95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista)

Foodnetwork and celeb chef Emeril Lagasse is celebrating 20 years by giving away a free e-cookbook in .pdf format with 32 pages of recipes from his New Orleans restaurants. To download the e-cookbook, click right here.

Golden Rules Organizer is a "GTD-compliant personal effectiveness tool includes project management, task management, contact management, scheduler, goal setting, diary with time tracking, notes, bookmarks manager" (OS: Windows XP/Vista/7)

myPortablePIM is "a calendar with many functions . . . designed to be portable, used from a USB stick to always have with you your data.There is no installation. Just unzip the downloaded package and you're ready: no key and no log file written by myPortablePIM outside of it's installation folder. Features: Easy to use; Event of the day, activities and reminders; Different views: monthly, weekly, daily and custom; Send the day's events, tasks and reminders via email; Two main views, called Desktop 1 and Desktop 2, where arrange your windows as you want; Password manager; RSS reader; Launcher; GMail checker; Notes; Ability to protect access with password; You can change the look and feel to your liking, there are dozens of different themes; Weather forecasts and current conditions; Image viewer; Address book; Compatibility with iCal and vCard standards" (OS: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7)

Panopreter Basic " reads text files, web pages in .htm format and Word documents in many languages, such as English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese, or Japanese. It also converts such files into wave and MP3 files, so that you can hear the reading of the files with a MP3 player. Panopreter Basic is also a good aid to any language learning program. You install the text-to-speech voices for the specific language, then you can hear the files being read to you. Because Panopreter Basic reads with Microsoft voice installed on your computer by default, when you like to listen to other voices, you need to install the corresponding text-to-speech voice engine on the computer. Windows XP users are recommended to install a third party voice to get a better English reading, for the default voice engine on the Windows XP isn't as clear as that on the Windows Vista/7" (OS: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7)

RedNoteBook is " is a graphical diary and journal helping you keep track of notes and thoughts. It includes a calendar navigation, customizable templates, export functionality and word clouds. You can also format, tag and search your entries" (OS: Win 98/ME/2000/XP/2003/Vista/7)

Suvudu Free Library has a new freebie title up for May: Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith: Savior by John Jackson Miller (.pdf. Sony and B&N formats available for download; Kindle coming soon.)

TextSTAT is "a simple programme for the analysis of texts. It reads plain text files (in different encodings) and HTML files (directly from the internet) and it produces word frequency lists and concordances from these files. This version includes a web-spider which reads as many pages as you want from a particular website and puts them in a TextSTAT-corpus. The new news-reader, too, puts news messages in a TextSTAT-readable corpus file. TextSTAT reads MS Word and OpenOffice files. No conversion needed, just add the files to your corpus. In TextSTAT you can use regular expression which provides you with powerful search possibilities. The programme is multilingual. Because it uses Unicode internally, TextSTAT can cope with many different languages and file encodings" (OS: Windows, GNU/Linux and MacOS)

World Wide NotePad is "a small text editor similar to Microsoft's notepad but has some more useful features like an auto typer to make typing the same sentence or word more easy, also World Wide NotePad has a text to speech feature which reads all text in the current open document and speaks it out load to you" (OS: Windows XP/Vista/7; host site notes that ".NET Framework 4 must be installed to run this application. To install the .NET framework run the dotNetFx40_full_setup in the zip file.)

Blog Capsule

A lot of people think I'm psychic. I'm not. I make a few educated guesses. Occasionally I just bet on the right random pony. Mostly it's simple dumb luck. Honestly, if I really could predict the future, I would not be Paperback Writer. I would be Tibetan Cave-Dwelling Chick.

But after yesterday's bizarre coincidence (and really, that's all it was) I'm willing to test my own unpsychic ability to prove once and for all that I have no ESP. This will be a decidedly unscientific test; I'm just going to make a blog capsule post and predict five things I think will happen by this time next year (March 28, 2011.) If I'm right about all of them, I'll give up and admit I'm psychic. If I'm not, then I get to gloat.

Let's see, looking into my fake* crystal ball here . . .

1. A major publisher will move a big chunk of their titles into print-on-demand to test the waters, and in the process suspend author advances in favor of quarterly royalty payments.

2. Enhanced content will be the next big author promo trend.

3. The Author's Guild will make so many more concessions to Google they will be sued by their own membership.

4. The e-book market will hit a plateau as the novelty of e-readers wears off and people decide books are not as entertaining as TV, video games or DVDs, which they will be able to play on a new type of crossover e-reader manufactured in the far east that is intended for use with animated anime (aka comic books that can be set to be read or be played like a cartoon.)

5. The next big new genre trend will arrive by the explosion via an unknown author whose debut goes platinum, and will be a combo of alternate history with a kind of mashup between urban fantasy and steampunk.

I am not using any insider information to formulate these predictions, btw; they are just guesses. Now if you want to be part of the experiment, copy this post and save it somewhere you know you'll check at the end of March 2011, along with a note to stop by here. I'll put a reminder on my calendar and in exactly 365 days post again with the list and how accurate -- or not -- that my predictions were.

Okay, now it's your turn to play psychic: what predictions would you make about the biz for next year? Share them with us in comments.

*it's actually a paperweight I bought on sale from B&N.com

Gone Blogger Gone

I know I have to redo my sidebar; there are at least a dozen links over there now for blogs that have closed their doors or gone static. According to my somewhat nebulous blogging rules these should all be removed (Writeminded is the latest to close their doors) but it's too depressing to acknowledge how much of my blogroll Twitter, Facebook and all the other social media trends have eaten alive. Thing is, I keep thinking how Rosina Lippi came back to blogging, and Romancing the Blog is supposed to be eventually returning, and then I don't want to delete anyone's links, just in case.

I've been keeping some form of online journal for nearly ten years, almost as long as I've been a professional writer. As a result I've watched a lot of trends come and go, evolve, get snatched up by Google, etc. From what I've observed over time, the very nature of an online presence trend virtually sentences it to eventually be abandoned en masse for whatever new/shiny/improved thing that next comes along and catches everyone's fancy. Remember when every author simply had to start a blog, and then create a MySpace page, and then do a podcast, and then make a book video? Not so much anymore now that the herd has stampeded their way to flood Twitter and Facebook. No doubt the next leap from there will be Buzz or Vook or some Publishing variation of FourSquare.

For obvious reasons, I'm not going to be named the poster child for traditional online author self-promo. I've never been cool enough for LiveJournal; articulate enough for podcasts, or technosavvy enough to do book videos. I've always felt far too old to intrude on MySpace; same goes with Facebook now. Even if I liked it, which I don't, Twitter is for people with keyboard phones and working thumbs. I've tried lots of other things over the years, too, only to discover that web sites, list-servs, chat rooms and writing communities are huge time sinks that don't justify the time or cost involved, or for other reasons were impossible for me to maintain.

I'm not all about my limitations, though; sometimes I think I get it right. Back in 2000 when everyone was predicting that e-books would kill print, and squabbling among their writing organizations about segregating e-pubbed authors, I guessed that electronic books were going to be a big part of the future of Publishing. That's why I started self-publishing free original e-books online as promo for my print novels, and subsequently founded most of my readership on that free content.

Ten years ago I also suspected online journaling by authors would be big someday, which is why I've been a blogger for so long. The power of free print books has also helped build my readership, and the blog has given me a chance to identify interested readers and put real books in their hands.

I want to keep moving forward instead of resting on my laurels and stagnating, so I constantly think about how I need to change. The keyword here is think, not leap -- I'm not a bandwagon jumper. I want to build the bandwagon myself. And drive it. And decide where it goes. And get off when I decide it's not taking me anywhere I want to go. Which, yes, makes me a huge control freak, but it also keeps me from wasting my time. I've looked at taking some new directions with self-promo that haven't been done yet and that might work really well, as long as I can figure out how to do them myself (again, I have control issues, I admit it.)

One of the great things about blogging is that I get most of my ideas right here on PBW. You guys know how much I love to give away books. Thanks to your thoughtful comments on my Time to Read post, I packed up a bag and paid a visit to the local hospital this week, and (after getting permission from the charge nurse) handed them out on the maternity ward. I'd have never thought to do that without you ladies reminding me of how much I used to read when my kids were babies and I was nursing every couple of hours.

You would not believe how grateful the new moms were to have something to read other than those boring handouts they give you in the You Just Gave Birth! bag. Plus I got to admire some adorable little ones. Tomorrow I'm going to hit a couple of tattoo parlors (yes, I know, how did I make that leap? You guys made me think about other captive audiences.) What do you do when you're sitting there being inked for an hour or two? Reading a free book might be fun, especially if the characters are tattooed, or tattoos are an integral part of the plot, as they are in my Kyndred novels.

Anyway, you have to change with the times or turn into a fossil; I get that. I wouldn't still be in print if I didn't. Not matter how unfashionable it becomes, I'm not giving up blogging; I enjoy it too much. That said, I'm also ready to try some new things. I still believe not following the herd gives you the space you need to be innovative and original -- and even more importantly, noticeable. While everyone is busy doing what everyone else is doing, focusing on what you can do on your own actually gives you a better chance of standing out. Combine that somehow with doing something that you love, and you won't mind the work involved. In fact, you'll probably look forward to it.

What do you guys think will be the next big trend for author self-promotion? Let us know in comments.

Prepare to be Charmed

If you enjoy books by author Monica Jackson (definite fangirl here) and are familiar with her novels Love's Potion and In My Dreams (ditto), or you're just in need of a great romance to read (always), then you'll be happy to hear that today is the release day for Charm Me Baby, Monica's latest release.

Here's a bit about the book from the page at Red Rose:

Mia Washington, a respected professor at a large Atlanta university, has a plan for her life that doesn't include dealing with her dysfunctional family in the small Mississippi town she was raised.

When Mia's aunt dies and leaves her a book full of magic, charms and spells, her life changes. Mia's cousin begged for a love charm to force the town's most gorgeous and eligible surgeon to fall in love with her. When the love charm went awry, it was Mia's heart that was the target for Cupid's new arrow.

Magic exists...and so do the spirits that accompany it. Mia learns it's not only real, but dangerous.

But how dangerous can magic be?

Sizzling, spine-tingling dangerous, if I know Monica. The purchase link goes live on 3/4/10, so I'll be heading over to RRP to buy the e-book as soon as I get home from my annual quilt show trip. I haven't bought from the site before this, so are there any other titles over there you guys would recommend? Let me know in comments.

Freebies for All

Author Joely Sue Burkhart has posted a revised version of The Horse Master, a Blood & Shadows prequel, on Scribd.*

A couple of seasonal freebies on Scribd: The Story of Snow by Mark Cassino with Jon Nelson (children's book, illustrated); Carol Baicker-McKee's Scandanavian Heart Basket Templates for making three sizes of the holiday heart baskets (assembly instructions & photos at the author's blog here), and Create a Homemade Christmas and Incredible Memories and Free Christmas Clip Art Printables, compliments of Christman-fun-guide.com.*

Author Roslyn Hardy Holcomb has a novella, Rock Star Wedding, a sequel to her novel Rock Star, available as a free read in .pdf on her website (scroll down.)

This month Suvudu Free Library has presents for all you vamp fic lovers out there with free downloads of Charlie Huston's Already Dead (first book in the Joe Pitt series) and Wit'ch Fire by James Clemens. Also, Star Wars fans can get three titles for free from Suvudu to add to their literary collections: Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith: Skyborn and Star Wars: Lost Tribe of The Sith: Precipice, both by John Jackson Miller as well as Star Wars Fate of the Jedi: Dramatis Personae.

Author Kristen Tsetsi has posted a short story collection, Carol's Aquarium ~ A Collection of Unusual Fiction free for reading online, printing and downloading.*

*Note 9/3/10: Since Scribd.com instituted an access fee scam to charge people for downloading e-books, including those I have provided for free for the last ten years, I no longer recommend using their service. See my post about this scam here.

Freebies & Contest

Suvudu, Random House's free online library, has two new e-books now available for download in various formats: Starfist: First to Fight by David Sherman and Dan Cragg, and The Demon Awakens by R.A. Salvatore.

Suvudu is also running a Halloween costume photo contest with a prize of books and a $25.00 Visa gift card for those of you who like to dress up your kids and pets (the contest runs from now until November 9, 2009.)

If you're looking to change your desktop background to something more seasonal, check out these twelve fabulous fall wallpapers (link filched from Gerard over at the Presurfer.)

If you'd like to download some free classical music suitable for Halloween, Michael Segers over at Associated Content has a list of 50 freebies in audio and video.

E-xperiment Ten

Ten Things About the Shadowlight E-xperiment

Amelie Markirk's Blog/Amelie (off topic note -- Amelie's review of Rob Thurman's Trick of the Light proves I'm not the only one who was floored by this book.)

New B&N.com reviews ~ Npaules ~ 4kidsmom ~ Debra_ Saturday

BlogCritics/Robin Kavanagh

Book Crazy Scrapbook Mama/Pamk

Dreaming in Rhyme/Joely Sue Burkhart (Joely wrote a very cool poem about the story.)

From This Day/Rhienelleth

It's My Blog -- It's My Opinion/MarnieColette, also on Facebook and MySpace and in a discussion on amazon.com's Shadowlight sales page

Raine's Secret Garden/Raine Weaver

Web Petals/Marjorie M. Liu -- Marjorie not only says many kind things I don't deserve, but she's also giving away three copies of Shadowlight and three copies of a surprise Darkyn novel. Stop by her blog today and leave a comment to have a chance to win one.

Wife of Monobot/Little Bits

Shadowlight E-xperiment Update

While dodging work taking a break from my latest round of edits on two novels, I thought I'd do a new update on the Shadowlight e-ARC experiment.

Silver of Silver's Book Reviews coaxed me into doing an interview at her place as well as posting a review of Shadowlight here. She makes me sound a lot more interesting than I am, btw.

More on the latest reviews I've read:

B&N.com reviews/Nemhain ~ harstan ~ Zeek319 ~ lxz ~ CatsMeowAZ ~ Chad ~ Pandababy

Blogging by Liza/Liza

Chocolate Reality/Steena Holmes

Items of Interest/Mad Scientist

Just Erotic Romance Reviews/Mireya Orsini

The Collected Ramblings of Keita Haruka/Keita

Library Thing reviews/miap45 ~zeek319 ~ csayban ~ Pandababy

Maryse's Blog/Maryse

A Multitude of Books/Milady Insanity

Pandababy/Pandababy (I think Pandababy was the first blogger to post a review; I just didn't get to the e-mail and linkage because of the inbox shuffling that sometimes happens when I hit the wrong sort key)

Reality Bypass/Jana

Smexy Books/Mandi

The Top 5 Reasons I Do What I Do/Sherri, also at Powell's and Paperback Swap

Welcome to the Strange Frontier/sakinah ; also at Symetry of Old Pain; Pomme de Sang and Good Reads

The e-mails that have been coming in have been almost unanimously friendly, supportive and helpful to me, especially the constructive criticism and the exchanges I've had with those of you who wanted to discuss some point(s) from the book. I know I don't volunteer a lot of info, especially when my editor's choices are involved, but I like to know what didn't work and why (especially as I'm finishing up the edits on Rowan's book this week.)

Some of the e-ARC readers were kind enough to post reviews on more than one site, and this is what I consider effort above and beyond what I asked in return for the e-book. I also appreciate all the booksellers out there who are handselling the book and/or are featuring the novel in Staff Picks, end cap displays or a prominent place in their stores. While my internet following is strong, the majority of my sales still come from the brick-and-mortar stores, and no one can help you there better than an enthusiastic bookseller.

To my knowledge there have been no bootleg copies of the e-ARC posted on the internet; I really doubt there will be. I think the readers and bloggers in the online writing community have a lot more integrity than they get credit for.

Some of you have asked me about how the book will fare on the lists given the absence of print ARCs and the way-early shipping. Don't worry about it. It's nice to have a book appear on the lists, but I'm paid according to my sales, and that's where you've all helped the most. I care about earning out. Besides, I made the top twenty last year with a book that shipped out late during a holiday week; I figure that was the one miracle I'm entitled to as an author.

And that's the latest. I'll do one more update after the print edition releases, and then I'll see if I can put together some useful stats on the results.

Shadowlight E-xperiment

Last month I committed to trying an e-ARC experiment for my October release, Shadowlight. I thought I'd provide some stats on how that's gone so far:

Distributed: 73 e-ARCs via e-mail.
Labor (preparing/converting the manuscript into the e-ARC, responding to e-mails): 17-1/2 hours

Reviews posted that I've read so far:

(Another) 52 Books/Bibliophile

B&N.com's Shadowlight sales page (Eight reviews)

Bellwood Farm/Laura

Beyond the Invisible/Soleil Noir

Blue Heron Creek/Debra Saturday

The Book Book/Chad

Chapters, Canada/Bookworm

My Writing Existence/Anne

One Book Away from Heaven/Pattepoilue

Stray Thoughts Of Margaret Fisk

There are definitely more reviews out there, and a bunch of links waiting for me to check out in my e-mail box. I do want to read them before I post them here, not to screen them but as a courtesy to everyone who took the time to request the e-ARC, read it and write them up.

A couple of people have e-mailed me about the possibility of e-ARCs resulting in lost sales of the print novel. While I don't expect everyone who received an e-ARC will end up buying the print version of the novel (nor would I), many of these readers had never read any of my books before, and several have commented via e-mail or in their reviews that they're going to buy or check out from the library more of my backlist. Basically what I lose in sales of the print novel I'll likely double or triple in backlist sales. Since all of the Darkyn novels are still in print, as well as most of the StarDoc books, this helps keep more of my books in print. I'll sacrifice a few current-release sales for that.

Most popular/universal comment so far: some form of "I loved Rowan!" Which is good, because originally I pitched Delilah's story, not Rowan's, as the second book in this series (and that is what ended up on the contract.) As I was writing Shadowlight, however, Rowan came out so strong on the page that I asked my editor if I could instead write book two about her. She agreed, I pitched a new synopsis, and wrote Dreamveil, Rowan's story, as book two. Which now seems like a pretty good decision all the way around (reason #999 as to why you should listen to your instincts.)

My thanks to everyone who is participating in this experiment. So far, so good.

e-Shadowlight

Thank you all for sharing your opinions yesterday on my idea to make e-ARCs of Shadowlight available. After much thought, I've decided to give it a go, although I will be imposing a time limit for e-ARC requests mainly to prevent this from going viral in the bad way.

So: readers and bloggers who are willing to commit to writing up a blog post or review of Shadowlight, the first novel in my new Kyndred series, can e-mail me at LynnViehl@aol.com to request a .pdf or Microsoft Word 2007 copy of the book before midnight EST on Saturday, August 22, 2009.*

As I mentioned yesterday, favorable opinions are not expected and there are no other strings attached; all I ask for in return are two things:

1) Everyone who receives the e-ARC agrees to write up a post or piece about the book on your weblog, web site, or appropriate forum (this includes forums like discussion boards or online bookseller sites for those of you who don't blog or have a site) before October 6, 2009.

2) Everyone who receives the e-ARC agrees not to sell, distribute, redistribute, post on the internet or otherwise pirate copies of the novel.

With the e-ARC of Shadowlight I've also included the initial draft of the first chapter from Dreamveil, the second Kyndred book, so you'll also get an exclusive preview of what's next in the series. Also, if this works out well, I will likely do it again with future novels.

I really appreciate everyone helping me out with this.

*Added: this e-ARC offer is now closed. Thanks to all my visitors who responded for offering your support for this experiment.