Book News: Draft2Digital Acquires Mark Coker's Smashwords, Ryan Field Books

 Book News: Draft2Digital Acquires Mark Coker's Smashwords

This news has been out for a few months, but I think it's still fresh and I like to post about websites where e-books are sold. 

I remember going to a dinner party back in the late 90s and one of the guests worked in the art department of Random House. At the time, I was getting short stories published for the Gay/Lesbian Presses like Alyson Books. And I remember this guy telling us that soon there would be digital reading devices that people would use in place of hard copy books. Even though several people just waved him off and laughed, I found it all fascinating. 

And slowly but surely, as the next few years passed, e-books were gaining in popularity by the most avid readers. Of course to this day there are still old timers who refuse to read digital books, and that's fine. However, I have always found that the most serious readers only read digital. They often buy at least 5 books a week. 

With that said, by 2008 digital books became so common almost everyone who really knew book publishing was doing it. And a man named Mark Coker started a wonderful online e-book website called Smashwords. I remember when it all started and I have always had my books there. First, my romance publishers would put them up on Smashwords, and then when I started to do a few indie books. I depended on Smashwords, too. And for what it's worth, I have always found Smashwords to be pleasant and professional. It's nothing like the vipers of Amazon. 

Over the years, since 2008, I have seen so many publishers and start-ups come and go I've lost track. Most have shuttered and disappeared from the Internets. However, Smashwords is still here and it's moving forward, as usual. It was announced earlier this year that Draft2Digital, another e-book publisher that I like, will acquire Smashwords. This is big news for indie authors. 

And Mark Coker will be staying on. 

“I’m thrilled to join forces with Draft2Digital,” said Mark Coker. “Over the last decade, I’ve come to deeply admire Draft2Digital’s team, technology, and commitment to authors. Our shared business model is a key to our two companies’ success. We put authors first. By design, we only make money when our authors make money. This aligns our interests with the interests of our authors. Together we will lead the next chapter of the indie author revolution.”

You  read all about it, here. If you do just a quick simple search you'll find tons of information about this merger. And if you're an author, I'd like to say that all of my books have always been on Smashwords, and you should do the same.  

A Different Kind of Southern Love Story

What readers are saying about “Uncertainty”

Amazon

“A wonderful story that I loved. The characters were well developed and strong. Gus: A sweet young man. Doing something for all the wrong reasons. Craig: his boyfriend, he’ll go along with anything Gus say. Henry: Gus father a no-nonsense man, who’s husband died last year. I enjoyed this story.”



What readers said about “Altered Parts”
“Best Gay Novel In Years. This story will stay with you and you will feel you know every character and the beauty of their home in the mountains of North Carolina.”
In paperback or e-book. #gayromance #Wednesday

Altered Parts

The Wizard of Pride

The Straight Pride Parade

 How to Be a Good Gay Bottom 

Japan Digital Books; Berenstain Bears' App; Self-pubbed Bestseller DBW

Japan Digital Books

The other night while watching an installment of HGTV's House Hunters I saw a young professional woman who works as a mortgage broker looking for a small apartment in Manhattan. When she entered one apartment and saw vast walls of built-in bookcases she said the bookcases would be the first thing she took down if she bought the place. Her reason was, "Who reads print books anymore? Didn't these people ever hear of e-books or Kindle?" And this article about how e-books are moving forward in Japan is interesting because it seems to go along with the way reading habits are changing...not to mention the significance of e-books.

The Diet enacted a bill Friday to revise the copyright law to recognize publishing rights for electronic books. Under the revised law, which is set to take effect in January 2015, rights holders will be able to file suits to stop pirated digital books from being distributed on the Internet. Copyright holders of books and other publications have already been allowed to file such suits over electronic versions. The revised law is also designed to promote the distribution of digital books, whose market is growing due mainly to wider smartphone use.

You can read more about it here.

Berenstain Bears' App

For those who have followed my Chase of a Lifetime series the Berenstain Bears are a favorite with Jim and Len's son. The author of the children's books also came from Solebury, PA, which is where I live (New Hope is the main post office for everyone.) And now there's a BB app for Mother's Day.

We Love Our Mom! is designed for 4-8 year olds. The interactive app includes tools to help teach vocabulary, as well as a feature that lets readers record their own narration.

It's interesting to me mostly because I once read on a literary agent's blog that technology and children in publishing would never come together. What that agent failed to understand is that most children between the ages of 4 and 8 can run circles around her when it comes to technology.

You can read more here.

Self-pubbed Bestseller DBW

Divergent has been holding its own on the DBW bestseller list, but it recently slipped in the ranks thanks to a self-published digital book.

Divergent is this year’s runaway top best-selling ebook in the U.S. — but it’s not the best-selling ebook this week. (In the UK, at the London Book Fair, the buzz around HarperCollins is about why Divergent is selling comparatively well abroad.)

The juggernaut has been stopped and sits at No. 2 on the Digital Book World Ebook Best-Seller list, making way for Fixed Trilogy Bundle, a collection of titles by self-published author Laurelin Paige.

It kind of has a Fifty Shades look to it, but I don't know much about it. I just hope it didn't reach this bestseller point due to more gaming. I don't mind a little author/publisher subterfuge, within reason. I don't think anyone selling anything commercial can claim sainthood. But I'm not fond of the all out vicious race we've been reading about and hearing about recently.

More here.

Weather Hurts Book Sales; Catherine Ryan Hyde Now Hybrid

Weather Hurts Book Sales

This is a interesting article for me because we lost power last week for five days and I read a lot. Although we have a generator, it can only be used at certain times for the most important things. So even though I was able to work for about four hours each day with the generator I still had a lot of down time next to the fireplace without full power and I caught up on a lot of reading. I purchased six books online that week, in digital format...e-books. I read them on my iPhone. (It took a better charge with the generator than the iPad.) I know others in the same powerless situation who did that same thing. So I can't help wondering what the numbers are for e-book sales last week, too, because this article only talks about how brick and mortar bookshops lost money with print books due to the weather.

Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe in Ashville, N.C., tried to keep its regular hours, but closed at 2p.m. on Wednesday ahead of the snow storm. Thursday it opened two hours late and closed at dark. The cold was also a problem, and the store canceled its Mystery Book Club meeting on Monday night because of it. Weather forced it to cancel its Sci Fi YA panel yesterday as well, which was to have included Meagan Spooner and Amie Kaufman, authors of These Broken Stars; Jodi Meadows, author of the Incarnate series; and Lissa Price, author of Enders. Bookseller/book buyer Caroline Christopoulos described yesterday as “reflectively quiet” and said that business was “quite slow.”

You can read more here.

One more reason why I doubt I could ever go back to reading print books again.

Catherine Ryan Hyde Now Hybrid

I've posted about Catherine Ryan Hyde, author of bestselling novel, Pay It Forward, (and many others I've loved)several times here on the blog. Even though we write in completely different genres I've always been a huge fan of her fiction, and she inspired me to branch out on my own to indie publish a few books. That wasn't an easy decision for me because I'm the kind of author who craves the input from publishers...and from the whole publishing process. I'd rather just write and let them worry about everything else. I truly do let them get away with anything just so I don't have to deal with it. I've always been that easy to work with.

But times are changing and I had to see what indie publishing was like for myself. One reason is that I have four completed novels ready for release at this time and I have NO idea when they will be released. I submitted them as far back as August and the ONLY book I've had released since September has been Cowboy Christmas Miracle. One romance novel is over 100,000 words long. Why the books haven't been released I don't know. But I've learned in my years in publishing not to ask. Publishers...all publishers...do what they want and authors have very little control in that respect...especially unagented authors like me. I indie published because I wanted control, for my readers and for me. It wasn't because I'm unhappy with publishers. I have no regrets and I've always had good relationships with my publishers. So I did a little research and saw that authors like Catherine Ryan Hyde were now experimenting in the indie world of publishing themselves and that made me feel more comfortable about it.

For those who don't know, the term hybrid is an author who is published by trad publishers and also indie publishes his/her own books. Why this article makes it sound so surprising is a little interesting to me, because Ryan Hyde has been open about her indie publishing and she even wrote a book with author/blogger Anne R. Allen titled, How to Be a Writer in the E-Age and Keep Your Sanity. I posted about that here back in 2012. I've also posted about Anne R. Allen many times. I read their book and loved every word of it. In fact, I still revisit sometimes to check things out.

The article in PW about Ryan Hyde discusses what motived her to get into indie publishing.

Agent Laura Rennert, at Andrea Brown Literary, who represents Hyde, said the idea to self-publish her client came out of both curiosity and necessity. Although Rennert said that “99.9%” of her clients are traditionally published, she and her fellow Andrea Brown agents wanted to know how to self-publish, so they could “optimally help [their] authors... if this was something they wanted.” The trial with Hyde, who Rennert noted is very prolific, was with a book called Second Hand Heart, which is published by Transworld in the U.K. Although it was a test—Rennert approached Hyde with the idea of self-publishing wanting authors with “a sense of adventure, a willingness to experiment, and [who] are active on social media”—it wound up laying the groundwork for a turning point in Hyde’s career.

You can read more here. If you are an established or new author thinking of indie publishing it's a worthwhile read.

CrossFit Men; Bookshops vs. Amazon; What Makes People LGBTI

CrossFit Men

In case you haven't heard, there's a new fitness craze sweeping pop culture called CrossFit training. I know a few people who do it, I've looked into it personally, and there's a long, interesting piece about it in Time Magazine this week. I can't link to Time because they have paid content and I know a lot don't have subscriptions. But here are a few interesting things about CrossFit I thought were worth mentioning.

From CrossFit Journal:

2:57 Colin Clark’s Iron Oak CrossFit started when he and a few friends started working out together in his garage. As the results came, the word spread, and soon he had to affiliate and move into a larger facility. Clark described the systems he put in place as he went from a garage training group to a business, and he detailed how he helps individuals accomplish their personal goals in a group setting. He talked about how he approaches nutrition with members and explained how that approach has changed over the years. Clark also described his on-ramp program and explained why classes at his affiliate are 75 minutes rather than the traditional 60.

You can read more here and check out the entire web site. In this particular piece there's a very cute guy, which seems to be something that follows everything CrossFit related. The men are gorgeous and I'm not posting about this by accident. I'll be adding a main character to a book who is a CrossFit trainer in the next installment of the Glendora Hill series.

And if you just do a simple search you'll find all the info you need. From what I've learned so far, the basic concept behind CrossFit training is pushing your body, with repetitions, to lengths you wouldn't normally do with cardio or weight training. Don't quote me on that, though. Here's a better definition.

CrossFit, a trademark of CrossFit Inc., is a strength and conditioning program with the aim of improving, among other things, muscular strength, cardio-respiratory endurance, and flexibility. It advocates a perpetually changing mix of aerobic exercise, gymnastics (body weight exercises), and Olympic weight lifting. CrossFit Inc. describes its strength and conditioning program as “constantly varied functional movements executed at high intensity across broad modal and time domains," with the stated goal of improving fitness, which it defines as "work capacity across broad time and modal domains."

Bookshops vs. Amazon

There an informative piece at Huff Po where someone talks about experiences with small brick and mortar bookshops vs. Amazon. It's commentary that comes from personal experience and I can back up almost everything written there.

And that's OK, I can rise to a challenge, make it work -- except for one thing: book snobbery. The kind of snobbery that prompted a local bookseller to require a $100 fee for shelf space to carry five of my books. He had never read my book or even looked at it; he was merely responding to the fact that it was published by a small press and wouldn't be arriving through the traditional distribution method. I declined his offer.

Aside from the fact that I believe all people will be reading digital books eventually, I can support this comment through my own personal experience with a bookshop I once contacted about carrying print versions of a few of my books. Some don't even want to work with smaller genre authors, which is a shame, most of all, to readers who aren't yet familiar with digital books. They are missing out on so much and they don't even know it.

The author of the piece even discloses she's not a romance fan, but also knows and understands there is a market for it.

You can read more here.

 What Makes People LGBTI

This one bothers me a little because it's a look at twin boys, and one is "all boy" and the other has "highly feminine" traits. It doesn't bother me in a literal sense. The highly feminine boy could be transgender, or he just identifies with women. No problem there. I just get confused when they tend to link gay with feminine traits. But I'll explain more about that below.

As identical twins, Patrick and Thomas began as genetic clones. From the moment they came out of their mother's womb, their environment was about as close to identical as possible - being fed, changed, and plopped into their car seats the same way, having similar relationships with the same nurturing father and mother. Yet before either boy could talk, one showed highly feminine traits while the other appeared to be "all boy," as the moms at the playgrounds say with apologetic shrugs.

The piece discusses a few more complicated reasons for what makes people gay. It's very long, so be prepared. We all should know by now that having feminine traits doesn't necessarily make someone gay, nor does the lack of feminine traits mean someone isn't gay. But, in all fairness, it's really the title of the article that's more misleading than anything. They do get into gender nonconformity, too. So a better title would have been what makes people LGBTI, which would cover more ground and tone down the stereotypes that often mislead people who don't know much about the LGBTI community.

You can read it in full here.

Gabourey Sidibe's Revenge; Full Frontal Nude Shots; Simon & Schuster E-book Rise

Gabourey Sidibe's Revenge

The unfortunate thing about this is that when you put yourself in the public eye you are open to all kinds of criticism and some of it's not constructive and can be downright mean-spirited. This recently happened to Gabourey Sidibe after an appearance at the Golden Globe Awards. I've had that happen to me before on a much smaller scale than what recently happened to Sidibe when another author on a comment thread made fun of my name and also made reference to athletic fields. But it comes with the territory, and we all do make these choices consciously and criticism is to be expected. It's how we respond to mean-spirited criticism, and with what kind of creativity we take our revenge, that matters the most. And Gabourey Sidibe should be complimented for a job well done in the revenge department. It is best served cold.

This is what she tweeted to those who made fun of her:

To people making mean comments about my GG pics, I most def cried about it on that private jet on my way to my dream job last night.

You can read more here, with photos.

Whether you like Sidibe or not, she does add something interesting to anything she's ever done. It's that something special you can't train for or even work for. You either have it or you don't.

10 Male Full Frontal Nude Shots

Someone sent me this link yesterday and I thought I'd share simply because male full frontal nudity in films always seems so shocking. Even in this article it's explained that way, and I'm not always sure why.

There’s nothing quite as shocking as seeing male genetalia in a film. Trust me, I’ve had to research for an article on it. There may still be some gasps at the female equivalent, but we’re certainly more accustomed to their appearance (sometimes even popping up in a 15). A stray knob shot can still cause gasps of horror or ripples of laughter.
Read more at http://whatculture.com/film/10-most-shocking-male-nudity-shots-in-cinema-history.php#hYIOjd0AeWrQoLpz.99

I don't get the shocking part. Maybe I've seen too many "knobs." In any event, if you check out the link you can see 10 of the most "shocking" full frontal nude shots in film history. But like with most everything else related to male full frontal nude shots you'll also have to do a separate search to actually see these "knobs." The article finds them too "shocking" to publish.

Simon & Schuster E-book Rise

You know how you read about the way e-book sales are going flat and how those nasty old e-books might even disappear completely. Or how people are still more interested in print books than e-book and e-books are most likely a passing trend. Well, this article is interesting because big publisher Simon & Schuster had huge growth with e-book sales on a global level. Those of us who have been pioneering in the digital market for a decade are not surprised by this. A good deal of our readership comes from a variety of international readers who only read in digital format, from the UK to Asia.

The publisher’s international eBook business is growing at a faster rate than US eBook sales, because these countries are catching up, she said. Last year, the publisher sold eBooks in 200 different countries including a copy of The Sun Also Rises in Antarctica. Reidy said that the publisher is seeing an opportunity in these digital sales and that it is not affecting physical sales. She said that there is a great opportunity for foreign book retailers to sell English-language titles in non-English speaking countries, but they have yet to capitalize on this yet.

Through feedback I get from my readers outside of the US, a large part of this interest in e-books has to do with the fact that e-books are more easily accessible and print books are not. In many cases, especially with LGBTI content, e-books have changed the lives of readers. They can now read books they never would have been able to read ten years ago. And this includes classics like the book mentioned above. Or harmless, smutty love stories with naughty guys who have strong stories like the ones I write.

You can read more here.

Smashwords Teams with Scribd; Indie Authors

Smashwords Teams with Scribd; Indie Authors

This is big news for indie authors and readers. Smashwords signed a global deal with Scribd. Smashwords is the largest distributor of e-books globally, and Scribd is an e-book subscription service with over 100,000 titles that includes bestsellers and new releases. There are so many benefits to this deal I'm going to post what I found in my inbox, and link to a detailed article about the deal. I would also imagine this is going to benefit all small e-presses as well, especially the part about Smashwords authors getting their own bio pages on Scribd.

From my inbox:

Smashwords Author/Publisher Alert - December 19, 2013

Inside:

1. Smashwords announces global distribution deal with Scribd

2. Smashwords unveils web site redesign

3. Apple tickets help speed distribution to Apple iBooks

4. How smart navigation can help you sell more books

5. Retailer holiday schedules

6. Helpful author/publisher resources

Your Smashwords page: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/RyanFiield
________________________________________

1. SMASHWORDS DISTRIBUTION TO SCRIBD
________________________________________

I'm excited to announce a new global distribution agreement today with Scribd, an online reading community that boasts 10 million readers visiting their site each month.

There are two parts to the agreement:

1. Smashwords will distribute books to their subscription ebook service, where readers pay $8.99 to read an unlimited number of books (read below for the great terms Smashwords authors receive!).  2. Smashwords to sell books on their site.

And this article makes things clearer:

"I'm thrilled to learn about the partnership between Smashwords and Scribd," said Quinn Loftis, a USA Today-bestselling Smashwords author of nine young adult paranormal romance titles, including the seven-book Grey Wolves series. "I look forward to distributing all my titles to Scribd via Smashwords because I appreciate the opportunity to reach more readers. My fans will appreciate the incredible value represented by Scribd's subscription service."

I'm looking forward to it, too. I already use Smashwords because I get distributed in so many other places. I've always had mostly good experiences with Smashwords and some that have been interesting and unexpected in a good way.

I also think this speaks loudly for e-books in general. I read a lot lately about how e-books have balanced out and some seem to think they are going to disappear. I don't get that mindset and these people leave me gaping in wonder sometimes. And news like this global deal confirms what most of us who have been pioneering e-books have believed from the start. I also think it's a huge boost for indie authors simply because for the first time in a long time I didn't see them lead the article with term self-published authors. And from now on I'm sticking to indie author as a rule.



 

Rock Hudson Alleged Gay Confession; Barry Eisler on .99 E-books

Evidently, there's new information about an alleged gay confession from Rock Hudson. This alleged confession was something Hudson told his wife at the time, Phyllis Gates. This is from Huff Po.

Back in 1958, Hudson's wife, Phyllis Gates, confronted the Hollywood legend about being gay, according to The Hollywood Reporter. That confrontation was secretly tape-recorded by Detective Fred Otash, a private eye who had dirt on everyone from Marilyn Monroe to Judy Garland. Gates had hired him to keep tabs on her husband.

"Rock, your great speed with me, sexually. Are you that fast with boys?" Gates asked Hudson, according to a transcript of the discussion obtained by THR from Otash's family.
"Well, it's a physical conjunction [sic]," he replied. "Boys don't fit. So, this is why it lasts longer."

It's also been alleged that Rock Hudson's wife at the time, Phyllis Gates, was a lesbian who was constantly trying to blackmail him. This is a fascinating article  Fred Otash is mentioned here, too. It really does get into a few details you don't read about often, and mentions a list of close friends in Hudson's circles that were just as closeted as he was.

Outing Mrs. Rock Hudson: the obits after Phyllis Gates died in January omitted some important facts: Those who knew her say she was a lesbian who tried to blackmail her movie star husband Advocate, The, Feb 28, 2006 by Robert HoflerPhyllis Gates, the former Mrs. Rock Hudson, died January 4 at age 80, and the Los Angeles Times commemorated her passing with an astonishingly long, 1,000-word, half-page obit a week later. (Would Katie Holmes ever get so much ink?) To read that and other newspaper whitewashes of her memory, you would have to believe that Gates was a loving Brokeback Mountain wife who had been duped into marriage by Rock's equally gay agent, Henry Willson.

I doubt we'll ever know the complete truth, and I don't think that matters anyway. Rock Hudson was a victim of his time and he couldn't come out. But I think this line in the Huff Po article bothers me the most:

"He was basically a very romantic man. He was like a woman;

This comes from a biographer, Sarah Davidson, who went to the University of Douchebaggery where they obviously taught Gay Male Stereotypes 101.

Barry Eisler on .99 E-books

I post openly about the indie books I have out and how I price them. I've found a good deal of success in keeping the books priced at .99 for now. I've also mentioned I've been on the fence with the Amazon lending program because it makes it impossible for me to distribute the books for three months because Amazon makes me sign an exclusive to be in the program. I have a good readership at places like ARe and I like to accomodate them. But I will be releasing my next indie on Amazon, Internal Desires, and I will do the lending program for the first three months. I want to see how it works out, and I haven't done it for a while.

In this next article to which I'm linking below author Barry Eisler discusses his thoughts on e-book pricing, promotions, and .99 E-books. I thought it was interesting. I also think that what works for him might not work for me or another author. As I said, I'm always afraid of taking a hit by NOT releasing in places like ARe. But that's always been the case with anything like this. What I do think is important is that you try everything you can try to see what works for you. I really never have a set plan, and when I think I do and I try to repeat something it always turns out differently than it did the first time. I think the secret is to keep trying and to keep doing different things.

I’ve done a couple of free promos of individual titles through KDP Select, advertising the sales using BookBub and EbookBooster, and the results were good -- the #1 free spot for my first novel, A Clean Kill in Tokyo, and the #2 slot for my second, A Lonely Resurrection. I like the free promos because if things go well with the giveaway, the title in question tends to bounce back much higher in the paid store, with more visibility and more sales. Possible shortcomings of the free promos, though, are: (i) the people you’re initially reaching are by definition a demographic that is motivated to download books for free, and that might therefore be less interested in buying them; and (ii) people who get books for free are probably less motivated to read them, meaning fewer new customers and less word of mouth. So I started wondering what would happen if I tried a 99-cent promo instead... and what would happen if instead of doing it for only one title, I did it for my entire backlist.

You can read more here.

E-Book BEA Debate; Michael Douglas on Oral Sex; New Fight Against AIDS

E-Book BEA Debate

When I post about this topic now, I start to feel as if I'm living in an altered universe sometimes. And yet this article from PW talks about e-books as if they were just invented.

In a question from the audience, Ed Conklin, buyer at Chaucer's Books in Santa Barbara, Calif., said, "I'm not real interested in e-books." That's because there's no way for a customer to buy an e-book in his store. In a follow-up question, Emily Pullen, manager of Word Books in Brooklyn, N.Y., pointed out how little money booksellers make on e-book sales. "If I sold an e-book to every customer who came in my store, I'd be out of business in a week." To which Friedman responded that e-book pricing is going to level out at higher than $2.99.

While I do often think that e-books are either too expensive or too inexpensive to be realistic, and I would like to see publishers focus more on fair pricing, I can't help but always take into consideration the near future. And when I say the near future I mean watch kids in grade school, or even in middle school and high school. The tech devices they own would most likely turn someone like Ed Conklin from Chaucer's Books upside down. If past is prologue, and if history does repeat itself, than all these debates are absolutely pointless.

I saw an interesting TV commercial last evening. I forget what the commercial was about in detail, but at the end there was a young woman holding a record in her hands and she says, "I know what these are. I read about them in books." The main focus was that records are obsolete, and most kids don't even know what they are. Frankly, I don't even know what records are because my generation had cassette tapes and CDs. I never had a record collection. My mom and dad owned records. But the underlying irony in that commercial is that in the real world the odds are that the young woman either read about old fashioned records online somewhere, or she read about them in an e-book. And whoever put that ad together didn't even realize they were being ironic.

Michael Douglas on Oral Sex

Update: Here's a link that will lead you to a web site that talks in depth about HPV. There's also a vaccine available, which I didn't know about.

Actor Michael Douglas talked openly about his ordeal with throat cancer and the kind of cancer it was. According to this article, it wasn't caused by smoking or alcohol. It was caused by engaging in oral sex. This isn't the first time I've heard something like this. It's actually more common than most people know.

 In a candid new interview with U.K.'s The Guardian, Douglas admits that his illness was caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV).

"Without wanting to get too specific, this particular cancer is caused by HPV, which actually comes about from cunnilingus," the "Behind the Candelabra" star, 68, explains.

For those who haven't heard about this, it's an interesting article with more links.

New Fight Against AIDS

This comes from Lambda Legal.

As the nation marks the opening of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month, executive directors from 35 LGBT and HIV/AIDS organizations from across the United States have released a joint letter committing themselves and their organizations to re-engaging the broader LGBT community in the fight against HIV. While issues like marriage equality and employment protections for LGBT workers have taken center stage, HIV continues to ravage the LGBT community. Despite making up just two percent of the population, gay and bisexual men accounted for more than 63 percent of new HIV infections in 2010. In fact, gay men are the only group in which HIV infections are increasing.

With all the information out there, the numbers in gay men getting HIV should be declining, and yet that's not the case. I've read that a lot of younger gay men hear that HIV is a chronic disease and there are now medications that can keep them alive so they don't think they have to be as careful anymore. This is true about HIV in a general sense. Those with HIV don't get a death sentence anymore. It is treated as a chronic disease.

But that's not the bottom line, not by any means. The HIV meds have side effects that you may not see for years to come. These side effects can appear in a variety of ways. And none of them are pleasant. I know this first hand because I've been acting POA for a friend who is HIV+ and I often go to his doctor's appointments with him at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The other factor is the cost of HIV meds. They run into thousands of dollars each month and if you think Obamacare is going to help you you'd better start reading more. The fact is that if you don't have a great medical insurance plan you're going to have to figure out a way to get those meds and it's not going to be simple.

This is the goal. I think it's realistic if everyone takes the time to read this information.

“The LGBT community always has been at the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic. As the community most impacted in the nation, we are the ones who must step-up and recommit to ending future transmissions. To have a new generation of LGBT young people grow up free from HIV and AIDS will be a fitting legacy to those we have lost to this disease.”

I also think it's time we took the stigma away from AIDS. Michael Douglas talked about his ordeal with cancer and oral sex in the above article without a hint of shame. We need to be able to do the same thing with HIV as gay men.

New Book Cover: Fangsters; Hannah on "Girls" Gets E-book Deal; CBS Sunday Morning Barbie Porn

Here's the preview cover for my new book, Fangsters, that's being published with Riverdaleave.com books on April 30th. I've posted about this here. And I'll post more info with excerpts as I get it back in coming weeks. Here's the book description:

When organized crime meets the underworld of the living dead, it creates endless possibilities for intrigue and passion. Combine that with a traditional old vampire clan from Sicily trying to mainstream with humans in northern New Jersey as business people, and it winds up becoming an adventure into darkness of epic proportions.

Anton Pagano is from an old Sicilian vampire clan that migrated to New Jersey in the late 1800's. He lives in a mansion in northern New Jersey with his mom and dad, and he's never had to worry about anything other than his wardrobe, his latest new car, and the secret love affair he's been having for years with another vampire in his clan. At a glance, he looks and sounds just like anyone else between the ages of twenty-one and thirty years old.

But when Anton's dad, the head of their clan, decides it's time for Anton and his vampire cousin, Digger, to get into the family business, Anton's not all the excited about it. Until he meets a sweet young human man named Leo on his first night at work. They wind up spending the rest of the night together, and then things get even more complicated when they bring Anton's secret vampire lover into the picture a few weeks later.

After a bloody battle with werewolves, and the beginning of what Anton predicts will be an all-out war between two vampire clans in New Jersey, Anton and his secret vampire lover decide it's time to consider turning Leo into a vampire so all three of them can be together for eternity. But thanks to fate, nothing is as simple as it looks, and they wind up doing the one thing they ever wanted to do to Leo as a last resort. 

Hannah on Girls Gets a Book Deal

I've made no secret of how much I love the TV show, Girls.  On reason I love it is because of how it focuses on "new adults" and how I'm a huge fan of the upcoming genre, new adult fiction.

I also like Hannah as a character. She's annoying and adorable at the same time. She's also smart, and trying to figure things out like so many young people her age.

In an episode last night, she gets an e-book deal and I thought it was interesting how they treated the subject of e-books on the show. For the mainstream, it's obviously something so new the writers have to emphasize that it's an "e-book" deal. When those of us who have been writing and reading e-books for so long now just call them books, not e-books.

It was also interesting...and entertaining...to see Hannah's reaction when they told her she had a one month deadline for the e-book they wanted her to write.  I once had a three week dealine for a 60,000 word novel. Anyone who has ever worked in e-publishing can understand this.Your first instinct is to run. The next is to sit down and start writing, because publishing is NOT the slowest industry in the world anymore. Far from it.

CBS Sunday Morning Barbie Porn

I talked about how CBS Sunday morning was going to do a segment about erotic romance in the mainstream this past weekend. I did DVR it and I did watch.

Of course they did what the mainstream usually does: they made funny haha jokes that aren't really funny, they use terms like "mommy porn" that make no sense to most of us, and they refer to erotic romance as porn instead of love stories with sex added into the storyline. (I proved, once and for all, an erotic romance can be a book without sex when I released "Chase of a Dream" in abridged and unabridged versions last year...with and without sex...and it didn't change much about the storyline when the sex was removed.)

But overall, I found the CBS segment about erotic romance entertaining, especially when 76 year old author, Desiree Holt, gave Bill Geist a first hand example of how she uses physical props in order to get sex positions right in the sex scenes she's writing.

In order to do this, Ms. Holt uses Barbie and Ken dolls. She claims it gives her a first hand account, up close, of the way real people might pose during various sexual acts. And CBS actually blurred out the heads of the dolls during a Holt demonstration. I'm not joking. It was highly amusing. Evidently, Barbie porn isn't okay on TV, especially on Sunday morning.

I thought Desiree Holt was adorable and I thought she did a great job talking about erotic romance, considering how Bill Geist seemed to have a proverbial stick up his ass, and how he kept rolling his eyes. But he could have been joking around, too. The overall interview and segment wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it might be. And, of course, they had to mention Fifty Shades of Grey, once again, as the book that started everything and all about erotic romance. What can I say? I guess they honestly don't know we've been writing books in this genre long before E.L. James jumped out of the Twilight fanfic pile. But you take what you can get, with a great big smile.

As a side note, although I did find the use of Barbie dolls as props entertaining, I have never actually used props like that for my own erotic romances. I draw from personal experience, thank you, and I've created my own positions many, many times.  

Would You Invest Your Money In a Brick and Mortar Bookstore?

I've read a great deal recently about how e-book sales have been leveling off, and with these articles I've found an enormous amount of commentary about how print books aren't going to disappear and e-books will never really take off. This one is interesting.

Having survived 500 years of technological upheaval, Gutenberg's invention may withstand the digital onslaught as well. There's something about a crisply printed, tightly bound book that we don't seem eager to let go of.

But, would the author of this article, a Mr. Nicholas Carr, actually invest his money right now, at this point in time, in a brick and mortar bookstore? For a while this concept opening a small bookstore almost became a cliche, in both real life and chick lit. After a bitter divorce, the ex-wife would take a large chunk of her settlement and go into business by opening a small bookstore/tea shop. Two years later, she'd be in nursing school trying to figure out how to support herself and cut her losses. I saw that too many times to even count.

Don't think like a reader, a book lover, or even an author. Think like a businessperson this time. In order to survive, brick and mortar bookstores have been selling everything from stuffed animals to pots and pans. I'm surprised they aren't selling turkey dinners with dressing. And even with the addition of new product, along with print books, they can't seem to remain afloat. Not even the large chains.

I remember when all this started back in the 1990's. I had just opened my art gallery and I was two stores away from a very nice brick and mortar women's bookstore. In New Hope, we get thousands of tourists passing through town on any given week at certain times of the year. So with that kind of foot traffic you'd think that a brick and mortar bookstore would be able to at least make a decent living for the owner. I was in business for ten years. I did okay and never had trouble paying my rent with the gallery. But I never saw a brick and mortar bookstore last more than a year or two. Most left in the dead of January in the middle of the night never to be seen again.

At the time, you couldn't blame e-books. No one even knew what they were. What the owners of these small brick and mortar bookstores claimed at the time was that the bigger stores like B&N and Borders were eating them alive and they couldn't compete. I think that's partly true. But I also think that reading habits had changed by the 1990's and people were just reading a lot less in general. I think publishing in general went through a stale period around that time. I used to belong to the book of the month club and I remember hearing they were having trouble making a profit.

In any event, I wouldn't have invested my money in a brick and mortar bookstore back then, and I certainly wouldn't do it now. I highly doubt Mr. Carr who wrote the article I linked to above would either. All you have to do it take a look at kids from three to twenty years old and see how they are reading. It's not print books.

So while e-book sales may have leveled off for the time being, I doubt they will disappear any time soon. I wouldn't be so radical as to predict that e-books will take over completely by the year 2020. However, I don't think it would be unrealistic to predict that it could happen by the year 2030. And it could take that long because we still have to get through one or two more generations who refuse to even look at an e-book. I understand that to a certain extent. But not completely. I can't imagine going back to reading print books anymore. Or, paying the prices I used to pay for print books. Or not being able to order a book on Amazon at midnight and have it delivered instantly to my tablet.

There are still a lot of things to be worked out with e-books, like sharing for one, and pricing for another. But even with all the issues going on right now, I wouldn't invest my money in a brick and mortar bookstore unless I wanted to take a loss on purpose (people do this all the time for tax purposes). I actually haven't used either of my two e-readers in a while. But that's only because I've been reading on my tablet and my phone, not because I went back to reading print books. And that's even more interesting. While I have heard all kind of statistics about how e-book sales have leveled out, I have not yet heard once where anyone who made the switch to reading e-books ever went back to reading print books entirely. I'll admit I'm not as exicted about e-books as I was five years ago because it's so common to me now. But that doesn't mean I've stopped reading e-books.

Erotic E-books Inspire Lending Across the Pond

 

I've had this article in my in-box all week but didn't have time to post it. It's about how erotic e-books have affected the overall digital market in the UK, and how people are lending/borrowing e-books. I have to admit I'm a little surprised because I didn't think lending erotica was all that popular. In other words, I've always thought of it as a discreet genre where people would hesitate to borrow either e-books or print books. I always thought of them as purchases. But I guess this is becoming more popular now, and no complaints from me.

A rare bit of good news for the nation's beleaguered local libraries: erotic fiction is being credited with a boom in e-book loans.

Surrey County Council has experienced a rise in loans from 16,231 in 2011 to 19,847 in 2012 with this January seeing the busiest month in the authority's e-book history with 2,469 loans.

The most popular e-book in 2012 was romance novel 'At the Argentinean Billionaire's Bidding' by India Grey, followed by 'Bedded By The Greek Billionaire' by Kate Walker in second, and 'Beauty And The Billionaire' by Barbara Dunlop in third.

You can read more here.

The article is from Huff Po UK, and I'm not surprised at all to see how many readers in the UK enjoy erotic romance. I've found a good deal of my own sales come from the UK, and so do a lot of my personal e-mails from readers. It's an interesting article, with book covers, and I think it's worth reading in full. It gets into how erotic romance is a guilty pleasure, and how digital books are changing the rules now. These are things a lot of us already know. Hell, I write it because it's a guilty pleasure for me. But I also think a lot of other people are just beginning to get turned on to it.

What is "Windowing" an E-book?

I was reading an article last night about "windowing" and I noticed a lot of people in the comment thread didn't know what "windowing" meant. So here's a quick post about it, with a few comments from me below.

From Teleread:

Delaying (which is to say, “windowing”) the e-book has been tried, but not all “serious readers” are so biddable as to let themselves be pressured into buying the hardback. Many of them will submit one-star reviews on Amazon decrying the publisher’s asinine anti-e-book position and not buy it at all out of spite, and others will go out and pirate the book as soon as some enterprising pirate scanner makes it available—and then not buy the e-book when it is released.

In other words, windowing means they don't release the e-book at the same time they release the hard cover. The mind set behind this seems to be that we will all run out and buy the hard cover first, which most of the time costs more money and keeps brick and mortar bookstores in business. I guess this could be compared to the way films are released, where they open in movie theaters, then go to DVD, and ultimately wind up on cable.

Also from Teleread:

Harper Collins has chosen to delay the Kindle release to assuage its fear of cannibalizing sales. In the process of assuaging these fears—whether rational or irrational—it has set loose a whole different set of cannibals: potential Kindle book buyers.

The ensuing firestorm has directly impacted the book’s ratings as many Kindle customers have chosen to use a controversial tactic to voice their chagrin. I am alluding to the use of a one-star review, in which a commenter slams a book or publication for reasons concerning pricing and/or availability.

What this is basically saying is that you don't screw around with people who read e-books. If you do they are going to blast you with one star reviews whether they've read the book or not. I know this from personal experience because I once had a one star review on Amazon by someone who hadn't even read the book. He/she left the one star review because they'd seen it priced cheaper and they wanted to rant about it. I didn't take it personally, nor did I take it as a reflection on the book. I don't think the reader meant it that way either. And I think most readers know authors don't control book prices.

But you don't screw around with people who read e-books. I'm one of them. If a publisher thinks that by delaying the release of the e-book...or windowing it...will get people to buy more print books instead, it's just not going to work. As a reader I don't buckle to that kind of pressure and I'm more than willing to wait for the release of the e-book, no matter how long it takes. I didn't pay hundreds of dollars for two e-reading devices, a tablet, and an iPhone for a publisher or author to dictate what format I'm going to read in. My last print book read was "Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet," and I have no intention of going back to print books in the future.

A better example about how I feel about e-books would be the e-book I'm reading right now, "The Front Runner," by Patricia Nell Warren. It's an LGBT classic that I'd read years ago in print. A few months ago I decided I wanted to re-read it and saw it wasn't out yet in digital. I didn't go out and buy a new print copy. I waited until it finally was released in digital and I just started re-reading this week. Had it not been released in digital, I probably wouldn't be re-reading it at all.

John Sargent from Macmillan on DOJ Settlement, E-books, and Piracy

In a year end letter to authors, illustrators, and agents, John Sargent from Macmillan wrote candidly about where Macmillan stands with regard to the DOJ and other current topics that seem to be twisting around in the air these days and no one's sure where they'll land and settle.

So far, I've seen nothing but negative comments about this letter. I personally wouldn't comment on this if my life depended on it. At least not most of it anyway.

Here's why. I don't think anyone has any answers right now.

 I do know that we are not in discussions, with anyone. This will leave us where we have always been, the smallest of the big publishers.

This is a good thing; no mergers. I would imagine agents are happy to hear this. Now for the DOJ business:

There are two reasons we decided not to settle. First, it is hard to settle when you have done nothing wrong. Much as the lawyers explain to me that settling is completely standard business procedure, it still seems fundamentally flawed to me somehow. Call me old-fashioned. The second reason is the more important one. Since the very beginning, the government’s demands have never wavered in all our discussions. They still insist on the two year discounting regime that forms the heart of the agreement signed by the three settling publishers. It was our belief that Amazon would use that entire discount for the two years. That would mean that retailers who felt they needed to match prices with Amazon would have no revenue from e-books from five of the big publishers (and possibly the sixth) for two years. Not no profit, no revenue. For two years.

There are those who would argue with me, but I also believe any settlement is an admission of guilt. And if you don't think you're guilty, it's tough to settle. Plain and simple. It may be standard, but it's still an admission of guilt to some. So Macmillan has decided to go to trial, June 2013. It should be fascinating to see how this turns out.

The second reason why they decided not to settle is something I'd never even attempt to comment on. Amazon is very secretive and no one really knows what they are up to. In many ways, they've changed the world for writers and I would be a fool at this point to comment. Publishers like Macmillan who have always been the ultimate gatekeepers haven't done even half as much.

Which leaves me with the final and more jolly topic of this missive-matters digital now and in the future. At this writing 26% of our total sales this year have been digital. It is good to remember that means 74% of Macmillan’s total sales are ink on paper books. Just as in 2011, the percentage of e-book sales has remained consistent week by week through the year for the most part (the big uplift in the last two years has occurred the week after Christmas). Our e-book business has been softer of late, particularly for the last few weeks, even as the number of reading devices continues to grow. Interesting.

This is the part where it really gets interesting. Sargent seems to be suggesting, by his own comments, that he's not sure e-books will continued to rise in popularity. And he could be right. Who knows at this point? I do know this. I'm not handing back my e-reader for a print book. You'd have to wrestle me to the ground first, and it wouldn't be pretty. And the younger people I know between the ages of say seven and eighteen years of age are only interested in all things technology, which includes e-books and digital readers (they aren't even taught how to write cursive anymore; images of sugar plums don't dance in their heads; images of mini iPads dance in their heads now). I might consider going back to vinyl records if iTunes disappeared tomorrow. I might consider driving a car with roll up windows. But not print books. No. Way.

I do think Sargent writes honestly and he believes in what he's saying. Like I said, he could be right. There's a lot at stake right now and publishers like Macmillan don't seem to be sure about anything. No one is.

The best news as we enter this holiday season is that independent booksellers have had a good year, booksellers in general have had the time to adjust their product mix and store counts, and consumers continue to value and buy real books. Piracy continues to be an issue, but it has not exploded. More people are reading more books. The playing field in e-book retailing, while not even, has not yet tilted too far. There is a bright future out there.
Now, that sounds good on the surface. But take a closer look at this: "consumers continue to value and buy real books." So does this mean e-books are not real books? So the digital version of J.K. Rowling's "The Casual Vacancy" I'm still slogging through (and loving; review to come) isn't considered a real book because I'm reading it on a tablet? And is the digital version of any book less important because it's not considered a tangible item?

Interesting.

Random House Announces "Digital Only" Publishing Venture

And they all told me e-books would never go anywhere four years ago. Not Random House exactly, but someone who worked closely with editors at Random House and other large publishers.

And am I glad I didn't listen to THEM. For those who don't know, e-publishing was basically being laughed at four years ago on almost all publishing blogs. The mainstream media didn't even mention it. Digital only was a huge joke. And most of those in trad publishing who didn't see the trend toward e-books coming must be shocked to see something like this announcement from Random House.

I got this directly from my inbox, from a publishing insider who knows what he's talking about. I've seen it announced in a few other places, so I'm not telling tales out of proverbial school. Basically, it's nothing new even though they make is sound as if they've just invented Hostess Twinkies. They make it sound as if publishing digital only "shorts" is something new, and we all know e-publishers have been doing this for years now.

I'm happy to see that trad publishers like Random House are noticing the shift toward digital books, but I'm also a little annoyed that they will all be moving in on territory smaller e-publishers have pioneered for them. And when I say pioneered I'm not joking around. It's not easy to stick to something you believe in while all the so-called "professionals" are laughing at you.

So before you jump into buying something from Random House, or any other large publisher, don't forget all about the smaller e-publishers and authors who've been working hard to give you digital only books for the past decade. They knew what you wanted and they gave it to you.

  THE RANDOM HOUSE PUBLISHING GROUP
ANNOUNCES NEW DIGITAL-ONLY IMPRINTS
NEW YORK, NY – November 29, 2012: Gina Centrello, President and Publisher of The Random House Publishing Group (RHPG), announced today the launch of three new genre-fiction digital-exclusive imprints: Alibi (mystery/thriller); Hydra (science fiction); Flirt (YA/New Adult) and an expanded list under the recently re-launched Loveswept (romance). A fully-dedicated editorial, marketing, and publicity team will support each publishing program.
The Loveswept publishing program—an imprint comprised of new digital-original and classic romance titles—was re-launched in 2011. Since then, new authors have been acquired and launched under the imprint, and new digital-original titles have been published each month. Building on this success, the digital-only program will be expanded to include the popular mystery/thriller, new adult, and science fiction/fantasy genres.
“There are many readers out there looking for exactly what Loveswept offers—compelling characters and great stories published frequently at an affordable price,” said Centrello. “We are thrilled to expand this program.”

The new imprint program will be overseen by Allison Dobson, Vice President, Digital Publishing Director, working with Scott Shannon, Senior Vice President, Publisher, Digital Content and Matt Schwartz, Vice President, Director of Digital Strategy.

Gina Wachtel, Vice President, Associate Publisher will oversee the editorial team, including Sue Grimshaw, Editor-at-Large, Romance, Randall Klein, Associate Editor, Mystery and Thriller, and Sarah Peed, Associate Editor, Science Fiction and Fantasy.

“As publishing continues to evolve, with more authors finding their first home in digital, our challenge is to create new ways for readers to discover books,” said Dobson. “This dedicated team understands both the content and medium, and can effectively break out authors in the digital space.” For a closer look at this exciting new program, visit http://www.atrandom.com/eoriginals.
RHPG continues to innovate digital publishing with a variety of groundbreaking and successful projects, including the POLITICO Playbook Election eBook series and the enormously successful e-shorts program, featuring bestselling digital e-shorts by Lee Child, Dean Koontz, Karin Slaughter, and many more.

E-Book Market/Art Market: Should We Be Thinking More Like Business People?

When I read an article about how the e-book market is different from the art market, I couldn't help but wonder whether or not we should be thinking more like business people. As the owner of a high end art gallery for ten years, and a small business owner all my life, I've spent most of my life buying and re-selling things for profit.

During the time I owned my gallery I represented over 100 artists, most of whom remained with me for the ten year period in which I was in business. I took copyrights very seriously. As the agent who represented these artists I felt it my duty to protect their works as long as their works were under my gallery's roof. I wouldn't even allow customers walking in and out of the showroom to take photos of their art. To me, that's an infringement on copyright and I had no idea whether or not they were going to go home, turn those photos into prints, and then resell them somewhere else. It happens. Of course some customers didn't like that...some were downright snarky about it...but they weren't the art buying crowd and I didn't have any problems asking them to politely leave my gallery. I knew they were just walking through town licking ice cream cones. The serious art buyers would never even think to take a photo of an original work of art in a gallery without getting permission first.

In the article I'm linking to today, I'll post excerpts that talk about resale of books and how that's compared to the resale of art. As a side note, the photo above is part of my own personal collection. It's a Neil Loeb (you can google him) originally dated 1971, and I think I would part with anything but that work of art. I have no intention of ever selling it in my lifetime, however, I am hoping it continues to grow in value. But I'm not sure I can say that about most books I own...or most of the books I've written for that matter.

The United States Supreme Court recently heard oral argument in Wiley vs. Kirtsaeng, a copyright case that deals with first resale principles. The gist of the case is this: Kirtsaeng bought textbooks in developing countries where the books sell for less than in the United States and brought them to the United States for resale.

Wiley sued Kirtsaeng for copyright infringement and won; Kirtsaeng has appealed. Kirtsaeng’s defense was primarily the first-sale doctrine, which allows owners to resell, lend out, or give away copyrighted goods without interference. This doctrine is a prime reason why every ebook comes with terms of sale that state that what you are “buying” is a limited license, unlike with a pbook.

This is where it can get tricky, and I'll admit that I'm still learning more because I have so many e-books out for sale. To take this to very basic level, this is why you don't see used e-books for sale on Amazon like you see used print books. In most cases, unlike art, used print books are sold for less money, not more. But there are cases where I've seen some of my print books being sold on Amazon and Ebay for far more than people originally paid for them. I think this has more to do with adult content...at least that's the only thing I can make out of it. There are people who know and understand that anything with strong adult content usually commands a higher price, especially if they are marketing books with adult content to markets that don't have access to books with adult content. I've posted about this topic before, and how I receive no money whatsoever as the author of these print books when they are sold at higher prices used. And I don't expect to either.

This is what could happen if more cases like this win:

Yet this case could spell the end of such secondary markets except for goods that are outside copyright, which means not in our lifetime for currently produced artwork.

More importantly for artists, publishers, and authors alike, all art — regardless of form — that is still under copyright will plummet in value if capitalism works correctly. Why would anyone pay a handsome price for art that they cannot resell 10 years from now. Copyrighted works will have limited market value because there will be real market.

Isn’t this the fight we are experiencing with ebooks? Publishers cry about how piracy and discounting devalues ebooks, but it is really neither that devalues ebooks; instead it is the licensing scheme that intentionally prevents a secondary market that causes the devaluation.

I have a feeling this isn't going to disappear any time soon. And I tend to agree with the author that Wiley may wind up regretting all this in the future. It's why I've made it a point to start self-publishing on my own so I can call the shots with at least a few of my own e-books, and I will not be subjected to the opinions of Wiley or anyone else. Right now, in this post, I'm talking mainly about the student text book market as it relates to the article I'm linking to, but this is something that could have an impact on all markets.

As one Justice wondered, how would we dispose of an automobile we wanted to replace because automobiles have numerous items that are copyrighted. We couldn’t sell that auto in the absence of permission from all copyright holders, a difficult task in the absence of the first sale doctrine.

And that's about as to the point as this gets. I recommend reading the article in full to get a better grasp on what's happening right now, and what could happen in the future. The e-book market is still small and there are a lot of people who don't fully get it yet. Unfortunately, they always seem to be the loudest people around.