Big Kindle foam finger, "We're #2"

As a Taoist, I embrace the ephemeral nature of perceived existence. As a Buddhist, I seek to destroy the ego. As a writer, I am an arrogant swine who wants to be on top of the bestseller lists and let no one else have any of the ice cream, ever. So I am doing the happy dork dance of briefly being Amazon's second-rated author on the horror popularity list (behind King, ahead of Koontz, which shows you how ridiculous the rating is.)

It's mostly on the happy coincidence of After: The Shock still doing well, Amazon pushing Liquid Fear over Christmas, and Amazon pushing The Home in a January special. So, you see, it is hard for me to brag about it because I didn't really cause it, I just happened to be here when it happened. I'm too lazy to track down all the links and I'm probably already slipping, but if you want to look, it's at the bottom of my Author Central page at Amazon.

Sergio Castro is about to finish up the art for our next children's book, Bad Day For Ballooons. He did a cool anime style for it, and we hope to have it out in a few weeks. Then I am committing to marketing the books, something I've been far too slack about.

I was going to revisit my "Predictions for the Future of Digital Publishing" for the third year in a row but I am kind of tired of all that. Summary version is it's here to stay, we are all equally unique, and smarter people than me--like Edward W. Robertson, Joanna Penn, and Lindsay Buroker--are doing a much better job of writing about it.

Also just released Creative Spirit in both Czech (Duch Korban Manoru) and Italian (Spirito Creativo), and in other news, my translators and I have three of the top nine slots on the German Kindle horror charts. My goal is to make a similar impression in Italian, then move on in and take over the world via Brazilian Portuguese and Latin American Spanish. Ah, there goes my ego again...Here's me and a goat, because goat.

Also, The Skull Ring limited editions with high production values and awesome Alan Clark art whose ownership is sure to get your more sex is now shipping from King's Way Press. I'll do a separate rundown of recent audio releases and Italian books in a later post.

Look for some big 99-cent blowout sales coming up on Jan. 17-19, Jan. 29-31, Feb. 26-28, and March 26-28. I gave away 1.2 million books in 2012 but this year my books will rarely be free just because free no longer has value. If you enjoyed them, please consider writing reviews--not for my ego, but because so many of the advertising sites now have star-rating requirements to meet.And I'd like to keep writing books, lest I really have to become a Taoist and Buddhist and actually remove myself from mortal desires.

And my family is not quite ready for that. I hope your 2013 is off to an amazing launch for a wild ride ahead.
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Paper books as artifacts in the digital age

I was on an ebook panel at the local library yesterday, speaking with a writing group, and the inevitable defense of bookstores arose. I've come to believe this is an emotional issue, not an issue of logic, data, or even the reality that is occurring all around us--bookstores are closing, and rapidly. I'm not here to gleefully dance on graves, since I like bookstores and they have helped sell my books in the past. But the idea that "Paper books CAN'T die out because I like them" is not going to stop paper books from their rapid decline. They are nice artifacts that give many of us comfort, but the incredible drain of resources to get a book from Point A to Point B will forevermore put it at a competive disadvantage.

(Disclaimer--worldwide nuclear war would restore paper books to dominance because many of them would outlast all the digital information erased by the electromagnetic pulse. But I can safely predict overall readership would still decline.)

Paper books are already clear artifacts to me, comfort items for the shelf. Oddly, I have been reading paper books more than my Kindle lately--but this doesn't mean I've "decided that paper is better." No, I am clinging to the last bits of nostalgia and indulging in some works that might never be available in digital form.

I took my wife to an antique store a couple of weeks ago--proof of the depths of my love and sacrifice, if you know how much I abhor any form of shopping--and I was startled how much of the store was occupied by books. Yes, books are already antiques, even while the major publishers churn out tens of thousands of copies of the latest trendy fiction and celebrity bios. You could look at those huge bestsellers as signs of publishing health, but they actually reflect the disease--publishing is only practical on a blockbuster level: Many sales each of a few titles, not a few sales each of a few million niche titles.

In the store, I found a stack of Dean Koontz books and thumbed through them, mostly out of curiosity, since I have enough Koontz paperbacks to last a lifetime. But I found a tattered 1977 copy of Demon Seed, the movie tie-in edition of the 1973 novel. On top of it was the newer, re-released and thicker version. For those who don;t know, Koontz revised most of his books as he got the rights back and re-released them. In the new version, I read the afterward where Koontz explains how he cleaned up the book and honed it. Of course, I was far more interested in the old version, the rawer, less polished, version. Koontz often works too hard to remove any provocative edge in his books, and my only complaint with him is that his protagonists are always too relentlessly and predictably noble, cheerful, and idealistic. To see how Koontz changed in the quarter-century between the two versions, simply read the Wikipedia entry on the book and what you find is an unfortunate case of revisionist history.

The other reason I chose the older version is because I am pretty sure it will never be available as an ebook. No way would Koontz allow its release. The new version is $7.99 in ebook, while you can buy used versions of the new paperback for a penny plus shipping. I paid $1.99 in the antique store, far more than I'd normally pay for a paperback (well, I also paid gas to drive to the store, but you could argue I'd be there anyway). Versions of the older version are on eBay from $3.50 to $30 plus shipping. They will always be "worth" more than the revised, supposedly improved editions in similar condition.

The moral of the story is that there is no morality in the paper/digital war. Times change, no one is wrong, neither is inherently "better." For this reader and writer, I know when I am buying an artifact and not just a story. I often delete digital books after I finish them. I often give away paperbacks after I've finished them. Maybe I'll keep Demon Seed awhile. Maybe not. It's fun to read precisely because I can see the anti-Koontz in it, the smirky little twenty-something writer who delighted in being a bit naughty and edgy. What you could call "the artifact Koontz."

Bookstores are turning into antique stores. But that's okay, because we cherish our artifacts. And perhaps we will even value these artifacts more when they are no longer widely available. Do you cling to any similar artifacts you know are artifacts? Cassette tapes that mark a time in your life? Videocassettes? Old paper books? 
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Kindle Lending Library and Amazon prime membership

The big bubbling news of Amazon is the launch of the Netflix-style pool of ebooks rolled into the membership. Not trying to be a know-it-all since I am the world's dumbest genius, but this was an inevitable move that I predicted last year. I just didn't expect it to happen so soon. The initial pool of books is around 5,400 titles as of today. Expect that to blow up very soon, because of the other big development in the rumor stage: Amazon is looking to let self-published authors opt in to the library. I don't know anything of substance but The Passive Voice works off of an "informed tip" to explore the issue.

For readers, it is an amazing deal. Most Amazon customers would have Prime anyway, just to get the movies and the free shipping and the other benefits. Now you basically get 12 free books a year--and good ones, not just stuff an indie author made free (not that there is anything wrong with indies, but you will not see The Hunger Games free elsewhere.) More reading is always A Good Thing.

The biggie for writers will be: (1) compensation and (2) exclusivity. Amazon may well be worth the exclusivity. Obviously, I feel that way, having signed two books with them and happy to do more. A big library moves Amazon even further ahead of the other ebook markets, by orders of magnitude. It's the compensation question that's more of a concern, particularly long term.

One rumor is a payment fund by which writers will be compensated for checkouts. This is a good idea, but the size of the pie and the total number of slices are still uncertain. Even $100,000 a month is not very much if 100,000 authors are splitting it (I'd guess there are at least half a million indie authors at this point).

But writers ultimately write to be read. Back in the Stone Ages of pre-2009, we spent a lot of energy trying to get our books onto library shelves and getting noticed by readers. While discoverability will still remain a challenge, I like my odds a lot better when it's on a free digital shelf. Maybe those readers will connect and go on to try (and maybe buy) other books.

I write each book for one reader--the reader whose ideology may be changed, whose inspiration might blossom, or who might need those few hours of entertainment and escape. I don't know who that is. So I have to work as hard to reach as many readers as possible. The Prime lending library helps accomplish that mission.

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If you have Prime, you can check out my Fear books (Liquid Fear and Chronic Fear are both releasing Dec. 20). I don't see a function to be able to "pre-checkout" but it's on the list of those available for loan. Maybe I'll have more there soon. Keep watching the skies.

Bookstore guilt: Not Interested

The closing of Borders led to a rash of articles like this one lamenting the loss of bookshelves, delivering the underlying message that now people will have fewer places to get books and caring people should all feel sad and depressed. Such nostalgia-driven sentiments are understandable, and you can't tell someone what they should feel nostalgia about (any more than you can tell them which faith to have or whom to fall in love with), but the arguments are logically flawed.

The reality is bookshelves are expanding at a more rapid rate than ever. The decline in new paper books is way more than offset by the avalanche of new digital titles. And it's not just the current crop of indie authors leading the charge. Small presses and digital publishers are staying fast and lean, moving rapidly to take advantage of the era's opportunities.

I don't celebrate the decline of bookstores, but I am not overly nostalgic about them, either. While I have done numerous signings in them and purchased books there, I get much of my reading material at thrift shops, yard sales, and the library. I am not a collector. Aside from a few core favorites, I read a book and then pass it on. I don't feel smarter standing in a bookstore, and even though I might discover titles by browsing, I see exponentially more titles on my computer every single day. And I don't think people are going to go out of their way to support inconvenient behaviors such as driving to the store unless they want the experience instead of the product.

My father-in-law was once CEO of a chain of 100 family-owned retail stores in the Midwest. They were expanding rapidly though the 1960s and 1970s. Then some Wal-Mart executives came to the family and showed the Sam Walton plan for market domination and made a reasonable offer to buy out the family chain, more as a courtesy than a cut-throat business move. After all, Wal-Mart planned to kill the chain one way or another and had little to gain with the offer.

My father-in-law said the family turned down the deal because Wal-Mart's plan was "impossible." The traditional retail business was built on a profit margin of 33 percent, while Wal-Mart was planning a 28 percent margin. It would never work, and even if it did, customers would remain loyal to the family chain where they'd been shopping for decades, even if they had to pay just a little bit more.

Wrong and wrong. The family chain collapsed within several years, and my father-in-law said the big shocking lesson was that people DID NOT CARE about nostalgia. They were going to go to the place that gave them the best deal at the most convenient location.

I was at a little bookstore in a small Kentucky town recently and I asked the owner if she could survive the digital revolution. She said, "People will always want books." I told her she had a great location, and she answered "This used to be the town bus station." She did not see the irony.

Just because bookstores die doesn't mean people will read any less. In fact, we are reading more, because it's cheaper, more convenient, and most of us have a device at our fingertips for reading. I am not going to feel guilty because "we didn't save the bookstores." The closing of a bookstore doesn't make us morally weaker, dumber, or less civilized. It's not a referendum on our ability to communicate or our intellectual curiosity. It's not any kind of harbinger at all except for the simple one that the bookstores are not serving our collective needs at enough volume to maintain a profit.

We aren't killing bookstores. We are birthing a new Golden Era of literature, by writing and reading and sharing ideas, and that's far, far more important.

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Kindle Giveaway Tour one-sixth done

With today's post at Candace's Book Blog, I've passed the halfway point of the first month. People have asked "How can you keep it fresh for 90 days?" That is a good question that once in a while gives me pause. Can I do five or six Q & A's and answer honestly but different each time? How much can I write about the same topic, such as the ever-popular use of ghost hunting as used in Speed Dating with the Dead? Can I go that long without breaking into a writing-related rant, or examination of the publishing industry that few care about?

When I step back, here's how I can easily do it. I think I will have 15 books out during the tour. I can feature one title at individual stops (there's 15!) I have a few video stops to make where I visit sites from my novels, so I can double-dip on those books. I have some UK and Australian stops where I can talk about e-books as relatively new discoveries. And a few posts on the indie era and the changing nature of books, Appalachian legends, and future projects, as well as my comic books, screenplays, and side interests (Saturday's post will be about my film-acting experiences) and I should be able to keep it fresh even for people who make every single stop.

I haven't seen a huge surge of sales, but this is more about laying a foundation for readers, bloggers, and writers to meet around the digital/virtual world. I haven't even tried to quantify the tour on success/failure measurements, because it's improvisational and a moving experiment. The goal is to stay a few days ahead on the posts, stay involved with you who are commenting, and present the spectrum of all I do, and maybe show a little about the "real me," since I've mostly been just a name on a book to a lot of people.

The tour was originally called "90 Days of Nightmares." It's barely two months since I first got the idea and still not a single nightmare. So all in all I am rather pleased. I know some people are watching to see if I can make it. Hello! I'm still here.
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The Safe Play

The Kindle Giveaway Blog Tour Day #3 is now a post at Joe Konrath's blog so go over and enter for the Kindles. While you are here, take a chance to sniff some ink and paper.

I was thinking this morning about playing it safe, partly because of some peripheral things in my personal life and partly because of some good comments over at A.P. Fuchs's blog regarding self-publishing. What he says makes sense: if you are just a generic genre writer, you probably won't be able to stand out in any environment, whether in NY or out in the world of readers. I made my original launch of the tour with The Skull Ring, a fairly well-crafted suspense thriller with a few good twists. Satisfying, but nothing ground-breaking or earth-shattering, nothing that would have you closing the book and thinking about it for weeks.

Even back when I wrote it, it was more with the idea of writing a popular book, and it has sold pretty well, but perhaps its most damning feature is that everyone likes it. At Amazon, it has nothing but four- or five-star reviews. It's the best reviewed of all my books, and I believe it has the most number of reviews. I don't generally read my reviews though I occasionally check a couple just to see if people are pointing out the same things, which may indicate a problem I can learn from. This book just doesn't make people angry. It doesn't make them want to throw it (or their Kindle) across the room.

I have this novel Disintegration that is bleak, written at a really dark time for me, and I have never done much with it, partly because I am not sure I want that message in the world. The Left-Handed Puppeteer tells me somebody out there might need that message. But I was planning to revise it, to make one or two characters more redeeming or virtuous and have some hope of a happy ending for someone. In fact, I left the original ending--those final five pages--unwritten for months because I knew what had to happen, and I hated to write it. It nearly made me physically ill (and, no, not because it's gross, but just because it felt that intense and irredeemable.)

Changing it would have been artistically dishonest. Sure, change for plot clarity, change for coherence, change for consistency. But never change to please. Because I knew the original ending would enrage a certain portion of the readership. But I've learned over the years that it is better to enrage than have someone close the book and not remember a thing about it, as has happened to me with some commercial bestsellers. So Disintegration will be out in Full Scotty, the way it was meant to be. I still have a final revision pass to make and some beta readers to knock it around a little, but it doesn't need surgery just because someone might not like the size of Frankenstein's monster's ears. Look for it in October.

At times I have tweeted or posted something and lost a follower or two, and I review what I might have said to offend someone. But then I get two or four followers in their place, and I realize what is actually happening is I am losing the people who don't share the message and finding people who do share the message, meeting people on common ground. And I also am a better receiver of their messages, too, because we're talking the same language. We are the people who choose to spend time with one another.

This tour is meant to be The Full Scotty. No hiding, no more playing it safe. It's not even about selling books, though that is always nice. It's about sticking with a vision and being who you are. I've hidden a lot, especially in my personal life, though they say it's all buried in the stories if you know where to look. The writers I admire, and the people I admire, do just that--keep the faith. They lose a few people along the way but were those people really on their side in the first place?

Okay, while we get the Kindle Giveaway Blog Tour back on track, let's do a random giveaway here of a limited edition hardcover copy of Brimstone Turnpike from Cemetery Dance. Features novellas from Thomas F. Monteleone, Mike Oliveri, Harry Shannon, and Tim Waggoner, edited by Kealan Patrick Burke. Also contains my novella "Burial to Follow," which is also available as a 99 cent e-book. Signed by all contributors, I believe the market value is $40. Only 600 copies made, but this is a "PC," a personal copy, which is even rarer. If all contributors got four like I did, that means there are only 24 in the world.

EBay here we come. But please, wait until we are dead. Value will increase.

Simply comment below with your email address and I will randomly select a winner in seven days. Good luck!

(P.S. If you ARE into the whole PUSH FOR TOP 100 thing, then tomorrow may be a good day to ask your friends to buy Speed Dating with the Dead for Kindle. That's a hint, not a command!)

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iPad v. Kindle v. Mobipocket

Since Smashwords has added the Apple iBookstore to its list of associates, my books should be available for the iPad sooner or later (if they are not already). With the addition of Mobipocket, there aren't too many gadgets where you can't download my work. I don't expect many sales through cell phones and other objects, and I suspect the iPad will be better for digital comics than the Kindle will. These revolutionary changes have sparked a lot of discussion among writers--what is the "professional" route these days? Find a big publisher and hope it all works out? Throw everything up on Kindle right away and hope people find it? Roll the dice and be all in with an unknown future? I think it mostly depends upon you past experiences.

I have been with several different agencies, and back when I started, you could still send your books directly to publishers (and it wasn't that long ago). By the time I was at a point without publisher or agent, the industry had changed dramatically. Outside a couple of science fiction and fantasy publishers and the small press, almost no publisher wanted an unagented manuscript. That gave agents incredible power, and in some cases, a bit of smugness. The pitch seemed to have become more important than the words on the page (I don't even know if anyone is reading anymore, or simply spouting stuff at sales meetings). Worst of all was this insidious creeping toward rudeness and arrogance--now not only do agents send out form rejections, which is perfectly understandable, but a lot have stopped responding at all. You can spend several years without even knowing if you have a legitimate chance. A decade ago, you could figure out that what you were doing wasn't salable or you needed work, or simply that you were targeting the wrong agents. It's just not a genteel industry anymore, and I say that knowing some wonderful, passionate people in the business.

The bottom-line pressure is on them, they are buried under manuscripts, they are beholden to corporate policy way up top, and bookstores are failing. On top of that, major authors are defecting and signing exclusives with Amazon. Given the bookstore structure of returns, this industry could turn to sand in their fingers. On the other hand, the authors that are already in the system want to preserve the system, because change is scary for anyone. If your book is only "worth" a $5,000 advance, that means it's good enough to publish and you will make more on your own.

It makes sense for the industry to think "blockbuster," where the whole point is to drive readers to those mountains of discounted hardcover bestsellers. NY really only needs a few hundred authors, the airport kiosk brands. The rest are just window dressing to make it look like a store. It's far easier to sell a million Pattersons than 10,000 books by a hundred different authors.

But authors have been drinking the Kool-Aid and go to too many writing conferences and hang out in places where people pretend to know something in a business where nobody even knows what worked in the past, much less what works now or tomorrow. It's the outliers, the people who don't play by the rules, who make it--James Patterson met with his publisher and had mock charts made up showing his unwritten books on the top of the bestseller list, convinced them, and made it happen. Now he has his own wing in his publishing house. He could easily become the seventh branch of the Big Six. Because he made it happen.

It will be interesting to see how "professional advice" changes when a few big authors set up their own enterprises. No one laughed at King for self-publishing.

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"Read an Ebook Week" freebie

In recognition of "Read an Ebook Week," I've made the Burial to Follow ebook free at Smashwords. The ebook contains the novella originally published by Cemetery Dance, three novel excerpts (including the never-before-seen DRUMMER BOY), and a bonus essay on the changing nature of media. I hope you give it a try in one of the various formats and let me know what you think.

There's a Skull Ring review at Mr. Shield's blog.


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Paper or Plastic: Is an ebook still a book?

(THIS ARTICLE CAN BE BORROWED, HACKED, POSTED, STOLEN, PUBLISHED, PIRATED, TRASHED, ERASED, DOWNLOADED, KINDLED, PIXELATED, NOOKED, PRINTED, AND REPROGRAMMED, AS LONG AS MY NAME AND WEBSITE ARE USED)

Reading paper books is an emotional experience for which many of us have developed nostalgia. We remember our Dr. Seuss books, our early school readers, our library adventures, then the teen years and really ranging into our individual tastes. Right now, most of us did that with paper books. Ten years from now? I think not.

My first music of my own was a scratchy Rod Stewart vinyl LP I found in a dumpster (yeah, we were poor and didn't have much besides my dad's old-school country 8-tracks). I have a cassette tape of that scratchy vinyl LP, and that is my version of the experience--right down to the skip in the middle of "I'd Rather Go Blind." Even if I hear the song on a CD, my brain puts in the skip, because that's the way I know the song. If I sing it to myself, the skip is in there. That's my experience and my nostalgia.

Have you ever tried to play a vinyl album for a kid? They think you're nuts. Some people get fighting mad over the very idea of ebooks, as if this were Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451." Paper books are "real books" or "true books," they say. Yet they still call CDs and iPod downloads "records" or "albums," the same name they used when the format was a large vinyl disc. And music wasn't harmed in the least. In fact, most of us who aren't crotchety old fuddyduds will allow that music is vaster, broader, and more experimental than ever because it is more easily shared and experienced.

I remember in the 1990s when a few Chicken Littlers were warning about the death of paper books. I laughed at them. I remember in the early 21st century when writers first started wondering about whether they should protect their electronic rights. The industry laughed at them. On Christmas Day, Amazon sold more ebooks than paper books. I'm not laughing anymore. I am selling ebooks. And I am writing books with the expectation that they will be ebooks. And I am planning the long arc of my remaining career with the intention of staying "in print" and viable. And passing that to my heirs for the life of copyright. It's not only realistic, it's stupid not to do it.

And, as with the ease of music proliferation because of technological advancement, I see reading returning to the working class. You know, those people who can't afford $25 books and can barely afford time to read them because they are busting their chops to feed and house a family. A $2 ebook they can read in small chunks, and the convenience of carrying around 1,500 books at all times, will get more people peeking "between the pages."

Since I became interested in this issue, my research has shown that Kindle, Nook, and other ereader-device owners not only buy and read more books than they ever have before, they are trying genres and subject matter they never would have picked up otherwise. One man on the Kindle Boards hadn't read a book in 30 years because of visual impairment. Because he can now blow up the text size, he has read four books since Christmas. Teachers are taking their Kindles into classrooms and making reading cool again. Kids already have their own personal devices and are used to them. That's their nostalgia.

Publishers are trying mightily to stem the tide because they are invested in an old model in which they control and dole out content and lock up writers' rights for as long as possible. It's a central and overlooked element of the current ebook pricing wars. That's a side issue for readers but it's going to become critical if you believe the author is why we buy books, not the physical means or channel through which the story travels.

I fully appreciate those who defend the smell of pulp and ink, the tactile sensation of pages, the brilliance of a four-color paper cover and foil-stamped title logo. Many book bloggers fiercely defend paper books and most won't review ebooks at all. But if you look closely, the blogging phenomenon took over the role of "real newspapers" in reviewing and announcing books, to such a degree that many bloggers now are on the reviewer lists of major publishers, and obviously have a vested interest in preserving the current model because they are getting cases of free books. I don't blame them for not reviewing ebooks, because then they are left with nothing but the experience, and everyone loves free stuff. Already, there is a new model developing in which ebook bloggers may be readying to take over for "real book bloggers."

I love paper books, and I believe they will be around for the rest of my lifetime. There will still be bookstores, but they will be specialty shops and antiquaries instead of mainstream commerce centers. How much money have you spent at your local indie bookstore lately? Can you even find an indie within a two-hour radius? Here in my small university town, we have one indie bookstore and one specialty store that sells vinyl records. We no longer have a store that sells CDs, and only one chain video store. Are vinyl records the only "real music" or VHS tapes the only "real movies"?

I still have plenty of paper books. Some I keep because of nostalgia. I look at the object and feel that same attachment as I would with the old Rod Stewart album if it were still around. Other books I give away, but I still have the experience of the story. The "paper book" object is separate from the "book" experience of the story. Objects are ephemeral and paper crumbles to dust. The experience endures. The story lives on.
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Scott Nicholson is the author of eight "real books" and six "fake books" (er, ebooks). Some of the real ones have the same stories as the fake ones. The difference is the "real books" have often been declared out of print by the publisher and removed from store shelves, so his dedicated readers must take extreme measures to find them, including prowling garage sales and stealing from the library. His ebooks are easily available and cheap. The Skull Ring and The Red Church are two such cheap books at under $2 each. But, as the commercials say, the experience is priceless. Visit Scott at http://hauntedcomputer.blogspot.com
and Write Good or Die
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Idiot love will spark the fusion

After wrestling with the self-publishing dilemma for about three months, the only downside I see is that I waited too long. I should have done this at least a year ago, when I had back the rights to The Red Church and toyed with the idea of setting it up with Lightning Source. Of course, it would have cost me hundreds of dollars to purchase a new ISBN number, pay the various fees, and then get some books sent to me, and presumably they would magically show up on the Ingram's distribution list and be available for store orders (not that many stores would have reason to order them at the moment).

This ebook thing, well, it still seemed so far in the future. I knew no one personally who had a Kindle or other reading device, and as someone who stares at a computer about 12 hours a day, the thought of "recreational reading" on the computer gave me a headache. When I got curious about it, around December, I immediately jumped in with both feet. No overhead, just a little work to learn file formatting, and--BOOM--back in print and ready to meet a new audience. The trickle of money and new readers has been satisfying, but there are have been many other exciting and unexpected discoveries.

First and foremost, I am active in the literary community again, and I've come to appreciate those people buying those first ebook readers when a lot of people are still saying "print books or die." From reading their forum and blog posts and talking with them, I have learned they not only buy and read more books, they are trying genres and subjects they would never have tried in paper books, and are adapting their reading habits because of the new-found convenience. Now they can carry a library with them, and read something for five minutes waiting in line, or sit and enjoy a book at leisure.

This lesson seems to be lost on New York at the moment--ebook readers buy and read more books than they ever have before. Even with reduced prices, the volume of sales more than offsets the larger profit margin of high-priced ebooks. No need to rehash pros and cons of ebook prices, because it will be determined by consumers in the long run (which, in the case of emerging technology, usually means "one or two years"). I am more concerned with what it means to me personally, and to you lovely people who choose to explore my stories.

After a couple of dormant years while waiting to hear back on various projects, I have become more energized to believe in my work. I tell writers they should always care more than any agent, editor, publisher, critic, or other decision-maker. They have their own motives, and those are different from the writer's, though occasionally overlapping.

Because publishing my work is now just a few mouse clicks away instead of a couple of years through a production process, I know that every word I write can find its audience. It may only be five people, or it may be 5,000, or 50,000. Now I can find out, based on no other condition except my willingness to produce quality work that connects with readers, and to have them be aware of the work. Is it any harder than when your books are on a store shelf across the country? I believe it's easier. My audience and I are directly connected via electrons. You are right now connected to me.

Because I now know I can sell and make money myself, I have a baseline for what I am willing to accept with any publishing partner. I want good partners, as should everyone in this industry. But I also know I can go it alone and not only make it work, but have a realistic goal of income and audience size based on real numbers. I don't have to "write to market" or jump in a fading trend or "create a platform" or be the most likable guy at the writing convention (in other words, the guy who buys the most drinks at the bar). I don't have to be grateful if an agent bothers to respond to a query. I don't have to be crushed if no one likes a book in which I believe. I don't have to accept one person's opinion as representative of 30 million Americans, or the tens of millions of other English speakers in the world. I don't have to take "no" as the final answer. My heart says "Yes. YES, YES, YES, a thousand times YESSSSSSS!" And it's not just coffee speaking...

Oddly enough, self-publishing has also reignited my drive to be published in New York and succeed in that segment of the industry (and, yes, it is now only a segment, not the entire industry). Through lessons learned in the comics world, where you are pretty much self-publishing unless you are working with Marvel and DC's corporate characters, I've learned the value of vision and faith. I already had faith, but my vision had wavered, because I was thinking (and sometimes hearing from the industry) that my ideas were not the hot pitch or coherent log line needed to get sales approval. Maybe my writing is crap and everyone's too polite to say, even the 100,000 people who have bought my books.

But what you really tell me is "Scott, do what you do." Whether I end up as the Johnny Depp of weird fiction, the Deliverance banjo boy of horror, the Lao Tzu of suspense, or the world's laziest hack, I know that's cool with you. Now I know it's cool with me, too. Thank you very much.

Now off to finish that book that everybody's going to say, "I never expected Scott Nicholson to write this kind of thing."

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P.S. entry title from David Bowie's "Soul Love"

New interview

A new interview is up at the cool site Omega's Apple, compliments of Anthony Morgan. I'm starting on the Ghostwriter Publications ebooks, with Night of the Crabs by Guy N. Smith heading for the "little screen," a pulp creature classic.

Making the rounds of various digital sites like Mobile Reads, Kindle Boards and the Amazon forums, it seems opinions on digital book prices are still all over the map. I've been trying to approach the issue from a long-term view, notably in how authors will or won't control their long-term royalties, but few seem interested in that. In the meantime, I'm staying busy and going full steam ahead on the ebook effort, with The First going live on Amazon yesterday and soon to be headed for ePub, Sony Reader and other formats at Smashwords and Zulu Express. Work also continues on the freebie download, Write Good or Die, with Douglas Clegg and Alexandra Sokoloff contributing.

If you want to be a working-class hero, we're looking for more Microchips to join the Haunted Computer team--you'll get free advance reads and be in drawings for paper books as well. Email hauntedcomputerbooks@yahoo.com with "Microchip" in the subject line and let's cook some electrons!
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Digital daze

After running myself ragged on various forums and blogs reading opinions on ebooks, I've come to several conclusions that work for me:

a) there is no conclusion and we may never know what it was if one ever happens to come along

b) most in the industry really believe low ebook prices mean the death of literature as a career field

c) people will just have to make their own decisions and embrace whatever principles they hold over the issue

It did give me food for thought on low-end prices, and how major publishers who carefully plot a promotional campaign, release date, store placement, and product hype must get really upset when some snot-nosed indie brat breaks the Kindle Top 20 with a 99 cent ebook. I say let the writers price them at whatever they want, which Amazon currently is happy to do.

Thus far, I am releasing previously published (on paper, for the most part) material, so any revenue is gravy to me. I don't think it's demeaning my craft or undercutting my value to sell at a couple of bucks. Indeed, I am honored people want to read my work, and I suspect cumulatively, over time, I will make more off these secondary appearances than I will from their original publication through professional publishers.

Yet my model is predicated on certain assumptions I can't control, any more than major publishers can bank on hardcover sales remaining their bread and butter: Amazon and other outlets will always be open to independent authors and publishers; the ebook market keeps expanding; and readers will still be able to find me once the floodgates are thrown wide and four million writers finally get their chance to be "authors."

Who knows, maybe we bottom feeders will soon be griping about all those writers willing to give their work away for free.

New digital publishing venture

This is really a no-brainer, given the rapid changes in the publishing world. I have launched Haunted Computer Productions as an ebook enterprise, working in collaboration with Ghostwriter Publications in the UK. Our plan right now is to take over the world on each side of the Big Pond. It's a perfect storm of conditions (and I promise we won't use many cliches like "perfect storm") to engage in this--there's a generation of authors who aren't as tech savvy but whose books have already been published, had their day on the shelves, and gone out of print. There is no reason for those books to be gone forever.

Right now we are talking with a couple of genre authors to get their ebooks up on a writer-friendly model. They can pull out at any time. I have been thinking about this a couple of months, having spent the time to learn about ebook formatting and having undergone the frustration of waiting for six months on a submission or two years for a book to hit the shelves. HCP is not about instant gratification by writers who aren't "good enough" to sell in New York. In fact, some of these authors have sold hundreds of thousands of print copies. I am considering a few select original titles, and my standards are as tough as anything in major publishing. The main difference is that I don't have a profit-margin sheet that guides decisions. All I need is passion and a few hours of time.

Personally, I am still pursuing major publishing deals because I still believe that's what authors should do if they want a professional career, and you'll benefit from the nurturing, editing, promotion, and bookstore presence. But there's a growing ebook audience whose needs are not fully met because they are only now realizing their hunger. I hope you will follow us at our new blog and support us if we look interesting.