Are we Indie writers shooting ourselves in the foot, so to speak?
Today I’m running a promotion on Book Barbarian for Caught in Time. This is my first in series and I’m offering it free. Often the first of a series is the one that ad sites want. I did this to reach out to a pool of readers of science fiction who may be interested in my books. Discoverability is difficult for most Indie authors, and promotions are one easy way, but they cost. I chose Book Barbarian because it targets science fiction and fantasy and is at a reasonable cost. The top site is Bookbub where I recently ran into an article that was really a promotion piece, which raised some questions I wanted to ask.
Below is the last section from the piece I discovered on Flipboard that extols their site. Bookbub is considered the top ad site for books, difficult to qualify for, and very expensive. However, authors swear it’s effective. It’s the last sentence of the “article” that is causing me concern.
Book lovers are Obsessed with this Site. (Flipboard May 9)
By Bookbub.com
…”Book lovers have now become practically obsessed with this concept. In many cases, they’ve downloaded hundreds of books and saved hundreds of dollars using the service.
“I now have more books than I can read in a lifetime,” said Suzie Miller of Auburn, WA. She said she has downloaded more than 350 free ebooks using the service.”
As a reader, I use the service, and like Suzie Miller, (a real person?) I have downloaded more books than I will be able to read this year.
But is this a good thing for authors?
Your book gets downloaded, but may sit in a reader’s library for ages.
Or, maybe they read it and buy out the series.
I’ve had both things happen.
But I’m afraid authors are devaluing their hard work, and readers are not as eager to download the offerings as much as they used to, or buy books at retail. Why pay full price when you can get a similar book free or heavily discounted? Are we harming future revenue?
Am I right or wrong, or somewhere in between?
Do I, as an author, have a viable alternative?
No answer here. Just putting it out there.
What do you think of when you hear the word robot?
Probably something made of metal with hard edges.
Maybe not. Often I throw in interesting science pieces and this article on building soft robots, with space in mind, caught my eye. I wanted to pass it along.
…”The advantage of a soft robot is that it’s flexible and, in some ways, better able to adapt to new environments. Soft robots move in ways similar to living organisms, which expands their range of motion, perhaps making it easier to squeeze into a tight spot, for example.”
Also, probably easier to transport when weight is so much a factor.
…”By design, the actuator has chambers, or air bladders, that expand and compress based on the amount of air in them,” NASA said in the statement. “Currently, these two interns are operating the design through a series of tubes in the air bladders, allowing them to control the movement of the robot. By adjusting the amount of air in the chamber of the soft robotic actuator, the robot can flex and relax, just like a human muscle.
In particular, the interns are investigating four key properties of the actuators — mobility, joining, leveling and shaping — and how to use them in space exploration. Mobility refers to how the soft robot moves in its environment, while joining concerns how robots can link together (for example, to make a large temporary shelter). Leveling refers to how actuators can create a surface, such as filling in space underneath a lunar habitat, while shaping examines ways of adding strength to materials like dust shields.”
Once you hear the idea, it makes so much sense. Of course, I’m wondering about the computer components and how they operate the robot and the toughness of a material that can stand up against a space environment.
But NASA is working on it. Thinking outside the hard metal box.
This week I’m talking about Sea of Rust by Robert Cargill. Mainly because I mentioned robots in the blog, and this story is all about robots.
The story begins thirty years after the apocalypse and fifteen years since the murder of the last human at the hands of robots.
We’re extinct, and the world is dominated by an OWI or One World Intelligence that shares consciousness and is trying to upload all the remaining robots into its mainframe.
Enter Brittle, an independent robot trying to survive a wasteland that once was our Midwest. But its mind is deteriorating and body parts are losing function. The only way to replace them is by scavenging other parts from similar robots
So it’s a bit gruesome to start.
There are other solo machines wandering the wilderness, and they form a pack with Brittle, trying to escape assimilation.
If you can handle the grimness (think Madd Max), then the story is interesting from the robot’s point of view, and the interaction, almost human, of the robots that struggled to survive and evade assimilation makes for a worthwhile story.
And finally,
I want to give a shout out to Tabby’s fantastic book club. They were a warm and amazing bunch. I don’t think they expected someone who could talk as much as I did. Enthusiasm does that to me. So, thanks for your hospitality.
It was a fun way to meet new people… and show off my books.
Often awards are a way to curate outstanding books. In the science fiction and fantasy field that means the Hugo and the Nebula. Nominees for 2019 are now in for both, and may offer several interesting reads. (See below)
With that settled, I’m currently working on marketing. I have a promo on Fussy Librarian April 25 for Caught in Time. The tricky part with promos is figuring out all the rules and logistics. Fussy expects at least ten reviews with a four star overall average. If it is in a series, they’ll only take the first book. But… They will take a new release if you can show ten reviews with four plus average rating on your other books. Fussy is also cheaper. Twenty-five dollars for science fiction and thirty-eight for romance. However, they recently updated their website and guess who got totally confused?
Okay, I goofed. It happens…
All Systems Red by Martha Wells. I’ll probably read her follow-up stories of Rogue Protocol, Artificial Condition and Exit Strategy. As I recently pointed out, stories from a robot’s point of view are currently popular. Guess we’re getting ready for the Singularity.
A Thousand Faces by Janci Patterson. It’s bad enough to sort through fake news in today’s society, but what if there were shape-shifters among us? Shifters who could change their appearance and step in to discredit powerful people? No, no…that was not really Jeff Bezos, was it? Just a shifter posing as him. Not buying it huh? What if they worked for the government? Or against it? Such people would shift our reality. What if you were one of them and were being hunted? Put it on my list. An Indie special.
Alliance Rising by C. J. Cherryh. A book by one of my favorite authors in the Alliance Universe? Yes, please.
Sideris Gate by Cheryl Lasota. I’m enjoying the Paradisi Series universe. Andy McKell has done a fine job with his Janus Trilogy, and now I’m excited to get another viewpoint of the action.
“Submitting a manuscript to a traditional publisher is like sending a letter to Santa Claus.”
This is an urban punk detective mystery that is a fun and thoughtful read. Detective David Stalin, down on his luck and living under a dome in the dangerously poor section of L. A., lives with a highly developed A.I. Saving his life, cooking his dinner, and guarding the slovenly flat, the A.I bickers constantly with David while attending to his needs. I loved their interaction. David gets a case from a wealthy woman to find her missing daughter. There’s no DNA, no motive for her missing, no record of what happened on any security camera, and a belligerent LAPD feels he is trespassing on their case, even though they are at a dead end.
In addition, he has published a book on how to get reviews called Book Review Bonzai. I need reviews, but when I read the method, it looked like a lot of difficult work. It involves using software programs that scrapes the internet for reviewers, putting information on a spread sheet to keep track, and batch e-mailing them to ask for a review. It works, but sounded very time-consuming.
Catherine Asaro has just released the next in her Skolian Saga called The Bronze Skies. This is a stand alone in the story of Major Bhaajan who comes from the Under City of the City of Cries. She calls it book eight in the Skolian Empire series but it follows the more recent Undercity title published last year.
Mother nature is throwing fits.
This week I wanted to support a small press offering that I discovered from an ad site. Chimera by N. J. Tanger has received 260 reviews with a 4.6 rating. Pretty impressive.
t could be a very memorable weekend.
This week I finished Edge of Dark by Brenda Cooper. It was nominated for the Campbell Award. I must mention that it is tied to previous books The Creative Fire and The Diamond Deep. I was unaware of this until I encountered a rant by a reviewer on Goodreads. Frankly, it didn’t disrupt the story for me at all. In my own series, several of the books are separated by spans of time and are also stand alone stories about future generations of the originals.
Anyone reading science fiction has most likely bumped into a few alien characters. Now, aliens are tricky to write about. If their form and thought processes are too alien, the readers won’t connect with them. Also, trying to figure out how an alien would look and think is difficult if you’re working from a human brain.
This most recent book in the series doesn’t have the heart pounding tension of the previous one, but is a pleasant read, nonetheless, even if the humans come off as arrogant jerks.
This week I read Charlie Jane Anders’ “All the Birds in the Sky.” The timing couldn’t be better as it has just received a 2016 Nebula Award nomination.
ScifiBook Review 