Now That’s Publicity
Recently I was puzzled upon reading an author’s rant about publicity in the era of social networking. She was unhappy because her publisher expects her to maintain a web site but doesn’t pay her to do so. Isn’t publicity the publisher’s job? Well, she might have had a point, but then I read this article about author Joe McGinness, who attempted to bid over $60,000 for a dinner with Sarah Palin before being disqualified on the grounds that she doesn’t like him. Joe McGinness has written books on Nixon and the Alaskan oil trade, and is working on one on Palin. From now on web sites so that fans can look up an author’s other works are totally passé. I’m going to expect my authors to shell out thousands of dollars on dinners with (in)famous people or I won’t take them seriously.
For Filthy-Minded Philologists
If you enjoy words, especially dirty words, check out The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (that’s a hypertext version, but you can get plain text and other formats if you google around).
Pick a rude word. I went with vagina (though in fact I had to search for “a woman’s private parts.”)
Now search for all the synononyms in the dictionary.
I got bumbo, Carvel’s Ring, cauliflower, cock alley, commodity, doodle sack, fruitful vine, madge, money, muff, notch, quim, water-mill.
Now you try it.
If you feel like posting your words, you may wish to do so on the main blog instead of LJ so you don’t duplicate someone else’s search. On the other hand, I don’t get such a big volume of comments that it matters much. But there’s a linkback if you wish.
Author Chat: Lionel Bramble: September 25, 26
Please join us for an author chat with Lionel Bramble. Lionel has committed journalism, publicity, advertising, and ghostwriting, and is responsible for the story “The Pillars of Hercules” in Like a God’s Kiss. The chat will be in the usual place, Circlet Press’s Livejournal community.
So how’s it selling? (or: superpowers for Lauren)
Publishers can’t easily tell you how many copies your book has sold.
I know this now. But I didn’t always know it. I once asked a publisher the same question. Therefore I refuse to think of it as a stupid question, because I don’t ask stupid questions, right? Uhm. Anyway.
If it were a paper book, it would take a year to tell you how many copies sold. This is because publishers allow bookstores to return unsold copies of books in case the bookstore decides to spend the money on something they think will sell better, like copies of a new book purporting to examine the evidence that Elvis is alive.
Even ebooks aren’t that easy to track. You think it would be, since it’s all on computer. But coming up with a number would mean someone who has real work to do would have to sit down and tabulate the results from every distributor involved. Since the answer is probably less than one hundred and might even be less than ten, it’s not really worth the effort. Even people like me who arguably don’t have much real work to do would have to bother someone who does in order to get figures to add up.
I blame Amazon. They don’t tell you their sales numbers, but they do have this really strange sales rank thing. People have tried to explain what their sales rank thing might mean (no one knows, possibly not even Amazon). I think they make it up. However, it does give authors something they can click on over and over, and tempts them to do silly things like have their friends buy copies of the ebook from Amazon all on the same day in an attempt to boost the magic number, even if the actual money made from this tactic is less than if everyone bought the book straight from the publisher for a higher royalty percentage.
I try to be gentle with people who ask for sales information even if I can’t give it.
This brings me to a letter of last night where an author asked me for sales information on not one but two books not published by Circlet.
It might be conceivable that I could know sales numbers from a book published by Circlet, even if I don’t. But I’m not sure why she expected that I might know sales numbers from a book not even by the same publisher. Is it possible she doesn’t know who is publishing her books? I mean, she must have signed a contract at some point. Presumably she read the contract.
In fact, it’s way too silly of her not to know who publishes her books that I will stick with an alternate explanation. I have as of yet undiscovered superpowers to know sales figures from books from other publishers, and she was trying to do me a big favor by making me discover this ability. That must be it.
What a lame superpower.
Porn with Zombies!
Circlet Press just released a paranormal romance with werewolves and zombies:
Click on the link for an excerpt and purchase information.
I have a happy bod.
I just shelled out a bunch of money for an pre-owned Aeron chair and it landed on my doorstep Saturday. I’ve sat in Aerons before. After a little time in one, you may start to feel that having to sit in any other desk chair is in fact a form of abuse.
This purchase was, ironically, made possible by my recent car wreck. I got the payout for the totalled car, and decided to go with ZipCar for now. I’ll admit that I’m completely neurotic about not having a car, which is very stupid considering how I haven’t driven a car for over a year due to migraines. I got tired of driving somewhere and being unable to drive back when the blurry vision and auditory hallucinations kicked in. However, I do have a spouse who drives. If we’re lucky we won’t have too many arguments due to the additional hassle of having to pick up the ZipCar.
Other purchases have included some fairly nice yarn for warmer sweaters since I’ve been so darned cold since I lost so much weight. I’m probably going to cave and buy some alpaca, even though whatever I buy will need to be hand washed (current plans do not include replacing our ancient washer/dryer with something that approximates handwashing). I picked up a little something for myself at Toys in Babeland, but you don’t get to know what. Under serious consideration is a fairly simple 8-plait bullwhip to start learning new ways to make loud bang noises in the park, though first I have to learn to get a forward crack out of the signal whip without removing my ear. And then there’s replacing the house’s water main. It’s an expensive job, but will be split with downstairs (cause it’s a condo, natch). It would be nice not to get stucked freezing and covered with soap every time someone flushes the toilet.
Happy Night of the Living UHauls!
What to read?
Lately I’ve been reading Raymond Chandler. His work is exciting and well-written, with prose that is often more fun than the meaning, like a present where you can entertain yourself for half an hour with the ribbon and the wrapping paper before you even get to the contents. He’s been an inspiration for many scifi/fantasy authors, and (important for a person with little money and less shelf space) you can find lots of it in the library.
A lot of stuff I’m ’supposed’ to like has been disappointing, especially erotica. In some cases I end up feeling like I’m a better writer than 99% of the folks writing erotica. It’s nice to go swim in a pool that’s big enough that my fiction is nothing but a modestly interesting backwater and whereever I swim I have plenty to learn.
However, it’s only a matter of time before I run out of Chandler.
So where should I go swim next?
Author Chat: Mari Ness, August 27-29
The next Circlet Press author chat will be hosted by author Mari Ness. She is the author of the story “Cinder Feet”, forthcoming in the Circlet anthology Like a Thorn. Her other publictions have appeared in Fantasy Magazine, Hub Fiction, and The Mammoth Book of New Erotica 2 and 3. Her cats would like to take this opportunity to inform you that she does not, in fact, feed them enough tuna. Join us (and the cats) at Circlet Press’s Livejournal community.
Pi-con
This weekend I went to Pi-con, a small sf con near Springfield, MA but just over the border in Connecticut. It was a pleasant little con with three tracks of programming, a dealers’ room, and lots of pretty young things dressed in home-made steampunk outfits. I only regret that since I wasn’t a hotel guest I couldn’t get in the pool. As per usual, I was wading through some fairly crippling headaches and medications for most of the day, but I managed to keep from wobblinpag or speaking in tongues. I think.
The first panel was Gender and sf/f. I was thinking about gender from the point of view of having just edited a book of transgender sf erotica. The other presenters were thinking primarily of how women are treated in sf/fantasy, and also of the treatment of women in TV shows (not always sf/fantasy). I was a bit handicapped on the grounds that I don’t watch TV. Having figured out the dynamic, I mostly stayed out of the way. However, I did bring up the treatment of men in M/M romance written by women and had some fun watching one of the other folks try to explain how that was different from how men treat women in fiction.
The panel on horses and other animals suffered for being up against the guest of honor reading and had fewer audience members than panelists, but was still kind of fun. One of the audience members grew up in Holland after WW2 so remembers when people still used horses for agriculture and transportation on a daily basis.
The main feature of the panel on tools for writers was to illustrate how a panel is less interesting if the moderator doesn’t do enough traffic cop organization to keep one person from talking the whole time. Especially, I think, if you’re going to do most of the talking in a panel about how to write, you should have some credits to your name other than a novel you’ve been working on for six years but haven’t finished. Throwing an application that provides charts and diagrams to keep track of your characters and plot items seems a poor substitute for finishing the project already. Do writers have some innate talent that enables them to convert ideas into structured text, and can software substitute if you don’t have it?
I had an erotic reading scheduled, splitting an hour with Raven Kaldera, who I haven’t seen in ages, certainly not since he transitioned. As we were getting settled a gentleman sat down in the front of the row to demand of me who was reading and what was to be read, since he couldn’t find anything about it in the program. Since the program listed the participants (me and Raven), and at a con readings are usually from the writers’ own works, I’m not sure why he was confused. Let me describe this man for you. As a right-thinking person you believe you are, you do your best not to stereotype people when you first meet them. However, you’re not as successful at this as you like to think you are, and you fail hopelessly when faced with this man. He’s the sort of man who looks like he doesn’t have any friends and is hoping you’ll be the one he deserves, especially if he decides you meet his standards for feminine attractiveness. You start hoping that you are not attractive. I gave a short introduction and started reading from The Memorial Garden. I picked a nice juicy bit, which is to say not a het bit. Not at all. The man left. I was relieved, even though the remaining audience was small. I am pleased to note for the future that I possess the spell of banishing creepy straight men. The audience grew a bit when I was reading, and those who remained were extremely enthusiastic. Raven read from a story in the Circlet pub “Like a Sacred Desire” which is either out now or will be out soon.
I finished off the night as the moderator of the first half of the BDSM panel. Yes, indeed, the topic is so popular that they have two hours of it and divided the panelists into two batches. I did a lot of active moderation for the first half, then opened the panel up to let other people be the top. The first half was much more fun. I’ll keep that in mind.
And then it was time for a two-hour ride back to Boston.
Crack! Part 2
Last month I wrote about whip practice in the park. A month later, post car accident and all sorts of excitement we went back. I’ve now got enough muscle in my right arm that I can crack for a much longer time before I get sore. The downside is that I can now crack long enough to give myself blisters. My skin tends not to toughen up, so I put in an order for golf gloves as some of the other participants suggested. Also, my strength is greater than my control over the lash, and my arm hasn’t learned how little force I need to get a decent bang out of the whip. The upshot:
The welts faded a bunch before I got pix. From my point of view, some of them hurt enough to give me pause, though that was less the pain than the buzz of endorphins making me dizzy. In any case, no whip welt on the planet can hurt as much as a migraine, and I’ve never got an endorphin rush from one of those.
I still have work to do before the signal whip is all the way broke in, and I’m already thinking of picking up an inexpensive 6′ 8-plait bull for a different feel and–this is important–louder noises. The folks using 12′ and longer whips got some really nice echoes coming back from the water.
