cheap books

[julesjones]

I'm doing website updates in lieu of actual, you know, *wordage*. Which is how I discovered that Fictionwise is doing the thing with massive storewide discounts again -- 40% off until the end of Sunday, after that 25% for a bit. This does not do me any good as a reader, as I refuse point blank to buy anything with DRM, and the open format titles I'm interested in are the ones I don't really want to be reading on the public omnibus. However, it might do me some good as a writer if anyone wants to buy one or two of my books cheaply. [*]

I think I forgot to mention that a few more of my books are now available on All Romance eBooks, including Spindrift and Pulling Strings. They have also been uploaded to Fictionwise, but it will probably take a couple of weeks before they show up on the public site.


[*] Obviously I like sales direct from my publisher's website best, because I get the most money that way. However, I strongly prefer sales through distributors to no sales at all. :-)

Comments

Sniffing at Fictionwise

[lakeaustin.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't want to buy there anyway since so many of their readers voted L&M 'good' rather than 'great'. Clearly I don't want to be counted in that number, since they don't recognize 'great' when they read it!

Carole
waiting semi-patiently for L&M 3

Re: Sniffing at Fictionwise

[julesjones]

I can live with them rating it "good" -- what would worry me is if a lot of them were rating it "ok". :-)

Still only writing a few hundred words a week on the new book, but at least that's now more to do with standard Christmas running around in headless chicken mode than with being so drained by a new job that I can't write.

Damned by faint praise

[lakeaustin.livejournal.com]

I guess saying it's okay is about even with saying 'How nice.'

Question: When a distributor like All Romance Ebooks gives away a book free (like for example, they give you a code for one book free every time you buy 10), the author is still paid for that, is s/he not?

And just out of curiosity, does your publisher send your books out for reviews? I was looking at the list on Rainbow Reviews and noticed that none of your books are there. I know you have to request to be reviewed, at least there. I wondered how actively the publishers work on that. Now -- reviews are probably a sore topic right now but more reviews has to be a good thing.

chl

Re: Damned by faint praise

[julesjones]

If I rated something "ok" at Fictionwise, I'd consider it to be not a waste of my money, but not an incentive to buy another book from that author. So a few people rating one of mine ok isn't a problem, but if a lot of people were, that would be worrying.

I don't know how the ARE contract works (and should probably go and see if they have anything on the public site), but this is what the public information at Fictionwise says:

"Publisher royalty is fifty percent (50%) of the Sale Price or twenty-five percent (25%) of the List Price, whichever is greater."

So no matter what the sale price is, FW will always pass on at least 25% of the list price (which is essentially whatever the publisher tells them is standard cover price for the title) to the publisher, unless there's some odd deal going on. My contract with LI says I get half of whatever they get from FW, which as you can see from the bit I quoted runs anywhere between a quarter and a half of the list price, depending on what discounts FW are offering. If someone buys one of my titles with a micropay rebate they've earned on someone else's book, I should still get some money for it.

What you will see occasionally is a bunch of titles offered as free downloads at FW. I know that these often involve the publisher and/or author agreeing to give the books away without royalty payments in order to get publicity of some sort. In particular, it's very common for sf authors to offer their short stories which have been nominated for the Hugo awards, so that potential voters have the chance to read them if they missed the stories when they were originally published in magazines.

Loose Id do send books out for review, but not to all review sites. I don't know if Rainbow Reviews is on their radar or not. I send out some review copies as well, but I mostly do so to review sites that I read moderately often myself, and I don't read Rainbow Reviews -- no particular reason other than there are a lot of sites out there and I've already got more on my feed than I can handle.

Re: Damned by faint praise

[lakeaustin.livejournal.com]

What review sites do you read yourself? I like RR because I can usually tell from their reviews if it's a book I want to read. And they don't trash books. If a reviewer there really doesn't like a book, they give it to another reviewer.

Re: Damned by faint praise

[julesjones]

In romance, mostly Dear Author and Azteclady's reviews on Karen's blog at the moment, with reasonably regular wanderings further afield. (And Elisa Rolle's LJ is on my default view, but what's she's reviewing is mostly ebooks, and until I got the Cybook earlier this year I Did Not Do Ebooks as a reader.) I used to read Smart Bitches a lot, but I've found it's not currently offering what I'm really looking for.

The reason I read DA in particular is that they have reviews that give me an idea of whether or not I might like to read the book. The thing for me is that I'm primarily an sf and fantasy fan, not a romance fan. I love a good romance when it works for me, but so very many books explicitly marketed as romance are utter wallbangers for me for reasons that have nothing to do with the writing quality [*] that I'm not willing to read one without a recommendation from someone whose opinion I trust.

Now, that recommendation can be in the form of a review by someone who didn't actually like the book herself, but who can set out why she didn't like it in a way that lets me see whether what she disliked is something I'd actually like. When I first stumbled across Smart Bitches, and the Dear Author, they thing that struck me was that the sort of reviews they wrote didn't pull any punches when they didn't like a book, but they had insight into why they didn't like it, and were well aware that other people might feel differently about the book, and thus their reviews were useful guides as to books that would be worth my while checking out.


[* A book goes on about how big cities are Teh Evil and a real romance heroine will eventually come to her senses and run back to the wonderful small country town that is the only place anyone can be truly happy? *Wallbanger*. I have lived in that small country town, and while I'm very happy to go back and visit, and I understand why some of my family love living there, I'm also very very happy to be living in the big city myself.]