#FridayFlash: The excuse

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Five times that night, her mother called her, and five times that night she didn’t pick up.

It wasn’t a bad night, overall, at least at first. The cold snap had finally broken.  When she took Crisscross out for his last walk of the day there was finally no more ice on the road, she could have worn sneakers instead of boots. The air was damp and ripe with the smell of mud, and a half block from the farmhouse she suddenly passed into a current of air that had been tinged by the sweet-sour musk of a passing skunk — such a contrast to the sterility of the past weeks’ bitter cold, of the arid piles of snow that had smothered the countryside end to end all winter.

But then Derrick had stopped by.

Her mother loved Derrick.

“If you don’t marry him, I will!” she’d said the last time they’d talked.

Janice had no answer. She was still shocked that there was a ring — that her mother had seen a ring.

“He’s so sweet and old-fashioned.”

“If he was old-fashioned he would have gone to Dad, not  you.”

They both knew why he hadn’t.

Janice waited.

“That was a long time ago,” her mother said. “He paid the money back. Every penny.”

“I have to go.”

“He’s got the ring,” her mother repeated. “You’ll break his heart. It’s all arranged.”

Arranged?

Really?

Three days passed with Janice left waiting — what else could she do? — and then that night as the clouds pressed their darkness across the sky the doorbell finally rang and everything changed.

“Hush, Crisscross.”

The dog stopped barking, stood behind her as she opened the door.

Derrick knew her answer as soon as he saw her face.

She didn’t invite him in.

“I’m not ready,” she told him.

But they both knew what she really meant. She was 35. There was no more getting ready.

She heard him slam his car door — but he wasn’t the only one who was angry. Janice was, too. Hearing her own words as they slid out of her mouth . . .

By the time her cell started ringing she was already online.

She was thinking about debts.

But she was writing down the phone numbers of realtors . . .

An Author’s Amazon Wish List

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Via the top-shelf blogger Passive Guy, here’s a top-shelf post by Mike Stackpole about Amazon and the book biz.

One of the points Stackpole makes is that as an online/digitally savvy company, Amazon has real time access to data about what its customers are buying — i.e., “statistics and analysis that tells them which authors are trending or about to trend.”

Amazon can act on those stats to “cherry pick talent and promote their ‘discoveries.'”

Amazon also has the ability to promote digital sales of books and later on produce a print compilation of digital novels, offering a unique print product. This is actually stated as a plan in their press release.

Good on Amazon. And I agree. This gives them a huge advantage over brick & mortar publishers/distributors.

But I do wish one thing: that Amazon would share more of its statistics with its writers.

As Passive Guy writes in his post, indie authors are in many respects Amazon’s partners in the e-publishing trend. He also writes:

Indie publishing has changed authors from helpless little children who cry and wait for their agent or publisher to come and wipe their noses into savvy and intelligent entrepreneurs, people who know how to do things for themselves.

To which I add: entrepreneurs need data.

I’d like to know how many clicks I get on my stuff on Amazon — my book pages, my author page.

I’d like to know how many book samples are being downloaded.

I’d like to know what percent of sample downloads convert to sales.

I’d like to know when/where people abandon my page or for that matter quit reading the sample.

And I’d like to know how all those stats compare to data about other authors’ Amazon activity.

I mean, think about it. For indie authors, Amazon pages and samples are marketing tools.

With the right kind of data, we’d better understand how well those tools are working — or how they can be tweaked.

Of course Amazon has reason to keep its data inside its kimono: competitors. But there’s a workaround, too: just release it in the form of trends and percentages rather than raw numbers.

So how about it Amazon? Please? Pretty please?

Booking Through Thursdays

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This week’s question is:

If you could get a sequel for any book, what would it be?

Right now? Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, for three reasons.

  1. I enjoyed the book and would love to be able to re-enter its world.
  2. James created a character that I like, then closed the novel with an ambiguous ending. I want to know if Isabella leaves Gilbert! And for that matter, what happens to poor Pansy?
  3. Since  no sequel exists, for one to suddenly appear would require one of two things: either a dead author would need to come back to life; or he would need to otherwise project his consciousness into physical reality. And either scenario would have quite intriguing metaphysical implications :-D

#Fridayflash. I Tripped . . .

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I tripped over the broomstick — YES I knew it was there. Quit interrupting, please.

It always falls out of the broom closet. The broom closet is too damned jammed full. Everything in my life is too damned jammed full. Especially my closets. Would you like an inventory of my broom closet? The vacuum cleaner, the mop, the bucket, the steamer, the rag bag. All expected. But wait! There’s more! Bag of sidewalk salt. Old school backpack. Plastic jug of distilled water. The ex’s shortwave radio (!!!!)

Nothing fits. Things spill out all the time, do you think I don’t know what’s going on? This is Chaos herself — Khaos! Respect her! She can’t be stuffed in a closet you know!

So the broom spilled out, I don’t know when, maybe the kids needed something from the closet this morning — the handle spilt across the doorway to the mud room, I was hurrying back from the bus stop, late for work, tripped, coffee all over.

I was flying for a moment, floating.

It seemed like a very long moment.

But that’s an illusion, a trick the mind plays — and why? To divert your attention? You’re about to get the bruising of your life, your floating is about to meets its bruising end on the hard, hard floor.

Don’t think about it yet don’t think about it yet . . .

I called Derrick afterwards, of course, and he could tell I was crying — I shouldn’t have called — one of those girlie things we do and shouldn’t because what was there to fix?

Nothing. Nothing. The fixing maybe could have happened yesterday, by cleaning out the closet, I suppose.

But he came over anyway, and drove me to work . . .

So I take it back, actually, now that I think it over again. Because I realized after he kissed me and I got out of the car and ran up to the glass doors and through and flashed my ID at the security guard:

“He drove me to work . . . he’ll pick me up after work.”

So maybe the little breaks our mind gives us are not the breaks but the thing itself. Like those optical illusions.

Is it a picture of two ladies’ profiles or a vase?

He’ll pick me up after work. Maybe we’ll grab a bite to eat. Maybe I’ll ask him about his day.

Maybe tripping over a broom handle isn’t the accident so much as the start of the floating . . .

Is that even possible, I wonder?

I wonder . . .

WWW Wednesdays :-)

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Via Should Be Reading, another game, w00t!

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

My answers . . .

What are you currently reading? This is a bit of a dupe from yesterday of course — Charterhouse of Parma,  a 19th century French novel by Stendhal.

What did you recently finish reading? Portrait of a Lady by Henry James and An Absence of Angels by Julie Harris. (Historical fiction, enjoyed it very much!)

What do you think you’ll read next? I just found out this morning that Wickedly Charming, a novel by Kristine Grayson, a.k.a. Kristine Kathryn Rusch, is available for free this week on Kindle. Rusch’s husband Dean Wesley Smith writes that the book is “about publishing. It is wonderful fun and even has Sheldon McArthur the book dealer as a character.”

I downloaded a copy and I bet that’s what I read next :-)

Teaser Tuesdays . . . and omg I’m a such a lit nerd

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So the idea is you turn to a random page in the book you’re reading, and pick out two sentences, and post them.

I thought I’d play along, only I just started reading Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal. So my teaser sentences are . . .  135 words long. And has a loooot of commas. LOL

I’m such a lit dork :-)

The beautiful idea of dying near the object of one’s love, expressed in a hundred different forms, was followed by a sonnet, which set forth that the soul, parted after hideous torments from the weak body which it had inhabited for the past three-and-twenty years, and impelled by that instinctive desire for happiness natural to everything which has had life, would not, even if the great Judge granted pardon for all its sins, betake itself to heaven, to join the angelic choir, the moment it obtained its freedom; but that, more happy after death than it had been in life, it would join itself to its earthly love, within a few paces of the prison in which it groaned so long. “Thus,” ran the last line of the sonnet, “I shall have found my paradise on earth.”

How to Rate a Kindle Book

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Earlier this year I posted about a capability Amazon added to Kindle, that allows readers to rate Kindle books.

At the time I imagined that the new functionality would be fairly straightforward — i.e. there would be a little button you could click to submit a rating.

It turns out to require a bit more doing.

Here’s what I’ve figured out so far. (Mind you, this is from my Kindle, version 3.0.2 — maybe newer models support different ways to rate books.)

Also, this may go without saying but your kindle has to be connected to a WiFi network for either of these methods to work.

Rate a Kindle book by writing a review

To use this method:

  1. Open the book
  2. Click Menu
  3. Select Book Description. This takes you to the book’s Amazon.com page.
  4. Page down to the last page of the book description.
  5. At the top of the last screen of the description, you’ll see a hotlink Write a Review. Use your 5-way controller to select it, and then follow the prompts to rate and review the book.
One way to rate a Kindle ebook is via the Book Description.

One way to rate a Kindle is via the Book Description. The last page displays a hotlink “Write a Review,” as pictured here on the Can Job book description.

If you try to rate the book without reviewing it, you’ll find out (like I did!) that Amazon won’t let you.

You have to write a review to rate a book.

Not sure whether this is a bug or a feature. It makes it rating e-books more trouble, obviously. But maybe it helps prevent overly frivolous rating. Maybe, if people have to take the time to write down at least a few simple thoughts, they’ll be more thoughtful about how many stars they give . . .

Rate a book via social media (Facebook or Twitter) interface

I haven’t tried this method yet, but I found this in the Kindle documentation on Amazon:

On the final page of your book, you’ll be given the opportunity to share your thoughts via Twitter or Facebook.

Use the 5-way controller to select “Rate this book.”
Select the number of stars you’d use to rate the book, then select “save & share.”

You can rate the book at any time just by going to the final page. Press the “Menu” button, select “Go to” and select the “End” button.

You can also select “Tweet/share that you’ve finished this book” to let everyone know you’ve read it.

I’m going to try that method, too, and post an update when I have.

Please drop a note in the comments if you have anything to add about rating Kindle books — positive, negative, or questions.

And please stop by my Amazon author page to peek at my Kindle novels :) Thanks!

She self-pubbed, got a Harper Collins contract . . . and now is self-pubbing again

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That sound you hear is another old taboo exploding.

It used to be that authors with book contracts pretty much had to do what publishers told them to do. Right?

If you got big enough you might be able to throw your weight around. But most authors had little if any power.

So this is definitely another milestone moment in 21st Century publishing trends:

Novelist Polly Courtney has dropped her publisher HarperCollins for giving her books “condescending and fluffy” covers aimed at the chick lit market.

There was a time when Courtney would have had to accept whatever covers/marketing decisions her publisher made.

Not any more — because now she has options.