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How much do you make by selling through Amazon's Kindle store?

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:25:41 -0500

I recently uploaded my first fantasy novel to Amazon's Kindle Store. You can still download it here for free, but the idea behind making it available on Amazon's site is (1) to hopefully gain more exposure and (2) maybe make a buck or two in the process. I'd like to take a moment to look at the latter of those reasons by asking the following question: How much, really, can one make selling an e-book in the Kindle store?

First, there's what Amazon calls the "Suggested Retail Price", or SRP. This is set by the author at the time the e-book is uploaded:

The price you charge can range from a minimum of $0.99 to a max only Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, or Bernie Madoff (before he admitted to his Ponzi scheme and was locked up for 150 years) could hope to afford. Amazon, however, discourages price points above $9.99; you'll find many bestsellers featured prominently on the Kindle store-front selling at this price due to discounts Amazon has applied.

That brings us to our next point of discussion: Amazon's discount. We've all seen it, where Amazon takes a product that normally retails for $129.99 and discounts it to $69.99. The same principle applies here, though the discount in no way impacts an author's royalty. From my extensive research (which consisted of reading through a handful of posts on the Amazon DTP Forums until I found this one), I discovered this statement from Customer Service:

"...please know that as per our terms and conditions, our decision to discount products is based on a number of considerations which can vary over time. You will continue to receive the set percentage of the list price you set for every sale, even if Amazon changes the retail price for your content."

What this basically means is that while there may not be a method to their madness concerning what gets discounted and by how much, if and when they do discount your e-book, it will not negatively affect your royalties.

So now we come to the royalty itself, or how much we actually make per sale. The simple answer is 35% of the SRP. For a longer answer one can look to Amazon's DIGITAL PUBLICATION DISTRIBUTION AGREEMENT:

5. Royalties. Provided you are not in breach of your obligations under this Agreement, we will pay you, for each Digital Book we sell, a royalty equal to thirty-five percent (35%) of the applicable Suggested Retail Price for such Digital Book, net of refunds, bad debt, and any taxes charged to a customer (including without limitation sales taxes) (a “Royalty”).

That means for every e-copy of The Hall of the Wood sold, currently priced at $0.99, I'll make $0.35. Amazon gets the remaining $0.64. As above, should Amazon choose to discount my e-book, I'll still make the 35% royalty on the original SRP, so still $0.35. I can adjust my price point up a bit and make a little more per unit sold, but of course can't drop it below the minimum $0.99 threshold.

So, that might be more information that you cared to know, but there it is.

Sell Your E-books in the Amazon Kindle Store

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:02:00 -0500

I've been interested in Amazon's Kindle digital book reader since its inception (though, admittedly, I didn't start blogging about it until the second version came out). I haven't bought one yet because I'm waiting for the inevitable price reduction, but that doesn't mean I haven't been exploring its features and some of the content for the device.

The biggest source of content for the Kindle is, of course, Amazon's Kindle Store. The store features a lot of e-books. A quick run down of some of the categories:

Fantasy	5,267 e-books
Science Fiction	7,299 e-books
Mystery & Thrillers	13,570 e-books

Total, there's over 300,000 titles available for download to your Kindle. That's a lot of books.

I recently discovered one of the best things about the Kindle store: anyone can post products there. JA Konrath clued me into the possibility, and he does a nice job of breaking down some of his own sales numbers. You can see that he's had no small success at it thus far. Granted, Konrath is a published author, so his name is out there via other, more traditional channels, but he also puts forth a lot of effort online as well. Nonetheless, is the possibility of an unpublished writer posting his or her work to the Kindle store gold waiting to be mined? I plan to find out.

As of a couple of days ago, my novel, The Hall of the Wood, is available for purchase via the Kindle store:

I wanted to make the price $0.25, but $0.99 is the minimum allowed price. The one catch is that, of course, you must have a Kindle to which to download the e-book to. So, if you've already spent $300 for the device, what's another $0.99? ;-)

The concept of an unpublished author finding success in this channel is a challenge. As noted above, there are over 5,000 fantasy titles available for purchase in the Kindle store. How to make my novel stand out amongst those? For one, I created a book cover. Nothing fancy, but it gives the potential buyer something to look at other than "No image available". Second, I gave it a product description, which is the standard blurb taken from my web site:

Jed's wife and unborn child are dead, killed by a legacy he dare share with no one. Seeking a reprieve from his guilt, he sets out for his former home, the Ranger Hall of the Wood. Along the way, he discovers all is not well. Aliah Starbough, a friend from Jed's past, sends him a chilling warning: the rangers are dead, the Simarron Forest, thrown into peril. Nearby Homewood has issued a plea for help, a summonings which Kayra Weslin, knight errant, and her chronicler, Holly, answer. Along with Murik Alon Rin'kres, an Eslar sorcerer who harbors a secret purpose all his own, the four attempt to unravel the mystery of the missing rangers. They soon find tales of their disappearance frighteningly untrue.

The third way to gain attention is through customer reviews. This one is huge, and the one that in my mind will allow us as writers to break free of the traditional agent/publisher dependency. It's a stamp of approval, a guarantee of quality, a statement saying that your book is not crap. Customer reviews, to a point, validate a book's worth. In general, low reviews indicate a lack of quality. High reviews, the opposite. This is not to say that every review should be taken as gospel. But given enough reviews and a trend should emerge.

I often read of the struggle authors undergo in finding an agent or publisher. There's really no rhyme or reason to it: the decision-making is subjective, and how often have you come across a published novel that, to be frank, sucks? I've begun to doubt the vindication that supposedly comes with having your work blessed by a "real" publisher, and let's face it: business models change. We might be witnessing the beginning of the end for traditional publishers here. If not that, certainly a sea change in the way we purchase and read books.

The Hall of the Wood has been available as a free pdf download for a long time now. As Konrath points out, Amazon's web site gets a lot more traffic than his own. That volume has a lot of potential to increase sales. Selling on the Kindle store seems like a real no-brainer to me.

Micro-book Review: Perdido Street Station by China Mieville

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Tue, 19 May 2009 10:21:03 -0500

A micro-book review, like micro-blogging, is a review containing as few words as possible. In the spirit of Twitter, mine will be less than 140 characters (not including this intro).

Beautifully written and wholly engaging, Perdido Street Station ultimately left too many threads unwound for my taste.

How much does the Kindle 2 really cost?

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 11:48:00 -0500

iSuppli, which makes a business out of tearing down electronics products to see what's inside and then publishing their cost findings, released a report stating that Amazon's Kindle 2 costs $185.49 in components. The Kindle 2 retails for $359. That's a difference of $173.51.

Engadget shows the component breakdown:

I don't mind Amazon making a profit, but I'm still not sold enough on the Kindle to fork over $359 for it. James Martin of PC World did a cost-justification analysis comparing the purchase of a Kindle 2 and associated e-books vs. going the traditional route and it didn't work out so well:

"...my number crunching reveals that even a loyal reader of paperbacks would only have saved $58.82 by the end of the second year of Kindle 2 ownership."

That's a whopping savings of $60 after two years. In his analysis, he assumes 2 paperbacks per month; that's a lot of reading. I know I couldn't maintain that pace for 2 years.

He goes on to say:

"Amazon is sure to introduce a third-generation Kindle during that period, which you may decide you can't live without. There goes your $58.82 savings, and then some."

Therein lies the crux of technology, my friends. There's always something bigger and better right around the corner. However, I'd love to own a Kindle 2, and maybe that "next gen" version will help drive down the price of the current model.

Generating Names

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 08:56:00 -0500

Sometimes I need a little help coming up with the name of a character or place. I'm compiling a list here of the name generators I find most useful. Note that they have a decidedly fantasy genre bend to them; that is what I write, after all. Also, I rarely take a random name literally. Rather I'll tweak it a bit. But I've found these sites good starting places when the mind is stuck.

Yes, I'm still here… and still writing

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:24:31 -0500

Rumors of my death are false. I'm still alive and kicking and trying to squeeze in some writing whenever and however I can. I'm relying more and more on Office Live Workspace for those days when I don't have my laptop with me. It's working out pretty well; I'd like to do another blog post on the topic as a follow-up. Stay tuned for that.

Now, however, I've slowed the blogging, including doing weekly writing updates because I've been finding it harder and harder of late to make any significant progress. I hate to just post that I didn't make any progress week in and week out—of course, here I am doing just that.

On writing… I did take a couple of weeks off. I needed the time to step away from my current project (the one I'd been posting weekly about). I like the characters. I like the story. But still, it was missing something. To that end, I've started over on the editing. Page 1. With a mind towards adding another layer to the story and, in particular, to one character. The end result is that I hopefully end up with a better story. Whether I accomplish that or not… we'll have to see.

So, it's back to writing for me. Blogging will likely be kept to a minimum while I concentrate on wrapping up this novel. But I'll be around and back on the blogging thing in time.

Juggling, or a brief Writing Update

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:00:51 -0500

Juggling two balls really isn't that hard. Three takes some practice. Four—I've never been able to juggle four balls without dropping one real quick. That's pretty much what happened to me these past few weeks, with my writing being the fourth ball.

That's not to say I did nothing, but it's been a few weeks since I've actually sat down and wrote or edited anything. Things are clearing a bit, though, and I hope to get back to it this weekend if not sometime during the week.

I'll leave it at that so I can get down to refreshing my mind as to where I last left off…

Writing Update #32.1

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:01:12 -0500

I was allowing myself some time to make a leap. That leap has to do with my current fantasy novel. Specifically, how to make it rise above the rest, so to speak. I think I've re-stumbled upon an idea I'd had way back when I started this venture. I'd steered away from this particular idea for reasons I'm not entirely sure of anymore. But, with the majority of the novel laid out, I think it's time to go back and add some additional layering. Sorry to speak in such abstracts, and because of that this post will conclude post-haste.

The end result of this shift into re-discovered territory is that I'm going to spend some time doing some research. I plan to post that research here as somewhat of an experiment. On my technology blog, I sometimes post information that hopefully is of some use to someone, but more importantly it's simply out there so I can find it again the next time I run into a similar or identical problem. I'm going to carry that idea over to this blog. We'll have to see how it goes.

Writing Update #32

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:51:36 -0500

A weekly progress report as I work through the (second pass) editing of my current fantasy novel.

Alright, so I made absolutely no progress this past week. Actually, that's not true. I advanced my edit page by 1 to 307 out of 367. It's a bit frustrating, especially given that I'm so close to finishing this edit, and, to tell you the truth, I'm not even sure how the week got away from me. One thing came up, and another, and another, and so on, and I just never quite sat down to get any writing done.

OK, even that's not entirely true. I hit upon a climatic part of the story and I did spend some time thinking it out, mostly because I'm not so sure I nailed it as it stands right now, but the silver bullet never came to me. It's going to take some more thought, and hopefully I'll get it sooner rather than later.

Also, I have to admit my mind has been wandering a bit to my next project. In many ways I have to wonder if my current novel is really breaking any new ground (enter yea old foe of the writer, Doubt). I think my next will, so it's hard to not think ahead to it. Plus it's just going to be a little… different. Still fantasy, but it all takes place in one city, and is going to be a bit of a mystery/thriller. At least that's the plan.

For now, though, I've got a conundrum to figure out so I can wrap up The Five Elements.

Tor Free E-book: Spirit Walk by Charles de Lint

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 15:57:39 -0500

It's been long enough since I last reported a free e-book out of Tor that I can't help but think I missed one (or two).

Anyway, Tor's got another one out there. This time we get to take a look at Charles de Lint's Spirit Walk. From the post:

Charles de Lint’s Spiritwalk (1992) is the sequel to Moonheart, his groundbreaking novel about the people in and around a house in modern Ottawa that straddles this world and another one. Here is the same cast of characters, as they deal with a pair of very different threats to the ancient house. As in Moonheart, de Lint skillfully combines a contemporary sensibility, a great sensitivity to the rhythms and patterns of myth and folktale, and a set of simply likeable characters whose lives you find yourself wanting to hang out in.

From the post's comments it appears while this is a continuation of a pervious novel, it does stand enough on its own that it is not required you read Moonheart. I imagine like any pseudo-series, where at least the world and some of the characters appear in both works, having read the previous novel will enhance the experience but not having read won't necessarily ruin it.

Writing Update #31

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 20:41:30 -0500

A weekly progress report as I work through the (second pass) editing of my current fantasy novel.

Hard to believe that this update marks my 31st week working on the editing of this novel. Part of that was spent on the first edit; lately these updates have been focused on my second edit. As I work through this second pass, I know without a doubt that I'll have to go through it at least one more time. More likely two more times. First, though, some progress…

I'm on page 306 out of 367. That's only an 8 page increase over last week. Overall, I'm 83.3% done, with 61 pages remaining. Another way to look at it is at my current pages edited/week (17.83) I've got about 3 1/2 weeks left before I finish this second edit.

I'm going to leave it at that so I can get back to some writing. Until next week.

Pyr Free E-book: The Crooked Letter by Sean Williams

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 06:11:36 -0500

This time it's Pyr giving away a free e-book, namely Sean Williams' The Crooked Letter.

Pyr says this about the book:

When mirror twins Seth and Hadrian Castillo travel to Europe on holidays, they don’t expect the end of the world to follow them. Seth’s murder, however, puts exactly that into motion.

From opposite sides of death, the Castillo twins grapple with a reality neither of them suspected, although it has been encoded in myths and legends for millennia. The Earth we know is just one of many “realms”, three of which are inhabited by humans during various stages of their lives. And their afterlives...

In the tradition of Philip Pullman and Ursula K. Le Guin and inspired by numerous arcane sources, the Books of the Cataclysm begin in the present world but soon propel the reader to a landscape that is simultaneously familiar and fantastic.

Download. Read. Enjoy.

Writing Update #30

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 14:00:13 -0500

A weekly progress report as I work through the (second pass) editing of my current fantasy novel.

I meant to get this up last night but kind of shut down early and didn't feel like breaking out the laptop after that. Anyway, good progress this past week: I'm on page 298 out of 367. Net gain from last week is 27 pages, putting me at a "weeks left" figure of 3.75 and a % completion of 81.2%. Word count went down 284 to 107,090.

Word count has really leveled off lately. I'll put up just that chart this time for reference. I don't see it going down much from here. If anything, it may go up some more.

That's it for this time. Till next week.

Writing Update #29

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:49:57 -0500

A weekly progress report as I work through the (second pass) editing of my current fantasy novel.

Decent writing progress to report. I hit page 272 out of 368, which is a net gain of 14 pages over last week. I added 2 additional pages of new material—really 3—but with some other edits the end result was that the novel's length went from 366 total pages to 368.

Weeks left: 5.4. That's awesome. That means in just over a month I should be finished with this edit. The operative word is should. We'll see how it goes.

Here's some graphical progress:

Total word count remained steady:

Percentage completion is now at 74%:

That's it for this time. Hope I have some more good progress to report next week.

Micro-book Review: Heldenhammer by Graham McNeill

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 18:05:00 -0500

A micro-book review, like micro-blogging, is a review containing as few words as possible. In the spirit of Twitter, mine will be less than 140 characters (not including this intro).

Heldenhammer is a rip-roaring, gritty hack-fest that tells the tale of Sigmar, the Warhammer hero destined to unite the kingdoms of Men.

(136 characters)

Microsoft Office Live Workspace

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:22:00 -0500

What is Office Live Workspace?

A lot of people are mobile these days. I am. I have my laptop with me most times so that when I want to fit in some work on my current novel or other documents I flip it open and go. But every once in a while I leave the laptop at home. The dilemma then becomes one of how do I fit some work in on those documents when the files are not accessible?

Enter Office Live Workspace.

Office Live Workspace is a free "access your documents anywhere" service from Microsoft. With the service you can store hundreds if not thousands of documents remotely, then access those same documents from any computer.

Technically, you don't have to have Office on your desktop, but the integration is quite slick, so I would recommend it. Also, the product is beta, so keep that in mind.

Installation & Setup

You get hooked up with Office Live Workspace by installing the Microsoft Office Live Add-in available via Windows Update as an optional update. I'll assume you can handle that part of the install since it really is just another update. Also, once you get into the service, you'll likely be prompted to install some updates. Go through the motions and let it install what it needs.

Now, either you already have a Live Id from previous apps you might have installed or used or you'll need to sign-up for a new one. If you've already got one, you can sign in from the Office Live Workspace home page:

Otherwise, here's the step-by-step to get setup with Office Live Workspace.

1. Let's say you've fired up, say, Microsoft Word. Once the Office Live Workspace add-in has been installed you'll see the following dialog asking you to take the plunge with Office Live Workspace:

2. If you click "Continue" you're brought to the following web site where you can sign up for the Workspace service.

3. Type your email address and click "Next". You'll then see this:

4. Go through the motions of filling in the form in order to set up your account. Good luck with the captcha—it took me more times than I care to admit to get it right.

Once you've filled out the form to their satisfaction and clicked "Finish", you'll get a confirmation of sorts:

5. Go to your inbox and wait for the email to show up. When it does, click on the "Activate your workspace" link.

I ran into some problems at this point. The service was fairly unresponsive (see above comment about this being beta ;-) ). I waited a bit, and finally got in:

That's it. You're in. People familiar with SharePoint will see some commonalities here. Basically you've got a repository for storing documents and other files. You can upload files, create a new workspace for grouping files, or view shared documents if others have opened up their documents for you to see.

Save a document to Office Live Workspace

Uploading a document is easy. Let's do it through the web page first, then we'll look at how to save a document to the remote Workspace from within Word.

To upload a document to the Workspace over the web:

1. From your Workspace page, click on "Add Documents".

2. Navigate to a file using the resulting Open dialog and select it.

3. You'll see a progress bar next to the title of your document as it uploads. The time it takes to upload your file depends on the size of the file.

4. Done. File has been uploaded:

Now, if you're using Microsoft Word you can upload files directly from there.

1. First, sign-in using the account you created above.

2. This is one of those times mentioned above where you'll need to install some updates. Click through until it's happy.

Unfortunately, you will be asked to reboot. Once you've done that, open up Word again, select "Save to Office Live" again and sign-in.

3. A File Save dialog will pop-up. Double-click on the "Documents" folder (it doesn't look like a folder, but that's what it is) and click "Save".

Give it a sec…

That's it. Document saved.

Open a document from Office Live Workspace

Just like saving/uploading a document can be done from the web interface or through Microsoft Word, so can opening a file.

1. To open a file through the web interface, locate the "Edit" (leftmost) button.

2. You'll be confronted with a warning about unsafe files:

Click "OK"

3. Your document will open in Word or whatever program is assigned to open the file type you chose.

Now, to open a file stored on your Workspace through Word:

1. Select the "Open from Office Live" menu item. A File Open dialog will pop-up. Select your file.

2. Click "Open" and your document will open in Word.

Make changes and save. You'll see the "Saving" dialog again as the document is saved off to the remote Workspace location.

That's all there is to it. You've signed up for an Office Live Workspace account, uploaded a file to the service, opened it from the remote location, made changes, and saved it back.

Conclusion

I'm planning on using Office Live Workspace for those days when I don't have my laptop with me but where I also have some time to work on documents I typically only store there. I do have some concerns over security—I'm not going to store personal financial data out there. But as long as the service remains stable I think it will help me stay productive.

Writing Update #28

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 20:52:30 -0500

A weekly progress report as I work through the (second pass) editing of my current fantasy novel.

Very good progress this past week. Overall, I'm up 36 pages, from last time's 220 to 256. I added 1 additional page, bringing the current total page count to 366.

The graph:

You can see that the total page count dipped and leveled off, but has now been steadily (and slowly) rising. Total word count actually went down by 37 this past week to 106,845:

I expect there to be maybe one more bump in word count—there's a new scene I feel I need to add to give the reader some more context on one of the main characters, plus it will allow me to utilize my witch character again (I love witches). Then, a gradual lessening as I continue to pare down sentences of unneeded words and such.

Percentage-wise, I hit 70% completion:

Couple of other stats I've been keeping: "average pages edited per week" and "weeks remaining". The first of those is at 18.13 pages/week. The second, 6.07 weeks remaining. 6 more weeks and I should be done with this pass. Things are really fitting together nicely. I'm looking forward to the next edit, which I've no doubt will go a lot faster once all the pieces are in place at the completion of this edit.

Del Rey Free E-book: The Patriot Witch by C.C. Finley

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 18:44:55 -0500

Some more free e-book goodness.

This is the first time publisher Del Rey has given away in electronic format a front-liner book. The concept of The Patriot Witch, by C.C. Finley, sounds intriguing:

The year is 1775. On the surface, Proctor Brown appears to be an ordinary young man working the family farm in New England. He is a minuteman, a member of the local militia, determined to defend the rights of the colonies. Yet Proctor is so much more. Magic is in his blood, a dark secret passed down from generation to generation. But Proctor’s mother has taught him to hide his talents, lest he be labeled a witch and find himself dangling at the end of a rope.

A chance encounter with an arrogant British officer bearing magic of his own catapults Proctor out of his comfortable existence and into the adventure of a lifetime, as resistance sparks rebellion and rebellion becomes revolution. Now, even as he fights alongside his fellow patriots from Lexington to Bunker Hill, Proctor finds himself enmeshed in a war of a different sort—a secret war of magic against magic, witch against witch, with the stakes not only the independence of a young nation but the future of humanity itself.

You can download the DRM-free PDF from Finley's web site.

Authors: Kindle 2 text-to-speech undermines audio books

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:29:00 -0500

The Author's Guild has issued an E-Book Rights Alert, informing authors of the possible revenue loss to stem from Amazon's Kindle 2 'text-to-speech' feature because of that technology's potential to undermine the audio book market.

The Guild says this about the Kindle 2's text-to-speech feature:

[Text-to-speech] presents a significant challenge to the publishing industry. Audiobooks surpassed $1 billion in sales in 2007; e-book sales are just a small fraction of that. While the audio quality of the Kindle 2, judging from Amazon's promotional materials, is best described as serviceable, it's far better than the text-to-speech audio of just a few years ago. We expect this software to improve rapidly.

In short, Kindle 2's text-to-speech feature is just that: any text stored on the Kindle 2 can be read back to you. The voice has been described as a "not-quite-natural electronic voice", but as the Author's Guild states, this feature should improve over time. Just the fact that we have such technology is proof enough that it will improve. Text-to-speech years ago was horrible. Yet now you can listen to say, my blog posts, through a service like Odiogo.com in a voice that is fairly pleasant if not a bit inconsistent in its pacing. It's 'serviceable', no doubt.

Personally, I take issue with the Guild's stance on this issue. First of all, audio books are expensive. Amazon has clearly invented a way to bring that cost down effectively to zero. That's good for consumers, right? Second, we live in a free market society where innovation is generally considered a good thing. This particular innovation, again, is a win for consumers because instead of having to buy print and audio versions of a book, you can now buy the Kindle format and that's it. Read or listen (or both), it's up to you. Just think of it: now you can read as usual, but you also have the option of listening for those times when reading is not possible. It's the ultimate in maximizing your time while still partaking in one of civilized society's greatest forms of entertainment.

I understand the other side of the argument. The "lost revenue" side, that is. But much like Paul Bunyan had to bow out to make way for the chainsaw, maybe it's time for the publishing industry to get out of the way and let technology and innovation pave the way to a brighter reading and listening future for all.

I'll leave you with Neil Gaiman's thoughts on the subject:

When you buy a book, you're also buying the right to read it aloud, have it read to you by anyone, read it to your children on long car trips, record yourself reading it and send that to your girlfriend etc. This is the same kind of thing, only without the ability to do the voices properly, and no-one's going to confuse it with an audiobook. And that any authors' societies or publishers who are thinking of spending money on fighting a fundamentally pointless legal case would be much better off taking that money and advertising and promoting what audio books are and what's good about them with it.

Now, what do you think?

Amazon's Kindle 2 to Launch February 24

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 11:17:00 -0500

There's plenty of news, buzz, skepticism, excitement, early product reviews, and photos surrounding the imminent launch on February 24 of Amazon's all new version of the popular e-book reader, the Kindle 2.

The feature list for this new Kindle is impressive:

Slim: Just over 1/3 of an inch, as thin as most magazines
Lightweight: At 10.2 ounces, lighter than a typical paperback
Wireless: 3G wireless lets you download books right from your Kindle, anytime, anywhere; no monthly fees, service plans, or hunting for Wi-Fi hotspots
Books in Under 60 Seconds: Get books delivered in less than 60 seconds; no PC required
Improved Display: Reads like real paper; now boasts 16 shades of gray for clear text and even crisper images
Longer Battery Life: 25% longer battery life; read for days without recharging
More Storage: Take your library with you; holds over 1,500 books
Faster Page Turns: 20% faster page turns
Read-to-Me: With the new Text-to-Speech feature, Kindle can read every book, blog, magazine, and newspaper out loud to you
Large Selection: Over 230,000 books plus U.S. and international newspapers, magazines, and blogs available
Low Book Prices: New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases $9.99, unless marked otherwise

For me, the most attractive items from that list are the size, weight, battery life, and the sheer selection of Kindle-formatted books that Amazon now offers. The wireless feature is kind of cool, but I don't know that I'd use it all that often. In other words, once you've got a book or two downloaded you're pretty much set for days if not weeks, right? I spend enough time in the office and at home that having to hook up to a standard network isn't a big deal, though it's not clear to me at this point if that is even an option. Downloading over 3G might be the only way to bring content down.

As far as size, the image on the right says it all. The Kindle 2 is described as "pencil thin". That it is. That's one slim piece of machinery, though I do wonder about the Kindle 2's durability. I'm anxious to read early adopter reviews to see if this is an issue at all.

Other intriguing features include Whispersync which will allow you to start reading a book on the Kindle 2, then pick it up automatically on your iPhone or Blackberry, then jump back to the Kindle 2, all without losing your place. Read-to-Me is of some interest as well, though I wonder how tinny or jagged the speech will sound as it reads the book to you. If done right, with a smooth, pleasant voice, you may never have to actually read a book again

Update on Read-to-me: Legal action is already being contemplated because of this feature. Publisher's Weekly reports:

Some in the publishing community are raising objections to the new device's deployment of text-to-speech software that lets users have books read aloud by Kindle. Agents are raising questions and Authors Guild executive director Paul Aiken tells the WSJ "they don't have the right to read a book out loud. That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law." Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener says "these are not audiobooks. Text to speech is simply software that runs on devices and reads content." To that argument, an agent responds to us: "TTS is a tool. So is a knife. If I use it to cut vegetables, I'm using it for its intended and lawful purpose. If I use it to stab someone, I'm committing a crime. The fact that they are using a technology to create an audiobook rather than recording one has nothing to do with the issue. They are using a tool that has lawful purposes to violate copyright." Asked about next steps, Aiken says "we're studying it right now."

The Kindle was intended as the iPod or iPhone of the book world. Based on the sales figures Amazon has reported it would seem they're succeeding in this regard. According to Jeff Bezos, Amazon had been selling e-books “for years” and “it wasn’t working until 14 months ago” when the Kindle was launched.

You can see the "Kindle effect" clearly demonstrated by the spike starting in 2007.

So, what to do? Wait-and-see or rush out and pre-order right now? What are other folks' thoughts on the new Kindle 2?

Writing Update #27

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:25:13 -0500

A weekly progress report as I work through the (second pass) editing of my current fantasy novel.

So-so progress this past week. I'm now on page 220 of 365. That's up from last week's 213 and 359, respectively. That leaves me with 145 pages to go. I only cranked out 1,636 words for the week, so from that perspective I didn't do so good. But, I did complete a scene that I had left a "to do" behind on during the first edit, and I'm mostly pleased with the way it turned out.

Total word count went from 105,246 to 106,882, which means I've been creeping back towards that magical 110,000 number. Here's the chart:

Percentage complete has kind of flattened out of late:

I figure about 8.6 weeks left at my current pace, which I think is up a bit from last week. However, now that I'm back into editing instead of writing new material I should be able to get that number moving down again.

That's it. Good writing to those who do that sort of thing.

Writing Update #26

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:50:27 -0500

A weekly progress report as I work through the (second pass) editing of my current fantasy novel.

A couple of weeks ago I posted that I was going to start doing these writing updates monthly instead of weekly. Sometime between then and now I changed my mind. It's back to weekly.

Soon after I settled into that new, monthly reporting schedule, I noticed a change. I'd already slipped a bit the previous week, but now all of a sudden I was suddenly free! Free of responsibility, free of deadlines, free of the accountability I'd imposed upon myself. Unfortunately, such freedom comes with a price: I started spending more time at work and working on my other blog. Nothing wrong with either of those endeavors (in fact, work always comes first because it pays the bills), but the unintentional side-effect was that my writing progress was suffering.

So, back to weekly reporting for me. I realize 99.9% of the people who happen across this blog probably don't give a hoot about how many pages I edited or where my word count is at, so consider this a purely selfish indulgence on my part.

Now that I've bored you all to tears, let me bore you just a little more with this past week's writing progress. Even though I didn't report numbers for last week, I still kept track of them. But I'll go back and do a comparison between where I'm at right now and where I was a couple of weeks ago when last I posted the numbers. The graphs reveal the time between.

Currently, I'm editing page 213 out of a total of 359. That's up from a current page of 181 and total pages of 352 which is where I was at 2 weeks ago.

Percentage-wise here's where I'm at:

First of all, you can see where I slipped a little, though not all of that was me sipping margaritas instead of writing. I actually spent considerable time on a section that got butchered during the first pass edit. The end result was a lot of chunks of text missing, so I had to stitch that scene back together.

Total word count went up for a change:

That's because I started adding new material instead of taking it out. Word count is now at 105,246. I feel pretty confident it won't go down too much more from hereon out.

I'm happy with my progress thus far. Even with a little slacking by my figuring I should have this second edit completed in about 8 weeks. Two more months, then, and eight more updates, then on to the third edit and publishing glory.

Brandon Sanderson: Do a WARBREAKER comparison

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 08:32:25 -0500

Brandon Sanderson is offering his novel Warbreaker as a free download.

What I like about this particular freebie is that he's not only making the final version available but previous versions as well. That's kind of a twist. How often do you get to see what pains an established author went through from first draft to polished final?

He starts with Version 1.0, which bears a warning:

this version is very, very rough. It includes characters that I decide to cut halfway through, has some serious lack of foreshadowing for elements at the climax, and contains a lot of typos. Read at your own risk!

You can make your way through versions 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, and, finally, 4.2, the latest and greatest. He's also got a Word doc which compares versions 1 and 2 if you want to see the differences side-by-side.

Sanderson is giving away Warbreaker under a Creative Commons license. The book will be available for purchase in June of this year.

It's bad all over

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 08:58:00 -0500

Opened up my feed reader to find this post by Jason Sanford where he says:

In only the last few weeks, we've learned that

Realms of Fantasy will cease publication in April (and after they published a great January issue).

Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthology is no more.

F&SF is going to a bi-monthly publication schedule.

On top of that, Asimov's and Analog last year changed to a new format that was more economical to print, while Locus and NYRSF have both recently asked for more subscribers to keep their financials solid. Add this in with problems in the magazine distribution business and cut backs in the book publishing industry, and it isn't hard to see how more bad news could come down in 2009 for written SF/F.

Some of that I'd heard about, but Realms of Fantasy, one of my favorite magazines, closing? Sure enough, go to their web page and you'll see:

Dear Readers: We're sorry to report that the April 2009 issue of Realms of Fantasy Magazine will be the last. Thank you very much for your support these many years!

If you have a remaining subscription to Realms of Fantasy, you can choose one of three options:

-Transfer your subscription on a remaining issue by issue basis to SCI FI Magazine.

-Transfer your subscription on a remaining issue by issue basis to OTAKU USA Magazine.

-Get a refund for the remaining issues left on your Realms of Fantasy subscription.

To tell us about your choice, click on this link to our customer service department. Make sure to include your full name and address. Thank you.

There's perhaps no better reminder that publishing is a business than when doors start closing and someone wraps the proverbial chain and padlock around the door handles.

Baen Books Free Library

scott.nospam@nospam.scottmarlowe.com (scottmarlowe) — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 08:57:00 -0500

In these troubling economic times it's always nice to find some great entertainment that isn't going to cost you anything. Enter Baen Books and their Free Library.

Lots of good stuff here.

I just downloaded Holly Lisle's Fire in the Mist and Michael Z. Williamson's Freehold.

Go check it out and see what you can find.

scottmarlowe.com

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Writing Update #26

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It's bad all over

Baen Books Free Library