Ordinary Day

ETA 6/23/2016 9:37am: Hi, incoming visitors from The Digital Reader! Welcome!

According to a post I spotted on The Digital Reader this morning, the publishing industry’s new spin on why people aren’t buying as many ebooks anymore is “digital fatigue”. The Digital Reader’s post in turn points off to Publishers Weekly’s report, which describes a survey taken of nearly 5,000 readers as to why they aren’t buying as many ebooks anymore.

I’m dubious of the whole concept here, though. I see phrasing like “quality long-form reading experience”, and have to wonder exactly what that’s supposed to mean–if this is just code for “we keep thinking that the digital reading experience is supposed to be exactly like print”, or what. I’m also wondering exactly how they got their pool of respondents for the survey–because their results sound comprehensive, sure, but there’s no data in that article as to how they acquired their survey pool.

And while I note that the article does reference self-published titles (gasp! A publishing industry survey actually acknowledged that self-pubbed titles exist?!), I also note that nowhere in this article does it mention how the uptick in pricing lately has made ebook buying prohibitive for a lot of readers.

It’s certainly been a factor in my own ebook purchasing decisions the last several months. When I see a lot of new novels in SF/F coming out at digital price points of $12.99, $13.99, and $14.99, or novellas coming out at price points like $9.99, then yes, I’m going to buy fewer new ebooks. The publishing industry may not like that Amazon created a consumer expectation of $9.99 for novels, but the fact remains that they did–and I think it’s kind of silly to expect consumers to keep buying books at the same rate when the prices go up considerably. I’m still seeing a fundamental disconnect here between what the industry thinks it ought to charge for ebooks, and what readers are actually willing to pay for them.

I will at least acknowledge that I find fatigue with the devices plausible. I also find it plausible that people don’t really want to read ebooks on their smartphones–because while it’s convenient, it’s also a bit annoying to be only able to read a paragraph or two at a time on a small screen. This is why I generally do also carry a tablet around with me, for doing my reading. And I’ve gone to tablet reading (specifically, the newest Nook tablet I picked up) instead of a dedicated e-reader on the grounds that I want the tablet for other things during the day (occasional day job testing, game play), and it’s unnecessary weight in my backpack to also carry an ereader when I’ve got the tablet.

But a) I’m a techie, b) I live in a tech-heavy town, and c) I have a well-paying day job, so I’m probably an outlier in this. And my social media channels do slant towards fellow techies as well as people who continue to be power readers in the digital realm, like romance readers. (And I’m really, really curious as to whether that survey that PW is talking about included romance readers.)

In general, though: meh. It sure would be nice if the publishing industry eventually figured out that digital readers don’t want to pay high prices for ebooks, but I’m not betting on that happening any time soon.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Over on Dear Author this morning, on their morning news roundup post, I spotted this New York Times article about the new CEO of Barnes and Noble and what his goals are for the chain. There are two general points of interest for me in this article, both of which make me look askance at B&N’s entire modus operandi these days.

First one:

To that end, Mr. Boire is leading a push to rebrand Barnes & Noble as more than just a bookstore by expanding its offerings of toys, games, gadgets and other gifts and reshaping the nation’s largest bookstore chain into a “lifestyle brand.”

As one of Dear Author’s commenters pointed out, exactly whose lifestyle is B&N aiming to represent here? Do they have anything more specific in mind there than “people who are actually willing to set foot in our stores and give us money”? Because I certainly haven’t seen much in the way of actual focus here.

And the other bit I want to call out:

Still, the company’s struggles are probably far from over. Barnes & Noble has been battered by Amazon, its powerful online rival, and has incurred big financial losses from its largely failed attempt to carve out territory in the e-book space with the Nook. While the company posted lower losses in its Nook division in the most recent quarter, sales were still disappointing, as the Nook segment tumbled 31.9 percent to $43.5 million, primarily because of lower digital content sales.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: look, B&N, your ebook sales might not have tanked if you hadn’t unilaterally screwed up the entire experience of buying ebooks on your site when you overhauled it this past summer. I haven’t bought a single ebook from B&N since that site update. It is directly responsible for me shifting the majority of my ebook purchases over to Kobo, with a side helping of Smashwords and Amazon for indie authors.

In other words, if you make it teeth-grindingly impossible for customers to buy digital content on your site, you know what’s going to happen? They’re not going to buy digital content from you.

The Digital Reader had some recent B&N news too. And what made me raise my eyebrows there was that apparently, B&N is now selling pasta. Pasta. Seriously?

Because, as one of the Digital Reader’s commenters pointed out, when I want to buy pasta, I think B&N!

If you need me, I’ll be over here facepalming.

And, for that matter, buying all my future print book purchases at Third Place Books.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Dara’s been keeping a sharp eye on the Hugos brouhaha the past few days. This past Saturday, she put up this report on how certain individuals apparently took it personally that they were being criticized for the behavior of certain other persons in their little coterie. Dara rightly calls this bullshit, because it is–because the Puppies recruited Day into their ranks. And they recruited the GamerGate crowd. And now they’re complaining and claiming that they have no control over the behavior of the “wild wolf” Day.

Sorry, but no. You don’t get to recruit the likes of Day into your ranks and then complain when people call you out on it. It is not only disingenuous, it’s also cowardly.

But of course that wasn’t all, either. Dara’s got another report up this morning, following up on the previous–in which it is declared that people who would vote NO AWARD rather than the Sad Puppies slate are not only assholes, they are also Leninist Communists. (Or Nazis, according to another commenter! So the people the Puppies don’t like are Nazis AND Communists!) Phrases like “cuddly pink fluffy cudgel of political correctness” and “flaming rage nozzles of tolerance” get thrown around. (Because apparently “tolerance” is a dirty word.)

Mr. Torgersen apparently also feels that people who support Chick-Fil-A are “heroes”, and that supporting a corporation known for blatant homophobia is the act of “free people”.

I’ve seen other posts in which larger names in the genre are calling for civility. George R.R. Martin and Mary Robinette Kowal are trying to do their part to fight the fires. Noble efforts on both their parts, and I particularly applaud Kowal for not only being willing to provide people supporting memberships to Worldcon, but specifically also recusing herself from any Hugo nominations next year. Likewise, I applaud those who are matching Kowal’s efforts and trying to broaden the pool of supporting memberships being offered to fans on tight budgets.

I’m all for civility. I’m for the ideal of SFdom being welcoming to all within its ranks. We are supposed to be the literature of ideas, after all, and ideas cannot thrive in an atmosphere of stagnation. We need to have our ideas challenged, and in order to do that, we need diversity in the ranks.

But here’s the thing–when some of those ranks are on record as not wanting women, people of color, or people of alternative sexualities in the clubhouse, when they specifically go out of their way to fight against such persons being included, and when they shriek that all who would stand in their way are Nazis and Communists and “Social Justice Warriors” and “CHORFs” and whatever other derogatory terms they dream up… my civility is spent. So are my tolerance and sympathy.

Politically disagreeing with me is one thing. Going out of your way to fight against my existence is another thing entirely.

Tolerance goes only so far. It presumes that all parties are at least willing to accept each other’s presence in the clubhouse. But this? This is spiteful little boys throwing tantrums that the girls and the black kids and the queer kids are in the clubhouse now too, and they want some of the punch and pie.

And hey. Pie is tasty. But we don’t have to fight over the pie. There is enough for all, people.

But if you want a slice of the pie, stop throwing tantrums. And stop trying to push the other kids back out of the clubhouse. It’s unworthy of children above the age of six, never mind grown men. It’s unworthy of the literature of ideas.

And it needs to stop.

In closing, here, instead of a Sad Puppy, I offer this Happy Kitten instead.

So Happy!

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

For the first time since 2007, Dara and I will be going to Worldcon. We’ve come out of the mire of the financial hits leveled at us by several consecutive years of medical crap, and moreover, the convention’s taking place in our home state. We can drive to it. Even better, I and several other authors in NIWA are banding together to run a table there. We’ve got books. We’re gonna sell ‘em.

The thing that makes me sad and tired and wary, though, is what’s happened with the Hugo ballot this year.

As y’all may remember, since Dara and I semi-regularly post about this, there’s a broad ultra-right-wing conservative clique within SFdom. They’ve been up in arms lately because the wrong things have been winning Hugos. And by “wrong things”, I mean “things created by women, people of color, and queers”. They’ve pushed back against this with an organized rush to get things they consider acceptable onto the voting ballot.

And the particularly vile part of this: they’ve reached out to GamerGate to pull them in on these shenanigans. All in the name of getting additional recruits for their declared war on “social justice warriors”.

(About that phrase, by the way: I’m now ranking “social justice warrior” right alongside “political correctness” on the list of phrases that set my teeth on edge. I’ve said before that if the first words out of your mouth on any issue are “political correctness”, then you are part of the problem. Likewise, I here and now state for the record that if you are the sort of person to dismiss progressives and liberals as “social justice warriors”, you are going to have to work very, very hard to get me to respect and take seriously anything you have to say. Do not bank on your success in that regard.

Besides, me? Totally a social justice healer. But I digress.)

Dara has written up a comprehensive post on the matter, and what attendees of Worldcon can do about this to cut this and future Hugo shenanigans off at the pass, in the name of trying to keep the award from becoming entirely meaningless. Her recommendation: vote “No Award” on any category overloaded with the nominees from the voting bloc in question.

I will be following Dara’s recommendations, because it is deeply disheartening to me to see SFdom becoming, more and more, a microcosm of the same “us-vs-them”, toxic tribalism that has infected US culture in general. If you’re going to Worldcon too and therefore have the ability to vote on the Hugos, I encourage you to consider doing the same.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Dammit, B&N, are you people trying to shoot yourselves in the feet? Because it sure looks like you’re hunting for bigger and bigger guns to do just that.

Spotted on Dear Author today: news that Barnes and Noble secretly partnered with Author Solutions to sell print on demand and other services to self-pub authors.

Why is this a problem? Because Author Solutions, as detailed here by David Gaughran and here on The Digital Reader, Author Solutions has a terrible reputation in the writing community. And they are in fact being sued for their practices of upselling useless marketing crap to authors who sign on with them.

What particularly pisses me off about this is Gaughran’s description of how all Nook Press users are at risk of having their data handed to Author Solutions.

I was already cranky at B&N for taking down the Download buttons off their portal on the web site for Nook users to get to their libraries. But as a Nook Press author, I am deeply disturbed by this news, enough that I will seriously be considering removing Faerie Blood and Bone Walker from Nook Press, deleting my account there, and using Smashwords to deploy to B&N in the future.

Fellow indie authors, I urge you to get up to speed on this development, and to stay far away from B&N’s Author Services, and from Author Solutions in general.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

As has been announced today at Dear Author as well as Smart Bitches Trashy Books, Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches is now administering a defense fund to support Jane Litte and Dear Author in the Ellora’s Cave v. Dear Author case.

So if you have any interest in this case and would like to help support Jane and Dear Author, there’s now a way to do it. Check any of the links for Sarah’s announcement on the matter, and what their expectations are as to how to handle the money. There’s a bit of data as well as to what Jane herself is doing to pay her attorney–who, being a pretty high-profile lawyer, is not cheap, even though he’s discounting his hourly rate for this case.

I’ve donated, and will continue to keep an eye on this case myself. More news as I have it.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

It seems that the Ellora’s Cave v. Dear Author lawsuit has started getting traction on other major Internet sites as well as mainstream media. Jezebel has picked up the story here, and Liberty Voice has a post up here. And as I reported yesterday, the L.A. Times picked up the story too.

Meanwhile, for those of you who may have missed it on either Dear Author or the Smart Bitches site, Jane has put out a call for authors, cover artists, or editors who are willing to testify in the case. (People associated with EC, obviously.) Relatedly, Courtney Milan has an offer up to help people who may be afraid to testify and break anonymity. (Another reason why Courtney Milan is awesome, and I’m happy to be a reader of her work.)

So things do appear to have proceeded past the filing stage, and the romance genre’s presence on the Net continues to be heavily focused upon this. More as I hear about it.

Meanwhile, I do have one EC author who’s pinged me to take me up on the offer of a Boosting the Signal post. While Boosting the Signal is still technically on hiatus, I WILL be running her piece–as well as a piece this Friday from fellow Carina author Sheryl Nantus, AND a piece from long-time online-and-local author pal Chrysoula Tzavelas. Be on the lookout for these to come. I’ll be having some pieces forthcoming from Dragonwell Press as well.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

For those of you who may have missed the news as it exploded over the weekend, Jane Litte and the Dear Author site are being sued by Ellora’s Cave. As you might expect, there was a great deal of brouhaha over this, not only on Dear Author, but also over on Smart Bitches.

However, there are new developments as of this morning. Jane reports on Dear Author’s Monday news post that she’s now retained the services of Marc Randazza, a story also picked up by The Digital Reader.

It’s very worth noting that a bunch of Jane’s commenters were urging her to go talk to PopeHat, and that the guy she’s now hired is spoken VERY highly of on that site, calling him a First Amendment badass. This is promising news indeed.

Meanwhile, I’m seeing the #notchilled hashtag springing up on Twitter, and several of the authors I follow are speaking out passionately on it.

Like Courtney Milan, about whom I’ve posted before as one of the small but growing set of romance novelists whose work I REALLY like. Courtney’s letting Ellora’s Cave have it with both barrels on her own blog as well as on Twitter:

Ellora's Cave has switched their business model from making money with their authors to making money off their authors. #notchilled

— Courtney Milan (@courtneymilan) September 29, 2014

Fellow Carina author Ella Drake ALSO has words to say about this–because SHE’S had some experience as an EC author, too:

We don't need an outside blogger to show us the doubt we already had. #notchilled

— Ella Drake (@Lori_Ella) September 29, 2014

And with Ella in mind, I’ll make an open offer to any Ellora’s Cave authors whose sales are impacted by EC’s implosion and by readers backing out of buying their work: if any of you have non-EC titles you’d like to encourage people to buy instead, come talk to me and I’ll run a piece for you on Boosting the Signal.

ETA: Couple more links as people continue to post about this:

The Book Pushers have proclaimed that, moving forward, they won’t be reviewing Ellora’s Cave releases and invite EC authors to submit non-EC titles for review instead

Novelist and blogger Barry Eisler is deeply unamused at EC’s behavior, along with the rest of the Internet

Jenny Trout has choice, pungent words for some individuals who’re pleased that DA is getting sued

Bad Menagerie posts about how they’re exactly the small-time bloggers that many are suspecting EC is trying to intimidate

Wendy the Super Librarian breaks out her Little Miss Crabby Pants persona, and goes into detail as to why EC’s behavior is a problem for everyone

Book blogging site KBGBabbles expresses its concerns

Deirdre Saoirse Moen has an EC Author Exodus Support thread

And OH YES: the LA Times has picked up the story

More to come as I find it.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

News has broken since yesterday that Ellora’s Cave has sued Dear Author, specifically over the post DA did here, talking about the publisher’s history and how they appear to be imploding now, and basically asking WTF. EC is suing DA for defamation. Jane Litte of DA, being involved in the suit, cannot really post about it in depth. But Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches posts about it here.

There is a great deal of WTF to be had here, in no small part because Jane Litte was reporting on Things That Actually Happened. This used to be called “journalism”. But if this suit has its way, it could now be called “defamation”.

I’m not an Ellora’s Cave author, but I do know folks who are, and who have been deeply worried about developments with that publisher. That there are EC authors who are not getting paid for the work even though their work continues to be on sale concerns me deeply. So does EC authors being afraid to speak out publicly about what’s been going on.

And now DA is being sued?

This is, in a word, bullshit. I know from following the Dear Bitches Smart Authors podcast that Jane is herself a lawyer, so she’s got background to understand the level of bullshit involved here. But I really hope that the Ohio courts will smack this down, and if Jane winds up calling for help with a legal fund, I’ll be throwing her what bucks I can spare.

ETA: I’ve been linked to! So here, if you’d like to see other links cropping up on this matter:

Her Hands My Hands stands up to join the Streisand Effect starting to spread about this.

The Digital Reader reports on the matter, including an explanation of what SLAPP is (note: Jane Litte reported a lack of anti-SLAPP laws in Ohio, which could prove to be a problem).

Vacuous Minx reports on how EC has bailed on a prior lawsuit before, and speculates on likely outcomes of this case.

And although this is a post from earlier this month, prior to news of this lawsuit, Writer Beware reported on the EC implosion and warned writers off of submitting new work to them.

Pete Morin has a link off to the actual complaint filed. Which I have now read, and it’s interesting to note that EC is specifically stating that the assertions that EC authors aren’t getting paid are false, and they seem to be trying to make a case for the DA post being a cause for EC authors having a panic rush–rather than oh, say, EC authors themselves reporting that this shit is going down and DA’s post reacting to that.

The Passive Voice has a post up also linking to the complaint, and some analysis of what will be happening now both in the post and in the comments.

More links as I find ‘em, folks.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Amazon’s new Kindle Unlimited service, which is basically their attempt to do Netflix for ebooks as far as I can tell, has been getting a lot of attention in the publishing world. Reactions, from what I’ve seen so far, are quite mixed. (Mr. Scalzi, for example, has an interesting writeup on the topic over here.) So here’s mine.

With my reader hat on, I’m feeling right now like this service won’t be useful to me, since it doesn’t really address how I interact with ebooks. If there’s a book I want to read that I don’t want to put down money for up front, I already have a way to address that: the Seattle Public Library and the King County Library System, both of which are very friendly to ebook checkouts. Granted, this doesn’t always work, since there are some books that these two systems might not actually have and which I could in theory immediately grab via Kindle Unlimited if I were so inclined.

But here’s the thing. If there’s a book I want to read ASAP, chances are very high that it’s by an author who’s already on my buy list. In which case, if I want it, I’ll be buying it. If it’s not an author I know already, chances are equally high that said book is competing with the several hundred other things on my To Read list, and it’ll come off the queue when I get to it. If the library systems don’t have it, I can generally wait till they do.

And if I happen to become unemployed again, the service becomes even more superfluous. $9.99 a month isn’t much if you have a regular, well-paying job. But if you don’t, every new dollar adds up. And this would be one of the first expenses I’d drop if I happened to be a subscriber who suddenly lost her job.

Really, though, when you get right down to it, I’m perfectly happy to use the library for books I’m not sure I want to buy yet. And if it becomes a question of “who gets my money”, I’d just as soon donate to the library rather than blow $9.99 a month for access to books I will most likely not actually read in any given month.

Because I mean, seriously, people, there are currently over 1,200 titles on my Goodreads To Read shelf. Many of which I already own, and most of the rest of which I can grab from the library when necessary. I’m not seeing much need to blow $9.99 a month on top of that to get access to those books via some other mechanism.

Meanwhile, with my author hat on, my reactions are mixed. Whether my titles with Carina show up on this service is beyond my control. If Harlequin elects to deploy Carina titles to the service, it’s certainly possible that I might get a few extra pennies I might not otherwise get, which is fine. (Though at the level at which I currently operate, yeah, a few extra pennies would be what I’d have to expect here.)

And as y’all know, since I’m not publishing Faerie Blood exclusively with Amazon, that title certainly won’t be getting out there. So in regards to my self-published stuff, Kindle Unlimited isn’t a benefit to me at all.

How about y’all? Anybody out there going to sign up for this thing, as a writer OR a reader?

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.