Change in Blog Stop #31!

Blog Tourists: There's been a change in the next blog stop, #31. I couldn't get online to change my post or inform anyone, so I apologize for not getting the new URL posted, Here it is Author Raine Delight:
http://rainedelightbooknook.blogspot.com/2010/07/happy-anniversary-1romancecom.html

More later. moving on to the condo and joining visiting family. Happy Blog Tour, everyone!

Delle

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO 1ROMANCEEBOOKS.COM!

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO 1ROMANCEEBOOKS.COM!
(INTRODUCTION TO BLOG, INCLUDING LINK TO PREVIOUS BLOG) Thank you for my stop on the 1RomanceEbooks.com one year anniversary blog tour!

This is blog stop # 30, following  #29, J.M. Snyder, URL:  http://jmsnyder.com/
The link to the next stop will be found at the end of this post.

While this is not exactly the trip from Hell, it does have some of those characteristics. The Swan is a lovely hotel, but the room is problematic. Little things: We asked for a cot, and after many hours had a rollaway delivered when we were at dinner. But I am not very good as sleeping vertically, so I did request that somebody come back and place the bed parallel to the floor. Other little details along the same vein, yet the place is pleasant and nice at the same time. Naturally a personal family crisis had to hit at the same time and getting back home early doesn't seem to be a workable option.  On the bright side, the scary part of that has passed, and friends are stepping in to help out.

I'm actually writing this Tuesday night, in case I can't Wednesday night. Tomorrow I'll be meeting with about a hundred other authors who write Regency-set romances, with workshops aimed at historical information, improving writing skills, market and sales, and so on. And food. The food is spectacular. Tomorrow night, we'll have a "soiree" with a lot of us coming in Regency costume and performing real English country dances. Regency style gaming.  And food. More great food.

What I'm going to try to do tomorrow is take several photos and then just add them to what I've writter here. rather than try to re-write in the middle of the night when I finally get back to my room. But the very fact that I will be too exhausted to write anything  more should tell you what I great time I'm having!

As a prize I'm giving away 2 things: a copy of  winner's choice of any of my ebooks on 1RE- including the award-winner I'm going to put up after I get back home, HIS MAJESTY, THE PRINCE OF TOADS. In addition, there will be a beautiful hand-blown glass  necklace. And maybe, just for a whim, I'll add a little souvenir from Harry Potter-land or Disney World Depending on what I find.

Please leave a comment to enter the drawing to win!  Maybe a question about Disney World or something about writer's conferences or this special interest one which will be the day before the huge Romance Writers of America conference starts. In my spare time. I'll try to answer.

Yah, sure, you say.  Okay, just post your comments, then., and maybe you'll win the Grand Prize, the fabulous Sony Touch EReader. Remember: the more comments you leave on the tour, the better your chances of winning the grand prize.  
***
The next stop on the anniversary tour is #31, Claire Thompson, URL:   http://clairethompsonauthor.blogspot.com/

UNVEILING THE SECRETS OF THE CAPTCHA Part 3

Like me, you no doubt have puzzled many times over the meanings of those strange Captcha words you have to re-type before posting comments on blogs. You know- the ones that look so much like words, yet aren't any words you've ever seen before? It's  one of my lifelong ambitions to unravel these riddles, so I have been collecting them and piece by painstaking piece uncovering their true meanings. Alas, I fear the task is never-ending: more of them appear every day. But here are some of them I've managed to decipher:

Lumanoc: n. Singular of a wild ox that comes out only by the light of a full moon. Grows long fangs to replace its ruminant teeth. Feeds on werewolves.

Whors: n. an archaic spelling for a long legged quadraped that munches grass. (Surprise! You thought it was something else, didn't you?)

Redigrab: n. First conceived in a laboratory with the intention of producing a viable competitor to Cling Wrap, Redigrab was discovered to have such gripping power it was found to be most useful to law enforcement for detaining criminals instead of handcuffs. Unfortunately it had the same effect on the arresting officers, while those of the criminal persuasion quickly learned the only antidote was peanut butter. Therefore, by slathering their wrists with peanut butter in preparation for the commission of a crime, the criminals pre-disposed themselves to escape, leaving their would-be captors bound instead. Hence, Redigrab has been outlawed in all civilized countries and is now used only in Somalia, where nobody knows who's in charge anyway.

Icksatly: adv. Pig Latin corruption of sickly. Sometimes mistaken for NASA-Speak referring to a malfunctioning Mars satellite.

Prorn: n. Clearly, this is text-speak for professional porn.

Bustsos-- uhhhh..... Several implications for this word have been uncovered but all have turned out to be false leads, and its true meaning continues to elude me. If anyone has seen this word used in an appropriate fashion or has knowledge of its roots, it is imperative that you report it to the proper authority (me) immediately.

Leervows: v.  That's when one of those really tiny passenger jets promises to get you off the ground and even safely back to earth. Really. Honest. Fixed that hole in the fuel tank. Put a really stout Band-Aid on the one back by the tail section. It'll be perfectly safe. No need to report it to the FAA.

Pedrapid: n. A pedophile on foot after his 1978 Plymouth ran out of gas in the desert. A condition that happens all too rarely.

Depical: n. A putrid pink medicine you take by the spoonful to cure bouts of depis, a skin disease with hiccups and spells of ADD. Don't believe me? Watch my grandsons.

Terrific Blog Tour!

Happy Birthday to 1Romance EBooks! They're celebrating with a fabulous Blog Tour from July 15 to 31, over 30 authors, up to 2 a day, participating! GRAND PRIZE is a Sony reader TOUCH edition, selected by drawing from all participating and REGISTERED readers who comment. Every comment during the tour earns another chance for the reader, so you have lots of opportunities to win. Every author is giving out a prize too, so that's 34 more chances to win a prize. http://1romanceebooks.com

My day is July 29th, when I'll be in Orlando at RWA and the Beau Monde conferences, so I'll share my experiences with you. And I'll be giving away the winner's choice of an ebook from 1Romance EBooks, plus a beautiful hand-poured glass pendant necklace.

You MUST register at 1Romance EBooks before any of your comments will count, so get busy and sign up. It's free, and you'll get a chance to get to know a bunch of authors, all who write romance. You can earn more points, too. Just go to their site and read the rules. And have a great time touring with us!

Randy Ingermanson on the Future of Publishing

I just read this article from Randy Ingermanson's blog called The Future of Publishing. If you are interested in publishing and what your future is in the big flow of the mighty rivers within it, read this article. It's extremely insightful.  http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/blog/2010/07/07/the-future-of-publishing/

 It's  long and very detailed, 9 specific predictions, looking at the broad expanse of publishing and how it will change. I'm inclined to agree, although I don't see anything in this article about how Amazon and other e-distributors will fit in. I think those things, which will ultimately determine the income of published authors, are in great flux right now, so certainly I would be reluctant to make such a prediction.

I'm guessing anyway, though. Apple's iPad is making a huge play for the ebook market. Sony, Barnes & Noble and many small distributors are also diving into the melee. Amazon's Kindle intends to own the whole show. But now Google is headed toward the skirmish pile. Then there are all the small ebook publishers. Will they be squeezed out by self-publishing in e-form? Well, I think the strong and innovative will stay strong. The weaker, poorly organized companies will miss too many opportunities. And in the end- or perhaps only the immediate end- Amazon will not rule the world after all. Sorry, Amazon. To use a parallel in nature: The mighty Amazon River flows into an ocean- the Atlantic Ocean. And the ocean is bigger.

Retro-Geek Triumphs Again!

I am discovering more and more every day about using The New Blogger as a website. Except that I don't think I'm even going to bother to call it a website. It's a Multi-Blog? I don't care.

What's new?

1. Linked the pages and related secondary blogs, and back-link to home blog. Need BUTTONS instead. I'll work on that.

2. Completed the Mexico photo blog on The Most Beautiful Place on Earth. Go check it out. Next is England, then the Mediterranean.

3. Getting the Books blog in shape. New posting on my newest coming release, LADY WICKED. I would still like to post the stories of how each book came to be. 

4. Added a Fan Page, but don't know how I'm going to organize it. Can't use my previous design- it won't work here.

5. More to do- no link to my videos, no reviews of books posted. 

Most important (for me), a new idea:

6.I don't have enough blogs! I felt like I needed a private place, to could organize myself, rant if I so pleased, keep all my notes handy and so on. I've used GMail's calendar and task list but it feels like I'm shoe-horning myself into their mold. So I designed a blog that really works for me.  A Day-Planner and Journal combined. The way I've used spiral-bound notebooks for years.

In the center is the blog part with titled postings. The documents, etc. On the left column is a dated list of things not to forget. Bills, tasks, appointments. On the right, a current shopping list, and links to sites I'm likely to need quickly. I want to post a small calendar because I've always found it helpful to visualize how much time fits between now and an event. The one I have found does link me directly to my Google GMail age calendar, which is nice, but 'd rather have it right on the blog. And I don't like the ad, but don't want to pay to remove it. So I will likely just put up my own link to the GMail page, and find an updating calendar for visual.

For me, this is a major success. As visual as I am, I'm always forgetting what is not in sight. And the organizer stuff I've seen for computers seems to fit a world that is a step beyond my reach. This blog does it my way! It's pretty, and it's elegant, and it's just mine. No one else can find it. Voila! Victoire! (Can you tell I don't speak French?)

KINDLE Goes to 70% Royalties

You might have noticed my books have not been available on Kindle the last few days, or that I no longer have them listed with deep discount prices or free on Smashwords. That's actually good news. Two of them are back up on Kindle, and the other two will be soon. Here's what's going on:

As of June 30, the new 70% royalty rates are available on Kindle. This change, announced in May, doubles the previous 35% royalty rate, which was Pikersville compared to what competition was paying- 65 to 85%, depending on the site. But with Kindle selling possibly 90% or better of ebooks in general, self-publishing ebook authors couldn't afford not to use Kindle as a distributor. Amazon's one driving force all these years has been to capture the entirety of the market, though, and competition from smaller sites, which often offered free ebooks, or discounted rates, was beginning to cut into their game. After all, if an author gets 85% of the cut, as on Smashwords, he/she can sell her books at a heavily discounted price and still make more per book than through Kindle because if there's anything ebook buyers love, it's cheap or free ebooks.

But naturally, considering its true nature, Amazon found a way to leverage the increased royalty rate into a competition-bashing weapon. And authors can't really turn it down if their aim is making sales that have some meaning.

Kindle will also keep the 35% royalty rate, and authors may choose. But they can only have the 70% rate IF they do not offer their book on a competitive site for less money. In addition, the book must be priced between $2.99 and 9.99, and it must be priced at least 20% lower than the retail price of the same book in print. And, the book may not be in the public domain. The author or publisher who puts the book up on Kindle must have legal rights to its publication. In addition, there is a delivery fee based on size of file, which amounts to about a nickel on my books.

There are a few things that seem sort of contradictory, and I'm researching them, but it seems clear to me that I cannot offer my books on Smashwords or another such site, or my own site, for any price under $2.99, and clearly I cannot give them away or offer them at "Name your own price" , which I had been doing.

That was, unfortunately, one of Smashwords' best draws. But if, for example, I sold one book in a hundred for a price of about $1- and that's about how much one gets with the "Name your own price" pricing, I'd have to give away huge number of books to equal 70% of $2.99, minus $.05, or $2.04 for every book. I can count on each of my books selling at least 10 books a month, and many times, a lot more. It's kind of unpredictable. And yes, I admit I haven't been promoting in the most effective ways on Amazon, so they could be doing much better than this. To make better use of Smashwords, I'd have to give up 35% in royalties from Kindle. I can't afford that.

The question is, of course, what will Smashwords do to counter Kindle's move? I am no lawyer, but I see this strong-arm method of grabbing the competition's customers as pretty close to an anti-trust move. That's never scared Amazon off from trying similar tactics in the past, but in almost all cases they've had to back down. So I wonder what will happen next?

For those of you who are considering re-issuing your older books for which you have your rights, or if you're thinking about e-publishing some stories you don't plan to put through the traditional publishing process, maybe this increase, coming from the biggest seller of ebooks in the industry, could be good news. It's good for me, overall. With this increase, I'll be making more money per month from my older books than I ever made through a publisher in an entire quarter. And from the last owner of the company, more every month than I made in the entire year.