Category Archives: kindle

Damned with faint praise. Or something like it.

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Damned with faint praise

I was stuck on what to write for this week’s offering but as usual something came up, and it wasn’t that quesadilla I had for lunch. It is a wondrous age we live in, and it seems that for good or for ill, something new is developed every day. So it is that there is a new development that the authors in our audience — particularly the mid-list folks who, imho, provide the solid backbone of the publishing industry — might want to be made aware of. Amazon is slowly adding a feature, or element, or whatever you might want to call it, on their book title pages titled “What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?” and which consists of a list of four or five titles, accompanied by the percentages of buyers who bought another book to the exclusion of the one they were originally looking up. This is to be distinguished from the “Customers who bought this book also bought” (emphasis added) feature. No, the “ultimately buy” feature tells the world what percentage of the audience looked at your book, found it wanting, and bought another book by someone else instead! It’s kind of like sitting in the autograph room at Bouchercon and hoping that someone will come up to your table, and just as someone does, their friend says, “oh, let’s go meet ______ ____________ instead.” It’s not being done with every book by every author, and, at least as far as I can tell, it’s only being utilized by amazon.co.uk. Maybe the Brits have thicker skins, though I don’t think so: I learned of this feature from a British author, whose novel had received the implicitly rough treatment, and the author was, uh, not happy.

I don’t think that this new feature is going to be welcomed with open arms by authors on either side of the Atlantic. Am I wrong, here? What I sense is a suggestion to the effect that if you’re looking for something to read, you might find something you like better elsewhere, and we have a jury of your peers to tell you so. As for the authors themselves, I could see this busting up some friendships. I mean, if you have ten books published, and Amazon is noting with each one that a certain percentage of people would rather buy a book by, say, Author A, that might create a problem. I really don’t see how it helps anything, either. It’s might be intended as a sort of “Recommended If You Like” referral, but it isn‘t, and they have one of those already with their “ People Who Bought this book also bought“ feature. It strikes me as more of a “Why would you want to read this when you could read that?” Or to put it another way, it’s almost like an article in your neighborhood newspaper which states that while your wife might still love you, she would rather be tupped by your next door neighbor, as would seventy per cent of the women on the street. Oh, and your Kindle books aren’t safe from this thing, either.

So what do you think of this? I would include a link to an example of this, but I don’t want to embarrass anyone, even indirectly. But have you seen this? Have you been a — I hate to use this term, but there is no other — victim of it? And should Amazon, UK or US or otherwise, get some feedback about it? What say you?

Our Survey SAID…

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I received a Kindle for Father’s Day 2010. I loved it. I still do. It is the junkie’s dream come true, instant gratification in a tool that will fit in Captain Kangaroo‘s pocket. On Father’s Day night, I looked at the stacks (yes, stacks) of books next to my bed that await my terminal illness (I figure I’ll have lots of time to read everything if I’m too ill to do anything else. Well, maybe not lots of time…) and told myself that there was no longer need for me to grab a book off of a store shelf that I didn’t have time to read, just so I’d have it when I wanted to read it. Since I could have a book when I wanted it just by pressing a couple of buttons, I didn’t need to create a backlog. I would load a book, read it, and then buy another. Never again, I told myself, would I need to hoard books. Right.

At last count, one year later, I have thirty or so books that have accumulated on my Kindle. I mean, why would I pass up the complete works of Sax Rohmer for a couple of bucks? Or a new Marcus Wynne novel for ninety-nine cents? I drop ninety-nine cents in change on the floor of my car when I’m exchanging bucks for ambrosia in the Sonic Drive-through. I’m going to resist buying Lawrence Block books, which have been out of print for decades, for less than the cost of a Venti espresso that I will purge within an hour? I’m going to pass that up?

So I ask…how many of you out there have an accumulation of unread books on your Kindle? If you have such an accumulation, how many do you have? And do you have any idea why you are doing it, since, well, it’s not like Amazon is going to run out of a particular title? Is there something really, really wrong with us? Or are we okay and it’s just the guy who collects virtual beer cans who needs an intervention? You tell me.

The Curious Case of the Overpriced Kindle

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By John Gilstrap

A friend of mine who happens to be a mega-selling thriller writer finds himself in an interesting spot. A month or so ago, Publisher’s Weekly gave his now just-released book a coveted starred review. That’s a big deal. Just about everybody in the book business reads or is familiar with PW, and a rave review from them can do great things for a book. It’s more important for newer writers than it is for authors of my friend’s ilk, but still, it’s quite an honor.

Imagine the disappointment, then, when I logged on to Amazon and I saw that his average review there is 2.5 stars. What gives? How can there be such a disconnect? How can a book that received such acclaim garner so many one-star reviews?

It turns out that there’s a readers’ revolution in play, and the cause they’re fighting for is fairly priced Kindle books. In my friend’s case, the Kindle version of the book is selling for $14.99—about a dollar more than the discounted price for the hardcover—and his fans are in full revolt. Their only weapons in this war are to boycott the author, and to pollute his rating with one-star reviews.

I get the anger over the pricing. Back when the Kindle was first making the news, the deal was clear: You could buy any book you wanted for no more than $9.99. Then the publishers revolted, and the so-called agency model was born, in which publishers get to set the retail price for their books. Thus, mega-selling authors have more expensive eBooks than non-mega-selling authors, and Kindlefolk feel betrayed.

I can’t begin to understand what the publisher is thinking in this scenario. In what world does it make sense to market eBooks at a higher price point than hardcovers? Add that to the list of bazillion things in the entertainment business that make no sense at all.

Because it makes no sense, I think the feelings of betrayal are justified, but the payback strategy feels flawed. People feel like they have to make their feelings known, and polluting the ratings feels good. It’s kind of the same thing as punishing a waiter with a bad tip because your steak was overcooked. It might feel good, but at the end of the day it accomplishes nothing.

If you read deeper into many of the angry reviews, you’ll find stated intentions not just to boycott the author whose book has been overpriced but his publisher, but—inexplicably, I think—to boycott the Kindle and eBooks in general. This is where I start to get pissed.

Why throw out the reading device? Why not express your anger by reading a new author in the same genre? Why not give a break to some newbie whose publisher is working hard to grab your attention? Are people so addicted to name brand franchise authors that they can’t take a chance on a new name?

If you’re angry about the price of the brand name books, and you want to get the publishers’ attention, I think you need to take your business to a different publisher. Not only might you find a new author to like, but your experiment would truly publish the offender you’re trying to get back at.

Off the top of my head, I can think of 11 mystery and thriller writers who would love a chance to be added to your must-read list.

Good news for ebooks: the 82-year-old mother test

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About this time last year, TKZ hosted a couple of spirited discussions about the merits of e-books, Kindles, and electronic publishing in general. After watching my 82-year-old mother become a devoted “Kindle convert” during the course of a recent cross-country road trip, I suspect that the technology battle is over. E-books have won.

My mother (nicknamed “Mimi” by friends and family) and I recently drove from South Carolina to Los Angeles in a cream puff of a car, a ’99 Mercedes sedan (it had only 17,000 miles on it when we hit the road). My sister had given Mimi a Kindle at the outset of our trip–and as we set off, my mother was a gracious but reluctant recipient. Thanks, she said, but I’ll never be able to hold it right for reading. It just won’t feel the same as a book. Will I have to keep it on a wire like the laptop I never use?

And then she plugged it in. Two days later, I couldn’t pull her away from the thing.

By the time we got to Phoenix, Mimi had already made her way through two Stieg Larsson books, and was downloading more. She was so enraptured by the reading experience that she was barely coming up for air.

Before she got her Kindle, Mimi was a voracious reader, but her buying habits wouldn’t have brought joy to publishers. Unable to make it out to the library anymore, she had become an avid reader of used books–we would send her box loads of second hand books. As a child of the Depression, Mimi thinks paying $26.95 for a brand new hardback is practically sinful, and she’d fuss at us if we splurged on any title we could have bought used from Amazon at a fraction of the price.(I tried to explain to her that buying new books helped ensure the future of her favorite authors, but try explaining that to someone who peeled the foil off the backs of gum sticks during World War II).

Mimi is so excited about her Kindle, it’s like we’ve given an addict her first hit.  She rhapsodizes about how you can increase the font size, and the long battery life.

After all the angst and anguish about what e-books will do to publishing, I think the future is bright–in the future, readers like Mimi will be downloading and paying full price for e-books. By being able to browse and read samples online, they’ll be exposed to new releases and other books they may never otherwise have read. And–did I mention? They’ll pay full price.


I think this is great news for writers and publishers. I call it the “82-year-old mother test.” Bottom line: If Mimi loves your product, you’ve got a great future. And boy, does Mimi love her new Kindle.

If my mother has joined the ranks of e-reader converts, I’m ready to declare an end to the debate (at least on Tuesdays, which is my blog day). The e-book era is officially here. May we all live long, e-read, and prosper.

What about you? Have you overcome previous doubts about e-books and joined the ranks of e-readers? Are you secretly hoping for an iPad, Nook, or Kindle this year?

A Little of This, a Little of That

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I visited one of our local Barnes & Noble superstores — one of those two story freestanding buildings that one can get lost in for hours — and was on the receiving end of a mental gut punch. A good portion of the second floor which had formerly been set aside for fiction has been given over to the expanded children’s section. I don’t have anything against children’s books, mind you; if young ones don’t love reading early it’s doubtful they’ll develop even a deep fond for it later — but a lot of what I saw consisted of book-related merchandise (stuffed animals and the like) as opposed to books. What caused the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach (and yes, there’s quite a distance to be traversed before one reaches my pit) was that I recalled a very similar occurrence several years before. There was a popular chain store named Media Play that I used to frequent. I walked into one about a year after digital downloading of music became popular, and found that their music CD section was reduced by forty percent. Media Play, by the way, is no longer in business.

What you will find at Barnes & Noble: signs everywhere you look for the Nook (you might say they‘re in every cranny). And the Nook will be available at your local Wal-Mart beginning Monday October 25. You’ll be able to find the Kobo there as well, along with the Sony e-book Reader and something called the iPad. The battle has been joined.

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Here’s an idea for you: renting e-books. If you can’t afford Ken Follett’s latest book, even as an e-book, rent it for two bucks for two weeks. Pay two bucks, download a DRM-protected file to your Kindle (or Sony Reader, or Nook, or iPad) and read it. It disappears after two weeks. The provider gets a cut and — yes! — the author and the publisher (if there is one) get royalties as well every time a book is downloaded. Under the traditional library model, nobody gets anything when a book is borrowed from the library. I remember a few years ago when I went to borrow a book about a Da Vinci code or something or other and was on a waiting list behind 288 people. If you don’t want to wait to read it, then for a couple of bucks you won’t have to. Reader’s groups would love this. You wouldn’t need a public, tax-supported entity to sustain it, either. I don’t see libraries loving this idea (or jumping on it (some libraries offer audio book and e-book downloads, but the selection is paltry) but its meant as an alternative, not a substitute, to libraries. And suppose you really like the book, and want to keep it? Your rental fee could count, in full or in part, toward the purchase price.
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A new site to bookmark and check daily: Len Wanner’s The Crime Of It All The Crime Of It All
The Crime Of It All

. It’s devoted to mystery and crime fiction. Worth a look and a read. Repeatedly.

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And speaking of reading: I’m juggling two books. One is NASHVILLE CHROME by Rick Bass, a fictional treatment of the history of country music’s Brown Family. It’s a wonderfully told cautionary tale about the downside of getting what you wish for. The other is BOOK OF SHADOWS by Alexandra Sokoloff, a beautifully dark tale by one of my favorite authors and people.

Improving the Kindle and some other things

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I am having one of those rare days where I am actually feeling my age and as a result I am somewhat (uncharacteristically) cranky. After chasing the neighborhood urchins off of the driveway and kicking the cat I was playing with my Kindle and instead of 1) being thankful for the technological marvel that it is and 2) still being alive to see it I instead started grousing to myself about what it isn’t, and what it doesn’t have. Just for the record, I love the Kindle. I really do. I don’t love it as much as the flash drive (for which, I confess, I have acquired feelings a couple steps down from a fetish) but it’s close. It’s not quite where I want it, however. Herewith, some suggestions. Some of these items are within the control of Kindle’s makers, and I have shared with them, receiving in return the electronic equivalent of a pat, tickle and rub on the head. Other of these suggestions would require some modification from elsewhere. Without further ado:

— A built-in backlight would be wonderful. I have trouble sleeping and night and a page or two of Pilgrim‘s Progress would be just the berries as a cure for insomnia. If I get up to go into another room I usually awaken my wife, which I don’t like to do. It would be easy to reach for the Kindle, and fall back asleep within minutes, if not seconds. I know that one can buy a light to attach to The Precious but if you’re paying over one hundred dollars for something like this to begin with, you really shouldn’t have in order to read it at night. I mean, I can read an iPad at night.

—A carrying/storage case that comes with your purchase. When you pay over one hundred bucks for something you ought to have something that provides you at least minimal protection for it. Maybe Jeff Bezos could farm that one out to the folks at Church & Dwight, who have made a fortune manufacturing and selling cases that provide at least minimal protection from all sorts of things at a very low cost.

— Free books with a purchase of a Kindle. I’m not talking about things in the public domain, either. I’m talking about books people want. You buy a Kindle, you get three books (for example), each of which retail on the site for fifteen or less, for free, as an incentive to buy a Kindle. It’s a wonderful instrument, but we’re being asked to shell out a lot of money for an object that won’t work unless you shell out more money. And by the way, I’m talking free to the consumer. Amazon takes the hit on the payment to the publisher (if any) and the author, both of whom get paid as if the book was purchased. And while we’re wishing and the beggars are riding, what about a points arrangement? The Kindle owner buys books, and accumulates points, which they can turn in for a book. The consumer gets one point per dollar spent, and then can turn in (for example) three hundred points for a three dollar book. People love getting things that they think are free. Get people buying and reading more.

— Access to Pandora from your Kindle. Wouldn’t that be fun? If you have no idea what Pandora is check out www.pandora.com and become your own disc jockey.

That’s a few of the things that Amazon could do on its own. Here are some other things that would make the Kindle more interesting.

— More books. I am amazed what is available on Kindle but am more amazed by what I cannot buy. The Alexandria Quartet by Laurence Durrell. A lack of golden age science fiction by such luminaries as Robert H. Heinlein (a lot of his books are missing) Theodore Sturgeon (what?! No More Than Human?!). None of Ross MacDonald’s classic novels. This is a complicated issue having to due with rights and estates and lawyers, oh my, that it is probably going to get worse and not better. I am a capitalist and proud of it, ladies and gentlemen, so please believe me when I tell you that t there is money to be made here for everybody if we all play nice and divide the pie up equitably. Pretend its Christmas, there’s one candy left in the dish, and the person you want to seduce most is looking at it. Share.

— Don’t let the publishers set the prices, at least all by themselves. I am not one of those guys who believe that publishers are inherently evil or even evil at all, by accident or design. It is simply that setting the prices for books in this new format is virgin territory for them. Significant mistakes are being made. The sweet spot for the price of a novel appears to be around $2.99 per book. The attitude of some publishers towards this, in some cases, seems to be that of Captain Picard: “$19.99. Make it so.” Won’t happen. iTunes started screwing around with the price of single music tracks — raising them — and guess what? Sales dropped. As a talking point, start at a price of around $8.99 for best sellers and $2.99 for mid-list or new authors to generate some interest in new blood and to encourage readers to try someone new. Let the author and Amazon (or B & N, or Apple, or whatever vendor) make the final decision, and let the publisher explain how that price will affect what happens to the book in physical form. It’s a different business model, true. But we’re not all sitting on the dock at Boston Harbor, waiting for the ship to bring in the next installment of Charles Dickens’ new book. It’s time to rewrite at least some of the business manual.

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What I’m reading: I finished Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin a few days ago and have re-read it twice since then. It is a classic, pure and simple, of many genres but possessed fully by none. If I could afford to I would pass it out (or load it onto Kindles) door-to-door. The last few pages continue to bring tears to my eyes. But don’t tell anyone.

You mean this does that, too?

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It was a day of extremes.

I went yesterday to our local senior center to drop off some books for their library. I had a conversation with the ladies at the reception desk. Neither of them had heard of Kindles, or e-books in general. I directed them toward the Amazon home page, which for years has had that huge Kindle feature that kind of smacks you in the face and almost makes you forget why you arrived at Amazon to begin with. They looked at it, took the electronic tour, and decided that nothing beats a book.

I returned home later and another country was heard from. My daughter walked through the door after a day at middle school and advised that students, who cannot have cell phones with them during school hours (they have to be stored in their lockers), are now permitted to bring Kindles to school to use during study halls. And indeed, her fellow students are taking advantage of this policy Are they reading? Well…yes, reading what they are happily tweeting back and forth on Twitter and commenting on Facebook. I’m sure that this was not what the administration intended. In fact, it is quite possible that the school officials are unaware that Kindle is not just for reading anymore. It can be used for web surfing, listening to music, and yes, tweeting back and forth to keep one’s friends up to date on what is happening (“How R U I m soo bord!”). This hasn’t exactly been trumpeted by Amazon, but if you have a Kindle 2.0 or later, go to the home page, use the menu to go to the “experimental” link, and take a look. If the school thought that their charges would use this tool to catch up on their Cormac McCarthy or Robert Louis Stevenson (okay, or their Stephanie Meyer) they are about to be kissed by the goddess of disappointment.

As someone noted recently, the rate of change is accelerating everywhere, it seems, except at your local Bureau of Motor Vehicles office. Take phones, for but one example. Every time that I have been tempted to trade in my weathered but still functional Blackberry Pearl for the cellular equivalent of a trophy wife I have backed off. It seems that each day brings a new phone with a host of new functions. There are things that I could probably do with the Pearl — Jack Bauer used to download schematics of nuclear power plants with his — that I not only don’t know how to do, but also don’t know that I can do. Better to keep the less attractive but comfortable and familiar companion I have than to have to learn the bells and whistles of a new model. My son threatens to buy me a Jitterbug, which would be okay, actually. As far as technology in general is concerned, however, the demographics seem split into three groups: one that does not even know what technology is available; one that is aware of it but underutilizes it; and one that takes the potential to its designed limits, and even beyond. And that is true of the Kindle as well. There are still folks who think a Kindle is something you do to a fire. The majority of people who know it as an e-book reader may be unaware that you can do more with it than read on a sunny beach. And then, of course, there are the younger whiz kids. If that son or daughter of yours has suddenly seemed to acquire a newfound interest in reading which is manifested by taking a Kindle to school you might want to quiz them on what chapter of what book they’re reading. DY feel me?

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What I’m reading: THE FALL by Del Toro and Hogan. Not that it’s scary or anything, but I’m on my second box of Depends.

Dum da dum dum…

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I am writing this while sitting in a hotel located in what is known as the Central Business District of the open-air insane asylum called New Orleans. I am here for a music law seminar, listening to people much brighter than myself (and yes, a couple who, well, aren’t) discuss how to build a bigger butterfly net to use when chasing the fewer and fewer dollars that are available in the music industry. My mind was starting to wander this afternoon when one of the seminar speakers brought me back on task by saying, “And here’s another revenue stream. You all have heard of e-books? And Kindle? There’s talk of adding music to e-books.”

Whoa.

Now, newer versions of Kindle have an application which will let the user upload (download? Sometimes it’s not clear in which direction the digital river flows) music to the unit to play while reading. You connect your precious up to your computer via a USB port and uplo…er…downl…uh, transfer the music from computer to Kindle. What the speaker was talking about, however, sounds like something else entirely. This is music that would come with the e-book. As contemplated, it would be 1) genre appropriate (romantic for romance books; spooky for horror novels; and heavy metal for John Gilstrap); and 2) instrumental, so as not to distract those of us who cannot walk across the room and hold a thought at the same time.

This raises a couple of questions: 1) where is the music going to come from? 2) who is going to pay for it? and 3) will the author have controlling, or at least some, input into whether they want their precious to have musical accompaniment? It is questions 2 and 3 which should concern the wordsmiths out there. If you have signed away control of how your e-books are marketed, the answer to #3 may be “no.” And as for the answer to question 2, it may or may not be the author who is passed the check directly or indirectly, depending on how things shake out on the whole thing. Music on television and in movies and video games is not free; someone paid a lot of money to put that catchy song you walk around humming into a commercial, or at the beginning of CSI: Miami. It won’t be free for e-books either.

It is not my intent to give you something else to worry about. But authors: keep your collective ear to the ground. And you eyes open.

*****
My New Orleans sojourn is part of a ten day trip which began with three days in Franklin, Tennessee at Killer Nashville. A smaller conference which is very user friendly, Killer Nashville is aimed primarily at hopeful authors and is a wonderful way to network and learn writing tradecraft. P.J. Parrish was seemingly on every panel (that’s an exaggeration, but not by much) and showed us how a P.J. Parrish book created. Different color Post-It notes affixed to a cardboard backing are involved and it was truly a wonder to look at. It was an extremely interesting and marvelous over-the-shoulder glance at how the collective Parrish team gets the job done. Jeffrey Deaver was the guest of honor, and was extremely friendly and easily accessible to all, including his multitude on Number One Fans. He generously spent over an hour telling a jammed-to-capacity ballroom how he works his magic, from idea through completion. Jeffrey began his presentation with a basic premise that is sometimes forgotten: writing is a business. He spends eight months outlining and four months writing and when he is done and turns in the manuscript he sits down and does it all again. There is more to it than that of course but it was great to hear a strong and basic fundamental advocated so forcefully.

****

What I’m reading: THE THOUSAND by Kevin Guilfoile. Pythagoras meets a girl with a dragon tattoo who kicked a hornet’s nest while playing with fire. If I hadn’t been so busy these past ten days I would have read it in one night.

Next time: The coolest place in the world is in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Seriously.

A Whole New World

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by John Gilstrap

Michelle had a schedule conflict, so she asked me to switch blogging duties with her this week. She’ll be posting tomorrow in my spot, but we should be back to normal next week–or to whatever masquerades as normal among Killzoners.

I am amazed and grateful and totally baffled at the thing that keeps on keeping on with my eBook sales. As I write this post on Wednesday evening, No Mercy continues to hold the #4 slot in Kindle sales, while Hostage Zero holds the #17 slot. That’s nine days in the top five and top fifty, respectively–much higher cotton than I have seen in a very long while. Making the deal even sweeter, I received an email yesterday from the folks from Books On Board, the world’s largest independent eBook retailer, informing me that Hostage Zero is the #3 bestseller there. That’s all wonderful. I even got a brief mention in the Wall Street Journal.

Here’s where it gets confusing: On amazon.com, the sales rankings for the print version of my books seem to be going the wrong way. Mind you, I have no idea how any of the rankings translate into real sales, but as I write this, the Hostage Zero sales ranking is well into five figures, while the print version of No Mercy sits at 2,896. (FYI, 2,896 in total sales means, according to the site, that it’s #72 in Books>Literature & Fiction>Genre Fiction>Action & Adventure. How’s that for splitting hairs four times?)

My point is that there seems to be a disconnect between print popularity and eBook popularity on amazon.com. I have no idea why, but I suspect that the mean demographic of the eBook buyer/reader is significantly different than that of the hardcopy counterpart. I think that the marketing model between the two camps is entirely different. For example, among eBook community (of which I am an enthusiastic member), word of mouth buzz–the Holy Grail of book sales–is many times more efficient. You hear a rave review of a book that sounds interesting, and you have it in your hands with a couple of clicks of a mouse. Combine the buzz with a price point that allows readers to buy two eBook thrillers by a new-to-them author for less than the price of a single eBook by a franchise author, and a runaway critical mass is easier to achieve. From there, the author and publisher pray that the momentum becomes self-sustaining.

If my suspicions are correct that the marketing models between print and eBooks are dramatically different, I think it’s clear that the difference is one-way–that eBook readers are aware of what print readers are reading, but not necessarily the other way around. When you look at the Kindle Top 100, the vast majority of titles are bestsellers in their own right in the bricks-and-mortar world, and became eBook bestsellers as a matter of transferred momentum. Problem is, it’s difficult for that momentum to transfer the other way.

Think about it. In my recent travels, I was disappointed to discover that Hostage Zero and No Mercy were both absent from every airport bookstore I visited. The spaces where they might have been stocked were filled instead with the paperback versions of the hardcovers that occupied the same spots a year ago–and then, only if the hardcover predecessor made The List. Given the price per square foot of retail space, it makes sense that airport bookstores would dedicate real estate only to the surest sales. In order to ride the momentum of a runaway eBook, those stores would have to order new stock and take a new risk in an economic environment that punishes risk takers. Extrapolate that logic out to drug stores and grocery stores and all the other retail locations that used to be outlets for paperbacks, and I think it’s clear that the mass market original is a format on life support.

On the flip side, though, I think the market for $25 hardcovers is likewise pretty bleak. It’s the price, not the format. As it is, bestsellers are discounted down to $15 or less in the Big Box stores, a number that is feasible only because non-bestsellers are still sold at full price to offset the lost revenue. The print side of publishing seems to be creating a retail environment where bestseller prices are unsustainable, cheaper options are difficult to obtain, and full-price hardcovers will have an ever-shrinking market consisting only of people who are willing to shell out five times more than they need to for the same entertainment.

It’s a whole new world indeed. What do you all think? When you look into your personal crystal ball, what does the publishing world look like five years from now?

Unlimited Free Book Giveaway

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By John Gilstrap
www.johngilstrap.com

Once a year, in late June, I embark on a post of shameless self-promotion. This would be that post for 2010.

Hostage Zero, the latest entry in the Jonathan Grave thriller series launches next Thursday, and I am pumped about it. Fueled by a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly, which amazon.com was kind enough to put on Hostage Zero’s product page, and excellent advance reviews from other publications, this feels to me like it could do some real business. Let’s all take a moment to cross our fingers on that one.

Good reviews help, but it takes more than that to really get people to take notice of a book. It takes promotion, advertising, and word-of-mouth sales. I don’t mean to presume, but I hope I can count on y’all to help with that last one. C’mon, it’s an investment of $6.99. How can you go wrong?

My publisher, Pinnacle/Kensington, is really stepping up to the plate with this one. From June 29 through July 5, in an effort to build the buzz for Hostage Zero, they are giving away free e-books of No Mercy through Kindle, Sony E-Reader, B&N’s Nook and Kobo. That’s free, folks; as in, you know, FREE! Gratis. No charge. That’s a free copy of the book that is one of five nominees for ITW’s Thriller Award. How cool is that?

The real marketing push for Hostage Zero begins July 6, when the co-op money kicks in to get great placement in Borders, Walden and Books-A-Million. There’s talk of other placements, but they’re not yet firm. You should see a fairly significant online ad presence, as well.

So, the boat’s in the water, and everyone is pulling on an oar. Will Hostage Zero become a bestseller? Lord, I hope so; but then every author hopes so. That’s the really scary part of this business. Think of the hubris. Each of us believes that out of the thousands and thousands of titles that are published every year—out of the hundreds that are published in our own genre alone—this one product of our imagination will somehow break through all the noise and find a breakout audience. Who do we think we are?

On the other hand, it always happens to someone; why not us? Why not me?

Jonathan “Digger” Grave is an old-fashioned kind of hero, whose sense of right and wrong does not necessarily factor in the prevailing laws of the land. If your loved ones are kidnapped, Digger will move heaven and earth to bring them back, and he won’t mind sending people to heaven or hell if they get in his way. A former Unit operator, he is a gentle philanthropist who is intensely loyal to his friends and lethal to his enemies. He is, if I may say so myself in the spirit of shameless self-promotion, a lot of fun.

And starting next Tuesday, for only one week, you can download No Mercy for free. I like to think this is an easy decision. What do you say?