CLOSED CIRCLE QUERIES AND FAQS

First of all, if you have a non-delivery problem or a glitch in the site, write to us at:

authors@closed-circle.net and we will establish a ‘case’ with all the proper linkage to our book delivery system, and get working on it.

If you have a question, suggestion, or problem, either technical, about the site, or about a purchase, please comment, and I’ll try to fix/answer it.

Here are some FAQs about Closed Circle, off the top of my head.

1. We  offer 2 download packages: the regular or “FULL” contains 11 formats predone. At least one of these should enable you to view the file without further ado. The MINIME download, or “MINI” contains 3: mobi, e-Pub, and pdf, if you like a faster download. You can turn these into just about anything.

2. MAKE BACKUP COPIES! We’ll work with you if you have a problem with a download, but once you’ve got it, please back up your original download file and keep your e-library backed up on more than one device. Losing that download file AND your reading copy is the same as losing a book. We are selling the files to you, for use in your immediate household. Please do not lend copies: we are trying to make a living on this, and every little bit helps.

3. All income from Closed Circle goes straight to the writer in question.

4. Nobody but Closed Circle can sell these files. If you see them elsewhere, they’re pirated: don’t patronize thieves. Again: we have to pay our light bills—please respect a creator’s rights.

5. If you are a writer and want to do what we’re doing, we’ll be happy to tell you how, particularly if you find us at a convention and buy us a drink.  We are glad to link to fellow writers. Closed Circle has taken a massive slice of our writing time to plan and set up, but once set up, it should be a matter of producing e-books and putting them up.

6. Use the post office box given on the most current CC downloads if you need a physical address. NOTE: IT HAS COME TO OUR ATTENTION THAT EUROPEAN PAYPAL ALLOWS ONLY 10 CREDIT CARD TRANSACTIONS PER CREDIT CARD, AND THEN YOU HAVE TO USE A NEW CREDIT CARD. BUMMER! WE WILL ACCEPT INTERNATIONAL MONEY ORDERS MADE OUT TO THE SPECIFIC WRITER—NOT TO CLOSED CIRCLE, WHICH HAS NO BANK ACCOUNT AND CANNOT CASH ANYTHING!!!—AND INCLUDE YOUR E-MAIL ADDY IF YOU ARE NOT A REGISTERED BLOG MEMBER—SO WE CAN SEND YOU THAT DOWNLOAD LINK.
IF YOU ARE A REGULAR ON OUR BLOGS AND WE KNOW YOU, JUST E-MAIL US THAT YOU’RE SENDING US A MONEY ORDER AND WE’LL SHORTCUT THE USUAL PROCESS AND GIVE YOU YOUR DOWNLOAD LINK BY RETURN E-MAIL, TRUSTING YOUR PAYMENT WILL REACH US AT OUR PO BOX.

7. Yes, we will be writing things directly for CC. It will take a while. Writing does take time. But be patient.

72 Comments

  1. purple_reading_giraffe

    Hi, all! I love CJ’s books, all of them! I have wanted to tell her so for years, but hesitated to be annoyingly gushing. Bren is the one who got me firmly hooked, and Tristen cemented the deal, and they lead me to renew my friendship with Pyanfar, and to meet many other marvelous souls. Cherryh is who I reach for whenever I just need a great escape – they are great re-reads, as well.

    I would like to nominate Hunter of Worlds for the ebook queue – an older and less well known title, but with many of our favorite CJ ‘themes’, and one of my personal favorites. It’s also fairly short, so perhaps fairly quick? I think it and Faded Sun and Cuckoo’s Egg might exist in the same universe. [Or maybe Glass & Amber – very hard to 1. find 2. afford. Or Sunfall? I have never had a chance to read those, yet.]

    I am very glad I found LibraryThing yesterday, and that reading_fox ‘put up’ Faery Moon with a link to closed-circle. I was disappointed with the limited selection of CJ’s books for my new Kindle at Amazon, and what I see as a high price compared to a physical copy on many Kindle books – seems the costs ought to be lower than for a ‘real’ book. I was happy to see $5 and dismayed to see $9.95 for CJ titles here. I think my price-point is about $5, though I’m not certain exactly why. Your page on ‘what it takes’ is enlightening regarding ebook production costs, though.

    I was also intrigued by your info on the ‘twisting’ of the artistic vision caused by the physical distribution process. I think things may get better through ebook popularity increase. I definitely see a publishing house as having a useful role – to help the reader find well-made and well-edited books. The self-published books can be highly variable in quality, and this is likely to get worse. I am only likely to direct purchase from an established author that I love if there is no ‘middle-man’ I am inclined to trust, such as DAW or TOR, involved. The ebook format should, hopefully, eliminate the distribution inventory problems’ effects on the books, as well as the out-of-print disappointments many suffer.

    I would strongly recommend you consider making your ebook titles available at Amazon (and probably other venues). You don’t have to be a publishing house to publish on Amazon, and the process sounds pretty straightforward (they also have an on-demand printing service). While Amazon will take a (possibly large) cut, the likely far greater volume of sales and the elimination of payment processing headaches should astronomically increase your return on investment. Kindle (and possibly Sony, etc.) also offers reader benefits, such as immediate availability and online archiving/backup. I would also tentatively suggest (to save time better spent writing) you consider only publishing your ‘mini’ files in future if those who want other formats can use Calibre to convert, and if my impression that the various readers can handle the mobi and/or epub formats is correct.

    Another notion that occurred to me while reading some of these entries… OpenOffice might be far more user-friendly for converting to HTML and PDF and possibly other formats. It can read MS Office documents easily, and it’s free. Might be worth looking into.

    One further thought… It’s possible your loyal fans might be interested in volunteering their time & talents, a la Project Gutenberg, to speed up the conversion of your backlist. I would certainly be more than willing to proofread, or learn how to convert, or to mark for TOC. A fair ‘payment’ might be a free copy of the final version 😉

    I hope there might be a useful idea or two here. Feel free to discard the useless or repetitive ones.

    p.s. I adore the cover of Deceiver – Bren looks so fierce! I also have greatly enjoyed the evolution of his acceptance of the ‘feudalism’ of atevi society. I was saddened by Tristan’s withdrawal from the world-at-large given how firmly he believed in the necessity of blackberry picking; I hope his future holds greater happiness.

    p.p.s. Due to my just completed tour of Jane’s delightful art pages, and stumbling into the reviews she has shared, I now see that I really should try her stuff, too. All things are interconnected, especially on the WWW.

  2. purple_reading_giraffe

    Ummm… nevermind about Hunter of Worlds, I see Penguin has made At The Edge of Space available as an ebook. (self-head-smack)

    • CJ

      I ought to provide a bibliography, with what’s now where. I can’t even keep up!

  3. purple_reading_giraffe

    alas, one of the drawbacks of being a prolific and reprinted author 🙁 😛

    I’m saving up for the Morgaine & Vanye in pictures, now. I’d love to see more of that, I suspect. Black & white would work just fine on Kindle (just scan it all in & upload)(heh – not likely that easy). Speaking of graphic novels, I now work at an Amazon distribution center picking the merchandise people order and sending it to the packers. I seem to be picking graphic novels in a tall, narrow, fairly thin, hardcover format quite frequently. They’re something new to me, and they seem to be mostly fantasy (though I have no time to actually LOOK at them). I thought Jane might be interested. I wonder if Manga has made the Graphic Novel more popular now, or if I’ve just always been unaware…

  4. chondrite

    I don’t expect CC can offer dead tree copies of your books — the warehousing of same would boggle the mind! Is there someplace you suggest we pick them up, if not through you? Sometimes I find them on Amazon or ebay, but that’s chancy, and I’d rather go with a recommended CC-happy site, if possible.

  5. CJ

    Yes. Selina Rosen has some signed ones. And we have some titles which I think Jane is beginning to put up on the CC site—I was puzzled for a bit, but now I understand what she’s doing. If we happen to have spare copies, we’ll ship, with signature of your choice and direction. Let us know. And if you ever want books signed, you can mail them to me (and back; with labels and stout boxes) and I will do it. Or I will sign bookplates.

  6. tulrose

    I suppose you’ve thought of print-on-demand, e.g. Lulu.com.

  7. CJ

    I think there is such an option on Amazon. Not sure.

  8. JohnDenton

    Hi,

    I hope no one has asked this question before, but I could not find any info. Closed Circle lists “officially coming in 2010: Tripoint, Finity’s End, …” in the Alliance-Union section. I’d really like to buy those books from you, so will they come any time soon, or is this a canceled project?

    Thanks

  9. CJ

    Not canceled. Jane got very ill this year and we are way behind, but just now starting to swim at full speed. She is, if you ask, all better now. Cause found and dealt with.

  10. JohnDenton

    Thanks for the prompt info, CJ.
    I am glad to hear all is well with Jane. I guess that means I will now eagerly await the new Alliance-Union ebooks (and maybe also the other Netwalkers?).

  11. topazz1963

    Just came on to this site. Sorry if this question has been asked before. I see Rusalka is available. I loved those books, and wonder if the series will be availabe? Also, I have not tried downloading anything from another site besides Barns and Noble (for my NOOK), and was wondering how it works.

  12. CJ

    Rusalka is indeed available: we are going to be changing the cover within a few days, so you may want to hold off. I think the new cover is super. And Chernevog is ready to go up within about that same few days.

    To buy anything from Closed Circle, you just go there, go to the store, click on the product, and use Paypal (you can also use a credit card and persisting all the way through Paypal’s screens—ultimately you get that option. Or you can pay us directly, with a little delay for the mails.) Once you get the download code, click on it within 48 hours, and it should give you a zip file, either ‘mini’, a few popular file types, or ‘full’, meaning every file type we can manage. You’ll want the epub file, so mini would do; full is the same price. You download first to your computer, and we encourage you to make a backup DVD of it, so no matter what happens to your device or your computer, you have it safe. [We do not copyprotect our files, feeling we are better defended by the honor of our readers than by any copyprotect ever spawned.] You can then unzip the file on your computer [computers tend to come with unzip softwares, or if you don’t have one, ask: I think I use something like JZIP—, and transfer the epub file to your Nook via the USB cable your Nook should have. It will come up as a ‘drive’ and you just drag the file over. It’s then yours, and you can also read it on your computer via a reader-emulation software, or print out a hard copy, whatever suits you.

  13. Marlena

    Sorry if this has been asked before but I have not been able to find any audiobook versions of your books. Are they out there somewhere?
    Thanks!

    • CJ

      Yes. Cyteen is about to come out from Audible.com. They just finished taping.

  14. Marlena

    Yay! That makes me happy! Thank you!

  15. kiloecho

    I had a dream last night. I saw the sales figures for Closed Circle; they were huge. Here’s to hoping that my dream becomes reality.

  16. Psider

    Can anyone explain the logic behind the Foreigner ebooks being available in the US Amazon store but not UK or Aus? Are there ramifications to changing “where” I’m from (besides being able to access the books I want)?

    Also, do you guys need any help getting books converted to ebook format for CC? I’m a tyro in the area, but a tech writer by trade (html, css, xml, editing experience), and willing to volunteer for the experience (and a chance to be involved in something somewhat more creative than software doco; and impatient to get my favourites in travel format. 🙂 ).

    • Peter

      This is ebook publishing – check your rational faculties at the door. Short version: some bright light decided that the point of sale of an ebook is the IP address of the purchaser, not the server location of the vendor, and that first sale rights don’t apply. Everybody else followed suit, and nobody’s raised a big enough legal stink to get this changed, with the result that you can buy a paperback from Amazon and have it shipped to Timbuktu at ruinous expense, but can’t download an electronic copy for your Kindle.

      As far as changing your location, it depends – some bookstores will just lock you out based on your current IP address. Amazon is a bit more flexible, and will usually only change it after you make a few purchases from an IP that doesn’t match your “location”, with an option to send them confirmation of your address to change it back. The work-around is to use a VPN (or proxy, if you can find a secure one) to do your electronic bookshopping.

      Note that doing so is (probably) illegal under US law. Not sure what the laws in Oz have to say, but under Canadian law downloading from (although not uploading to) file-sharing networks is quite legal, so pirating books makes me a good, law-abiding citizen, while buying them makes me a criminal. This amuses me far more than it probably should…

      • Psider

        Ugh, it’s ridiculous. I just want to get copies of the Foreigner books without jumping through hoops or potentially borking a perfectly good account/kindle – and I can easily buy all those paper books here through mainstream bookstores – so it shouldn’t be that hard electronically. :S

        In Aus we usually subscribe to “if it’s small time, no-one’s likely to bother me”. But I think I have a forehead tattoo that flashes neon whenever I even think about doing something even vaguely illegal…

  17. CJ

    Ca-ray-zee! I’m glad to know what’s going on, because it’s puzzled me—but this is nuts! There IS a provision that British rights for paperbacks are a separate set of rights—but there’s NEVER been a great problem getting a UK publisher to just sign up and issue an edition. If a UK publisher would contact DAW about e-rights, I’m sure it would solve the problem. As it is, it seems it would take shipping a Kindle back and forth to a friend in the US. I’m going to ask DAW and my agent where that rights-business stands and what the prospects are.

    I just wrote DAW and my agent on this problem, and don’t know what the answer will be.

    • Peter

      The further complication is that even when a publisher does have e-rights for a certain territory they may not bother to actually exercise them, as that might run the risk of selling books, thus turning a profit for both the author and the publisher, and that’s Not The Done Thing, apparently. I recall Diane Duane running into this after the re-release of her Young Wizards books, which were initially “Not available for sale in [Canada]” on Amazon despite her US publisher (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) having Canadian e-rights. She has a blog post on it here. If a fan hadn’t made a fuss on her blog I’m sure the books would still be “unavailable due to rights issues” because nobody in HMH’s IT department could be bothered to check which territories they had rights to and just set them to US-only.

      The really absurd part is that the methods used to enforce these restrictions can be trivially worked around, either using a VPN to change one’s originating IP address (this is much less scary, for the non-technical, than it sounds – two mouse clicks and my computer appears to be in London, New York City, Montreal, or any of a dozen other cities) or using gift cards or prepaid credit cards for payment (for those stores that base your “location” on the billing address of your credit card).

    • Peter

      Oh, and note that a UK publisher signing on for an e-edition doesn’t necessarily solve the issue – UK rights often (but not always) include the Commonwealth, but that doesn’t guarantee that the book would be available in, say, Australia (see the issue with the publisher of the YW books not bothering to exercise their Canadian rights), and it doesn’t do the people who don’t live in the US/UK/Canada but still want to read the books in English any good.

      Hopefully one day the publishing industry will realize that refusing to sell books may, just may, not be the greatest business model for companies that make their profit by selling books. In the meantime, there are workarounds.

  18. CJ

    Peter, can you explain that VPN thing in greater detail (assuming it’s legal) to help out others who may need to do it?

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