I’ve reported the situation to DAW—a note from an alert reader—and they’ll handle it. I’m not sure how many books are mis-described. If you spot that, comment here and we’ll all know.
Meanwhile it’s snow turned to rain here. I’ve got a re-exam at the eye doc’s this morning: my prescription seems to have shifted a bit and I’m straining to see clearly.
Want a REAL timesync? Check out the cnn.com game site. Mahjongg Solitaire is absolutely wicked. The Games site has a few buggy games: getting the Crossword to take the first letter is an annoying one—but it will if you start and then erase. But Mahjongg? I can see how fashionable Chinese ladies got seriously addicted to this game. Board play is only for 3 or more; but the electronic version is dimensional solitaire.
Fear not. I’m writing like mad.
So this seems like an opportune place to ask this question:
Does it matter to you (and your revenue stream) what edition and from where one purchases “Intruder”? Is there any difference whether one buys an eBook vs a hard-copy book? Whether one buys from Amazon, B&N, or a local independent bookstore?
Steve, thank you: we actually get more from the e-book in most instances, but it’s close. On a 25.00 HB, the writer gets 2.50 to 2.00; on an 8.00 paperback, 75 cents. E-books range widely from 50% of cover to 10%, depending on your contract.
I’ve been wondering what a certain item on the cover was and was it a spolier or something just from the mind of the artist….
I think it’s a Krenegee from Brin’s “Practice Effect”. 🙂
And here I thought gaming was a time sink. All this time my kids have have spent online was something more temporally profound.
Um – the Chinese ladies will have been playing the orignal MahJong – a kind of very fast and complex gin rummy. In fact, the men mostly played – and play – it, it’s a basis for gambling. I’ve played the original MahJong and the Solitaire version and enjoy both.
The board game I’m familiar with is Go. Which is mindbending. Another absorbing and obsessive game. ;)Mahjongg on the board has a frightening number of moving parts.
Has anyone here ever played Hanafuda, the flower card game? Where I used to work, we had a group that played obsessively every lunch. It looked like a combination of Go Fish and poker.
We have a program at the library tonight where we are getting a remote feed from a telescope on top of Haleakala, and are able to control where the telescope points via the internet. Trouble is, there seems to be a pretty good cloud cover right now. I’m hoping it clears off by tonight.
http://www.faulkes-telescope.com/node/1693
Very interesting re: your part of book prices. Does it matter if the book is discounted ? Amazon has Intruder for $16.77. Hopefully you get your fair cut of the list.
The one who gets hurt when the book is discounted is the publisher, SFAIK. My amount is set by the cover price, by contract, but I suspect the publisher is getting stung. And say what you might about publishing—the big houses are all going through very rough times. E-books are going to be how THEY keep afloat—because the big problem has been a Victorian process of printing, an absolute chokehold on the printing of books, because there are very few specialized presses that can do a massmarket printing, in the whole world; and the trucking of books hither and yon, and a distribution system that got way out of control and began dictating to the publishers how the covers would look and how many they would take, and even whether a book once printed would get distributed, or not at all, if some rep got annoyed or decided it didn’t look the way they thought it would—everything is cans of tomato soup to those people: it’s not content, it’s the packaging they care about. Then you’ve got a returns process that in some airports only gives a new book four HOURS of shelf life, then returns it. And then the dear Supreme Court held that books in a warehouse had to be inventoried and taxed like any other product, tax paid annually—while books, which WERE printed in large runs and warehoused until sold—suddenly became a liability, and they had to go over to tiny print runs and printing close to what they could absolutely sell in a year, then reprinting tiny runs again and again and again and again—which costs through the roof, but not as much as the tax they’d pay again and again and again on the same books sitting in a warehouse. [Thor Tool Decision.]
It’s absolutely insane. The e-book process cuts out all these people and puts it back in the hands of the writer, the publisher, the art director, the editor, book design—and the e-book outlet. Many fewer hands reaching for the little profit there is in a book.
I had to pause at “SFAIK,” even though I know the abbreviation as “AFAIK.” Are you sure you didn’t have a kif in there? (I’ll just pretend sfaik is somehow related to sfik, but perhaps not.
So there are things upon things pushing towards ebooks.
Looking forward to the arrival in T – 14 days.
Can we buy ‘Intruder’ from your closed circle website? 🙂 Or where would you recommend?
I wish you could. You can buy certain physical books from me, notably some of the Foreigner set, signed, personalized as you like, for cover price plus postage; but I ceded DAW the e-rights to the few Foreigner titles I had in return for some more minor DAW books—which I also probably actually have the rights for, but this way we both get what we need and are happy with each other in the feeling we’ve treated each other fairly. So you’ll see a few early titles from me, and then the majority from DAW, via Amazon and other e-book sellers.
Ok… thanks!
I saw that description on Amazon and thought I was losing my mind… 🙂
Much as I’d like to sympathise with publishers I remember when we had to wait several months before your books reached the UK. One book (the third in the Chanur saga I think) took a couple of years. I still don’t have it as a single novel. I was forced to buy the complete trilogy if I remember correctly.
I hope your eye test goes well. I went to the hospital last week because my optician had referred me. Thankfully that should be it. Apparently the visual field machine says I should have difficulty reading but since I don’t (and I play golf and don’t often lose track of the ball) the optician shrugged it off. It’s not got any worse over the last three years so and he’s happy there’s no glaucoma. In his view “If it doesn’t bother you, it doesn’t bother me”. Just got to keep an eye on it (ha ha) and go back if it changes.
I remember having to wait ages before a UK publisher made the books available. I got fed up with that and started phoning Penguin Distribution in Philadelphia where a nice lady would air-freighted them to me. Did that till Amazon.com (USA) started then used them and then used Amazon.co.uk when it started. However for Betrayer I got a 48hr delivery to UK from Amazon.com after the pre-order I placed at Amazon.co.uk wasn’t going to be available till a fortnight after launch date.
Apparently the Kindle version of Intruder is going to be available along with the hardbound. This is a good thing—especially for people where shipping is an issue.
Physical books have SO much overhead – wasteful of resources to print and ship and store. I guess it is finally time to go electronic. I love books so much, though. (Especially judging from the room I need to store them!) And how will I ever appreciate the Intruder cover on a black and white Kindle?
Ah well… electrons here we come!
Thanks for the views on this thread (and sorry to have hijacked it).
I have both the ebook and hardbound on pre-order. Amazon is telling me March 9th to 13th, but others say the 6th. I’ve seen Amazon deliver pre-orders sooner than claimed. Anyway, the ebook should be ready as soon as it’s made public.
“Yippee!” Probably doesn’t translate into Ragi easily….
Note also, I generally read my Kindle ebooks on an iPad 2. Always gotta be one in every crowd….
I love books. I love paper. I am sad to see the art of the printer and the binder going somewhat away. I know full well that not everything is going to be digital; for one thing there will always be folks like me who love the printed book too much to let it go.
But I am reassured that the e-book does make better money for the person a book OUGHT to be earning for: the author! If ever I come into possession of a Kindle or similar such device, I’ll feel much happier to be contributing to someone’s livelihood.
I agree that the “old ways” of publishing – with all these extra costs and ludicrous money-grabbing behaviors – has gotten to a point of needing to be pruned, to use a gardening metaphor. For some of us who have books in progress (but not ready to be published), the landscape of the book market is very, very scary…
Intruder: Foreigner #13 [Kindle Edition] at Amazon is instead Betrayer. I have the hardback same book, but wrong name. From my previous buys of this series I don’t see one named Intruder at all. Invader and Inheritor, but no Intruder.