Tag Archives: e-books

The Portal is now available from Amazon!

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It’s time to enter The Portal.

9781614174639

Okay, that’s a bit hokey, but seriously, the Kindle version of The Portal is now available. It’ll be up on Barnes & Noble, iBooks, and other fine sites soon. Those of you who have dipped into the novel on this blog can now have your very own electronic copy for the astonishingly low price of $4.99.  (All right, that price isn’t so astonishingly low, but it’s what my publisher decided the thing was worth.)

Customer reviews are critical to the success of an ebook.  If you can find it in your heart to write a good review of The Portal at Amazon, that would be very helpful.  You don’t have to purchase the book from Amazon, but reviews from verified purchasers count for more.

My publisher and I couldn’t quite agree on sales copy for The Portal.  Here is my summary:

In the woods behind his house Larry Barnes makes a spectacular discovery—an invisible portal to a parallel universe, where Burger King has turned into Burger Queen, cell phones are huge, and his home town doesn’t look anything like the place where he lives.  When he returns from this world, he makes the mistake of telling his best friend, Kevin Albright, who convinces him to try entering the portal one more time.  What could go wrong?

But this time Larry and Kevin find themselves in a very different world. From the moment they step out of the portal they are caught up in a war that pits the United States of New England against New Portugal and Canada.  They need to make their way in a world that is utterly alien, without computers or automobiles or telephones.  A world in which no one has heard of America, or Mozart, or bacteria.  Larry and Kevin face hunger, disease, battle—and, most of all, loneliness.  But they also find friendship and family, joy and love.  Can they survive the war—and help New England win it?  Can they make their way back to the portal and return home?  And what will they leave behind if they do make it back?

Exciting and deeply moving, The Portal is a science-fiction adventure you won’t soon forget.

An alternative cover

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My publisher changed its mind about “Alternate History“.  The primary reason: Amazon uses “Alternative History” as its category for ebooks and “Alternate History” for books. So here is today’s cover:

9781614174639

 

My friend Kathy (who can’t possibly be old enough to be the parent of a tween) complains that using the word “History” on the cover will turn off kids the age of her son.  This is interesting.  Publishers feel the need to categorize novels, because readers tend to stick to their favorite genres, and it’s much harder to market a novel if it can’t be fit neatly into a genre.  (My first agent gave up on me when I sent him Marlborough Street and he had no idea how to pitch it to publishers.  My current publisher decided it was a “psychic thriller,” which I guess is a thing.)

Kathy also queries why the novel isn’t marketed directly to tweens — don’t they have their own category?  Yes, they do.  But I’m pretty sure adults will enjoy The Portal, and if you market a novel specifically to young adults, you’re not going to get any adults reading it (unless you’re J.K. Rowling).  So, I dunno.  I’d much rather write the stuff than figure out how to market it.

Writing e-book sales copy — sheesh, it’s harder than you think

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I have to trust that my e-book publisher knows more about the business than I do.  They certainly seem to.  They have convinced me to change my title from Portal to The Portal because one-word titles aren’t selling well nowadays, unless you’re James Patterson or Clive Cussler.  OK, fine — they can have the “the.”

Now they have sent me these instructions for the sales copy that will appear online..

Maximum overall word count: 200 words. (this includes sales blurb only)

Ideal length: 150 words

Why the length limits? Readers/people are basically lazy.  Amazon allows for approx 120 words before the reader has to click “read more”.  The incentivizing plot twist (or a strong suggestion of the twist) must appear in the first 120 words.

First Paragraph length max: 250 characters including spaces.  More than that and the number of lines exceeds three on most standard monitors.  More than three lines and the reader tends to “click away” unless the title is highly anticipated.

Apps present a new wrinkle.  200 characters including spaces to incentivize the reader to “click” read more.  Because readers are basically lazy, the buy-now case is best made in the first 200 characters (including spaces).

Copy Structure: Every word in the copy must either introduce the protagonist/antagonist, present the internal or external conflict, or contribute to a  relevant and non-clichéd sub-genre plot twist that sets the book apart. (but not too far apart.  Readers also tend to read in a rut).

OK, then.  The text I came up with here doesn’t fit the guidelines, so there is work to be done.  The limitation on total character count (including spaces) is an interesting modern development.  I’ve just started using Word 2013, and it took a bit of fumbling around before I figured out how to get it to show me the character count.  Sure enough, it will display the number of characters, and the number of characters including spaces, with a single mouse click.  Good job, Microsoft!

 

Print on Demand

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My e-book publisher has started a Print on Demand (POD) service to go along with its e-book publishing services.  I’m going to try it out for Portal.

POD fills a gap in the e-book self-publishing model: some people just prefer a printed book.  A guy at work said he’d like to read one of my books, but what he really wanted was an autographed copy.  Can’t autograph an e-book.  (It seemed kind of weird that a co-worker would want my autograph, but not totally weird.  There’s something about a signed copy of a book that makes it special.)

There are two major players in the POD world: CreateSpace and Lightning Source.  This article explains the differences in mind-numbing detail and ultimately recommends CreateSpace.  My publisher uses Lightning Source.  Oh, well.  The publisher’s model, as with e-books, is that I pay them a (relatively small) amount of money to do all the prep work. They also handle the ongoing dealings with Lightning Source, in return for a small cut of the royalties.  You can eliminate the middleman and do all the work yourself if you use CreateSpace, assuming you have the time and energy; I have neither.  Per-unit royalties through my publisher are much lower than they are for e-books, because there’s so much more overhead in creating a printed book.  The idea is that most of your revenue would be from e-book sales, but the printed option is there for people who prefer it.  I can, of course, buy any number of books at a steep discount, and then sign ’em for my co-workers, give them away to passing strangers, etc.

POD is another blow against the business model of traditional publishing.  Time to give it a shot.

Apple loses its e-book antitrust suit

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The judge has ruled against Apple in the suit that the Justice Department brought against it.  Now there’ll be another trial for damages.  And Apple has vowed to appeal.  So nothing is really decided.  But hey, we all know Apple is guilty!

Here is the graphical evidence of what happened to e-book prices when the major publishers, in collusion with Apple, forced Amazon to go to the agency model, thereby ending price competition among e-book vendors:

Prices went up two dollars or more per book overnight.  The exceptions were Random House and all the little publishers; none of them were party to the collusion. Thanks, Apple!

Summit will now cost you money

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I told you to download Summit from Amazon when it was free, but you didn’t listen to me.  You never listen to me.  Now you have to pay $2.84 for it.  Why $2.84?  I don’t know.  But it’s worth it!  Probably worth even $2.99, now that I think about it.

The purpose of making the book free was to generate some nice reviews, and I got some!  Here’s a sampling:

This is a well written, well -rounded, exciting book. I loved it and will be looking for all books by Mr Richard Bowker. I do NOT give five stars often or lightly, but I am impressed Summit. So if you like thrillers, this is a great one to read. And Mr Bowker, if you ever need a beta reader, I would be thrilled to do it.

And:

The author has a way of bringing you right into the story; the characters are believable and flawed. The sprinkle of romance is fun and the Mr Bowker’s knowledge of classical music and the ability to identify the problems of a classical music prodigy are amazing.
Above all the plot twists and turns were extremely suspenseful.
I also appreciated the author not painting the Russians as all evil and U.S. as all good.
I wish Bill Sullivan had a better ending, but such is life. More importantly, Fulton and Valentina (more than) survive.
A great read, thanks !

I wish Sullivan had a better ending, too!  And:

Richard Bowker manages to give lots of credibility to the subject of psychics. What is there not to agree in the end? Psychics do exist, even if their lives are depicted more in the dark forces type of books than in a thriller.
Deep thoughtful take on American and Russian ideals, the perceptions and beliefs ingrained in their nationals to infuse a patriotic love, which makes us explore our own psyche and rattles perhaps our own confidence in our righteousness. The same political corruption and power greed exists at all levels, in all countries- and is perfectly delineated in the pages of this book. It is difficult not to love the heroes, and the insertion of a love story makes the read even more enjoyable for female readership. I did enjoy this book till the (perfect) end.

And, as a reminder,here’s the exciting new cover:

summit

Amazon has a patent on selling used ebooks — are we doomed?

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A few months ago I vented about the possible advent of a market for used ebooks, which (if legal) would doom the quaint custom of writing in return for money. Now it turns out the Amazon has patented a way to create a digital marketplace for ebooks and other kinds of digital objects. As this Wired article describes it, the mechanism would be similar to the one used by Amazon’s Kindle e-book lending process.  When you lend the ebook book, your access to it is cut off for the term of the loan.

The proposed used digital marketplace would take that one step further. Instead of loaning the access rights of an e-book, music file, video or application, in exchange for some cash, the original owner of the digital file would transfer the rights to use that file to another party permanently.

If the file were downloaded to a device, after the sale, the original owner would be unable to access the file. the data would still be on the device until deleted by the original owner, but access to the contents of that file would be turned off.

The Wired article floats various theories about what Amazon is up to here.  The one that makes most sense to me is that this is just another way for Amazon to bypass traditional book publishers and record companies. For authors to get a cut of the resale money, they might have to deal directly with Amazon, rather than via a middleman.  I can’t imagine that Amazon wouldn’t offer some kind of royalty on these resales, because then they risk having top authors simply refuse to publish their works for the Kindle.  But I could be wrong–nothing seems to have stopped Amazon from selling used print books.  And, as the Wired article points out, used ebooks aren’t going to have dogeared pages or ripped covers.  They’d be just as good as the new version, only cheaper.  Who wouldn’t like that–except the starving author?