So Amazon bought The Book Depository.
That’s business, I suppose, but it wasn’t something I ever wanted to hear. As Chris Zappone said in the Sydney Morning Herald, online book retailing is about to get a little less competitive.
Author: Karen
Categories
How to discover new books
Finding books is hard
When I look at books I like on sites like Amazon nowadays there’s one extra place I always look. The ‘who bought this item also bought’. When I find a book in the list that looks interesting, I read the excerpt, if there is one, then I read the reader’s reviews.
This is where I find a lot of new books nowadays.
Another place I find new books is Suvudu’s Del Rey Spectra 50 Page Fridays.
And of course, there are still the recommendations from my reading friends of books they read and liked.
Even so, as Michael Shatzkin, of the Shatzkin Files says, one problem not really solved yet with eBooks is the ability to find books you want to read.
But the merchandising … leaves a lot to be desired. My shopping experiences are actually a bit of a random walk. I ask my ebook retailer to show me books by category and … I tend to see the same books over and over again, far too many of which I have already read …
Michael Shatzkin, Merchandising ebooks is a problem not really solved yet
The big bookstores aren’t much use
It’s a dilemma, and for me the difficulty of finding new authors hasn’t just started with the eBook revolution. I never used the major bookstores like Borders to find new authors. I only ever used them to buy books.
Why?
Because they only carry the bestsellers and new books. I don’t always want the bestsellers, and I don’t always hear about books when they’re new. When I hear about them they may be six, twelve months old—after my friends have recommended them, or I read a review somewhere. By then they’re often out of stock at the big chains.
Back in the days when bookshops were more prolific, there were two local science fiction/fantasy shops I frequented all the time. The salespeople in those shops knew their books and they would happily recommend authors or novels based on what you were buying. One thing I really look forward to is the return of these specialist bookstores—which I think is coming, now that the big chains all seem to be going broke.
Online booksellers—both electronic and paper—have improved matters, only they’re doing it in a typical Web 2.0 fashion, putting the onus back onto users to make the recommendations rather than doing it themselves.
Reader reviews
I like reader reviews. I like the ratings they put on books.
They’re different to the reviews you read in a major newspaper’s weekend section or a magazine for two reasons.
Paid reviewers have no real choice in what they read. Well, they do have some choice, but they still need to review the major releases, even if they don’t like them, sometimes even if they don’t read in that genre. So right from the start, they’re reading a book they would not normally read as a reader.
I also find that they’re a lot like film critics in that they review so many books they’re often looking for something different. Anything new, fresh or innovative rates highly with them—even if it doesn’t suit the genre or the story.
But readers, they’re reading books in their genre. They’re reading books they chose to read. When they write a review they’re starting from the same place I am. When they give a book five stars I pay a lot more attention to it that I do to the five stars a professional critic gives it because it means that someone like me read the book and liked it.
I pay a lot of attention to one-star reviews as well, incidentally. You will often find readers give a book one star because of a subject matter that is taboo to them. A book with mostly five-star reviews and some one-star reviews is often a very good book. Read the reviews to find out.
Book sites on the web
Of the booksellers I look at regularly I find that:
- Amazon has an excellent review system. Most of us know it already and use it
- Fictionwise has ratings, but no capacity for comments
- The Book Depository has capability for reviews and ratings but in my experience I find few books that I buy have been reviewed by users
- iTunes also has capability for ratings. I haven’t used the Apple store much as they still don’t have many of the books I want—or maybe I just can’t find them—but based on the other items they sell I expect these reviews will eventually come to rival Amazon’s.
But you don’t have to just stick with the bookstores. There are specialist sites where you can record what books you are reading, keep a record of everything you have in your library, write reviews and see what other people who like the same books you do read and recommend. Some of the big ones are:
We’ve still got some way to go, but it’s getting easier to find books. Much easier than it was back in the day when the big bookstore chains were all we had. It can only be good for books.
I have found something we do worse than fight scenes.
Love scenes.
We often put romance in our stories but we’ve always tiptoed around the edges as it were. In our latest novel*, however, we needed a couple of scenes where the characters needed to go just that little bit further.
We took three days. It’s a public holiday here so it was three solid working days for two scenes. I wrote one draft, Sherylyn fixed that, then I fixed hers, and she fixed mine. Around and around for three solid days. Too much. Too little. Too crass. Too soft.
In the end we managed around 500 words for each scene, and both scenes are getting there, even if they’re not perfect yet.
But boy they were hard to write.
* Our latest work is Kidnap Me One If You Have To, also known by our working title of Edmund. We tend to use working tiles based on the name of our main character, or one of the characters integral to the story.
Hooray. And it’s even in Australia.
Now I have to decide if I want to buy from Apple or boycott them. Territorial rights and digital rights management are the bane of my life. There are so many eBooks I want to buy but can’t. There are so many eBooks I have bought but can only read on one reader.
I recently critiqued a batch of stories written by a writing class.
The writers could be divided into two specific groups:
- Those who had just left secondary school and moved into tertiary education. Ages ranged from about eighteen to twenty, and
- Mature-age students who had been out in the workforce/world for some time. Their ages ranged from early thirties to mid-fifties.
The stories submitted by the mature-age students ranged from thrillers to fantasy to slice-of-life. Some were funny, some were racy. There was even one semi-horror. Even so, they were all relatively light in tone.
Every single person in the younger group, however, wrote black, bleak stories from real life where the protagonist ended up getting killed, or beaten up, or raped. Or all three. Without exception.
No wonder dystopian fiction is such a hit in the young adult genre nowadays.
Because we were worried that our database may have been hacked, when I reinstated this blog I went through each post, got the text-only version, read it to ensure there were no nasty surprises hidden within, and reposted.
One of the things that was fascinating to see was how much both Sherylyn’s and my writing has changed in the five years since this post has been going.
The way we write together has changed.
Five years ago we each wrote a separate first draft, then relied on the other to tighten continuity and add colour and emotion in the second draft.
We still both do our own first draft. I don’t think that’s likely to change. Each of us has different ideas that we’re prepared to carry through a whole novel. It’s what happens afterwards that is different.
I still occasionally re-write parts of Sherylyn’s first drafts, but mostly now I tell her what is not working and she does the initial rewrite herself. As for me, I do more writing and rewriting, and I add a lot more emotion myself than I used to, but I rely more on Sherylyn to tell me whether the story is on track as I’m writing it. If she tells me I’m diverging away from the story then I’ll rewrite it as part of that initial draft.
What it means for both of us is that we have effectively cut out the second draft altogether, incorporating much of it into the first. It’s made for speedier writing, although it still takes six months to get that first draft down. It has also made for better writing.
Categories
An exercise in good writing
Over at ProBlogger Jon Morrow, of Copyblogger, posted a motivational article called How to Quit Your Job, Move to Paradise, and Get Paid to Change the World.
It’s an emotional topic and not just because of the catchy title. It has garnered hundreds of comments. Read the article and you’ll see why. But I don’t want to talk about what caused the outpouring of support, I want to talk about the writing.
This is fact, not fiction, but if you study Morrow’s technique this is ideal for fiction.
More after the break, with major spoilers.
Categories
Overheard: an editor’s assistant
Overheard at a coffee shop near one of the big five publishing houses.
Smartly dressed girl, “I’m employed to edit manuscripts, but he hasn’t given me a single manuscript yet.”
Sympathetic noises from more casually dressed friend, who looks as if she has the day off and is meeting Girl for lunch.
More casual conversation, and I get the impression that Girl is working for ‘him’. Maybe as an assistant, but he’s definitely her boss.
Girl, “I waited and waited for him to give me some editing to do. He didn’t. Finally, I asked, and he came back with a whole pile of manuscripts and said, ‘Send these back. They’re rejects.’ ”
Horrified sympathetic noises from friend. “He’s treating you like a secretary.”
“Exactly. And I’m employed to edit manuscripts. Well, I gave it a few more days before I asked again. Do you know what he did? He gave me more manuscripts to return. I’m sick of it. I don’t want to do this job any more.”
Categories
We’re back
We’re finally back online.
It took longer than expected to recover, because we didn’t know if the database had been compromised or not. As a result, I had to check every record personally before I put it up again. It’s hard work. I’m just glad we did good housekeeping and there was data to check.
I didn’t reinstate comments or trackbacks.
I haven’t finished the site re-design yet. That’s the least of my worries right now.
Categories
We got hacked
We got hacked.
It’s one of the hazards of having an on-line presence, I guess, but it’s still unpleasant when it happens.
The funny thing is, while I don’t like that they got into our website, changed the permissions and inserted rogue code, what really upsets me is that they used our emails to generate spam.
The site is easy enough to fix. We have pre-hack backups and it was time for a redesign.
Emails, however, are your name and your reputation. Changing your email address is like changing your postal address. It’s a lot of work, you always miss notifying someone important. It’s not something you do quickly or lightly.
Besides, it’s your name. It’s how people know you. You don’t want to change your name.
So we wiped the site totally. It will be back better than ever as soon as we get the time to put it back up.
Emails though—we’ll reinstate them and hope for the best. With new passwords of course.
If you got spammed by us, we’re sorry.