Online, Typos Never Die

I've been an English teacher for more than thirty years. That's scary. And, during most of those years, I have tried to help students make their writing better. Or, as my current supervisor says of her own career, "For years I thought I was combating ignorance; then I realized I was just documenting it." Yes, we English teachers spend a great deal of time looking for mistakes.

Whenever I do web design, one of the wonderful things about it is that electrons are ephemeral. I can correct mistakes and the problems go to some cyber-heaven. However, once words are online, other entities copy those words, usually without credit or permission, and typos just keep on turning up.

Periodically, I use a search engine to keep me abreast of online use of my novel titles. Seldom does any reference to "The Gift Horse" have anything to do with me, since the phrase is widely used. "Trinity on Tylos" seems to be unique, however, so any use of those three words in that order should refer back to my science fiction novel. Recently, a Google search for "Trinity on Tylos" led me to a site called Vampire Raves. Someone posted my novel's back cover blurb on the site, but the source was apparently Amazon, rather than the book itself. How do I know that? Here's the story—

When the publisher's printing partner, Paw Prints POD, first posted it on Amazon, the title was Trinity on Trylos. It took me quite a while to correct that. But the description, which is that back cover blurb, misspells the main character's name. One of my teacher friends from long ago often mentioned a colleague, Venice. I wanted an exotic, yet human name for my futuristic character, so I swiped it. Quite frankly, I stole the last name from the social pages of the Athens, Georgia newspaper, so the main character is Venice Dylenski. However, Amazon's page, which was created in part by someone from PawPrints, called the character Benice Dylenski.

Indeed, a search for that name yielded ten results, and none of them are Vampire Raves, so there are undoubtedly other sites which have this same error. Just how many sites have posted this incorrect copy from Amazon? I have no idea, but it does illustrate that one mistake can go a very long way online.

There is something even more scary about that.

Fighting That 900 Pound Gorilla

I noticed that recently another ePublisher went belly-up. Chippewa/ LAP is the latest in a series of casualties. Mardi Gras Press, which seemed to be picking up a number of experienced eBook authors, closed up shop within the last few months as well. Last year Inara Press and Scherezade Press closed.

I noticed this on the index page of the Chippewa site:

Chippewa Publishing has closed its doors. Thank you for all your business and support. Please visit one of our wonderful competitors at amazon.com.

Is the problem the competitors or Amazon.com? I suspect the latter. Amazon.com has been described as the 900 pound gorilla in bookselling, and I’ve seen the results myself. If the book isn’t on Amazon, it lacks credibility which hurts sales. If it is on Amazon and your publisher isn’t willing to offer a huge discount, it won’t sell either.

Whiskey Creek Press isn’t exactly taking on the 900 pounder directly, but they list their books on Amazon reluctantly. One of my contacts who was once employed by WCP mentioned that they avoid listing new releases with other vendors for a while, hoping that eager buyers will come to the WCP site and purchase at full price, which is better for the publisher and the author.

Amazon is a “lose, lose scenario” for authors with smaller publishers like mine, because the books are so overpriced in either an attempt to preserve profit or in a futile attempt to drive customers to the publisher’s own site. Recently, I noticed that Trinity on Tylos is now “in stock” at Amazon; a feature I paid for over a year ago, but the price is $23.96, a price that’s $10.01 over publisher’s list. Probably that odd ball price covers shipping and handling from the publisher to Amazon and from Amazon to the customer. Alas, there are no customers at that price. The average hardcover costs far less, so the #3,243,149 in Books sales ranking for Trinity on Tylos comes at no surprise.

The Gift Horse does a bit better, no doubt due to lower costs at Booklocker. The royalty is half as much for sales at Amazon, and they don’t get to me for at least six months, but it is in dollars rather than cents, and the book is listed at cover price rather than being up-priced.

One of my author-friends has a book with a small publisher which offers a discount at Amazon, and her book sells reasonably well there, so the only way to win is to control costs so well that the book makes a bit of money even when placed with the 900 pound gorilla. As the saying goes, you can’t fight it, so you have to find a way to deal with it.

Unfortunately, some publishers (and their authors) just can’t win, but they try until the bitter end.

In good company, but sold out?

Like many authors these days, I have a “google alert.” This is a nifty service which sends me an email when someone does a search for either Pamela J. Dodd or Trinity on Tylos, and lets me know what that person clicked on after doing the search. My latest alert apprised me that Trinity is now available from The Dungeon Bookstore. Okay, I admit, my first thought was, “Say what? There’s not any BDSM in Trinity!” I touched on that in The Gift Horse, but not in Trinity. However, a visit to the site states: Science Fiction, fantasy, horror, and witch craft/magic books are our main categories, we've also begun to add science fiction dvd's and comic graphic novels.

Some of The Dungeon Bookstore’s other offerings are books I like quite a lot, including the series by Elizabeth Vaughan which begins with Warprize. Indeed, they have titles from Tor, Baen, and Eos, which is top notch content, and I am really glad to be included. Another great aspect of this site is that they offer free shipping, without up-pricing the books. The printer, Pawprints, sells it via Amazon, and they raised the price a dollar, which along with Amazon’s standard shipping price of 3.49 yields a purchase price of $18.48. Ouch.

Unfortunately, the product page lists the book as being sold out. I clicked on a couple of my fellow Whiskey Creek Press author’s titles, they were “sold out” as well. I asked over at the WCP author group, and the webmaster replied that this page just links to the WCP site, and customers are supposed to buy there. That's too bad, huh? I guess I'll always be "sold out" in the Dungeon.

Cover art

For the past week, I've been looking at samples from the art director at Whiskey Creek Press, and now the cover art is ready and I've posted small versions of the front cover on www.pamelajdodd.com— just look at the Pam's Books page.

I found the whole process interesting, from the questionaire that all WCP authors fill out, to the tweaking that I requested, trying to get that little thumbnail to help me tell my story. Perhaps the most important information was the character descriptions. Here's what I sent in for those:

Hero Description — There are two “heros” and the title, Trinity on Tylos, reflects that. (1) Steve Dylenski is a space service officer, about 30, with relatively short (military style) hair, clad in a uniform which has a waist length royal blue jacket over a white turtle neck and dark pants, with gold rings on the sleeves denoting rank. (2) Azareel is an alien, a massive gray-blue humanoid, hairless, with light eyes, clad in a dark robe over black pants.

Heroine Description— Venice, an attractive female, is abducted early in the story and transformed by the alien to look like his race, so she also has gray-blue skin and no hair. After her capture Venice wears formal gowns in jewel tones and a sparkling choker necklace.

With those brief instructions, along with a summary and the copy for the "back cover blurb" the artist, Nora Baxter, came up with three possible covers. One of them was close to my internal vision of these characters, but we went through three more versions before I was completely satisfied.

As I look at it now, I wonder if potential readers will see these characters as I do, three unique individuals whose lives become intertwined as they become founders of a new civilization. Or maybe they'll think it's a cartoon, like the Jetsons. I guess only time will tell.

On being a book reviewer

About two years ago, I decided that I could save a few bucks and learn more about current trends in fiction by signing on as a book reviewer. After sending an email to the staff of Timeless Tales, an internet site with almost a thousand posted reviews, I was given an eBook and a month to read it and write a review. Apparently my efforts were satisfactory, because after that I could choose as many as three titles a month from their huge list of available eBooks as long as I got the reviews done within a month or so. Some of the titles I would have loved to read, especially those destined for print, were taken before I saw the updated database of titles, but there were always items of interest. Unfortunately, a few months after I signed on, the review coordinator died. The last few reviews I sent in were never posted, nor were any new requests for titles met by the owners of the site. Timeless Tales stayed online for a few months, but it wasn’t updated, then it simply disappeared. I’m sure running such a site is a great deal of work, but I miss both the reviews and the opportunities it represented.

One of the other reviewers for Timeless Tales with whom I had corresponded did let me know that Sizzling Romances needed reviewers, so I emailed the owner of that site, and I was soon back in the reviewing business. Although a few of the novels I chose from their list sizzled a bit too much for my tastes, I really enjoyed reading and writing for that site. The site owner has had numerous problems, including some severe health issues, so it has gone on hiatus for now. I’m beginning to think having me as a reviewer is bad luck, so I’ve decided to focus on my own writing career and leave reviewing to other able readers and writers.

One of the books I reviewed while I was with Sizzling Romances was an ARC from Whiskey Creek Press, and I liked it so much that I kept that publisher in mind when I was seeking a home for my futuristic novel, Trinity on Tylos. I did send Trinity to another publisher first, because I had corresponded with one of their authors, but after that publisher rejected it, I sent it to Whiskey Creek Press. I was delighted, of course, when they accepted it.

Now that Trinity on Tylos has been through the copy edit, I’ve been given the green light to seek prepublication reviews. As of this date, I’ve queried twelve internet review sites, but I've only had two requests for an ARC (advanced review copy). As a former reviewer, I know that many sites will take an ARC and if none of the reviewers pick the title, then it won’t be reviewed. I’m hopeful that I’ll get a few reviews before the release date, but those aren’t easy for fledging writers to acquire. If I get those reviews, I’ll link to them from www.pamelajdodd.com.

Finished! (for now, that is)

I’ve spent quite a few hours in the past month working through Trinity on Tylos, which is now moving into the final editing stage. I must say that the editor assigned by Whiskey Creek Press has worked diligently on the manuscript and with me, so that this book is even better than it was when the publisher accepted it in May.

I usually have some people, not editors but ordinary readers, do a “first reading” of any manuscript before I send it out, and one of the three who read this manuscript had some difficulty keeping up with all of the characters in the first four chapters of Trinity, which begins on a colonization ship. There are some ninety people on board, and the reader doesn’t meet all of them, of course, but I wanted to convey some of the shipboard camaraderie and rivalries which would occur in such an expedition.

The WCP editor had some similar concerns, so we reworked those chapters and are planning to include an appendix with a list of characters. Hopefully, those changes will help those who purchase Trinity on Tylos to get into the story without frustration.

Trinity on Tylos is a multifaceted story, with complex themes, yet the plot moves along, hopefully keeping the reader entertained. Now that this phase is finished, I’m looking forward to February, when more readers get a chance to meet these characters, who have been running around in my brain for quite a while now.

New hope for eBook authors

While cruising around the Sci Fi channel's really excellent website, I read a favorable review of Linnea Sinclair's Finder's Keepers, which I bought a few years ago as a pdf file (that is, an eBook) published by NovelBooks, Inc. Here's the link to the review: http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue423/books2.html

Finder's Keepers is "new" in a mass market paperback edition, and I wish the author much success as she bridges the gap between the fringe market of eBooks and traditional publishing. This book is a lighthearted futuristic romance and deserves to find a larger audience than it had when it was just a download away. In an earlier post, I examined the role of eBooks in modern publishing, so I won't rehash that here.

My new novel has been accepted by an eBook publisher. I'm glad that Whiskey Creek Press offers trade paperbacks as well, so I can purchase those for resale at booksignings and so forth, but I hope that people who don't know me will purchase Trinity on Tylos for the same reasons that I purchased Sinclair's book— because it looked like a fun read. I've never met Ms. Sinclair, but I've enjoyed several of her books, and I see the publication of Finder's Keepers by a New York house as a reminder that the original publisher isn't always the only publisher.

Also, I'm glad that futuristic romance is becoming a genre recognized by larger publishers. I've been reading them for some time, but some publishers and authors are bringing this genre into the mainstream. Susan Grant's books, published by Dorchester, are among those which are finding a large audience.

So check out Sinclair's book and the Sci Fi channel's website, especially the reviews and letters.

Progress Toward Publication

The publisher at WCP has given me a release date of February, 2006, for Trinity on Tylos, and requested that I write the “back cover blurb,” the dedication, and some descriptions of characters for the cover artist.

Writing the dedication and character descriptions was fairly easy, but with a 150 word limit, doing the back cover blurb was a bit of a challenge.

Take a look at my final draft and see what you think:

Enamored with her lover, yet governed by her sense of duty, Venice Dylenski, security chief of the colonization vessel Excalibur, has a fascinating, satisfying life. But the Excalibur is about to encounter Azareel,an alien captain with superior firepower and a hidden agenda.

While seeking a home for human colonists, the crew of the Excalibur meets the Archeons, who take Venice and a companion captive. In short order, Azareel informs his prisoners that they will play a critical role in revitalizing his dying race, that of surrogate mothers to genetically-engineered Archeon offspring.

Venice, reluctant "to be the next Archeon soccer mom," strives to escape, but her companion seems all too willing to cooperate with their captor.

Trinity on Tylos has complex characters faced with myriad problems to solve, set in a future where man may have escaped the bounds of his solar system, but not the bonds of human emotions.

Whiskey Creek Press to Publish Trinity on Tylos

It's official— Whiskey Creek Press in Wyoming has accepted Trinity on Tylos, but the release date hasn't been set as of this post. Debra Womack, publisher, called it a "very good read" and further stated that she "completely enjoyed it." Hopefully it will be available soon and each of you can read it as well.

I've placed a link to WCP on the blog, and I'll add some comments as the editorial process gets underway. Obviously, I'm excited to have this new publisher, and I hope my readers will take a look at their website. When I know more about the timeline for publication, I'll post that here as well as on pamelajdodd.com.