A New Local Vendor for my Books

This is a brief post about a bookstore which is selling my titles, The Gift Horse and Trinity on Tylos. I've been in several times as a customer, and this store has a good selection of titles, a large audio book collection, and super organization.

Readers who visit The Bookstand of Northeast Georgia will find some entertaining reads at great prices. This spacious store is located in what locals call "Banks Crossing" and has ample parking. The proprietor, Ronda Sailors, also has books by other local authors, so I encourage book lovers and those shopping for book lovers to stop in and pick up a great present.

If you are new to Pam's Pages there are links to my publishers as well as to each book's listing on Amazon.com, so you can check these out before you make your purchase.

This & That

People like to talk, don’t they? Sometimes they tell news and sometimes they tell something else entirely. I’m sure you know people who are of such integrity that you believe what they say, and others that you must take with more than the proverbial grain of salt. Lately, I seem to be bombarded with gossip, via phone, online, email, and especially over the dinner table.

After I posted an entry about poor editing in online publications and ebooks, I began to follow up on some of the problems in small press and epublishing. One fascinating source I came across is Dear Author. This site has book reviews, commentary, and news of the publishing industry. Some well known authors are among those who respond to the entries, so if you want to be “in the know” this site will interest you.

A friend mentioned a book, Conversation Peace, which is described as presenting “principles to help women revolutionize their speech habits and improve their relationships by focusing on ways to positively avoid sharing gossip, throwing negative barbs, or snapping sarcastic replies throughout everyday life.” If you are like me, you can think of some acquaintances who could benefit from this one. Some of the folks who call or visit seem to find their entertainment in spreading tales, often of questionable veracity. Yet, questioning “the news” can make one seem rude, but any rational person would have to question some of the tales which go around my small town.

I’d heard about a new bookstore here in Jackson County. A couple of weeks ago, I visited Bookstand of NE GA, which is at 337 Pottery Factory Drive, in Commerce. The phone number is 706-335-BOOK (2665). Their advertising touts “gently used books” and that certainly was the case when I visited. This store trades as well as sells, so you might bring in some of your gently used items. Locals, this store is at Banks Crossing, so stop in and check it out.

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.

What a great promo idea!

I’ve struggled with getting my books onto shelves— in homes and in stores. But if any of you has a book on the shelves in a bookstore or other retailer, here is a nifty new promo idea: Shelf Talkers.

Most independent book retailers achieve success because they can “hand sell” books to their clients. However, even small stores have moments when the staff is busy, or the shy clerk is holding down the fort. That’s where shelf talkers come into play. These can be as simple as an index card, or booksellers can download fancy ones from Ingram’s marketing blog, ready for printing. Either way, this little sign can direct traffic to a special book— like mine!

Interested? Take a look and follow the links, and soon your book might just be making the move from store shelves to home shelves.

Check out this promo blog, and this article by romance writer Stephanie Bond.

Where do you buy books?

Or do you? As a child, growing up in a family with limited financial means, we didn’t buy many books. I did view the ones I owned as special, and I still have a few of them, battered after about forty years of ownership. For the most part, we read books that we checked out of the local library, or the school library. Even when I was in elementary school, my mom was thrilled when one of my teachers described me as “well read.” That still fits, I suppose, even if the source of my reading material has changed.

I still read quite a bit from libraries as I transitioned from a student to a teacher, but with the heavy burden of reading what was assigned by my college professors and what I was teaching to my students, my reading for pleasure was naturally curtailed. Then came two children, and wow, did that make a difference!

The years kept going by and when I was in my early forties, I suppose I had a bit of a mid-life crisis. Instead of buying a motorcycle— which I had given up at 33, when I learned I was pregnant— I began to read exactly what I wanted to read. Not what was on the best seller list, not what was being touted by my friends or family members, not what I could get at the library, but what I wanted to read. I began collecting obscure works that I’d missed. I now have all of Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise books. I read lots of science fiction, like David Weber, Elizabeth Moon, and Lois McMaster Bujold. Futuristic romance was just getting established, and I read all of them I could find. That search led me to eBooks, and book reviewing, and to a certain extent into writing my own books. I can’t remember who said it, but it is true that you write the books you want to read. The Gift Horse is a contemporary suspense story with dark psychological overtones, and Trinity on Tylos is a futuristic with romantic elements, and I love both of those genres, so if you like what I like, try them. Buy them— please!

Which brings me back to the original question. I seldom read library books anymore, but I buy quite bit from Amazon.com, and I buy eBooks from Fictionwise. I buy my rare books via Alibris, which is also on the internet. Locally, I like Books a Million, and I sometimes shop in Barnes & Noble, even though they refuse to carry my books. Borders will order my books, and I like the atmosphere in their stores, but they are perhaps the most expensive bookseller, so I seldom shop there, unless I need good service.

eBooks, fad or future

A few years ago I bought my first laptop computer, and I purchased my first eBook shortly thereafter. The only reason for that purchase was that the book was out-of-print, and rather than spending time hunting for it through some of the used book sellers online, I could get what I wanted instantly, at the price of a mass market paperback. That book, an electronic version of a print book, didn’t suffer from either of the biggest problems I’ve encountered with books which are marketed as eBooks— that is, it was not rife with errors which should have been eliminated in the editing stage, and it wasn’t too brief to be called a book.

Once I had that positive experience, I bought a few other eBooks, but I only purchased electronic versions of books which had begun as print books. However, as an avid reader of online book reviews, I kept seeing reviews of books which were only available in electronic format. Eventually, I tried a few of those. Some were wonderful reads, but as I ventured on to more and more publishers, I ran into the previously mentioned problems— poor editing and an occasional novella sold as a full-length book.

Despite these issues, eBooks have a few advantages over their print cousins, but just a few. First, it’s easy to store a whole bunch of them on the hard drive of a computer, or in the flash memory of a PDA. Travelers find this especially helpful. By carrying their reading in electronic format, they can have far more to read and far less to carry. Better yet, when you are finished, you don’t have a big box to sell at a yard sale or donate to charity. Also helpful, but not universally true, is the fact that many eBooks are less expensive than their print counterparts. However, the main reason I began reading eBooks is the same one that keeps me coming back, and that is the generic nature of the titles which are available from the local bookstore. I might find ten futuristic romances at a bricks and mortar store, but I can find a hundred by checking my ever growing list eBook retailers.

There are some reasons that eBooks aren’t for all readers. I can’t imagine sitting at a desktop to read a whole book, so the reader needs a PDA, a laptop computer, or a dedicated eBook reader. Sometimes a print book is best, whether you’re sitting on the beach under the umbrella or in the bathtub. I’ll always want print media for certain times, but at other times I’m willing to sit inside with my laptop and read until the battery gives up. Thankfully, editing has been steadily improving, but I wonder “where’s the rest of it?” when I find I’ve paid for a book which has about 25,000 words— which is less than half the usual count for a full length novel. And this may seem petty, but I don’t like it when I download the book and don’t get a close-up look at the cover art. Some publishers send it along, but many do not, usually because including such graphics will slow the download process.

Although they often sell poorly in comparison with print books, eBooks are more than a fad. As the internet matures, online media will evolve to include music, video, and eBooks. Just as digital still photography and video cameras are beginning to merge, one day people will have a paid access to multimedia files, and eBooks will be one of the attractions. Until then, print will sell better, but books in electronic format will provide an avenue for new authors to strut their stuff to tech-savvy readers. Many of these books provide readers with what they want, something different. And different can be better— a lot better.

My answer to the title question is simple, "Both!"

There are many eBook vendors, but I’ve bought multiple volumes from the sites below. If you’ve never seen any electronic books for sale, check out these publishers and vendors—

http://www.wings-press.com/
http://www.whiskeycreekpress.com/
http://www.fictionwise.com