WTF, Amazon?

So, last night the Twitterverse nudged me and said, “Hey, did you notice all of Macmillan's books have been removed from Amazon?” I hadn't, but I jumped over to my Amazon app and established that it was true, if I wanted a book from any of Macmillan's imprints (like, say, Tor or Saint Martin's), I could only get them through third party sellers.

“Huh?” I said. “Yo, Twitter, what's up with this?”

Twitter sent me to a blog entry on the Wall Street Journal confirming this has happened and quoting an anonymous source at Amazon who said this is part of an argument over the price of e-books.

This bothers me for several different reasons.

The first question I would like answered is, “Why is Amazon letting us figure this out like this instead of issuing a statement?” Why are they not stating their case? It seems at best immature and is definitely something that pisses me off as a customer. Simply not providing me with the items I desire without respecting me enough to tell me why is obnoxious. I don't know if the PR department wasn't warned, wasn't listened to when they said this was a mistake, or is in severe need of firing, but at least one of those three things is true.

The second question I have for Amazon is, “Why drag all editions of Macmillan's books into this?” Yeah, it makes the debate more noticeable. But is that in Amazon's interest? Because I'm not sitting here thinking that Macmillan's been cut out of Amazon because Macmillan's full of greedy bastards, I'm sitting here thinking that Amazon is punishing me because publishers are getting tired of being ripped off by them. Amazon looks like the bad guy, an aggressive bully. They'd be better off doing this in a dark alley somewhere, not on a brightly-lit plaza.

The debate on e-book pricing has been going on for a long time. The LA Times touches on this in their article on the situation. Publishers admit digital editions of books cost less to get to the consumer than print editions. However, they claim cost difference isn't nearly as big as the public appears to think. According to Bob Miller, president of Harper Studio, the savings is as little as $2.50 per copy. Paper and ink aren't free, but they also aren't the major expenses involved in publishing a book.

This leads into my third question for Amazon, which is, “Exactly what's so bad about allowing publishers to set their own prices for their products?” Amazon doesn't say, “All paperbacks are worth $8, all softbacks $12, and all hardbacks $17.” Those products are all priced according to what the publisher put down as the MSRP. What's different about e-books? The only thing I can think of is that Amazon wants people to think e-books are cheaper than print books so that the public is willing to shell out money for Kindles.

Personally, I don't own a Kindle. I don't want to own a Kindle. The DRM and the EULA both offend me far too much for me to be willing to give Amazon a dime for a Kindle. If I was given one, I'd sell it. But I've always been able to separate my feelings for the Kindle from my willingness to frequent Amazon. Last night, Amazon decided to yank that freedom away from me.

I think Amazon assumed their customers would be on their side in this. I'm sure some are. But I'm not. I think they're being arrogant and heavy-handed. I think they need to stop. And I think they damned sure need to explain themselves.

 

UPDATE: John Sargent wrote an open letter to all Macmillan authors/illustrators and the literary agent community. It ran as a paid advertisemenmt in a special Saturday edition of Publishers Lunch. Read it for the Macmillan side of this issue.

Things I've Learned This Year

The other evening my beloved was talking to a friend he hadn't seen in fifteen years, doing the “This is how my life has been...” thing. During it, he mentioned to her that I was a writer, have been writing seriously for the last few years, and have been working on getting a book sold for the last year. And I thought, “What? Really? For a whole year?”

I didn't argue with him because I almost instantly decided he was right, but my first instinct was to contradict him. It's not like I've been phoning up editors trying to get them to buy my book for the last year. I haven't even been phoning agents. Or anyone else, I don't like phones. Not their voice-chat apps anyway... Um... Sorry, ADD. As I was saying, I haven't been waking up every morning and pestering people to buy my book. Last summer, I sent out a few agent queries, yes. Then I stopped bothering people so I could do more revision. If Shadow were a house, you could say I had a few agents glance over it but none of them thought they could sell it as is so I decided to do some renovating before talking to anyone else. If I were telling someone about it I wouldn't say, “I've been trying to sell my house for the last year,” but something like, “I've been trying to get the house ready to sell.”  I haven't been actively knocking on doors trying to sell my novel for a year, but I have been working on selling it because I've been working on making it salable.

I've learned a lot over the last year about the publishing industry and about how a book goes from sitting on a laptop to being in store. The technicals I was mostly aware of, but there are a lot of details that I never though about much before.

Some of what I've learned has been things people outside the industry have no way of learning without being told. For example, did you know books opening with people waking up will almost undoubtedly be tossed after the first sentence? I didn't. How could that be clichéd when I can't think of any books that start that way? Some movies and a few TV shows, yeah, but books... Oh, wait... Arthur Dent started The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy waking up, didn't he? Hang-over, bulldozers, aliens... Yeah, alright, there's a book that started that way. And I've likely read others, but not many, at least not compared to the number of books I've read that start out with a woman dressed as a slut in order to get some bad guy to droll over her long enough for her to stab him in the back. As far as I can tell as a reader, chicks who consider tight leather and miniskirts to be assault weapons would be much more clichéd than people whose stories start in the morning. But then I started looked at agent blogs and they assure me it's way overdone. How overdone?  Well, last week I saw an agent tweet that she'd gone through 25 queries that morning and 23 of the samples featured someone waking up. It seemed like she was commenting on that being a lot rather than trying to say it was standard, but she didn't sound shocked.  Things can clearly be clichéd in slush submissions without being clichéd in published works.

I've learned that agents want authors to have domain names before querying. I learned that after querying, of course... In all honesty, I'd assumed that it was presumptuous and as annoying as people querying for fiction with marketing plans. Apparently I was wrong. Industry types also don't seem to consider it an attempt at buying attention, which was my other fear. And they like blogs and use of social media too, if you're curious.

I've learned to Tweet. And, yes, that's part of the quest for publication. No, not just because of what I said a second ago about agents liking to see authors use social media. On one level, I follow a long list of agents, editors, and published authors who all give me valuable insight into the industry. But more importantly to me, I've found a collection of fellow writers who function as an awesome support network. They encourage me when I'm having trouble bothering with opening my word processing window. They commiserate when things go wrong. They cheer when things go right. I wasn't on Twitter when I queried before, but when I'm ready for it again my Twitter friends will be there to cheer me up when the head shakes come in and will be there to shriek with me when I finally make it to a nod. The impact of not feeling alone should never be underestimated.

I've learned to use the word “that” less. Like hundreds, maybe thousands, of times per manuscript less. I've learned to use fewer dialog tags and to simplify them. I've learned there are alternatives to adverbs.  I've learned I use too many commas.  I've learned my characters blink too often. And sigh too much... Yes, they're teens and that means a lot of sighing is natural, but it also means readers will be able to assume a lot of them without the words being there. I've learned a lot about saying too much and some about saying too little.

I've learned the Open Office word count feature is useless for novels because it counts quote marks as words. It might not be too far off for a novel with little dialog, but it shifts my word count by over ten thousand words.

I've learned I need to enjoy rough drafts. I've learned it's possible to enjoy revising, but that I don't have to. I'm learning when I can be forced to work and when I can't.

I've learned that I'm not going to give up on this writing professionally idea because it's hard and painful and frustrating, that I'm strong enough to keep at it even when it feels like it's killing me.

And I've learned that I'm not going to stop learning anytime soon.

Play Ball!

I'm watching the Vikings trounce the Cowboys, which puts me in a good mood even though my own beloved Ravens fell to Indy yesterday. After the first touchdown, my husband was making fun of Favre's reaction, saying he looked way too happy. And he had a point, Favre was stoked enough you'd think they just won the game not merely been the first team to score. But I liked it. Favre's enthusiasm has always been my favorite thing about him. Even with the saga of his re-retirements, I've never doubted that he loves the game. We wouldn't have witnessed that saga if he didn't.

As I watched him after the most recent touchdown, I realized the game was actually demonstrating what I was blogging about yesterday. Brett Favre knows how to play.

Now, in football, the verb “play” is used no matter what you do, but Favre is a master of having fun. And I think that's why he's so good at the rest of it.

In contrast, look at Romo. Tony Romo's not a bad quaterback, and I hate the Cowboys so you know I mean it when I say that. I'm betting he likes his job too. I'm sure he cares about what he's doing and I've certainly seen him get emotional about it, like that time he sat down on the field and cried after loosing an important game by making too many mistakes. But while I've seen him demonstrate misery incarnate on several occassions, I don't think I've ever seen him cloaked in the “Holy Shit, this is FUN!” arura Favre wears so often. Sure, I've seen him happy, but not in the same way. And I think it's because when Romo's on the field, he's at work.

Obviously, I know neither of these men. I could be way off. But that's sure what it looks like to me. And even if Romo weren't a Cowboy, I'd much rather be Favre.

 

Uncharted Waters

Earlier this week, I stated in my Livejournal that I thought I had a need for more direction in my writing.  I realized that while I had put writing on my schedule, I sat down to write without knowing what I was working on.  I had a list of things that I needed to do, but if I was going to force myself to do any of them I thought I needed more direction.

Then I started reading CHAPTER AFTER CHAPTER by Heather Sellers and the very first exercise is to simply sit down and write something.  So I did, even though none of the stories rattling in my head were anything more than vague ideas and even though I was very aware of having a lot of editing to trudge through.

Two hours later, I had three thousand words of a new story.  I've added to it the last two days and am loving the freedom of writing without an outline again.

When I first started writing, I never used outlines.  Then I realized the results were rambling and long and unpublishable without a lot of rewriting.  I started outlining.  It worked, so I kept at it.  And I got more and more detailed.  My first outlines were a few pages long.  My most recent one took up a whole notebook with scene by scene breakdowns.  And my most recent rough draft, IMAGINE, based on that detailed outline, was a uninspired lump of drivel.  Sure every scene had a reason to be there, sure every line was feeding the plot.  But the story itself was DOA.

Now this could be coincidence.  Not every idea works out well, so maybe the problem wasn't that I killed my joy of writing by sticking too close to a blueprint.  But in the past, even when a book didn't work I at least had fun writing it.  I do believe that shows through in the words, but even if it doesn't I'd obviously rather enjoy myself than not.

I'm enjoying the new story.  And I do have an idea of where it's going, I just haven't written any of it down and haven't put much thought into how to achieve it.  This week has felt a lot like when I first did NaNo and re-learned to move past editing while I worked in order to just write. (It was something I knew in school, then trained myself out of trying to become a 'serious writer'.)

The best part about my new project is that since I started it I'm able to look at the more developed WIP's again.  Monday was productive, but that died the next day.  Tuesday I did nothing and Wednesday morning I couldn't stand the thought of fixing my physics problems in SHADOW and I had no idea what to do about the revising of WERESTORY after I hit the part in the work that needed real revising rather than mere edits.  I got past everything I remembered needed to address in SHADOW yesterday and will be continuing to pass through it this weekend.  And I now have faith that I can move past my block in WERESTORY.  Although I'm not quite up to opening the file and mucking with it yet, I'm in a much better headspace to deal with it.

A friend over on Livejournal suggested the solution to my problems might be taking a planned week off writing.  (In contrast to the unplanned six weeks eaten up by holidays and illness.)  Obviously, I didn't follow that suggestion, though I may have had I read it before starting the new story.  I think I followed the spirit of it though.  No, I didn't stop writing, but I gave myself permission not to work.  And that may be the true failing of IMAGINE, that it was work.  For me, the work part of writing needs to come with the revisions.  The stuff before that needs to be freer, more alive, and certainly more enjoyable.  Before the work stage is the play stage.  Don't confuse playing with something untaxing though, it can be hard to play.  It takes energy and focus and dedication.  But it's still more fun than work.

Oh!  And people have asked, what is the new story about?  Dragons.  No, not the dragons from before.  This story takes place in the old story's universe, but takes place earlier and follows different MCs.  And, yes, I did see tweets about agents saying they were suddenly getting a lot of dragon books.  I decided to ignore that.  And that feels good too...

 

Chill, Girl

I've been productive today.

I rewrote a part Shadow's ending that was bugging the heck out of me without me realizing it before the weekend. I rewrote all three lengths of my synopsis enough to reflect that. And I rewrote my query based on feedback from  Jodi Meadows, who used to screen slush for a botique agency and thus really knows what she's on about. 

No, I'm not sending the query out yet. For one thing, word is there's a query-flood on right now.  But more importantly, there are a few other things I want to tweak in my story. And I need to work on my plan of who to send the shiny new query for the improved less-lame version of my story out to. And I need to keep an eye on myself and make sure I don't screw up my basic query trying to personalize it.

There are people out there who think it's acceptable to write “Dear Agent” and cc the query to as many addresses as they can find. These people are wrong. However, I tend to go overboard in the other direction. I don't just write a name, I also write why I'm writing to this person specifically. I praise blogs and Twitter feeds and the books on the agent's list. I think it comes across as just too much. I fear I sound fake. That really bothers me because it isn't fake. If I gush at you, I mean it. But there's no way for a stranger to know that, no reason for them not to simply lable me a suck up.

So, world, here's another little detail about me... If I sound merely polite, feel free to suspect my words. They're probably still sincere, but they're schooled and overthought. If I sound like a crazed tween in awe of the Jonahs Brothers... Well, I'd never try to sound that stupid on purpose, so what you're seeing is the uncensored me. Feel free to think I'm annoying, just don't think I'm dishonest.