Sci-Fi novels sell inexplicably well. The fact that we have an illiteracy rate of almost 50% might be partly to blame for the popularity of science fiction. Many people don’t have the ability to read books written at a level any higher than children’s books or science fiction novels. Regardless, sci-fi sells so well that there are more and more articles and interviews with science fiction writers where they are put on pedestals and treated as though they belong in the select company of writers of much higher standing – like romance novelists.

What readers need to understand is that science fiction novels – by their very nature – are meant to be inferior. Surely, no ivy league colleges will ever teach science fiction novels as part of the curriculum. No science fiction novel will ever be thought of as a classic alongside Spencer, Dickens, Quinn, Lindsey, Garwood or Woodiwiss. If a science fiction tale were that good, it would simply be known as drama or literary fiction or a classic horror tale. No one would ever call Well’s “The Time Machine” or Bradbury’s “Farenheit 451″ science fiction novels. They would be referred to as classic scientific fiction.

The very thing that separates classic scientific fiction from sci-fi novels is that sci-fi novels must by default be bad, tacky even or they’ll no longer be classified as sci-fi and will get placed in a higher category.

It’s difficult to respect something deliberately meant to be a lessor work. One should always do great work. If a writer classifies his own book as science fiction, that tells me that even he doesn’t think much of it. If that’s the case, readers shouldn’t think much of it either.

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The logic makes as much sense when applied to science fiction as it does when applied to romance now, doesn’t it?  That is to say – it makes less sense than I do at 6 a.m. before my morning coffee.  Truthfully, science fiction is a fine genre with some amazing work and there are writers out there putting out some steller stuff.  Yes, some of it may even be taught in colleges one day – right down the hall from courses on romance.

Wait – courses on romance have been taught in some amazing colleges, haven’t they?  And Eloisa James, a graduate of Harvard, Yale and Oxford is a Shakespeare professor at Fordham University.  Oh, yes, and she’s written many New York Times bestselling ROMANCE NOVELS.  (But don’t tell Mr. McCaskey.  The strain of wrapping his brain around that information would probably be too much for him.)

Boogle on over and quack out your thoughts!!!

Ms. Krentz’s “Copper Beach” is priced for ebook at $12.99 and the hardcover is $15.26.  That means that Penguin Publishing is selling Ms. Krentz’s ebook for only $2.27 less than the hardcover edition.  Holy toadfrogs, Batman.  I adore the author’s work, but that price tag is a big ole’ stop sign for me.  Even if I had $12.99 to spend for the book - I wouldn’t pay that price.  The cost for this ebook doesn’t reflect economic reality in today’s market given most consumer’s budgets and it doesn’t reflect how little ebooks cost to produce as compared to paperbacks – let alone hardcover.

In fact, the $12.99 pricetag is so high it feels like gauging.  That I wouldn’t put up with even if I had a bank balance bigger than the combined wealth of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, every Arab Sheik and the entire Walton family.  In the present economic environment, Penguin Publishing’s price scale seems far worse than mere greed – it feels evil.

I also think it’s quite short sighted of Penguin to set their ebook prices so high.  Consumers have long, long memories.  In my neighborhood there was a hardware store that had been family owned and in business for many years.  Then during Hurricane Hugo the store decided to profit from the aftermath.  It decided to pad its bank balance at the expense of the people who’d kept the place in business for so long.  In the midst of disaster and destruction, the store charged outrageous prices for supplies, generators, batteries and even water. And the victims of the Hurricane got victimized again.  But the area recovered.  People rebuilt and hardware stores all over the area made a great deal of money – but not that store.  You know what happened to that store?  It went out of business and the victims became the victors. 

If Penguin would reduce prices far below what it could reasonably charge the company and its authors would make more money now and would make far, far more when we FINALLY recover from the present economic disaster.  Penguin could sell all its books for $7.99 or less and stamp each one with a note - something like – “We’re all in this together and a link for a website.”  At the site, the company could state that it had reduced prices to keep books affordable and that prices would increase when things improved.  You know what? The company that did that would find out that the most valuable business commodity is a loyal customer base. 

Ms. Krentz isn’t responsible for what her publisher charges.  Sure, she makes money from each sale but the publisher and the vendor make far more than the author who doesn’t get to decide the price.  That’s a big advantage of being an indie author – all the choices belong to me.  I surely don’t have a fan base of even 1/100th of Ms. Krentz’s, but based on my experience I can say that the author would actually make a fortune if she got the rights to her back list and self published.  She could charge $3.99 or $4.99 per book and make more than she’d made on that books original advance, all the payouts and all the royalties – far more. 

Penguin’s not the only publisher bilking the public, but it’s the one I noticed today.  The mindset that allows a company to feel entitled to price an ebook so high is the same mindset that prompted my local hardware store to go for the gold and disregard the hardship being suffered by their devastated and loyal customers. 

Penguin and any company willing to re-victimize the victims of the current economic catastrophe should suffer the same fate as my local hardware store.  But you know what? We actually had to drive farther to pass the gauging  hardware store to go to another business. In an online world, it will be much easier to teach publishers the consequences of corporate greed and an unconscionable lack of empathy. And we won’t even have to go out of our way to do it. 

Clicking “next” is easy and perhaps now would be a good time to put that into practice.

By special arrangements with my wonderful hubby, I got exactly what I wanted. And you know what? I have no “Christmas regrets.”  I don’t have even the itty bittiest twinge of buyer’s remorse.  In fact, I have the opposite – I’m filled to the brim with buyer’s satisfaction.   So naturally, I had to put fingers to keyboard to tell y’all all about it.

I’ve been privileged to publish on Amazon via their magical, mystical KDP platform for a couple of years now.  Yet, I’m a newcomer to the Amazon customer universe.  I’m confessing that up front because I don’t doubt that some of my adoration for the Kindle Fire is actually adoration for the whole Amazon experience.  Getting a Fire gave me the keys to the ereading kingdom. I now have access to the biggest, the baddest, the best ebook variety on Planet Earth.  Pretty much, if there’s an ebook in existence, it’s gonna be on Amazon and it’s gonna be there for the lowest price. In this economy, that’s a big plus for the Amazon experience and for the Fire.

Before I got my Fire, I read the flood of criticism that seemed to pour from every which way. They said that the device is faulty because there is only 1 button.  That button turns the Fire on and off and critics claim it causes  many consumers to accidentally turn the device off while they’re using it.  Critics also said that the web browser was way, way too slow and that the App Store was vastly underpopulated.  And they cited big problems with the touch screen features that were sometimes unresponsive.

Of all those major problems that the reviewers cited, the only one I’ve encountered is that sometimes the touch features don’t respond.  When that happens, I’ll either try again, touch the home key, or touch that much maligned little on-off switch to restart.  Frankly, it doesn’t bother me that much but I understand Amazon is working on the issue.  Through recent personal experience with a bad Tablet purchase (not a Fire – an Android for my eldest son) from an Amazon vendor, I’ve learned that when Amazon gives its word, Amazon keeps its word.  So when the company says it’s working on the touch screen issues, I now believe it completely. 

Even if the little touch screen glitches remain, I’ve found the Fire to be the ultimate entertainment device experience and if y’all don’t have a Fire, you need to pick one up right now.  This minute. 

All of the other criticism – about the on/off switch, the slow browser and the insufficient App store – hasn’t cropped up as a problem for me at all. I mean, not even once have I had an issue with those features.  The good peeps at Dear Author have some very informative info up about how to change device settings on the Fire so that you can load Apps from other vendors.  I changed the setting, but I haven’t left the Amazon once to get anything from anywhere else. 

I’ve watched a video through the prime service - Gordon Ramsay’s Ultimate Christmas.  It was lots of fun and I look forward to boogling through some of the other offerings.  I’m looking forward to revisiting the 1st episode of the 1st season of “Grey’s Anatomy” and re-living the time when the Mer/Der magic was new. (Readers of this blog will know that I’ve been a Grey’s Gal since episode 1.) My youngest son will demand some Fire-time to watch the early seasons of ”Dr Who,” and my hubby will doubtless want to explore some of the Star Trek offerings.  The Amazon Prime video offerings are already numerous and they’re growing every day.  I may even pick up some of the first season of “Ellery Queen” – originally I thought it was free for Prime, but alas, I’ve discovered it’s $1.99 per episode.  Still, I’ll likely pick up one or two of ’em because that’s classic TV in its best, its most intelligent and excellent form. 

I never had a real yen for an iPad and now I’m glad I never got one.  My Kindle Fire is much more portable and it offers something that neither the iPad nor other Android devices can match – the ability to download video to the device.  Yes, America, you can download movies or TV shows onto your Fire and then watch them on a plane, in a train, or on a long road trip in the car.  Funny that the critics never mention that feature now, isn’t it?  The ability to download video means the Fire vanquishes Android Tablets and it even kills the mighty iPad.   But the critics couldn’t go around saying that now, could they?  Because their goal seems to be to dampen the Fire before it burns so far it gets out of control.

Kindle Fire brings the tablet to a place where nearly everyone can afford it and it dishes out the tablet experience in a way that even a non-techie like me can do more than “get it” – we can own it. 

Nope, the critics didn’t kill my Desire for Fire and I’m mighty glad I didn’t listen to them.  They were so loud in their howling cries that I suspected they had an agenda.  I suspect it much more now that my personal experience contradicts their claims.  The critics were ranting that Amazon’s everyman tablet experience would die beneath the weight of all the device returns to the company after the holidays.  Wonder how that’s working out?  I haven’t heard a peep from consumers who returned the Fire nor from Amazon, discussing Fire returns.  The critics would like Amazon to go under but it’s folks like you and me that will keep the company floating happily along at the head of the pack.

Instead of a product return, I’m giving a product testimonial – and it goes out with a great big “Thank You” to Jeff Bezos and the entire Amazon Kindle Fire team.  Those critics I was talking about before seem like the kind of folks who believe  “You can’t get rich by overestimating the intelligence of the American public.”  I’ve never listened to those people – instead, I listen to the public and my readers – or I try to.  And I believe that Amazon is the company Bezos built on the principal that you CAN get rich by catering to the intelligent population of America – and other countries all around the world. 

Trust me on this one, the Kindle Fire is a tablet you can buy knowing you’ll love it and understand it because it was created for you by a company that believes you should want more, you should get more and you deserve more.  So Amazon gave you more - it’s created a Fire that puts the world at your fingertips.

This is the first month I could make the comparison.  In the early days of November I first uploaded my titles to B&N’s “pubit” system to sell directly on B&N.  Previously I was selling on B&N via Smashwords.  This month I have the B&N numbers.  This month, I can ask the question.

Are Amazon’s sales eroding ?  Based on my sales figures there this month, it looks like the giant etailer is having serious, grave issues with sales.  During the same period, sales at B&N seem to be growing, growing, growing.  Yet Amazon is still investing in its Kindle platform.  Like B&N, Az is now introducing a tablet. 

Introducing a tablet makes sense at B&N where sales are on the upswing.  It only makes sense at Amazon if sales are on the upswing too.  Yet if they are – then either the reporting system is broken or sales are being underreported for a more sinister reason. 

I’ve emailed Amazon 2 or 3 times over the last couple of days asking the retailer to check the sales reporting.  So far, I’ve gotten no response.  Yes, it’s a weekend but Az works 24/7 and if it’s growing its ebook ventures and investing in a new tablet, then it has people working 24/7 too.  And if those people are worthy of a paycheck they should be capable of running the necessary testing of the system.  But, as noted, I’ve gotten no response.

From the KDP forum, I see that other authors on Amazon are experiencing the same phenomenon – the numbers show that they are selling more on B&N than on Amazon.  While that could be true, based on sales numbers historically from Amazon – I doubt it.

So my question remains – is B&N Outselling Amazon or is Amazon Underreporting Sales?  These days at Amazon the numbers aren’t adding up.  It makes it appear that something’s rotten in Denmark – err, Amazon.  And my history with the company leads me to believe that Az has traditionally been very accurate with its reporting. 

If there is a problem with the reporting system, if the push with Kindlefire and getting that platform up and out has strained Az’s resources to the point where it will take a while to run the numbers and report them, then Az needs to explain that. 

If Amazon doesn’t come clean about it’s current problems a lot more people are going to start asking a lot more questions.  That won’t be good for business and it will hurt the company’s reputation at a time when Amazon wants America to trust the company to be its digital provider.

The etailing giant has a history of being very closemouthed about its business and its numbers.  That doesn’t work so well anymore, now that people can compare Kindle with other platforms.  Amazon wants us to trust it with our digital dollars and the company has to earn that faith.

Amazon’s got some ‘splaining to do.

UPDATE:   This was published early Sunday, 11/13/11.  About an hour after it was published, I got an email reply from Amazon.  It claimed that they had “researched” my inquiry about the sales reporting system. Amazon says “there are no issues with reporting sales.”  The conclusion? 

B&N is eating Amazon’s lunch.  Either that or no one at Amazon tested the system. Between “researching” my inquiry and actually testing the system lies a gap as wide and as insidiously threatening as infinity.

Traditionally published romances average around $7.99 and new releases by some publishers top the $12 mark.  If you’re trying to make a house payment and keep your lights on – how can you justify spending that money for a book?  Most of us can’t these days.  We simply can’t. 

Yet you can pick up many indie romances for as little as 99 cents.  I published The Duke of Eden on Amazon as a serial before I finished the full.  There are 3 parts of the serial up at Amazon.  Each sells for 99 cents and the full sells for $2.99.  It’s easier to pick up the book in 1 installment, but if your budget won’t allow it, then pick it up a piece at a time.  Most writers who sell serial stuff only put out little chunks, a chapter or so at a time, making the whole book much more expensive than just buying a regular novel. 

I didn’t do that.  I put out big chunks of Duke and only charged 99 cents for each.  And when I published the full for $2.99, I left the serial up, even though it costs me higher priced sales of the full.  Why?  Because I get it. I’m with you.  I understand.  I’m in the same place you are with my budget and I refuse – I absolutely refuse- to unpublish the lower priced option.

Many folks haven’t tried indie romance.  Somehow, they consider indie work to be inferior and unworthy.  Or that’s what they’ve heard, anyway.  Well, in today’s economy when traditional publishers don’t consider your bottom line, maybe this is the best time to give indie romance a shot.  Lord knows, the news is full of gloom and doom.  Creditors are calling, nasty letters come in the mail and many of us are paying bills in chunks.

More than ever, people need regular doses of the kind of hope, optimism and happy endings that they get from romance novels.  Remember the old commercials that talked about “Miller time?”  Well – it’s INDIE TIME. 

Most indie romance sells for $2.99 or less.  You can pick up A Faerie Fated Forever for free at almost every ebook site on the planet right now.  Don’t let the high prices charged by traditional publishers deprive you of the hope and optimism that helps fuel you to keep on keeping on until it gets better.  And it will.  We all know it will. 

By the time things improve, I hope that indie romance has become your first choice.  Indie authors are doing some of the best, most creative, most cutting edge work out there. Once you go indie, you may not want to go back.

And why should you?

The responses are interesting. Go check ‘em out and add your own faves to the list.  I couldn’t pick just one so I didn’t comment.  Also, I’m not in a real social mood – does that ever hit y’all?  Anyway, mine would be a tie between Kathleen Woodiwiss’ “The Flame And The Flower” and Johanna Lindsey’s entire Malory series, especially “Gentle Rogue.”

Like I mentioned earlier, my mood and my muse are sort of in a funk right now.  So I don’t feel especially bloggy either.  Hopefully, I’ll recuperate.  So for now, I’ll leave you with the new list to check and my link from the list I found last week. 

Why is everyone thinking about our all time favorite romances right now?  I’m not sure.  Maybe, we’re all trying to work up some holiday spirit.  Maybe, we all need a strong dose of Happily Ever After to combat the economy that seems to get worse and worse.  

Or maybe – great minds and demented minds actually think alike.

Amazon has been aggressively pursuing top authors. Even celebrities have seen the business sense of partnering with Amazon.  Director/Actress Penny Marshall got an alleged $800,00 advance for signing with Amazon to do her memoir.  Likely, Ms. Marshall also got a piece of the pie because Amazon is building brand loyalty by sharing the profits from the sale of books with the authors who wrote them.   It’s quite sad how revolutionary that concept is and it’s quite funny that the weapon of equity pointed straight at their P&L sheets so terrifies the traditional publishers. 

Some publishers have taken the war a step farther by punishing authors who dare to self publish material that is NOT UNDER CONTRACT.  That’s right, Penguin supposedly canceled a new author’s publishing contract because she dared to self publish some old work during the long – long – long period between signing a bood deal and the book actually appearing for sale. 

Hawaiian writer Kiana Davenport signed with Penguin and received a 20k advance for publication of her book “The Chinese Soldier’s Daughter.”  It was due to come out next summer.  During the interval, Ms. Davenport, mindful of lectures about the need to drum up publicity and build her “brand” self published an e-book of some of her old work on Amazon.

She says: 

When Penguin found out, it went “ballistic,” Ms. Davenport wrote on her blog, accusing her of breaking her contractual promise to avoid competing with it. It wanted “Cannibal Nights” removed from sale and all mentions of it deleted from the Internet.

Ms. Davenport refused to remove the e-book.  Penguin says it will pursue legal action if the author doesn’t return the balance of her advance.  A lawyer with the author’s guild who has represented Ms. Davenport, Jan Constantine, says that Penguin made an example of Ms. Davenport. The lawyer feels Penguin’s acts are intended to warn published authors that for them, self-publishing is a risky business.

The writer felt she was being punished for sleeping with the enemy. 

The publishers could try beating Amazon at its own game by sharing some of the wealth and some of the control over the final product with authors.  I guess it’s just that if you’re used to keeping all but a tiny slice of the pie, you’ve come to consider the pie yours – rather than the creation of the baker who cooked it. 

Traditional publishers have put out some fine work from some amazing folks through the years.  But they should recall that authors talented enough to create such masterpieces are likely risk-takers by nature.  If publishers don’t change their tune the best and the brightest are likely to dance away.

Oh and Amazon – yoo hoo-over here – over here.  **Waves**. 

Maybe I should try billboards???

The list was composed from reader’s nominations of over 1500 books by over 500 authors.  The books with the most votes made the list, which actually contains 109 books because there were several ties.  Although there appears to be a variety of books, the first thing that impressed me was further evidence of how loyal readers are to their favorite authors. 

I noted that several writers appear over and over again.  For example, the first book on the list is “Outlander” by Diana Gabaldon.  Four of her other books made the list.  I’ve got to say, I disagree with “Outlander” being anywhere in the Top 100.  I don’t like the book.  I picked it up a few months back as a free read and made it all the way through, certain that at the end there would be some kind of amazing happy ending to make all the misery between the lead couple worthwhile.  It didn’t happen.  I hear that there is some sort of HEA for the lead couple in a later book, but that’s not good enough. If there’s no HEA, then in my book, it’s not a romance.

Again, Susan Elizabeth Phillips and Linda Howard appear several times and I heartily agree with both.  Linda Howard’s “Dream Man” has a permanent place on my keeper shelf as does Phillips “It Had to Be You” – and her whole Chicago Stars series.  I love both of those books, but I don’t think either one should be at the top. Other authors who appear a number of times are Julie Garwood (Love her stuff “The Secret” lives on my keeper shelf), Judith McNaught (“Whitney, My Love” also lives with me), Nora Roberts, Georgette Heyer, Amanda Quick, LaVyrle Spencer and Mary Jo Putney. 

For me,  the #1 Romance should be a tie between Kathleen Woodiwesses’ “The Flame and The Flower” and Johanna Lindsey’s “Gentle Rogue.”  That was one of my first thoughts when I saw this list.  It led to the BIGGEST SHOCKER OF THE LIST – NONE OF LINDSEY’S MALLORY NOVELS MADE THE LIST AT ALL.  Only 1 of Ms. Lindsey’s books made it – a scifi romance called “Warrior’s Woman” which I’ve never read and which only came in at #68, tied with a bunch of others.

Who were the readers voting for this list?  In my book, James Mallory, from “A Gentle Rogue” is the perfect romance novel hero and the Mallory series taught me how series romance should be done.  Ms. Lindsey was robbed, I tell you, robbed.

My second shocker dealt with another of my favorites series romance writers – Julia Quinn.  NONE of her books made the list.  None.  Hello? What was in the Kool-Aid these people were drinking?

 My final and happiest shock from the list?  How very few of the books were “paranormal.”  There was no horde of vampires, zombies or werewolves – Hallelujah.  The absence of large numbers of these books from the list gives me hope for the future of our genre. 

Mind you, I do think that more contemporary romance should make the list.  My WIP is a contemporary as are 2 of my others (Griffin’s Law and The Billionaire’s E-mail Seduction).  The next time anyone puts together a Top 100 list I hope it contains few to no werewolves, zombies or vampires and features a lot more contemporaries.

Peruse the list and let’s be grateful to the good folks at The Romance Reader for putting it together- even if none of my books made it either.

The digital giant has been signing authors for its own imprint, with the latest being thriller author Barry Eisler. Eisler made big news not too long ago by turning down a $500,000 two-book deal from his traditional publisher, saying he was going to publish the books himself.  However, a better deal came along and Eisler was smart enough to take it.

Amazon approached Eisler with a “hybrid deal” allowing him to control packaging and some other aspects that mattered to him.  Az also fast-tracked the digital version of his book, which was published about a month after the manuscript was finished.  The paperback will follow.  Eisler thought that traditional publisher St. Martin’s was just too slow, and it was even slow in getting him a draft of a contract.  In the 4 months it took the publisher to get the draft to Eiser, the publishing world changed.

Eisler says that publishers want to preserve “their own position, perks and profit — that’s just what establishment players come to do over time.” Legacy publishers, according to Eisler, often slow down the process deliberately, allowing them to earn interest on the money due to the writer which remains in the publishers’ hands during their calculated delays.       

What mattered to Eisler were his readers because without them he couldn’t make a living.  He said, “ if I can find a way to get readers books that cost less and are delivered better and faster, I want that.”  And Amazon was willing to throw out the rulebook and negotiate a deal tailored to what mattered to the author.  Overall in the Eisler deal, Amazon agreed to get the book out faster, cheaper, to pay the author more money and allow him to retain more control. 

Amazon helped create the new digital world and the company is in prime position to – deservedly - reap the benefits.  Moving at the speed of tomorrow, Amazon offers some authors a new path – publishing contracts built around the needs of the people who create the work.  Imagine, Amazon is actually willing to consider and adapt to individual requests from writers.

It’s no longer a one-size-fits-all world and the Publishing Royals no longer get to make the rules.  In the new world order, the people who write the books now have choices about how they’ll publish them and on what terms.  The power has truly shifted back into the hands that should have held it all along – to the dreamers, the creators – the authors. 

In the new Amazon City On A Hill writers work with publishers to get their work out to readers faster and cheaper.  It’s a win/win for everyone except the publishing companies who refuse to throw out the old patterns.  In the new world there are no patterns for how a book gets published and there are no patterns for what kinds of books get published.  

Perhaps we’ve finally arrived at a place where a book will be as individual as the person who wrote it, as the company that publishes it and as the readers who will love it and make it their own. Each story is different for each reader. Now each publishing journey can carve its own path.

Traditional publishers best learn to respect the writers who’ve always made their buisnesses possible.  If they don’t learn fast, they won’t need to bother.