Back at the Artist Reception, last Sunday, a computer savvy visitor friend basically said, "Have you thought about putting these images and their stories into aa booklet or an ebook? I can help!"
So, with that help, I can now announce that the Books Are Here.
They are available, currently, in PDF and EPUB formats (but I will probably be adding Kindle versions soon...) - so here are your current options.
As the button below will tell you if you toggle the fold-down menu, you can do one of three things.
You can order the physical, printed copy of the book which I can print off here, perhaps even sign if you want it thus, and then mail to you through the good graces of the post office. You get a printed, colour booklet to hold in your own two hands and flip through in real-time at your leisure. All the photos and the stories are included.
You can order, for a slightly cheaper price, the thing as a PDF file which I can email to you, and you can do your own printing at home if you so desire - or you can view the PDF file on a display device of your choice.
Or you can order, for a slightly HIGHER price, a copy of the PDF file (for possible printing and physical viewing) and a copy as an ebook (currently, as I said, EPUB, but working on more...) to be viewed on, perhaps, your iPad or similar device.
(Also, BTW, if you get the book and fall in love with a particular photo, they're all available for purchase as prints - email me for details...)
Here's the Buy Button with those options:
And now, just to give you a hint of what's inside and to ( whet your appetite...Collapse )
Come look at this wonderful world of ours with me, through a lens on my camera, through the words that the pictures inspired. Come walk through the flowers with me.
This rocked up in the old inbox just now:
Hi,
I will like to discuss a very important crude oil project with you. I
wrote to know if this is your valid email.Please, email me for details on: [redacted]
What, if I don't get this email I should let him know? No, this is not my correct email address but somehow I got your mail anyway to tell you this? And you want to discuss "an important project" with me but you don't even address me by name?
Dude.
I Am A: Lawful Good Elf Wizard (7th Level)
Ability Scores:
Strength-9
Dexterity-11
Constitution-12
Intelligence-18
Wisdom-14
Charisma-11
Alignment:
Lawful Good A lawful good character acts as a good person is expected or required to act. He combines a commitment to oppose evil with the discipline to fight relentlessly. He tells the truth, keeps his word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished. Lawful good is the best alignment you can be because it combines honor and compassion. However, lawful good can be a dangerous alignment when it restricts freedom and criminalizes self-interest.
Race:
Elves are known for their poetry, song, and magical arts, but when danger threatens they show great skill with weapons and strategy. Elves can live to be over 700 years old and, by human standards, are slow to make friends and enemies, and even slower to forget them. Elves are slim and stand 4.5 to 5.5 feet tall. They have no facial or body hair, prefer comfortable clothes, and possess unearthly grace. Many others races find them hauntingly beautiful.
Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.
Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)
...but you KNEW that, didn't you? You KNEW I was an Elf...? [grin]
Artists Reception on Sunday 21st April, 3 - 5 PM - cider and refreshments will be served. If you're around, come spend a Sunday afternoon with me looking at pretty pictures and getting the stories that go with them!
(if you're not into driving disco beat, watch it with the sound turned down. But watch it anyway. Just do.)
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Well... first of all, any guest on my blog needs one basic qualification: a basic knowledge of English grammar. This say I, the blog owner; and so does "the dude" who takes care of the whole thing, who is my husband, and who is very amused at being "the dude". And second of all, guests on my blog tend to be known to me, and usually invited to participate.Not to say that I haven't acceded to requests to guest before, but as I said, those came from people I know, whose writing and whose motives I know, and yes, who can string together an English sentence without coming up with the sort of monstrosity that turned up in the comments.
On second thought, maybe I ought to play along. Ask this "dude" to submit something and it if is sufficiently funny I could post it as an example on how not to... but no. I'm not quite THAT mean.
Still. Thought you'd enjoy. Clueless spammers are clueless, as always.
Ladies and gentlemen, I go tomorrow to a place called Bellewood Acres, where there is a small gallery, in which yours truly is going to be a part of a photographic exhibition from this Saturday all the way until May 30. For any of you within driving distance, if you want want to drop in, please come! There will be an Artists Reception on April 21, from 3 - 5 PM, and I would lvoe love love it if people came by to take a look and say hi.
Being a writer, I am doing this highly visual thing with one difference. EVERY PICTURE HAS A STORY. There's a "story snippet" that goes with every image in the show, and I spent the past three days writing them, and I swear I was channeling Oscar Wilde all the way. They came out pretty well, the tiny little story gems that are being offered up together with the images in the exhibition. Some of them turned out poignant. Some of them have the air of dark fairy tales. Some of them are even funny. I'm feeling rather pleased with that effort.
But the important part of this is, I'm going in tomorrow to hang pictures. THIS should be fun; I'm thinking of charging admission, just for those who want to watch me blunder and bluster and possibly come out with cartoon-fingers full of bandages tied into white ribbons. I've some 20 photos to hang, adn some of them are "double hangers", with two hooks on either side of the frame, which means I have to keep the freaking things STRAIGHT, and, well, this should be great fun...
Anyway. If you're local and you want to point and laugh and take pictures during the set-up (and maybe make coffee runs for me down to the counter in the main cafe area... [grin]) you might swing by and wave and tell me LiveJournal or Facebook sent you, or something. Or just make a plan to come by - not necessarily tomorrow, but over the next few weeks - and take a look. And maybe stock up on a Christmas present or two for someone who might appreciate a fine photograph and a story to go with it.
I'll see you, as it were, at the pictures...
A couple of things that caught my eye (with my comments IN CAPS):
"We're the good guys," insists Jarred Weisfeld with Start Publishing. "We're the ones who are coming in and trying to save something."
Weisfeld and Lyons see themselves as rescuing a sinking ship, and they're not thrilled about being painted as the bad guys on the internet because they want to offer what they see as realistic terms to Night Shade's authors.
Night Shade proved that "there was no way to run a book publishing company in that field, with those kinds of royalties, and make a profit," adds Lyons. So he tried to come up with a realistic royalty rate, "where I felt pretty confident that we could make a small profit." And that meant shaving those 22 to 25 percent losses that Night Shade was making out of the author's share -- because other costs in publishing are fixed, like printing and binding.
THERE ARE ALWAYS "FIXED COSTS" LIKE PRINTING AND BINDING. BUT I SAID IT BEFORE AND I AM SAYING IT AGAIN HERE NOW. *WITHOUT THE AUTHORS THERE WOULD **BE** NO "FIXED COSTS" LIKE "PRINTING AND BINDING". SO THE CHEAPEST WAY OUT OF THE FIXED COSTS OF PRINTING AND BINDING WOULD BE TO GET OUT OF THE BUSINESS THAT REQUIRES THEM. WHY WHY WHY *WHY* IS THE ONLY "NEGOTIABLE" ASPECT IN THE PUBLISHING BUSINESS THE AMOUNT OF MONEY THAT THE *AUTHOR* GETS? wHY ISN'T THE AUTHOR A "FIXED COST"? WHY IS THE THING ON WHICH ALL OF THE REST OF IT RESTS CONSIDERED TO BE A NEGOTIABLE THING, WHY SHOULD THE AUTHORS BE EXPECTED TO TAKE THE CUT EVERY TIME? PROFIT ISN'T A FIXED COST OF DOING BUSINESS, AND IF YOU FRIGGING MAKE A LITTLE BIT LESS PROFIT WHILE PAYING YOUR CONTENT PROVIDERS WHAT THEY ARE WORTH, SHOULDN'T THAT BE A COST OF DOING BUSINESS IN THE FIRST PLACE? NOBODY SIGNED ON TO PROMISE YOU OODLES OF MOOLAH. BUT WITHOUT A BOOK NONE OF THE REST OF IT IS RELEVANT AT ALL. SO WHY DOESN'T THE AUTHOR GET AT LEAST 40% OF THE PRICE (AS THE CREATOR OF THE PRODUCT!!!) AND THE REST OF THE "FIXED COSTS" GET TAKEN OUT OF THE 60% THAT REMAINS? I REALISE PEOPLE LIKE BOOKSELLERS NEED TO PAY RENT - BUT SO DO THE AUTHORS. REALLY. HONESTLY. WE DO. WHY IS IT ALWAYS THE WRITER WHO HAS TO BE THE "SACRIFICE" PART IN THE "SHARED SACRIFICE" EQUATION?
Meanwhile, Start will be handling the ebook side of things, and Weisfeld says that the deal only makes sense if they drop the ebook royalty, from between 30 and 50 percent to 25 percent. That original, higher royalty rate is just another sign that "bad decisions were being made by editors and business people," says Weisfeld, adding: "We're not bad guys, we're here to turn a profit and at the same time keep our end of the deal and make sure all our authors get paid." This is definitely better for authors than if Night Shade enters bankruptcy, he adds.
AGAIN. MAKES SENSE FOR WHOM? FOR THE PROFIT MARGINS OF EVERYONE BUT THE WRITERS? MAY I REITERATE. THE AUTHOR WROTE THE BOOK. WITHOUT THAT BOOK NONE OF THE REST OF IT MATTERS AT ALL. THERE WOULDN'T *BE* ANY ROYALTIES. PAY THE AUTHOR *FIRST*, AND THEN DEAL WITH THE COSTS INVOLVED IN PRODUCING THEIR WORK. THIS IS PARTICULARLY TRUE WHEN IT COMES TO EBOOKS WHERE THERE *ARE* NO "FIXED" COSTS LIKE PRINTING AND BINDING. THERE IS A ONE-TIME COST OF PRODUCING AN ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE WORK, YES, WHICH A COMPETENT PROFESSIONAL CAN DO QUICKLY AND CLEANLY AND IT ONLY NEEDS TO BE DONE ONCE FOR A GIVEN BOOK WHICH CAN THEN BE ELECTRONICALLY (AND COSTLESSLY) DUPLICATED WHERE AND HOW IT TURNS OUT TO BE NECESSARY. THE ONLY OTHER OUTLAY IS PRODUCING A DECENT COVER (AND, WELL, OF COURSE THE AMAZON CUT...) BUT THE POINT IS IF YOU'RE KVETCHING ABOUT THE COSTS OF PRINTING AND BINDING AND THAT'S WHY THE OTHER ROYALTIES OF 10% WERE TOO HIGH FOR YOU TO SUSTAIN, WHAT'S YOUR EXCUSE HERE? REALLY, WHAT IS IT? WHY IS A 40% *MINIMUM* ROYALTY ON AN EBOOK UNSUSTAINABLE? bECAUSE THE AUTHOR GETS WHAT IS ACTUALLY A FAIR SHARE OF THE PROFITS...?
Lyons says that the bloggers and other people who have been weighing in on the deal, and posting on the Skyhorse Facebook page, seem to believe that "everybody ought to get the most that anybody's getting."
AND OFF WE GO INTO THE HOLLYWOOD SYSTEM, FOLKS.
THE STARS GET THE MILLIONS. THE REST OF YOU, THE LINE FOR THE SLAG HEAP STARTS OVER THERE.
And then there's the "Term of coypright" clause that it's in the new contracts that the Night Shade authors are now expected to knuckle under and sign - the very same clause that drew the fire of organizations like SFWA when it turned up in the new contracts from a Random House imprint recently. WHy oh why would anyone sign away their rights for "term of copyright" - for the duration of their LIVES?! Who thought that this is a good idea? Well, it might be, for the publishers. Authors, not so much.
And then there's the clause which gives the new owners the right to dispose of some of the acquired properties to third parties at their discretion, without the author's further approval or consent. So you could end up being published by who knows who, and you have absolutely no say in the matter at all.
I don't have a book with Night Shade, I don't have a horse in this race. But I have friends who do.
And there is a lot of unhappiness.
