Save 50% on Diane Duane’s ebooks and help save Diane Duane’s home

A great chance to pick up some discounted books.

I’ve written a number of times about the occasional ebook sales Diane Duane runs on her self-owned ebook store, but this one has a special urgency. A series of medical expenses and lower-than-expected royalty payments have put Duane and her husband, Peter Morwood, in danger of losing the home where they’ve lived for the last twenty years.

To raise some money, Duane has slashed prices by 50% on Ebooks Direct, the ebook store she runs for the books to which she and her husband have the ebook rights. All titles are DRM-free and multiformat, and include the guarantee that if you ever lose the ebook files, they’ll replace them free.

There are some great books there—the Young Wizards New Millennium Editions, Feline Wizardry trilogy, and associated Young Wizards novellas, the Tale of the Five, and many more. If you haven’t read them yet, this would be a great…

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A Tale of Two Marketing Systems

Wide vs. KU

Amazon’s Hall of Spinning Knives

More dangers from Amazon

You Can Win Without Cheating FFS

As always, worth a read if you follow digital publishing.

Michael Hyatt Has Something To Sell You

Beware the vanity press scammers.

Scammers Break The Kindle Store

Don’t fall for scams.

Wonder Woman

If you’re one of the handful of people who haven’t seen WW, go see it. I doubt you’ll regret it.

mishaburnett

Let’s forget about the “superhero” universe for a minute. Let’s not worry about continuity and connectivity and just look at this film as a film, as if it exists all by itself.  Okay?

Now, that’s easy for me, since I haven’t really been following the “DC Universe” films.  I saw (in fact I own) the second Nolen Batman film, The Dark Knight. But that’s about it.  I really wasn’t interested in When Batman Met Superman or whatever it was called.

I wasn’t all that familiar with the source material, either–I know the basics of the character concept and I vaguely remember the old TV show.  Okay, I remember Lynda Carter in the amazon outfit. But I can’t recall ever reading the comic book.

So when I went in to see Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman I was able to look at it from a fresh perspective.  And what I saw…

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Comments on the Nebula Reading List top five short stories

Unfortunately, I think Lela is right. The Hugos and Nebulas have become politicized to the point that message fiction is the only way to win, and the “progressives” still have the numbers. Those in the middle seem so afraid of the far left, or of being accused to being alt-right, that they think they have to vote for soft message fiction.

Adding to this trend is the “right flight” toward the Dragons and other, pardon the pun, alternatives to the Hugos and Nebulas, often leaving the field to the left and their kumbaya circle. I suspect awards will become increasingly balkanized, with little true, respected, fairminded middle ground for non-message fiction.

Lela E. Buis

It takes 10 nominations to make a story a Nebula finalist, so these five stories I’ve just reviewed look to be the ones with the best likelihood to make it.

Since I’m reading down the list, there are a few trends sticking out. As far as I know, only SFWA members can make recommendations. Because the listing has been recommended by professionals in the genre, I’d expect to get good quality on the list. These stories I’ve just reviewed have recommendations in the double digits, but I’m just not finding a lot of what I’d call substance in the content. I’m thinking all those people are clicking the “recommend” button because they want to affirm the message. If I’m looking for quality stories to nominate, does that mean I can put any confidence in the number of recommendations the stories have gotten at all? Hm. Maybe not. Does this mean…

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Could an independent Copyright Office and the Trump Presidency mean trouble ahead for copyright?

A really good summation of what’s going on with copyright.

Remember October, when Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden pulled Maria Pallante from her post as head of the LOC’s Copyright Office, and Pallante resigned a couple of days later? Artist Rights Watch made a big to-do about Google using its influence to “fire” Pallante, but the actual reason probably had more to do with the way Pallante had been loudly advocating for the Copyright Office to be made independent from the Library of Congress. Most bosses aren’t best pleased when a lower-level manager tries to go over their head to get their office shuffled out from under them.

The House Judiciary Committee has released the first policy proposal (PDF) to come from a recent in-depth review of US copyright policy, and that proposal is in line with what Pallante had wanted: make the Copyright Office independent from the Library of Congress, with the Register of Copyrights subject to nomination and…

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The KU Conundrum…

Another perspective on the page-reads problem. It seems to affect certain books dramatically differently from others–especially ultra-long books such as box sets. There is probably some new piece to the algorithm that’s affecting things.

For now, I’m hanging onto KU despite the decline I’ve seen, a decline of 30% or so for me, because all things considered I think my books do better in KDP Select/KU than out. But I do have two series “wide” on all vendors, and I’m always ready to make adjustments.

Ruby Madden

I’m re-assessing how I run my publishing business for 2017 and wanted to share some of my frustrations as an Author.

Recently, many authors have noticed that over the last few months, the pages-read numbers for our eBooks that are borrowed at Amazon and read, have decreased dramatically. Some say it is just a slump resulting from an Election Year. Others say that something is amuck with Amazon’s pages-read reporting system that lets us know how many pages were read for stories that we have enrolled in the KINDLE UNIMITED (KU) program.

Most of my newer titles are enrolled in KU. I like the program, both as a reader and author. I’ve always enjoyed reading for pleasure and I also read for my job as a writer and novelist. I gain inspiration from my fellow authors and love to track my reading via GOODREADS. I like knowing that…

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