Heads up to all authors with Kindle Editions and to Goodreads users
| January 21, 2012 | Posted by annathepiper under Other People's Books |
I started spotting notices on various editions of books on Goodreads last night talking about how as of January 30th, they’re going to stop using book data from Amazon. Affected book editions are showing notices at the top of their pages that look like this:
Goodreads Data Alert
If you click on the Learn More button a new page pops up talking about Goodread’s reasons for doing this, and displaying a form where you can fill in data from other sources to make sure that the book doesn’t vanish out of their database.
AUTHORS: Go check your books on Goodreads and make sure you’re not about to lose your only entry in their database. ESPECIALLY if your only listed edition is a Kindle Edition.
GOODREADS USERS: Check your bookshelves and see if you’re about to lose any Kindle Editions out of your various shelves. You do NOT need librarian access to rescue a book–anybody can fill in the form, apparently. But you should rescue any obvious Kindle Editions in your lists. All you need is a legitimate source of data about the book, from somewhere other than Amazon.
More site updates and reminder re: buying Faerie Blood and short story
I’ve done a bit more tweaking of the site layout and content tonight, trying to make the main page a bit less busy, but also still visually interesting. So I’m experimenting with the post layout–let me know if you think the columns work. I’ve also removed a few of the sidebar widgets. The Links/Blogroll widget… more
Some site updates
If you’re reading angelakorrati.com posts via mirrored means (hi there, LJ, Dreamwidth, Goodreads, and tumblr users!), you won’t see unless you click through–but I’ve done a little housekeeping. To wit: New theme! Woo! Standalone pages now have comments disabled and hidden. My Contact page has been updated to include my Google+ and Tumblr info. The… more
Heads up, ebook fans
Here are some free ebooks I’m aware of in the last few days of this year. Jump on ‘em while you can, fellow ebook readers! If you’re an Ilona Andrews fan, that particular writing team has a novella called Magic Gifts set in the Kate Daniels universe. It’s only available for a short period of… more
I need your help on initial Kickstarter thoughts!
So let’s get this show on the road, people. I want to start planning the Kickstarter project to get Bone Walker finished and purchasable, but as Phase 1 of this, I’d like your feedback on potential incentives! I want to hear from you if you fall into any of the following categories: You’ve run a… more
Would you buy a print edition of Faerie Blood?
| December 14, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Faerie Blood |
So, Carina Press has said no on Faerie Blood. This leaves before me the question of what to do with it next, and at this point, I have three problems with this novel when it comes to pitching it in the current market:
- There are already a whole lot of urban fantasy novels out there;
- I’m not romance-y enough for the paranormal romance end of the spectrum, read, I have no sex in this novel, and there’s barely any kissing;
- I’m also not dark/gritty/apocalyptic enough for the urban fantasy end of the spectrum. There’s not much actual violence in this book, and my heroine isn’t a badass, she’s a fiddle-playing geek who only just finds out about her fey heritage and the magic she’s inherited from her mother–she doesn’t have much time in the story to actually do anything seriously badassed with it.
Given these things, I am extremely dubious about my ability to pitch the novel to any further big pubs or agents. For one thing, I’ve already pitched it to most of the big pubs, with the exception of DAW, and the main reason I haven’t sent it to them at this point is my aforementioned wariness of the current urban fantasy market. For another thing, I’ve also already pitched it to the agents in which I’m actively interested. Part of me is still nagging that the couple dozen agents I’ve pitched it to isn’t enough work on pitching it–but on the other hand, a lot of the agents out there seem to have gotten slammed with so many queries now that their slush piles are crazytalk and their response times have accordingly increased dramatically. There are some agents whose response time has gotten to be over a year, and that’s assuming you get back a response at all.
So given all this, I’m seriously tempted to go the self-pub route with Faerie Blood and any further related stories, and focus other energies on newer things to be pitched to the big pubs.
My question for you therefore, O Internets, is this: if I were to do a limited run of print copies of Faerie Blood, would you buy one? I’m thinking about it because there are two Espresso book machines right here in Seattle, and one of them is right down the hill from my house at Third Place Books. I have two books (by other people) that are the output of this machine, and while it had trouble with the thicker one which is over 500 pages, the shorter one, which is comparable to Faerie Blood in length, is not badly assembled at all. If I were to get new, cover-quality art for the novel, it’s conceivable that I could therefore do a small set of print copies.
So I’m putting hard thought into this. I am looking at Third Place’s posted rates for their printing services, and pondering the possibility of doing a Kickstarter to raise the money.
Talk to me, Internets. Would you be interested? Because if I get enough people going hell yeah, I will move forward with this.
ETA: It has now been suggested to me on Google+ that I should consider a Kickstarter not for Faerie Blood specifically, but rather, for finishing Book 2, Bone Walker–and offering print copies of Faerie Blood as a potential incentive! I like this idea quite a bit and am going to be thinking about it very hard. If any of you out there would like this too, I really want to know about it!
Faerie Blood and Lament of the Dove status report
| December 6, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Faerie Blood, Lament of the Dove |
|
As of this writing, Faerie Blood has finally vanished off of Fictionwise–and by extension, ereader.com, since Fictionwise owns that site and to the best of my knowledge, they use the same database. This means now that the novel shouldn’t be available for sale anywhere at all.
It’s a bit weird, being back to square one with this book, even if at a smaller scale than several traditionally published authors I know who’ve had a series fold out from underneath them. At the same time, though, it’s also a bit of a relief.
Faerie Blood is now in the queue at Carina Press, for all the same general reasons I was interested in them before: i.e., they’re queer-friendly, they’re digital and therefore appealing to me as a tech geek, they’re taking all genres and do a lot of ‘other genres with heavy romantic elements’ stuff in particular, they now have a solid and established track record. In this specific case, though, I’ve also noted that they’ve published at least a couple of authors who’d been previously published elsewhere–at least one author for example who was previously published through Dorchester. So I’m hoping that this’ll mean they’ll be receptive to my work.
Relatedly, I am one, count it, one single chapter away from finishing the sixth draft of Lament of the Dove. Once that happens, I will be putting out a call for beta readers. (I’m cognizant that we’re moving into the Christmas/Solstice season, though, so I will be trying to schedule around that, and targeting sending Lament off in early January.) Watch this space for further details on that, people!
And speaking of books that need plugging
| November 28, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Other People's Books |
|
Decent self-published books need all the help they can get to get readers, so I’d like to take the time to mention 
mmegaera
She was kind enough to give me a coupon for a review copy from Smashwords, and I’ve just finished reading the book as of this weekend. It’s a bit of a mashup of Western, SF, and time-travel romance, and I found it a good solid read. A proper review will be coming later (I’ve rated it on Goodreads but haven’t written up a review yet), but I wanted to go ahead and mention it now. Click over to her page to read an excerpt, and if you like what you see, buy it and tell her I sent you, mmkay?
Cyber Monday Faerie Blood
| November 28, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Faerie Blood, Short Pieces |
|
Since Faerie Blood is no longer officially for sale anywhere (and what few places it’s remaining I’m not likely to see any money from), I wanted to remind y’all that if you haven’t read the book and you want to, I’ll be happy to direct-sell it to you!
And since it’s Cyber Monday, let’s make this easy!
I have three CDs left from my previous stock. These include both a PDF and an ePUB copy of Faerie Blood, and along with it, a PDF of my short story “The Disenchanting of Princess Cerridwen”. If you’d like one of these, five bucks to all comers, including the cost of shipping it to you if you’re not local to me.
ETA: All three CDs have now been spoken for. However, if you’d still like a CD copy of Faerie Blood vs. one just emailed to you, talk to me and we can work something out!
If you’d like to just buy a copy of Faerie Blood directly from me, let’s call that four bucks, and you should specify if you want a PDF or an ePUB copy.
If you’d like a copy of my short story “The Blood of the Land”, previously published in the anthology Defiance, you can have that for .99. Again, please specify your desired format.
And I’ll give you Faerie Blood and “The Blood of the Land” both for an even five bucks.
The best way to pay me would be via PayPal, addressed to my gmail address annathepiper. If you want one of the CDs, you should also email me directly at the same address with an appropriate address to send the CD to you!
I will keep these prices valid not only through today, but also through the rest of the holiday season. Please feel free to spread a link to this post around as well if you so desire!
RIP Anne McCaffrey
| November 22, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Other People's Books |
|
Like most of the rest of the net, I’m seeing the news today that Anne McCaffrey has passed away. The initial link I was given is here, and another early report link is here. They’re saying she had a massive stroke.
This one hurts, people.
I remember the Pern books being among the very first SF/F books I read as an adolescent. In turn, they influenced other books I went in search of–notably, Sharon Shinn’s Samaria series, which always struck me as Pern-like in flavor. And as I’ve mentioned in the past, I get huge echoes back to Pern through the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik, as well.
PernMUSH is one of the three MUSHes that formed the bulk of my online roleplaying history, and almost at the same time I joined PernMUSH, I also joined the offline group Telgar Weyr. Like many in Pern fandom, I had my share of issues with many details of Anne’s world, and eventually I actually enjoyed Pern fandom in many ways more than I did the original canon material. But I cannot deny that she created a world that had a massive, massive influence on me. To this day I have friendships that were forged because of Pern fandom.
PernMUSH established my ability to roleplay–and by extension, to write–from a male point of view, since F’hlan was the first significant male character I ever played. F’hlan taught me a great deal about the kinds of male characters I liked to play, and how to keep a long-running romantic relationship lively. (Melora, I am looking at you.)
I must also give mad props to the Crystal Singer books, since a significant bit of my roleplay history was on CrystalMUSH as well. Killashandra Ree, I loved you. You led me to roleplaying Kevlan Sharr, Tance Vokrim, Jerrik Rawn Deegan, and Tamber al-Acorrin (who had the distinction of being the first gay character I ever played on a MUSH).
Because of all the writing I’ve done for Pern fandom, McCaffrey’s influence on me as a writer has certainly also been profound. I have characters that still vividly live in my head, and make sad faces at me that I haven’t ever properly finished their stories, or otherwise adapted them into characters I can put into my own work. McCaffrey’s been a template for me on how to do strong female characters–and, since I always took issue with her penchant for setting up strong female characters only to have them eventually play second fiddle to their men, she contributed to my resolve to never do that with my own heroines. Similarly, as I was always unhappy that she gave queer males a presence on Pern but never queer women, that has set a goal for me to achieve in my own work.
I even met Ms. McCaffrey once, way back in the day when solarbird
John Scalzi has a post up for her here. The Fandom Lounge on JournalFen speaks for her here. And Tor.com has an announcement post here.
The sound you hear, O Internets, is every single dragon I have ever written or roleplayed for keening. Gold Timbrith. Bronze Tzornth. Bronze Valreth. Brown Trollith. Blue With. Green Yfandeth. Likewise, all of my characters at Far Cry Hold must mourn.
RIP, DragonLady, and thank you so much for your works and how you have molded my life. You will be missed.
ETA: lyonesse
Also, io9 now has a post up.
ETA #2: GeeksAreSexy.net chimes in here. Suvudu has a post up here.
Recent Comments