This review was posted for Son of the Black Sword.

1.0 out of 5 starsThis rating has NOTHING to do with the writing!

(Name removed because he probably meant well, and this isn’t personal)

Format: Kindle Edition

I read and absolutely loved, Correia’s monster hunter books. Own each and every one of them. I was so looking forward to reading this one after I saw the blurbs for it. However, I cannot bring myself to allow the publishing company that Correia has his contract with, to take advantage of me. Like many of the ‘main stream’ authors, or rather, those that aren’t taking advantage of self publishing, the cost of the book is inane. The Ebook. Which costs the publishing company NOTHING to create in comparison to hardback, and paperback books. Costs more than the Paperback. That alone, will prevent me from purchasing this book, until the price is fixed to something reasonable.

 

 

I know writers aren’t supposed to respond to reviews, but I’m not responding to this as a writer, I’m responding to it as a retired accountant.

I am the author in question. Your review doesn’t hurt anything except my overall average. You aren’t sticking it to the man. You aren’t harming the corporate fat cats. If you think the book sucks, give it one star. That’s awesome. That’s what the stars are for. But you don’t use one star to bitch about the price of eBooks. That just makes you look stupid. We shouldn’t still be having this conversation with anybody who isn’t a Bernie Sanders supporter.

Now, Accountant Hat on. This is pretty basic stuff. This is how basic costing works, not just for books, but quite literally everything. But today, we’ll talk about books, because your ridiculous review has pissed me off.  I’m going to dumb this down and keep it simple as possible.

I produce a product, which I sell to a publisher. Under that contract I am given an advance against royalties (money up front), and then I get royalties based upon a percentage of the sales price. This is good. This is how authors GET PAID.

Now, over on the publisher side they have a bunch of costs associated with the production of my product. Some of these costs apply to both ebooks and print. However, contrary to what most people think printing isn’t the big deal, as much as all the other stuff.

There are four levels of costing. Each one will represent a percentage of the cost of the product.

General and Administrative: These are the costs associated with having a company. Regardless of whether the product makes it out the door or not, you are paying the rent and keeping the lights on.

Overhead: Cost related to doing whatever it is your company actually does.

Direct: Costs related to actually making whatever it is you make.

Now, I’ve never been an accountant in the publishing industry so I’m not sure what the rules are for which costs go into which bucket. (My accounting experience was for manufacturing high end electronics, then guns, and finally keeping the wings from falling off of A-10s, and this varies from industry to industry)

Now, the thing that is different between eBooks and physical books is that Direct part. (Which having seen how books are printed, trust me, you are drastically overestimating) and you’re leaving out all that other stuff like having a company, and paying a bunch of people to make art and sell it.

And direct cost is more than “paper” and “ink”. On my publisher’s books, I am a Direct Cost.

Oh, but wait, we forgot the last percentage, and that’s profit. That’s the awesome part everybody wants to maximize. I like when my publisher makes a profit, because that means they get to stay in business, which means I get to continue making lots and lots of money.

So when a producer sets the price of an item, they look at what all those numbers above are, and then they try to cover all of them, and have some left over to make a profit so it is worth doing it again.

Some products are more profitable than others. When you go to a fast food restaurant, the margin on the burgers is slim. If they sold nothing but burgers they’d be in trouble. However, the margin on soda is amazing. That soda you spent a couple bucks on? The most expensive thing involved was probably the cup. When I was selling guns, guns were cut throat, high competition, and on most brands I’d only make 10-15% on the sale of a gun. But then I’d made 40%-50% on accessories. That was how I kept the lights on.

Ebooks are like that. Publishing is an industry with crappy margins. Don’t believe me? Ask Borders. Yes, ebooks have a lower direct cost, but that is all still going into the same company bucket. Some lines are more profitable than others. Duh. It isn’t about “fairness”. Business has nothing to do with fairness. Business is about staying in business.

That’s the basics of how costing works.

But wait, there’s more!

Now we get into Econ 101! (I love Econ).

So now that you know how much you have to make in order to keep the lights on, you want to maximize your profit. You want to sell it for as much as possible, but not for too much because that will turn some people off and you’ll sell fewer units, so you want to get that sweet spot where the supply and demand curves meet.

Some people are willing to pay more, others are willing to pay less. Go super cheap, make less per unit, and sell more, and at the other end you go super expensive, make more per unit, but sell less. Which is why the Nissan Versa and Aston Martin DB9 can both exist.

Beyond that I’m not going to explain how supply and demand work. That’s the first few hours of an Econ class. Or go read Thomas Sowell. You’ll thank me later.

Books aren’t cars, but they’re basically interchangeable entertainment products. Some authors’ brands can get away with a higher cost because they’ve established that they’re a Honda, and some new guy is going for moped prices because his quality isn’t established and the only way he can hope to attract customers is by low price. The super cheap customer isn’t going to buy the Ferrari, and Ferrari is just fine with that.  But when cheap guy posts a one star review for the Ferrari, we’re all going to laugh at him. For the record, I’m not a Ferrari. I’m more of a Ford Expedition.

Since there isn’t some super easy way to tell you what the perfect sweet spot is, publishers guess. Some guess too high, and others guess too low. Who guesses just right? Well, we don’t know, because it isn’t like you go around showing your competitors your P&L (that’s a Profit and Loss statement for you Bernie fans, for those guys, think of it as magic voodoo).

Oooooh, but there’s even more!

What? Pricing eBooks is even more complex? Unpossible!

Yes, because now lawyers get involved!

Did you know that Amazon is actually a business too? And that it exists to make money? And that it also wants to maximize its profit? Crazy. Bernie should do something about that.

Publishing houses don’t work off the same contract as lone self-published authors. In fact, for a publishing house to set up an ebook distribution deal with Amazon there is a lot of wrangling, and Amazon gets a say in how those books are priced. This involves lawyers (see that line about Overhead, they probably go in that bucket).

And that isn’t even getting into the fact that in said contract, there are all sorts of little special things, like Amazon promotions (where they can put things on sale or discount them or bundle them with audiobooks) and publishers need to set their regular price to take those things into account.

Now, if you’ve got a publishing house that sells ebooks in other places (like on their own page in monthly Webscription discount bundles that have been around since the internet was invented) then that complicates matters, and Amazon is going to have you set minimum price guidelines and maximum discount rates. It all gets very complicated, and is also why for the first few years of my career the most common FAQ on my blog was “Why can’t I get your book on my Kindle?”

Once my publisher got that contract hammered out, and Amazon was happy with the minimum prices they agreed to, I was super happy, because now on my personal P&L I was making a whole lot more money by having my eBooks in the biggest marketplace. Yay.

Now, you may have noticed that my publisher (who trust me, isn’t evil, she’s actually pretty cool) drops the prices of the ebook the longer it has been out. Part of this is that contract thing, and another part is that demand curve thing, but either way, it gets cheaper as it goes.

So yeah, in this case the ebook is around paperback costs. HOW BARBARIC! Oh, except wait… There is no paperback yet. The book is only out in hardcover. Which means back on that demand curve (remember, profit good) the potential customers aren’t choosing between an $8.99 paperback and a $7.99 ebook. They’re choosing between a $25 hard back and a $7.99 ebook.

In our case when the paperback comes out, my publisher drops the price because the market conditions have changed (which is why the Monster Hunter Nemesis ebook is $6.99 and Monster Hunter International is free). Sometimes my eBooks show up for less because Amazon is having a sale, and I don’t even know about it until one of my fans tags me on Facebook about the sale.

You really want to get offended? My Super Evil Publisher also sells eARCs (Electronic Advanced Reader Copies) on their own page three months before the book comes out, for close to hard cover prices! GASP! These are the early, probably not fully proofed, versions that would normally go out to reviewers. But going back to that demand curve thing, some brands are in such demand that there is a market of people who will spend $15(!) to get an eBook, because they are in that much of a hurry to find out what happens next, and are willing to pay a premium to get it first (I actually earned out my advance for Monster Hunter Nemesis off of eARC sales alone).

Now if you’re self-publishing and trying to decide how to price your book, it is simpler. You don’t have a bunch of lawyers involved, and you don’t have all that G&A and Overhead. Lots of self-published folks go 99 cents, others do the $2.99 to maximize the royalty percentage. Same principle. You’ve got your market and your demand curve, and you’re going to price accordingly. You need to figure out the price that maximizes your return. Whatever you set it at, somebody is going to come along and say it is wrong. ONE STAR!

This all boils down to a question of entertainment dollar value to the customer. If you want it now, and you really like this particular brand, you’ll realize that you spent more than that on your burger combo at lunch today and buy the book. If that isn’t worth your entertainment dollar value, then you won’t purchase.

In pricing, nobody is “taking advantage of you” unless you are stuck in a monopolistic situation. Ruth’s Chris costs more than Sizzler, but Ruth’s Chris isn’t taking advantage of you, they are pricing according to their brand and their product to maximize their position in the marketplace. If they price too high, then they will not make a profit, and will have to adjust or lose market share. Which is kind of funny, because in this tortured analogy, I’m actually priced more like Sizzler, and you just gave a one star review to Sizzler, because I’m not priced like McDonalds.

Accountant Hat off, Writer Hat on… Back to this kind of one star review, it is utterly pointless. You aren’t educating anybody. The only person you’re harming is the author. Because nobody in the world is going to say your review was helpful, nobody is ever going to read it. So all you did was lower the overall average stars, which primarily damages the author’s standing. A review that says “I’m too cheap to buy this ONE STAR!” is the same as “It sounds like this baby killer likes guns ONE STAR!” or “I bet he listens to Fox News ONE STAR!”

“What a rip off! It turns out Moby Dick is about whales! Whales are fat and stupid and so is Herman Melville! ONE STAR!”

Ignorant reviewers… You aren’t helping.

Frankly, it is kind of insulting. Me? I’m fine being insulted. I consider it blog fodder. A. I get called the worst things in the world daily, so I’ve got rhino hide. B. I’ve sold a ton of books so I know you’re full of crap. But put yourself in the shoes of some new author at a publishing house and think about how they feel when you post reviews like that. It’s like you’re telling them that the eight hours* of entertainment they provided was worth less than the price of a hamburger.

And I’m not even talking a very good hamburger.

The value of a book isn’t the paper. The value is the entertainment you get from the book. If you get books because you like having shelves and shelves of books (nothing wrong with that by the way, you should see my office) great, but why the hell did you buy an eReader anyway? Authors love being told that the entertainment they provide isn’t worth a buck an hour, usually from people who have no problem drinking a $6 Coke and eating $4 nachos while watching a 90 minute movie that cost $8 to get into.

Stars are to rate the product, not to announce to the world you don’t understand how capitalism works. If you’re too cheap to buy it, just don’t buy it! If you read it and it is good, give it stars! If you read it, and you thought it was bad, give it less stars. It’s that simple.

 

 

*Oh, and shut up, speed readers. That’s right. I said eight hours. Deal with it. Nobody cares that you read 6,000 WPM like some sort of freaky robot person. Most people read for fun at 200 WPM and most books are 100k words. I swear, I’ve never in my life mentioned that it takes hours to read a novel without some self-righteous speed reader chiming in the comments about how brilliant they are and how they read a novel every fifteen minutes. Goody for you. Those of us who’ve known the touch of a woman don’t care you read fast.

 

 

This is a great read about the political bias in mainstream publishing.  http://www.nickcolebooks.com/2016/02/09/banned-by-the-publisher/

But remember, all of those allegations about ideological bias against conservative and libertarians was just in you Wrongfans’ imagination.

I don’t know Nick Cole. I spoke with him on the internet for the first time this week. I’ve never read any of his books, but apparently lots of people have. From what I understand he was a solid midlister, who was selling well, and growing his backlist. The usual good career track stuff. His last book did well and got great reviews. However, one small bit in the next (under contract) book in the series hopelessly offended a young editor at Harper and it went sideways. But read Nick’s account.  It is fascinating stuff.

For years we’ve known there is a liberal bias in the publishing industry. I mean come on, almost all of them work in Manhattan. Duh. Of course the publishing industry vehemently denies that. Left wing fans don’t see it the same way fish don’t notice water is wet. It just is.  Right wing fans get sick of being preached at or treated like they’re stupid, and go spend their entertainment dollars elsewhere.

Because this isn’t my first rodeo, I already know exactly how Nick is going to get attacked and dismissed.

1. There is no bias.

On the contrary, it is biased, and anybody who has paid any attention at all knows it. Just like Americans in general, some authors are politically apathetic and don’t pay any attention to that part of their business. Other authors know about the bias, but they benefit from it, so they’re cool. Other authors know it, but don’t say anything because speaking up is at best a hassle, and at worse, career damaging. Then there’re some of us who can’t keep our big stupid mouths shut.

Authors are about as evenly divided ideologically as the rest of America, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at what we say in public, or reading our books. That’s because most of the non-left keep their heads down to avoid rocking the boat. In my genre there are hundreds of outspoken left wing authors, because that’s accepted, normal, and good, while there are a few dozen outspoken on the right. And that’s way more than when I started. The declining power of traditional gatekeepers has enabled more writers to speak freely.

Once I started being really vocal I was shocked by how many well-known, established authors I met who had the wrong politics who were keeping their heads down out of fear of damaging their careers. I’m talking living legends, and I’m all like “Whoa… You?” There are lots more than you’d think. We’ve got like a secret handshake and a decoder ring and everything now.

I’ve also spoken to a bunch of liberal authors who think the system is hopelessly biased to the point of stifling free expression and artistic creativity, but even being on the home team they can’t say anything without fear of hurting their careers. All the time at cons I meet an author for the first time and get some variation of “I disagree with your politics, but you’re right about this.” And then it usually turns into them ranting about how messed up their publishing house is.

2. Let’s quibble over the definition of “censorship” and “banned”.

I haven’t read the other side’s take on Nick’s article yet, but knowing them as well as I do I can guarantee that will be brought up. While I was reading that link the second I saw those terms I knew the CHORFs would do the whole Strain at a Gnat, Swallow a Camel thing, nitpick the definitions, and then dismiss the whole thing.

Yes. A publisher is perfectly free to reject a book.

Yes. Refusing to publish someone’s work is not the same as banning it.

Yes. Part of an editor’s job is “censoring”.

Yes. Part of an editor’s job is understanding the author’s market, what the customers want, and providing them a product which will sell and be profitable.

Duh.

Great. Now that the stupidly obvious is out of the way for the dimwits at File 770 (don’t forget to look both ways before crossing the street!), let’s get down to the important part of Why it was rejected.

Politics. Period.

So, for definitions I wouldn’t use the word Ban, but it is certainly censorship: the practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts.

In this case, unacceptable was a small idea that cast a bit of liberal orthodoxy in a negative light.

And this wasn’t a message book. This wasn’t a big recurring theme. This wasn’t a preachy, beat you over the head with Special Topic X message of the day (note, all that stuff is perfectly cool with mainstream publishing when it is left wing), this was one bit of backstory about one group of characters explaining their motivations.

But that one kernel of something that could be construed as going against holy left wing dogma was the kiss of death. It was horribly offensive. AIs find casual abortion of convenience an indicator of humans possessing a callous disregard for life… (that’s actually a pretty clever idea for the usual AI uprising trope). Nope. That’ll offend 50% of your audience!

Oh bullshit.

In a genre where we can be eyeball deep in murder, rape, genocide, every crime known to man while inventing a bunch of new ones, carnage, and sheer awfulness, with dangerous ideas supposedly our bread and butter… Yet having a bit that from the PoV of one group looking at a progressive sacrament in a negative light is just too offensive to tolerate. Now if a left wing author wants to sprinkle liberal amounts of abortion through their fiction, make all the Christians into belligerent inbred rednecks, and then kick George Bush’s severed head down the street, nobody in Manhattan publishing is going to bat an eye. Because they live in a Manhattan echo chamber where everybody thinks the same way, and the idea of there being customers who would find that offensive is simply inconceivable to them.

This is supposed to be a genre of ideas, big ones, small ones, and dangerous ones. The problem is that for too long we’ve had a homogenous bunch of gatekeepers, many of whom were willing to sacrifice story and creativity in favor of enforcing a rigid group think. And then some ideas just aren’t allowed.

The fact that this editor thought that bit would turn off 50% of Nick’s audience just demonstrates how incredibly out of touch these people are now. Sure, years ago that might have been the case because all of the review places were as in lockstep as the publishers, so if anything with dangerous wrongthink escaped into the wild it would be trashed or ignored. They’re still trying to do that (which was one of the reasons behind Sad Puppies) but their stranglehold is crumbling.

3. This is all a publicity stunt to sell more books.

Since I’m an author with GET PAID in my mission statement, I wouldn’t blame him if it was, but I don’t think so. That story is far too familiar, and I know too many other authors where similar things have happened. However, I warned Nick yesterday to get ready. This story appears to have gone viral. He is probably about to get slandered with every vile accusation imaginable by the CHORFs.

We’ve seen repeatedly that any time an author breaks from the group think, they’re going to get slammed. If you say anything at all about the existing system, it is either a publicity stunt, or you’re a delusional liar, or a bitter whiner with sour grapes. At no point in time does the idea that you’re telling the truth as you perceive it actually ever enter into their narrative.

Yet you can tell the truth and get publicity. Once this story broke Nick’s self pubbed version of this book went right to the top of the charts. Scaring off 50% of your audience? Nonsense. He’s sitting at #1 in like three genres right now. Like I said, the gatekeepers are crumbling. Their ignorance would be laughable if it hadn’t already screwed over so many good authors.

Here is the beautiful part… For decades the left held all the power. Readers are sick of their shit. The fact that standing up to them can actually be a sales boost demonstrates that their power is waning. You know why I talk about the size of my royalty checks? Because nothing pisses the bullies off more than being successful despite their best efforts to trash you.

Nick is getting publicity off of this? GOOD. That means creators no longer have to be beholden to the whims of every twenty something junior editor with a gender studies degree in Manhattan.

 

 

The Audie Awards are to pick the best audiobooks of the year. Son of the Black Sword is one of the finalists for Best Fantasy. The winners will be announced in May. Good luck to all the nominees.

This is a good year for my narrator, Tim Gerrard Reynolds, because he’s up there twice, competing against himself. I did that one year, with both a Monster Hunter novel and a Grimnoir novel as finalists (I won!). Tim deserves it, he really did a fantastic job. He was a real pro to work with, and he turned in a compelling performance.

I do really well in audio. I think my writing style translates over well for the medium. I’ve made a bunch of best of lists every year, hit the top of the Audible bestseller list a few times, and I believe this is the 6th Audie Award I’ve been nominated for. I’ve won two. (if I could do proportionality in regular books what I do in audio, I’d move up to the C list!)  🙂

I’ve been remarkably blessed with good narrators. Audible Studios has done a fantastic job picking the right narrator for the right series, every time. In this case, Tim Gerrard Reynolds just has the perfect tone for epic fantasy. He nails it.

When I talk about writing business stuff, I often refer to people as pros, and that is like the ultimate compliment. Tim reached out beforehand and wanted to talk about every name and pronunciation, and this one was a real challenge because the setting is inspired by India and southeast Asia, so many of the names sound really different to the western ear from how they’re spelled. (in reality, Ashok sounds more like Oh-shoke, but to an English reader it’s going to be Ash-ock. Sort of like in America my last name sounds like Korea instead of Qoh-whey-ah 🙂  ) Lots of the names I had no idea, so Tim had to improvise.

He made it sound awesome.

But I’ve been really lucky with all of them. Professionals, the lot of them.

Oliver Wyman is the narrator of my Monster Hunter series, and he has just gotten better and better with every book. For those books you need a sort of irreverent, smart ass, tough guy vibe, yet still needs to switch between a whole mess of different (and sometimes really weird) voices. Oliver is great. At one point he even plays a character as a very convincing Christopher Walken.

Then I’ve got Bronson Pinchot for the Grimnoir Chronicles and Dead Six series, and he is just phenomenal. He’s got a range, but he brings this incredible depth of emotion to the characters that just blows you away. Bronson was also up for the Best Actor Audie one year for his work on Grimnoir. His craziest performance ever though? Big Eddie.  Holy moly. The Big Eddie scenes from Dead Six… You just need to listen to them.

For my Warmachine novels I got Ray Porter. Ray is a pro. His performance on Into the Storm was excellent, When he asked what the main character sounded like in my head, I told him young Frank Sinatra. And Ray nailed it. He’s recording the sequel now.

I’ve had other narrators for short stories and novellas (speaking of which, check out Gabra Zackman’s performance on the novella Instruments of War, holy moly, she is good), and Audible Studios has never let me down. Every narrator they have ever paired me up with has always been excellent.

A special thanks goes to Steve Feldberg and his crew, who puts all this stuff together behind the scenes. Steve, and all of his people I’ve ever dealt with, have been great communicators and solid professionals. It has been a wonderful partnership. I love working with Audible.

 

Here is another one of my Infinity armies. I took a bunch of pics with the new light box, and am posting them as I get the chance. This army was painted for my oldest daughter. She is my anime fan girl, so of course she picked the army that basically Space Asia.

Group shot. The colors are dark blues accented with golds and orange. Why? Because CRAB CLAN! (Yes, eldest daughter is the same one who played the Hida Berserker).  Bases I went with lots of leafy green because it made a good contrast with the blues.

The ladies of Yu Jing. I am not happy with how these face came out, but I was still playing around with skin tones and let the paint get a little clumpy on some.

On the power armor ones, my daughter wanted kind of a Tron effect, hence the ice blue edging experiment. I don’t know how I feel about that. It looks pretty good on the table, but I think I would have liked more different colors.

On the samurai looking fellow you can see the flag freehand I did on his back up in the group shot. It looks great on the table. The middle sniper was the first Yu Jing I painted to test the scheme.

These three, and the guy on the right in the pic above were all speed painted to have in time for a game.

The doctor and engineer with their helper bots. The girl was actually above mentioned daughter’s character in the Writer Nerd Game Night RPG. Asuka Kamiyama, Japanese street racer.

On the big guy, yes, those are Pokemon balls on his shoulder. Why? Because the two little panda robots are supposed to pop out. 🙂

The shading on the blue came out really well, but looking at the detail pics I should have used more black lining around the orange bits for definition, or gone whole hog and did a glow effect.

I think I might go back and put some more colors and contrast on the gun. The kanji on the chest is for Mountain.

 

The annual Life, The Universe, and Everything writing conference is this week in Provo, Utah. LTUE is the best pure writing con out there. I recommend it for anybody who wants to make it as a professional writer, or who wants to learn more about craft of writing. It isn’t fannish, there’s nobody in costume, it is just business.

It is way cheaper than the pro writing conferences. Originally LTUE was held on the BYU campus, and it was aimed at students. Over time it moved to UVU, and for the last few years it has been at the Provo convention center. Having been there for all of those I can say unequivocally that it is much nicer having gotten out of school. Just like life, you want to move on and make it in the real world? Then get done with school and go be a grown up. 🙂

I believe this is my 8th LTUE. The first time I attended I had written one book. Wow… I can’t believe it has been that long.  🙂

Thursday

9 – Writing a War: Political Unrest

11- Defining and Measuring Success: It’s a Mindset

4 – Writing Action Scenes

Friday

9 – Relevant Character Backstory

10 – Monsters, Fantasy, and Horror

3 – It’s a Book, Not a Baby

Saturday

9 – Finding Your Audience

4 – Guns and Those Who Wield Them