Business End

Articles about the business aspects of publishing and self-publishing.

Do I Care About Mobile Readers? [A Checklist]

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This post, from Piotr Kowalczyk ( @namenick on Twitter) originally appeared on his Password Incorrect site on 1/10/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

Year 2010 has already been called “The Year of the Mobile”. Internet activity is shifting from desktop computers to laptops to tablets to mobile phones. This is an inevitable trend. People play music on mobile phones, update their social networks, watch movies and even play games. What about reading? It seems to be one of the easiest things. It’s not.

One side of the story is that people complain about general reading comfort – and this is a common excuse to stay with paper. The other side of the story is a fact, that a majority of Internet content is still not mobile friendly.

Here’s a quick checklist of things which can be done to make mobile readers’ life much easier.

Do I publish my books in formats optimized for mobile reading?

If you plan to publish a next book, a free teaser of a book or any new piece of writing, think not only of Scribd, BookBuzzr or Lulu. Think also of sites which convert your book to formats tailored for mobile viewing, like ePub or mobi. The most popular services, besides Amazon’s Kindle Store, are Smashwords, Feedbooks, Wattpad and Kobo.

Do I use a mobile friendly blogging platform?

Most of what 2.0 authors write is not actually books, but everything else intended to draw attention to those books. A blog is still a major place to share thoughts and tease about a book (first chapters, excerpts, etc). If you’re on WordPress.com, you are 100% mobile friendly. When a reader is visiting your blog from a cellphone, a mobile theme is automatically loaded instead of a regular one.

Do I use mobilizing plugins for my self-hosted blog? 

 If you run a self-hosted blog, you can use a proper plugin. This is especially important, when a blog is rich with many advanced plugins. They make it slow to load and probably the content will not display correctly as well. A list of blog mobilizing plugins can be found here.

Do I use blog mobilizing services?

If not a plugin, you can use one of convenient blog mobilizing services, like Mofuse or Mippin. You may also consider mobilizing part of your blog (such as one category) – and this tool seems to be the best option. Just paste the RSS feed in and in a couple of easy steps you’ll have it running. The list of services is also available in the above mentioned article.

Does my feed shows full articles?

More and more people are switching to reading RSS feeds on their mobile phones. If you set up an option to show only an excerpt of your post, the reader is forced to move to your page in order to read the rest. If your blog is not mobilized, consider it a lost view (or even a last view). A much better option would be to show a full length post in a feed.

Do I tweet mobile links?

Even if you haven’t done any of the above, you can still make your content mobile friendly. This is especially important if you spend a considerable part of your time in mobile communities like Twitter, Brightkite and alike. You can always use Google Mobilizer – just paste a link and in one click you’ll have your page optimized for mobile viewing.

Now, if your content is already mobilized, there is one more thing you could do. [As] non-mobilized blogs [are still common], the general attitude [toward reading blogs on mobile devices] is “do not open this link”. So ask yourself…

Do I inform readers that my blog is mobilized?

You can easily do that. Use text or widgets delivered by blog mobilizing services. Hopefully one day it won’t be needed any longer.

 

Also see this article, which provides instructions for how to make your blog available for sale to Kindle owners.

Stuck: Is the DIY Scaring Them Off?

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"So you are in Ingram’s?," they ask, as if it’s some kind of legitimizing checkpoint in order to go any further. Because if the book wasn’t listed, like there’s no possible way in a million years they would even take this conversation any further.

[Publetariat Editor’s note: strong language after the jump.]

There is no veritable "indie" brotherhood from which an author can establish a relationship with indie bookstores. I can’t breeze in and ask them to carry my book, just because they’re independent and I’m independent. Ok, good enough, they have to read it first. Fine. Makes enough sense. But how can I afford to send out potentially hundreds of promo copies? Why can’t my synopsis be good enough? Is it because I’m the author walking into the bookstore and that is too accessible?

Is the D.I.Y scaring them off?  All this time I’ve been poo-pooing those statements by certain twitter detractors that author accessibility is always a good thing, especially for no-names like me. Is it possible though, that bookstore owners are uncomfortable with the author walking in with a copy of the book and asking them to carry it?  So, is the D.I.Y. scaring them off? They want a little more professionalism, anonymity?

I had these beautiful, glossy 4×6 postcards with the cover on one side and the synopsis/backflap copy and ISBN info on the back. How much money am I going to piss away by doing a mass mailing to selected indie bookstores throughout the country?

But what is their risk in carrying something no one’s ever heard of? Is it shelf space? I can understand that. They have to make a buck, and the real estate in these small spaces carries a premium for titles that will sell with a profitable margin.

But 29 Jobs and a Million Lies is slim. It’s got a nice cover, really, it does. What’s the risk? Just take a chance on me. I’ll promote the book the best I can, and I’ll do a reading at one of your events, even on a regular basis.

I need to bring my following, you say? I have a following if I don’t have an opportunity to sell my book locally? Ahh, that independent Catch-22. The onus is on me to cultivate that following, even if it’s friends who I’ll have to drag to these readings and events. Friends do not always equal Fans, though they can overlap.

I’ve learned that the Twitter "following" numbers do not equate to sales, or even real "fans." So how do I cultivate a local following who will trail me to these events and boost up attendance at coffee-house readings? Really–how? Because I can’t get the Ocean County Library or the Middletown Library to return my calls inquiring about carrying the book and doing a reading.

I’m willing to do it all. I’m a little stuck now.

On the positive side, the local arts paper has agreed to do a profile (I’ll be whoring that right here soon) on me so I guess I can use that to get in the door at a few of these joints.

Right? That’ll un-stuck me?

(Oh my god, my first post without a "fuck".)

Thanks, as always, for reading.

This is a cross-posting from Jenn Topper‘s Don’t Publish Me! blog.

How To Lose Friends And Tick Off People On Facebook

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This article, from Scott Stratten, originally appeared on UnMarketing on 1/20/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission. While it is addressed to social media consultants, the advice here is equally useful to authors, publishers, and anyone else who hopes to avoid missteps in using social media.

An open letter to all my friends in the social media consultant/guru game,

Please stop.

You’re steering people the wrong way.

You sell yourself as social media consultants, the ones that can show you the way and then fark it up.

I beg of you to stop.

Go back to teaching Internet marketing from the old days, I could at least ignore you then. I talk to you at conferences, share the stage but I can’t listen to you up there any longer spewing “tips” that hurt people and their relationships.

Here is what I and many, if not most of the world, request of you to stop immediately when teaching “Facebook Strategy”:

Photo by the awesome Racheal McCaig

1. Stop telling people to invite everyone in their contact list to every event, even if it’s local. If you invite me to your 1 hour workshop at the library in New Mexico, and I live in Toronto, it hurts my view of you and questions your geography skills

2. Stop teaching people to create fake events. You know what I’m talking about… it’s the “month long event” that you say people should create, and then they “message” all the “no’s and maybe’s” and “not yet responded” to continue to pump out their message. It makes me feel all unfriendy. (yes, that’s unfriendy)

3. You know that trick of tagging people in articles/pics/videos that they don’t appear in so they come and read it? Stop it. Getting me to think I’m mentioned somewhere just to find out I’m not and you’re just being a selfish bumhole, does not bode well for our future “friend” status on the book of faces.

4. Inviting me to a “loss weight” teleseminar event, where it lists people you’ve invited is like being on a roll call at fat camp. Really? Do I look fat in these jogging pants? I know a lot of people are overweight, but inviting someone to an event to lose that weight, especially when I’m perfectly happy living my life of denial, does not strengthen our relationship.

And while we’re here, can you start teaching your clients:

1. Inviting me to assassinate someone in the temple in Mafia Wars may give off the wrong vibe for your brand… I don’t know about you, but I like to be a sniper in the privacy of my own Xbox, not regular updates on my wall of whose neck I’ve cracked

2. Hundreds of Farmville updates on your wall doesn’t make me think you’ll focus on my needs if I become your client. Especially if you’re positioned as a “busy” person, and your status update says “I have no time!!!” And yet we can read how you just nursed a sickly cat on your farm in FarmVille, well, um, it’s just awkward.

3. Blingee generic mass-sent greeting animated cards make people go nuts. Before turning off and blocking the app, I had 43 posted on my wall. In 4 hours. Nothing says “I thought of you personally” like a mass sent lame greeting self-serving wall post. “Hey Scott, if you don’t like the app, you can just turn it off” Well, I didn’t ask you, but if you insist, that’s like me having to tell people to stop kicking me in the nuts. It should be opt-in, not opt-out.

If you’re going to be in the position of an expert, act like one.

Teach people that really, truly want to know how to do things in social media properly. Show them how to:

1. Connect with people on an authentic, not automated level.

2. Show them that with time and effort, you can meet the greatest people in the world on sites like Twitter, if they only would only invest their time, care and knowledge first.

3. That “success” is subjective, not a number of friends/followers. If by success you mean some of the most incredible relationships you’ve ever had, that once trust is established can also lead to a fruitful business, you can have it within social media.

4. Tell them to treat others like they would like to be treated. That sending repeat invites weekly to your event on Facebook would really really suck if they had 20 people doing it to them every week, and that promoting others is sometimes better than promoting yourself.

5. And warn them, that us, the self-appointed guards of social media are very protective, very persistent and aren’t goin anywhere.

There you have it my fellow social media teachers. I’m sure we’ll get along fine with just these small but meaningful changes.

Love you.

Sincerely,

The entire Internet

(As a special treat, I also made this into a song for you. With apologies to Heart)

UPDATE – Thanks to the awesome @SnipeyHead here is a post on how to get rid of most of this annoying schtuff by using FaceBook Lite. 

Scott Stratten is the President of Un-Marketing.com. He is an expert in Viral, Social, and Authentic Marketing which he calls Un-Marketing. It’s all about positioning yourself as a trusted expert in front of target market, so when they have the need, they choose you, That’s UN-Marketing.

Over 45,000 people follow his daily rantings on Twitter and was voted one of the top influencers on the site with over 20 million users . His recent Tweet-a-thon raised over $16,000 for child hunger, in less than 12 hours. His book “UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging” is due to hit the shelves in the Fall of 2010 from Wiley & Sons.

His clients’ viral marketing videos have been viewed over 60 million times and has generated massive profits and lists. One of the movies was chosen by the Chicago Bears as their biggest motivator towards their Super Bowl run a few years ago, while another made their client over $5 million in 7 days. He recently appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Mashable.com, USA Today, CNN.com and Fast Company. That plus $5 gets him a coffee anywhere in the world.

Since he still has to pay for his own coffee, he earns his keep by speaking and consulting around the world on how businesses can engage better (or at all!) with their current and potential customer base using social media, viral marketing and just plain old engaging conversation. His team of Un-Jedi’s are responsible for such online hits as “The Dash Movie”, “The Time Movie” as well as the tongue-in-cheek “I’m Breaking Up With The Leafs” (although Scott wants you to know he really is no longer a Leafs fan).

Writing Styles

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Last night I found myself taking several tweets to explain why I write like I do. That told me I had stumbled onto a good blog topic, so here goes. First, let me say that whatever your style, if it works for you, it’s right for you. My purpose is simply to explain what I do.

There are generally two types of writers:

  • Seat of their Pants Writers
  • Outliners

Seat of their Pants Writers

These are the people who follow their muse. They believe that were they to do any kind of pre-writing organizing, they might stultify their creativity. They are also folks who must then do a lot of rewriting to get it right. For me, that’s a lot of work. Being the lazy person I am, I don’t find it very attractive for my purposes.

Outliners

These are those who like to work with a logical framework right out of the starting gate. I am generally an outliner, as you can probably tell from my past articles which start out with a list of bullets and then expand those into points I want to make, such as I’m doing here. It is definitely possible to organize your thoughts and then use the muse to fill out what you’re trying to say so both approaches get served. That would be me.

Why I do what I do

During my twenty-five years time in and with the military, I wrote a lot of messages, a lot of intelligence reports, and as a tester and evaluator of new military systems and concepts, a lot of highly technical plans and reports which were of the scope of doctoral dissertations. This type of bureaucratic writing demands a high degree of organization and its readers may have to make decisions that affect many lives or millions of dollars. (What you are now is what you were when.) On the other hand, it is possible to adjust writing styles. When I began writing nonfiction how-to books, I knew I had to communicate with a much broader, more informal audience. The highest compliment I have ever received about that transition came from a fan in the 1990s: “Reading one of Bob Spear’s books is like sitting down with him in my living room in front of my fireplace and having a conversation.” I always keep that in mind when I write fiction. I’m not interested in or have pretensions for writing the great American literary novel. Instead, I want to tell a story that captivates and entertains. I was a music/business major, not a literature/English major.

The Importance of Storytelling to Me

My first six years of my life were spent on a self-sufficient Quaker farm in North Central Indiana. I had no playmates, brothers, or sisters living within miles. My grandmother would tell me oral stories of our family; my mother would read to me; and I would spend hours in front of our old Motorola radio listening to classic radio theater (this was the late 40s and early 50s, so no TV yet for us). Storytelling became so important to me as a form of entertainment, that I began telling stories out loud to myself. I would always be the hero ,and I would free form my way through never-ending stories (…and then…and then…and then). I told my first story to an adult at the age of four when I tried to outdo a tall tale told by our hired hand. My grandma was listening inside at the window and just about fell over she was laughing so hard. The hired hand just stood there speechless with his mouth wide open as I told him about being chased by wild Indiana, swimming to England and back, and riding to Indiana and home.

Remembering those years led me to become a professional storyteller in 1997. I quickly became a performance resource on the juried Kansas Arts Commission Touring Roster. I found myself performing at schools and communities all over the state. This is why the story is everything to me when I write fiction.

A Recent Example of My Process

It is time to write my 5th mystery, but I needed to write it more as a thriller. This is my approach. First, I take a look a look at my character database, my ‘Bible,’ and determine how my characters need to grow or change in both good and bad ways. I also give a thought to any new characters which are needed. So, I guess you could say the interaction of my characters among themselves and with outside events, natural or man-made, is the basis for my stories. After I play with the characters a little, I begin laying out plot points in some kind of logical time line that allows for those characters to continue to develop. Each plot point is written in a format of one to several sentences. These serve as memory ticklers as I write. Each plot point becomes a chapter. For this latest book, I’ve come up with a structure initially built upon 45 chapters. I lay out my chapter heads and include my plot points just under them so I can glance up to them to make sure I’m not forgetting any key elements.

Now, I allow my muse to kick in again (the first times were when I developed my characters and my plot points). I begin writing, now filling in settings, thoughts, motivations, dialogs, etc. This approach eliminates the need for extensive rewrites. It becomes much easier to quit and return to my writing without losing my thoughts as to what I’m doing where. That’s really important because I write in my bookstore, an environment where my work gets interrupted often by customers or my wife needing help.

In other words, I have developed a process that works for me. It might not work well for you at all, but it may give you an idea or two to try. Until my next post, happy writing!

This is a cross-posting from Bob Spear‘s Book Trends Blog.

Top 10 Book Promotion Strategies for 2010 Revealed by Survey

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A recent survey of authors and publishers by a national book marketing firm reveals that they are anxious to leverage the benefits of social media marketing as they promote their books in the coming months.

According to Dana Lynn Smith of The Savvy Book Marketer, nearly all – 94 percent of the respondents – said they plan to promote their books with social networking and other social media this year.

"Online book promotion through social media is clearly a popular strategy," says Smith, a book marketing consultant. "But, it’s important that authors and publishers learn to use these new book promotion tools effectively."

According to Smith’s late 2009 survey, here are the top 10 book promotion methods that authors and publishers plan to use this year:

1.  Social networking and social media: 94 percent

2.  Blogging: 84 percent

3.  Seeking book reviews: 75 percent

4.  Seeking testimonials and endorsements: 73 percent

5.  Press releases: 68 percent

6.  Ezines or email marketing: 62 percent

7.  Radio and television talk shows: 62 percent

8.  Speaking or teleseminars: 60 percent

9.  Article marketing: 57 percent

10. Book signings: 56 percent

"Despite the emphasis on online book promotion in 2010, more traditional activities like book reviews and radio interviews are still important," notes Smith. "An effective book promotion plan should use a variety of online and offline tactics for the widest reach."

Of the 136 people responding to the book promotion strategies survey, 42 percent are independently or self-published authors, 25 percent are authors published by a traditional publishing house, 12 percent are aspiring authors, and 21 are publishers or others in the industry.

Smith, who develops marketing plans for nonfiction books, is the author of The Savvy Book Marketer’s Guide to Successful Social Marketing and several other book promotion guides.

For book promotion tips, visit The Savvy Book Marketer blog at www.TheSavvyBookMarketer.com. Subscribers to Smith’s complimentary newsletter, The Savvy Book Marketer, get a copy of the Top Book Marketing Tips e-book when they register for the newsletter at www.BookMarketingNewsletter.com. For more book marketing tips, follow Smith on Twitter at www.twitter.com/BookMarketer .

How To Sign An Ebook

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This post, from Ami Greko, originally appeared on The New Sleekness on 1/18/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission.

Like the oft-lamented “smell of books,” I’ve found that there there are some concepts that people consistently get hung up on when discussing ebooks. I used to try to puzzle out answers to these, but in this new, Zen-like approach I’m experimenting with in 2010, I’ve decided to try to actually evaluate the meanings behind the questions. Get your Desktop Rock Garden ready: we’re going behind the scenes on three of them this week.

Question 1: “How will people get their ebooks signed?”

As far as I can tell, the logic behind this question seems to go like this: authors have always signed books, and readers have always come to events to get their books signed, therefore not being able to do that = huge problem.

Here’s the logic I’d love to see people using: instead of wondering how we can adapt an older model to suit new technology, maybe we should think about what getting a book signed represents to a consumer, and see if there’s a way an ereader could make it better.

I’m not big on signed books, so it’s possible I’m missing something here, but it seems to me that they tap into a few different things: the impulse to memorialize an event, the collecting jones, and also the desire to have a unique experience directly with the author. Why else stand in line for an hour with your name spelled out on a post-it note waiting for Salman Rushdie to scrawl his signature and your name in Shalimar the Clown? (←An actual unfulfilling personal experience I’d prefer to not relive.)

We can make this a different encounter. It’s a paradigm shift. Instead of forcing people to wait in line hoping to get some small face time with an author, maybe everyone who attends the reading gets a recording of the event immediately following. Maybe the author is excited enough about being sent on tour that he writes an additional story with the book’s characters, available exclusively to those who show up at his appearances. Maybe a risk-taker even releases the first chapter of her upcoming work-in-progress and an email address where comments can be sent.

The suggestions above aren’t meant to be definitive, and more importantly, they aren’t meant to be changes that need to happen overnight. I mean for them to be examples of the ways in which we can reconsider the signing experience wholesale, instead of merely adapting old practices.

What ways would you be excited to see the signing experience change?

 

Part II in this series, Kindles For All!, can be read on The New Sleekness.

Ami Greko is the director of business development for AdaptiveBlue, working primarily with their add-on Glue. She has previously worked as a publicist at Viking Penguin and FSG, marketing director at Folio Literary Management, and digital marketing manager at Macmillan.

Different Types of Merchant Accounts

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After cash, credit cards are the most widely accepted means of payment in the world. No matter what business you are running, or what product you are selling. Chances are that you will require a credit card processing system. From American Express to Visa, the brand may vary, and since there is no such thing as an individual payment gateway for each individual company. Every company may have a payment system that is unique to them, but the payment gateway is what is the essential link. But before we go into the technicalities, lets get some of the basics out of the way. Especially some of the terms just used.

Any credit card transaction on the planet acts in a predefined manner, first the customer will offer his credit card details, the credit card details are then processed through a payment gateway, and finally the credit card payment is received in a merchant account. The way in which the credit card payment is accepted is different, you could be using the credit on a EPOS (electronic point of sale terminal), or you could have a successful online store that is accepting payments. The important thing to remember is that the mode in which you are accepting the payment is not as important as having a payment gateway and a good merchant account.

Okay so the next thing to discuss here is what is a payment gateway? well a payment gateway is usually a third party system that processes the credit card transaction it could be the server an EPOS dials out to, an e-commerce system, however the term payment gateway usually refers to the latter, and once the checks are done the funds are then transferred into a merchant account. The essential component is the merchant account, the merchant account is offered by companies and based on the volume of transaction and certain other criteria; the charges and upkeep is different. No merchant account is free as the company is offering you services. Merchant accounts in general are of various categories and depending on the type of business you are running, different monthly charges, and percentage charges are applicable.

Important merchant account types

a) Regular merchant accounts – Although in business there is no such thing as a typical business, however a majority of businesses are usually treated as regular merchant accounts, they have low maintenance fees and lower rates than other merchant accounts.

b) High risk merchant accounts – This category is usually reserved for high risk credit card processing accounts, for example accounts that handle a large volume of transaction that may or may not offer a 100% authorisation rate. An example will be an outbound call centre, that attempts hundreds of credit card transactions to verify the credibility of the credit cards. There are also additional complications like currency conversion involved. Hence the term high risk merchant account.

c) Specialized merchant accounts – There are some businesses that require specialized credit card processing, or might require a specialized merchant account that caters to requirements such as offshore processing, etc. Such merchant accounts are usually referred to as specialized merchant accounts.

Congratulations: You Get To Be The Bigger Person Now

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If you’re working your author platform effectively, you’re very active online. You’re doing any or all of the following: posting to your blog, possibly posting to others’ blogs, tweeting, posting updates on Facebook or MySpace or LinkedIn, participating in online discussion groups and comment threads, posting or commenting on YouTube book trailers, and maybe even podcasting. Your goal is to open a dialogue with readers and your peers, and the better your author platform, the more feedback and discussion you will generate. Much of the feedback and discussion will be enjoyable and thought-provoking, a kind of online ‘salon’. The rest of it, not so much.

An awful lot of people will have strongly held opinions with which you disagree, or which are ill-informed, or which are obviously being shared only for the sake of getting a rise out of you or casting aspersions on you or your work. But however much you may want to angrily tear into this latter group anytime they darken your virtual doorstep, however tempting it may be to respond with a biting and clever remark, you must never do it. Answering the uncouth and trollish in kind requires you to become uncouth and trollish, which can quickly escalate beyond your control and undermine all the goodwill you’ve built up to date with your community of readers and peers, and quickly turn off any newcomers to your tribe.
 
As an author, you’ll find there are two primary arenas in which you may feel it’s necessary to rain invective down upon a perceived adversary: following a bad review, or following an ill-informed or insulting post to, or about, you. First, let’s look at what happens when authors respond to negative reviews…negatively.
 
Consider this case of commercially- and critically-successful novelist Alice Hoffman, who was so outraged by a negative review (some have called it merely lukewarm) from author Roberta Silman in the Boston Globe that Hoffman ended up flaming Silman all over Twitter. Hoffman eventually went so far as to provide Silman’s phone number to her fans and request that they call Silman to defend Hoffman. It wasn’t long before the mainstream press was all over this, and not much longer before an embarrassed Hoffman began making public apologies.
Then there’s author Alain de Botton, who responded to a negative review on Caleb Crain’s blog with a number of posts that eventually escalated to the point where Botton was saying things like, “I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make.” There’s a terrific post about the incident on Ed Rants in which de Botton responds to questions about the incident and provides an essay as part of his response as well.
 
Next, take a gander at the controversy more recently sparked by author Candace Sams on Amazon. When reader-reviewer LB Taylor posted a one-star review of Sam’s novel Electra Galaxy’s Mr Interstellar Feller, Sams responded with a series of angry responses, initially under an alias but eventually under her own name as well. When the dust had settled and the press and blogs were finished with her Sams went back and deleted all of her posts in the Amazon thread, but it was too late by then because plenty of sites and blogs (such as Babbling About Books) had already copied and re-published the worst and most disturbing of them online.
 
Prior to the Sams dustup, perhaps the best-known author outburst came from Anne Rice in 2004, also on Amazon, in response to multiple negative reviews of her novel, Blood Canticle. In a 1200-word diatribe, among other things, Rice responded to reader-critics by saying, “Your stupid, arrogant assumptions about me and what I am doing are slander…You have used the site as if it were a public urinal to publish falsehood and lies." Her entire response is reprinted on the encyclopedia dramatica site, where the term “rice out” is defined as, “To make a spectacle of oneself in response to literary criticism by insisting that one’s creative work is superior in all aspects.”
 
Now, compare these authorial meltdowns to the actions of Carla Cassidy, who posted a wry and clever rebuttal to a negative review on the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books site. SBTB’s review featured a sarcastic, snarky list of 26 reasons why Cassidy’s novel Pregnesia is the best book in the history of pregnant amnesiac romance books. Cassidy responded with her own list of 10 reasons why she loves the SBTB review, as detailed on the Saturday Writers site. According to Saturday Writers, “Carla responded with grace and humor that exactly matched the tone of the review. I don’t think I could respond so well to a negative review. I’m in awe of her.”
If you can’t craft a humorous and/or graceful response to a negative review—and the many examples of non-humorous, non-graceful responses from seasoned authors given in this post are proof enough that you can’t trust your own judgment on this—, then it’s best just to keep your mouth (and keyboard) shut entirely on such matters. As Neil Gaiman has said on his blog, “some things are better written in anger and deleted in the morning.”
 
As for coping with stuff and nonsense from respondents to articles or blog posts you’ve written, or from people who are more or less just out to make you look bad, you should simply ignore such commentary when it’s clearly labeled as opinion but it may sometimes be necessary to correct inaccurate factual information posted about you or your work. If you choose to do so you must tread with the utmost care, lest a new idiom for author freak-outs turns up in common usage with your name attached to it. I don’t think I’ve yet seen a more shining example of calm, professional, classy damage control than that of Harlequin Digital Director Malle Valik in response to the firestorm of controversy that followed Harlequin’s announcement of its partnership with Author Solutions, Inc.
 
First, Malle responded personally to the many charges leveled against the partnership on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books (scroll down through the comments thread to Malle’s first comment, posted on 11/18/09 at 6:48am). Next, she graciously answered some specific questions about the deal on Dear Author, then came back to respond to some very pointed and angry remarks in the comments thread following that interview. In the face of a plethora of insults and accusations, Malle kept her cool, kept a positive attitude, and remained professional. She kept the discussion on-point, and never allowed herself to stoop to the mud-slinging tone employed by many of the attackers.
 
Malle Valik is to be commended for her exemplary performance in this matter, and to be emulated by every one of us anytime we find ourselves in the unenviable shoes she was wearing last November. To do so, you must first acknowledge that as a writer, you are in the free speech business. It is your duty (and should be your honor) to defend the right of anyone to voice any opinion on any subject, however much you may disagree with that opinion or even find it offensive. While I freely acknowledge that very often, the people who put you in a mind to take the low road are not honestly attempting to engage you in a fair debate, it will do you no good to respond to them in kind. Correct factual errors if you must, but only if you’re certain you’re capable of Valikian conduct in the matter. Take action on libelous statements about you or your work if you feel they have the potential to do significant damage to your earnings or reputation, but do so in private, offline. Otherwise, your safest bet is to ignore the noise; it’s not truly worthy of your attention, anyway.

This is a cross-posting from April L. Hamilton‘s Indie Author blog.

With Kindle Royalties About To Be Set At 70%, Is It Time To Revisit Bestselling Novelist Anne Rice's Post: "Should Major Authors Think About Making Kindle (If Possible) Their Primary Publisher?"

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Many Kindle owners may care very little about issues such as author and publisher royalties, digital rights management, the finer points of Kindle book pricing, or whether Kindle authors need traditional publishers like a fish needs a bicycle. But some of these issues ultimately will have a powerful effect on the selection of books that are available to us as Kindle owners.

 
As of yesterday, the prospect of Apple unleashing a popular tablet device and negotiating great deals that would lure authors and publishers away from the Kindle was looking like the first real threat to the growing dominance of the Kindle in the field of ebook reading devices and content. 
 
Today, not so much.
 
Any fears that authors and publishers were about to begin jumping ship in droves from Amazon’s Kindle catalog were vaporized this morning when the company announced a suite of dramatic changes in its relationship with authors and publishers. The headlines will be all about the fact that Amazon is promising to begin, on June 30, paying a 70 per cent royalty on qualifying Kindle books, but there is much more to ponder in the requirements that Amazon will use to qualify authors and publishers for that 70 per cent royalty, and in the overall impact that these moves will have on the book business. Amazon never seems to be short on arrows in its quiver, and in this case its tactical moves are bound to have a chilling effect on Apple’s apparent efforts to lure authors and publishers away from the Kindle platform.
 
"Today, authors often receive royalties in the range of 7 to 15 percent of the list price that publishers set for their physical books, or 25 percent of the net that publishers receive from retailers for their digital books," said Russ Grandinetti, Amazon’s vice president of Kindle Content, in today’s news release. "We’re excited that the new 70 percent royalty option for the Kindle Digital Text Platform will help us pay authors higher royalties when readers choose their books."
 
Indeed. There’s plenty for authors, publishers, and literary agents to chew on here:
  • Amazon is prepared to compensate authors and publishers more generously than they will be compensated anywhere else.
     
  • For authors who deal directly with Amazon rather than through the mediation of a publisher, royalty compensation could be astonishingly high.
     
  • Despite all the buzz about "Kindle Killers," the Kindle Store is the only real game in town if it is true, as some have claimed, that the Kindle Store currently accounts for over 90% of all ebook sales.
     
  • Even at the current 35 percent Kindle royalty, popular authors like Anne Rice are already thinking about making Kindle "their primary publisher." At 70 per cent, there may be no stopping them.
Back on December 13, Rice went on an Amazon customer forum and asked:

What do you think? If regular publishing is having a very hard time marketing and distributing books effectively, should major authors think about making Kindle (if possible) their primary publisher? Kindle would then be the one to introduce and advertise the book, and Kindle could license limited hard cover editions for those addicted to the "real book." Would this be good for authors? Would it be good for readers? Would Kindle do it?

Of course, it’s not like Amazon’s sole purpose here is to do better by authors. Like nearly every major occurrence in the economic marketplace, today’s announcement is driven a complex web of market forces, of which the key factors here are Amazon’s desire 
  • to maintain the dominance of the Kindle catalog, 
     
  • to outflank Apple in that potential ebook newcomer’s effort to negotiate with book publishers, 
     
  • to organize Kindle Store pricing into a logical $2.99 to $9.99 range (at least 20 percent below competing hardcopy prices but higher than the zero-to-99 cent range that has been growing in the Kindle Store and threatening the overall Kindle pricing structure),
     
  • to strengthen participation by authors and publishers in the Kindle text-to-speech feature and other coming Kindle features, and
     
  • to persuade publishers to play nice with the Kindle ecosystem, in part by making them aware how easily they could end up losing authors who might opt for the direct relationship whose possibility Rice raised in her aforementioned post.
Nobody but Amazon and the publishers really knows what deals, percentages, and subsidies may have informed Amazon’s previous dealings with corporate publishers of Kindle content over the past 26 months, but one thing that seems likely today is that, with the royalties and qualifying requirements noted in this 70 percent royalty option, Amazon may be pushing more and more of its corporate publishing partners in the direction of the Digital Text Platform that has been seen heretofore as a publishing platform for smaller indie publishers and self-published authors. After all, for example, participation in the text-to-speech program has never been optional for DTP publishers, so the inclusion of it as a qualifying requirement for the new royalty program suggests that publishers who have accessed the Kindle via corporate publishing channels in the past may be pushed now directly into the DTP. And, like the major music labels that participate in Amazon’s "self publisher" print-on-demand subsidiary, CreateSpace, in order to market their previously out-of-print backlist music titles, the smartest of the major book publishing houses are going to go where the best terms are. 
 
If they lag behind, they run the risk of arriving there only to find that some of their authors are already there.

 

 

This is a cross-posting from Stephen Windwalker’s Kindle Nation Daily blog.

Shipping Warning! The USPS Strikes Again!

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Like many small businesses including indie authors and publishers, we rely upon the USPS’ online shipping services to print labels for our shipments. I’ve been especially pleased with using Priority Mail to send books out when time is important.  Well, no longer.

On Friday, I printed three mailing labels Priority Mail, for mailing after the long weekend.  The Post Office was closed on Monday, so I shipped them out Tuesday, from our POst Office counter. All three were returned to me today, labelled Return to Sender: Bad Meter Date.  When I explained to my regular clerk that they were closed Monday, he said it didn’t matter, they could no longer pass through a package with a printed label except on the actual date shown on the label.

What The ????

I called Washington DC — an amazing excercise in  futility.  It seems that despite my packages being run through for years, no matter the date on the label, the Postmaster General, John Potter has determined — within the last coiup0le of weeks was the date I got, that they will no longer accept packages for Priority Mail shipping unless the label is printed the actual day the item is presented.  He is concerned about the Post Office’s reputation.

What The ????

It seems that some people unfairly ask for refunds of postage when the label date indicates an earlier shipping date than the actual shipping date. My mention of the fact the office was closed Monday did no good, nor my mention of the fact that each package is scanned into the system and the scan date is the date that the package is entered into the system, not the printed label date. No matter, my pre-paid postage is dead.

So. If I understad this properly, the USPS Postmaster General John Potter has, in the interest of maintaining the repuytation of the POstral Service, determined that without so much as an online warning, they willo make shipping for their regular business customers, as inconvenient as possible, thereby improving their glowing reputation.  Sounds just like Washington DC, doesn’t it?

The USPS has put a loty of money — taxpayer money I might add — over the past few years into marketing their services for business shippers.  They stressed the convenience of what they offer in all their TV advertising.  Yet, this decision.

To put my own troub les into perspective, my local Postmaster told me to watch where he went, as he slid to the back, behind their counter.  He called out — "we’ve got a lot of regular busi8ness shippers now," and motioned towards a huge laundry dolly. Wheeled canvas, about four feet on a side and filled two feet above the top with Postal Priority Packages. 

"These are from one shipper," he explained,"They were all returned because he printed the lables on Friday, and presented them after the Holiday on Tuesday.  I’m sure he’s not going to be happy."

I’m sure.  So remember, if you can’t take the time to go to the post office to deliver your package today, don’t print the label, or it will come bouncing back.  Even if it’s a PO Holiday. Call them, instead, for a pick-up.  This will help their bottom line about as much as the PR nightmare this new ruling will create among the business customers the Postal Service has been working to attract for so long.

Oh, by the way, if you think this is a hare-brained new regulation — you can always write John Potter:

US Postmaster General

US Postal Service

475 Lenfant Plaza SW

Washington, DC 20260

Do You Really Know The Author

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When we buy a book, we think we’re going to like it because the title, synopsis or cover attracts our interest. I’d be the first to admit that I don’t often read a book that makes me stop to wonder about what the author is like. Questions like what does the author look like, where does the author live and did life experiences give the author ideas for the book. An author’s brief biography is in the back of the book and sometimes a picture, but that short paragraph is not nearly enough to get to know the author.

The more famous authors becomes, the more we learn about them, because of the publicity they generate. Lesser known authors just starting out, especially self published ones like me, are strangers and will pretty much stay that way unless the author reaches out to them. I don’t hire publicity, but I do use the internet, my local newspapers and book signing. I have the idea that if I make myself known to my readers, providing they like me and my books, the more books I might sell. So far this reasoning seems to be working.

Some readers get to know about me through my blogs where I tell about my rural upbringing. If I didn’t tell the readers, would they know that westerns were the books of choice in my house. How I grew up is reflected in my writing. Living near a small, Iowa town helps me use characters and stories that are true to life in my mystery series.

The Dark Wind Howls Over Mary – a western – ISBN 1438221576

Amazing Gracie Mystery Series – Neighbor Watchers- Book One – ISBN 148246072

I often talk about my personal experiences that I have turned into books such as being a caregiver for my parents. I volunteer for the Alzheimer’s Association and for eight years was facilitator of an Alzheimer’s support group. Because of that experience, three of my books deal with Alzheimer’s disease. People who are working their way through that dreadful disease need to know that I went through it before I wrote the books. I want the readers to understand I know how they feel so they can identify with me and my family.

Open A Window – ISBN 14382444991

Hello Alzheimers Good Bye Dad – ISBN 1438278276

Floating Feathers Of Yesterdays – a three act play – ISBN 1438250932

For the readers that haven’t found my websites or read my biography, I put my bio and contact information in with the books I sell along with a business card. If they are curious enough to check my information out on my bookstore website, they will learn about me in my bio, blog and book event pictures as well as the titles and prices of my books.

I advertise my bookstore website as much as possible and sell my books on other sites like Amazon. When I sell my books, I send an email to the buyers right after I mail the books to alert them to watch for their books. The mail system has lost some of my books. I do replace them at my expense. Knowing that media mail takes 2 – 9 days, I try to mail a book in a day or two so that the wait doesn’t seem so long for the buyer. I want that speedy delivery to please them. If the book does get lost, I replace it. I have developed a trust with the buyers. They find they can depend on my honesty to replace a lost or damaged book. They need to know I will do the right things to work up my customer base and show them I have an honest business. Maybe the books won’t turn out to be to their liking, but it will be everything it has been advertised to be.

In my email I always say if the buyers have time, I’d liked to hear what they think of the book. Those reviews come in handy to put on sites where I sell books. Giving my email replies a personal touch has made me friends with people from around the United States and lately in other countries. They continued to keep in touch. These buyers wait for word from me that my next book is ready to buy. Some of the anxious ones email several times to ask how long until my next book is finished. I always reply with a response about how the book is coming and reassure them that I’ll let them know as soon as I have the book for sale. Right now, I have a long list of emails to send a notice once I’ve published the book which should be ready this summer. What I have done so far may not have made me a household word yet, but what I’m doing works for me. Maybe some day.

 

 

　

　

　

　

Chapbooks: The Personal Side of Self-Publishing

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 I recently came across a blog by Betty Ming Liu, an award-winning teacher of writing and journalism at NYU, The New School, Media Bistro, and Sarah Lawrence College’s Writing Institute. She recently learned a lot about chapbooks at a panel discussion devoted to the topic. Check her blog post for a great introduction to chapbooks and how to make them.

Chapbooks can be a lot of fun.

My father, Roy Friedlander, was a printer who apprenticed in the Compositor’s union in 1933, and I grew up around books. Later, he would bring home chapbooks like these and other ephemeral printed pieces.

He worked his entire life in commercial printing, business forms printing, briefly at the New York Times and later as a teacher at the New York School of Printing. I think these books, almost exclusively by poets, short story writers and graphic artists, really appealed to him because they were so different than what printing usually meant for him.

(Photo credit: Betty Ming Liu)

Now that the holiday season is here, I started thinking how wonderful a gift a chapbook can be for a writer who wants to share her work with friends and family. It’s a way of bringing publication into your own hands, and of seeing at least some of your work in print. A well-designed chapbook, neatly produced and sewn up, would be valued by whoever received it. 

What Is A Chapbook? 

17th Century Chapbook PeddlerAccording to The Chapbook Review, they are “slim, soft-cover books, usually inexpensively produced and independently published.” In fact, the form of a chapbook is largely undefined. Today, many poets use chapbooks to issue poems, assembling them by hand from pages they’ve printed themselves.

Although small presses may issue chapbooks that have been printed with engravings, lino cuts, or letterpress printing, none of these are required. In its simplest form, a chapbook might be a cover printed on slightly heavier, or colored, paper, with several folded sheets sewn inside the cover. 

This simple and easy to produce “booklet” can easily become a vehicle for your creative prowess. Adding an illustration to the cover will make it more attractive. Look at line drawings, where there are no gray tones, for the best and most traditional match for your content.

What will you put inside your chapbook? The choices are pretty unlimited. I’ve seen lovely chapbooks with poem sequences, a single short story or essay, or a combination of poems, stories, and drawings. Sometimes the chapbooks have limitation statements inside the back cover which add an exclusivity to the production. This is a good place to sign the chapbook, if you want to add another personal touch.

Yes, It’s a Business, But There’s More To It Than That

We are usually very focused on publishing as a business, how to make good decisions about publishing, controlling costs, meeting schedules, and all the other necessities that enter into self-publishing as a business. Sometimes it’s refreshing to remind ourselves of the beauty and power of writing in its most unadorned form; the essence of writing as communication.

I particularly like the artisanal quality of these chapbooks. A writer becomes something of a self-publisher, and also a craftsman, as she chooses her work, arranges the pieces, prints her sheets and assembles the chapbooks. Many parts of her being come together to create these very personal creations, and the results speak of the individual attention that goes into them.

There is no more personal expression of the desire of a writer to self-publish than a chapbook, and no more direct way for the writer to bring their work to a small circle of intimates.

Resources

You can explore the intriguing and personal world of chapbooks, both those from small presses and ones created by individuals, as well as learn some of the history of chapbooks, and see another set of step-by-step instructions. Here are some links:

 

This is a cross-posting from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer site.

Kindle Store Pricing Trends: Is Amazon Backing Away From Big Deals?

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Kindle Store prices, discounts, and promotions are moving in so many different directions that we should resist concluding that there are many real identifiable trends, but here are a few things I have noticed lately:

 

  • Amazon’s own Big Deals on Kindle page, which tended to go unchanged and stagnant for months at a time after being launched last year, still exists but its link has been removed from the "Special Features" section of the Kindle Store’s left-sidebar Browse link list. This could mean nothing in particular, or it could mean either than Amazon is backing away from the free promotional book offers from mainstream publishers that have tended to populate the page or — and this is the more interesting of these possibilities — that the page is being overhauled and might be rolled out anew with information not only on free promotional books but also on over a million other free books available to Kindle owners, including Amazon’s own listing of nearly 20,000 free public domain titles and other free-content channels via Project Gutenberg, the Project Gutenberg Magic Catalog, the Internet Archive, ManyBooks, Feedbooks, and others.
     
  • The number of free promotional titles in the Kindle Store has been trending down lately, and may have become more of an annoyance for Amazon (in terms of customer service and its impact on the Kindle Store bestseller list) than it is a benefit for customers, although total abandonment of the listings might be a risky move in the context of Amazon’s "customer experience" business principle. Although the Kindle Store listings seem to suggest 56 free promotional titles at present, there are actually fewer than 40 after one subtracts free sample chapters and one title that is actually not available for order or pre-order.
     
  • An alarming number of the forthcoming likely bestsellers in the Kindle Store — especially among those slated for Kindle release between March and May 2010 — show Kindle prices in the $14-to-$15 range. Generally (but not always!) such prices are the result of listing issues and tend to sort themselves out (and be lowered to the range of the $9.99 bestseller price point) within a few days of a title’s release in the Kindle Store.

This is a cross-posting from Stephen Windwalker’s Kindle Nation Daily blog.

Kindle Rush Results

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This post, from Seth Harwood, originally appeared on the Author Bootcamp blog  and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

Click here to Listen to this post as Audio. (Right-click to download.)

As some of you already know, back on December 27th, I released a sample of my first short story collection A Long Way from Disney on Amazon’s Kindle store and used social media strategies to market it. I did this for various reasons, but mainly because, as I said here on OC before, I believe authors need to take on the role of scientists and experiment with what’s possible in today’s publishing world. (If you’re interested in how I publicized this, see my recent posts at AuthorBootCamp.com.)

A Long Way From DisneyFrom a scientific point of view, the experiment was a great success. I learned a great deal, which I’ll discuss below. I sold a lot of books (at $.99 each): around 350 in the first week, and I got my name and stories in front of a lot of new people. I also heard from a number of them who read the book right away and really loved it! For you authors out there, I hope you can relate: Getting positive feedback on your work from total strangers is about the best feedback there is.
[For those of you keeping score at home, those sales put $260 into Amazon’s pockets and $140 into mine. Not too shabby, I don’t think, but also not the split an author might hope for.]

Okay, without any further delay: Here are the Results (What I’ve learned) from Experiment 1:

1) Timing can be essential. I positioned myself to hit the Kindle store just after Xmas, thinking that with many newly gifted Kindles out there, a lot more Kindle ebooks would be selling and that I could cash in on this rush. I was correct in this prediction (Amazon sold more ebooks than paper copies over Christmas), but what I didn’t predict was how much harder this made it to reach the Top 100 Kindle bestseller list, a goal I had set for myself. I wanted to hit the top 100 because it would give the book additional exposure and stimulate more buying from newbie Kindle owners looking for quick, cheap content.
 

Ultimately, I think choosing this time right after Xmas might have helped me sell a few more books. But by not hitting the top 100 list, I missed a critical chance to attract more attention on the Kindle store. As author Rob Kroese posted on an Amazon Kindle Discussion board, he was able to hit 300 in books on the Kindle bestseller list prior to the holidays by selling 30 copies a day. During the holidays, he sold 60 copies per day and couldn’t crack the top 500. I should mention that the highest ranking I got on Kindle Bestsellers was #250, which in retrospect was a great achievement, even if it came short of my goal.

On that note, I also hit #4 in Short Stories, #16 in Literary Fiction and #40 overall in Fiction.

Would I have been able to reach my goal of the top 100 at another time? I’m not so sure.
 

2) Making the Kindle Top 100 list is actually pretty hard for an independent author. Initially I figured, how many copies of these books can they be selling? Well, I learned that in actuality the answer can be quite high. A lot of the books on the Top 100 list are actually FREE! The Kindle store includes many classics in the public domain—for example, Sherlock Holmes, Pride and Prejudice, Treasure Island, Little Women, etc. And whenever someone downloads these free texts, Amazon counts it as a sale. It’s hard to compete against FREE. And, for this reason, the bestselling ebooks list can be harder climb than the paper version. (Back in March 08, I made #45 overall in books on Amazon when I tried a similar experiment with a print on demand publisher and my first novel, Jack Wakes Up.)
 

3) Free isn’t for Everyone. So why shouldn’t I set the price of my book at FREE—the web’s new magic price, according to Chris Anderson—as I’ve done with audio podcast versions of all my fiction at my site and on iTunes? Well, because Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (how you put your book up on Kindle) won’t let me. That’s right, as an independent posting content to the Kindle store, the lowest I can go in price is $.99. It’s true. So who’s posting these freebies on the Kindle store? Publishers. Including, you guessed it, "Public Domain Books."

There’s no sour grapes here. I hope no one will misread any of these statements as that. But there are some interesting lessons learned. Would I have made the top 100 if I had put my book up at a less busy book-selling time? Who knows. But if Rob Kroese can hit #300 by selling 30 books in a day, I probably would’ve had a good shot when I sold close to 200 copies on just the first day. I’ll just have to try another experiment at some point to find out.

When I do, I’ll also capitalize on one more thing I learned in this experiment about actual buying on the Kindle platform:
 

4) Non-Kindle-owners need education if you want them to buy. Not too many people have a Kindle out there, but any Kindle book can be purchased on a PC or an Phone/Touch. This means that a great many people can actually buy a Kindle book, but many of them will need to be educated about how they can do this—something that I tried to enable, but could’ve done far better with in retrospect.

So how did I do? As a writer, the biggest success of this experiment was getting my fiction into more people’s hands and hearing strong feedback from them. As for my writing career and how to proceed with publishing experiments going forward, I really learned a great deal. I hope you found it helpful. To talk more about this with me, please comment on either of my writing/publishing websites: sethharwood.com or authorbootcamp.com, or hit me up on Twitter (@sethharwood) or Facebook.

What am I doing next? Going cross-platform with this experiment—taking the Kindle version of A Long Way from Disney and bringing it to Smashwords (Sony reader and others), Mobipocket (Blackberry) and the iTunes store as an App to enable the content to be read on even more devices! I’ll be back to talk about how that all goes soon!

#fridayflash: Snow Ball Excerpt

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This week, I present an excerpt from my other novel, Snow Ball. Snow Ball is not at all like Adelaide Einstein, it’s a dark comic mystery. And when I say dark, I mean it — as this excerpt will demonstrate.

 

“Shine on, shine on harvest moon, up in the sky…” Velma crooned, bouncing one hip as she worked.  She spun to open the refrigerator door, briefly eyed its numerous contenders for lunchtime beverages, then closed it again and stepped over to the basement door.  She gave it a little push to open it wider, calling, “Do ya want pop or milk with your lunch?”  Her accent made the word “pop” sound like “pap”.

She heard a grinding sound, a muffled cry and a thud.  “Ah…milk is great, hon,” Walter responded from somewhere out of view.  “With a little chocolate syrup?”

She smiled and closed the door, turning back to get the milk.  “He’s as bad as the kids,” she chuckled to herself.  She put the toast on the plate and the chipped beef on the toast, then set the table with a placemat, flatware and Walter’s glass of chocolate milk.  She flung the basement door open again and had to yell to be heard over the buzzing power tools.  “Walter, soup’s on!” she called.  “Now can ya turn that thing off and get your hiney up here before it gets cold?”

The buzzing stopped and Walter appeared at the foot of the stairs, wearing a yellow, blood-sprayed, disposable surgical suit with matching mask and booties, his glasses speckled with red and his gloved hands smeared with the same.  He lowered his mask.  “Before what gets cold,” he jokingly asked, “my hiney or the chipped beef?”

Velma giggled.  “Oh, you!” she chided him.  “Get all that stuff off and come on up now.”

When Walter reappeared, stripped of his disposable garb, glasses washed, he took his place at the table and said, “Oh, this looks great, just great Vel.”  Anyone seeing him on the street would’ve assumed he was an accountant or maybe a junior college math teacher.  He took a bite and hummed appreciatively. 

After he’d swallowed and had a slug of chocolate milk, he smiled at Velma and, pointing at his plate with his fork, asked, “Do ya know what they used ta call this when I was in the service, Vel?”

Velma’s eyes rolled and she smiled back indulgently.  “Yah, I do.  Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Walter.  Do ya have ta tell that story every time I make ya chipped beef?”

Walter chuckled.  “Oh, I was a different man then, Velma.  If you’da seen me then, ya woulda thought I was like John Wayne.”  He looked a little distant as he reminisced.  “We hadda be ready for anything.”  He looked at Velma and smiled again.  “But ta tell ya the truth, I’m glad I never got the call.  Truth is, I don’t know if I’da had the stomach for it.”

Velma turned off the radio and took the chair next to Walter’s.  “Yah, I know whatcha mean,” she said, squeezing his hand.  “Gunning folks down, left an’ right.  It’s all so impersonal, ya know?  I mean, those other boys never did anything ta you, they’re just fighting for their country same as we are.”

“Yah,” Walter sighed.  “War is a terrible business, ya got that right Velma.  If there’s a war going when our boys get ta be old enough, I’ll have ‘em up at Peter’s faster than you can say Jack Robinson.”  He dug back into his lunch. 

To change the subject, Velma cocked her head toward the basement door and brightly asked, “So didja get anything yet?”

Walter tucked his napkin in at his throat and grumbled, “Not much.”  He took another bite and smiled as he chewed and swallowed.  “He’s a toughie, all right,” he said with admiration.  “Golly, I don’t know what else ta try.”

Velma patted Walter’s left hand as he continued eating with his right.  “Are ya sure it’s really worth all this work, Walter?  I mean, couldn’t ya just finish it and move on ahead?  We’re all set ta go with the pharmaceuticals business now, and―”

“No, no,” Walt gently protested, wiping his mouth and shaking his head.  “Now that’s just the problem nowadays, is folks lettin’ other folks take advantage.  That last kilo wasn’t stolen from this turkey, he took it and he sold it himself.  He stole it from us, Velma.”

Velma shook her head and clucked, “I know I shouldn’t be surprised anymore, with all I’ve seen, but jeez louise, doesn’t that young man have a mother?”

“I know, I know what you’re sayin’.” Walt nodded.  “It’s like the parents today don’t even bother ta teach their kids common courtesy, let alone how ta behave like proper citizens.”  He tapped the table with his index finger for emphasis.  “And it’s just that kinda thing that’s ruining this country, Vel.  First there’s no respect for the elders, then it’s a lack of manners, and next thing ya know ya can’t even leave your fence alone with your merchandise for ten minutes.”

Velma clasped her coffee cup.  “Yah, I s’pose you’re right, Walt.  It’s just that it’s taking so long, and the kids’ll be home in a coupla hours.  Dickie’s hockey playoff starts at three, and ya promised him you’d be there.” 

“I know, hon,” Walter whined, “but I gotta finish this thing.”  He polished off his chocolate milk and snickered, “I can’t leave ‘im in there all night, ya know.”

Velma studied her cup.  “But there must be a way ta speed it up…”  She paused to think a moment, then snapped her fingers and stood up, saying, “I’ve got just the thing!”  She trotted out of the room and reappeared a few minutes later, holding a seam ripper. 

“A lotta times it’s a mistake ta go right ta the heavy machinery, Walt.  A lotta times it’s attention ta detail that gets results.”

Walter took the small, sharp, hooked blade and beamed, “Ah, you’re a peach, Vel.  This is super.”  He turned it over to look at it from all angles.  “How does it work?”

“Oh Walter,” she sighed, shaking her head patiently.  She took the implement back and pantomimed in the air as she explained, “Ya stick it in an opening, any opening, and then pull it along in the direction ya want ta cut.”

Walter took it back.  “Wow, that’s really somethin’,” he grinned.  “I bet this’ll do the trick all right.”

“Well all right then, but ya gotta buy me a new one,” Velma replied, giving Walter an affectionate pat on the shoulder.  “I’m not done with that quilt I’m making for your mother, ya know.”

 

If you liked this and would like to check out more of Snow Ball, it’s available in Kindle format on Amazon, various other ebook formats on Smashwords, and in a print edition on Amazon.