Dot Dead Diary

4 Unanswerable Ebook Questions

    Is there one universe or many? What is the meaning of life? What happened to Jimmy Hoffa? 

    There are some questions that just cannot be answered.

    As readers of this blog know, I am undertaking an experiment in e-publishing. My first two novels, both published in trade paper, did fine (and continue to sell). But I couldn't resist climbing aboard the ebook express and so I uploaded my latest effort, Drop By Drop: A Thriller, onto Amazon.com, BN.com, Smashwords, and Apple's iBookstore. Generally, all seems to be going well. While I miss bookstore signings, the fact I have already made more in royalties on Drop than on my last traditionally published book provides some solace.

    But in the world of e-publishing, mysteries abound. There are questions for which I have no answers. Here are four:

    1. How do people find out about an ebook original? I tried a little experimental advertising of Drop By Drop -- sales were not affected. Drop was greeted by a bunch of online reviews which definitely helped. Lately, there have been fewer. Still, sales have not gone down and are even trending upward. My experience is not unique. I have spoken to a couple of friends whose books were made available on the Kindle with little uptake. Only months later did their sales zoom. Why? They don't know. There's an invisible hand at work, I guess.

    2. Living as I do in Silicon Valley, a few miles away from 1 Infinite Loop (Apple HQ), many readers tell me they have purchased their copy of Drop from the iBookstore. I also read about authors selling scads of books on BN.com. So here's the question: Why do I sell 20 times more books on Amazon than Barnes and Noble's BN.com and 9 times more than on Apple's iBookstore?

    3. The United States has about 312 million people. The United Kingdom has about 64 million or about 20% as many. According to estimates, 750M paper-and-ink books were sold in the US in 2010 and 229M in the UK or about 30% as many. I did some Googling. According to these links, US ebook sales were $441M in 2010 and in the UK were £180M or about 60% of the US total. So why am I selling 80 times more books on Amazon.com this month than on Amazon.co.uk?

    4. My second book, Smasher, made it onto a national bestseller list and was optioned for film. Reviews in paper-and-ink newspapers and mystery and publishing magazines were great. Drop By Drop was reviewed only in online publications. Smasher sells for $2.99 and Drop for $3.99. Nevertheless, Drop is selling 14 times more copies than Smasher on Amazon.com so far this month. How come?

    Attention: there may be a Nobel Prize in store for whoever can answer the first question of this post, but all you get for answering any of the four ebook questions is my thanks and appreciation.

9 Days Away and Still Rambling

I haven't posted in nine days.  That's the longest hiatus since I started this blog.  Sometimes the realities of life impinge, y'know.

I have baseball on the mind.  And we novelists and ballplayers are in the same profession, aren't we?  Entertainment.  The goal of both is to provide recreation, enjoyment, and diversion.  So why aren't we treated the same?  The major league minimum salary is $380,000.  Wouldn't that be sweet?  So why not reorganize novelists along baseball's lines.  We could have 30 major league publishers where the minimum is the aformentioned $380K.  Each would have minor league affiliates chock-full of writers, whose talent would be nurtured by salty old coaches until they are ready to be called up to the majors.

Wednesday I watched the season finale of Friday Night Lights, the only network show I watch.  My friend Jeff Shelby has already expounded on its uncertain future and what might happen to the network executive who dared to cancel it.  As corny as the show can get sometimes, as unlikely as the series of last play wins is, I will shed tears if it's not back in the fall.  If you haven't seen the show, all episodes are available online.

In my last posting, I discussed the probable insanity of novelists.  After all, we live in an alternative universe and record what we find there.  Look at this from last week's Times Book Review:  "Researchers suggest that because the 'wrong' side of the brain helps process [their] words, hallucinators may generate inner speech that is not attributed to the self."  How our brains are wired can help determine whether we are suited for life as novelists?