Yet Another Blog Reschedule

I've done a pretty good job bringing posts in a timely manner, but I think I need to push it back further than every Friday.

Before I hear complaints (or cheering? I'm honestly not sure who reads this thing...) here's a pretty good reason for it: I'm a writer first and a blogger second.

Lately I feel like the opposite has been happening. Whenever I have a free chunk of time to spare I spend it writing up a new post rather than working on a manuscript. With fewer posts that allows me to spread out my pre-scheduled posts further out and, thus, have more time to write.

So what is the new schedule already!? You ask in an increasingly frustrated voice.

Here it is: I'm going to try a format of every ten days. On the 10th, 20th, and 30th of every month, expect new posts (with the exception of February, with the last post of the month falling on the 28th).

Overall it won't be too much of cut. Some months have 5 Fridays, some have 4, with the new format there is going to be 3. Originally when I decided on Fridays, I did so with the purpose of giving people the weekend to read the new post, but from what I've been able to see from my readers' statistics it seems as though weekends don't really have an influx of readership (Wednesday actually seems popular for some reason.)

On the upside for my night owl readers, I will also be releasing my posts four hours earlier than before. You may have already noticed this particular time shift a post or two ago.

So, let me try this new schedule out for a few months and see how much work I get done.

Or I'll spend it looking at LOLcats.

 

My Very First Bad Review! :D

For those of you who don't want to trek all the way over to Amazon, here is the content of a one star review I got recently:

Rushed

Very confusing and rushed book-- interesting premise but could use more development. Would've enjoyed it more if the author spent more time describing the creatures and how the world's co exist  

My reply?

In all seriousness let me be mature here for a moment and admit to my immaturity: I'm pretty pouty whiny to myself about it, there's no other word to really describe my level of pure, childish, butthurt levels going on here.

That said, every author is going to feel that way, but since I'm on the road of admitting it, I'm going to take it a step further. I am going to actually break down said review so that you can decide how valid it actually is:

1. Spelling

I'll admit, this person's spelling is pretty good. Heck, they even have a point, but I'll just go ahead and say it: A lot gets explained in the sequel.

"What sequel?" you ask, gagging at the thought of having to dredge through another so-called "novel" by me. It exists, mostly, having about 30k words written, but I put it on the back burner to write other stories. Rest assured it's real though.

So anyway, here's where I get a bit whiny, immature, and maybe a bit obsessive.

2. Number of Reviews



This is where I called bullshit on reviewer "ruvi." Often, I'll use someone's number of reviews as a basis for how reliable they are for a review I am reading by them. How many Reviews does Ruvi have?

One.

Counting Dusted.

Consider that for a second. Out of every possible item you can get in the whole existence of Amazon, my book Dusted was so terrible, a work that defines the epitome of the pinnacle of crap, crap so bad that it actually manages to cause greater words of fiction to crumble within a five foot radius of it, that Ruvi had to review this one thing. Period.

No really look for yourself.

Now, I'm going to take another slice off my own anonymity and show you guys my review profile.
What does this say about this other profile in comparison?  I have 19 reviews, 16 of them books, 11 of them indie books. The genres are primarily YA and paranormal books and vary in the number of stars I give.

3. Interest Zone

Here's where I got just plain nosy. Ruvi has a public wish list and, curious, I decided to check it out. You can too!  If you're not feeling up to it, let me list a few books that Ruvi wants:

Malcom Little: The Boy Who Grew Up to Become Malcom X
Vegetarian Times
The Preacher's Bible
Indigenous Women and Feminism: Politics, Activism, Culture
Ain't I a Feminist?: African American Men Speak Out on Fatherhood, Friendship, Forgiveness and Freedom


Whoa, this is a pretty far cry from the wacky adventures of a bunch of paranormally affected teens battling faeries! At this point I'm not thinking "Why did Ruvi rate Dusted so low?" I'm thinking "Why in the world did Ruvi download and even read Dusted, even if it was probably during a freebie weekend? Much less review it!"

I don't have my wishlist public, but here are just a tiny handful of books I want, as well as genre:

Spirit's End, by Rachel Aaron (Indie fantasy)

Witch Way, by Heidi Hall (Indie paranormal fantasy)

A Charming Wish, by Tonya Kappes (Indie paranormal mystery)

Clean Sweep, by Ilona Andrews (Indie paranormal fantasy)

Nightshade, by Andrea Cremer (YA paranormal)

Mirror Sight by Kristen Britan (Fantasy)

School Spirits, by Rachel Hawkins (YA paranormal)

The bottom line

Yes, Ruvi has an opinion, just as everyone who reads Dusted does. Ruvi even took time out of his/her schedule to write a review which I actually appreciate. But Ruvi (and anyone really) should keep in mind that when reading out of the usual zone, there's going to be some bias and disappointment.

For me, unless something is so terrible that it almost makes me physically ill to read it, to the point where I don't want to read a new book for a while, I err on the side of being nice. Because, at the end of the day, I remember that we're all human, and those little indie authors are going to appreciate reviews the most.

So what are your thoughts, readers? Am I on the mark, or am I being whiny? (or is it making your head spin that I'm asking you to review a review of a review?)

Oddly Specific: Technology Girl and Tribal Boy

It wasn't until recently when I reviewed Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi (a fantastic book of which you can get for $2.99 on Kindle this month! Don't say I never do nice things for you.) that I noticed an oddly specific situation that has sprung up in YA books. I have since dubbed it Technological-Dependent Girl Falls in With Tribal Boy.

I'm not saying these books are bad. Far from it, all three books I will be using as examples are in my top favorites. Rather, it is just something that I decided to sit back and really think upon.

"I'd better ready by Thinking Pipe, just in case."

 Let's start with Under the Never Sky (did I mention it's a super awesome story at only $2.99 for Kindle this month?

Cool girls never look back at explosions... or.. whatever that stuff is supposed to be.

Aria has grown up in an environmentally-sheltered dome that has circulated air, computers, and all kinds of advanced technology. She even has a communicator implanted so that she can stay in constant communication with all of her friends and the like. Through certain circumstances she is booted out into the harsh real world, etc etc, disguised as a metaphor for growing up. We all know how it goes.

Perry, meanwhile, is literally tribal. We're talking a character who is considering killing his brother so that he can take over as leader of the tribe. He's surrounded by a world of firestorms, cannibals, wolves, and anything else that might decide to kill him at a moment's notice.

Next is Uglies by Scott Westerfield (as of this writing on January 7th it is $1.99 on Kindle, another one I suggest you grab a copy of!)

I refuse to use the latest cover.

 Tally has technology at her fingertips. She has entire computer screens for room walls, hoverboards, nanomachines, and a lot of other things I've forgotten (it's been something close to 8 years since I've read it.)

David has lived at what is basically a campsite his entire life. He knows hunting, logging, and survival among the ruins of what used to be civilization three hundred years ago.

One of many, many, many covers.

Across the Universe by Beth Revis is a little bit of a mesh between the two.

Amy is cryogenically frozen, so she's behind the times in a lot of ways. Granted, she lived in a world technologically advanced enough to allow cryogenetically freezing people.

Elder, meanwhile, has kind of a combination of technology and tribalism. While he is board a starship, and they have made advancements since Amy was first frozen (approximately 100-ish years ago. I can't remember if the story actually says how long.), but there is also a lot of farmland and cattle and a general alien feeling of each other's worlds.


Heck if I wanted to make a guess and throw a wild card into the mix that I haven't read (yet), it would be Delirium by Lauren Oliver. Correct me if I'm wrong, but my Reader's Sense tingles at the mention of this book following this theme.


Anyway, got a particular picture in your head? Good. We're going to break it down into two reasons as to why the particular theme of Technology-Dependent Girl Falls in With Tribal Boy exists and is popular (note that I don't specify "Falls in Love" because Uglies is the rare exception.)

1. Technology is Feminine

"What?" You're probably thinking to yourself as you spew coffee at your screen. "How can inanimate objects lean towards a certain gender?"

Well, there are a lot of adjectives you hear with computers: sleek, slim, thin, trendy, sexy, etc (I don't keep up on latest...well...anything). Basically you want this:

To be the technology equivalent of this:

And that's fine, we all like things pleasing to the eye.

But rarely do you hear masculine adjectives being used to describe computers: tough, hardy, durable. With maybe the exception of the word "Powerful." Maybe it's just my opinion, but it seems like we want our technology how we want our women-folk.


2. We Miss Masculinity

In a world where meterosexual and manscaping are real things we have gotten tired of the pretty-boy Edward Cullen/Justin Beiber/One Direction image continuously in our faces, and now yearn for something more masculine. Teenage girls, however, still find anything too masculine as threatening, so they're not likely to be making out with Ron Swanson anytime soon. By having a tribal boy as a fantasy they can imagine a youthful type while still maintaining a masculine personality. (Please just trust me on this, I'd back this up with some links, but I'm probably already on several FBI watchlists for even trying.)



So there we have it, an oddly specific YA story genre that comes down to general appearance and attractiveness. Also, for those of you possibly offended that I would pigeonhole the entireity of our species:

I don't claim accuracy in my rantings, just opinion.

How to Shop for Kindle Books

I have owned a Kindle reader for just over a year and, during that time, I have learned that there are a lot of nuances in shopping for ebooks, and I'm here to share them with you

Why choose Kindle over Nook?

This is probably the only point where I'm going to sound a little like an advertisement. I chose Kindle for several reasons, the main one being that Nook wanted account information despite the fact that the ebook I was trying to buy was free. With Amazon as long as you have an account you can download as many free books as you want. Second reason is because Kindle holds pretty much 66% of the share of ebooks with Nook being 33% (there are others, but that gives you a breakdown of the big two). Finally, the third reason is because I publish through Amazon, and it would be hypocritical to choose a device that I don't even publish on.

That said, let's move on to the real reason I'm writing this.

Ebook Pricing

The price of ebooks is tricky. Ebooks were originally made with the mindset that they would be much cheaper than regular books, instead what we've been handed is way overpriced digital copies that you don't even legally own and are frequently more expensive than a mass market paperback. It's this very reason that, given an equally-priced choice, I would pick the physical book every time.

Let's do a breakdown of pricing.

Mistborn trilogy box set by Brandon Sanderson

$16.11 for mass market paperback

$15.30 for Kindle

Now, these prices might be different by the time you read this, but Mistborn gives you an idea of poor pricing. It's not the fault of Sanderson himself, or even Amazon. For big-name published books the price is set by the publisher. This is one of those examples that I would chose the paperbacks every time.

Allegiant, by Veronica Roth

$11.57 for hardback

$3.75 for Kindle

Normally this is a deal I can get behind, but I already owned the first two books in physical format and had already purchased Allegiant in October. I try to keep my series in the same format when possible. If you check now, however, the Kindle version is $6.99, I'll come back to the fluctuating later (under the section Fluctuating Prices.)

Hunger Games box set by  Suzanne Collins

$22.94 for trade paperback

$5 for Kindle (now $14.99)

The Sight and Fell by David Clement-Davies

Unavailable as a set in paperback but they are $8.09 and $8.96 respectively.

$0.00 for Kindle (now $7.99)

Cold Days by Jim Butcher

$7.23 for mass market paperback

$2.49 for Kindle (now $4.99, although I suspect it will become $7.99 in the future.)

Like I really needed another copy of Cold Days.

Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

$27.47 for mass market paperback

$9.99 for Kindle (likely $19.99 if you check now)

Holy insubstantial electronic text, Batman! How in the world did I manage to get the entire series for $2 per ebook?

Now that you've seen pricing, let me lay down a good rule:

Never pay more than $3 for a Kindle Book.

There are exceptions, like if you know it's not going to get any better than that. I can promise you that you won't see Allegiant for less than $3.75. Now, why do so many of the ebooks I mention cost more than that? Because, technically, they are book sets. Each book in the Hunger games costs $1.66, each book in Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones is $2 per book. Good luck getting those prices for paperbacks, even if they are used copies.

Those examples there show you how ebooks were originally supposed to work as a much cheaper alternative.

How in the world are you going to keep from missing out though? Here's where I break down my method.

Kindle Daily Deals

These are actually really good deals. I've seen ebooks normally costing about $7.99 go for $2.99 or even less. They used to only have one Kindle Daily Deal but have since expanded upon it, now offering a minimum of 4 deals per day. Usually the four categories are: Main (listed as The Kindle Daily Deal), Romance Daily Deal, Science Fiction and Fantasy Deal, and Kids/Teen Daily Deal (it generally alternates between being a children's book or a YA book). I have sometimes seen them list others, at the moment of this writing (which is much earlier than what it is scheduled to post) the Kids/Teen deal is currently replaced by History Daily Deal, I have also seen Religion and Spirituality Daily Deal as well as others.

They change at midnight (1:00 AM where I live) and are worth checking every day. Most of them are generally books you've never heard of, indie authors, but sometimes they'll list a big-name author (although I have been genuinely surprised by some indie authors). I usually jump on those because they're usually books I've been very interested in but have been too hesitant to commit because I don't want to throw $10-$25 at a gamble for the chance that I might hate or like the story. It's much easier to take a chance when you're only gambling with less than $5 on an ebook Daily Deal. Here's a breakdown of what I've learned. All of these are big-name authors that you can walk into any book store and pick up a copy.

Books bought: 7

Disappointed:3

Liked it (though not enough to continue the series):3

Loved it so much I bought a hardback copy as well as the sequel in hardback: 1

I paid a total of  $19.30 for all seven of these (not including taxes). This is the price of two mass market paperbacks or one hardcover copy (or less, two of these were graphic novels which can retail for about $20-$30 for hardback on average)

The Daily Deal is definitely worth checking every day you have a spare 10 seconds, a spare 2 minutes if you actually want to buy one, or a spare 5 minutes if you're not sure and want to read a preview. I keep the Kindle Daily Deal bookmarked because it's a little awkward to find it in Amazon's website. If you don't want to bookmark it, just Google "Kindle Daily Deal" rather than sift through Amazon, it will take you right there.

Kindle Monthly Deals

Kindle Monthly Deals are another really good set of deals. Like Daily Deals, the Monthly Deals offer a bunch of $8+ ebooks for $3 or less, except you don't have just 24 hours to decide. As the name suggests, the Monthly Deals start at the first of the month and run through until the end. Most of them are indie names, and you won't find a whole lot that you'll probably be interested it, but once every couple of months or so, you'll find a real gem.

Not all good prices come from the monthly or daily deals, however. All of those books I mentioned above in the pricing comparison? Not a single one was a monthly or daily deal, and that's when we get to...

Fluctuating Prices

Sometimes the price changes for ebooks. These price changes will last anywhere from a weekend, a month, a season (like summer, or the holidays), to permanently (although this is rare). Why?

Indie Authors: They have control over every aspect of their pricing. Dusted retailed at $1.99 for its first couple of months but I changed it for the reason I suspect lots of authors do: better sales. Although I have seen some authors temporarily put their book "on sale", lowering the price for a certain amount of time they choose before raising it back up again.

Large-name published books: ?!?

I really have no idea. Maybe the planets align in just the right way or something. They certainly don't adjust the price as the book gets older, nor do I suspect if they want it to be "on sale" like indie authors do, but when a book gets lowered to an awesome price, how are you going to keep track of these? I have two methods:

Top 100

People find out about good prices on ebooks somehow. Maybe there's a single, crazy guy who does nothing but scour through every Kindle book to look for a cheaper price, then tells everyone.

Our hero.

Anyway, the best method of finding big-name authors with low prices is to check the Kindle Best-Sellers section. They have a list of the top 100, and this list varies greatly. The problem with the top 100 is that it's always full of fluff; romances, chick lit, nonfiction. If you're like me (and that would make you super-intelligent and incredibly beautiful/handsome) you don't want any of those, you want books like YA, science fiction, and fantasy. That's why, on the left-hand side of the screen, you can narrow your searches into genre. I generally look at the best-selling categories for Science Fiction & Fantasy, and the Teen & Young Adult categories (further narrowing Teen and YA into the Teen/YA category of Science Fiction & Fantasy to sift through the Teen/YA fluff books.)

This particular technique is how I managed to find all of those books mentioned above at good prices. I highly suggest checking late Fridays and Saturdays since those are the two days they're more likely to have lowered prices, and later in the day so that more and more people discover the sale, thus managing to bump it up into the top 100 best sellers. I once saw every book in the Maximum Ride series lower to $1.99 for a single Saturday.

Wishlist/Watchlist

This works better with indie books, I've found, since they're more likely to fluctuate in price or become freebies for a certain amount of time. If you find yourself interested in a Kindle ebook, but don't want to pay the current price listed for it, throw it into a wishlist. You can make multiple wishlists on Amazon and label them accordingly, I list mine as "Kindle Books" but you're free to name it whatever you want, like "Ebook Watchlist." From there you can just keep an eye on them and Amazon will tell you if the price reduces and for how much since you added it to the list (oddly enough they don't tell you when the price goes up from when you added it...) I've gotten a handful of reduced-price indie ebooks this way and, even better, gotten a couple of them for free. Again, I suggest reviewing this list Friday and Saturday, but unlike the 100 best-selling list, this one is not affected by other people finding it and is more about patience than random opportunity.

Everything Else

Here are some other, smaller things to consider.

First Book and Sequels

I only ever add the first book in a series to my Kindle Wishlist/Watchlist. The reason is because the first book is most likely to go on sale, no one is going to buy Book 2 in a series if they don't own Book 1, no matter how cheap Book 2 is. Some people think that by lowering Book 2's price, people will buy Book 1 and Book 2, thus doubling the sales. If you're like me (and that would make you very much under-appreciated in writing talent as well as a snappy dresser) then you won't bother with either of them.

Box Set Vs Single Books

Be careful when buying a "Box Set" of ebooks, there have been times where I've seen the single editions sell for cheaper, combined, than the set ($2, $2, $2 each versus $8 for the box set, for example). This usually happens with indie authors because we can't do math and we hope you can't either. The reverse, however, is also true. I've seen single books cost $0.99 each and the box set itself also cost $0.99. Check out the author's page of book listings before you commit to anything.

Gift Cards

If you're like me (and that would make you have a raging cause of consecitaleophobia)...

GAH!

...you don't like having micro-transactions in your account balance.

Amazon $1.99
Amazon $2.99
Amazon $0.99

You're going to run out of room pretty quickly. Instead what I like to do is buy a gift card somewhere and apply it to my account. From there all of your Buy With One Click ebooks get automatically deducted from the gift card amount instead of your checking. When buying other items from Amazon, just specify that you don't want to deduct from the gift card amount while putting in your purchase information if you only want to save the gift card for Kindle books.

Confused? You'll get the hang of it, or feel free to ask me any questions in the comments section.

My Book List for 2014

I have books piling up past my ears. A couple of months ago I had to sit down and review my bookshelves and really evaluate which books I was going to read. If the book had been sitting on a shelf for a couple of years and I still didn't find myself with the enthusiasm to read it, off to a better home it went. Things have gotten a little less cluttered from there, but I've still got quite a few sitting pretty, so let's see it I can get through 30 of them and look back on this list a year from now.

In all fairness I've intentionally left a few books unread so that I can read the next book in the series right after. I tried picking up Allegiant right away and felt totally lost, even with a scrap of paper I had written during the reading of Insurgent to help get me up to speed, and so ended up having to reshelve it.

Here is my list in no particular order, it doesn't include every unread book, just the ones I really want to get to.

Allegiant by Veronica Roth
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Girl in the Arena by Lise Haines
Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Claire
Three to get Deadly by Janet Evanovic
Delirium by Lauren Oliver
Starters by Lissa Price
Cinder by Marissa Meyer
Strange Angels & Betrayals by Lili St. Crow/Lilith Saintcrow (the gothiest name I have ever seen.)
Lure of the Dead by Joseph Delaney
Liberator by Richard Harland
The Eleventh Plague by Jeff Hirsch
The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan (I sped through all of these and then ground to a halt before starting the last one. Weird.)
The Royal Ranger by John Flanagan
The Alchemyst by Michael Scott

Here are more, in omnibus form or more than one in a series.

False Covenant by Ari Marmell
Lost Covenant by Ari Marmell
(Although from what I've seen I will probably leave these two alone until book 4 comes out. I loved Thief's Covenant but I heard Lost Covenant (book 3) left off on a cliffhanger.)

Through the Ever Night and Into the Still Blue by Veronica Rossi
(Another example of leaving book 2 alone until book 3 comes out.)


Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead
(I read the first one so this is books 2, 3, and 4. Frostbite, Shadow Kiss, and Blood Promise.)

Flora Fyrdraaca SFBC Omnibus by Ysabeau Wilce
(This is two books in one: Flora Segunda and Flora's Dare)

Steel City Magic SFBC Omnubus by Wen Spencer
(Another two books in one: Tinker and Wolf Who Rules)


Witchworld: Swords and Spells by Andre Norton
(Three books in one, the Trey of Swords trilogy, Sword of Ice, Sword of Lost Battles, and Sword of Shadows)