As you may know, I live out in the Boondocks, the sticks, Woop Woop (or pick your own quaint phrase meaning “the middle of nowhere”). The main industries here are fruit growing and wine making.  They play country and western musak in the local supermarket and the churches outnumber the pubs about twenty to one. In this week’s local free rag – which is actually a half-way decent local paper if you can stand the unrelenting right-wing political bias – the front page story (and when I say front page, I mean it fills the whole front page, including a half-page photo) is about a local writer who has had a book published. The story wasn’t just that, of course, although the very existence of a local writer would have been newsworthy enough, it focused on the scale of the bloke’s success. His book has been published internationally, you see. Not only that but he has never had a rejection letter. The first publisher he approached snapped it up.

Of course, I was amazed, not to say a little miffed, that my own publishing success has gone completely unremarked in the local press. I read the article again, thinking I might find out who the bloke is and maybe look him up some time. It would be nice to have another writer to talk to whom I could meet in the flesh from time to time. It was then that a comment near the end of the piece caught my eye. The journo referred not to the man’s publisher but to his “investor”. In a trice I was onto the Web. The publisher of the book turned out to be a vanity press. Judging from what was said in the article, the author had bought their deluxe package at about $2,000 – no doubt this also included a carefully-worded press release to send to the local paper. And that, of course, explained why this writer had not received any rejection letters. (How would a rejection letter from a vanity press look? “Dear Mr. X, Thank you for letting us see your manuscript. We receive thousands of excellent manuscripts each year and, unfortunately, we are not able to take your $2,000 at this time. We wish you more success with giving your money to another publisher.”)

Still, I do know a few people who have used vanity publishing services over the years and in at least one case, their books are as good as any you might find from a major publisher. In fact, better than the bulk of them. And the article had said how amazingly well this particular book was doing. So I went to Amazon, to see what the fuss was about. There was no opportunity to read a sample, unfortunately, but I did notice that it had been out for six months but had only one customer review (albeit five stars) and its sales rank was around three million. (In case you’re new to the mysteries of Amazon, a sales rank of 1 is good. A sales rank of 3,000,000 means nobody is buying. I have no idea what any other number means.) So not really the success the article was making it out to be. In fact (and I have no idea whether the work deserves it, but) it seems to be languishing in obscurity. Perhaps the article in the local paper will improve its fortunes.

A number of thoughts occur to me about all this.

The first is that the journalist and editor who put this on the front page didn’t do even some minimal fact checking. This seems to be par for the course with journalists these days – even on newspapers you have to pay for. If they had checked the facts, they might not have printed such a breathless accolade, or described anything as surprising as a first time author who hasn’t had a rejection letter. On the other hand, the bloke might just be a relative of the paper’s owners or editor. Nearly everybody around here is related to everybody else.

The second is that the journalist, the editor, and perhaps even the author himself, simply do not understand the difference between a publisher and a vanity press. Maybe it is only people in the business who have learned to make this distinction. Maybe the rest of the world hasn’t cottoned on yet. The thing is, paying someone to publish your book is not the same as someone paying you to publish your book. Honestly, I don’t mean to be snobbish about this. I have self-published a few books (although I have not used a vanity press). Self-publishing and even vanity publishing are not bad things – as long as it is clear to the reader what they are getting. Like it or not, being published by a “traditional” commercial publisher (large or small) is the reader’s implied guarantee of a minimum level of quality. Self-publishing and vanity publishing mean there is no implied promise of a minimum quality level and the reader must take pot luck (or insist on reading a free sample before purchase).

The third is that I really ought to be more aggressive and mendacious about marketing my stuff.

Sunshine is inimical to writing. The grass grows and has to be cut. The weeds grow and have to be killed. The fruit grows and has to be coddled like a baby. The dog staggers to the shadows, and drops. That seat among the tress beckons like a favourite vice. You take your laptop but the flashing rosellas and the spiralling eagles, the fidgeting thornbirds and flitting fairy wrens, the tumbling butterflies and swooping dragonflies, all take their toll. The horseflies and mud wasps zip around your head and snatch ideas as they struggle to find their way down to the screen. Like the lizards and the red-bellied blacks, your proper place is lying prone, letting sunlight seep through you. Like the wild orchids and the granite bluebells, your proper job is to nod in appreciation. This is why you came. This is why you found this place in the forest. Writing must wait for the rain.

I’ve been looking forward to this launch, partly because the book contains some of my favourite Australian SFF writers, partly because the whole point of the book is to raise awareness of suicide, and partly because it contains the first story of mine ever to be published that features one of my favourite creations, Broome.

Broome is a robot that will be assembled some three hundred years from now. It will appear in two space opera trilogies of mine (only two and a half volumes of which have been written so far). At the time of the story in Hope (called The God on the Mountain), Broome is 11,000 years old and many light years from Earth. It’s had various names during that long time, but it chose the current one because of the old joke about the broom that’s lasted for years, and has only had three new heads and two new handles.

You can join in the launch on Facebook, if you’re quick, and you can find details of the book on the Kayelle Press website. Whatever you do, please buy the book. It’s got terrific stories and useful information about suicide but, more than that, it’s in a good cause and the people who put this together have all given their time and energy to try to help. And pass on the message to everyone you know. Someone in your circle of family and friends may be glad that you did.

Here is a summary and something about the stories:

Before I go on, let me just squee* for a moment. The second edition of my time travel thriller, TimeSplash, is out today (on Smashwords - out tomorrow on Amazon), It has had a bit of an overhaul, too: new cover, slight re-edit, and two new ISBNs. That’s it, on the left of this post. The blue one. Feel free to stroke and pet it.

The audiobook and print editions are out soon too (from proper publishers) but the ebook (2nd edition) belongs to me. I’m also squeeing because I successfully steered the MS through the increasingly rigorous requirements of Smashwords and Amazon to end up with a book in both the major ebook markets of our time: The Amazon Kindle Store and The Rest.

Pricing was interesting. This was the first time I got to set the price for TimeSplash. Before now, my publisher had set the price at $5.50. Now the responsibility is mine and I had to think long and hard about it. In theory, the cheaper an ebook is, the more you will sell – but the less you will make on each sale. But that is only if you believe ebooks are price sensitive. I know that Joe Konrath says they are (and has evidence to back that up) but my own experience is that there is an area, somewhere under $10 where it really doesn’t make much difference. Free is very different, and I have discovered that you can shift ten times as many books in a week as you can in a year if you’re giving them away, but let’s not go mad. I have a starving Airedale to feed. So I decided to peg my book to the price of a cup of coffee at my favourite coffee shop – which is $4.50 for a large cappuccino – which is what I always order. That seems to me to be about the right price/value point for a full-length novel in ebook format.

And, finally, to the point about geographies. I’ve never used Amazon to sell ebooks before and I had heard they take 30% of the sale price of a book, leaving 70% to the author. This isn’t actually true. They take 30% in some countries (eight or ten, maybe) but in the rest, they take 65%, leaving just 35% for the author. As it happens, one of the countries outside their 30% zone is Australia – where I live, and where I might expect to make the most sales**. Does anyone have any idea why this is? The whole formula for determining price on Amazon is so baroque you would need a lawyer to help you understand it, but it’s easy to see that they’re trying to fix the market so that they don’t get undercut. Yet this different royalties in different geographies thing has me totally confused. What is that all about?

And your take-home messages? Self-publishing is possible but all publishing is weird. And you can buy TimeSplash at Smashwords for exactly the price of a cup of coffee.

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Update 21-8-11: TimeSplash has finally appeared on Amazon too. 

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*Squee v. The rare emission of joyous noises by authors, who may have waited many years to make them.

**In fact, I make most sales in the US and the UK, and almost none in Australia. Possibly because Australians don’t like science fiction (as an Australian publisher said recently) and they don’t like ebooks (talk about late adopters!)

It is a sad and terrible indictment of the society in which we live that a woman like Yasmin McKillop might die because she can’t afford the surgery that could save her life. Yasmin is a young woman, a nurse who cares for old people at my local hospital. She’s one of those lovely people you take to immediately. She is married to my friend James, who is blind, and they have two young boys. And now, Yasmin has a brain tumour. The prognosis from surgeons at the public hospitals here is very poor, but there is a surgeon in Sydney who believes he can save her, if she can find sixty thousand dollars for the operation.

On a nurse’s wage and James’ invalidity benefits, Yasmin has no house to sell, no savings to draw on. Her family are just ordinary, working people. That kind of money is so far beyond the reach of normal people that it must seem completely hopeless to her family and friends.

In desperation, her sister, Mia, has launched an appeal. Mia is not a media-savvy campaigner with far-reaching networks into the circles where money like this is easily found. She’s just a young woman who lives and works in a small, country town who loves her sister and is doing all she can for her. She has put up a Facebook page. She is talking to local people and local businesses – in Stanthorpe, one of the poorest towns in the whole of Australia. That’s why we need to do something to help Mia raise that money and save her sister.

I know most of the people who read my blog are writers and working people too. I doubt we could raise that much money between us, but we can raise some, and there are plenty of other ways we can help. This is what I would like each of you to do.

1. Visit Mia’s Facebook page and donate something to the appeal – even if it is only $5 – the price of a cup of coffee. The link is also at the bottom of this post.

2. Use the +1 and the Retweet buttons at the top of this post to spread the word to your social networks. You can also Digg the post, or use StumbleUpon or any other sharing tools you like. Do whatever you can to help Mia get the message out to the world that Yasmin needs help.

3. Mention the appeal on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, MySpace, Twitter, and anywhere else you have an audience.

4. Write a blog post on your own blog – even if it is just one sentence with a link to Mia’s appeal page, it might just help.

5. If you know a journalist, mention Yasmin’s plight to them. A ‘human interest’ story like this might just be something they, or a colleague, are looking for. If the story made it into a State or national newspaper, or was mentioned on a popular radio or TV show, it would take the appeal to a level where anything is possible. Even if you don’t live in Australia, mention it anyway. Generosity doesn’t stop at national borders.

6. Write a letter and send it to your local newspaper, your local radio station, your local Rotary Club, anywhere you can think of where people might be willing to help.

I’m sorry to ask. I’m sorry to live in a society where I have to ask. Please help Yasmin and her family. Please do whatever you can.

The link to the appeal is http://www.facebook.com/Yasmin.Aid?sk=info

Yes, it’s that time of year again. For the many people who weren’t around on May 4th 2008 when I posted my first “hello world” from my brand new writing blog – that is, all of you – May 4th 2008 is the date from which I reckon my writing career began. So as 3 GWC (Graham’s Writing Career) draws to a close, it’s time to take stock once more and reflect on all that has happened since 2 GWC drew to a close.

Well, maybe not. Oh, alright, but just one paragraph. It was a busy and complicated year – essentially the first year of my first novel – and it ended (near enough) with me having found a wonderful literary agent (Ineke Prochazka) to call my own. There were a few story sales along the way and lots of other writerly stuff. In all, it was a year of good, solid progress. I started writing three novels in 3 GWC too – and finished one of them. I hope to finish the other two in the coming year. It was also the year that Jodi Cleghorn and eMergent Press came into my life and Big Bad Media came and went (literally – it has now wound up). I went to Worldcon. I went to Supanova. A couple of my friends did amazing (publishing-related)  things (that’s you, Emma, Marianne, Joanna and Joanne) and I got two new computers!

And all the other things that I forgot to mention.

On the agenda for next year are another novel sale – or two – (which is now your department, Ineke), more shorts sales, finishing my comedy sci-fi novel “Cargo Cult” and possibly a couple of other books, maybe going to the Brisbane Writers Festival (haven’t quite decided yet), and seeing “TimeSplash” finally appear in print (and maybe audio – how’s that going, Em?) I think it will be another busy and complicated year. At least I hope so.

There are a couple of shorts of mine appearing soon in anthologies for you to look out for (please!)

In Situ – a spec fic anthology from Dagan Books, ed. Carrie Cuinn. It contains my story “Salvage”. Expected publication date is 15th May – pre-order it via Goodreads.

Hope – a spec fic anthology from Kayelle Press, ed. Sasha Beattie, with a great cast of Aussie writers. It contains my story “The God on the Mountain”. Expected publication date is “real soon now”! I am especially stoked that two of the other contributors are friends who shared the QWC/Hachette retreat with me in May 2008 – the event that I believe kicked off my professional writing career.

Nothing but Flowers: Tales of Post Apocalyptic Love from eMergent Press, ed. Jodi Cleghorn. It contains my story “Two Fools in Love” – the first time I ever sat down to write a love story and actually did it. This is already available as an ebook but should hit the streets as a paperback any second now.

You all have a good 4 now. Happy New Year.

If you are reading this, the chances are about four to one that it is because I am a finalist in the Sydney Writers Centre, Best Australian Blogs, 2011, Competition. That’s what my site stats tell me, anyway. Believe me, I’m as amazed as you are to find my blog has made it so far. Apart from a general feeling of chuffedness and a bit of bragging to my wife and daughter, I hadn’t given much thought to what this means.

Then I noticed my site stats and the big spikes in the number of visitors on the days when announcements have been made. Now I feel vaguely guilty. I mean, all you nice people popping over to take a look at my blog! I should have done something nice for you all, put up a couple of deep and profound posts, changed the banner to a big “Welcome!” sign, tried to flog you a book, or something.

Ah well, another day, another blunder. Too late now, I suppose.

Unless…

Nyah! There’s no chance I could win. I mean, there are some truly exceptional blogs in my category (and I already follow them all, by the way) and anyone in their right mind would see that at a glance. Still, I didn’t expect to be a finalist, either. So, just in case, the following paragraph is for you, kind stranger. (Regular readers can go back to writing desperate pleas to publishers and agents.)

Hello, and welcome to the Graham Storrs blog. Don’t let this post fool you, I can be quite sensible, even interesting, sometimes. So, take a few minutes to skim through previous posts. The gold nuggets are in there somewhere. Probably. If not, well, at least you will go away inspired by the thought that, if my blog can be a Sydney Writers Centre, Best Australian Blogs, 2011, Competition finalist, then so could yours.

Thank you for dropping by.