Ebooks: Still the Way to Go

If I needed any more convincing that ebooks are the way to go for the books I’ve written, the newest BookStats report is it.

Though I’m too cheap to buy the full report (and why charge for such a thing anyway?) there’s enough detail provided in the New York Times to show that ebook publishing is gaining and not going to disappear any time fast.

Fiction ebook sales rose 42 percent to $1.8 billion from 2011 to 2012, whicl non-fiction ebook sales grew 22 percent, to $484.2 million. Books for children and young adults (my niche thusfar) increased a startling 117 percent, to $469.2 million.

Ebooks now account for 20 percent of traditional publishers’ revenue, up from 15 percent in 2011.

But what about independent authors – how fare they in ebook sales, without the aid of a publishers’ marketing clout and their own authorial name recognition? Those numbers appear harder to find.

Nathan Bransford, however, believes there is no “ebookbubble” and that authors getting into publishing would be foolish to ignore the advantages ebooks offer, especially to new authors.

David Gaughran is also bullish on ebooks (and he’s apparently got a new book out on getting your ebooks more visible to the raving audiences; maybe that’s what I’ll spend my freshly-minted Amazon coins on).

Given the splintered nature of independent authoring and sales, it’s not hard to figure out why the numbers are more difficult to come by. But you’d think someone would be tracking this. If you know of any good, recent studies, sound off in the comments.

Finding lots of good advice for ebook publishing, though. Such as this advice from Robert Niles, a former Online Journalism Review editor and author.

Here’s the gold:

Unfortunately on Apple, you need to stay on those category bestseller lists to keep moving product. Apple lacks the recommendation features readers find on Amazon, meaning that once you drop off the bestseller lists, there’s no easy way to browse to your book any longer. So, yep, even though I still link to Apple, sales have dropped to just a few copies a week now.

So, as an independent eBook publisher, I say, thank goodness for Amazon. With Amazon’s recommendation engine pushing my title to readers of books similar to mine, sales of my book on Amazon have remained healthy four months after it debuted. And Amazon offers bestseller lists in many different subcategories that drill down much deeper than “Travel,” allowing would-be customers to browse to my book even after it has dropped down the main Travel bestseller list. Amazon mixes eBooks and print books in category bestseller lists, too, exposing my book to readers who don’t think to look exclusively for eBooks, too. That gives it a sales edge over Apple, which sells only eBooks.

No Soup for You

So what this map tells me that if I’d been alive and aware of politics in the mid-1950s, my chances of meeting tourists or officials from the Soviet Union visiting the United States would have been nil in my home town.

Idaho Falls lies in the southwest corner of the vast swath of planet forbidden that stretches from the Wyoming border to the Seattle area.

I’m not surprised. Nor am I surprised by bans on travel in much of Washington state, southern Nevada, central Colorado, a big hunk of Texas, the area around Savanna, Georgia, central Tennessee and most of North and South Dakota (which I’ve visited and I can attest the Soviets wouldn’t have missed much). The areas listed here are either connected with nuclear weapons production, nuclear research, or nuclear weapon launch sites. Nor, considering the Soviet proclivity for industrial espionage, is it surprising to see the industrial heartland of the country off-limits.

You’d think, though, that with a map like this, those Soviet spies would be dying to go to those forbidden places.

Chapter Thirty-Six: Twaddle

Chapter Thirty-Six: Twaddle

The voles were in the garden, eating slugs. The crows' duck joined them, waddling through the jungle of tomato plants, seeking the succulents seeking to eat the reddening fruit.

Marmots have moved their truck, one said, chewing.

So I hear, said another.

Still, they're here to weed.

Yes, yes.

If slugs could scream, they would be screaming. The slaughter was immense.

And Jarrod? Who sees him lately?

Mainly the crows, a vole said. Since he's back from the canyon, they've kept a close bead on him. I seen him once. Thin, frail-like. Don't imagine whatever went on in the canyon helped him.

He's always been thin, said another.

It's a cruel world, said a vole to no one in particular. That wee creatures like us should use our energy so inefficiently, while the big beasties get long with their bulk with less.

Keep eating, a vole said. Keep eating. There are plenty of slugs to go around.

Yes, there is that. It's like a perfect world.

Like heaven.

There was a general pause in chewing.

There's that word again, a vole said. I heard Jarrod using it a few nights ago, talking to the crows in the beeches. They didn't know I was there, but there I was. And they were making no effort to be quiet in their speech, so it's no fault of mine I heard what they had to say. And I tell you, yon Jarrod is not as frail as many of you think. I think whatever happened in the canyon shocked him a mite, but in a good way. His eyes are clear. Clearest I've ever seen them.

Then there's the light.

Chewing slowly recommenced.

Yes, the light. You've seen it as well?

How could you not see it? Even Blind Mole has seen it. Or at least felt it. Jarrod exudes light. He's always had those iridescent feathers, mind, but now, they glow in the moonlight. He's well again. He's full again. Whatever it was that ailed him, it has healed.

I heard there are beavers again in the canyon.

Again, the chewing ceased.

Oh lord. Will there be another flood, do you think?

You've hit the crux there, sister.

Quiet in the garden.

There's this thing called a chiasmus, a vole said. It's like a story told in a circle. Something happens, and then something else, events trickling on like water. But this water flows in and on and around itself, flowing over the same rocks, carving the same bars, caressing the same fish. As the story goes on it winds in on itself, telling itself in reverse until, at the end, you're back at the beginning.

Jarrod has completed his chiasmus. Thence the glow.

How do you know so much?

My gran was a good one for storytelling, and loved telling the stories in round. Mostly, they were of the voles growing, growing strong, entering starvation or predation, then weakening. And then growing strong again. But with characters to guide you along the way and to point out the morals with their claws.

And if your gran told a story of Jarrod?

The vole sighed. She would tell a story of a Holstein pheasant who will no longer cringe when we mention the beavers.

A long, thoughtful, chewing-filled pause.

Is that what they mean by heaven?

No, a vole said. Heaven is something else.

But it were close enough to heaven, said another, that Jarrod acts as if he's just returned from there.

So when are things going to happen? a slug asked.

Soon, the vole said. And pounced.

Seven Years

Come the end of the month, I’ll have worked at the Radioactive Waste Management Complex and the Idaho National Laboratory for seven years.

I know that, in the long run, that’s not a lot of time. But it is a pretty significant bit of time for me. It’s the longest I’ve ever held a job – and I’ve had a few in my shady career of employment. I’ve never enjoyed a job more, which is even more significant.

This job has enabled us to do quite a bit. It helped us pay for two masters degrees which led me into a part-time job teaching at Brigham Young University-Idaho, which isn’t all that bad of a thing either. It’s helped us pay for a bigger house (but not too big) and the furnace and soon the air conditioning to make it comfortable. It’s helped us provide for three kids, and to have enough to put aside for retirement, and to help out a few others. It’s been a tremendous blessing.

I hope and pray that in another seven years, I’ll still be working here. I like it that much.

As significantly, it’s given me a different frame of reference for life. It’s helped me see that if I want to write novels, I have to sit down and write them, not just sit and wait for the novels to come to me. I’m not published yet, but in the last seven years, I’ve written three novels – practice for when the real one is ready to come out. That’s due a lot in part to the fact that at work I’m doing a different kind of writing than I was doing in journalism, and there’s enough of a gap between the two types that I don’t feel like I’m working when I’m writing a novel. That’s a significant thing.

So what will the future hold?

Still pondering a PhD, though it’s looking less likely that I’ll be able to do the technical communication doctorate at USU. Part of that is because we’d have to move to Logan. I did find out that I’d get tuition waivers and, in teaching classes there, get paid. But I don’t know how much – I’m still investigating – and we’re not sure we want to leave Ammon for Logan, nice as Logan is. That would be a big step – with big rewards at the end to be sure, but I have to measure those rewards compared to what the rewards could be if I continue on the course I’m on now, or if I choose another course (pursuing a different bachelors or an additional masters is not entirely out of the question). Maybe something in computer programming, though I have to wonder if that’s more insane than taking the family to Logan.

More to follow.

ANOTHER Gorilla!

This may not be the smartest video to use to illustrate this story, as, on the surface, it could be misinterpreted that I’m a racist scumbag. I hope my writing proves otherwise.

An interesting bit of news today coming out of Slate.com (that aggregator in disguise), National Public Radio, and a few local Cleveland, Ohio, news outlets: The much-celebrated Charles Ramsey, hailed in the news and on the Internet as the hero who freed three women held captive by a neighbor for nearly a decade isn’t the only hero in the picture.

In fact, he wasn’t even the first on the scene.

His wasn’t the home from where Amanda Berry made her now-famous 911 call.

But no one here is shouting “First!” least of all Angel Cordero, who was first on the scene and working on the door when Amanda Berry first started screaming; neither is Wentel Tejeda, from whose home Berry made the call. Both say they just did what had to be done (as did Ramsey, of course) to rescue the three women and the small girl held captive in their neighborhood for so long.

So why is Charles Ramsey getting all the notoriety? And why are we all being called racist for “enjoying” his “hilarious” video interviews? (Now, some of the memeification of Ramsey is clearly racist. But that’s not what I’m talking about.)

It’s because the media is racist(!)

That is, of course, click bait. Because the media really isn’t racist. Not really. Not really, really racist. They just happened to focus on the rescuer who spoke English, so maybe it’s more fair to say it’s because the media is monolingual.

Codero and Tejeda are Hispanic. Both offered interviews to local Cleveland news outlets (and others now that the Buzz! and the Wham! of the rescue and Rasmification of it all is fading) in Spanish. Both Codero and Tejeda were less colorful in their language, even if they spoke in one the reporters didn’t quite understand.

So it’s not because the media is racist. They’re just monolingual, and, let’s face it – I was once a media as well so I know very well what I’m talking about here – they’re also just lazy.

Ramsey is a hero. Absolutely no question. He helped break those ladies out of their hell. And he’s colorful – not in skin, but in language. Get any red-blooded reporter in a room with the likes of Charles Ramsey and more timid, less English-able folks like Codero and Tejeda, and the media is naturally going to gravitate toward Ramsey because he’s there with the Boffo that every story needs, even a story where four people set free from captivity doesn’t carry enough Boffo of its own.

So is it a wonder that the video of Ramsey is the one making the Internet rounds – it’s the one the media shoved into our faces. It’s the colorful one. It’s the one that makes a spectacular news event entertaining and, well, entertaining, because once again the rescue of these ladies isn’t enough.

Aldous Huxley knows what I’m talking about.

Bill Hall, who used to write opinion for the Lewiston Morning Tribune, once penned a column in which he kind of laughed at the media tendency to focus on the gorilla in the room – literally. He attended an environmental rally at which someone wore a gorilla costume. So the costumed person is the one who was photographed and put into the newspapers regionally. Because he was more colorful than your typical, run-of-the-mill tree-hugger, which, considering this is North Idaho, is saying something.

The media will focus on the color every time.

Recently, some friends of ours in Sugar City got involved in a fundraiser for a sick kid. One wing of the fundraiser put together a benefit auction and dinner for the kid. The other wing put together a motorcycle rally – because the kid really likes motorcycles – and made him the grand marshal. Guess which wing of the event got the most coverage on the news? And guess which event leader got bent out of shape because her event didn’t get equal coverage?

Once again, it’s the Gorilla Question.

So yeah. There were more gorillas in the room, so to speak, in Ohio. The media simply chose, as they raced to be first and to meet those deadlines, to present to us the one with pretty white girls running into his arms and the McDonalds bag in his lap.

The Backcountry Tablet

I confess I have taken my Kindle Fire hiking.

Probably a stupid thing to do, carry an expensive device over lava fields, leaping over cracks in the earth; or up dusty trails, through woods, or out on the riverbanks. One drop and it’s all over, pal.

Besides, its utility in the backcountry has always been a bit limited. I have a full survival manual on my Kindle, but the topographical maps are always dependent on an always-on Internet connection (yes, I have a free app, but I understand the paid apps work on the same stupid, stupid principle).

So when I read TechCrunch’s article on Earl, the Android tablet “that wants to be your backcountry buddy,” I was intrigued. And at $279 a pop (if it ever gets out of development stage) I’d seriously consider buying one.

Here’s why it’s neat: It incorporates technology that other tablets should have already – the ability to pick up AM and even FM radio signals, the ability to function as a two-way radio without a blinking Internet connection, and a few others, including a solar panel for recharging and a robust anti-dust and anti-water chassis. (While the solar thing is cool, I have to wonder about costs in getting this beast repaired with the addition of a panel. Also, I have a portable solar panel that might work to charge my current stable of tablets. I’ll have to look at that more closely.)

TechCrunch is a little hazy on the details. I wonder if this works on the ham radio frequencies and thus would require the operator to get a license (not that big of a deal).

So as always, I go to the source, where I can meet Earl in person. They tell me this works on FRS/GMRS systems, as well as MURS – making it a pretty versatile device that would generally not require a license to operate. (Some GMRS channels required FCC licensing.) Pretty cool.

The guide part looks a little looser – if you want an always-there topo map, guides, or whatever, you’ll have to pay for them. But then again, having them all in one neat little package might make the extra cost worth it.

Tablet technology being what it is, though, Kindle and company could catch up (or may have this kind of thing already; I’m really rather ignorant of what apps are available). And the Earl has no camera, which is another reason to enjoy carrying my Fire around (cuts down on the baggage, see).