New Book Launch Day!

A St. Ives Book Club Mystery

Death Knocks Twice

 

The St. Ives Book Club is at it again when one of their members discovers human remains in Lucinda Pye's field. The grisly discovery turns out to be Professor Gower Pye, Lucinda's common-law husband, who disappeared after a fractious dinner party at the farm seven years ago. St. Ives's amateur sleuths have questions. Why was Gower not found by before this? If the professor of medieval studies was murdered, who did it and why? Their questions lead them to an abundance of suspects. Eight guests at the dinner party had reasons to wish Gower dead. A scandalous tell-all memoir, a tawdry affair, a bitter family feud and a reputation destroyed surface as motives to kill. But if the professor was murdered that October night seven years ago, how do they prove it? And if they can't prove it, how can they accuse? When a second body is found, the gang knows that if they fail, a killer will go free. 

Set in the tiny hamlet of St. Ives in Southern Ontario, a murder mystery book club discovers they have a taste and talent for solving unsolved crimes. Led by the brilliant and eccentric Elliot Marks, five active retirees and two young reporters unearth secrets certain residents of the cosy village would prefer remained buried.

Available on Amazon in ebook and print. Click on the title to be taken to the product page. 

Death Knocks Twice

Kobo Cheap Thrills Sale!

The River Bride

eBook Regular price: 6.99

Cheap Thrills price: 1.99

Sale runs from Oct 17 to Oct. 24 

in Australia, Canada and New Zealand only.

Readers who have already bought and read Iced Under and The Grey Lady, this is your chance to add to the collection. A fourth book has been in the works for five years that I plan to finish in 2020 before retiring the series. The River Bride is the third book in my Gatineau Hills Mystery Series but it can be enjoyed as a stand-alone.

Seven years ago, the Bremer family's au pair was found brutally slain in an abandoned trailer. Tried and convicted for the girl's murder, Trey Bremer has always asserted his innocence. The truth of what really happened to Teresa Musgrave that day begins to unravel when an anonymous note arrives at the town's weekly newspaper office,The Stollerton Record. On the hunt for the big story that could save her career, Alvina Moon is caught up in a disturbing crime and the victim's beautiful, troubled artist husband.

 Click the link below and then choose Kobo 

to reach the product page.

The River Bride on Books2Read

Happy Reading!

Books2Read Universal Link and the Independent Publisher

I am an independent publisher. I also write but because I manage four pen names, one imprint, two blogs and forty titles, I am considered an independent publisher. I use Smashwords, Kindle Direct Publishing and Draft2Digital to get the titles into the world. I use CreateSpace for printing and print distribution. After twenty years of trying to make a living at writing, these service providers have made it possible for me to actually make a living at writing. Whoo hoo!

You'll notice I've changed the sales links to the titles on this blog from individual ebook retailers to one link per title: Books2Read Universal Link. ( https://www.books2read.com/ ) 

This amazing little tool was developed by Draft2Digital for authors and book-buyers to streamline the shopping process. Instead of half-a-dozen links (that I may or may not get right) I only have to provide one. 

1) The book-buyer clicks on the link and is taken to a landing page for that book where all the stores that carry the book are listed with logos readily identifying each  store. Cool!

2) Book-buyer chooses store he or she likes, clicks and boom--there you are on the product page. Read the blurb, mull over the price and buy. Swell! 

3) The buyer is prompted to request the same store for future purchases. Nice!

I like stuff to be as uncomplicated as possible. Shopping online is very difficult for me so anything like this helps cut out the clutter and I don't feel pushed or hassled into looking at a bunch of stuff I don't want.

Draft2Digital did not charge me as a publisher for this new tool. These savvy ebook distributors are quietly remapping the publishing industry one book sale at a time.

Smashwords is another forward-thinking distributor that also has a hopping book store. They sell in all formats, retailer direct, give an outstanding royalty to the author, host author pages, giveaways and work with libraries to promote independent titles. They are super international and have a free section to sample new authors. No pop-ups or advertising or spam emails--just books in all genres at great prices.

Check them out:   Smashwords Book Store

Hey! Happy Reading!

Kindle Unlimited Royalty Structure - My Thoughts

Oh to live in a world where things stayed the same for more than a calendar year. Rapid change and publishing do not mix. As a writer on KBoards said: "This is why authors drink."

Amazon's KDP platform rolled out its new royalty structure for titles exclusive to KDP on July 1st. If you enrolled your book in Select, your book is subject to borrows. Borrows used to be paid at a flat rate (the amount varied from month-to-month) of $1.35 for a book read to 10%. Under the current structure, royalties are paid for pages read at a rate of 0.005779/page.

A 300 KENP (the term for Amazon's calculation of a page) book read to the end would earn $1.73. Under the old system (fondly known as KU.1) that book would have earned $1.35. 300 KENP breaks out into roughly 150 regular pages depending on how it's formatted. So let's say a price point of $2.99 with a $2.09 royalty on a sale and a $1.73 on a borrow. A sweet deal, right? Oh, but that's the honey-trap. Let's run the math....

10% read under KU.1 earned $1.35. 10% read under KU.2 earns 0.17. Yes. 17 cents. (Cents is such an old-fashioned word. I feel I should be wearing a newsboy's cap as I write this, fingers inky with newsprint.) One hopes one has written a high-octane, addictive page-turner but it's a little late now if it isn't. The book is exclusive to Amazon for three months.

With Kindle Unlimited, a subscriber is allowed up to 10 titles at a time per month on their Kindle for $9.99. Maybe my book will make it to the top of a reader's TBR pile. Maybe not. In the meantime, Amazon does not pay out for more than what is read that month. There are obvious reasons why the old system was unsustainable for Amazon, at the same time it was an excellent strategy because the retailer was able to quickly build a huge catalogue of books for their subscription service. It is equally obvious why KU.2 is a bottom-line dreamboat.

(Sadly, I would've done exactly the same thing if I were Amazon. Actually, I'd be even meaner. I'd start culling books from my store that were not performing. I'd be analyzing the Pages Read Data to identify a break-out book that hasn't broken out yet and then I would snap up that author for my Imprints. I'm horrible.)

KU.2 has deep ramifications for publishing and I'm still mulling the possible outcomes. But in the here and now, what it means for this author is something like 17 cents a day. (30 KENP pages x 0.005779 = 0.17337 cents; 30 pages is approx. 3 chapters)

Drinks are on me!

C'mon iTunes ... let's hug it out.

You know how when something is unjust and you are helpless to be heard or make a change and you just flail and flounder and rave at the fates and blog about it?

I woke to this very welcome email from the (now) lovely people at iTunes Legal/Notices. 
-----------------------------------------
Nadine Doolittle
Jul 22 (2 days ago)

to Erin
Hello Erin,
Can you confirm if any progress has been made on removing this title from iTunes Store?

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-grey-lady/id560171274?mt=11

The rights have reversed to me. I have since republished it and cannot promote or sell the book with this previous edition still being offered for sale on iTunes--in direct violation of its copyright. The literary agent for this work hasn't received a statement of earnings from iTunes nor has the original publisher.

What is going on? Why the delay?
----------------------------------------------------------

iBooks Store Notices
7:39 PM (11 hours ago)

to me
Hi Nadine,

We will be removing this title from the store today.

Best,
Annie
---------------------------------------------------------

iBooks Store Notices
8:17 PM (10 hours ago)

to me
Hi Nadine,

i can confirm that the book has now been removed.  If you still see the book, it may be a caching issue which will resolve itself within the next few hours.

Best,
Annie

-------------------------------------------------------

I can stop muttering incantations of doom every time I see a Watch commercial! My teeth will stop grinding in my head! I am filled with love for all things Apple! A reservoir of good will toward all men has been opened in my bosom! 

(I never hold a grudge because grudges take work to nurse and I'm too lazy.)

Thank you iTunes! Have a great day!

Apple Piracy Policy. Um, Really?

This is from their website:

"Apple actively and aggressively enforces its intellectual property rights to the fullest extent of the law. If you have any questions concerning piracy please fill out the form below."

Okay, so like I have a question? Um, I filled out the forms ... like so many forms, dude, and like no one has responded. So, like, are you sure about this piracy policy-thing of yours? Because I received word this morning from Amazon that my novel The Grey Lady is still being sold at $9.99 in the iTunes Store despite six DMCA notices filed, emails, forms filled out and complaints filed in that hellhole they call "Support."

Get this:

I thought I would give Apple the benefit of the doubt, you know? Maybe the page was a dead link, right? So I decided to try and buy the book myself. First I had download iTunes but my computer is too old, so iTunes Download told me to piss off.

Unable to check if the book was available for purchase, I was reduced to asking Amazon Support if they could check for me. (Let that sink in for a minute.) They emailed me this morning to say they checked and the book could be purchased.

Two years later without account statements sent to the agent or the original publisher. No royalty statements. No legal right to sell the book.

So to recap:

"Apple actively and aggressively enforces its intellectual property rights to the fullest extent of the law."

Apple is aggressive with pirates of their intellectual property. They could give a shit about your intellectual property. And when they are the ones doing the pirating, its a case of Fuck You.

Class dismissed.

iTunes Legal, Are You Listening?

Dear iTunes Legal Department,

I'm not entirely sure you exist. I filled out forms online and hit Submit but for all I know that could just be a big placebo button to keep us hoping someone will actually do something.

Here's the thing.

You have my book The Grey Lady as it was published by McArthur and Company in 2012 still up for sale in your iTunes Store and I'd like you to remove it.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-grey-lady/id560171274?mt=11

See, boys ... (gosh this is awkward) it doesn't belong to you. It doesn't belong to McArthur anymore either. It belongs to me now and has since June 2013. McArthur and Co. gave it back when they closed their doors.

It's been three years. I've asked you nicely (July 2013 and August 2014) to remove the book from your store as

1) I don't receive royalties on it
2) I've published the book myself
3) I want you to

And just like the darling hipsters you are, you still haven't done it. I assume you are too busy believing your own hype to deal with copyright infringement. You still have that shitty interface for customers/authors/the great unwashed to file their complaints into the Apple Buzzkill Cloud where they can be ignored.

This is the response I received after filing a Copyright Infringement Complaint with Apple Legal:

Thank you for taking the time to contact us.

If you do not receive a response from an Apple employee, we regret that we are unable to process your request. Please note that due to the high volume of requests we receive, this may be the only other reply you will receive from us.

We appreciate your interest and consideration in contacting Apple.
Best Regards,
Apple Legal
Copyright Team

Cheers you fucking assholes. Now get my book out of your store.

Mystery Maven Canada

At the moment my writing life is not terribly interesting. I sit down at the computer at 7:00 am, struggle mightily to shape the manuscript into something readable with flashes of brilliance before 12 noon. Then I eat sugar and noodle around the Web to read about lives more interesting than my own.

And guess who I found! Linda Wiken at Mystery Maven Canada! Linda is the former owner of Prime Crime Mystery Books in Ottawa and was (and is) a tremendous supporter of my first novel, ICED UNDER. She invited me to her bookstore for a signing happening at the same time as the Great Glebe Garage Sale. If you know anything about garage sales, yard sales, or tag sales I need not say more. Even my own kid popped in to say an extremely brief hello before whipping out to cruise the sale.

But Linda's store was soul quenching. The equivalent of cosying up to a blazing fire on a rainy day with your favourite mystery. I loved every minute of it. I'm no saleswoman though. I kept poking over the books. One woman thought I worked there. She asked me if I could recommend a good medical mystery. I actually felt sorry that I couldn't think of any.

On the journey to becoming an established author it's easy to forget those moments or to remember them as being unsuccessful. I think I sold three books (of mine) that day. But you know, it was a great experience. I have that book signing in my writing arsenal. I was sweaty and rattled and I felt like a fraud--it was amazing!

Linda Wiken now has her own booksignings to look forward to after landing a contract with Berkley Prime Crime for her series, writing under the pen name Erika Chase.

Congratulations Linda!! I'm very happy for you and I can't wait to read your first title when it's released in 2012.

Pay a visit to Mystery Maven Canada. They have exciting lives over there.

Summer's over

 The September rains are upon us. The outside world has gone back to their jobs, the kids are in school, the cottagers are closing up and going home. A great time to hole up in the office and get into the new work. I've had an amazing summer, reading, walking, thinking about stuff. I took a parttime job working in an independent bookstore and discovered what it was like to be on the other side of the counter. Fun and tough at the same time. Fun talking books to customers and discovering some gems of my own with my employee discount; tough eavesdropping on customers who were planning to buy on their Kindle instead.

Even I could see the writing on the wall. The independent bookstore is on its way out as a place to buy books, particularly in cities, but perhaps they can be repurposed as literary salons, venues for readings, book clubs, discussions. Heck, they already have the coffee. I think more we'd sell more books, no matter what the format. 

Case in point: My bookstore hosted a reading at the end of August as part of Wakefest 2010, an arts event staged every year in my tiny town. This year's Authors on the Lawn featured Brenda Chapman, Tom Henighan and Diana Beresford-Kroeger whose book, The Global Forest is garnering international attention. Diana's presentation was so passionate, I couldn't hear her without wanting to leap into action to save our nation's forests. Isn't that the whole point to writing, publishing, bookselling? We are trying to get ideas across. We are trying to save the world.

This is me chatting about THE GREY LADY, my most recent manuscript. Trying to save the world, one murder at a time. Many thanks to mystery author, Brenda Chapman for taking this.