New Book in Cosy Mystery Series Now Available for Pre-Order!

After telling my newsletter subscribers I was nervous to put a book up for pre-order - I have put The Killing of Honey Gable up for pre-order 'cause that's how I roll!

The novel is almost finished. I have two chapters to write, then a final pass before it goes off to my trusty proofreader. Pre-order means I can let readers know it's coming but it also means if I drop dead before the final file is uploaded, it'll just be hanging there. The unfinished, not-quite-perfect novel.

This is the thought that plagues me at three o'clock in the morning. (That and what the heck are they putting in Temptations that the cat needs a fix at that hour??) 

Pre-orders make me nervous but I bit the bullet this time because so many authors in my genre use pre-orders for their readers who are eager for the next book and might not be informed when it's released.

I'm also hoping the deadline refines my thought process (which is another way of saying I spend less time dreaming about the story and more time writing it) and I can make this a habit. 

Pre-orders are not available for print (for indies) at this time but you can order your ebook now and it'll arrive to your Kindle or ereader on Launch Day - April 19, 2022.

The ebooks are Kindle Unlimited Select titles. The print version will arrive on April 19, 2022. If you enjoy what you have read so far in the series, please leave a review! We hate to ask but there is almost no opportunity to advertise books without reviews. 

So I am asking. I love hearing from folks who enjoy the series - please let the world know through your social media or by writing a brief review. And thank you!

AND if you would like to get my books for FREE - subscribe to my newsletter and join my Advance Reader Copy team. If you enoy reading and writing honest reviews to post on Amazon and/or Goodreads, then come on down! I would love to have your input. 

Subscribe to The Butler Didn't Do It Here (And get a free copy of Long Shadows Fall.)

Pre-Order The Killing of Honey Gable from Amazon Here

THE KILLING OF HONEY GABLE - DUE FOR RELEASE APRIL 19, 2022

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B09VFR93R2

A bus abandoned fifty years ago. A missing six-year-old boy. And a killer in danger of being unmasked.  

The long, quiet winter is over. A decades-old hit and run cold case sparks the St. Ives Book Club to life when the bus involved in the accident is discovered abandoned in a forest. Folk singing sensation, Honey Gable, was on the way up when she was run down after a performance at St. Ives Theatre. A tragic accident? Or did one of the six people who fought with Honey that night take their hatred to homicide. A clue is discovered, leading the amateur sleuths on the trail of a killer who will stop at nothing to conceal his or her identity. Poking into this cold case will be like poking a hibernating bear.

Set in the tiny hamlet of St. Ives, 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 that certain residents of the cosy village would prefer remained buried.

My Secret Weapon for 2022 - Plottr

I've always been a pantser. I'd get an idea for a story, see the end or the main point in my head and off I'd go writing myself in and out of corners until I lurched to the finish line. 

The "finish" line was followed by weeks of (hair-pulling, teeth-gnashing) editing until I could declare the book complete or too stupid to live. 

My process was long, tedious and increasingly joyless. Worst of all, it did not result in book that was as tight as I would have liked it to be because I was exhausted and hated the thing by the end. 

There has to be a better way, right? Well, there is. It is called drafting an outline which is something normal people do. I've tried to nail that sucker down for years without success. The act of writing an outline to write only led to me hating my story faster. 

I can't even remember when I heard about Plottr or where, but on impulse I signed up for the online demo of the software. I am cheap. Some might even say stingy. I am immune to impulse buying or sales pitches. But I loved the demo. I could see instantly how this program could work for me. I could play with it, I could manipulate it to work the way my brain works. Sometimes I plot very tightly with it. Sometimes I follow one of the templates. Sometimes I use it for the timeline to shift scenes where I need them to be. I can see how the story is progressing in each box where I jot down everything from dialogue to clothing to weather.

The random bits that flesh out a scene get plugged into Plottr and make writing faster, easier and stronger. Less editing, less time wasted hunting around for where I put what. My daily word count went from an exhausting 2K day to a relaxed 5K a day.

I'm not sure how it does what it does. It's visual so that's a huge help when you're trying to figure out what comes next. It's also liberating because it's easy to plug in the bits that come to me and dump them if they're not working. I can move stuff around. It's not set in stone. There's room for some pantsing but I get a look at the dead ends before I start writing. I waste less time and brain energy when I'm cranking out the words. 

To make a living in self-publishing, we have to produce and Plottr is my secret weapon to amp up production. I have five books planned and instead of feeling overwhelmed and discouraged, I have this cool little tool at my side to get the stories out. 

If you are interested and want to check it out for yourself go to www.plottr.com. There is a rate for a lifetime license which is what I bought. The service is excellent. The thing works. 

Canadian Cosy Mystery Cover Reveal!

You know that old saying "Don't judge a book by its cover"? Yeah, well, it wasn't written by a self-publisher. I'm on my third cover for the St. Ives Book Club Mystery series. The retired covers are still out there because I made paper copies and thus forever will be haunted by my old "what the hell, it's only a cover" covers. 

Hair-pulling, tweaking and gnashing of teeth later, I've settled on this design for the series. If you are a lucky owner of one of the old covers, well, that's what you get for being an early adopter.

Lord, I hope this is my last foray into covers. Trying to nail the cosy-amateur-sleuths-vibe is not easy. Without cats, cupcakes or witches in my books, I didn't fit in with the other cool kids in the cosy mystery section of my favourite book site. (Goodreads)

While I'm here, the third murder mystery in the series, Dead to the World, is coming out in November, exact date is still to be determined. But follow me on Amazon to be notified when it releases. 

When Bernie Dixon falls to his death from the belfry of the St. Ives clock tower while ringing in the Third Night of Christmas, the book club is approached by his widow to find out if his death was indeed an accident - or was it something far worse?

 

Make mine a cozy mystery series, please.

It has been 5 years since I published my crime fiction series on Amazon, Kobo, Google Play, Barnes and Noble and Apple iBooks. Since that time, I've been ghost-writing, writing under a pen name, trying out genres, testing my skills and pushing myself out of my comfort zone. Some stuff worked, some stuff didn't. Some stuff worked for readers but not for me, and vice versa.

It was fun and educational. But after five years of experimentation, I started thinking about killing people--cozy mystery-style. To scratch that itch, I wrote a traditional mystery (also known as a 'whodunit') and it morphed into a full-blown series with five titles in the pipeline.

A St. Ives Book Club Mystery is set in a tiny hamlet in Southern Ontario where a murder mystery book club decides to try their hand at solving cold cases.

Who killed Jenny Blake?

In the gentle hamlet of St. Ives, a killer roams free.

In 1975, seventeen-year-old Jenny Blake was found strangled in the ruins behind the abandoned St. Ives Abbey. Her murderer was never caught. Forty-four years later, an advertisement in the local newspaper draws seven people, including Avery Holmes, to the home of Elliot Marks with the purpose of forming a murder mystery book club.

Within minutes of the first meeting, Marks puts forward an intriguing proposal: Instead of reading about murder, why not try solving one - beginning with who killed Jenny Blake?

Was it her ex-boyfriend, the brilliant but withdrawn Jesse Sutcliffe? Or Duncan Carmichael, the attractive local politician who was dating Jenny at the time of the murder? Or was it the eccentric Elliot Marks himself, who is hiding his connection to the dead girl. For Avery Holmes, poking into an old murder case is a risky proposition. After all, waking a killer who thought he or she had gotten away with murder could lead to ... well ... murder.

Advertisement for Murder is available for pre-order on Amazon. Launch date is October 1, 2019.

For 90 days, it will only be available on Amazon. The side hustle to writing is marketing and I'm experimenting with Kindle Unlimited. If the KU love isn't there, I'll release this title and subsequent titles to all retailers. It's not an easy call to make, choosing to be exclusive for 90 days. I could be making a mistake. We shall see. The print edition is out now and available on Amazon. I don't do Expanded Distribution anymore because I'm not interested in competing with third-party sellers for sales. A sale through them nets me 0.23. Um. No. So it's available in print through the regular Amazon channels for $8.99 and if you buy the print, you can pick up the digital for 0.99.

digital ISBN: 978-1-988003-63-4
print ISBN: 978-1-988003-62-7

And I'm back to writing mystery! (I wonder what is says about me that I'm happiest when I'm thinking about how to get away with murder....)

Happy October!

Huffington Post and the woefully uninformed writer

I live near Wakefield, Quebec, a small village in which independent artists create music, poetry, theatre, textiles, glasswork, woodwork, photography and more. Everything from the food we eat to the culture we consume comes from the place we live. Our seniors are anything but "elderly" and our way of life is DIY if all else fails. We are not conservative. Though we value tradition, we respect differing points-of-view and choices.

Or so I thought.

A traditionally published author in Wakefield has written an article for Huffington Post entitled Self-Publishing: An Insult to the Written Word. 

Laurie Gough is a fine travel writer; I have two of her books and a copy of her latest release on my shelf. But she does not know anything about self-publishing and to the best of my knowledge (based on this article) she made no attempt to inform herself before she posted her opinion piece. She is aware I am a self-published author. I cheerfully insult the written word every morning from 7 am and 12 noon.

Laurie makes an apology of sorts in the comments trail in which she more or less throws Canada under the bus saying self-publishing isn't as big up here. That doesn't fly with the Canadian authors on KBoards Writers' Cafe. (Founded by a Canadian author who passed away last year. Seriously, Laurie. Google is your friend.) 

HuffPo article take down of self-pubbers destroyed in comments

I drop into the Cafe every morning with my cup of coffee to wake my brain up and get started on the day. I usually don't read threads like the one above because, meh, I've heard it all before. I made $1400 in 20 years of traditional publishing and $10,000 in 2 years of self-publishing so I can't be bullied into thinking less of my work. For whatever reason, I opened the thread and Laurie's name came up. Talk about surreal. And then I read the piece and got a stomach ache.

I can accept that Laurie was expressing her personal opinion. What I can't accept is the utter lack of thought, research or fact-checking that went into forming her opinion before she hit "publish." She made no effort to challenge her beliefs and consequently she has no idea how to defend them.

We've all fallen victim to the sloppy journalism of online "news" so I won't go down that rabbit hole of dissecting the misquoted Margaret Atwood, the lazy analogies or the hyperbole. The over 700 comments do a better job of correcting the errors and misinformation.

Two authors address the fundamental flaws in Laurie's thinking better than I can.

It's Joe Hunt

Monster Hunter Nation

The interesting silver lining that I got out of this as I head into 2017 was the sense that I am part of something bigger. The traditional publishing system is far from obsolete and has a lot to offer society and writers. But where it can't serve, self-publishing is a viable alternative.

It is also work, but that's what's cool about it. I had no appreciation for what editors, publishers and agents were talking about in terms of marketability until I tried to sell my own books. I do now and that's the best thing about DIY--one is forced to be humble enough to learn.

A lesson I hope Laurie Gough gets out of all of this.

Google Love

Google. I loved you when you were just a baby search engine and everyone was hot for Yahoo and its ilk. I remember when Yahoo was king and Ask Jeeves and how they clogged up the search with advertisements and confusion. I took one look at Google's clean, readable pages and I had found my Web Search soul mate.

Then came Gmail and Blogger and our love deepened. Now there is Google Play where I've listed my books and sales are anemic but I'm not worried. We've been down this road before, haven't we, Google? We'll get there.

Now my kid, who grew up only knowing the great Google, is working on a Google-related product. Heck, yes, I'm proud. Check out this YouTube video of Salman Sajun Productions working on a project for a cool Google phone case.

It's neat to see how it all comes together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv-P8QG4JXc

And here is the making of the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv9svoypuUs

Google, thank you for all the good years and here's to many more. Stay the course and all will be well.

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!

Unpublishing a book is like....

Getting a divorce.

It smarts. But I had to do it.

My foray into the fast-paced world of writing fast and dirty was a bust. I conceived the idea for Razor Wire for the brand-spanking-new Kindle Unlimited program. It was designed to be read in installments, ending in a cliffhanger like a thriller television show. I'd outlined 6 'episodes', wrote 3, and then Kindle Unlimited changed its royalty structure for payment and the serial format lost its value overnight.

I bundled the installments, thinking I would come back to the series in future to write Razor Edge and Razor Close.

Heh. Well, here's the thing. I lost steam or my mojo or whatever that thing is that makes a writer connect to a story long enough to get it out. I tried many different methods to get going again but my brain wasn't having it. Creatively, the series was dead in the water.

And dead sales-wise too. I think I sold less than 10 ebooks and 5 print books that were mostly pity sales. A local fan said it wasn't anything like my other books. Yeah, well, a girl's gotta try new things or she becomes stale. I'm not sorry I wrote it because it pushed me out of my comfort zone to explore a new sub-genre. I think of Razor Wire as a creative experiment in writing to market, in which I proved to myself that the book market is a moving target.

Razor Wire is unpublished (or is in the process) at all retailers as of today. CreateSpace will still sell the print edition. My plan for the thriller is to go back to my original idea and publish it as a trilogy. I'll beef up the story, explore some themes I rushed through and go deeper into the psychology of the characters. I believe there's a good story there and I didn't give it its due. I'll release the serial in July in three complete installments. CreateSpace will get the complete edition for print at the same time.

Writing fast is dandy for first drafts, but the process has to slow down after that to get to the good stuff. Lesson learned. It only hurts a little. Lives were not lost.

Takeaways:

1. Stick to your vision.
2. The story wants to go the way the story wants to go. Be the pencil.
3. Slow down. You are creating worlds not making a cheese sandwich.

Daniel Razor and his troubling sidekick, Charlotte Dawson, will return new and and improved in the summer. Bigger and brighter in three juicy installments. 

Kindle Unlimited and Me

I would've titled this post Kindle Unlimited and the Indie Author but every author's experience is different. Our books are different, our marketing skills are different---it gets really boring itemizing how different we all are. We're so hung up on trying to find commonalities when we share information that we can't see the forest for the trees.

Here is the forest:

Amazon is a book retailer. They also publish their own imprints. They're also a mechanism by which authors can self-publish their work direct to Kindle ereaders. They sell the devices as well as the books to read on the devices. They also offer subscription-based access to all books enrolled in Kindle Direct Publishing Select. They have margins.

Here are the trees:

The independent authors who have enrolled their books in Select. They give Zon an amazingly diverse catalogue to hook Kindle Unlimited subscribers and Zon gives them a platform with which to reach readers. Sure, almost everyone wants the blockbuster novels, but indie offerings are the "added value" component of the whole forest. The authors also have margins.

It's a happy, balanced ecosystem until Amazon has to increase its margins and then the authors inside the forest get squeezed. We felt the Amazonian boa constrictor squeeze this week when the KENP formula was changed and the value of our books decreased by about 60 pages. KENP stands for Kindle Edition Normalized Pages. Authors in Select are paid 0.0046 per KENP read. If Mary Sue borrowed my riveting mystery, Iced Under (511 KENP) in January, I would have been paid a $2.35 royalty. Now, I would be paid $2.07. The royalty on a sale is approx. $2.79.

Not too shabby, right? What's 72 cents among friends. And besides, isn't the idea we'll get readers borrowing our books and make a bit of money on the side? Hey, I drank the Kool-aid, I'm not judging.

The kicker is we have to promote and compete to get borrows with exactly the same zeal and expense that we have to promote to get sales. Time and money margins. Only these are not sales and your book is only available in one store, not four (or five if you count Google Play and I don't). And then you open your reports page and whoa nelly! You are down by a sum that you did not see coming.

Okay, so we've been "normalized" after not being normal. Or something. I was all in with Kindle Unlimited until I realized I wasn't building a sales record. I was knocking myself out to get borrows. Borrows are lovely when they're in a library and somebody--somewhere--has already paid for the book. But when you become dependent on them for income, borrows are like living in your mom's basement. Every now and then she threatens to sell the house.

It's been said that KU has cannibalized sales. It's also been said that KU has helped sales. I have no data either way. In my experience, I worked like a dog to promote my novels last year and came out about $10 ahead each month that I was in Select versus wide. Other authors report dramatically different results.

The upshot of all this analysis is no two books are alike. Look at your own book and take your own market and margins into consideration when you're deciding to go exclusive or wide with all retailers. If all else fails, experiment. I liked the convenience of Select but I like getting sales in other markets a whole lot more. I like building a sales history. I like getting my $2.79 fair and square.

My margins are chubbier now too and I like a chubby margin.

Peace out.

A Writer's New Year's Resolutions

1. Write better books.

2. Get more exercise.

3. Write more books.

4. Make more money (anything above poverty level will do)

Resolution 4 used to top my list. Year after year, making money was my number one priority and year after year, it was never enough. I make more now than I did last year but at the expense of my body, emotional well-being and the joy of writing. So I'm ditching Resolution 4. 

Selling books is a crap shoot. Writers can spend years crafting novels and never make enough to pay the Hydro bill. Or they can spend 14 days writing a novel that lies there like a dead dog in August and never sells a copy. Or they can spend years working on craft and net thousands upon thousands of dollars from one book, or the exact same result could be achieved after a weekend of booze-induced scribbling. Total crap shoot.

I hereby resolve to ignore sales reports, do my best and let the money take care of itself. Sink or swim, the book is on its own. 

Next!

Resolution 1 and 3 can grow to like each other with steady, daily application to the word count. 200 words a day for 365 days equals one reasonably-sized book. 200 words is a walk in the park. For me and other writers, the demarcation between "good writing" and "cranking it out" is 2000 to 3000 words a day. 2K for me is a good day's work. A friendly, patient approach and good books will come in great quantity.

I resolve to write good books and more of them with daily dedicated application of 200 to 2000 words.

Which brings us to Resolution 2. All of us who sit in front of a computer for hours at a time need to stand up. Right now. I can see you. You're not standing. It has become life-threatening to sit for hours. (It probably always was but we're just learning about it.) I've restructured my office to allow me to stand and work. But that's not enough. Daily exercise outside improves just about everything.

I resolve to take a daily walk, which will help me stick to Resolution 1 and 3 and increase the odds of number 4 happening in my lifetime. 

I'll report back on December 31, 2016 (God and Blogger willing) on how my 2016 Resolutions panned out. Because that could be fun. Or not. We shall see!

Venosta, Quebec Writers' Retreat

I am off on a Writers' Retreat Sept. 25th to 27th in gorgeous Venosta, Quebec. I have never taken a retreat before due to lack of time and money and a deep-seated insecurity about the work. None of which has changed but I'm a sucker for a heritage farm house in the Gatineau Hills and I have a new series I'm struggling to get locked down for 2016.  

Mark Frutkin is the artist-in-residence. I read Erratic North and loved it. Thus, I am excited by the work ahead, tempered with rational dismay by the work ahead. 

Here is where the retreat is being held:  

http://www.venostawritersretreat.com/

What else is happening in my writing life?

I'm trying to zero in on the titles that did well since I began self-publishing, the titles that show promise and the titles I should put to bed. It's finding what interests me, what appeals to the market (readers) and the time I have available all in one place and then directing my energy there. Some writers nail this out of the gate and others (me) are slow learners. Onward!

Have a blessed weekend and don't forget to download your free copy of Heathcliff today on Amazon.

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.

Day 12. iTunes Legal. The Sequel.

Two years.
Five DMCA take down notices filed.
One query from an Apple legal representative.
Two emails from beleaguered author.
Result:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-grey-lady/id560171274?mt=11

I swear I will leave this post up for posterity if they remove The Grey Lady and the last laugh is on me.

Here's the thing: If you are not ready to sell books, then don't sell books. If you don't like dealing with authors and their pissy-diva complaints, then don't sell books. If you want lovely content to lure buyers to your freakishly expensive devices, then you'll be dealing with human beings who write books. If you don't want to deal with them, then don't sell books.

The thing about Corporate Image is it can't just be an image. The way a corporation treats its smallest customer is the measuring stick of their integrity, not a glossy ad campaign telling us you have integrity. I wrote a book. It was published. Shit happened and now we want the book removed from the iTunes Store. Easy-peasy. Literally every other book retailer managed to pull off this wondrous feat as soon as they were notified.

At the moment, I can't enroll The Grey Lady in KDP Select because it is being SOLD on iTunes without permission or payment in direct violation of copyright. This means I can't hold the promotions I planned for this summer. This means lost revenue.

It's not rocket science, Apple iTunes. It's book-selling and if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.

(Speaking of ad campaigns, for the love of God, will the Conservative Party give us a break from those truly stupid Justin Trudeau attack ads? Running them every 15 minutes is not helping. One of the actors carps from a script about Mr. Trudeau's hair and all I can think about is his hair compared to Mr. Harper's hair and then I wonder 'Why am I thinking about hair?' In the meantime, Mr. Trudeau has an ad running about the issues facing middle-class Canadians. No mention of hair. Do the math, gentlemen.)

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.

Kindle Unlimited and Indie Publishing

I'm not going to get into a semantic wrestling match over whether or not a self-published author is an independent publisher. I call myself an indie author. It has fewer syllables.

Amazon recently announced changes to the Kindle Select/Kindle Unlimited royalty structure. An author will be paid for the number pages read when their book is borrowed. How much will they be paid? We don't know yet. I expect Amazon will walk the tightrope between paying just enough to keep authors in the program but less royalty than a sale would deliver.

The caveat is the reader has to finish the book to get the full amount. Can you imagine? How many of us abandoned War and Peace? (I'm raising my hand) We are biting our nails, hoping that we've written a book gripping enough to keep the pages turning. (This does not apply to the trade-published novels by the way. Indie is a whole 'nuther universe.)

Here's the interesting (to me) twist to the story. I woke up on June 2nd, suddenly resolved to remove my three Gatineau Hills Mystery titles from Kobo, Apple, and Barnes and Noble (among other places) and enroll them in Select. I didn't know this new royalty structure was in the wind--it was only announced last week. I would have received $1.37 per borrow (est.). A sale would net me $3.50 (give or take). But I figured it was worth it to promote the books, find readers willing to borrow an unknown author and the enrollment is only for 90 days.

Under the new royalty, a borrow read all the way through could net me closer to $3 (assuming a 0.01/page royalty). Am I psychic? Hah! I'm very happy I trusted my intuitive voice this time and made the move. I created new covers especially for KDP and I'll hold a promotion over the coming months.

The flip side of this new event is that shorter works such as the Razor Series will be bundled and take longer to release. NJ Dorrian's Wuthering Heights Variations Series will be released wide as soon as her 90 days in Select expires. That series was designed to be novella-length. Besides, in watching buying and borrowing habits, I believe readers of historical fiction prefer to buy over borrow. So look for NJ Dorrian on Kobo, Apple and Barnes and Noble this August.

As for me--holy hannah! Too much writing to do. My brain gives out after four hours and then I run off to make covers, ponder promos, write blurbs, tweak keywords, post updates to the blog, and plunk updates in the Excel spreadsheet I had to create for this enterprise.

Sounds like an independent publisher to me. Indie all the way.

New Series. New Author. Spring.

The first in an eight-book series based on the classic romantic novel, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. Unaware that she is dead, Cathy raps on the window of her old bedroom to rouse Heathcliff to let her in. She has found her way home at last after getting lost on the moor coming from Thrushcross Grange. But so much has changed and Heathcliff's is not the face she sees at the lattice window. As Cathy sets out to find him, she remembers their love and the cruel twists that split them apart. 

In the meantime, Emily Bronte is visited by a publisher's representative named Mr. Dawson who is tasked with advising Ellis Bell to revise his novel. Shocked at finding the creator of Heathcliff is the painfully shy daughter of the local curate, Dawson demands answers. To fight for the life her original vision, Emily must reveal the source of her disturbing inspiration--a revelation that astonishes Mr. Dawson.

AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER ON AMAZON

The Introverted Author's Guide To Marketing

10 Tips to Flogging Your Books the Introvert's Way:

1) Read KBoards but never post. You don't have to. No one knows you're on the other side of the screen, snooping into the threads. You'll learn just as much and it's almost like being with people, only better.

2) Exercise. Pop a cassette tape into the old VCR--(yeah, you heard me)--and follow a work out led by a really cheerful, extroverted fitness leader. You'll kill two birds with one stone. A workout and socializing!

3) Email. No need to talk to anyone on the phone. Ever.

4) Write books.

5) Put the books on sale occasionally and advertise the sale at carefully chosen sites using this criteria: (a) they will accept your book (b) they offer a reasonable risk of recouping your investment (aka ROI) (c) they don't bug you to tweet stuff for them.

6) Work on improving your storytelling skills by writing more books.

7) Blog if you like it. I do.

8) Don't do anything that bugs you, makes you tense, grates on your nerves or is a time suck in the interest of "building a platform." Write books instead.

9) Do the activities you enjoy doing. I like giving readings where I can talk about the writing process, self-publishing or the writer's life. I'm not crazy about talking about the books themselves because I'm already removed from them by the time they come out. (Huh. Doesn't sound much like a reading. More like talking about books with wine involved....)

10) Join up with other writers when you foolishly commit yourself to hand selling at a fair or some other mad undertaking. You'll be less likely to hide out in the bathroom and therefore sell more books.

Bonus Tip: Write a bestseller and become a recluse.

Inspired by David Gaughran's book: "Let's Get Digital." Introverts need not fear the self-publishing marketing journey. Give it a read.

A big shout out to Draft2Digital for the free gift!

Goodreads Giveaway Winners!

And the winners of the Goodreads Giveaway for THE RIVER BRIDE are.... *insert drum roll here*

Susan Gannon of Arvada, Colorado
Arturo Operario of North York, Ontario
Sarah Hansrote of Knoxville, Tennessee

792 people entered THE RIVER BRIDE Giveaway and 365 people added it to their To-Read shelves. Thank you!

Folks, this will be my last Giveaway and here's why:

The mailing of books is costly in addition to the cost of the books themselves. This expense is absorbed by the author. The service the winning readers provide is to post their reviews at Goodreads. Without reviews, authors cannot afford to continue to enroll their books in Goodreads Giveaways. A print copy is the only format accepted and because of the cost involved (and often disappointing result) many authors I know are giving up on Giveaways. It is a great program and I'd hate to see it go but for independent authors on a tight budget, it has become a poor return. 

There are readers out there who buy indie books at full price and post their reviews. There are companies who for a fraction of the cost of a Giveaway will promote an independent author's book. When marketing dollars are tight, the non-performer gets cut. 

Writing a review can be nerve-wracking but your opinion matters, especially for an unknown work in this day and age. Think of yourself as a literary talent scout! Finding diamonds in the rough! going where no man has gone before! Readers rule! Discovering a new work by an unknown author is an adventure. You have to tell the world about it because if you don't, who will?

Congratulations to my three winners. Folks, your books are in the mail and I look forward to reading your reviews!

Peace and happy reading.