Yeah, you can probably finish that sentence.
We’re not done discussing writer/reader relationships, I don’t think, but for today there’s some other stuff to talk about, including something I’m really, really excited about.
First, a couple of links. My pal Mario Acevedo, he of the fun books and incredibly dirty mouth, is doing a contest and chat over at Bitten by Books today, so head on over and enter to win some of his awesome work. And, you know, to taunt him and stuff.
Second, I’m not sure how many of you are aware of This Week’s Amazon Controversy. In a nutshell, this weekend Amazon listed a bunch of very expensive graphic novels at bargain basement prices. The pricing info was picked up by Rich Johnston over at Bleeding Cool–he’s @BleedingCool on Twitter as well, and you should follow him, especially if you’re the sort of geek who reads comics or has any interest in comics or movies or whatever, or who, oh, dreams about Batman, or who downloaded “Voodoo Child” by the Rogue Traders and plays it in her car and then pretends that she is married to The Master, and then we make the Doctor my sex slave…oh, um, I mean, if you were that sort of geek, which of course I am not. Ha, ha! No, not me! Um. Anyway, Bleeding Cool is a great site.
So Rich picked up the story, and lots of people–including the hubs–flocked to Amazon to order books. (In fact, if you checked the top Amazon sellers on Sunday morning they were all hardcover graphic novels, which was quite cool). Then Amazon started processing some orders, and sending out emails saying that if you ordered more than one copy of a book your duplicate orders were canceled, but they would otherwise honor the price at which you purchased the books. Which is great, right? Except that now they’re just canceling people’s orders altogether, without notifying them, or with a rather short email that basically says, “Yeah, too bad.” So some people got their books at the advertised price, but most are being told Tough Luck. Rich discusses the emails and the reactions of disappointed readers here.
BUT. Here’s the big news, which I really hope you guys will be excited about. I’m sure many of you know who James D. Macdonald is, and how much he’s done for writers everywhere. And, if you haven’t read any of his books you totally need to.
Anyway. Jim periodically looks into self-publishing methods, to help out writers who choose to go that route for whatever reason. A few weeks ago he asked if anyone had anything they wanted made into a book, and, since I’d been planning/attempting for ages to put the Strumpet series together and set it up as a book, I offered it to him. I wrote a new little intro, and he wrote some back-cover copy for me, and there you go.
Long(ish) story short, the Strumpet series is now available on Lulu as a paperback (mmp size) and as an ebook!
So for all of you who’ve asked me to do this, there you go. Have fun!
(Note: Yes, the series is still available on the blog here, and will continue to be. You do not need to buy the ebook or paperback to still access the series; I wrote it as a free blog series and it will remain so. This is just for those of you who wanted it to download all as one document for easy navigation, or so you don’t have to keep visiting my site to read it, or who like having a paperback, or whatever. Also, no, it is not available on Amazon or as a Kindle download; in the interests of keeping costs down we opted not to buy an ISBN, which means it won’t be listed in those places.)
So that’s it for today. We’re rather content-light, but given how Very Serious we were last week, and given how excited I am to finally have the Strumpet series out there in book form (It’s Alf! He’s back. In pog form), and given that I’m up to my knees in a new project…well. We’ll see how it goes the rest of the week.
