Assassin is on countdown in the US

Assassin, a dystopian look at a future UK, is on a countdown deal in the Amazon US store for about a week, currently retailing at $0.99.

The assassin in the book is a literal gun for hire, who will kill for anyone with the means as long as they aren't part of the congress - lower case techie 'c' deliberate.  The congress are what replaced the duly elected government to keep the lid on terrorism, for the good of the people and with the intention to revert to democracy when the time is right.  This is set in the relatively near future - it recalls the famous fire of Chester in 2035 so can't be that far in the future, right?

John, the assassin, is holed up with a beach bum in Cornwall during the mother of all storms and in a drunken lapse reveals his occupation to the beach bum.   To allay his fears he tells the tale of how he became the man he is, how he was incarcerated by congress agents after surviving the worst terrorist atrocity on mainland UK in living history, how he was isolated and learned of his families demise at the hands of a terrorist known only as Morris, who hides from the congress in the notionally independent nation of Wales.

However all is not quite as it seems.  There are congress agents staking out the beach accomodation and John has to arrange an escape for himself and his new friend, who turns out to have his own secrets.

The book is action packed and describes a UK I once thought we were heading towards a few years ago.  Interestingly I have started work on the sequel and, in the time honoured fashion of sequels I've built up the backstory, drawing from the original book and adding other events that have happened.  The pandemic and the impact on world economies plays a  part in that storyline, set around 2060ish, so look out for hat before the end of the year.

In the meantime, if you are an Amazon.com customer, why not pick up a copy of Assassin while it is on countdown and find out what is in store for the UK after Boris has finished with it?

Of course, for anyone with Amazon Prime or access to the Kindle Library you can download Assassin or any of my eight other books for free as part of your membership

The Journeymen is on Countdown offer

My second novel, The Journeymen, is on countdown offer at Amazon for a few days (until the 26th April).  This novel should ring a few bells with those of you who believe you've been unfairly passed over by inferior colleagues or that some people seem to have a disproportionate amount of good luck.  In fact, it is a conspiracy theorists book of choice.

Unlike most conspiracy theories this doesn't just make unsubstantiated links between what we see and hear and draw conclusions that many think are outrageous - it provides an entirely fabricated backstory to hand the lot off.

OK, bit of background might help you here.  We're not the only planet that has created civilisations, or indeed created the means to destroy itself many times over. Part of the focus in this book is one such planet approximately 9 light years away that has been there, done that, destroyed the Tee shirt.  In the book it is going through a renaissance following a period, a long time ago, when war nearly destroyed the planet and everything on it.  Critically the human stock, who are genetically very similar to us guys and gals, has depleted its genetic diversity to the point that the race is slowly dying out.  

Before the terrible wars that created this situation the planet had developed technology that allowed easy space travel over immense distances and had populated a planet nine light years away (coincidence? I don't think so).  They don't have the technology they had so embark on an intergenerational journey to what we call home, only to find things have changed a bit.  These guys, by the way, are the Journeymen.  A subset of them are a group that becomes sworn enemies, they are known as the Sons of Arlgon, nowadays referred to as the Sons.

The main problem when they got here, apart from the total loss of the technology they were hoping to harness to return with suitable DNA samples is that the original Journeymen have embedded (and bedded) the original humanoids on our home planet.  Luckily for the project, but arguably not for most us, many had kept to their own kind, but many had also bred with the indigenous population.  This resulted in the people discovered on arrival as the Colonists (AKA original Journeymen) and Interbreds (AKA IBs, also known as you and me, in the main).  

The Journeymen resolve to protect the Colonists, who generally had managed to secure positions of power and authority, by forming the second tier of authority - the Civil Servants and captains of industry, defending, protecting and directing the Colonists through the generations while the technology necessary to capture DNA and send it through space is developed from an extremely poor starting position.  And you thought HS2 was challenging.

The book starts, though, in the present day when a space vehicle engineer, Tom Roberts, presents a novel invention to help make long term space travel possible.  He is attacked, possibly by Sons who will do anything to thwart their sworn enemies, and rescued by a pair of Journeymen who happen to have their own agenda.  Tom is effectively imprisoned and ultimately framed for the murder of an ex colleague.  He escapes and through a series of adventures helped by a former lover and a reluctant senior Son seeks to secure his freedom.  The book interleaves Tom's story with the original Journeymen story, so aspects and subtleties of the history are revealed throughout the novel.

Back to my original statement about being passed over by less capable colleagues - and I bet you have - they were almost certainly either Journeymen being propelled to a position of power to better protect the Colonists in theoretical power.  Don't take it personally and don't try to stop it - none of us have that much power.

Obviously, if you have access to Kindle Unlimited then this book and its sequel, Journeymen II: Day of Reckoning, are free.  Otherwise, if this sounds like your kind of lockdown reading then why not grab a copy while it is price reduced?

Hotel California is free on the 8th & 9th May

Hotel California is free for two days only,8th & 9th May Amazon Standard Time about 08:00 onwards.

The book is a fast paced adventure, detective and, I'll admit, slightly speculative novel.  it's not based on the song by the Eagles, but I freely admit it was inspired by the song.  There's no dark desert highway, nor any mention of a mission bell either, come to think of it.  

It does have references to people who you may consider to be dead - they almost certainly are not around anymore and the characters described might just have a passing resemblance to them - you know, the likes of Elvis, for example.

The book isn't about a character named Elvis.  It's about a UK punk rock come reality TV star Ricky Maggot who wants to escape the world of celebrity (don't we all) and books a one-way ticket to a South sea island nicknamed in the music industry as Hotel California.  He soon realises he's made a massive mistake and teams up with the eponymous Elvis, who realised the same thing forty years earlier, and sets about trying to escape.  Add a couple of Russian gangsters who are hiding from their previous mafia life, a resort manager without a conscience, a killer on the payroll and a music journalist who asks just too many questions and you have a book that you'll storm through in a couple of days, especially if you are on lockdown.

It's on free for one day only so bookmark it and make sure you take advantage.

Obviously, if you have access to Kindle Unlimited then you can download this book for free anytime.  But for those who haven't got access to that, or as Prime members have already used up their monthly allowance, then this promotion is an affordable way to add it to your library.  Put the date in your diary.
My other eight books are also available for free to Kindle Unlimited members and you can access links to them here.

Skin is on Countdown promotion starting 14th April

Skin is going on an  Amazon countdown deal starting 14th April - not sure which time zone, probably 8 o'clock in the morning somewhere on the West Coast of the US, and runs to the 21st.  The way the countdown deals work is that the normal selling price for the book is discounted, with a bigger discount at the beginning of the promotion getting less of a discount the longer you leave it.

So why Skin?  Well, it is a book based in the near future with elements stuck firmly in events of the second Gulf War.  There are flashbacks to a failed special ops mission just inside Iraq on the days running up to the shock and awe phase of that war that had unresolved questions for one person in particular, Rory Callum.  Rory was engineering support on a Chinook that crashed on that mission and was the only member of the mission to make it out of Iraq alive, however years later there are many important details of his journey back to Kuwait unresolved, while other parts of the mission are on an endless loop every time he sleeps.

In the book's present, our future, Rory is now working on the fringes of legality, acting as an industrial spy being inserted into manufacturing companies at a low level, usually, and sneaking out details of next year's big product.  This time he's inserted into a local manufacturer that has developed something really big, life changing and worth a lot of money to the right investors.  It's a development being watched all the way up to the top, with the British Prime Minister of the day indulging in some sneaky insider dealing - no, not Boris, a later replacement for him further down the line.

But parts of Rory's past start to catch up with him as he carries on his job, working for the enigmatic Max and the sexually disturbed and violently dangerous Melinda and Rory finds himself facing up to a madman called Fabin, who has an ex-Royal Marine killer to assist him.

The title refers to the process Rory is spying on - a method to create artificial skin that was just science fiction when I wrote the book but is now looking like it will hit the mainstream in some form in the near future.  There are parts of the book that are still science fiction, or at least technically difficult and improbable at the moment, but I'll leave you to decide which parts are in which compartment.

There's a lot of action in this book, from pitched battles in Iraq to manhunts in London in the book's present day.  It's a long book, but thanks to the pace you will race through it running from battle to battle, past to present as the story and, critically, Rory's missing memories, are revealed.

Obviously, if you have access to Kindle Unlimited then you can download this book for free anytime.  But for those who haven't got access to that, or as Prime members have already used up their monthly allowance, then this promotion is an affordable way to add it to your laibrary.  Put the date in your diary.

My other eight books are also available for free to Kindle Unlimited members and you can access links to them here.

The Last Simple is free to download on Amazon

My latest promotion is the parody 'The Last Simple', written a long time ago, in 2011.  I had read most of the Dan Brown novels published up to that date and had enjoyed them, up to a point.  Dan has a method of writing that keeps the story moving and gives the impression that much of the storyline is well researched.  However, in line with most novels, you only have to stray into your own sphere of knowledge and specialism to realise that the author is winging it a little.

That's not a criticism, by the way.  We all do it, when we have to write about things we have limited experience of.  For me the warning bells sound when authors start writing about aircraft, and how they fly.  I've spent enough time working around fixed and rotary winged aircraft to know when someone is making assumptions, based no doubt on snatched views of a flight deck and scenes from movies.  I'm sure practically every reader with specialist knowledge cringes with  every book they read and film they watch, it's just that we all cringe in different parts.

Anyway, the winging was one thing. The trend towards ever shorter chapters was another.  I get it, write short, punchy chapters and readers can park the book after two stops on the subway, the perfect commuting aide.  Dan, or more probably his publisher, took this to a new level.  To me a chapter is a self contained unit.  Sometimes it can contain several perspectives but there should be some form of unity from start to end of the chapter.  Many of Dan's chapters ended in the middle of a subject and the next chapter picked right up where the previous one had ended.  That's a very artificial way of breaking a story up and to me it jarred, however after the Da Vinci Code became an international best seller the technique appears to have become legitimised.

So The Last Simple was born.  In part it is a parody of several of Dan's novels - if you've read any of his books you should be able to spot most of them fairly easily.  But it has it's own life as well and is pretty tongue in cheek.  For starters, the characters in the book know they are characters in a book.  In the case of Bradford, the lead character, he knows he's the lead in a third rate parody of a Dan Brown novel, but his ambition is to be one of Dan's lead characters.  The trouble is, he doesn't know if he has to dumb up or down for the gig.

There is a lot of wordplay, puns and silly gags running through the book and none of these are meant to reflect on Dan Brown.  I tried to cram in as many silly jokes as I could on every page. Some will make you groan, hopefull many will make you smile.

The promotion is time limited and finishes before the next weekend, probably Friday morning UK time.  Of course, if you have access to Kindle Unlimited then the book is free to download any time you choose.  For those stumbling across this blog entry too late, the book is reasonably priced anyway.

Working from home

Writers, even part time writers such as myself, are used to working from home.  I've a sneaking suspicion that even the most successful of authors are unlikely to have an office away from their home for the purpose of writing.  Sure, a few will have dedicated rooms in their homes that they use, possibly, exclusively for the purpose of producing prose, but I reckon most of us don't.

I'm very fortunate in that I actually do have a dedicated home office room complete with a custom built oak desk and bureau - we had them built by an artisan woodworker twenty years ago or more when I was studying with the Open University and, partly because it is a timeless design and the builder was such a good craftsman, it's still as good as new.  Perhaps the odd bit of distressing here and there, but that's the beauty of this type of furniture.  The room's not used exclusively for writing - far from it - we have a wall mounted TV and a leather recliner sofa in the room as well, and during the late autumn to early spring we both use it as our TV room in the evenings.  Most of my work, all year round, is actually crafted on my knee regardless of which room I'm spending time in.

In fact my second novel, The Journeymen, was written in large part on a Palm PDA - remember them? -with a folding keyboard.  It was very portable and until it let me down on a transatlantic flight in 2003 it had become my go-to resource.  I guess that failure was my personal wake up call - I'd written a large part of the battle scene in the Journeymen on board the facility on the comet between the J-Men and the Sons of Arlgon and the battery failed, taking several thousand words with it.  I dragged a foolscap pad out of my bag and scribbled down what I'd just spent a large part of the flight typing.

However, like a lot of you guys, I've been working from home - mainly by email - as a result of the Coronavirus crisis.  The desk has really come into its own.  I've resisted the temptation to sit on the sofa and put my feet up for the slightly irrational feeling that it wouldn't feel like work if I did that, even though the end result would be the same.  And maybe that's one of things about writing, why I can choose to write on my knee, on an aircraft, on a bus or wherever.  Because writing doesn't feel like a job.

And because we can access all our work resources via VPN and can chat using WhatsApp it feels like I'm still in the office.  I just don't have to face students four or five times a day, and I'm not complaining about that.  I'm sure the lockdown is going to result in a lot of issues for many people, most need some form of physical social interaction and at the time of writing this lockdown looks like a long haul but I've been practising (anti) social distancing most of my life, so I should be OK.  I may even find time to complete my tenth novel.  Even if I don't, I reckon my Kindle will take a hammering this summer - when I'm not working from home, naturally.

If you're looking to stock up on reading matter to weather the lockdown - it looks like practically everywhere on the planet is going through lockdown at the moment, then at the time of writing - 24 March - Digital Life Form is free to download.  It looks like that offer is good until about 8 a.m. Friday morning, UK time.  Be my guest.

If you're entitled through subscription to download Kindle Unlimited books for free then you can choose any of my titles, to keep you occupied when working from home loses its appeal.  Otherwise I like to think they're reasonably priced.  Links to them all below are to the Amazon US site - I'm sure you'll be redirected to your regional website if you are outside the US.

Hotel California
Assassin
The Journeymen
Journeymen II: Day of Reckoning
Project : Evil
Digital Life Form
The Last Simple
Skin
Parallel Lives

Digital Life Form is free on Amazon - limited promotion

Following hot on the heels of the free promotion for Project: Evil, which ended this morning, Amazon are offering Digital Life Form for free for a limited period.  Digital Life Form is a science fiction adventure written with my tongue in my cheek - it's fast paced, exciting but should bring a smile to your face as  you read it.  If you're self isolating, on shut down or just keeping out of the way of other people while Covid 19 wreaks havoc in your locality then you can do worse than blag yourself a free copy.

Here's the blurb from the book:

In 1978, meteorites striking a remote part of the Mojave desert preceded severe disruption to all radio frequencies in the California district. The disruption was mistakenly believed to be a Soviet sleeper cell mobilising or a Middle Eastern terrorist attack on the US. It was triangulated to the last known location of a bunch of oil roughnecks drilling in the desert and the US military intervened, with a massive loss of innocent life. The cause of the disruption is now known to be DLFs,

DLFs (microscopic, bacteria-like Digital Life Forms) have been landing on Earth for Millennia, clinging to meteorites, looking for the right conditions to thrive. To DLFs electrons are like oxygen, silicon is like food and computer code is their DNA. Since the middle of the 20th Century we have all benefitted from DLFs, without which there wouldn’t be Plasma TVs, microwave ovens or iPhones. But DLFs have to be carefully managed and controlled. Given free rein they will take over and modify electronic equipment in the most unpredictable way. Consequently there has built up a massive, secret international industry manipulating DLFs so that they produce the right products for modern consumers while ensuring DLFs don't disrupt the international infrastructures such as the electricity grid or the Internet, an industry that is policed by a secretive arm of the United Nations.

Royston, a post graduate geologist from the University of Manchester inadvertently becomes embroiled in the secret, dangerous world of DLFs and rapidly finds himself on the run behind the wheel of a drive-by-wire, rally specification Subaru infected with the strongest and most adaptable DLF ever discovered. He is being pursued by Winston Grace, an ex FBI, now UN agent in a Maserati sports tourer, an Apache gunship, a Chinook bearing eight SAS soldiers and two Hawk jet fighters. And that’s just the good guys. If they catch him, he may live. If they don’t, then there are more ruthless people on his tail, too, as he tries to evade capture in a world that doesn’t value human life and where the stakes are as high as can be imagined, in an industry that lives by just two mottos:

Life ain’t fair

and

Sh!t happens

This promotion will only run for a few days, so grab yourself a free copy before the price is raised b ack to its normal price.  Like all my books Digital Life Form is available for free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers all the time, of course

Free copies of Project: Evil stop at midnight Pacific Daylight Time

That's 8 AM on Sunday 22 in the UK - I think.  After that the book reverts to its normal retail price of £1.99 in the UK, should be $2.99 in the US and 2.99 Euros in Europe.  It will still be free to subscribers of Kindle Unlimited - that is Kindle lending library and Amazon Prime customers going forward.  the promotion has been quite popular - I hope there hasn't been any panic buying going on!

If you've just been locked down or are self isolating then this bizarre but funny book might just be what you need to keep a smile on your face.

Hotel California is on a Countdown deal in the UK (and as far as I know only the UK, but check your location just in case).  Also free to Kindle Unlimited customers

All of my books are available for free on Amazon Unlimited

After posting my last blog I made a rash, and heavy hearted, decision.  For the time being I've gone exclusive on Amazon instead of the halfway house I'd considered.  I can revert to non-exclusive listing sometime in the future, but I'm going to give this a good go first.

One of the opportunities of being in KDP Select is that I can run promotions and have a raft of these scheduled for the next few months.  In fact two are running as of right now.  

Project: Evil is currently free to anyone through Amazon (link is to UK store, but should let you redirect to your registered location).  This book is almost certainly the only comedic book on Project Management, a subject close to my heart.  I always felt project teams took their role over-seriously and secretly found much of the environment funny.  In this book I've tried to capture the funny side of PM, albeit from an unusual viewpoint - just how would you go about project managing the building of a super secret evel lair in the South Seas complete with planet destroying missile capability?  Act before 21 March and find out for free.  Otherwise it is free to all Kindle Unlimited customers - those of you self isolating with your Amazon Prime subscription could take advantage at any time.

In addition Hotel California is on a Countdown offer where the price is reduced to £0.99 for a period, before rising to a price a little higher for a few days longer.  Follow the trail of Ricky Maggott and find out what really happened to Elvis.  Offer ends 24 March, but again the book is free to Kindle Unlimited customers.

Please feel free to take advantage of these offers, and don't forget to spread the word to your self isolating and free friends.  My other seven books are also on Kindle Unlimited so are eligible for free download for those with the right subscriptions, plus they will all feature in promotions sometime soon - watch this space.

Self Isolating my books in Amazon

Some years ago I railed, often ad nauseum, about how wrong KDP select was.  Before I continue this post I'll say up front that I haven't substantively changed my mind.  While the concept of Kindle unlimited and allowing Amazon Prime members access to read  for free is a brilliant marketing strategy, I just don't believe Amazon have to insist on exclusivity for the service.  I think there's enough space for Amazon, Smashwords, Apple, Barnes and Noble and Kobo.

So a long time ago I ranted, several times, on these pages about the model and said I wouldn't enlist in KDP Select.  Of course Amazon are in this for the long game and gradually I've seen my exposure on Amazon dwindle to the point where I sometimes find it difficult to find my own books, and my sales via the other channels has become a little on the rare side.

So a little while back I quietly listed Hotel California on KDP Select.  I did this with a heavy heart as I don't agree with the exclusivity concept, but like King Cnut I'm unable to order the tide to pull out.  I've just listed two other titles - Digital Life Form and Skin - on the programme and I'm going to evaluate how it goes.  For those of you who prefer to shop in non-Amazon shops there are six other titles listed there, but I can't say for how long.

If you are a Kindle Unlimited or Amazon Prime member and find yourself needing to self isolate from Covid 19 and want to lose a few hours inside a book or three, why not look up one or more of these.  For you guys it is free - for me, I'm waiting to find out if it is worth the admittedly small effort of listing the books but I'll give it a try.  If it looks like it is worth going down the exclusive route then I guess I'll self isolate with Amazon.

Has Amazon taken the eBook market?

A few months ago Amazon launched an aggressive campaign to get the eyes of eBook readers on books offered through them.  They launched Kindle Unlimited, which provided access to all the books in the Kindle library - but not necessarily in the Kindle store - to subscribers.

About a month ago they launched the same scheme in the UK and I have no doubt it is being progressively rolled out across all the main eBook regions. It has its merits; all the eBook subscription services have their merits.  The main one is that the reader pays a monthly subscription and gets as many books to read as they want, much like Netflix and Lovefilm do for films and TV shows.

The downside of all subscription services is that, unlike films and TV shows, books tend to be read by individuals.  They generally take longer to consume, or read, than films and TV shows do to watch.  A year or so ago we could have argued that at least you can consume books when streaming internet services were unavailable, but that is less valid today.  Many of us have access to 3 and 4 G services with ever increasing monthly allowances (mine is currently 2 Gb over 4G).  My top tip for anyone wanting to use an eBook subscription service is to create a family email account and use that for multiple devices.

I can't speak for all authors, but since the US launch my sales have quite literally flatlined.  Hardly surprising, mind, given that whenever Amazon launched the service it included the first month free as a trial, so many would have used that month to fill up on eBooks and are probably now all read out for the time being.  Many of them would have cancelled their membership once the month was up but Amazon have gambled on a significant amount liking the service so much that they stay, others will just keep forgetting to cancel - it's not like Amazon care.

Some might have been frustrated that the books they wanted weren't available - many big sellers aren't in the library, possibly never will unless Amazon hammer out a loss leading deal with them.  Others, such as myself, are also absent - I refuse to give in to Amazon and sign over exclusive rights to them.  I'm not going to bang on about my views - again - just search my blog for KDP Select if you've missed my rants.  However, despite zero sales since Kindle Unlimited started my books have been perused more than ever on Smashwords.  I don't see Smashwords as a major outlet for books - I never think to look there to buy - but they provide metrics that let me know if there's any interest in my books.  Probably I've seen more activity on there than ever before.  I've been cautious about over-interpreting the metrics, it could be one person continually visiting my book page and downloading the 20% samples time and again. However this last 30 days sales have kicked in again - not large amounts, but first Apple, then Barnes & Noble, now Smashwords reporting sales.

While I hope those who subscribe to the Amazon Unlimited scheme get what they want out of the service, while Amazon insist on exclusive rights to any books listed there you won't find me there.  If they lift that requirement I'll be on in a flash.  But I really hope they don't dominate the eBook market any more than they do right now, we need competition, you need choice. 

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Visit my Book Website here

        Follow me on Twitter  - @RayASullivan

Hachettte CEO Responds to Amazon Spam Request

In the US Bronze is on a countdown promotion starting Sunday 14th September 2025 at $0.99 for the eBook, rising to $1.99 on the 17th September before reverting to the full price of $2.99 on the 20th September.  All promotions commence at 8:00 am PDT on the stated days.

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Just over a week ago Amazon astounded the self publishing world by emailing all of their KDP authors with a bizarre call to arms against Hachette, specifically the CEO of the publishing company.  They wanted all of the authors publishing through Amazon to email the Hachette CEO to complain about Hachette's position in its ongoing dispute with Amazon over pricing of ebooks.

Now most Amazon KDP authors are not published by Hachette.  The few who are will know that Amazon are suppressing their books, limiting their sales.  Potentially, if they believe the Amazon stance to be better for them, they could carry out Amazon's request and spam the CEO of the company that has invested in their books.  Edgy tactics for those who have probably striven for years to get that elusive publishing contract.  Pointless for the vast majority who don't have contracts with Hachette and who will probably never get one, may not even want one but for those that do they would probably not want to get the attention of the CEO in such a negative way.

My view, which many readers supported through tweets, is that CEOs shouldn't be inciting customers to spam other CEOs.  Unlike the craze of CEOs challenging other CEOs to pour iced water over their heads for charity this wasn't a one-on-one attack.  It was an attempt to bully the CEO of Hachette using a mob that had no business, in the main, getting involved.

So I wrote to the CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos instead.  In part I wrote to ask him to desist from invoking me to do Amazon's dirty work and to be fair, for the last week they haven't.  But the main reason for writing to Mr Bezos instead of Michael Pietsch, CEO of Hachette, was to point out that the competing pricing methods at the heart of the Amazon/Hachette isn't the issue, Amazon's attempt at dominating the ebook industry through KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited is.  I also pointed out that both of those services would benefit greatly by the dropping of the exclusivity clause Amazon insists on.  If you haven't seen my email, which I CC'd to Mr Pietsch out of courtesy, you can read it here.

Unsurprisingly Mr Bezos hasn't replied to my email, however Mr Pietsch did take the time to write me.  To be fair to Mr Pietsch I didn't write specifically supporting his side of the debate, I wrote to point out that Amazon were out of line with their attempt to recruit the KDP authors to do their bidding.  Mr Pietsch attached a letter that he put out after the Amazon email which explains Hachette's side in this saga but added a few words showing that he had taken the time to read my email.  Below is the full email from Mr Pietsch including his reply to all KDP authors, which has already been circulated on the web quite extensively.  It is well argued and worth reading, even for those of us not directly affected by the dispute.  As most of us are consumers as well as authors the outcome of the dispute is important - Hachette's approach may or may not price books higher than Amazon would like, but it gives consumers a choice. Amazon's approach, to gain absolute market dominance, is likely to cost consumers in the long run.

Here's the email:

  Your letter in response to Amazon's "Important Kindle Request"

Thank you for sending me your thoughts about Amazon’s letter to KDP authors.  Below is a note of clarification that I’ve sent to those who passed along Amazon’s complaints, which I thought you might want to see as well.

 

It’s heartening to hear your thoughtful comments.  Thanks again for writing.

 

Yours,

 

Michael Pietsch

CEO, Hachette Book Group

 

Thank you for writing to me in response to Amazon’s email.  I appreciate that you care enough about books to take the time to write.  We usually don’t comment publicly while negotiating, but I’ve received a lot of requests for Hachette’s response to the issues raised by Amazon, and want to reply with a few facts.

·        Hachette sets prices for our books entirely on our own, not in collusion with anyone.

·        We set our ebook prices far below corresponding print book prices, reflecting savings in manufacturing and shipping.

·        More than 80% of the ebooks we publish are priced at $9.99 or lower.

·        Those few priced higher—most at $11.99 and $12.99—are less than half the price of their print versions.

·        Those higher priced ebooks will have lower prices soon, when the paperback version is published.

·        The invention of mass-market paperbacks was great for all because it was not intended to replace hardbacks but to create a new format available later, at a lower price.

As a publisher, we work to bring a variety of great books to readers, in a variety of formats and prices.  We know by experience that there is not one appropriate price for all ebooks, and that all ebooks do not belong in the same $9.99 box.  Unlike retailers, publishers invest heavily in individual books, often for years, before we see any revenue.  We invest in advances against royalties, editing, design, production, marketing, warehousing, shipping, piracy protection, and more.  We recoup these costs from sales of all the versions of the book that we publish—hardcover, paperback, large print, audio, and ebook.  While ebooks do not have the $2-$3 costs of manufacturing, warehousing, and shipping that print books have, their selling price carries a share of all our investments in the book. 

 

This dispute started because Amazon is seeking a lot more profit and even more market share, at the expense of authors, bricks and mortar bookstores, and ourselves.  Both Hachette and Amazon are big businesses and neither should claim a monopoly on enlightenment, but we do believe in a book industry where talent is respected and choice continues to be offered to the reading public.

Once again, we call on Amazon to withdraw the sanctions against Hachette’s authors that they have unilaterally imposed, and restore their books to normal levels of availability.  We are negotiating in good faith.  These punitive actions are not necessary, nor what we would expect from a trusted business partner.

Thank you again and best wishes,

Michael Pietsch

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Michael Pietsch | Chief Executive Officer

237 Park Avenue New York NY 10017

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Amazon look to self published authors to fight their battles

I received an email from Amazon today imploring me to step into their ongoing dispute with Hachette.  I'm not renowned for my diplomacy skills, so I'm guessing mediation wasn't on their agenda.  I'm more of a direct problem solver, willing to roll my sleeves up.  Which sometimes gets a little misinterpreted as aggressive, but there you go.

Anyway, Amazon didn't just email me, they emailed every KDP author as far as I can tell.  They outlined their case for not bowing down to Hachette's pricing policy for ebooks, with the upshot being that they are trying to bring ebook prices down, helping promote sales which, they claim, will help authors realise more royalties.  To that end they have requested every KDP author to email the CEO of Hachette to tell them to back off, or something like that. 

Now Hachette don't publish my books and probably never will.  So their pricing policy is irrelevant to me as an author.  If they want to overprice ebooks it just makes my books look like better value than ever.  Why would I want to meddle with that?  Because of the dispute many Hachette titles are not being stocked by Amazon at the moment, so if I did want to pay over the odds for one of their books I can't buy them from Amazon.  No problem, Amazon are big, but they're not the only option, which is a good thing.  I'll take my business where I need to.

But the real big issues for me are, firstly, that I don't like spam and really don't like being asked to contribute to a spam offensive.  Big companies like Amazon shouldn't be canvassing customers to do this kind of dirty work, surely?  Secondly, I don't think Amazon have got the point that ebook pricing isn't the problem, exclusivity in retail markets is.  And Amazon are trying to tie all ebook authors up to an exclusive deal with themselves through their KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited programmes.

So I did send the CEO of Hachette an email, actually as a cc correspondent,  The main recipient of my email was Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.  I've little faith that Mr Bezos will read my email, CEOs are busy people, but by including the CEO of Hachette in the distribution I'm sure someone at Amazon will read it, to find out what Hachette are being told.  Possibly both CEOs will become aware, briefly, of the email.  It won't change the way either company works, I wouldn't expect it to.  But if it provides Amazon with a moment of reflection on their pursuit of exclusivity then my time will have been well spent.  Here's the email:

Dear Mr Bezos

I'm writing to you partly because one of your minions has undertaken to ask myself and, I'm assuming, every other KDP author to write a letter of complaint to the CEO of Hachette regarding the ongoing dispute between your respective companies. Although I'm cc’ing Mr Pietsch this email out of courtesy I'm not going to send him an email supporting your case for the following reasons:

1. I don't think large companies such as Amazon should be inciting their customers to spam the CEO of other large companies.
2. The dispute is irrelevant to myself and probably 99.999% of KDP authors - Hachette don't publish my books and probably never will. Spamming their CEO is unlikely to increase the likelihood of them choosing to publish me, either. Consequently, as an author, their pricing policy doesn't affect me, although their inflated prices will make my books look a whole lot better value.
3. As a book consumer I'm relatively insulated by your dispute. I'm unlikely to pay their prices for an ebook, but if I decide one is worth it then I will source it from any ebookseller that is selling the book. If your dispute means you won't stock their books, then you just lose a sale to someone else.
4. Hachette and their pricing policy isn't the big problem around ebooks today, Amazon's KDP Select programme is. Your company is trying to become the sole provider of ebooks through exclusive deals with authors, augmented by a brazen attempt to bribe us. Check your records, I've resisted this programme since inception because it is anti-competitive and we all know monopolies are unhealthy. The benefits of Amazon Prime and Kindle Unlimited are obvious enough for consumers, who won't care less whether the books they can borrow through these schemes are exclusive to Amazon or not. In fact, by dropping the requirement for exclusivity you will find you can offer many more books to make your programmes even better at no cost to your company. You would even be able to drop the monthly bribe slush pot, so you would save money while enhancing the attractiveness of Amazon.

I hope you resolve your dispute with Hachette amicably, however please ask your staff to avoid canvassing my support in such matters in future.

Regards

Ray Sullivan

 

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Should Amazon Drop Exclusivity Clause?

There are a lot of people in the US trying out Amazon Kindle Unlimited (KU) right now.  So they should, it's free for the first month.  Not sure what the get-out clauses say, mind.  I often politely decline 'free trials' because I'm always a little suspect that it may be problematic to back out.  As I'm based in the UK this doesn't apply to me, the service is US only at the moment.

But assuming the option to stop isn't too onerous, it may be worth US book readers taking a look.  It isn't the only ebook subscription service going, mind, there's Oyster and Scribd that have been going for a while.  It may be the future of eBooks from a consumer perspective, but it's not gold all the way.

Like the other subscription services Amazon is charging a set monthly fee, in their case nearly $10 a month, to let you loan a set number of books - you can only have so many live at any time.  Probably what the more voracious readers have been waiting for.  However it's only a good deal if it holds the books you want to read.  Both Oyster and Scribd have done deals with the big publishers, so there's a good chance you can get to read many of the bigger sellers.  There's been some moaning on the Amazon boards that many of the big sellers aren't on there yet - that'll be down to Amazon's negotiating/bullying techniques.  I expect they are well developed right now.

What Amazon have got that the other two subscription serves don't have is all the KDP Select titles, the books the self published authors agreed to sell exclusively through Amazon.  Regular readers will know I'm not a fan of KDP Select, new readers only have to wander a little through my postings to see exactly where I stand.  Before I continue, I guess I should ask the question - do self published books make a difference? Well according to one report, self published books now account for one third of Amazon's total sales - these are conscious purchasing decisions made in the millions by ordinary people.  Considering self publishing doesn't have the marketing back up of the big league, that's impressive.  By the way, some of my books were in that third of all sales, so obviously there's an element of class in the buying public too.

So let's reverse the above question.  What do the other subscription services have that KU doesn't? Well, pretty much the remainder of the self published works world-wide, including many of the books that formed part of Amazon's third of self-published sales.  Mine are in there, somewhere. Hundreds of thousands of books - some good, some not so good, many sourced via Smashwords.  With exactly the same checks and balances in quality that the KU list have, which unfortunately is mainly formatting orientated. But self publishers know they won't sell many books if their stories aren't up to snuff, and I reckon there's a load of great self published books out there right now. There are probably a fair few dogs, too, which is where a subscription service comes in.  The reason these books aren't in the KU list is because the authors haven't agreed to exclusivity, so although most are for sale on Amazon, none are in KU.  Coupled with the wait for the big publishers to allow their books in that must make KU looking a bit patchy in some genres.

There's another big question to be asked about the subscription services in general.  Are they the future?  Possibly, maybe only if Amazon gets its way and somehow forces everybody who has a book worth a damn to sign up.  Probably not, though, because the way the royalties are calculated at present across all subscription models is unsustainable for the long term.  Of course Amazon and the others are relying on inertia to kick in - once signed up, subscribers will often find they go whole months without downloading a single book.  However the subscription service will not forget to draw down the monthly sub, because that's their business.  But if only the above mentioned voracious readers sign up long term, then I don't see the models working.  The only way that could work is for authors to practically give their work away for ever, regardless of how popular they are.  Most of us are giving our books away pretty much now to gain traction.  All those $0.99 books you bought recently will have reaped the authors, at most, $0.60.  If you bought them from Amazon, the author will have earned $0.35 (all before paying income tax, of course).  It takes a lot of sales to make a significant difference in an author's life and I suspect subscription will make that difference all the more elusive medium to long term.

And the authors are getting edgy, too. When KU was launched, despite it being relatively late to the ebook subscription market, there was a lot of debate on the various kindle and ebook related boards. Initially it looked like Amazon were in line to persuade a lot of authors to sign up for three months' exclusivity with them. But then there was a backlash, mainly from authors who had participated in KDP Select and had felt the service left them feeling underwhelmed. Following on, many would be KU authors have publicly decided against it. Sure there is going to be a number who will try it out, and the first month is likely to see raised transactions as subscribers try to milk the service before becoming liable for a month's fee. Certainly some Kindle authors who clearly have regular sales have noticed a dip.

For the avoidance of doubt I will not be allowing my books to appear on KU while it insists on exclusivity. As before I don't believe Amazon needs this business model - if they drop the anti-competitive approach they'll fill KU with books currently absent and will probably kill Oyster and Scribd in the process, which would be a shame. There may, however, be space for one or the other - every Coca Cola needs a Pepsi, that's capitalist 101. Maybe Scribd and Oyster will merge to create a larger opponent to Amazon, however the real challenge is likely to be Apple. Apple have stepped up in the last year, championing self publishers and maintaining competitive processes. Sure, they manage a virtual monopoly with their devices and eco-system, but it's a monopoly consumers enter out of choice. And Apple have the clout to face Amazon down. On the side-lines also sits Google, quietly trying to build its ebook service. Google don't appear to have tapped into self published books to any great degree yet, but my guess is that they will soon.

So subscription is likely to be a buoyant market for the next one to two years, but my guess is that it could be heading for some turbulent water soon. If you're an author, hold tight.


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Visit my Book Website here

 

    
    Visit Project: Evil Website here                                        Visit DLF Website here

        Follow me on Twitter  - @RayASullivan

        Join me on Facebook -  use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me