New Mel Keegan Novel ... new cover ... wow!

What ... a new Mel Keegan book? Surely you jest! But no ... the book is launching in a few days, it's called MINDSPACE, and to prove it, here's the cover. The fantastic new cover. Wow. Jade has worked miracles on this. Have you seen the Adventures in 3D blog lately?!

I haven't blogged in months now -- I just don't have the time. In fact, there's so many things to talk about, one hardly knows where to begin...

So we'll make a start with the launch of my new book, plus a quick update on the HELLGATE series, and I'll just make the time somehow to blog about all manner of things -- the state of the industry, the shape of iPads to come, gay news, and a lot more.

Am I back -- will I be blogging daily, as I used to? Well, not if you want HELLGATE finished by the end of 2010! The work ahead of me is still looking like a hiking holiday through the Himalayas. In winter. But I've knocked a good dent in what needed to be done and there are still six months left. So -- we'll call this an update on how the series is going: nicely. Stay tuned. Take nothing for granted. Expect the unexpected. Don't applaud, throw money...

So what's MINDSPACE about? Well, I'll share that in another post because I just used up the entire 11.27 minute window for posting to this blog, and I have to run! I'll give you few hints right here: gay science fiction, transhumanism, gaming, revenge, survival, technology, love, war. And that's a potent mix.

Cheers,
Mel

Jarrat and Stone are back ... and I'm stunned

Words fail me. I mean ... words ... just ... fail. What can I say? Have a look at these, and be amazed:

Ooof. It's like looking at stills from the movie. These are two "renders" out of a set of 10, all of which are online at Jade's Adventures in 3D -- and they're also uploaded at about twice this size, so go ahead, click the pic to see the larger shot. The Jarrat renders went up first, telling a scene from his POV. The Stone renders went up yesterday, telling the same scene from his POV.

They leave my fingers itching to write NARC. And I can't, because I'm churning my way steadily through Hellgate, and 2010 is about getting that whole series finished. This is sheer, unmitigated torture! I ask myself, could I possibly squeeze in a Jarrat-and-Stone short piece, something "only" around 50,000 words or so? In fact, there *is* a story which has been slated to be the high-action prologue to the next NARC novel -- and you all know what happened last time I did this. STOPOVER was supposed to be the opening "kaboom" for APHELION, and it ended up being taken right out and published on its own, because at 45,000 words it was a) too long to be an opening act, b) would have pushed the overall length of APHELION to 230,000 words, which is monstrous; and c) was quite large enough to be published as a pocket-size thriller.

Hence, I find myself literally, and enthusiastically, adrool ... and asking the question in all seriousness: can I squeeze in a NARC short, if I work, very very hard, fueled by the rush of seeing these pictures?

Stay tuned!

And please do link over to Jade's blog, where pictures like this are commonplace, what's more, she'll tell you how to do it yourself:

Cheers,
Mel

ICE WIND AND FIRE: the paperback and the black hole

A swift update on the ICE, WIND AND FIRE situation:

We've passed the "delivery deadline" for the proof, and DreamCraft has officially categorized it as DBU -- Down Black Hole. It's been too long since it was shipped to hold out much, if any, optimism that it'll show up.

The proof has been reordered. Allow 14 days minimum for it to be delivered here, so it can be eyeballed and given the OK, and cleared for sale.

Alas, this puts us right in the middle of the holidays, so it looks like the paperback launch of IWF will have to be put back into January, 2010.

Rats. You can get it as an ebook, but ... what can I tell you? US Mails and/or Australia Post strike again.

In the meantime, here's some eye-candy, guy-candy, to put the smile back on your face:

...and it would be fair to say, in all sincerity, that I am so gobsmacked, my bog has never been so smacked. Want more: you need to be on Jade's Adventures in 3D. There's a new digital fantasy every day -- makes me feel like I'm stuck in reverse! I have GOT to get my creative act in gear in 2010. I'm supposed to be a writer, not a website administrator ... right?!

NARC ... Hellgate, The Swordsman, the Vampyre, all need to be finished. Okay: deep breath. The work starts (I said starts!) in January.

Bear with me...

Cheers,

Mel

Amazon headhunting in the GLBT community ...!

Hi, guys ... I'm back, and with something significant to say. The "bad news" is breaking across the GLBT writing community right now ...

Amazon under fire for perceived anti-gay policy

Here's an outtake in a thimble, to give you the gist:

The number one word being used over and over on Twitter at this moment is "AmazonFail."

Why?

Users are angry about a perceived anti-gay policy that removes lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender books from appearing in sales rankings.

Author Mark Probst writes on his blog that two days ago, "mysteriously, the sales rankings disappeared from two newly-released high profile gay romance books: 'Transgressions' by Erastes and 'False Colors' by Alex Beecroft. Everybody was perplexed. Was it a glitch of some sort? The very next day HUNDREDS of gay and lesbian books simultaneously lost their sales rankings, including my book 'The Filly.'"

Probst eventually got a response from Amazon.com Advantage member services, he says.

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.

Best regards,

Ashlyn DMember ServicesAmazon.com Advantage

In other words, what about the children? Protect the children. Get gay content out of any area of the net that minors could possibly access.

Uh huh. Fair enough. I suppose. But it's going to be a long, slow clean-up for the Big A, because protecting kids also means shielding them from violence, coarse language and heterosexual pornowhatsessz. Massive amounts of Amazon will have to VANISH, pronto, for Amazon to be able to support its claim that glbt writers are not being discriminated against. It ain't just glbt writers who're going to get slapped. Normal Mailer, Harold Robbins, Jilly Cooper, Ann Rice ... all vanishing into the A-search bye and bye...

In fact, the new Amazon censorship is a lot of "same old, same old." Google is very discriminatory too; in fact, discrimination against glbt writers is so common on the web, one learns to live and deal with it. (Example: I've heard of e-zines that sell ad space, and "guarantee" a review of any book for which advertising is bought ... but they don't review glbt titles, even though they'll take the advertising dollar. The scene goes downhill from there,
with glbt-friendly pages and blogs now getting paid out less than a penny for clicks on their Google Ads, though they used to earn up to 75c for a click on the same ad, before company policy changed.)

Amazon's policy shift is subtle ... they seem to be reading tags. If your book is user-tagged "gay," you lose your page rankings ... if your books are not tagged, you keep your rankings.

Say, what?!

My books still have their rankings (!) because I never bothered to go in and tag them for Amazon search ... I know they're called "user tags," but it's the writers and publishers who are far, far more likely to add the tags, not customers. (A customer bookmarks the page where the book lives -- why would they want to run around tagging books, when they've already found the damned book?!) I've been advised (!) to get in there and tag my books for Amazon Search. Uh huh. So, writers and publishers tag their books to make them visible and searchable ... hence, it's dead easy for Amazon to figure out whose page rankings to yank!

They haven't yanked my sales rankings (yet??) because I don't carry the tags. Never bothered to go and do it, because at least 70% of all my sales are driven via my own bookstore, which lives here: http://www.dream-craft.com/melkeegan/catalog.htm

Meanwhile, however ... something else is happening at Amazon, which has nothing to do with tags (I'm untagged) or sales ranking (rankings are still there), and for the life of me I can't figure it out. My Amazon sales are down 80% this month, so far. My sales switched off, as if someone had killed the power, at the end of March. I did great in February and March (actually super-great in March), and then very poorly indeed so far in April ... with the sales rankings still "on" and attached. Go figure

Fortunately Keegan ain't Amazon-centric; they can't hurt me very much. And I know this is going to sound self-centered, so let me hint, here and now before I say it -- behind the scenes, I'm thinking long and hard, and coming up with a way to turn this whole lousy situation not only to my own advantage, but to the advantage of all glbt writers. I think I have a terrific idea, but I need to thrash it out, think it through, research the costs involved, before I share it publicly. However -- hang on, because the light I'm seeing at the end of the tunnel is NOT the train; and it's a nice, bright light ... bear with me a while.

As I said, fortunately (for me; and I'm not being selfish here) Amazon/Kindle only ever accounted for about 30% of my sales overall, so I still have 3 out of 4 of my oars in the water. But I know that other writers absolutely rely on Amazon, and they're in dire straits.

My titles are also retailed via Payloadz, and 70% of all sales are driven via my own bookstore -- so, the violent drop in Amazon sales might smart, but it's not going to kill me stone dead. Other writers are not so lucky -- and I'm not talking, here, about self-publishers!

Most of the writers with whom I'm in touch (about a dozen full-professional) are publishing with
print-media companies in the US; a few are with ebook publishers. Amazon sales are a huge part of the income they get from writing. And this discrimination is going to hurt them badly. As I just said in a comment on the previous post, it's enough to make you weep tears of blood.

Now, as you probably know, my publisher went defunct about eight years ago, leaving me with a big backlist and two thumbs to twiddle! I got busy and have marketed my old stuff while writing new. Amazon was very kind to me, sales-wise, till the end of March '09. I still have no idea of what happened then; however, I'd only gotten around to putting 12 books there, out of 27 on my list -- and as for Kindle, there's only 6 there. So their ability to hurt me is limited.

The number of other venues for selling books online is growing all the time -- Smashwords comes to mind. (Speaking of which, Mark Coker tells me they just went online with a new "meatgrinder," which is their industrial strength, wide-scale document converter. You upload a .doc file or an .rtf, and tell it what formats to spit out. It does the whole thing. Should be easy ... we had problems with it last month, but I'm 95% sure it was all about time-out woes. Will be taking another crack at it shortly, and with luck it'll work just fine.)

Amazon doesn't have a monopoly -- it's important to realize this. I also acknowledge that they're the "1000lb gorilla" in this neck of the woods. For some weird reason, READERS trust Amazon over Lulu or anyone else. This is where Amazon can really hurt writers. Customers trust Amazon, and are more likely to buy a book from them than, for instance, Lulu.com or Smashwords.com, or whatever.

The trick will be to find a way to get around the discrimination ... without taking on Amazon in a stand-up fight. Because one does not trade blows with King Kong and expect to come out of it with one's nose in the same place where nature intended. Picture Daffy Duck with his bear on top of his head.

Our mission (and we'd better damned choose to accept it!) is to either persuade readers that it's safe, and good, to buy books elsewhere ... or, to find other ways to bend the existing Amazon model (discriminatory tactics and all) to our advantage.

Stay tuned.

Cheers,
MK

From the depths of the Easter long weekend

'Tis a season of chocolate rabbits and eggs you could never make an omelet with; days prompting that old classic joke about "Save me a hot cross bun, I'll be back on Monday." A four-day weekend where the country is closed, Thursday to Tuesday, and if you happen to have forgotten to get a printer cartridge or a spindle of DVD blanks, tough luck.

It's Easter. That time of picnic horse races and the aroma of Aztec mild hallucinogens wafting out of the malls, and blazing-eyed zealots actually, physically, in reality, having themselves nailed (with real nails and real hammers) to big wooden crosses on the beach in major cities, while the crowd looks on in aghast awe, wondering at their sanity, and perhaps asking themselves the inevitable question. Think about it. Or, don't. It's a subject that'll cost you sleep.

Anyway --

Keegan is still alive, still working! Just not blogging here as much as I used to -- Google having buried me in the page rankings! In fact --

I've been blogging elsewhere in the last week:

I've been contributing to this blog, which lives over at http://write-edit-publish.blogspot.com/ ... and it's a lot of fun, actually. It's interesting to quantify the subjects of writing, editing, publishing. It's also a great blog, and growing like a mushroom. From here on, when readers ask questions about the trade of the writer, editor, publisher, this is where I'll be answering them -- I'll just post briefly here and give the link.

And I've been on Digital Kosmos too:

The dome of the sky

Focus and contrast: red hot pokers imitate art

Cafe culture goes way upmarket

In the time warp ... Adelaide, of course!

Fossils, front and center!

Reflections teasing eyes and brain

...and in the background I'm working on the ebook/paperback version of the first of the LEGENDS novels; and if I can ever get a spare afternoon or two, I'll be rereading the Hellgate novels, ready to start writing. I hope to get a start in May. If I get get a start then, and nothing too bad happens, I can be done by Christmas -- both books. Personally, I can't wait to have them finished. This project has been "on" for about 20 years, at least for me. I wrote the first version of The Rabelais Alliance in 1989, about the same time as Ice, Wind and Fire came out with GMP. Naturally, I had high hopes of being able to sell a gay SF series to them ... and/but the rest is history. Rabelais has a longer pedigree than the British Royal Family, and having the whole story told will be a dream come true.

Little else is happening in the Mel-o-Sphere. Life is mostly about work, right now. Family is okay, if you stretch a point. Some are limping around waiting to heal, some are being deployed in the military, some are waiting for eye surgery! Me? Oh, surviving. Wishing I could crack some code and crank up sales, so I could tell the day job to go buzz off (and that's a euphemism).

Look for updates, tweaks, additions and rebuilds in the main website in the next few weeks, too. The work has been mapped and planned, just has to be done. I think LEGENDS goes to press first, and then the website gets its work next. April or May.

In short, life is a yawn, so --

Ciao for now,
MK

Gay book covers and the "wow" factor

Being gobmacked is coming more and more naturally to me; it happens quite often. I just got the first mockup design from DreamCraft, for the cover that's about to be slapped on the paperback of Legends. Get a load of this:

Click on the sample to see the image at 800 pixels wide ... woah.

This is the "rough" which is done at 100dpi, where elements are pushed around, recolored, resized, swapped over, dropped completely ... fonts get changed, colors are corrected. ((n other words, the final printed cover could be very different, but this gives us a starting place.)

This is the first generation of the "rough," and I'm (yet again) struck speechless.

I'm TRYING to take a day off today, but it's not happening. Too many problems -- it would be afternoon before I even got out of here, and the sky seems to want to drop weird little globules of water. I'd been thinking ... a long hike in one of the national parks. Scott Creek or whatever. Not going happen today -- try again next week.

So, in the background here, the first book of Legends is being reassembled, turning from a blog to a manuscript. It's literally being copied and pasted out of Blogger into Word. This is a little weird and wonderful ... first time I've done a novel this way.

I'm also being asked by several younger writers if I would produce something -- book or blog -- like a "hand holding" exercise, where I talk folks through the process, from the initial stages of getting a book onto paper, right through to marketing the finished book. Sure -- but not on this blog! Google has me dead and buried. With page rankings set to "0" ... well, the only people inside the USA (and that's 90% of one's audience!) who can find anything I write on this page are folks who already know it's here. Shades of Pirates of the Caribbean.

So -- sure, I can do this, and I'll float an appropriate blog, perhaps as early as this afternoon (since my day off ain't gonna be happenin' ... again).

Ciao for now,
MK

Here ends the first book of the Fall of the Atlantean Empire

Good news from the Mel-o-Sphere: LEGENDS is complete, up to the "End of Book One" marker, which is where I'm going onto hiatus with it, in order to turn my attention to Hellgate.

Rather than string it out into next week, I put the last half dozen posts up at the same time:
65. The Winds of Chance (part one)
66. The Winds of Chance (part two)
67. The Winds of Chance (part three)
68. The Winds of Chance (part four)
69. The Winds of Chance (part five)
70. The Oracle Dreams
71. Afterword
72. The art gallery

Please do note the art gallery on the tag-end of that list! A couple of new pieces have been done recently, and one of them blows me away. Click on this piece to see it at full size -- the shrunk-to-fit version pasted in by Blogger doesn't do it justice ... this piece has the quality of classical art, and I'm still in the "wow" stage:

The feedback on the format in which this novel was published as been varied indeed:

• 25% of people were blissfully happy to swing by every day or few days, and get a free hit.


• 25% of readers said, "I can't read this in bits -- tell me when it's finished, I'll download it all together."


• 10% of readers said, "I can't read this much on screen. Tell me when a paperback comes out, I'd be happy to buy it."


• 10% said, "I don't have the time to deal with little bits of reading. I want a properly formatted ebook, even if you charge for it."


• 15% of readers said, "I like the concept of a free serial novel, but I don't care for fantasy. Tell me when you bring out an SF or thriller novel."


• 10% of readers said, "I like ebooks, but I can't stand serials (I hate cliffhangers). Tell me when the whole thing's finished.


• 5% of readers said, "I like fantasy, and serials are okay. but I like my gay fantasy red-hot sexy. Can I get an uncut version of Legends? Would be happy to pay for an ebook.

This seems to cover everything, and leaves everyone happy.

It's great to have some firm data. So we're doing a newsletter this afternoon, informing people that (drum roll)... the first book of the trilogy is finished (download it all of a piece, if this is what you needed); and a properly structured ebook is being prepared; there can also be a Legends Uncut version, for those who wanted this; and a stunning cover is being put around this novel; it'll be available as a paperback in a few weeks.

I might vanish for a couple of days now ... I have the priceless opportunity to take a couple off, and I think I'm going to grab the opportunity. Might pack the HELLGATE books, start reading them while I kick back and unwind.

Reading the whole thing properly is the first thing I must do ... these characters have to "talk" to me in their own unique voices. Mick Vidal doesn't sound like Harry Shapiro, who doesn't sound like Neil Travers, who doesn't sound like Barb Jazinsky. And so on. These characters are never far from "in my head," but I need to really, seriously get back into their world. Then, two BIG books by Christmas, and the series is finished. Woah.

Hence -- a couple of days off while I have the chance!

Ciao for now,
MK

Writer beware: marketing deals? Be very, very cautious

I'm wondering how many other writers reading this blog (and there are about a dozen that I know of ... hi, guys!) received this rather outrageous piece of unsolicited advertising ... you want to call it spam, go ahead and call it spam ... and since they spammed me, I'll consider myself at liberty to paste the whole thing in here, verbatim -- and then talk about it below:










You've published a book. What's next?

The hard part about writing a book should be writing the book. You're not a digital marketing guru - you're an author.

So let AuthorWeb take care of the digital stuff. Here are some of the things we can do for you:

• Upload your manuscript to Google for Google Book Search
• Upload your manuscript to Amazon for sale on the Kindle
• Upload your manuscript to "Smashwords" for all other ebook distribution
• Make sure you are listed with Bowker's Books in Print program so your book is listed on all e-commerce sites
• Work with Barnes & Noble.com's Small Press division for web (and possible store) distribution
• Work with your POD service (Lightning Source, Lulu, Xlibris, etc.) to make sure you are getting the value you've paid forList you on author sites such as Filedby

Other services may include:
Enrolling you in AuthorsGlobe and other services, so you can get virtual speaking engagements
Setting up Facebook/MySpace/Twitter accounts so you can jump on that social networking thingSetting up a blog so you can tell the world what you're doing

How do we do this? We've been in this business for 22 years. We've watched it evolve from a print-and-paper world to a digital world - so fast that many authors are left hanging with no support. How do you navigate all the rules and forms? Why is an ISBN essential for selling your book? Once you've got your book listed on Amazon, how do you get the word out so people can buy it?

What we do

Basic Services - $1000 Upload files to Google for Google Book SearchNegotiating author's agreement with GoogleUpload files to Amazon for Kindle ebook sales Get listed (or enhance existing listing) on Amazon/B&N.com for print salesNegotiate the best distribution deal possible for both Amazon and B&NWork with your POD service for any further (independent) distribution - getting all those forms filled outEnhance your listing with Books in PrintEnhance your listing on FiledbyAuthor and other websites

Viral Marketing Services - $1500 Creation of Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter pages
Creation of blogSocial networking tutorial, so you can maintain these pages yourself

We have helped authors for 22 years.

Contact us today to learn more about how AuthorWeb can help you.

Exclusive: I've negotiated a special deal with mediabistro.com to offer all of you a $10 discount on a premium AvantGuild membership. Members get access to a wealth of professional resources and information, including their "Pitching an Agent" series, health insurance options for freelancers, and discounts on mediabistro.com courses and instructional videos. Just make sure to click on this link in order to claim your discounted membership.


END OF SPAM

Now, I don't appreciate spam any more than the next person does, and the only reason these people are not getting a very annoyed email from me is that they dropped two names that are new to me. Author's Globe and MediaBistro have not yet crossed my path -- and that path has cut swathes all over the Internet. I'd have stumbled over them all on my lonesome sooner or later.

I'll trade: no stinging email from Mel in exchange for two dropped names by them.

The rest of this stuff? I've already done it. YOU've already done it. EVERY author who has the talent and courage to call him/herself a professional has already done it.

The only writers who haven't done this stuff are amateurs, whose books are (sorry guys; it's nothing personal -- it's just unavoidably truth) not yet up to snuff. Amateurs who have several years and another 250,000 words of writing, self-correcting and learning to go before they can work their way into the entry-level of the professional arena. (Notice that the above spiel begins, "You've published a book." A book. One. It had better be the 3rd or 5th or 10th book you've writtenbefore you tried publishing one, because 99.7% of first books are tripe -- this much is fact.)

Almost without exception, first outing writers are not ready to sell copies. They'll get stinking reviews, lose a lot of money, get a lousy reputation as artists, and very likely have the "heart" knocked out of them. They might never write again, even though the latent ability is very probably there inside them.

The only people making money out of this kind of deal are the shrewd manipulators at the controls.

For gods' sake, all genuine writers (even the upper ranks of the wannabe authors) already have blogs, and websites, and Amazon listings, and ISBNs, and a thorough knowledge of Bowker, and Lulu, and ... so on.

You and I -- having been there, done that -- would rate the above list of chores to be worth about $250, max. And some of the items on that list are professional suicide.

I just went through a wringer to get my books OUT of the Google Book Search program, and these jokers are advocating it! They actually recommend a system that would upload 20% of an Agatha Christie novel -- including the END. Get this straight: You want to beat your brains out writing something like Death on the Nile, and then have Google "tell the ending" to everyone who searches on your name or title ... for free?!

Other forms of slow suicide are FaceBook and similar. Chatchatchatchatchatchat... Amateur and wannabe writers, take note and beware: Very soon, you'll be spending the time you ought to be investing in learning your craft, and WRITING, in chatting. You won't be writing; at best you'll be blogging, and at worst you'll be babbling. Writing and studying time goes down the chute, and -- it happens routinely -- you can wind up with carpal tunnel syndrome, with nothing to show for it.

Every pro or semi-pro writer reading this has already filled the above list, and a lot more besides. Personally? I've got that list quadrupled in terms of initiatives I've undertaken. I also have 26 titles on my backlist ... and I still occasionally get "dead days," or days without sales.

Here's a fact you might not like: the average professional writer earns about US$3000 from writing, per annum. Some of us earn a hell of a lot more, and I'm privileged to be among them ... but it didn't happen overnight, or even swiftly. I've been in this game for 25 years.

If you're an aspiring writer, you cannot afford to shell out $2,500 for services you could perform yourself. A day arrives very soon in your career (long before you find a publisher or take the plunge and POD it yourself) when you must commit to what you're doing. LEARN. You'll have to be your own must ruthless editor, your own most ingenious publicist, your own dynamo of a marketing analyst, and your own demon accountant.

The first thing an accountant will tell you is to "plug the leaks: Look after the pennies and the dollars will look after themselves." Writing is your business. If you were a chef, you'd expect to work long, hard hours for nothing in the early days while building up your restaurant. If you didn't want to do this, you'd go work for someone else.

Writing is no different. You'll work for years to gather and hone your skills; then you'll work for months or years writing not one but several books. This is how you become good enough to charge money for your work, have people pay you, call it money well spent, and buy your next book.

My heart aches for aspiring writers who get drawn into deals like the one outlined in the above spam. I wish there were some regulatory body to stop these people, but alas, there isn't. It's down to folks like me -- us -- to speak up.

Uh ... pass it on.

Cheers,
MK

Death by Google

Well, I said I'd be back -- and I'm only a day late. Only. The wifi connection was "up," but there was no opportunity to blog ... as well as nothing significant to blog about. You certainly don't need to know about w.o.r.k, and how it totally screws up your life!

However, I'm back in a lull where I can transform myself from drone-for-hire to optimistic-and-opportunistic-writer. [short pause while Keegan puts on Writer's Hat]

You can probably tell from the relative brevity and occasional invisibility of recent posts, that life ain't what it used to be! The global economic downslide has hit everyone, everywhere -- physical bookstores are closing, publishers ain't publishing too much anymore, and writers are writing less and reading the employment ads more. And Keegan is no different. Middle of '08, we were screaming along and I was hoping to "give up the day job" by about May or June of '09. Not going to happen this year, guys --

In fact, in the immediate future, I'm going to have a good deal less time than usual to spend blogging and chatting: I have to get my priorities hammered out. I need time to write, and to do promotional activities, and blogging, alas, is going to be shuffled waaaaay down the list.

Add to this the fact that Google never did respond to my request to get my page rankings restored for this blog (they zeroed me out five months ago now, and apparently refuse to talk about it), and you have a blog with 350+ posts up, which is struggling to get 10 visitors per day ... which sadly (in fact, it's tragic) means that the time I invest in this blog is a dead loss, speaking in purely "business" terms.

Why did Big G zero out my page rankings? I'm clueless. I've read their rules. I've abided by all of them. I have been critical of their policies regarding Adsense on gay-friendly pages (where publishers are paid out in fractions of a penny per click on ads for which the advertiser paid to Google dollars, plural, for said click). I've begun to suspect there is a human monitor who reviews criticisms of The Goog, and when they recognize criticism, you get ... terminated. I can think of nothing else to account for what's going on.

So --

Time to shuffle my priorities. I need more time to write and do promotional work; I have less "spare" time to simply chat. I can certainly continue to post to this blog about book launches and special deals, and reviews, and webpage rebuilds. Hey, that's "promotion." But -- and I really am sad to be saying this -- I won't be able to write about every subject under the sun, as I have done for nine months!

Eventually, I'll be recutting this blog into two or three new blogs -- but again, this is a very time-consuming project. Put it this way: if we want Legends finished, and Hellgate finished, the time has to come from somewhere!

This is a very sad occasion for me: I've enjoyed blogging, and if there were any way to keep on doing it ... I would.

Blame the global recession if you like. Or blame Google (which is probably far closer to the mark!) for being a righteous, "true faith" prima dona who disapproves of gay-friendly sites and punishes criticism harshly.

To those readers (you know who you are!) who have been following this blog for months now: thank you! It's been a tremendous learning experience for me. Tune in occasionally, because when I get Hellgate finished (Christmas '09??) I'll have the time to cut The World According to Mel into Keegan's World, plus at least one other blog besides. And since those blogs won't have been "Googled to Death," theoretically I should be able to chat again. When you're chatting for a wide daily readership, you can rationalize the time invested as (!) promotional activities.

What's next, for me? Heavy-duty marketing. All titles available at Kindle, Mobi and Smashwords. All titles available as hardcovers. Press releases and review copies going in every direction; and ... so on.

Summer is winding down into fall ... the rain won't be far away now. Cool weather is good for getting some work done, and I do feel inspiration starting to bite. So --

Ciao for a while: I will be back, but not daily!
Thanks for reading, I appreciate it...
MK

And now for something entirely different

About a decade ago -- when nanotechnology was entering the common vocabulary -- I read an SF book called Bloom (quite a good novel, actually), and then forgot all about it.

Much later, I read a feature article in some magazine, about how nano is being used in PAINT and COSMETICS these days; how the damned things, being so itsy-bitsy, can and do get right through the barrier of your skin and ... golly only knows what they're going to do to odd items like your heart, your liver. Your brain.

Well, far be it from me to be a doomsayer and a disaster monger. Heaven only knows, the worlds of NARC and Hellgate aren't likely to come to pass without nano. Turns out, we need those little guys.

Still, it makes you wonder -- when you know that the very cells of our bodies are turning to plastic. And then (all the while wondering) you stumble over a video like this:



Like I said, makes you wonder! And I think I'm going to pull our Will McCarth's SF novel, Bloom, and read it again. Last time I read it, I was on a plane halfway between Anchorage, Alaska and Tokyo. (I remember, I was also reading William Gibson's The Difference Engine -- that one, I finished while lying flat on my back in a departure lounge at Narita Airport.)

And I think ... just maybe ... I feel a novel idea coming on!

So, when someone asks you, "Where do you get your ideas from?" Well, blame the nano -- in all probability, your brain is already full of them. Like mine.

Bizarre concept, isn't it?

Gay books gone gaga at Google

Is it just me, or does Google seem to be "all over the shop" lately?

I'm still thinking along similar lines to my post yesterday, which was about getting seen, recognized, and plucked out of the ocean by the Searchbot. It used to be about keywords and relevance. Now? I have no idea.

Looking for blog venues where one could reasonably expect "free online gay fiction" to be listed, I search on (wait for it -- this is going to astonish you) "free online gay fiction."

Woah. Have you picked yourself up off the floor, where you collapsed in shock? Then, let us continue:

Now, you couldn't be much more pellucid in your keywords. And the results? Curious, to say the least.

My own post from yesterday was top of the list, but only because I'm searching from an address NOT inside the US. Remember, Google has my page rankings zeroed out, so anyone searching from an US address won't be seing me in any search results.

Next: a rather nice personal book blog with a handful of posts looking at gay novels, none of them free or online.

Next: an article repository, where features are FREE, and stored ONLINED, and *one* of them talks about a GAY individual who was busted for perving on minors.

Next: a personal blog with a post asking, "Why did President Lincoln FREE the slaves," and considering ONLINE resources. The words "gay" and "fiction" do not appear anywhere.

Next: at last, a real one. "Finding Free Ebooks" at blogger -- where (shockingly) free ebooks are listed. Good range of titles -- bit difficult to navigate the blog due to the slightly odd template design, but there's some gay ebooks there, and they're free. (Won't do me any good to pursue a listing there, because "serial" fiction is not listed.)

Next: personal book blog featuring ... books. Handful of gay topics, none free or online.

Next: political blog with a post having a (justified) rant about anti-gay sentiment, featuring the terms "free advice" and "online newsletters." The term "fiction" was never mentioned.

Next: personal blog with a post talking about an SF party to be held at an address on Gay Street -- inquiries online.

Next: Canadian radio station talks about pulp fiction, one character in which is "nerdy and gay."

Next: personal blog with a post giving the blogger's top ten recommendations for published gay fiction. Not online, not free.

Then you get onto page two, and it really goes haywire, getting worse and worse with each horrific shot in the dark. At the top of the page Google proudly announces, "Results 1 - 10 of about 80,664 for free online gay fiction," and "Sorted by relevance."

Out of the first page, the Bot was right in 2 instances: me (yesterday's post -- I was absolutely, bloody determined to get through to the Bot what I was talking about, if you recall!) and the Finding Free Ebooks blog which would be difficult to miss because it's CALLED "Finding Free Ebooks." Missing that one would be a lot like missing "Aricia's Gay Book Blog."

(If you Google the term "gay book", so long as you're OUTSIDE America, you should find yours truly at #5 with http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2009/02/gay-book-making-news-for-all-wrong.html, and Aricia at #8 with http://ariciasgaybookblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/gay-mystery-and-ancient-chinese-magic.html. If you Google "gay book" from INSIDE America, you won't find me at all -- Google killed my page rankings, if you recall, so it doesn't matter what I write about, what keywords I use, or what I entitle the post!)

So here's the question: WTF is going on with Google? They're just so wrong, they're hardly useful anymore! Thoughts, anyone??

In other news --

Chapter Twelve concluded at Legends today,
and
AG has uploaded the interview we did a few days ago, to her book blog...

Otherwise, the Mel-o-Sphere is a vacuum. Which is kind of restful, in a way.

Ciao for now,
MK

FREE online gay fiction! (And other goodies)

The title of this post is FREE ONLINE GAY FICTION.

And just in case the Googlebot (which is infamous for the peanut-like dimensions of its brain) is having a hard time interpreting that, allow me to expound:

FREE, as in "at no cost, no charge;"
ONLINE, as in, "on the Internet, in cyberspace;"
GAY, as in "not straight; bent; queer; you know ... gay;"
FICTION, as in, "a story, a novel, a plot; not a documentary."

So: FREE ONLINE GAY FICTION could be interpreted as "no-cost Internet-driven bent stories." Or "cost-free web published queer novels." Or, "no charge cyberspace not-straight plots."

I wonder if there enough KEYWORDS in this post to get some Bot's attention, and get through to its microscopic mind that I'm talking about --

You guessed. Free online gay novels.

Because, I'll tell you something ... you have a hard time giving the damned things away! I mean, there's Legends, commencing Chapter Twelve with about 35,000 words online, and I'm increasingly at a loss as to how to get people's attention.

I can't just make the novel itself searchable by Google, because the very thing you don't want is for some twinkie, underage and all, searching for hair care tips or skin care products, pulling up a page in which two very male males are getting ... companionable. Why did the page pull up? Because the text on said page speaks of "hair" and "skin." Bad, bad idea to let the engines index it.

So, since 0% of traffic is going to be coming from search engines, visitors can only come from directories.

And this is where it gets interesting!

I don't recall Google Directories being the same animal as DMOZ, when first I started marketing my work ... back in those days, Goog was Goog and DMOZ seemed to be a bunch of dessicated old wannabe academics with the power of god to award lesser mortals a place among the halcyon pages of their divine directory -- or not. And it was usually not. At the time, you could submit your blog or site to multiple Google Directories, which gave you half a chance of being discovered since you had cross-referenced and indexed yourself.

Turns out, Goog and DMOZ are now the same thing. The dessicated drivellers have gotten control of Google Directories, meaning -- yep -- you can now only have one submission category. (And tough luck if you're fantasy, AND gay, AND a novel, AND a serial!) Playing it safe, asking nicely for Legends to be listed under Gay, means a work of serious fiction is going to be listed along with the oceans of pornography, the rivers of erotica and similar ... stuff.

Not that it's likely to be an issue, because the DMOZ people are reported to be so far "down" on sites carrying commercials, your name could be Moses, you could be uploading the word of God himself, and if you carry commercials in the margin for Guttenberg, the local Synagogue, and Kosher groceries by mailorder -- DMOZ will take a great delight in rejecting you, and chucking God out right along with you.

So ... directories are a little bit thin on the ground. I spoke yesterday about something called http://www.blogcatalog.com/ ... and utterly to my confusion, Legends was rejected by these bods, too. Here is some vaguest clue as to why the blog isn't good enough for them:

Dear Mel Keegan,
Thank you for submitting your blog LEGENDS: a digital novel by Mel Keegan
(http://mel-keegan-legends.blogspot.com/2009/01/1.html) to BlogCatalog.

Unfortunately upon reviewing your blog we are unable to grant it access to the directory.

The most common reasons for not getting into Blog Catalog are:

We could not verify ownership of your blog. A link back, widget or meta-tag is required to verify site ownership.
The URL you submitted is not a blog.
The URL you submitted is solely for commercial purposes, or is suspected to be spam.
Your blog is brand new and/or doesn't have enough content to make it truly valuable.
If this is the case, please resubmit after you have made more postings.
Your blog contains pornographic material.
At the time of review your blog was unavailable or there was a typo in your submission URL.
Please make sure the URL submitted is correct and accessible.

The above list is complete twaddle: the backlink was there (meaning, I'm potentially feeding them traffic even now! I'm about to delete it, naturally); the URL is at blogger -- duh; it's not "solely commercial" -- it's a bloody novel; it's not spam; it's not brand new -- there's 35,000 words of fiction and a half dozen works of art there; there is no pornographic material there -- you'd have to be a puritan of the first water to file the love scene under "porn"; Blogger was not "down" at the time -- it hasn't been "down" in months; and the URL is both correct and accessible.

I have the strongest feeling that someone at BlogCatalog got as far as the Caveat (which is required by law and decency), and cut corners to save time on the job. They hit the "reject" button as soon as they saw the words "adult themes, realistic violence, and material of a sensual nature." In their world, the literal translation for the above is PORN. They're dead wrong, but I can do nothing about it. On this criteria, everything from Highlander to Conan the Barbarian would be filed under porn. It's so moronic, I'm astonished.

At the same time I also contacted a third directory, with an application for a listing ... no reply. I think the word "gay" probably gives them a rash.

It's going to get tougher from here on, because I've already hit the high spots, and I do believe homophobia is at work in at least a couple of cases. (Plus commerciophobia, in the case of DMOZ, where it's advertising of any description that brings the dusty old dears out in hives.)

Okay ... back to the drawing board, think of something new!

So I started surfing, looking for opportunities -- and after having been locked out of the Kindle Store (not through homophobia, but through xenophobia! Amazon Kindle is a privilege not -- yet?? -- permitted to foreign devils, such as Aussies, and Brits, and all souls born beyond those fabled shores) ... so, well, let's say I was surprised and delighted to be made welcome --

At the Mobipocket Store. Publishers wanting to sign up? The line forms to the left! I alerted DreamCraft to the possibilities, and it was "on" at once.

Right now we're looking into Mobi as a serious alternative to the Kindle store. To begin with, Kindle users can read Mobi files. Then, the store is almost as big as the Kindle store, with over 120,000 titles. And -- being a French company -- Mobi is not as hidebound as Amazon. They do have a gay/lesbian category, but most gay books are not listed there. They're listed under SF or Fantasy, or Romance or whatever, because Europeans are not so touchy on the subject: the word "gay" doesn't make too many people in Span, France, Germany, start to itch and sneeze. (The titles listed under Gay/lesbian are sizzling hot and short on plot. Uh huh.)

So here's where we are right now: we'd have been at Smashwords with three titles today (!) if only the upload server wasn't "down." Since it is -- well, we'll try again tomorrow. And we'll be at the Mobipocket store by the weekend, all being well.

The only downside I can see with Mobi is the DRM thing ... Digital Rights Management is, at this time, a bit of a mess. However, it does prevent people from just sending copies to friends, willy nilly -- which is, alas, what happens with unprotected PDFs. (If your name is Jeffrey Archer or Stephen King, you sell so many thousands of the things, you don't care; but if you're still celebrating each sale, as most self-marketers are, the file-sharing hurts).

So, the DRM protection of Mobi files is certainly going to get up a lot of readers' noses, but if you can live with this, people --

Keegan on your Kindle is a reality ... no thanks, mind you, to Amazon! You'll be able to get Fortunes of War, Lords of Harbendane and Dangerous Moonlight for your Kindle in a few days. We'll issue the backlist a few at a time this way.

And at the same time (as soon as the Smashwords server is back up) you'll be able to say you've got Keegan on the phone ... Smartphones and iPhones are catered to here: Stanza. We'll start with the same set of three, and go on, and out, from there.

To see what it's going to be like reading on a phone, I resized a browser:
That's not too bad at all, is it? I could live with that.

So there you have it. Progress is being made, albeit slowly. Legends remains problematical, not because of itself, but because it's a heck of a lot harder than I would ever have expected, getting listed in any location where interested will see it. Also, the "viral url" concept, where the address is emailed from person to person, is a non-starter. No go. The worst that can happen is that I'll finish the thing and issue it via Payloads, Smashwords, Mobi, Amazon, Lulu and whatever else has come along by then.

In other words, we'll see how we go.

Cheers,
MK

Writing and publishing for a technological explosion

Today I'm working on the files for the titles I want to send to Amazon Kindle by the end of the week. We're doing Nocturne and Twilight, The Deceivers, and two (or three) others where I'm not absolutely sure what they'll be. Could be White Rose, or Swordsman, or ... whatever. Depends what I feel like when I get down to the brass-tacks conversion work in the morning.

This morning, I blew off an hour (the only hour I had to invest in this ... work was calling. Loudly; demandingly) to figure out the process of how to get the book out of the DTP software (Serif) and into stripped HTML, without any loss of italics, chapter formatting, paragraph indents, and so on.

Done: process figured out. Now, I ought to be able to fix the other books in a couple of hours in the morning ... and, since they're digital, they ought to pop up in the Amazon engine more or less in real time. I hope. If so, we'll be having our Kindle launch at the weekend.

A couple of news items crossed my desk this morning, and for a change it's not bad news ... it's good. For a start, Amazon just announced that it intends to make its Kindle range available for smartphones:

Amazon has unveiled a new version of its Kindle reader, with a company spokesman having also announced that Amazon plans to offer Kindle books on cellphones.

This news countered Google's announcement that the 1.5 million public domain books available on its Google Book Search offering will soon be available (free, of course) via a new cellphone application.

I believe that cellphones will quickly outpace the dedicated e-book readers, including the Kindle, as the platform of choice for e-book readers. Leading the pack? The iPhone, ironically.

When asked by The New York Times a year ago about the quality of the Amazon Kindle, Apple CEO Steve Jobs famously said, that "it doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore".

(It was an ironic statement, because one heard it by reading — all the more so for me, as I first read it on a Kindle.)

It's worth noting that Amazon.com sold more Kindles (at least 500,000) in its first year of sales than the number of iPods that Apple sold in its first year (378,000).

Apple may not understand the value of e-books, but iPhone users will embrace them anyway. The reason is simple: The iPhone has a decent sized, high-quality screen. And its user base includes millions of people who love to do everything on their iPhones, including reading, which they're already doing with online content.
http://reseller.co.nz/reseller.nsf/feat/936AAD17BF9EDEC0CC2575660012FD28

(Incidentally, the above article, on Reseller News, is extremely good. There's a lot in it for writers, publishers, readers and technologists to mull over. I urge you to read it: Here comes the e-book revolution)

Ebooks are almost certainly where the future is ... they cost a hell of a lot less; they weigh nothing; they save trees; they let writers say what they what they want to say, and say it FAST. Going through the channels of traditional publishing, what you write/say today won't be read/heard for YEARS. What you said in 2003 might no longer be relevant in 2005.

I've been saying this for eons, and it was great to see the point validated here:

The book publishing industry is one of the most backward, musty, obsolete businesses in our economy. While every other kind of information moves at the speed of light, the process of publishing a book is like something from the Middle Ages.

For authors, it can take months to even find a literary agent willing to represent their work. Then the agent takes months to find a publisher. Then it takes ages for the publishing company to get the book out there.

People are already circumventing all this by self-publishing. The self-publishing industry is the only area of paper-book publishing that's thriving right now. Soon enough, a huge number of authors are finally going to get fed up with the publishing industry and just self-publish electronically. They'll hire their own freelance editors and do the marketing themselves. The publication of a finished manuscript will take minutes, rather than months.

Old-school thinkers in the publishing industry will lament the slap-dash nature of self-published e-books, and sniff that books are no longer published with the quality and care that they used to achieve. (Never mind that book publishers abandoned high standards years ago in previous cost-cutting initiatives.) The world will pass them by as the book industry undergoes the same transition that happened with the media and blogs.
http://reseller.co.nz/reseller.nsf/feat/936AAD17BF9EDEC0CC2575660012FD28

There's actually more good news, if you "look past what's on the screen," or as they used to say, read between the lines.

View the industry, for a moment, from the perspective of the person (the buyer) who decides what books are going to make it into the physical, streetfront store:

Every month I meet with publishing reps who arrive with information sheets on all the books they’ll be releasing in the next month or two.

We go through them, one at a time, talking about what makes each of them “right” — or not — for our clientele. I look at the cover image, read the blurb , consider the title, the author, the price, the number of pages, whether or not it has a hard or soft cover, and how many other similar/better titles we may already have on the shelves. Then I listen to my gut. If it says okay, I think about how many copies we’re likely to sell and how long it could take to do so. I order anything from 0 to 10 copies; by far, the majority are refused.

But even to appear on the form means they have gone through the agony of being submitted to a publisher, assessed for the sales and marketing potential, been accepted, edited and printed. Thousands of manuscripts never make it that far. Publishers make mistakes, but their expertise offers some assurance that a book has a market. When it is presented to buyers , it has already succeeded way beyond anything the author could have dreamed .

The process of getting a book into the hands of a reader via the traditional method is so arduous that many writers consider self-publishing to be an easier route to literary glory. A few have done so successfully. It may be easier to get a book into print this way, but these writers face more obstacles to actually being read by anyone other than immediate family .
http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/Lifestyle/Article.aspx?id=941494

Speaking as a writer, I don't want to deal with all that stuff anymore. I don't want to go through the years-long hunt for agents, and then the years-long period when the agent shops the book around and sends you bills for postage and phonecalls, and comes up dry at the end of a two year stretch.

There's a line that troubles me deeply in the above feature: Publishers make mistakes, but their expertise offers some assurance that a book has a market. And she says this literally cheek-by-jowl with the remark, by far, the majority are refused. (In other words, the store buyer doesn't reject authors and books ... s/he rejects publishers. Yeeeouch! That smarts.)

If the publishers were smart enough to know which books would bear fruit and which were dross ... why are the vast, vast majority dumped by the buyers at wide-spectrum book stores?

The reason is that everyone has a different perspective on what's good, what's great, what's commercial, and what's garbage. We're all human. We disagree. Frequently. This is what makes horse races.

But traditional publishing is an area in which one's subjectivity is going to come expensive, in the event that one is dead wrong. And this is what has happened to the publishing industry. They placed their faith in the few percent of writers who can sell millions; they pruned back the tens of thousands of writers who play to smaller audiences. This was done to maximize profits, but the net effect is that the human voice is getting strangled out of existence.

The solution? Digital publishing: ebooks. Anyone can publish a book, right NOW. And yes, I know that 99% of them will be the most unutterable rubbish! However, if only 1% of books published between now and 2100, using emerging "sunrise" technologies, were fine works...

That's 10,000 fine pieces of work in every million self-published. And the way POD is going, by 2012, that would represent a year's creativity. If half a percent are great, it's 5,000 new, fantastic books, per year. That's 100 great new books per week.

People might just start to read again, if they can get novels for a price they can afford ... save trees, and so forth. Or maybe the speculations I made the other day are closer to the truth:

What I'm saying is this: publishers -- whether New York or DIY -- shoot for the mass market. The big-time publishers have their market pegged: extremely literate people who demand high standards in their reading. But the mass of the public is increasingly illiterate; the readers who demand high standards, and have $40 to spend on a hardcover, are an ever-shrinking group, while the millions of readers who wouldn't know good grammar if it jumped up and bit them ... well, these people have pockets full of smartphones. And a lot of smartphones take SD cards. You can read stories on smartphones, kill time on the bus, train, plane, whatever.

Here's the bottom line: For every highly literate lady or gent with a credit card, standing in line for the hardcover of the New York Times bestseller, there could be a thousand, or ten thousand, semi-literate readers with smartphones, willing to pay $2, or $1, for an entertaining little read to pass the time on the commute.

Short version: there is an incredible fortune out there, reapable in the next few years ... and I have the sneakiest feeling that the writer's literary merit will be just about the last quality looked for by the mass of "common" readers who are, by the millions, daily, paying tiny fees for quick, cute reads.

Adult literacy is an increasingly lost cause, at the same time as the technology is racing to put video phones on our wrists, video wallpaper in our living rooms, and the electronic equivalent of the old "penny dreadful" in our laps, to while away that train ride, after we've all put the car up on blocks in a concerted effort to save the planet from our carbon emissions.
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2009/02/literary-history-repeats-itself-for-2.html

There's a heck of a lot more to talk about (I wanted to tackle the question of competition ... how one survives in a world where 100 great new books are published every single week, year in, year out, via technological freedom), and also to read -- but I just ran out of time.

I'll give you a couple of links, and with a tad bit of luck I'll be able to pick up the thread of this tomorrow of the day after!

See these:
Book publishers, R.I.P.? In this bad economy, it's tougher than ever to sell books
and
Self-publishing is not a last resort for authors

...and like the man said in the movie, "I'll be back."

Oh -- the next segment of Legends is up: enjoy!

Cheers,
MK

Gay book - making news for all the wrong reasons

In my rambling explorations of the Internet, I often stumble over curious things -- and here's one that's worth eight or ten ordinary ones: Plot thickens in case of 'censored' author, gay sheikh and a Booker prize-winner ...

It's a long an extraordinary story involving a gay novel (or at least a novel with a gay twist), the Muslim religion, a book festival in the Emirates, a major publisher, a Canadian Booker prize awardee, a torrent of misinformation, a storm of controversy, and a whole lot of people who wondered how the hell they got into this crapola.

Here's the short version -- insofar as there is anything vaguely approximating a short version! English journalist writes novel set in Middle East, featuring gay sheik with Brit boyfriend. Novel is published; novel is entered in the upcoming "first ever literary festival to be held in the Emirates" in Dubai, which kicks off on Friday. Why in the name of anybody's g/God(s) such a book would be entered in a book fair in a Muslim country beats the hell of of me, but it was and (surprise) it was tossed back by the fair organizers. A gay Sheik?! Can't happen legally, people. The whole concept questions the Muslim faith, and --

Bingo, right on cue, the book was kicked back. Now, was it banned? Author Geraldine Bedell maintains that it either is, was, or appeared to be banned at the time she spoke out about the situation ... and Canadian Booker-winner Margaret Atwood -- who whad been engaged to appear at the fair in Dubai, rightly went fairly ballistic. She's "a vice-president of the literary anti-censorship organisation PEN", and she canceled the appearance on principle...

So far, so good. Rumors flew about the book (The Gulf Between Us) having been censored by the authorities (where? in England?), and the whirlwind of misinformation shifted into high gear. The bottom line? The book wasn't banned -- not really, not technically, not in the actual meaning of the verb "to ban." Nor, apparently, was in censored.

In fact, the book was bumped from the festival in Dubai for many and varied reasons. Here's the bottom line: "The Guardian has seen an email from [festival director] Abulhoul, dated 19 September 2008, in which she says the novel was "extremely well written and should sell well" but continues: "However it is definitely not a book that we can launch at EAIFL for the following reasons: one of the Sheikhs is gay and has an English boyfriend; it talks about Islam and queries what is said; it is set in the Gulf and focuses on the Iraq war and could be a minefield for us."

Here's the whole sad story: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/21/margaret-atwood-gulf-literary-festival ... and the more you read of it, and into it, the worse it gets.

Who's responsible for the mess? In Keegan's estimation it would have to be the pea-brain who tried to enter a book like The Gulf Between Us in a debut book festival in the Emirates! Good gods, get real, people. Could be a minefield?! Could be a bloody neutron bomb!

This is one of those times when I am so relieved to be able to publish privately and sell via something like Amazon, PayLoads, whatever. The crapola is amputated. People can either buy or not, as suits themselves, and this kind of three-ringed circus doesn't happen.

Speaking of publishing ...

The proof of Death's Head has just arrived from CreateSpace -- and once again they've done a marvelous job. The quality is superb. Equinox and Scorpio are on their way and should be here in a week or so. That leaves Stopover and Aphelion to be proofed.

However, we're going to hang onto the whole package and release the whole thing at Amazon, all of a piece. This should be in about three weeks, I think -- might be four, because ... if you've been reading this blog for a while, you know how long it takes for a book to percolate its way into the Amazon engine.

Incidentally, Amazon sales of the Keegan titles are very good since Christmas, but the Lulu.com sales are dropping off to match, which shows you where people's faith is: for whatever reason (and there is no watertight reason) they trust Amazon a whole lot more than they trust Lulu. That's good to know; unless you work for Lulu.com.

Meanwhile, Legends is rolling with a full head of steam now. I just uploaded a good-sized post, which commences Chapter Ten ... and also some new artwork.

Speaking of the art, the Legends portfolio is incredibly beautiful, and we're trying to get some items up to Zazzle in the neat future. For me, things are very busy with the Amazon Kindle and Smashwords files to be developed.

Kindle is easy -- but Smashwords is going to take a lot more work, so I might have to settle for a whole bunch of projects at Kindle, and work on the Smashwords upload separately.

I'll leave you with an image -- the header shot for Chapter Ten.


Kudos to Jade ... fantastic work. I can see this on a mouse pad...

Cheers,
MK

To Keegan's amazement --

I'm impressed, and that's no exaggeration. In fact, the word is gobsmacked. I had an email, inviting me to follow a link and check something out: Aricia's Gay Book Shoppe.

Are you ready for this? Apparently it took about an hour to put this together, with about 130 hand-picked books, from mine to Josh Lanyon, Ann Rice, Storm, Constantine, Gordon Merrick and what I'd call a fairly an enormous range:



There's about fifteen pages like the above, complete with shopping cart, wish list, reviews, the works ... an hour's work? Like I said, I'm impressed. The only thing I'd want the store to do, that it doesn't do (yet?) is search. I think it's supposed to, but right now it doesn't, you have to page through it. (Gee, the hardship of having to click that Next >> button...)

Anyway -- there you have it. AG's very own bookstore, slapped together in sixty minutes.

Gobsmacked.

My own labors today have been less satisfying. I wasted a good hour, probably closer to two, trying to get Blogger to do what it's supposed to do. You know those posts that are collapsed, with 90% of the content "hidden" and a "read more..." button which expands the post out? It's supposed to be as easy as 1-2-3 at Blogger, but after a loooong time spent trying to get it to work I quit and spent the next few hours trying to catch up with myself.

That function just will -- not -- work, with is a major inconvenience. I'd been intended to hide the more sensual posts at Legends behind a caveat and a "read more" button, but someone smarter than me (or more code savvy) will have to figure this one out.

In the short term, I used the old, old old solution. Right before the steamy stuff got going, I put up this:

[Note: this chapter is about to fog up your reading glasses.
The following text involves sensuality of the male persuasion.
If you will be offended, simply refrain from scrolling down
past the illustration, and exit this page!]

...which is the caveat, plus one of the pieces of digital art which Jade produced a few weeks ago for the project. Good enough.

Incidentally, Chapter Nine is in full swing: I do believe this is the bit you've been waiting for! It'll run over the space of a few days ... and is worth waiting for.

The good news is that Legends is flying along now. I'm seeing traffic on the site that's surprising me, even though I'd had high hopes. If people will just get the message about supporting the project via the advertising, we're in business, big time.

Ciao for now,

MK

On this particular Sunday

I'm not actually counting, you understand -- Blogger does that for me. This (drum roll, clash of cymbals) is Post Three Hundred. Really! Three hundred posts ... I've been online since June 20 last year, and this blog has become a serious work -- it really does grieve me to break it up into a couple or several projects, but what has to be, has to be.

Design work is underway in the background right now, and I've made the tough decision to float a blog specifically devoted to writing and publishing. All the old posts on the topic will be appearing there, as they're deleted out of the Google index (to prevent duplicate content penalties). And then the basic background babble of the Mel-o-sphere will be posted to a much more personal blog.

Right now, though, I'm thinking I'll leave the old blog online, with links pointing out to the new pages ... just in case Google ever takes the time and trouble to reconsider the "Kill Keegan" decision which was made four months ago in more rarefied atmosphere than is breathed by the likes of you and me!

Y'know, I would love to know what I did to make them zero me out. I'd almost pay money to know ... almost. Not quite. But you take my meaning.

Work goes on apace. The first titles will be appearing at Amazon Kindle in the coming week, and by the end of the week I hope to have the first titles at Smashwords, too. However --

We just saw the weather forecast, and we'll be back "in the forties" in a few days. Meaning, temperatures up to 110 degrees F will be fairly commonplace. Thank gods we have an a/c unit in the office now! It should make all the difference. There's about five weeks to go, in which the temperature can be utterly disgusting.

Legends has had loads of fresh visitors from http://webfictionguide.com/ ... and again, it's thanks to Aricia. I just don't have the time to do this work -- promotional activities. Wish I did. So, thanks AG: that was inspiration indeed. Incidentally, that's a hell of a good guide, highly recommended if you're looking for free online fiction in many genres.

Speaking of Legends, Chapter Nine's second segment is online:
http://mel-keegan-legends.blogspot.com/2009/02/chapter-nine-continued.html

...and we've added a column to the blog's sidebar. For the sake of interest, Let me paste it over right here:

Enjoy the novel ... download it, save it to whatever device you like to read on -- but don't send the files to your friends. Send them this url: http://mel-keegan-legends.blogspot.com/2009/01/1.html.

Remember, the only income MK earns from this novel is generated via the advertising on the site, so it doesn't work if you just email the files. Thanks for your help here. Tell your friends, because the more people are on this page (and reading this bit), the better chance Legends has to reimburse the author ... which will keep more coming along -- massive SF novels like Crystal Genesis and fantasies like Blood and Fire.

There's several ways you can support this project. Obviously, you can donate $1 with a click on the PayPal button below. You can also notice the Google ads, in the event that you're looking for something and Ma Goog can actually help -- it's far from impossible for The Goog to render assistance, and the author isn't left out of the commercial loop! Then, at the foot of this page you'll find some very good offers and deals on goods and services which we've test-driven thoroughly: no junk here; you might just find something you've been needing. Scroll down for a look.

Lastly, consider the Amazon connection. You might not realize this, but if you're shopping for anything -- music CDs, jumpdrive, camera, anything! -- if you enter Amazon from this page and strike out from there on your own, a small percentage of the shopping you were already intending to do comes to MK as a "referrer's fee." Next time you're shopping Amazon for anything, simply start from any button on this page, and you're automatically supporting this project! Easy.

I have a strong feeling that the Amazon connection could easily be the best way to get Legends (or for that matter, any digital novel) to be lucrative enough to be indispensable. Everyone shops Amazon sooner or later. DVDs, music, books, MP3 downloads, loads of stuff. Do you know, you can get your groceries on Amazon these days! Is that weird, or what? And you see how it works: start shopping on Legends, depart from the button you originally clicked, go get whatever you were wanting, but the referral fee goes to the originating click. Brilliant.

(The only thing I don't like about Amazon is the fact the cookie they set is only a 24 hour cookie. Meaning, if the customer doesn't close the deal inside that time -- the cookie expires and Amazon don't have to pay nobody nothing for the referral fee. Maybe they'll be changing this in future???)

So ends Sunday in Keegan Country ... and Post Three Hundred!

Cheers,
MK

POD Publishing: the next generation

Just a quickie second post today. I'd like to pass along the url of a news story that's running right now on the Falls Church News Press:

Anything But Straight: The Future of Gay News

There's a few paragraphs in this story that I could have written myself! Some material pertains specifically to folks like myself, who're blogging in the interests of paying the bills one way or another -- and also, selling books. Do read the whole feature -- it's a quick read, and most interesting!

As a hook, let me give you this, and then exhort you read the rest:
...the continued improvement of E-book technology may save the GLBT publishing industry. On March 29, the legendary Oscar Wilde bookstore will close in Greenwich Village, citing economic trouble. This follows the demise of the famed bookstore Crossroads Market in Dallas.

With few venues to sell books and fewer publishers, it is a tough time for gay authors. While the major retailers have GLBT sections, rarely do these books receive prime shelf space. E-books may be a way to cut out the middleman, save on printing costs and let gay authors sell directly to the reading public.
http://www.fcnp.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4141:anything-but-straight-the-future-of-gay-news&catid=17:national-commentary&Itemid=79

It's interesting reading. Just yesterday I was talking about the impending ebook technology, and oddly enough, this afternoon I'll be working on documents intended for Kindle and Smashwords. The world seems to be shrinking!

See also:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2009/02/literary-history-repeats-itself-for-2.html
and
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2009/02/my-kingdom-for-ebook-gizmo_20.html

Cheers,
MK

Literary history repeats itself ... for $2

We were looking at website stats and so forth this morning, and saw something wonderful. The Lords of Harbendane had popped up to an Amazon ranking of about 46,000, which is nothing short of amazing. Many thanks to everyone who's ordered this book -- and also to everyone who's over on Legends. I'm actually enjoying the digital fantasy novel immensely --

Speaking of which, Chapter Seven concluded today ... and of course, I'm way ahead of you guys in the text, so I'm into the steamy stuff -- which you'll be getting into in about three days. It's also hugely gratifying that emails have been bouncing all over the world ... readers are landing on Legends from Istanbul, Baghdad (!), eastern Europe, China, Russia, many parts of Aus, NZ, the UK and US. Which is exactly what I'd hoped for.

Also, early comments on the book are very good. I'm hearing words like "lush, exotic, compelling, fascinating." Always nice to see such adjectives. It's also very nice indeed to be shipping copies, either physical or electronic. As a writer, to me it's all about earning the money to pay expenses so that I can write again next week!

And I know, as I say that, the market is tougher than its ever been, and a lot of writers are taking a kicking, which is more than likely undeserved. I've fielded numerous questions on this blog, but one which has been popping up at least once a week since Christmas is, "How do I sell copies on Amazon?"

That's one hell of a tough question. I could write ten thousand words and not answer it fully. The answer-in-a-thimble is courage, ingenuity and energy ... and I know that's not what folks wanted to hear. Writers who are struggling to get sales moving need, desperately, to hear that there's a "magic bullet," a kind of cookbook recipe. Do A, B and C, and you'll get sales.

I wish it were true, but it isn't. A while ago I read a post on a blog called Publishing Basics. Let me share a little of it with you, and give you the link to go over there and read the rest:

More people today than ever before are becoming authors. Unfortunately, most of them fail in their quest for success. According to a Jenkins Group survey, seventy percent of books published in this country do not make a profit. The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) backs this up. Their statistics show that in 2004, over seventy-six percent of all titles sold fewer than 100 copies. Why are so many authors failing?

• Uninformed authors approach the publishing process all wrong.
• Even excellent, worthy books go unnoticed when the author isn’t industry-savvy.
• Inexperienced authors quit promoting their books when the going gets tough.

It used to be that authors wrote books and publishers produced, promoted and distributed them. After participating in a few book signings, the author was free to go back to his home office and write his next bestseller. In order to be a successful author today, however, you must have a significant understanding of the publishing industry and be willing to establish a sense of intimacy with your book. It’s imperative that you become involved in the promotion of your book and, in some cases, the production process.

Technology has fueled dramatic changes in the publishing industry—and the news isn’t all bad. Hopeful authors are faced with greater challenges today, it’s true; but there are also more options and opportunities.

According to self-publishing guru, Dan Poynter, in 1970, there were only about 3,000 publishing companies. Today, there are somewhere around 85,000—many of them small/independent publishers who have established companies through which to produce their own books. There are still a significant number of new traditional royalty publishers emerging, as well. So why is it so difficult to land a publishing contract? In a word, competition.

Some years ago, I heard it said that over eighty percent of the public believe they have a book in them. With expanded publishing options, more and more of these people are actually writing their books. And millions of them are currently seeking publishers. Is there room in this industry for all hopeful authors? Probably not. But, according to R. R. Bowker, a whopping 291, 920 new books were published in 2006. And it’s pretty easy to predict which of these books will succeed and which of them won’t.
http://www.publishingbasics.com/2007/08/22/publishing%e2%80%94the-raw-truth/

That was published back in August of 2007 ... long before the Bing Crunch of last October and November. Patricia Fry, who wrote the post, is a writing and publishing specialist, not a stock market guru. She couldn't have foreseen what was going to happen more than a year after her post ... but let's put it this way: things have not gotten any easier.

The line between the writer, editor, publisher and entrepreneur is blurry even now, and has been getting blurrier in the last six months. The next couple of years will change so many things. There is also a kind of wildcard factor to think about, which I'm sure publishers have missed.

It's on the news frequently: people are increasingly illiterate. Even those who can read and write well enough to chat on Facebook and what have you, are not exactly what would have been deemed literate way back when. The fact is, a really badly written book is only obviously a stinker when it's read by someone who is literate. When it's read by someone who's skating around the fringes of sheer illiteracy -- or by someone who's reading English as a second or third language -- the shortcomings of the work are utterly transparent. All that comes through is the story (which is either interesting or boring) and the characters (who are either endearing or annoying), and the conclusion ... which either delivered the goods or left the reader saying, "Well, poop. After 350pp, I wanted something better, or different, than this load of twaddle.")

Now, I'm not using this as an excuse for the number of really horrible books that are published, POD, via Lulu and CreateSpace and so forth, every hour of every day.

What I'm saying is this: publishers -- whether New York or DIY -- shoot for the mass market. The big-time publishers have their market pegged: extremely literate people who demand high standards in their reading. But the mass of the public is increasingly illiterate; the readers who demand high standards, and have $40 to spend on a hardcover, are an ever-shrinking group, while the millions of readers who wouldn't know good grammar if it jumped up and bit them ... well, these people have pockets full of smartphones. And a lot of smartphones take SD cards. You can read stories on smartphones, kill time on the bus, train, plane, whatever.

Here's the bottom line: For every highly literate lady or gent with a credit card, standing in line for the hardcover of the New York Times bestseller, there could be a thousand, or ten thousand, semi-literate readers with smartphones, willing to pay $2, or $1, for an entertaining little read to pass the time on the commute.

Short version: there is an incredible fortune out there, reapable in the next few years ... and I have the sneakiest feeling that the writer's literary merit will be just about the last quality looked for by the mass of "common" readers who are, by the millions, daily, paying tiny fees for quick, cute reads.

Adult literacy is an increasingly lost cause, at the same time as the technology is racing to put video phones on our wrists, video wallpaper in our living rooms, and the electronic equivalent of the old "penny dreadful" in our laps, to while away that train ride, after we've all put the car up on blocks in a concerted effort to save the planet from our carbon emissions.

I have a feeling the age of the penny dreadful is returning. Rapidly. But they'll more than likely cost you $2.

Cheers,
MK