Dragon Stones Now On Amazon, B&N

Today, during my semi-monthly auto-Googling, I discovered that Dragon Stones has made its way out to Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and the like.  Interestingly enough, Long Before Dawn hasn’t reached those outlets yet, but it is available from online bookstores in the U.K.  Go figure.  Perhaps the British are more amenable than the Americans to proper vampire stories, where the vampires are monsters.

Anyway, for all my legions of fans out there who have just been waiting to be able to purchase my two latest books from somewhere other than Lulu.com (you know who you are), your wish has been granted!  You can get Dragon Stones from Amazon.com or BN.com, and Long Before Dawn from Blackwell Online and WHSmith in the U.K.  Both should be available elsewhere as well.

The Amazon Kerfluffle

Last month, it came out that Amazon.com is instituting a new policy that print-on-demand publishers, such as Lulu.com and Hard Shell Word Factory (publisher of Night Watchman), must use Amazon.com’s own POD service BookSurge* or have the print editions of their books dropped from the main store (though they can still be sold by third parties through the Amazon marketplace). Some companies, like Lulu, quickly caved … uhhh, agreed to use BookSurge; others, like Hard Shell, are taking a harder line and refusing to accede to Amazon’s new rules. The net result, for me, is that Night Watchman may be disappearing from the Amazon.com store in the future. I will be watching to see if this happens; so far, it’s still there, but they only have one copy left (”order soon — more on the way”).

I haven’t quite decided yet what I think of this whole thing. I’m not really sure that Amazon doing anything differently from Wal-Mart, which is notorious for beating up suppliers to cut costs and lower prices.  I don’t think Wal-Mart runs its own factories and requires its suppliers to use them, though.  (I could be wrong; if I wanted to do stuff like “research” and “fact-checking” I would be writing non-fiction.)  I guess I’d have to say that on the face of it Amazon is being anti-competitive and the ultimate upshot is likely to be higher POD costs, but we’ll see how it shakes out.  I don’t have much to lose whether my books are on Amazon or not.  The ones who do have something to lose are, I think, the small publishers; a lot of folks in the small press and self-publishing world are extremely agitated about Amazon’s move, and some are calling for a boycott.  Will a boycott succeed?  Probably not; it’s likely to be more symbolic than anything else.  After all, Amazon has been boycotted before, notably over their one-click patent.  The Internet was a smaller place then (fewer tubes) and the boycott still had no noticeable effect.  The current issue at hand is about as arcane as the one-click patent issue, and just as few people care about it; I think Amazon will just get away with it, until and unless it attracts attention from regulators (i.e., never). In any case, I am neither an economist nor an MBA, so my opinion on such matters is probably worth about as much as I make on sales of my book from Amazon.com –  i.e., next to nothing.

Anyway, if you’re looking for a copy of Night Watchman and you can’t find it at Amazon, you can always buy it directly from any number of places, like Barnes and Noble or directly from Hard Shell.  Or you can just swing by the house and pick up a copy; I’ll even sign it, too.

*Disclaimer: I used BookSurge to tear apart, scan, and republish A Flock of Crows is Called a Murder after the original publisher, DarkTales, went out of business.

New Story Available at Amazon.com

Hey, look, I’m using the blog for its original purpose!  Don’t worry, though, this is just a temporary digression before we return to the regularly scheduled adventures of Dennis the Menace.

I have a new fantasy story available at Amazon.com.  This one is called “Comfort” and it’s about the winter siege of a castle high in the mountains.  It’s not horror, but don’t worry, plenty of people still die.

“A Flock of Crows” Reissued

The reissue of “A Flock of Crows is Called a Murder” is now available from Amazon.com. Now you can get it for $15.99 instead of paying $40 for an out-of-print copy. And there was much rejoicing …

Stories Available At Amazon.com

I now have two short stories for sale at Amazon.com. Stories at Amazon retail for 49 cents and are split 60/40, which is a much better deal than authors usually get, at least the ones who aren’t famous (yet).  Check them out — you can buy two for the price of an iTunes track, and they’ll take longer to read than it will to play a song.

One story, “Cuffs”, is about a couple of thugs who attempt the world’s strangest carjacking. To check it out, click here.

The other story is “The Crying Room”.  This is a ghost story in the tradition of some recent, popular Japanese horror movie imports like “The Ring” and “Dark Water” (okay, “Dark Water” was hardly popular here, but still …) I wrote it years ago, before such movies started appearing. Hollywood finally caught up to me, I guess.  Buy “The Crying Room” here.