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Gelatinous Cubes and Hobbled Goblins

It’s two days before Christmas. I’ve done little shopping for some and finished for others. I’ll be scampering around NYC today finding last-minute gifts for my son. He’s been introduced to Dungeons and Dragons and he’s told me my gift for him (in addition to Amulet #4, Pokemon Black and White Cards, a Techdeck pack, and miniature radio controlled fighting tanks) can be a fully realized dungeon for him to adventure in so he can play. I’m up for it. I bought a small notebook with graph paper inside and a fine point pen – you have to have the right pen for these kinds of things. I’ll have to dust off my dice and look at the rules again. I think I’m missing page 36 from book one. It could be important but I can probably make up the rules as I go along.

Anyway.

A literary Christmas gift has been given to me by Kitty Bullard from Great Minds think Aloud Literary Community. she’s written a wonderful review of Open wounds and recommended it to her community. When a review starts with: “I feel “Open Wounds” is one of the greatest adventure books I’ve ever read,” I feel as if I’ve done all right. Thank you Kitty.

Check out her review at: Great Minds Think Aloud Literary Community.

Posted by Joe Lunievicz | December 23, 2011 | Categories: Blog, Dungeons and Dragons, Open Wounds, Review Open Wounds | 3 Comments

Webley Revolvers and Rann Kutch

I’ve started the writing phase of my new book.

I’m six days in. I started writing snippets before this so I had a thousand words or so written during my planning phase. And in some ways I’m still planning. But I’ve put down the research and started in.

Here are three words I wrote today from different parts of my text:

Mumbai

Salt

Blood

My writing process is long. I’m writing early in the morning before my family wakes up (and before the dogs grab their leashes in their mouths and drag me to the front door.) – before the sun rises. I’m writing half an hour to 45 minutes at a shot. This is good for me as once my day starts at 6:30 it doesn’t stop until the evening when I’m too worn out to put fingers to key board.

I have a 2011 smile on my face.

Posted by Joe Lunievicz | December 21, 2011 | Categories: Blog, Next Book, On Writing | 2 Comments

Lemonade and the Predatory Lemmings of Pricing (part 1)

Okay. This is a long entry but stay with me. I want to hear what you think.

So I checked out the fuss about Amazon and their predatory price app.

Let me see if I get this straight.

You go into a store and scan the bar code of a product using your cell-phone and get a comparison price from Amazon. And, you get an additional 5% (about $15 off a $300 dollar order) discount on your order. And you send the location of the store to Amazon.

Do I like the way it sounds? Not really. Is there anything anybody can do about this? Not really. Is it legally predatory pricing and therefore able to be stopped by a court of law? For example is Amazon purposely going to sell their products at below cost in order to steal customers? No. Not, as far as all I have read.

So what is going on around here? Is this capitalism at its best? Am I a socialist? Do I want the best product to win at the lowest price?

I’ve been trying to figure out what this could mean to independent booksellers. You know, how pissed off should they be over this for it seems many are pretty pissed off.

Let me take apart the two sentences above.

You go into a store and scan the bar code of a product using your cell-phone and get a comparison price from Amazon. And, you get an additional 5% (about $15 off a $300 dollar order). And you send the location of the store to Amazon.

1. Amazon is telling people to go into stores to compare prices. Now that doesn’t sound too bad to me. Go into a bookstore and scan a book price in to get a comparison price. Go walk or drive or take mass transit, journey to a book store – a bricks and mortar store, in person – walk in the front door and search for a book you want to buy, passing impulse purchases along the way, maybe talking to a bookseller on your way to finding the book, maybe having a latte if there’s a café attached to the bookstore, look at the price, scan it and comparison shop. I don’t know about you but so far I’m good with this operation. Anything that gets a customer into a bookstore is a good thing. Come in out of the rain. Rest tired feet while paging through a current bestseller by a window seat. Comparison shop. If they’re in the store they can buy from you. If they’re sitting at home on their sofa surfing the internet they can’t. So chalk one up for Amazon for pushing people into stores where they can breathe in the aroma of books and be confronted by your your flotilla of warm, friendly, and knowledgable booksellers.

2. If you want the lower priced product then order it from Amazon and they’ll send it to you in a few days, maybe longer depending on delivery method. Okay. So again. I’m not sure Amazon has a winner here. It’s a week before christmas and I’m in a store with a product I want to buy as a gift in my hands and I can either take that product home with me right now – have instant gratification – and cross off another gift on my list of gifts to get for the holidays or I can order it from Amazon for a reduced price, maybe a few dollars, but it may not make it here by christmas and I won’t know for sure until it’s in my hands delivered to me by UPS or the postal service. I can’t help but think most people will pay the few extra bucks and leave the store with the product. I’ve probably spent the extra bucks anyway on either gas or mass transit getting to the store in the first place. If I’m an independent bookstore I’m still liking this deal.

3. So let’s say that you go the Amazon way and buy the book online from them at a reduced price. Forget about the gas you spent money on to get there, or the transit fare, or the travel time. You want your discount so you get it. You still have to get out of the store, the wonderfully friendly, beautifully designed, warm with coffee smell permeating the air independent bookstore, with staff who know book lists backwards and forwards and who can recommend and sell the book socks off your feet. Go ahead. Try to leave the store without picking up a stocking stuffer. A game maybe? A bookmark? Reading glasses? Book light? Mr. Potato Head?

Go ahead. Make my independent booksellers’ day.

Am I looking at this the wrong way or what?

Posted by Joe Lunievicz | December 18, 2011 | Categories: Amazon, Blog, Bookstores, Publicity & Marketing | 5 Comments

Four Calling Agents, Three French Editors…

Three things I learned this year about publishing (please remember I don’t expect everyone to agree with me. These are based on my experiences this year).

It’s better to be published by a legitimate press than to be self-published. Even if it’s a small press – if you want your book to be carried in a store it has to be available from Ingrams, Baker and Taylor, and or Folio. These are the big distributors in the business. I found in every instance in approaching booksellers and managers in over twenty bookstores across the country that as soon as I told them I was not self-published and that the books were available from Ingram or one of the others I was treated instantly differently (ie: better).
Marketing is like a second job all by itself. I now work a full time day job, teach yoga twice a week, write, and do marketing for my book. I spend at least 1-2 hours a day marketing (twitter, facebook, blogging, emailing, interviewing, reviewing books, etc…). And that’s probably low. Finding a balance between marketing and writing is key to surviving your first publication.
The publishing business is crazy. Agents leave the business without telling you, publishers are put up for sale seemingly out of the blue, subsidiary rights can be sat on, writers are just as competitive as world class athletes when it comes to snagging a seat at a full table of librarians during author speed dating, books don’t show up at readings, managers who’ve been called ahead of time about your store visit can’t remember talking to your publicist even though it was only 24 hours ago, Goodreads is like crack (or craic) for writers, it seems no two writers have the same writing process though most would agree it’s incredibly hard work to do (find a writing process and to write), and finally once your book is published writers you’ve never met before will help you to sell it through blurbs (which are key to getting your book looked at by just about everybody in the business and many readers looking for a new author to read.

After Christmas I”ll have to come up with some writing resolutions. That will take some thought. Here’s something though. For the last twenty years I wondered if the coming year would be the year I finally published my first novel. This year I don’t have to wonder anymore.

And that’s a very cool thing.

Posted by Joe Lunievicz | December 16, 2011 | Categories: Blog, Bookstores, Events, Goodreads, Publicity & Marketing, Travel | 2 Comments

Book Review: A Closer Look by Karen DelleCava

Karen is one of my fellow WestSide authors and I recently had a chance to read her debut novel, A Closer Look. My review follows:

A Closer Look – By: Karen DelleCava

This is a wonderfully poignant book about a teenage girl named Cassie who in addition to dealing with the normal challenges of growing up in suburbia, has alopecia, a disease that causes her hair to fall out prematurely. When this happens to Cassie she is just starting high school, getting a boyfriend, and starting track. In a society and an age group focused on looking good, Cassie must deal with the stigma of being not just different but “ugly.” Cassie is a heroine you completely root for from the first page. Ms. DelleCava’s voice for Cassie is impressive, pitch perfect in it’s ability to show us what goes on inside this teenager’s head. The struggle she goes through, and her parents, to accept the loss and change of identity is wrenching. The use of the track team and Cassies’ ability to lose herself in her running is especially effective. The secondary characters, from the boyfriend, Tommy, to the best girlfriend, Tara, to Cassie’s mother and father, are all well developed and stay away from stereotypes, providing support to Cassie in different and sometimes unexpected ways. This debut novel shows a sure hand at handling this difficult material, keeping it real, at times funny, and finally when all the tears are dry, hopeful. I’d recommend this to readers 12 and up.

Karen’s book can be purchased at indie-bound or amazon.

You can also check out Karen’s website/blog at karendellecava.com.