Say it ain't so, Lee

I am a huge fan of Lee Child's writing and of the Jack Reacher series.  I have bought every one of the books, so last spring, when I found, in the iBook store, a collection of short stories called First Thrills, published by the International Thriller Writers and edited by Lee Child, I bought it. It contains 25 first rate thriller stories, including one by Child. The book was copyrighted in 2010.

This morning, I was browsing the iBook store again and found First Thrills, Volume 2, Volume 3, and Volume 4. Oh, yeah, volume 1 was also there. I grabbed 2, 3. and 4 because volume 1 was so good. I didn't take 1 because I thought I already had it.

I was right. Not only did I already have vol. 1, I also had 2, 3, and 4. It turns out the first edition was split into four volumes and repackaged separately. Had I gone to the book page in the iBook store, I would have read this sentence: "This original collection is now split into four e-book volumes. . ."

Shame on me for not reading through the book description.

Shame on Lee Child for being so crass.

C'mon, Lee, we buy your books because they have your name on them. We expect something original. We don't expect to buy the same thing over again.

World War II interesting fact

In 1941, the San Jose State Spartan football team was in Honolulu to play the University of Hawaii in the Shrine Game when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The attack left the team stranded so they joined the Honolulu Police Department as reserve officers. According to the account below, some stayed for the duration of the war.

 
 
 
  Watch this at CSN Bay Area

Freebie February

Celebrate February!
It's a great month with Morgan's birthday and my birthday. So to make it even better, I'm giving away ebook copies of my newly published short story collection, Game Face.
To get your copy, click on your preferred e-reader.

epub (iBook, Nook, Kobo, and others)
mobi (Kindle)

You have to do it this month because the offer expires at the end of February. The good news is that February has 29 days this year.

New Review of Game Face

The marvelous Helen Ginger just posted a great review of Game Face on her blog, Straight From Hel. You can read it here:
http://straightfromhel.blogspot.com/2011/12/book-review-game-face.html

Helen is a writer, editor, and speaker without equal. Her newsletter is a must read for every writer. Check out her blog and leave a comment.

Game Face now on Amazon

Game Face is now available on Amazon.com in both the paperback book store and the Kindle store. The paperback price is $9.95 and the ebook price is $2.99.

The Huffington Post recently had an article about e-book prices and the 99¢ controversy. The article is here. The gist of it is that authors cannot make money from the 99¢ price. The problem is that e-books are not cheap to produce. They might be cheaper than paper, but they are not free. The biggest cost is probably the cover, but other costs figure in. The ISBN costs a hundred dollars and if the book comes out in paper, epub (iPad and Nook) and Kindle, it needs three ISBNs for a total of $300.

I had a professional cover design because, frankly, I suck at design. Since I also published each of the stories separately (at 99¢ each) I had covers made for each of them. I included those covers in Game Face as interior art. (The short stories have not been flying off the shelves, by the way) The total cost for the art came to $1,500. I think it was worth it because they look great.

A 99¢ book earns 35¢ in royalties, so the book would have to sell 850 copies just to cover the cost of the ISBNs. When I add up all of the costs of producing Game Face, I would have to sell over 5,400 copies to break even (assuming most of the sales are ebook sales.)

Most ebooks sell around 200 copies, according to the Huffington Post article.

Readers, however, believe ebooks should be cheap. They are not likely to buy an expensive one when there are so many for 99¢. At 99¢, a reader can simply discard a book that sucks.

So, when I figured out the price, I had to find one that would allow a reasonable return on investment but still be low enough to attract readers. I decided that the paperback needed to be under $10. At $9.95, my royalty would be about $2 per book. After some calculation, I discovered that an ebook price of $2.99 would also give me about $2 per book. At that price, I would need to sell only 900 books to break even—far less than the 5,400 under the 99¢ price, but still 4.5 times the average sell rate.  I still have a lot of work ahead to break even, but I think readers will get value for their money.

PIMPED!

Bil Crider pimped Game Face on his popular culture blog.
http://billcrider.blogspot.com/2011/12/pimpage-occasional-feature-in-which-i_20.html

Thanks, Bill!

GAME FACE is here!

The definitive Val Lyon story collection is here. GAME FACE has been released as an ebook in Smashwords here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/112677. It is also being released in paperback. The publisher is Ilium Books. You can order it directly here: https://www.createspace.com/3725108 It is distributed through CreateSpace Direct and will soon be available at Amazon. It will also soon be available on iPad, Nook, Kobo, Kindle and others. I'll let you know as those become available.

Here's a deal. You can have the ebook for free until Feb. 14 by going to the link above. After selecting your format for download, go to the checkout and enter this coupon code: HB57R.

The cover and interior art were created by David Shackelford of Austin.

This volume contains seven previously published Val Lyon short stories and one story written exclusively for this collection.