Category: PSA

Salvage Right News!

This is a Two-Part Message.

PART ONE:
The Uncle is shipping signed copies, er, now. We have received several reports of readers receiving their books. If you would like a signed copy of Salvage Right, which Amazon and other vendors will be releasing, UNsigned, on July 4, you may order it from the Uncle, while supplies last. We only signed a couple hundred of those — not like the Meisha Merlin days, when we were scrawling our names in upwards of 1200 books.
So! If you want a signed copy of the hardcover edition of Salvage Right, go here and order it.

PART TWO:
The Uncle is shipping early. This means that Those Other Venues will not allow you to post a review on their sites yet. However! Goodreads will let you post a review and Baen, too. NOTE: Both of those require you to have an account.

However, if you have a webpage, a FB wall, a Twitter account, a TikTok thingy, or whatever else there is out there in the March of Technology, do please take a moment to talk about Salvage Right. Even something as simple as: “My book’s here!” and the title is good.

And remember, if you have gotten your book, read it, and want to talk about it, there’s a spoiler discussion space right here.

Thank you all for everything you do.

In case you need a graphic of the gorgeous cover art by David Mattingly to dress up your post:

Story Ideas: What Not To Do

Short form:  Please do NOT write to me-or-us with story ideas.

Long form:

1   We are not as forgetful as some folks assume we are.  It helps to bear in mind that if it’s been “years” and you haven’t seen X THING /  CHARACTER / LOOSE END addressed “yet” — that’s probably only two or three books.  You read much faster than we write.  The smart money says we probably haven’t “forgotten.”  We just haven’t gotten there yet.

2   I make it a practice not to read story ideas sent by readers.  This is not because I don’t love you.  It’s because there’s a long, bad history in writing regarding people suing writers for having “used their idea” without giving them credit/compensation/the firstborn/whatever.  I don’t have time for this kind of nonsense, so it is my policy to throw out, unread, ideas for future storylines in any of my working universes.

And, yanno, I’m not just being an Old Meanie, here.  This policy serves you, too.  Say, I’m planning on doing X in the next novel, and you write to me all eager for me to X in the next novel.  What happens, if I read your letter?  I have to throw X out, because of #2 above, and you will never get to see how it plays out.

All I’m saying is — trust us, yeah?  We know what we’re doing — in large measure, anyway.

Here ends today’s Public Service Announcement.

Procrastinators take note!

In six days (US), it will be May 3.

Why do you care?

Because on that day, Fair Trade by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, the 24th novel set in their Liaden Universe®, will be published!

You are encouraged to take any — or all! — of the following actions before May 3.

1   Preorder the ebook from the vendor of your choice, and start May 3 with that little happy thrill you get when you see a new book has downloaded to your ereader.

2   Preorder a signed hardcover from Uncle Hugo’s.

3   Preorder a hardcover from the bookstore of your choice.

4   Block out time to read Fair Trade, and make sure there’s plenty of food in the fridge, favorite beverages and snacks on-hand, because once you start reading, you won’t want to stop.

Fair Trader cover art by David Mattingly

 

Liaden Universe® Updates

Presented in order of Temporal Proximity.

First!  We have a book coming out on May 3!  Fair Trade, the third account of the loves and adventures of Jethri Gobelyn ven’Deelin, Trader Extraordinaire, will be available in hardcover, and electronic from all of the usual vendors.  Right now, you may preorder the hardcover from those same usual suspects.

There are Notes, to wit!

Note A:  YES, you will be able to buy this novel electronically on the release date.  NO, you may not preorder it.  This is how our publisher does things, and is above our pay grade.

Note B:  If you want a signed copy of the hardcover Fair Trade, you can preorder one right here

Note B1:  Personalizations are not available this time.  Uncle Hugo’s is just getting settled into their new space, and there was some concern about Mistakes Being Made.  Nobody wants mistakes, amirite?

Note C:  We have heard nothing about an audiobook edition.  This, too, is above our pay grade.  Please be assured that, should we hear something, we will shout it from the rooftops.

Second!  Salvage Right, a Liaden Universe® novel set on Tinsori Light, will be handed in to Baen in June.  Trade Lanes, the fourth Jethri Gobelyn ven’Deelin novel, has a September deadline.  That’s right, we’re turning in two books in 2022.

Third!  Title TBA, a Liaden Universe® novel that will probably continue the story from the Redlands.  This could change, so, yanno, don’t mark in down in ink.  That book is due at Baen in June 2023.

Fourth!  And, may I just say, the reason I’ve called you all together today — Lee and Miller have signed a three-book contract with their long-time publisher Baen Books.  The contract’s call-name is Traveler’s Trio, and we have no idea where those novels will take us, yet, but we do have delivery dates.  Those are:

Traveler’s Trio ONE:  September 2024
Traveler’s Trio TWO:  September 2025
Traveler’s Trio THREE:  September 2026

Note A:  In September 2026, I will be 74 years old.  Steve will have celebrated his 76th birthday three months prior.  This by way of reassuring those folks who have been worrying about our retirement that, err — writers don’t retire.  At least, writers at our level of the game don’t retire.

Here ends the Updatery.

 

 

All the News that’s Fit to Print

1   The eARC of Liaden Universe® Volume Five is now available for purchase at Baen.com.  Here’s your link.

1a  LUC 5 includes these stories: Fortune’s Favors, Opportunity to Seize, Shout of Honor, Command Decision, Dark Secrets, A Visit to the Galaxy Ballroom, The Gate that Locks the Tree, Preferred Seating, Ambient Conditions, Dead Men Dream, and an authors’ foreword.

1b  LUC5 will be published on February 1, 2022 in trade and ebook.

1c  You may preorder the trade edition from your favorite vendor*.

2   Fair Trade, the 24th novel in the Liaden Universe®, the third book detailing the adventures of Jethri Gobelyn ven’Deelin, is now available for preorder in hardcover* from the Usual Suspects.  It will be published on May 3, 2022.**

2a  The previous books in the Jethri arc are:  Balance of Trade and Trade Secret

3   “From Every Storm a Rainbow,” featuring a Liaden Universe® “holiday” story featuring Sinit Caylon will be available for your free reading pleasure at Baen.com on-or-about November 15

4   Watch the skies for a Pinbeam chapbook collecting all the so-called “bakery” stories, including new story, “Our Lady of Benevolence.”

__________________________
*Baen ebooks are never available for preorder — this has to do with Baen’s long-standing tradition of making eARCs available.  The ebook edition will be published on the day the paper edition publishes and will be available for purchase at that time from Baen, Amazon, BN, Apple, Kobo, and so on.

**We have no news of an audiobook edition at this time.  Be certain that we will shout this news from the rooftops, once it is in our possession.

The cost of doing business, Pinbeam Books edition

Mini-lecture, here. If you’re not interested in the intricacies of self-publishing, you can skip this bit.

So.

Asyouknowbob, Pinbeam Books — the self-publishing arm of Sharon Lee and Steve Miller — has been making paper editions of its Echapbooks available through Amazon. This is because Amazon makes it relatively easy to produce a paper book through their software — BN’s software long ago defeated me — and there is a portion of our readership who Really Really want paper, and this is how we oblige them, and thank them for sticking with us.

So. Amazon has recently refribbed the back room where indie folk get their books set up for sale. And as I was getting the paper edition of Change State ready to go, I encountered a checkbox that said, “Expanded Distribution.” Now, I’m none so sharp as I once was, and I figured that was the box I always clicked (when setting up an ebook), which allowed the book to be sold in the UK, Australia, Germany, &c. So I checked the box.

Turns out that, when you click that box for a paper book, you are allowing Amazon to serve as the distributor of the paper edition, to “other venues,” such as BN, and unnamed others, including “libraries.”

So, that’s a good thing, right? Expanded sales venues = expanded audiences, and all like that?

And that’s — yes. And no.

It will, I hope, come as no surprise to anyone here that Pinbeam Books is a for-profit enterprise. It’s one of several income streams, and how we keep the cats in litter and cat food, and ourselves in frivolous things like medicines and electricity.

Which brings us back to Amazon, believe it or don’t. Paper editions of Pinbeam Books’ chapbooks retail for $10. This is also what SRM Publisher — Pinbeam’s predecessor — retailed its paper chapbooks for. Before anyone says it — yeah, that’s kind of expensive. It’s always been kind of expensive, but there are reasons for that price-point, and here they are:

ONE: You have to pay the printer. Pro Tip: Always pay the printer.

TWO: When you’re publishing paper books, you want vendors who are not you to sell your book. Bookstores are *also* for-profit endeavors, so you can’t sell them a $10 retail book for $10. You sell them the $10 retail book for $6, and the bookstore makes $4 profit per sale, less their cost of doing business.

However, the publisher, being for-profit, as it is, cannot lose money on the transaction — but they take a lesser profit per each, because typically bookstores buy in bulk.

THREE: If you place your books with a distributor, say Ingram, the distributor — being a for-profit enterprise — also takes a percentage of profits received. SRM Publisher did direct mail-order and was not in any way big enough to interest a distributor.

Everybody with me so far? Yeah, you in the back, I see your eyes drifting shut.  You don’t have to stick with this, honest.

All righty, then. Amazon. In this Brave New World, Amazon is printer, vendor, and distributor. Being a for-profit enterprise, as it oh-so-definitely is, Amazon takes a percentage of each sale — as printer, as vendor, and as distributor.

For ebooks, this means that Amazon “gives” Pinbeam Books 70% of cover for each sale. Sweet, right?

For paper books, Amazon “gives” Pinbeam Books 60% of cover, and, since Amazon is also the printer, it subtracts its printing costs from that 60%. Which leaves Pinbeam Books — a for-profit enterprise — with a profit per each that is comparable to the per-each profit on an Echapbook.

But wait, there’s more!

If you then click the Expand Distribution ticky-box, you make Amazon the distributor of your paper book — and we have already decided that Amazon, being a for-profit enterprise, will not do this for free. The price Amazon charges to get Pinbeam Books paper editions to “other” venues, drops Pinbeam Books’ profit per each to, a very low level. Speaking as a principle in a for-profit enterprise, I’d say, an unacceptably low level. Pinbeam Books would have to sell a Whole Freaking LOT of paper books to balance out the distributor’s fee, and return an acceptable profit.

So, what Pinbeam Books — aka Sharon Lee and Steve Miller — needs to figure out is if it’s ever again worth going for Amazon’s “Expanded Distribution.” This time was a mistake, and we’ll let it stand. And there are those people who refuse to buy from Amazon, who might pick up a paper copy through BN, only —

They’d still be giving Amazon money — even more money — by doing so.

And so.

End of lecture.

 

To send a wagon for thy minstrel

So, it’s been a while since we’ve chatted.  My excuse is — page proofs arrived for the mass market edition of Accepting the Lance (to be published on October 27), and needed to be proofread.  No sooner than had we sent them back, then the copy edits for Trader’s Leap (to be published on December 1) landed, and that’s what I’m occupying myself with at the moment.

In-between All That, Steve and I have had several, err, creative meetings — to dignify a process that involves a lot of hand-waving, staring out of windows, pitching random scenes and sentences, and refilling the wine glasses — regarding the next book under contract.

Those of you who have been following along will perhaps recall that The Original Plan had Steve as lead on the next book, while I had needed surgery on my left foot, and held myself ready to consult, taking up the duties of Staff once I was fit, and also working on a side book.  I may not have said that outloud, about the side book, but that was part of The Original Plan.

It is here that we insert:  The best laid schemes o’mice an’ men gang aft agley.

We started well enough.  Then, in January, there was a funky mammogram, which meant biopsies of both breasts, only one of which had been invaded by cancer; followed by a mastectomy in mid-March, and a course of radiation therapy, which ended in mid-June, when I started taking a prescribed aromatase inhibitor, which produced crippling side effects. We’re now in the phase of letting that med leave my system before we try another one.

Otherwise, I’m pretty much recovered, absent the fact that I’m having some memory and cognitive issues, which I’m told will improve, in good time.

And then of course, there are the on-going shared threats to health, liberty, and life that we are all dealing with.

During all of this, Steve was Front, whose expanded duties included driving me to radiation therapy — a 266 mile round trip — every weekday, making sure we were fed, laundered, and up-to-date.

The book languished.  We missed one deadline, and were on track to missing the second, extended, deadline.

Thus, the creative meeting.  Which led to the realization that we needed to start again.

We spoke to Madame the Agent, who spoke to Madame the Publisher.  Between us all, we worked out a new delivery date, in 2021.  So, this is your Distant Early Warning: There will likely not be a new Liaden book published in 2021.  A Miracle may occur — it would not be the first time that Madame the Publisher has pulled a rabbit out of her hat, but that’s not the way the smart money ought to bet.

Today’s blog title is brought to you by Hildegard von Blingen, covering Gotye’s “Somebody that I Used to Know.”  Here’s your link.

Trader’s Leap signed copies

Asyouknowbob, Trader’s Leap, the twenty-third novel of the Liaden Universe® written by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, will be published by Baen Books in early December 2020.

Several people have written to us, to let us know that Barnes and Noble is sending to Known Liaden Readers with the news that they are taking pre-orders of Leap — which is pro-active, and I applaud them.

We have also been asked, in light of the fact that Uncle Hugo’s was burned in the recent riots, if there would be any chance of signed editions.

We have an answer to that question, to wit!

Yes, there is a chance of signed editions.

We have spoken to Don Blyly, the man behind the Uncle, and he wants to handle the signed copies of Trader’s Leap, as he has done for manymany of our previous novels.  He needs to get some ducks in a row, and to our knowledge, he is proceeding in that endeavor.

Now, here’s where you need to not let BN, or the Internet Timewarp, raise your expectations.  Leap is due out on December 1, 2020.  Today is June 30, 2020.  Even in a normal year, the preorders through Uncle Hugo’s wouldn’t open until September.  There is time enough in the interval to wrassle ducks into at least a semblance of propriety, and if the worst happens, and the Uncle cannot find a way to handle preorders for signed copies, there will be time enough and world to pre-order from another source.

So, yeah, the key is, as it so often is :  Patience.  Waiting is.

Deep breaths.

Here, have a picture of Sprite and Belle, being calm and patient.