Let the whining begin.

I know it’s been a while since I’ve contributed any pithy blogs, but a lot has happened this year to put me in take-time-off mood.

First and foremost was getting a total knee replacement. I’d been putting it off for a couple of years, but when the doc gave me that beady-eyed, silent glare, I knew my time was up. To all the people out there who say: Oh, I had it done, nothing to it…I say: BITE ME. Or better yet, let ME bite YOU.  It. Hurt. Like. Hell.  It also brought back very unfond memories of when I did the original damage to the knee and had to have surgery to get bone chips removed. Back then, it was a full cast, ankle to hip, for six weeks with stern warnings to rest and stay off it as much as possible. These days they heave you out of the bed within hours and expect you to hobble through the mind-blowing pain down a mile long hallway to the torture chamber (therapy room) where a big-breasted Valkyrie awaits. She takes no prisoners. Not even if they scream or faint. Not even if they stubbornly refuse to get out of the wheelchair and threaten her with an IV needle. THAT horror lasted four days instead of the two I was promised, and even then I told them if they didn’t get the paperwork in order I was leaving without any farking release forms.

At home, I expected to find rest and peace . Ever get put on a hospital ‘air’ bed? Its supposed to prevent bedsores and cramping but every time you move an eyelash it hisses while the air cushions adjust. And for someone like me who can hear a watch ticking three rooms away, it was HELL. And I haven’t even mentioned the food. AUGH! Over four days I had two little yogurts and a spoonful of peas. That was all that was edible. Thank goodness my son brought me sustenance from Tim Hortons.

Where was I? Oh yes, my angelic son. Faugh! All he had to hear was that recovery was quicker if the patient exceeds the required exercises each day and BLAM, he turned into a Nazi general. Tears didn’t affect him. Curses didn’t affect him. Threats didn’t affect him. Two and three times a day he loomed over me like Godzilla until I did the required repetitions the therapist ordered. And when HE wasn’t available, my loving granddaughter took his place, whip in hand. I swear neither of them knew how to count either. I hit ten and they were insisting it was only eight. Hmphf. New math.

HOWEVER. Despite the whining and whinging, I did end up thanking them for pushing me so hard. I exceeded the required measurements for bending the knee that the therapist wanted me to achieve week to week, and after six weeks, she signed off completely and gave me a gold star. As of today, I’m walking normally, no limp, and most of the swelling is gone. The scar is hideous and I set off alarm bells at the airport, but it’s relatively pain-free. Would I get the other knee done? Not unless they send a search party into the deep jungles of Bali and catch me in a big cargo net.

Another reason for blog-silence is because I have nothing much to add about the Amazon-Hatchette dispute. I shouldn’t say nothing much to add, just nothing much that is civil. For those who don’t know much about the dispute or don’t even know that one is going on, in a nutshell, one of the larger publishers, Hatchette, is pissed off at Amazon because Amazon wants them to lower the prices on their digital books. Lower prices=more sales. More sales=more readers=expanding fan base. Lower prices=happy readers. Happy readers=more sales. So what’s the problem? Double damned if I know. The publishing world just went through an enormous price-fixing court case wherein the Big Five were charged (and found guilty) of colluding to keep digital prices high. Afterward there was a flurry of discounted prices at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple, and other fine distributors. The only hold out was Hatchette, who decided to keep their digital prices high…higher in some cases than the print version of the same book. Yeah, that makes sense. So Amazon, well within its rights as a distributor, has refused to deal with Hatchette, and for some reason known only to the pea-brain “bestselling NYTimes” authors who already have millions socked away in the bank, petitions have gone flying around decrying the horrible big bad meanie Amazon for punishing the poor innocent authors by standing firm against the publisher. These pea-brained authors even spent over a hundred thousand dollars on a full page ad in the NY Times whining and whinging over big bad meanie Amazon.

Really? Yes, Really. Whining over big bad meanie Amazon where most of their sales over the past few years have taken place, print and digital. Whining over a company who has helped more authors…like me…get a second chance at their careers by letting them self-publish. Whining over a company who treats their authors like a valuable commodity and pays them accordingly each month, not dribbling out crumbs cloaked in clauses like “reserves against returns” twice a year.

Maybe I just don’t get it. Maybe I should be thinking:  Higher prices=fewer sales=but happy publisher.

AND speaking of higher prices…as I predicted months ago, possibly even years ago…the utterly stupid trend of bundling ten full size novels into one volume and flogging it for .99 has finally come around to bite the authors in the ass. I have nothing against discounting books for my readers. I’ve done it many times and have even kept a free book out there (Across a Moonlit Sea), long after I intended to leave it free hoping to interest new readers enough to check out the other two books in the series. And it has helped to keep my sales numbers from slipping into an abyss. September is a notoriously slumpy month for sales across the board for everyone, but I’m not the only one convinced that part of the fault this year lies in the bundling fever.  As I mentioned recently to a yahoo group I belong to: I’ve been against the ten-books-for-99-cent bandwagon since it started rolling. The first few that came out were novel (no pun intended) and probably made out like bandits, so of course everyone under the sun scrambled to put bundles together to catch hold of the new money wagon. In the past six months alone, I was approached FIVE times, four of them by authors I’d never heard of before, but they were all salivating to get cheapie bundles out there.

I’m thinking that not only is the bundling losing effect, but it’s actually starting to cause damage on the home front. There are so many bundles out there now that readers *expect* them! Even worse, they *expect* to only pay .99 for ten full size novels. Hell, why would a reader pay $4.99 or $3.99 or even $2.99 when they can pick up ten for .99? It’s killing us. We’re getting undercut every day and not by publishers this time, but by our own peers and I’m not sure this wound is going to heal any time too soon.

It’s a great bargain for the readers, no denying that. And the excuse I hear from new authors eager to toss in their novel with a “big name draw” in order to get noticed…well, I’m still waiting to hear how that worked out for them. Ten books for .99 at a 33% royalty rate equals approximately .03 per sale. So to earn $2.79, which is the royalty earned on a single sale for a book priced at $3.99, the bundle would have to sell 93 copies. A generous sale of 10,000 copies would generate $300.00 for each author in the bundle. Not bad unless you figure that 10,000 copies at $3.99 would earn out $27,900. Yeah, I’d sign up for that deal LOL. It might take longer to sell those 10,000 copies, it might take that new author–or even an old dinosaur like myself– a few years of writing more books and doing more promotion to achieve those numbers. But at least they wouldn’t be lost in a bundle. Reality check, people? Readers who buy bundles featuring a “big name” author will often only read that one author because it’s a deal to get their book at that price. The other nine? They more often than not go into the cyberspace filing cabinet.

Aren’t you glad I decided to blog again today?