Scribd slashes romance titles

Scribd is losing money.  Romance fans are apparently voracious readers, and they are borrowing like Greek bankers.  Scribd has to pay out for every borrow, and the numbers aren't working out for them.  So they are eliminating a number of their romance titles.

Mark Coker of Smashwords blogs about it here.  He takes a guess at how much Scribd will cut, and it's pretty mind-boggling:

Effective immediately, I estimate 80-90 percent of Smashwords romance and erotica titles will be dropped by Scribd, including nearly all of our most popular romance titles.  Books priced at free are safe and will remain in their catalog.

Based on what I've been able to glean, the lower the price and the higher the word count, the better the odds the book will remain.  Few books priced $3.99 and above will remain.  Scribd is not publicly revealing the formulas for what stays and what goes, probably because much of this is still in flux. They're cutting all publishers and distributors with the same blunt knife.

If he's right, they're basically nuking the whole genre.

Now, this doesn't affect me, obviously, because I don't write romance.  I checked my Scribd links on the sidebar, and they still work.  (For now.  *fingers crossed*)  But it's still a seismic event in the self-publishing world.  And it definitely sucks for readers who will no longer have access to the stuff they want to read and for the writers who were supplying them with it.

Maybe Scribd will figure out a way to make their business model work.  I really hope they do.  The self-publishing world is better off with more retailers, not fewer, and I'd hate to see Scribd fail.

Updated some links

Barnes & Noble is in the midst of redesigning their site, and the links I had for my stuff there changed.  I've updated them, so they should work now.

I'll put the Oyster links up when I can.  D2D says my stuff is published is there, and provides me with links, but all I get is a blank page.  I went to the Oyster site directly, searched for Jeff Tanyard, and found my stuff, but the same thing happened.  When I click the links, I just get a white page.  I've sent an updated file for Mr. Wilson in to D2D anyway, so I won't worry about it for a few days.  Eventually, though, I'll need to see the product pages.

Two common firearms mistakes in fiction

There are many "uncommon" mistakes, usually having to do with the details of some obscure weapon or other.  Those are somewhat forgivable, if still undesirable.

But the common mistakes aren't so forgivable because they occur in spite of some very basic knowledge.  There are two of these that seem to happen more frequently than anything else.  The first of these common mistakes is using "clip" instead of the proper "magazine."

This is a clip:

These are magazines:

A clip is what is used to load a magazine.  Easy rule of thumb: if the device has a spring, then it's a magazine.  If not, then it's a clip.

The second common mistake had to do with safeties.  I've read a number of books where the hero flicked the safety off his Glock. 

Glocks don't have manual safety levers.  Neither do revolvers.  There may be rare exceptions to this, of course--there's lots of variation among firearms, as well as custom builds--but they are rare.  If your hero flicks the safety off his Glock, or, heaven forbid, off his revolver, then some of your readers are going to roll their eyes.  They'll think you've never seen a gun other than on the silver screen, much less actually fired one.  And you don't want your readers rolling their eyes at your work. 

So instead of inserting a fresh clip in his Glock and then thumbing down the safety, have your character insert a fresh magazine and then release the slide.  Your readers will appreciate it.

Update

I've got 45000 words done on Venus, but the going has slowed.  The action is ramping up towards the climax, and I'm trying to get it right, and it's not easy.

I've started thinking through potential plots for Mercury and Mars, the other two books in the trilogy.  No outlines yet--only vague notions of what I want to happen.

I'm thinking about a third Buddy story, too.  That's way in the future, though, and whether I do it or not will depend on how Buddy: Evolution performs in the marketplace.

D2D added Oyster

Draft2Digital has just added Oyster to its list of retailers.  I've already added Buddy and Mr. Wilson.  I don't know how long it will take for them to go live, but I'll mention it here when they do.

Progress Report

The first draft of Venus currently stands at a little over 37000 words.

Some of that will have to go, though.  I've been reconsidering how I want to set some stuff up.

Anyway, it's getting there.  Once the draft is done, I'll turn my attention to Buddy: Evolution and get it ready for publication.

Chapters

Are they necessary?  Or are they a relic of a bygone era, a time when an author could ramble on without worrying about boring the reader because movies and television hadn't been invented yet and everyone was starved for entertainment?

Personally, I think they get in the way of my writing.  I prefer to write in scenes with asterisk breaks.  Of course, one might say that I'm essentially using chapters, I'm just not calling them chapters.  But I don't think so.  An asterisk break feels different from a chapter break.  *shrug*

I think there's definitely a disadvantage to using chapter breaks, and that's the fact that they are convenient stopping points for the reader.  With an asterisk break, the reader is just a little more likely to keep reading.  Always try to write a page-turner.

Wherever the truth lies, I think I'll try going writing without chapters for a while.  At least until someone complains.  ;)