Price is fixed

The price for Cities of Mars is now correct on the Amazon product page.  It took a little more than two days for the publishing update to go through, but it finally did.  So all's well that ends well.

I was going to alter the back matter in the Free Space books, but now I'm going to wait a little while.  I've got a promotion coming up, and I don't want to make any changes that might screw things up.  I'll change the back matter at a later date.

In other news, I found a plot hole in my current work, so I've got some alterations to make.  I don't think it'll be that big of a deal, though.  No major surgery required; just a bandage here or there.

Glitches at Amazon

Amazon is experiencing some glitches.  The product page for Cities of Mars, last I checked, advertises the book for $0.99.  This is incorrect.  The price I set for it is $2.99.  For some reason, the real price isn't being displayed on the product page.

Other authors have reported their product pages disappearing altogether.

I have no idea what's going on, but hopefully Amazon will get it all sorted out very soon.

Kobo requires captcha now

I really don't like the captcha thing.  The pictures are grainy, and it's often too hard to make out the details well enough to tell if the object I'm supposed to find is there or not.  Maybe it really does help prevent bots from logging in.  I don't know.  All I know is that it's an annoyance.

In other news, Draft2Digital has announced a new partnership with Baker & Taylor, a library system in the same vein as Bibliotheca.  I've added my books to both library systems.  We'll see if anything comes of it.

I'm going to change up my back matter a little and see if I can improve my sell-through rate.  My current rate isn't bad, but I think I can do better.

I've got some other things in the works, but no details for now.  ;)

I've removed/deactivated/whatever the copy of Mr. Wilson I was using as a magnet at My Book Cave.  It was an interesting experiment, but not one I think I'll repeat any time soon.  Not in the same way, at least.  I need to come up with an actual strategy first.

Still line-editing the work-in-progress.  Stay tuned.

Fixed a goof

Not a plot hole per se.  Just an inconsistency, and a minor one at that.  But this is why we do multiple passes over our work, right?

Manuscript currently stands at about 121k words, 42 chapters, and an epilogue.

A little Halloween music

Let's get in the mood, shall we?

To all you kids out there, this video was absolutely revolutionary when it came out.  Music videos prior to Thriller were basically just videos of the band playing the song.  Michael Jackson turned the music video into an art form all its own, and the rest was history.

Migraine blues and other stuff

Had another migraine last night.  Instead of getting anything useful done, I spent the night lying down, sitting on the toilet, and throwing up.  Par for the course.

No headache today--well, a little lingering bit, but practically none--but I've been kind of weak and tired.  That's also par for the course.

The air has gotten cooler.  Highs have been in the upper 60s the past few days.  Summer's officially over, I guess.  Today was breezy with overcast skies.  There was an enormous flock of blackbirds, too, making an awful racket.  It was like a scene from a Hitchcock movie.  Appropriate, I suppose, with Halloween approaching.

Until recently, every promotion I'd done on Kobo resulted in at least one sale.  The past couple of them, though, came up empty.  I have no idea how to get any momentum going there.  :(

Once I get the current work-in-progress published, I'll probably set up a Streetlib account.  I've basically decided to get on Google Play via Streetlib.

My magnet promotion thing netted 112 downloads during the promotional period.  However, I never took the story off "magnet" status, so it's accumulated a few more downloads since then.  I have no idea how people are finding it.  Maybe some folks liked it enough to tell their friends on Facebook or something.  *shrug*

Bookbub raised their prices.  A permafree SF book is no over $500 to promote.  It doesn't matter so long as I can't get a deal, but still...  :(

That's all for now.  Take care, y'all.

Wikipedia dreams

I've always been intellectually curious.  That can sometimes be a peril, particularly when I'm browsing Wikipedia.  Sometimes I'll start on one page, but then I'll get sucked into the various links, and before you know it, I've got a dozen Wikipedia pages open in various tabs and I'm reading about something I never intended to read about just a few minutes ago.

My conscious mind loves new information.  Like I said, I'm intellectually curious.  My subconscious mind, though, my id, doesn't like having so much new stimuli stored in my head.  And my id gets its revenge when I slip into sleep.  That's when all the stuff I was just reading about gets mashed up into a horror show.  Yes, my id gives me Wikipedia-inspired nightmares out of spite.  Bad id!  Bad!

If I could remember all my nightmares, I'd have enough story material for the rest of my life.  And it would be the craziest, awesomest stuff, too.  But I rarely remember.