Print books available--hooray!

I'm doing the happy dance because print copies of Trouble in a Big Box will be in my hands as of Dec. 3. It will probably take them longer to make it to book stores, if indeed they ever do. But after a four-month gap between the appearance of the e-book and that of the print copy, I'm delighted. This long gap speaks more eloquently than anything I know of the change in publishing. My publisher assures me they sell ten e-books for every print copy, so it only makes sense to do the e-book first and the print when it can be fit into the schedule.
This is a complete reversal from the traditional world of publishing in which I cut my teeth and toiled for many years. We printed hardcover books, held a huge launch party--well, okay, when we could and when the book or the author had the potential to draw a crowd--and when the print copy was exhausted, we went to paperback. Not until I retired did the TCU Press ever make any progress toward e-books, though I pushed for it a lot, especially for fiction titles, during the last years I was there.
I don't mind publishing e-books first; I do mind the long gap until print, because in my mind a big party still launches a book. I may be more fortunate than most in that I seem to have a ready market for print copies and a lot of people who want to come help me celebrate. Believe me, I am so grateful. Still, to me, there's something anticlimactic about having a print book months after some have read the novel as an e-book. I hope none of you feel that way.
Christmas may be a bad time--or a good time--to launch a belated print copy. We'll see. I'm hoping lots of you will want print copies for yourself for holiday reading or for gift giving. And, of course, I'm hoping you'll spread the word to friends and family about the Kelly O'Connell mysteries.
For those in Fort Worth, I'm scheduling a signing in early December. I'll announce the date in a couple of days, so watch Facebook please. For those of you elsewhere, ask your bookstore to order it from Amazon or Turquoise Morning Press.
The other day, talking to a group at the Fort Worth Woman's Club, I found that the ladies were most interested in the whole subject of the changing publishing world--what e-books, print-on-demand, and independent publishing mean to them as readers. Please let me know if you have questios about these things--I'd love to give you my own view, though I can't guarantee it's comprehensive.
Meantime, I'm a happy camper tonight.

:Like seeing your chldren again

An author/friend once commented that having books out of print was like having children  you can't see. Well, I'm excited to announce that as of today I can see two of my OP "children" again. Libbie and Sundance, Butch and Me are now both available as ebooks. I've mentioned them before but in cases of blatant self promotion, I believe in repetition.
Libbie is the story of Elizabeth Bacon Custer's years with George Armstrong Custer, as I imagine them. Not all the fun and games her journals would suggest. Elmer Kelton wrote, "Libbie is probably the book Mrs. Custer would have written had she not been determined to protect her husband’s name.” a review in Romantic Times said, “A wondrous, intimate story of an unsung heroine of the West," and Affaire de Couer said, “Rings…authentically true….Brilliant and memorable….Kudos to Ms. Alter for a refreshingly unique story.” Here's a brief excerpt:

I knew that history would make a plaything of Autie, and when that happened, all my battles would be lost again. Autie rarely lost a battle—save that last big one—and his fights were always glorious, painted on a broad screen by the clamoring newsmen if not by himself. My battles were small and silent and private, but oh! they were important to me, and I had managed to hold the line. I would not see it all wiped away with the muckraking cry that Autie's overweening ambition had led him to disaster at Little Bighorn. I would make sure that the world saw the George Armstrong Custer I wanted seen. Only this private journal—to be burned upon my death—records my own wars.

Twelve years is not very long in a lifetime, yet it seemed my whole life was lived in those brief years of marriage. I had fought battles of my own, hard battles, to marry Autie, and once married, I thought myself the happiest and luckiest of women—married to the great boy-general, the hero of the Civil War. We would, I knew, grow old together, savoring the best of life, the last for which the first was made, so the poet wrote. I'm not sure when, exactly, that I knew that dream was not to be, that a love as intense as ours could not survive, that two people as willful as we could not be bound so tightly together. And yet, when all was said and done, I would not have traded those twelve years for anything on earth. Were they worth a lifetime? There is no answer, but even to think about it, I must begin earlier, back in Monroe.... I remember yet one snowy night when I was but sixteen years old.

 Libbie is available from Kindle at

http://www.amazon.com/Libbie-Historical-Western-Romance-ebook/dp/B007Q3EJ74/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1333417391&sr=1-3  and from Nook at

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1000340594?ean=2940014178730&itm=1&usri=judy+alter+libbie

I'm proud of these novels and the research that went into them. Hope you enjoy them. Tomorrow, more about Sundance, Butch and Me, the story of Etta Place's years with the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang. 

This business of writing

Don't know that I have my thoughts organized on this, but I've been thinking about it for quite some time. I follow several writers' listservs. A theme on many is that you have to treat your writing as a business. Yet, I'm amazed at some writers, particularly those who manage their on backlist as ebooks and those who publish independently. Amazed, awed, but stymied. They track sales daily, they compare their sales to comparable books, they experiment with different digital prices--free, ninety-nine cents, when to raise, when to lower. Many of them are constantly at war with diffrent e-platforms, though most often Amazon, and they agonize over writing letters of complaint, getting action in lowering, raising prices, whatever they want. Writing is indeed a business, and they micromanage it--but when do they have time to write?
A big controversy wages these days over the Kindle Select program, whereby an author can agree to post a new book digitally only on Kindle for 90 days; in return you get five days in which you can give the book away free. Some give close to 20,000--sorry but it hurts my Scottish soul to give all that away. On the other hand, give-aways boost your ranking on Amazon (something I don't pay attention to, unfortunately), and many authors report a boost in sales of all their books after the free promotion. There's also something about certain high-level Kindle patrons can "borrow" books and the author gets a small payment. I don't understand this, and from what I read it doesn't end up profiting the author. Some authors praise the KDP Select program to the high heavens, but lately more are bitterly complaining.
My new novel, No Neighborhood for Old Women, comes out as an e-book April 8, and I had at first thought to rush headlong into the Select program but now I'm undecided. My publisher, wisely, leaves the decision up to me. If whatever decision goes amuck, I have no one to blame but myself.
I appreciated a post today where the author said she isn't really very good at marketing, and she wants to stay home and write. That's one big reason I sought out a small press--and let me tell you again how happy I am with Turquoise Morning--and another reason that I am having ePub scan, prepare and post two of my older titles--Libbie and Sundance, Butch, and Me. For a small percent of royalties they will handle the business details. I can move ahead with my writing.
I do have one free short story, a short story collection, and an award-winning novel up on various platforms as e-publications that I manage. But I'm lazy or lackadaisacal about it. I don't check in on them very often. Today when I did, I was surprised to find that one platform told me I had only two items; logged in again, changed whatever, and found all three. But another time when I logged in, I found only one--Skeleton in a Dead Space. Eventually I discovered that I have two sites on Smashwords (an umbrella posting service that posts books to a variety of platforms except Kindle)--one for me, one for Turquoise Morning. That seems self-defeating--I want readers to be able to find all my books with one click. The TMP publisher is going to see about merging them, and then I'll have to deal with getting the ePub books merged into the site also.
What happened to the good old days when you wrote a book, sent it to an agent or a publisher, and went on to the next book? I recognize that in many ways a bright new world is dawning for writers with the rising acceptance of self-publishing and the growth of e-books, but the business end baffles me. I also recognize that as a retiree who appreciates the extra income but is not dependent on it, I'm in a fortunate position. But I retired because I managed a publishing business and was tired, tired, tired of spread sheets, unit costs, profit margins, and all that. I retired so I could write--and so far, it's working well. One book in 2011, two in 2012, and two scheduled for 2013. Give me publishers any day.

New Life for Old Books

In the early 1990s, I wanted to break my fiction out into a "big" book, rather than the short fiction I'd been doing for Doubleday's western fiction series. I told then-edtor Greg Tobin I wanted to write a fictional biography of Libbie Custer's years with General George Armstrong Custer. After all, theirs was the "Great Romance of the Western Frontier." Greg coughed, hemmed, hawed and said he'd have to see a hundred pages before he offered a contract. Long story short, it was published and did better than any other book I've published. Not the big breakout book, but nice respectable sales. Of course it went out of print, and in those days who knew to save digital files? Even if I had done so they'd be on a diskette and difficult to access today. So I have paid a company to scan all 300+ pages. Just finished proofing the galleys, and it should be available for e-readers soon.
I suspect I'm as proud of this book as any I've done. I wrote it with Libbie's journals spread out before me, and yet I tried to give her a voice that was real to me, not the public voice she assumed in her zeal to make sure Autie went down in history as a hero. Read an except here http://www.judyalter.com/e-books.
In proofing this book, I was surprised at how much of me there is in Libbie and how much of my attitude toward my marriage, then some ten years in the past. And I was also surprised at the change in my writing style. Libbie is not clumsy, don't get me wrong, and when I began to read it, I thought, "Darn, this is better than I thought." But I also noticed some slight changes in style--I've learned not to repeat similar words too close together; I've learned to avoid what I now think is that awkward construction, "It was then that ...." I've learned to omit unnecessary words to a greater extent.
Don't let me discourage you from reading this. I got some nice comments on Facebook about it, and I still think it's the most human approach to what I see as Libbie's dilemma--marriage to Custer was not al happy romps across the prairie, and I tried to capture that realistically. This is BSP--blatant self-promotion: I think you'll like Libbie if you haven't read it before. I'll post on Facebook when it's live and available to order.
Watch next for Sundance, Butch and Me, my take on Etta Place's life with the Hole In The Wall Gang and her romance with The Sundance Kid. It's no accident that in the title, Butch Cassidy comes between Sundance and Etta. Fiction after all can suppose, imagine, and take liberties. Want a preview of my approach? Read the short story, "Reunion," in Sue Ellen Learns to Dance and Other Stories, available as an e-book for 99 cents. http://www.amazon.com/Ellen-Learns-Dance-Other-Stories/dp/0977179737/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331599197&sr=1-2
Enough bragging, but I'm excited to see these older works available to readers once again. Hmmm, twenty years is older? My, how time flies.

Family furor, nasty weather, and a thought about books

The furor in the family over the cookbook cover continues. Yesterday Colin doctored the cover to insert Kegan's face, only Kegan is wearing monster teeth (he's apparently fond of running around the house in them) and his head is too small under the hat and the whole things is too ugly--when my darling Kegan is so beautiful. Then Brandon took Colin's photo and furthered doctored it. And finally Jamie wrote that my publisher had sent him the real cover, which is titled "My Favorite Boy! How the love of one son can inspire an entire family . . . " I'm truly sorry that I couldn't get it to upload. I wrote a Marcia Daudistel, who follows my blog, about all this, and she suggested that small families don't have nearly as much fun as large ones. Jordan did tell me seriously that many of her girlfriends want to buy the book, always a good sign.
Tonight is one of those North Texas nights when you live in apprehension--will it really be icy in the morning? They're predicting freezing rain, subfreezing temperatures, and ice from early tomorrow morning through mid-day Wednesday. I have plenty of food and today did those errands that make you feel self-satisfied--the vet for dog and cat food, filled the car with gas, and picked up a prescription. Then, because it was already wet and nasty, I came home and hunkered down. I'm warm and cozy and prepared to stay home for a day or more if I have to. Of course, a power outage would change the whole story completely--and leave me without eat since my gas furnace has an electric starter.
I've been thinking a lot about point of view in fiction the last few days. I have most often written in first person, putting myself inside a female head--it's the voice that seems to come naturally to me and at which my writing is better. I think I mentioned recently my fear that you were supposed to graduate and I might never, along with the fact that my current mystery started out in third person and got much better when I rewrote in first.
But now I'm reading a mystery written in first person from a male point of view--and I don't mean to sound gender biased or anything like that, but I'm having a hard time with it. It's told by a man who's an undertaker--well, there's a bit of a problem in itself, still sleeps with his ex-wife, engages in pummeling with friends when they meet (He even says, "We men love that sort of pummeling."), drinks a bit too much, etc. I have a hard time identifying, whereas I quickly identify with the narrators of my cozies I read. There's no law that says cozies must be written by women, but they usually are. This has all the makings of a good plot, but I'm just not sure I'll hang in to the end--it's a fairly long mystery. Thank goodness I paid a dollar for it, used and on sale.
Just in case of ice, I ordered a couple of new books for my Kindle tonight (not that I don't have plenty of work to do, but this is the new, slower, lazier me). The beauty of the Kindle is that you can order the books and have them almost instantly.
An interest statistic: sales of e-books jumped 108% in the last--well, now, I don't know if it's quarter or year, but that's still an amazing jump.