The stars were out in force last week to help Arlene Hunt launch her latest tome, BLOOD MONEY, at the Gutter Bookshop, and Declan Hughes was there too (ba-boom-tish, etc.). Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make it myself, possibly because I was too busy feverishly thumbing through said tome. For my verdict, which was delivered on RTE’s Arena programme on Tuesday night, clickety-click here. Don’t adjust your speakers; if you’re wondering why I sound even more like a hippo playing the tuba than usual, it’s because I had a heavy man-cold. Poor me, etc. Happily enough, a couple of books popped through the letter-flap to cheer me up - the paperback versions of Alan Glynn’s WINTERLAND arrived, as did a new version of Gene Kerrigan’s DARK TIMES IN THE CITY, complete with ‘Shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger’ branding. Nice. And as if that wasn’t enough, John Connolly’s THE WHISPERERS arrived too. So that’s next week’s reading taken care of.
In other news, the Spinetingler Awards are open for business again, with Stuart Neville, Adrian McKinty and Ken Bruen (co-writing with Reed Farrel Coleman on TOWER) holding up the Irish end of things in the nominations. If you want do your democratic duty, clickety-click here …
In other-other news, I was a bit gobsmacked to learn that JA Konrath, a veteran of e-book publishing at this point, earned just over $4,200 in March, just by selling e-books. Now, maybe March was a particularly good month for him (he gives all the details here).
But if that kind of income evens out over a year, he’s looking at earning about fifty grand a year from e-book sales. Not a figure to be sneezed at, especially if you’re a writer (i.e., yours truly) who can’t get the proverbial dog to bark at him. In that spirit, and after hearing that Smashwords have signed up with the forthcoming iPad, I uploaded the previously Kindle-only CRIME ALWAYS PAYS to Smashwords, which now means that it’s available in a wide range of electronic formats. Hell, you can now read the blummin’ thing on your iPhone. For a free sample of the novel, clickety-click here …
2 comments:
I was walking through the bookstore that I work in today, and I passed some young women, one of whom said to another as I went by, "This is the best IPhone ap ever! I can scan the barcodes and see where I can get it cheaper!" I thought maybe she was taking an inventory of the whole store, but she seemed to be content scanning the books about Paris--for now.
Despite the sigh that this invokes, good luck with the e-sales. Multi-format would seem to be the way to go.
Hi Seana - I hear your pain on this one, but really, what else can I do? If no one wants to publish my stuff, and e-publishing is there, and the stories are just lying around gathering dust ... Hell, it's not like I'm doing it for the money. Even though I'm only in it for the money, etc.
Cheers, Dec
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