You know, the more I think about this whole Bookhabit thing the more annoyed with it I get. My opinions on the subject have been slowly growing in the comments of the last post, but I think I'm going to summarise them here, for posterity's sake.

Non-Transparent Process

As a bureaucrat, this is the one that pisses me off the most. I remember back in between Round 1 and Round 2 I got an email from Claire that very obtusely hinted at the voting system for Round 2 being 'weighted' in some way. It wasn't any more explicit than that, and it never became any more explicit than that; at no time in the last two weeks were any of the authors ever informed about the specifics of the ranking system. In fact – as mentioned to me in the email – Bookhabit was deliberately obfuscating the process in an effort to "prevent gaming of the system".

Fair enough? Well, no, not really. Because the site essentially changed the rules of the game not half-way through play, but after all the goals had been scored. "Bad" votes weren't eliminated as the contest progressed, but were deliberately left in right until the end. Why do this?

Misrepresentation

(This goes for the "vote weighting" thing, too.)

Here's the deal; the system as it progressed was set up to allow people with more dedicated fans to pull a higher rank. The system at the end was set up to specifically disadvantage books that had become popular extraneous to the Bookhabit site.

To me, this is Bookhabit essentially wanting to have its cake and eat it too. It wanted the extra hits and Google traffic bought in by the 'popular' authors but it didn't want any of these actually popular books getting into its Top 10. Why? The official reasons for the vote-changing at the end of the competition hinged on what I suppose you'd call "site users" versus "book fans". Rankings by "site users" – user that ranked more than one book, signed up before the contest, downloaded more books and so forth – were weighted more than rankings by fans who'd been brought in by individual authors to support their book in particular. More on that in a minute, but…

Do I have a problem with that? Well, no. Not if the site had been flat-out honest about that throughout the competition. But it wasn't. It was pitching Round 2 as a "popular vote" and so that's what authors like randomredux and I treated it like.

You know what the fourth and fifth Google hits for the search term 'bookhabit' are? I'll give you one guess.¹

This is what bothers me. That we put in all this effort with promotion – and yeah, it was effort – and in the end the site essentially turns around and says, "Oh sorry, we didn't tell you before but that's not how it works." Would we have bothered to promote the site as hard as we did if we'd know that to start with? Hell no.

Disrespect to the Fans

This one was originally pointed out by randomredux but I agree with him wholeheartedly.

Bookhabit disrespected you. Our fans; the people who took time out to show your support for us. Because they downranked your vote. Because you're apparently not the "right" people for their site. And this pisses me off. This really pisses me off, because as I've mentioned before, it's all about the fans. Fans are everything, our most precious currency. I spend a lot of time trying to interface with the fen – both new and old – because I know you guys are important.

Bookhabit, apparently, doesn't. And that's just bad for business.

Time and time again, whenever anyone looks at success in the long tail or micropayments market, it's constantly shown that success comes from fans. It's the viral market at its rawest and yeah, it's about popular appeal. Hell, it's not just the long tail. Economics works like this. You can be lauded by critics all you like, but you only get to be J.K. Rowling if people like you.²

This is where I think Bookhabit's dropped the ball; they're trying to seem 'literary' rather than popular. And seriously, I don't have a problem with that. I think it's a crappy business move, but I don't have a problem with it.

I have a problem with them implying otherwise.

The Cheating Thing

Since I'm talking about fans, I'm going to talk about cheating. And let's be honest, here; Chainbreaker dropped from 5th place to 24th. That's a hell of a lot of votes taken out, and there's nothing about that that doesn't make us look like we were playing dirty (book) pool.

Were we?

Well, I don't know. I've tried to keep it a bit don't-ask-don't-tell but I can say with a (mostly) clear conscience³ that if there was cheating, it didn't come from any official source.

It came from our fans.

And you know what? That's fucking awesome! Because that's exactly the kind of fan we're looking for; the sort of people who are prepared to go above and beyond the call to support us. It's a dog-eat-fucking-dog world out there and you don't win by playing nice. Bookhabit calls it 'cheating'. I call it "dedication".

So thank you, whoever you were (no no, don't tell me; it's your secret). You fucking rock my world.

A Bad Deal for Authors

Since we're out of the comp, I guess I can finally say what I've been thinking from the start, and it's up there in the subheading. I've given them a run, and at the end of the day, I don't think Bookhabit is a good deal for aspiring authors sitting in the long tail. I just can't shake the feeling that they've essentially – consciously or not – set themselves up as the modern version of a vanity press.

Vanity press; the thing every aspiring author is warning about. Essentially, you pay a truck load of money up front, get printed copies of your book and then it's up to you, the author, to sell it. Vanity press is expensive, at the very least, and is notorious for making big promises and delivering crappy products.

Bookhabit's pricing model makes it feel like a vanity press. Is it reasonable for them to take a 60% cut? Okay, they have to cover site costs somehow, but their rates just aren't competitive.

Lulu, for example, takes a 25% commission on top of royalties. So for the 'equivalent' price of a Bookhabit book, $2.50, you the author are making $2 as opposed to Bookhabit's $1. And at Lulu – indeed, all other distribution sites I've found thus far – you're free to set your own pricing structure. If you want to give your ebook away for free, go nuts. If you want to sell it for $100, you can go nuts on that, too.

So 60% is a lot, and Bookhabit's author pay-out model is deliberately structured to keep most of those royalties within the site itself. When signing up, you the author agrees that Bookhabit doesn't have to pay you until you've earned a stored total of $50 in revenue. That's a sale of 42 books, and if you look at the site I don't think there's a single book (at least, not one that I could find) that's yet hit that mark. Bookhabit, in fact, encourages its authors to use their pre-$50 revenue to buy other books from the site. In other words, the whole place is essentially set up like one big pyramid scheme with Bookhabit itself the only one ever really making any money.

The fact of the long tail is that almost no-one is ever going to hit that magical $50 margin; randomredux and I have, for example, $6 in "royalties" that we are never ever going to see again. In essence, Bookhabit 'owes' us $6 but because they're never going to have to pay it out, they're free to – in effect – use that $6 as if it were site profit. There's actually a financial term for this kind of trading off unactualised liabilities that I'm sure I'd be able to remember if I were an economist rather than a writer, but if I'm not mistaken it's considered really bad practice and has, in fact, sent not just a few businesses bankrupt.

Dodgy accounting and huge royalties aside, Bookhabit also just doesn't offer any value-add services to authors. Okay, they have a blog they occasionally use to promote some of their authors in. Well, you know what? I have a blog I occasionally use to promote authors in⁴ and a) I'm pretty sure I have a higher readership than they do, and b) I don't charge a 60% commission.

For an unpublished author looking for a distribution service there are much better choices out there. For all its problems, the aforementioned Lulu will sell you an ISBN and get your book listed on Amazon. Plus, of course, they do PoD printing. Mobipocket also has links to Amazon and other ebook distribution services. And if you're a US citizen you can go straight to the source and distribute your book for the Kindle. All of these services have higher royalties, larger markets and more flexible pricing structures.

All of which is why randomredux and I pulled Chainbreaker from the site. We're still struggling through our long tail, but we'll struggle through it without supporting a site I don't think is set up to do anything other than exploit aspiring authors.

1. For the record, because it will change long before this post does. ^
2. And, indeed, "critical acclaim" and "popular appeal" more often than not have an inverse relationship. ^
3. Okay okay, I registered twice. Forgive me! ^
4. Got an ebook you think I might like? Drop me a line! ^

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Okay, so that Bookhabit thing? Well, the competition closed with us ranked somewhere around #6; high enough to get into Round #3.

Seems like our celebration was premature. I'm just going to dump the email here because it's kinda involved, so…

( The Long Story… )

So, yeah.

At the end of the day turns out Chainbreaker dropped to 24th after all was said and done. Disappointment? I guess so, though I suppose realistically I knew that our chances of winning Round 3 against a batch of non-genre books was fairly slim. C'est la vie.

I'd like to give a big thank-you to anyone and everyone who took the time to support randomredux and I in this; you guys mean the world to us, seriously, so thank you.

I guess the next thing to decide is whether or not to pull Chainbreaker from the site. I've sort of glossed over this before, but I don't like Bookhabit's business model; the idea of them pulling a non-negotiable 60% of our profits when I'm unconvinced that they've earned us any real new exposure has always sat a bit uncomfortably, and from the start we were fairly upfront that we were in things for the competition. So… yeah.

Experiments in advertising, and all that, but we'll always have urbannordica.com.

Thanks again to everyone who came along with us for the ride. And watch this space…

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Okay, so, I'm probably not dying.

( Cut for vague TMI… ) I guess I'll know more when the tests come back.

In more fun news, on Friday night, ~Mat [h] and I went to see The Chaser's Age of Terror Variety Hour. We were full of lulz on account of the fact that being under 28 apparently entitles us to concession tickets at the Canberra Theatre, though the cost was kinda recouped by the fact that they've got a $7 internet booking fee. WTF? What is this, 1995? Stuff on the internet is supposed to be cheaper, Canberra Theatre, get with the times.

Anyway, the show was fun. Sort of like the War on Everything, I guess, in that it was a series of semi-linked topical skits. Mostly generic satire rather than political, though there was an amusing dance number satirising the plight of Australian hip-hop acts who have no more senior government Liberals to rant against (other than the Lord Mayor of Brisbane) and therefore no basis for songs. The most hilarious skits involved a 'study' on internet dating and how to get your bum on TV news via the power of the press release. Because bums are always hilarious.

Anyway, the name was pretty accurate (the show really did go for about an hour) and I can certainly think of worse ways to spend an evening (q.v. the rest of Friday).

Oh, and ~Mat [h]'s MX-5 ('Manbag') broke down on Saturday, which I'm sure would be much lulz for someone that wasn't us. Luckily it's under about twenty types of warranty, but it's still a pain. I had to call the NRMA to get him towed off the Parkway, and the car is currently at the Mazda dealer awaiting diagnosis. Fun stuff.

30 minutes to go. C'mo~on Chainbreaker!

… I can't watch!

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There's just over three hours of voting left in the Bookhabit Unpublished Competition. It’s been a wild ride, but Chainbreaker is currently holding on to fifth place.

Remember that we need to be in the top ten in order to progress to the next round, so if you haven't voted yet, now's the time to do so!

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First things first: There are only three more days left in the Bookhabit Unpublished Competition. It's been a nail-biting week, and after dropping down to 13th place Chainbreaker has managed to claw its way back up to 8th.

But we still need you help if we're going to remain in the top ten for the next round, so if you're reading this and you haven't voted yet I implore you to please take a few moments and do so. It means a lot.

And to all of you who've already done so, ♥.

My SL skin! Eet eest finished!

Well, finished enough for sale though I'm sure I'll continue to dabble on it; I'm still not entirely happy with the join between the abs and hips, but I think I need some Moar Practice in order to make it better. So for now it's up for sale at OnRez for the low low price of L$50. Huzzah!

And because I needed somewhere to leave my OnRez and SLex dropboxes, I'm now a landowner! A 512 plot in Fenland West called The Haunt. I'd been shopping around for a few days looking for plots and getting more and more despairing at the ugliness of it all. Yesterday, however, I finally got the Lindens to make my buy and, lo, the first (and cheapest) plot I clicked on left me staring right into a neighbour's yard that had been beautifully terraformed with trees and a waterfall/stream and a scattering of throw pillows. Okay, so the floating "beach mansion" on the other side was pretty uninspired, but compared to the previous lots I'd seen this place was bliss. So I staked it out and rezed my treehouse, set up my studio (essentially just a flat L of prims usually coloured either white or black, as a background to take model shots against), put down my drop boxes and patted myself heartily on the back.

While I was at it, I figured out how to edit prims in-game, which was fun. I can now successfully make squares and lay down different textures per side; go me!

Next on the agenda is terraforming the land some more; putting in some rocks and shrubs and a pond (pond is cool). Then getting to work on Loki's kilt thing. Huzzah!

Ganked from amiko-16.

Go here. Click refresh until you hit five quotes that resonate with you, and slap 'em up.

Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have.

Quoted From: H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Great minds have purposes, others have wishes.

Quoted From: Washington Irving

Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.

Quoted From: P.J. O'Rourke

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past.

Quoted From: Robertson Davies

Long experience has taught me this about the status of mankind with regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them, while on the other hand to know and understand a multitude of things renders men cautious in passing judgement upon anything new.

Quoted From: Galileo Galilei

And because I can't count:

The welfare of the people is the ultimate law.
(Salus Populi Suprema Est Lex.)

Quoted From: Cicero

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Imagine how chuffed I was the other day to realise that Lulu does hardback books now too! Schwoit. I think I like this whole book cover production thing. I should totally go into business… or not because, like, that'd be a great way to kill off my fun, hey.

I dunno what we're going to do with these. I ordered a proof – and cleaned up some of the interior formatting issues with both editions that I missed previously – so photos when it arrives. It'll be interesting to check the quality. The v0.1 paperbacks – you remember, the ones with the corrupted text – were interesting in that the interiors were impressive but I was a bit 'meh' over the cover printing. The finish is glossy rather than matte, and the print quality was a bit patchy on the large areas of near-black. Still, what do you want from PoD, right?

So, yeah. No idea what we're going to do with the hardback edition. Give them away to our most dedicated fans? Contest prize? Rewards for people who get us back up from #5 in the comp?¹ Who knows.

I was in the bookstore the other day – as I am almost every lunch – and it occurred to me how many books nowadays are getting released in the 6″ × 9″ paperback format; the size that Lulu uses. I always used to wonder why that size in particular, as opposed to a more standard paperback, and I guess I still do, but… it's interesting. The 6″ × 9″ format seems to have replaced hardbacks for the initial releases of most books; the smaller-sized paperbacks either following later or, occasionally, not at all.

I'm not really sure what relevance that has to anything. The stuff I notice, hey?

1. See how subtle that was? I so schneaky! ^

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Yesterday I typed up this whole big post about the Bookhabit Competition. It was all about advertising and popularity and genre and objective versus subjective critique ("this is good" versus "I like it").

It's all kinda pointless now because the dynamics of the competition have changed so much in the last 24 hours. It's nail-bitingly crazy. Chainbreaker has been sitting in the number one spot for about 12 hours now and randomredux and I are pretty much running around throwing our little arms up in the air making squeeing noises. Because, like, OMG! Number one! Imma gonna go track down every one of you who voted for us and… uh… give you all a great big hug! Because you guys rule, seriously.

It brings a tear to this author's eye.

Seriously, though, this whole experience has gotten me thinking back again to that whole popularity versus quality chestnut. You know, like with Harry Potter or the daily top favs on dA. Something invariably gets popular and then all the critics come out of the woodwork whining about how, "That's not art!" or whatever as if something like that actually matters when it comes to what people like or not. Popular culture, welcome to it and all that. I guess it's kinda niggling on me a bit because while I think (hope) that Chainbreaker is an enjoyable (and marketable) book, I'm in no way under the impression that it's Literature. When I write all I really want to do is entertain people, not fill their heads with MY THOUGHTS ON YAOI SOCIETY. I write stories with punching and explosions and swearing and blood and hot boys regarding each other soulfully, because that's the sort of thing I enjoy reading. And even after all this time, the person I write for is still primarily me.

When we entered this whole Bookhabit thing, our initial plans were – quite explicitly – to attempt to rely on our existing fanbase (friendbase?) in order to get through the first two rounds. I'm totally unapologetic about this, and the deeply cynical part of me is convinced that this is exactly the sort of behaviour Bookhabit was looking for. Because I really don't think this contest is about the authors per se; it's about Bookhabit outsourcing its marketing in the form of a competition. I mean, that's what I'd do if I were in their position and had an extra $5,000 lying around that I thought I could easily recoup by taking 60% of author profits.

Is this unfair to the other authors in the comp? Well, yeah, of course it is. People entered hoping to get chosen on merit and instead they're essentially getting steamrolled by a couple of authors who can pull in a big pool of friends and family. Do I feel guilty about that? Not at all, because randomredux and I have worked hard to build up the networks that we're currently cashing in on. Not just the promo stuff we've been doing for Urban Nordica itself – which has been a not-insubstantial effort on and off over the last three years – but the general friend- and fanbases we've accrued. There's nothing particularly special about what we've done; nothing that other content producers can't replicate.

Note that I'm not even talking quality of product, here. Quality of product is only a fraction of the story; what people like us really need in this fancy twenty-first century world is quality of fans. And that's how we've been marketing Chainbreaker. If you look at the success stories to come out of the long tail – and believe me, I do – it seems almost obvious that what you need to focus on is the fen, not the money. You don't make money in the long tail; at least, not enough to justify the effort you need to put in to get it.¹

I think a lot of long tail producers don't really get this; they sort of assume that because they've got a "quality product" (and, let's face it, who doesn't think their own product is quality) people are just going to magically flock to their Lulu store to buy it. Um. No. The people who make it out of the tail do it because they worked their way out. Okay, so maybe one in a blue moon someone's press release makes it seem like they got magically picked out of the hat but come on, that person is not you. It's like waiting to win lotto to become a millionaire; truth is, most millionaires got that way through hard work (and most lotto winners blow their money after the first 18 months).

This is the stuff I've gotta think about now. Every author knows finding an agent and a publisher is hard work but, I dunno, I reckon this stuff – this engaging-with-the-fanbase thing – is way harder.

Two years ago, I wrote a book. That was the easy part.

1. That being said… ^

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So, you thought you'd heard the last of Chainbreaker, did you!

Hah! Not hardly!

You remember Bookhabit? Well, Round 2 of the competition started today so once again randomredux and I need your help. This round has a ranking system and, well, you can read about it here. But basically we need you to go here and click on the blue arrow next to Chainbreaker's name. That's it.

You can rank up to nine more books, if you want. I grabbed "Dance With the Devil" and Prisoner, too, because slash spec fic is my bag baby and because maderr has been getting wank from other people over it.

We're currently #16 on the list. To make it through to the next round we need to be in the top 10 so… get voting people!

Oh, and you want some Urban Nordica themed junk like mouse mats, coasters, magnets and mugs? Well so did I. Lulz all round!

Edit

Whee!

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Well, Chainbreaker made it through Round 1 of the Bookhabit Unpublished competition, so it would be terribly remiss of me not to take this opportunity to expound to you all on what I think this experience has taught me.

I suppose now that I look at it, sticking Chainbreaker on Bookhabit was its first real adventure into the 'wild'. UrbanNordica.com and LiveJournal and dA and even Facebook are one thing, but these are all still pretty close to our chests; public, sure, but in spaced dominated by people who have a vested interest in us as people. Sticking the book somewhere like Bookhabit – sticking it in a competition – is like watching it take its first few teetering baby steps into adulthood.

The experience has taught me a few things.

The first thing is that boy, did we choose the wrong genre to write in! I mean, I guess I already knew that but, seriously, speculative fiction? Don't go there, kids. I suddenly have tremendous sympathy for publishers and agents who have to wade through the tens of thousand of submissions of this stuff, all Samey McSamesame, trying to pick out the one Samey McSamesame book that can make it in a market that's already overflowing with wizards and vampires and angels. Obviously I'd like to think UN has that 'it' factor and I think it's in our characterisation, but I guess in reality only time will tell for sure.

The second thing is; the first chapter is king. This is another one of those things I kinda knew but didn't really, yanno, know until downloading a bunch of first chapters off Bookhabit for the lulz okay I was scoping the competition. Apparently I have an attention span slightly lower than a monkey on speed, because I didn't find a single opening chapter that really grabbed me. And I mean really grabbed me, in the way something like Soon I will Be Invincible grabbed me.¹ I'm not sure whether this was a me thing or a "none of these stories are particularly good" thing or what, but, Jesus it made me scared. Because you know who's got the first chapter in Chainbreaker? Yeah, it's me. And you know what's worse? It was the first chapter written, back when the whole project was more like a play-by-post RP than a novel. And did I mention that I really, honest-to-gods can't assess the emotional impact of my own writing? Because I can't. Technical quality, yeah. Impact, not a chance.

Damn.

It gets worse, because of the third thing I've realised. I'm a character person; when I read (or watch) something what I'm relating to is the characters rather than the plot.² Actually, what I'm relating to is the concept of the character; this is me and my bitter, morally ambiguous, badass anti-heroes. A story doesn't get me unless it's got a main-character archetype I can latch on to. This is a really terrifying thing to realise, too, for the same reason as above. Most of my characters have been kicking about in various incarnations in my head for years. Wayne's currently the oldest; she used to be a renegade alien princess when I was about 14. Loki was an earth god named Jiboc, circa age 16. Sigmund was Sigyn from roughly the same era, about the only thing that's changed with him is his gender and fashion sense. Even someone like Miriah has been kicking around in my head for long enough now that she's got her own front door key. And the point is I can't tell whether or not these characters 'work'. They're so close to me that, honestly, I can't assess them objectively. I think Miriah is sympathetic, Loki is a monster and Sigmund is borderline psychotic… but I don't actually know.

(Sidenote: My favourite character moment in Chainbreaker is right near the end and essentially involves Lucifer doing a momentary heel-face turn. It doesn't last, of course, but the fact that it was him who broke up a moment of pathos with a show of what is essentially bald-faced courage really surprised me when I wrote it… yet felt really right somehow. It's an odd moment for a character who is fundamentally a villain. Sure, he's not Chainbreaker's villain, but that's only because the role was already filled by the time he showed up.)

So it's a double-whammy for me; the first chapter in Chainbreaker is Loki-centric. A first-person straight-into-the-action-what-the-fuck-is-going-on gamble. It's on my list of things to go back and re-write, but I'm still unsure about how I'd go about doing that, exactly. I'm sure there are pieces 'missing' from Loki; stuff I know inherently and have forgotten to expound to the audience through the contempt of long familiarity. Eight hundred words and it's all up to me to produce something that will grab the audience by the throat and shake… and I really can't assess how well it works.

Damn.

Anyway, the final thing I learnt this week was about perception; I've seen a couple of comments pop up along the lines of, I can't do X, Y or Z now… but I'll buy your book as soon as it's on Amazon! To which my mind immediately answers; no. No, because by the time we get to Amazon – by the time we get to print – it will already be too late for us to give a crap about you. That sound callous?³ Good, because it's supposed to, this is the reality of publishing. By the time Chainbreaker gets to Amazon, we don't need you; by that time, we'll have a publisher and an agent and a marketing team and graphic designers and typesetters. We'll have a proper distribution chain. You know, in bookstores. All the stuff we don't have right now. In fact, the only thing we have right now is you. Yes, you. Whether it's by guilt trip or friendship or because you actually (gasp) like the book, now is the time we need – really, really need – you. And we're gonna abuse that, sad to say, because a fanbase is all we have. The manuscript itself doesn't mean diddly squat. Promotion doesn't just magically happen; it happens because you guys make it happen.

See, here's the thing. It's not about money, it's about fans. That's why we're giving our goddamn book away for free; with royalties and the long tail working how they work, it's honestly not worth our while to actually charge people money. What we need is for you to take a chance on us, and we're trying to make that as easy for you as possible. So for godssakes, don't hang around waiting for print thinking you're doing us some kind of favour; you aren't. Your favour to us is getting involved now (and to all of you who are; we remember you, oh yes).

And now means now. Not when we've got a contract. Because, right now, we're nobodies. And the only one who can make us somebody? It's you.

1. Soon I Will Be Invincible has what I think has to be the most effective first chapter of any book I've ever read. It's kind of a Pyrrhic victory, since the next clump of chapters slide a bit, but still… ^
2. The one exception is Law & Order, which I love precicely because it doesn't focus on characters. Odd, dat. ^
3. Okay okay, I'm making this shit up. We always care about fans; you're the guys who make us. But the rest of the point stands. ^

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Okay, first thing? The Bookhabit competition is almost up, so if you haven't yet given dear ol' Chainbreaker a vote, do so now. We're five from five, so still in the running for the next round but only just. I hate to nag, but… Actually, no. $5,000 man. I'll nag all year for $5,000.

And while we're at it, Chainbreaker is also up for free download at Lulu.com. Because exposure is luff.

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