Category Archives: Writing
Kindle and changing ebook prices
A while back, there was some outrage going around about teh ebil Amazon empire and their treacherous ways with lowering Kindle prices on some ebooks, which may or may not affect royalty payments.
One author, we’ll call him John Doe, went on for weeks about it. He’d published an ebook through Kindle and one day, he found the price was lowered drastically. Upset, he contacted Amazon about this and they quickly turned the price back. Problem solved, right?
One would think so, but the issue turned up on several blog posts afterward, lighting the fires under several others who basically had no idea why they were angry but why the hell not! It even turned out that the author’s ebook had, indeed, lowered elsewhere beforehand, and Amazon had simply price-matched, per their TOS, but… THEY’RE STILL EBIL!
The unnamed author kept saying how the big publishers would never treat him that way. To that, I say bullshit. Not just bullshit, but big, wormy, steamy, bullshit. And I add, why isn’t he back with them if they’re so snazzy?
Let’s clarify a few things: when you put something up through Kindle, you may think you’re self-publishing but you’re not. Sure, it’s a lot closer to self than the traditional route. No rejections to deal with. But Amazon is still the publisher. You come to an agreement with them, make a contract to provide a good for their services, the same as you would with Bantam or Harlequinn or any other publisher. They allow you to set a price but there are stipulations: don’t undersell them, and royalties will be higher or lower depending on the price you choose. It’s your job to adhere to that agreement and not throw a big nasty tantrum all over the Internet if you fuck up.
And if this happens, and they choose to change the price of your book, it’s the same as if any other publisher decides to change the retail price in order to keep up with the competition. This is rarely the case with them because they let the bookstores handle all that, but in Amazon’s case, they ARE the bookstore. But if a publisher is at a convention and they need to push some books, they’ll damn sure knock the selling price down to sell, paying the author a royalty of THAT.
Personally, Google Books screwed with the prices of some of KHP’s titles and Amazon adjusted to match, and they still pay the normal royalties. Everything is cool with that. No need to FFfFFFFfffrreeeeeaaakkk!
Get what I’m saying? Chill people. I’m going to bed now.
Phone call from Pacione!
I just received my very first threatening phone call from Nickolaus Pacione! It was hilarious! The conversation went something like this:
JB: Hello?
NP: Why you trying to ruin my company?
JB: What? Oh! Is this Nick?
NP: Look, asshole, don’t publish any book called “Lake Fossil.”
JB: Okay.
*silence*
JB: Still there, bud?
NP: You’re a plagiarist!
JB: How’s that?
NP: You’re stealing my company name!
JB: So, publish a book and call it “Skullvines.”
NP: You can’t do that, butthole!
JB: Sure you can. You can call a book whatever you want. They’re not copyrighted.
NP: *mumbling*
JB: What? Take that dick out of your mouth and speak up.
NP: I’m gonna kick your ass!
JB: You know where I live. Hell, you’ll make it easy on me because the jail house is across the street. I can just beat your ass and drag you over there.
NP: Leave my company alone or I’ll expose Karen Koehler again!
JB: First, I’m not doing anything to you or your company. Second, how are you going to expose Karen? She’s nothing to hide.
NP: What about your wife? I’ll make it so she tries to kill herself when I’m through.
JB: *aside* Hey Robin, it’s Pacione. *Robin laughs*
NP: I’m not the one living with a psycho.
JB: Ha! Look who’s talking! Plus, Robin is nothing like you, and she writes better.
NP: I was published in Withersin!
JB: The fuck is Withersin?
NP: Motherfucker!
*dog barks in the background*
JB: Hey, is that a dog? Do you have a dog?
NP: Yeah, a black lab.
JB: Oh, I love black labs! They’re great dogs.
NP: You need to leave my company’s title alone! That’s my ultimatum to you!
JB: Do you ever smear peanut butter on your body and let your black lab lick it off?
NP: I’ll – I’ll expose you! I’ll expose your nature!
JB: What do you mean? What’s my nature?
NP: You’re a faggot!
JB: Oh now, sweetie. Keep talking like that and I’ll bring up those pictures of you and me making out on the beach. Those were great times, though I wish you’d worn more deodorant. But we were being so passionate that I didn’t mind much.
NP: *mumbling*
JB: What’s that? Slow down, you’re talking too fast.
NP: *mumbling* what I’m gonna do to you *mumbling*
JB: Huh? What are you gonna do with me, baby?
NP: Y-you worm!
JB: What are you gonna do with my worm?
NP: … asshole!
JB: You want my worm in your asshole? Well, you’d better wash your ass before I put my worm in there.
*click* He was gone.
Love from Nickolaus Pacione
I’m certainly not the first to get hate mail from the deranged idiot, Nickolaus Pacione. After all, he steadily goes after such greats as Brian Keene, Poppy Z. Brite, and Ray Garton, to name but a few. But tonight I got some love from him, and he not only goes after me, but my wife.
For those who don’t know, he runs a lulu-based “publishing” company called Lake Fossil Press. He can’t write himself out of his urine-stained sleeping bag, so he tries to make a name for himself by attacking bigger authors, equating infamy with fame. I hear he’s also been taken to the hospital for having transformers stuck up his ass.
When Skullvines Press debuted with Tabloid Terrors, he accused us of copying his Tabloid Purposes books, thinking that he somehow cornered the whole “tabloid” thing. Well, National Enquirer and Weekly World News, which we were creating a parody of, existed long before those things of his.
Anyway, Brian Keene has signed with Skullvines for his first bizarro novel, which carries a working title of Lake Fossil. So Nicky is a tad upset about it.
Well seriously, fuck him. I think it’s a great title for Brian’s book, it fits the plot, and it’s going to kick ass.
Anyway, first I get an email through the Skullvines Press contact form titled:
Jerrod: a friendly warning
I am not going to be as nice by the time this is all said and done. I hope all the shit your friends art giving me and misrepresenting my imprint — I hope there is a posse that gives your wife the same amount of shit and ten fold than what I get.
By the time that’s all said and done, your wife will find home in a padded cell and white coats looking for her. I think you and your fuckbuddy Keene are really delusional about what what’s the home of Lake Fossil Press. My magazine doesn’t have a fucking unicorn on it.
So think twice you fat fuck because I will show no fucking mercy to any of you.
So if you’re wife hangs herself because all the shit that everyone throws at her — I will just say, “I told you so motherfucker.”
GET FUCKED YOU FUCKING PLAGIARIST.
After that, I get a Facebook message saying:
I hope everything your so called “friends” thrown at me gets thrown at your wife ten times worst. Keene not only dissed my company but dissed one of my star authors. I managed to get Ray Nelson, so I demand that you give the company a little more respect because I got something you don’t have — star power. And if you see your “friends” turning on you and putting all that shit they thrown at me and throw it at Robin, don’t say I told you so. The threats of having me locked in a rubber room, what if they did that to Robin.
Well, I love you, too, sweet-cheeks. And Robin said, “I hope he shits bricks with hemorrhoids.”
***Update:
More love from his Facebook:
Subject: you could have prevented all of this
by not linking the fucking domain lakefossilpress and think of publishing a novel called LAKE FOSSIL — do you want people thinking Lake Fossil to be written by Brian Keene or a science fiction series that’s written by me. They will associate Lake Fossil with me because I’ve been going as LAKE FOSSIL on a social networking website, and not as ning. Take what I say as someone who’d say exactly what I say to your face.
Either stop with the process of your “novel” or I go to the press where you live saying you’re fucking with someone who has a similar illness as your wife. I am far from being an idiot and I’ve sold my work to publications where you don’t have a publishing history. My publishing history goes back to as far as being 20. It’s hard enough that one of your writers organzied a boycott of everything I’ve done.
As long you do those libelous accusations with Hasbro toys or claim that my magazine has a fucking unicorn on the cover. You will always be a horror target in my eyes. I am giving you one fair shot to cease from doing that novel or I will start using titles of your publications for my work.
Nick, I heard about the transformers incident. I didn’t state it as fact, except for the fact that I heard about it. The source claims to have a copy of the actual medical records. What I want to know is, did you have to pay for the robot’s therapy?
Since titles for works can’t be copyrighted, use mine all you want. Here is a list of my stories’ titles and I’d love to see you write something sharing the same name:
“Wolf Plugs” from Dark Jesters is about silver butt plugs to ward off werewolves. You like butt plugs, right?
Tabloid Terrors 1 has such titles as “I was a Sasquatch Sex Slave,” “Scandalous Love Triangle Between Scientist and Two Bears,” “Abominable Snow Woman Bodyslams Igloo in Crazed Rampage,” and “Why Do Skunk Apes Stink?” I’m sure you can relate well to most of those titles.
Tabloid Terrors 2 has the following by me: “Nessie Tried to Pimp My Wife!,” “A Very Squishy Date Rape: Sog Monkeys After Dark,” and “Golden Mermaid has Shitty Midget Fetish.” And no, Nick, that last one isn’t about you.
Tabloid Terrors 3 has these: “Alien Midgets Go Hi-Ho on the Ho-Ho,” (again, not about you though I can see where you’d get confused), and “Close Encounters of the Turd Kind: A Family Tragedy.” Okay, that one is about a guy who shits himself after being exposed to brown rays. It’s technically about you but you were the inspiration.
Write away!
Ego boost
Don’t worry. It’s not going to my head. But it was a fun app to play. What do you get?
I’d pasted in a few paragraphs from my serial, Fear the Woods:
It started to rain thick, stinging drops. The shadow paused behind another tree and listened to the bass of a living room stereo. There was no harm in investigating. It was dry inside and the loud music would drown out screams for the neighbors. After a few steps toward the house, however, it ducked behind bushes lining the front sidewalk.
A searchlight swept across the lawn as the patrol car passed, and voices cracked from the radio within. The shadow looked away from the car, held its breath, and curled into a ball, visualizing a cold black stone.
The officer with the light sighed. “I can’t see shit in this weather. Why even bother?”
“Yeah, fuck it,” the driver said. “Let’s go smoke that weed I confiscated last night.”
“I heard that.” He switched off the light and the car sped onward.
The shadow rose and stood silent until the taillights were out of sight. Then it proceeded to the side of the house and peered through the first window, which overlooked the kitchen sink. In the room beyond that, it could see the back of a chair that cradled a young redheaded woman while she talked on the telephone. It lifted the window just enough to make out what she was saying over the music.
Shroud reviews Frankenstein vs the Creature…
Thanks again to Shroud Magazine and to Shedrick Pittman-Hassett for a great review of my novelization for William Winckler’s Frankenstein vs the Creature from Blood Cove!
New Fear the Woods review!
Thank you Shroud Magazine and Anton Cancre for posting a great review of Fear the Woods Book One: How to Make a Vampire.
And he was dead-on about the fun 80s horror influence.
