You Can’t Sell What People Don’t Want

A Farewell Note From the Publisher

I invested more than $50,000.00 of my own money into reviving this magazine. I tried every traditional method I could think of to increase the circulation, but nothing worked. I also spent a great deal of money trying nontraditional methods. I advertised online with Google and Facebook, neither of which came close to covering their costs. And we created DRM-free electronic versions of the magazine to see if that would help increase our circulation. Sadly, the DRM-free versions never sold more than twenty five copies per issue, and the Kindle editions sold fewer still.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

The last time I read a fiction magazine was back in the 1980s, when The Twilight Zone magazine was published.

I never went for the SF/F digests. They had nasty, nasty paper that offended me. (Towards its end, TZ mag got nasty paper too.)

Now that they can be had in e, I still don’t want these digests. Short stories irritate me. I like something I can be surrounded by. With short stories, by the time I get really into it — it’s over!

Should there be any interest in purchasing the magazine I will gladly sell Realms to a responsible party for $1.00 and give them the finished files for the December issue.

I’ll hang onto my buck, thanks. Even if it wasn’t earmarked first for kittens.

Advertisement

I Began To Wonder

Crystal Cathedral files Chapter 11 bankruptcy

The Cathedral, which has been a landmark and a tourist attraction with its glistening glass tower, is now faced with $55 million in debt because of the economy and dwindling contributions.

I’m not here to gloat.

I liked watching Schuller from time to time in the 1970s and 1980s, even though I never thought he was what he presented himself to be.

But he was a very good storyteller.

And his best story was about raising funds for what is now a white elephant: the Crystal Cathedral.

He wanted what he wanted (I don’t know if it’s what God wanted, though) and it had the dollar price of X.

His thought process in raising the money was fascinating. He kept breaking it down into smaller chunks. Could he raise $1M from X number of people? No. Could he raise $100,000 from X number? Until he got it down to a small enough dollar amount for the average person to contribute.

Of course, he wound up with some huge contributions in there, but I loved the point of attacking a problem until it was several smaller problems which could be solved.

Here’s a big interview with him from 1997. Given his comments in that about debt, someone took their eyes off the books.

Hello, AMC! Now Renew Rubicon!

Note this:

That’s been every day at this blog. Every day there is at least one or two searches that lead people here for my Rubicon posts.

Bugger the ratings. It’s got traction. Don’t waste that.

Why bet on something unknown when you’ve already got something here?

A bird in the hand …

Kobo/Borders ePub: Reminder To My Stupid Self

The Kindle Store and the Sony Reader Store have direct download buttons for their ebooks.

Kobo and Borders make it a two-step process:

1) Add Book to Library
2) Go to Library and then download ePub

This is because Kobo and Borders also have special versions for the Kobo Reader, desktop, and mobile apps.

I keep forgetting this!

Truth In Annoucing

Mary Malcolm
Mary Malcolm, who died on October 13 aged 92, was one of the first two female announcers on BBC Television and became a household name in the 1950s.

Once, during a sound test, her remark: “Good afternoon, here is a programme mainly for morons” was accidentally broadcast.

In Search Of … Rubicon’s Tanya Book

In what I hope is only the season — and not series — finale of the AMC-TV series, Rubicon, we learn that Tanya is the author of a book!

La De Da, Writer David Hewson, La De Da!

Damn, I just bought an iPad: http://wp.me/p11hIG-1zoMon Oct 18 15:09:57 via WordPress.comDavid Hewson
david_hewson

Big Six Publishing Kills Writers, Books, And Itself

Trying to Buy le Carré

No one wants to sell me a book by an author I enjoy, in a format I prefer to read it in. I could game the system, get a gift card, use a US address, and buy it that way.

Or I could pay more attention to the results I get in Google when I search on “ebook our kind of traitor” — half the first page listing is comprised of torrents. The torrents have it free in EPUB, HTML, LIT, LRF, MOBI, PDF, RTF format options.

To mangle Clint Eastwood: “How honest to you feel today?”

Does Penguin believe that only Americans and the British read English? Pay attention to Twitter? LibraryThing? GoodReads? No one else in the world reads English and notices new books are available from famous authors? No one else in the world wants to buy ebook versions of those new books (hardcover versions are more widely available)?

He did a dangerous thing there.

Made me curious.