For A Switch, The Academy Awards Rewards YOU!

What's a dollar buy anymore? A tall (means small) cup o' joe from Starsmucks? Nope. Need some silver. Candy? A Baby Bottle Pop is $1.39!

How about some award-winning entertainment? No, not a ticket to see the Best Picture winner. For a dollar? Hello, McFly? Someone has to pay for the black hair dye for Marty Scorcese's eyebrows! Besides, now that George is the only one of the old gang without a golden statue, they're gonna raise some money to pay the salaries for him to direct something set in England starring Kate Winslet in a corset and Leo with a new look in scraggly facial hair. Something without a Stormtrooper in sight.

No, I'm talking about the Preditors & Editor's Winner for Best Mainstream Short Story of 2006 . Thanks to the Academy and their choices, "Switch " is on sale for 50% off! Already own it? Check out the other Surges that were released along with it…they also are 50% off! This limited offer will expire Friday, March 2^nd…So act now!

Switch Is A Winner At Preditors & Editors

So, I'm at my niece's birthday party...completely overwhelmed by noise, overcarbed and needing an escape. We've done cake and ice cream, we've done Diet Coke/Mentos fountains, we've done funny animal balloons. I need a Calgon moment. I run away to my sister's bedroom and decide I'll kick it with the laptop and go to Lit and have some adult conversation...

And I follow a link...and I'm looking at the standings for Preditor's & Editors poll for General Short Stories...and I know that we had a shot at the top ten. But I didn't expect this.

Number One. I reload the page. Still number one. It's real. Wow.

I run to the other room, grab my phone, call my co-writer. She knew already, hers was the link I followed. It's almost 11 months to the day from when we learned that Switch had been accepted for publication. We laugh and giggle a little. She tells me how she had gone and looked and started to be disappointed, thinking we got bumped down. It didn't occur to her to look
above the banner at the top spot. I talk about validation and proof and she gently teases me about how I shouldn't need this to know how good we are together. She's right, of course. But it is a part of me to look outside for proof, just like it is a part of her to not need that outside point of view. Just one of the differences that make us a strong team.

Wow. This feels great.

What Does Price Say To You?

A discussion about e-books and promotion over at Mrs. Giggles blog got me thinking. (Yes, I am aware that this can be a dangerous thing to do during the work day. I mean, what if I actually accomplished something intelligent? They might *gasp* expect me to do it again tomorrow!)

At one point a comment is made to the effect that $3.00 for a 30 page read is on the pricey side. Admittedly, I bristled for a second because the comment seemed to cast a small shadow in the direction of my publisher and I am nothing if not loyal. But now I want other opinions.

Artistically Inclined is just over 13,000 words. At $3.00, that works out to 4,333 words to the dollar. Most New York publishing house novels run in the range of 80,000 words, I'm told. So we're talking $6.99 or $7.99...call it $7.50 and 80K? That is 10,666 words to the dollar. Double the value if you are relying on straight stats.

But any sports geek, and especially any baseball geek like me, knows what lies can be perpetuated by statistics. Mark Twain's line rings true here.

So the question comes down to the value in the words. A very subjective area at best. Personally, I think I give pretty good return on investment with my words. Certainly I don't feel as though I fit the profile of someone churning out stories to cash a check. Nor is there a lack of investment on my side. The new story in Artifactual (the Bruce & Mandy anthology to be released by Phaze in April) is about 30,000 words and took the better part of 10 weeks to write. True, I have a "real job" and have to write in my "spare time". But even so, there is a lot of "sweat equity" in my published work.

Do any of you have beliefs about the perceived value of an e-book based solely on it's price? Would you pass up a book because the $2.00 sale price tells you it must not be that good?