How Things Change

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

This post will have a lot of typos.  No, this is not because I’m trying to make them, but because I have a blinding headache due to allergies.  Par tof this is that we’ve been sorting/culling books to get rid of.

Because of that, and because of my finally sending out Witchfinder to Subscribers and being mid setting it up to print, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how things change.

One of the sets of books I’m getting rid of (a lot of them low-value and going to thrift shop) are books on a certain time period.  you can go through my research bookcases and find piles of books on the Russian Revolution, for instance, because this was something I read a lot of for a while.  or about ancient Rome, or about…

My younger son said, “Why did you buy all these books if you weren’t going to write something set there?”

Well, part of the reason is that I didn’t know what I was going to write.  As a young writer and very interested in historical stuff, I was reading to see if some place interested me ENOUGH.  I started my explanation to him with “Imagine a time before the Internet” which, of course, was a joke, but on the other hand wsn’t.  nowadays if I’m just trying a time period on and considering whether I might, maybe, eventually, want to write something set there, I just go on the internet and, for the more recent times, get bios from gutenberg (which has them going back to the seventeenth century.)

What that means is I suppose that new writers won’t ruin themselves on books they will read but never use. And what it means for this one middle aged writer is that I have a ton of books to get rid of.  (which probably doesn’t help the allergies, because of all the dust.)

But these are macro changes.  There are others.  As Witchfinder nears publication, I’m looking at how THAT changed markedly.  The more I look at it, the less I’m going to put it up for 9.99.  Yes, it’s a massive book and the trade paperback is going to be extraordinarily expensive — for those of you who insist on reading on paper.  On the other hand, accessibility to the book seems to go down when you go over 6.99 and this being my first indie publication in novel form, I’d like to reach people.

Of course, I had planned on 9.99 because that’s what the traditional publishers were doing and I wanted this novel to blend in with my other ones.  Well, that’s different now, so it will be 6.99.  Which means the ones who subscribed ahead don’t get as much of a price break.  On the other hand, most of you crazy people sent me up to ten times that amount — and I thank you — so it’s not as though you were doing it for the bargain.

But that’s how fast things change in indie.  One year and it’s all different.

I have everything set up to take it live paper/e on the fifth.  Until that time, if you send $6 you save a buck, and I get more money.  Just use the button on the side.  (You’ll also get two versions, earc and final.  I don’t know how much difference there will be but I garantee I’ll find typos.)

Okay.  I now am taking my aching head on a quick clean of the house.  Rogue Magic tomorrow, and I promise to get some stuff in the subscriber space soon.  As soon as I catch up on the deadlines, I WILL update that regularly.

Now to do cat boxes and vacuum until the aspiring has time to attack the headache.  Sorry for short and odd post.  (But then I’m short and odd!)

57 thoughts on “How Things Change”

  1. Short and Odd? Don’t know about short but some of us (including me) may be odder. [Grin]

    Like

      3. My senior undergrad year, the pine trees were so amorous that it overloaded the pollen-counting stuff. We swept yellow drifts off of the dorm porches, all the cars had a yellow tint to them, and it set off my dust allergies. Pine allergy became an acceptable excuse for late assignments (when your eyes are swollen shut, it’s hard to type. This was pre-Dragon.)

        Like

            1. With their branches . . . intermingling.

              On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 2:17 PM, According To Hoyt wrote:

              > Christopher M. Chupik commented: “No, *two* trees. ;-)” >

              Like

              1. Reminds me of that pic I saw on Facebook of two trees which had grown into . . . uh, compromising positions.

                Like

            2. Sometime in my universe, I intend to use the line “It was spring, and the sap was rising,” and see if anyone understands what I’m implying. :-D

              On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 2:23 PM, Elizabeth Lightfoot wrote:

              > With their branches . . . intermingling. > > > On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 2:17 PM, According To Hoyt comment-reply@wordpress.com> wrote: > >> Christopher M. Chupik commented: “No, *two* trees. ;-)” >>

              Like

      6. I have heard reports that some people use their noses for breathing, but I have never had any success with that. Were it not for holding my eyeglasses my nose would serve no useful purpose whatsoever.

        Like

        1. I hear you. I broke my nose when I was ten and have never been able to breathe properly through it since. I can get enough air when I’m keeping still, but if I am performing any physical activity, including walking, I have to breathe through my mouth.

          Like

  3. The real reason for a writer to read lots and lots of history — especially primary sources, but secondary will also help — is to knock your block off by exposing you to very different societies, and then to let you get a feel for how societies fit together in reality.

    Like

    1. Yes, of course, but I have detail stuff on like Russia, which I’ll NEVER use. I’m not going to stop reading history — probably cheap, as usual, from thriftshop. I’m just not keeping hte highly specialized references around for times/places I’ll never write.
      And these days I might never have acquired the — physical — books, because… Gutenberg.

      Like

      1. Some of that detail on Russia might very well help fill in the cross-hatching of a society used in Darkship territory. Ya never knows.

        Like

  4. Allergies suck. I just had to take the dog to the vet, likely because of allergies. She got some antibiotics just in case it’s a sinus infection, but I doubt it will.

    Like

  5. I remember having headaches like that (I still don’t know why they stopped). I always figured that one day, when I’d gone to work in spite of the pain because I could, and I like to eat, I’d get mugged in the parking lot after closing, and end up having to explain to the cops how come I’d torn some idiot’s throat out with my teeth.

    Like

    1. Yes. That. And I’ll be writing later, but since I also need to do cleaning and cleaning doesn’t cause me to misspell things…
      However, it took me quite a while to figure out how to put water in a bucket. No, seriously.

      Like

  6. Some years ago Clan Red got together and cleaned out the “excess” books from Red Parents’ house. Over 3000 books, enough to fill the bed of a small pickup, went to a regional county library. The shelves are now double stacked once more. When you have a family of avocational and professional historians . . .

    Like

      1. Wry grin — a local bookstore (before the invasion of the megastores) had a “loyalty” program where each book bought earned a punch in a card, ten punches earning a ten dollar discount. I tried to persuade them to offer an enhanced program, with ten completed cards earning a free bookcase, but was never successful.

        Like

              1. Sheesh. This sort of thing is what gave the Roman Empire a bad name. OK, your comments and Tacitus. And Robert Graves. Anyway.

                Like

  9. All history is good for a writer in that it presents you with turns of events you know you could never get away with in fiction. It also illustrates the various ways people react to their environment and their culture, helping you create more vivid characters.

    But there is no reason to take title to the stuff and every reason to not attempt to domesticate it. Back when I briefly worked in a comic shop I realized that the cost of a comic book included three elements. The first was the cost to buy the book; negligible, even at today’s prices. Next is the cost of the time you spend reading it instead of some other, more enriching (or less — the format does not reflect the quality) reading matter. That cost is high, representing irreplaceable minutes.

    But the highest cost of a comic, for most of our customers, was the cost entailed in hauling that comic book (and its many relatives, its sisters and its cousins, which it reckons up by dozens, and its aunts) around, necessitating larger living quarters for the remainder of your life.

    If you must occupy your living arrangements with reading matter, choose not utilitarian material readily available in digital form.

    Like

    1. Exactly. Which is why we’re trimming out everything e can easily get/utilize in e. we’ll still have more books than… almost anyone, but we might be able to fit in a normal-size house, and cut down on the dust to which I’m incredibly sensitive.

      Like

      1. I have sold a lot of book I now regret getting rid of because of space issues. I also have a pile of books I want to get rid of and the bookstore won’t take and the thrift store will give them away or toss them. I’ve been thinking of buying a bunch of flat-rate mailers, picking names randomly out of phone books and mailing them with the notice, “congratulations on winning the raffle!” and pick another address randomly out of the phone book for the return address in case I hit on someone honest who returns them.
        Paper backs are almost as bad a kittens. You can barely give them away and only your friends will steal them.

        Like

      2. I always figure value in the time it takes me to earn the money to pay for it. If it only takes a few minutes to read, it is likely to take me longer to earn it than I spend reading it. So yeah, not negligible, and unless it is worth rereading many times…

        Like

  10. “I have everything set up to take it live paper/e on the fifth. Until that time, if you send $6 you save a buck, and I get more money. Just use the button on the side.”

    I must be dense, but which button?

    Like

Comments are closed.