Wizard’s Tower

Congratulations, Lethe Press

~ Cheryl

Steve Berman write to let me know that two Lethe Press titles have been selected in the Over The Rainbow Project’s list of top LGBT books for 2013. The successful books are:

Also on the list are Mike, Linda & Louise Carey’s The Steel Seraglio (ChiZine), which for contractual reasons that benefit Mike and his family I’m sadly unable to have in the bookstore; Martin Eden’s fabulous LGBT superhero comic, Spandex (Titan); the latest volume of Batwoman; and Kate Bronstein’s A Queer and Pleasant Danger.

In celebration of his successes, Steve is offering the two Lethe books half price. I’ve not read Alex Jeffers’ book yet, but Heiresses of Russ is great, featuring fabulous stories by Ellen Kushner and N.K. Jemisin as well as Rachel Swirsky’s Nebula-winning “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window”.

Welcome Back, Fablecroft

~ Cheryl

Long time bookstore shopper may remember that we helped the Australian small press, Fablecroft, run a promotion for a charity anthology, After the Rain, which benefited the victims of the Queensland floods. When the fundraiser was over the book went away, and it has taken a while for it to come back. That’s life sometimes with small presses. People have priorities in life (including, in this case, relocating across the country) and small stores like mine take a back seat for a while. But I am delighted to report that the book is back in the store. We also have Epilogue, which is an anthology of post-apocalyptic stories with an Australian twist. I for one can’t wait to read “What books survive” by Tansy Rayner Roberts. So, if you’d like to sample some of the best short fiction that Australia has to offer, you know what to do.

New From Book View Café

~ Cheryl

OK, so I have done some actual work today, rather than just blogging. We have some new books in the store. For today let’s give a warm welcome to three new offerings from Book View Café.

Dragon Virus is a collection of six inter-linked stories by Laura Anne Gilman. It has mutants. And a promising blurb from SF Signal.

Next up there is Living in Threes by Judith Tarr, a YA science fiction novel that spans the millennia from ancient Egypt to the far future.

And perhaps the prize exhibit is Flyers, the first book I have ever stocked by Vonda McIntyre. It is a small chapbook collecting two linked short stories. One of them, “Wings”, was a Hugo and Nebula nominee. At just £1.25 (about $2), how can you go wrong?

Archangel Protocol Reviews

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

I’m delighted to report that two reviews of Archangel Protocol came out in the past day or so.

Firstly Odo gives the book 4 stars on the Sense of Wonder blog. You can read his review here (también en español). And he’s giving away 5 copies of the book. You just have to leave a comment to get in the draw.

In addition Paul Weimer reviews the book at SF Signal. He gives it 4.5 stars. That’s pretty darn impressive. Also I’m particularly pleased that Paul gave shout out to Bruce Jensen’s magnificent cover art. Lyda and I are really pleased that the whole series will be getting coherent cover designs.

I am a very happy publisher today. Here’s hoping this shifts some more copies.

January Magazines

~ Cheryl

There are no vacations for the editors of monthly magazines. The new issues of Lightspeed and Clarkesworld popped into my mailbox bang on schedule. I have now done my bit and put them on sale.

So what do we have for you? We’ll this month’s Clarkesworld looks pretty special. The headline story is “Driftings” by one of my favorite authors, Ian McDonald. Ian said on Twitter that this is his first online publication, and I’m delighted he has chosen Clarkesworld in which to make that debut. Kate Baker’s audio version is, of course, already available.

The second story is “Variations on Bluebeard and Dalton’s Law Along the Event Horizon” by Helena Bell. That’s a bit of a mouthful, but it will be well worth reading because Ken Liu has described it as “One of the loveliest stories you’ll read all year”. Ken Liu. Really.

Finally we have “Effigy Nights” by Yoon Ha Lee. Her work should be familiar to Clarkesworld readers (you may remember “Ghostweight” from 2011). This one has a great opening. As usual, Kate will record the second and third stories during the month.

In the non-fiction we have a fascinating-sounding article called “The Wine-Dark Sea: Color and Perception in the Ancient World”. It is by Erin Hoffman and it opens with the revelation that there is no word for “blue” in ancient Greek. Wow, I wish I’d bought that one.

Jeremy’s interview this month is with Jesse Bullington, while in the Another Word column E.C Ambrose takes on the thorny topic of spoilers. There is also the annual Readers’ Poll.

This month’s cover is “Winding Down” by Australian artist, Alex Ries.

The January Lightspeed includes amongst the reprints a short story that came 8th in the Locus Centuries Poll for the 21st Century, “The Cambist and Lord Iron” by Daniel Abraham. There’s also a Theodora Goss story. The book exclusive novel is “The Fear Gun” by Judith Berman and there are interviews with Cory Doctorow and Lemony Snicket.

As usual, both magazines are available in the bookstore.

Interesting News From Smashwords

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Wizard’s Tower books are not available via Smashwords. There is a very simple reason or this. They don’t allow you to upload a finished book. They insist, instead, that you upload a Word document which they put through a really crappy automated converter (and, based on a few examples I have seen, insert legal language banning you from selling the book anywhere except through Smashwords). I’m proud of the books I produce. I don’t want Smashwords producing substandard versions of them, and I want to be able to sell them through many different stores.

Yesterday, however, Smashwords announced that they are finally beginning to test a system for direct upload of epubs. See Liz Castro’s post for details. Once that is up and running I’ll be delighted our books for sale through Smashwords.

Cheaper Bodies

~ Cheryl

I’ve been trying to avoid doing too much PR for the bookstore over the Holidays. I’ve seen way to much pestering of people to buy online, and quite a bit of annoyance expressed about it. As it is, I’m selling books without the hard sell. Not in the same quantity as during November, but definitely above average for the rest of the year. So I’m grateful for that, and trying to let you enjoy the Holidays in peace.

However, when publishers announce a price drop, I have a duty to pass the news on. I’m therefore delighted to inform you that Outlaw Bodies from The Future Fire is now only £3 (that should be a little under $5). If you have been thinking about getting it, now is a good time to do so.

New Icarus

~ Cheryl

Or indeed Icaruses (Icarii?). Lethe Press has send me three whole issues of the magazine. And this is a good opportunity to remind you that we have a whole bunch of back issues on sale at half price. So if fine gay-themed science fiction and fantasy (by greater writers such as Hal Duncan, Rick Bowes and Chris Barzack) is your thing, this is the place to go.

Got Elvis?

~ Cheryl

We have. To be precise, we have My Elvis Blackout by Simon Crump, the latest release from Galley Beggar Press. This is an ebook re-release of a book first published in 2000. It sounds quite mad. Here’s some of the blurb:

In these 37 short stories, the King of Rock and Roll – “hero and model to teenagers the world over” – joins a choir in order to torture and murder Christians, labours under the delusion that he’s a major rock-star (when really he’s just an inmate in an asylum who’s afraid of potatoes), and kills both Barbara Cartland and Chris De Burgh. And then he does some bad things too.

Oh dear. Apparently Elvis fans will not be upset. Chris De Burgh fans should probably not buy it.

Out Of Print

~ Cheryl

While I was in the Nielsen database creating records for Archangel Protocol I also took the opportunity to mark the paper edition of Dark Spires as officially out of print. That’s not 100% true as we do have one copy left, but Jo Hall has custody of it, along with a bunch of other books we have for sale at BristolCon-related events. Besides, I’d look a bit silly if I got an order for more than one copy.

The ebook edition is, of course, still available. I’m also looking into the possibility of making a print second edition available via a POD service. It is a good trial run project as I already have print-ready copy. And if it works I’ll look at doing other print projects.

The Perils Of Online Business

~ Cheryl ~ 6 Comments

Little did I suspect. when I set up Wizard’s Tower, that I would be spending a lot of time dealing with the petty bureaucracy of people like PayPal and Amazon.

Much of the past week has been spent worrying about how to deal with the unexpected cash flows resulting from the Great Finnish Book-Buying Event. Partly that has been financial. The money came in as GBP, and needed to go out as USD. Thanks to the Bank of Morgan-Standlee I managed to save over $50 in currency conversion fees. But I have also been fretting about whether any of the payments I’m making are going to trigger alarms at PayPal, and I still have far more cash in the account than I’m comfortable with. PayPal are liable to freeze your account at any time, and set impossible conditions for getting it back. Their idea of customer service is more reminiscent of a loan shark than a bank.

As a result of this I’m considering adding a Google Checkout payment option to the store. Financially it doesn’t make much sense. The percentage fee that they charge on transactions is lower than PayPal’s, but they also charge a flat fee of around 30c per transaction. That’s fine if you are, for example, selling art prints at $100 a pop, but if you are selling books and your average price per order is around $5, it is a significant extra charge. The reason for having it would be so that the store doesn’t have to close down if PayPal suddenly decides to freeze my account which, frankly, could happen at any time for no apparent reason.

Of course my own books are on sale elsewhere. You can now get Archangel Protocol from the Nook store. It should available from Kobo, Weightless and Angry Robot fairly soon too. As for Amazon, who knows? I uploaded the book shortly before I did the same for the Nook. It’s not on sale yet, and I have no idea when it will be. That’s because Amazon have, once again, started from the default position of assuming that I pirated the book, and they won’t put it on sale until I can prove to their satisfaction that I haven’t.

This happens pretty much every time I try to put a book on sale there.

Things are getting better, though. Last time this happened they insisted that they had proof that the book was pirated and took all of my books off sale for weeks. And they refused to talk to the author. This time they appear to be willing to speak to Lyda. Here’s hoping that works.

The annoying thing is that I have to keep doing business with Amazon because there are so many people who refuse to buy from anyone else, even though they can get exactly the same book, at the same price, from other stores.

Hexslinger Omnibus Available

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Some of you may remember that I was very taken by the first volume of Gemma Files’ Hexslinger trilogy, A Book of Tongues. Well, I’m pleased to report that the full series is now available in the bookstore. What’s more, if you buy all three books together then you get a significant saving. Here’s the offer.

Sharp eyed shoppers will also noticed that I’ve done a bit of rationalization of prices on ChiZine books. Rather than try to match US prices on their website, I have a flat price of £5.99 for each volume. For most of them that’s a price reduction.

That Was The (Amazing) Month That Was

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

I’ve now sent out all of the statements to publishers who have books in my store. Some of them have, I hope, got very welcome holiday presents. Certainly the great Finnish book buying festival set all sorts of records that probably won’t be broken for a long time. However, just as heartwarming was the fact that sales continued to be strong for the rest of the month, including a single order that was bigger than many past monthly totals. Even without that one incredible day, we would still have smashed sales records for the month.

Of course this is not money in the pocket. It is the first month that the store has ever covered costs. The extra can go towards making up for two years of losses. But the good thing from my point of view is that most of the money goes to the publishers, and that means I will be sending over $1500 to US companies this month. If I could do that on a regular basis I’d have a reasonable argument for applying for a business visa.

Of course I’m not expecting sales to continue at that level from now on. What I am hoping is that this will prove to be some sort of watershed event, and that from now on sales will continue at a higher level than they achieved before. But I’m not kidding myself that this will just happen. It will need work.

The first thing I’m going to do is some actual marketing. I have a lot more customers registered with the store, and most of them have kindly ticked the box saying that they are happy receiving email. So I’m going to start doing a monthly newsletter. Hopefully that will be a start on developing more of a customer community for the store. I’ll post it to the store blog as well, but if anyone who isn’t yet a registered customer wants to go on the mailing list just let me know.