Ebook Sales Soaring in 2012

Posted on June 25, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

It’s not new news that ebook sales are growing faster than sales of traditional paper book.  Yet for the first time, ebook sales have exceeded hardcover sales; first quarter (2012) ebook sales were $282 million compared to $230 million for hardcover books.  Not too surprisingly (to me at least), these new sales appear to have come at the expense of paperback books, sales of which dropped nearly 21%.  Hardcover books still seem maintain a certain “value” beyond the story itself, and I think people who buy them are seeking something they can keep and display in addition the words they contain, something that cannot be had with an ebook and, to a lesser extent, a paperback book.

This trend of increasing ebook sales is partially driven by the emergence of global ebook markets.  A recent report from the Association of American Publishers looked at global trends in book sales from 2010 to 2011, and it documented large increases in ebook sales in Europe (+219%) , Latin America (+202%), and Africa (+637%).  Even better news for American publishers was that all sales were up, even traditional paper books, although at a much smaller rate. 

This global increase could be attributed to several things.  The growing prevalence of the internet has allowed consumers in other countries to access more titles than in the past.  American publishers have also increased their global marketing efforts.  Finally, English continues to increase as an important second language, which has widened the audience and increased the demand for English language books.

I’ve also benefited from the increasing global market.  In the first quarter of 2012, over 11% of my site visitors came from non-US countries, including non-English speaking countries in Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia.  I find this a startling figure, yet encouraging.

While the publishing industry is undergoing rapid change, it still seems to be growing, so perhaps all the doomsaying about the death of publishing is actually overstated.  Ebooks are beginning to outpace traditional paper books, which bodes well for both the traditional industry provided they can shift their business model to take advantage of it and for independent publishers.  This is also encouraging news for new and emerging writers, who now have multiple potential avenues through which to market their work.

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A Year? Really?

Posted on June 24, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

I noticed today that it’s been a year since I first established this site.  Wow, a year!  I started scribbling my thoughts on writing and publishing in June 2012, shortly after I received the publication date for “Thief of Futures,” my first pro-rate story to become available (it was actually my third pro-rate sale, but the first to come out).  Until then, I had resisted creating an online presence, primarily because I wasn’t interested in doing it for personal and time reason, but I figured it was time to bite the proverbial bullet.  A lot of readers were going to see “Thief of Future,” and I wanted them to be able to find me and my work online.  It simply made sense from the business perspective.

In the last year I have made nearly 200 posts on a variety of topics.  I’ve celebrated nearly fifteen short story sales and joining the Science Fiction Writers of America, made contact with writers I never would have found otherwise, received fan mail (which is still surreal to me) as well as perplexed, WTF mail, been invited to submit stories to new publications, and learned much about the craft and business of writing.  Overall, it’s been a good year, and this site has been integral to it all.  So thank you for visiting and please come back again soon.

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Inspiration: “Time Debt”

Posted on June 21, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

I can often trace the inspiration for my stories back to one or a small handful of things.  It could be something I read, a trip I took, a brainstorming idea from a writing prompt—almost anything really.  My story “Time Debt,” published recently in Electric Spec is different.  I don’t know what specifically inspired that story. 

“Time Debt” grew out of a novella I wrote as a college student (oh so looooong ago), but bears little resemblance to that story except that it uses time dilation from near light speed travel as the primary speculative element.  (That original novella, incidentally, was inspired by tarot and Hebrew mysticism.)  At the time I started “Time Debt,” I was considering expanding that novella into a novel length story, but I felt I needed to more fully explore the potential effects of time dilation on society, something I hadn’t done well in the novella.  I also wanted to write a piece of flash fiction.

The original version of “Time Debt” wasn’t very good.  I trunked it, but I was drawn back to it many times over subsequent months.  I reworked it several times, and eventually gave it to my Hopefull Monsters writing group for critique.  After significant revisions to the main character’s internal conflict and epiphany, I finally had something I liked: a tale of regret and loss playing out over hundreds of years (and all in ~1,100 words). 

If you haven’t already, click over the Electric Spec and read “Time Debt.”  While there, make sure to check out the other fine stories in the issue, including work from A.L. Sirois, K. R. Hager, Larry Hodges, and Karen Munro.

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Welcome to the Cloud

Posted on June 20, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

I was home sick from the day job today and spent time fooling around on the internet when I should have been writing (I did some of that too, however).  I came across one of those “word clouds” and thought it might be interesting to make one, so I loaded all of my scribble word tags into a word cloud generator (wordle.net) and came up with this after a little tinkering:

 I thought it was kind of neat to look at, and it seems to capture what I’ve been writing about over the last year.

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Diabolical Plots Interviews Mike Resnick

Posted on June 20, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

Just a quick post today because I’m feeling a little under the weather (I must have caught something on the plane ride home).  One of the few websites I read with any consistency is Diabolical Plots, run by speculative-fiction authors Dave Steffen and Anthony Sullivan.  Recently they interviewed multi-award winning writer Mike Resnick.  While I don’t always agree with everything Mike has to say, he brings considerably more writing experience and perspective to the table than me, and the interview by Carl Slaughter provides a lot of insight into the business and process of writing.  I think it’s a must read for new and established writers.

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Tell Me Again, When Did I Get Back?

Posted on June 18, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

Even though I got home from a three-week vacation late last week, I’m still on vacation…mentally, at least.  Generally I’m able to reintegrate myself back into my day-to-day life fairly quickly, but I’m finding it difficult this time.  I’m not sure why, but I usually find it’s best not to question these things. 

I haven’t written a new word of fiction since last Wednesday, and I must admit I’m feeling guilty about it this morning.  So instead of writing new fiction, I’m writing this post—d’oh!  So it’s time to turn off the internet, hide the TV, and find a quiet place alone among strangers.  I’ll come out later today when I’ve hit my daily word target, or at least something close to it.

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Heading Home

Posted on June 13, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

Vacations are always nice to recharge the battery.  I get to spend quality time with the family, see new things, and eat some good food.  I’ve been traveling around the west coast of the U.S. for the last three weeks (California and Oregon), but now it’s time to head home.

I was hoping to get more writing done this trip, but I that was a foolish dream.  I’ve never been able to do a lot of writing while traveling; there’s simply too much going on.  This trip I did managed to write most days, but I only hit my daily word target about half of the time.  Sadly, I didn’t get any of the story drafts I brought with me revised, but I kept my submissions going (sort of), and I sold two stories (yeah!).  As much fun as the vacation has been , I am looking forward to getting home—except for that loooong plane ride across the ocean.

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The Sour and the Sweet

Posted on June 12, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

I withdrew my story “Hoodoo” from IN SITU.  This makes me sad, because I have been looking forward to the anthology coming out and because I like small presses and want to support them.  I can still remember my excitement when “Hoodoo” got accepted (oh so long ago).  The anthology is nearly a year-and-a-half past its original release date and, while it sounds like the publisher is still working on the volume, there still appears to be no release date in sight.  I wish the publisher and the editor the best with IN SITU, and I look forward to buying a copy when it comes out.

The good news, however, is that “Hoodoo” will get published.  It has been accepted for publication in the debut issue of Specutopia, a new speculative fiction magazine due out this summer.  About a months ago, Dale Wise, Specutopia‘s editor, dropped me an invitation to submit a story for the debut issue.  I’ve never received an invitation to submit anything before, so it was flattering, but it was also an opportunity too good to pass up.  I sent him “Hoodoo” and he liked it enough to accept it.  Joining me in the debut issue will be Greg Mellor (a fantastic Australia writer), Jennifer Mason-Black (whose work I don’t know, but soon will), and several others.  It looks like this new publication will launch with a bang.

So it has been a sour and sweet week for me with the withdrawal from an anthology I really liked and wanted to be in, but also the sale of two stories (“Dreams in Dust” to Lightspeed being the other).  We must take them as they come: the good and the bad.

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Inspiration: “Strand in the Web”

Posted on June 8, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

It’s not always easy to trace the inspiration for a story to a single thing, but this isn’t the case for “Strand in the Web,” which appears in the June issue of Goldfish Grimm’s Spicy Fiction Sushi.  Waaaaay back in 2010, my writing group, Hopefull Monsters, decided to do a writing challenge in which we each supplied a writing prompt, selected one, and wrote a story.  We had a collection of four or five fantastic prompts, and I selected the one from fellow Monster, Annette Bowman: “My but it is lovely tonight. The pink elephants are dancing spectacularly.”

Something about the idea of pink elephants, and all it suggested, appealed to me.  I started brainstorming ideas about elephants, which are endangered animals often poached for illegal trade (e.g., bladders, tusks, etc.).  I decided early on to set the story in an extraterrestrial nature reserve, where illegal poaching was occurring.  After that, the other pieces for “Strand in the Web” quickly fell into place: a main character who was morally grey, yet sympathetic; an entire ecosystem, not just the “pink elephants,” that could be explored; and an environmental theme, linked closely to the main character’s internal and external conflict.

I wrote the first draft of “Strand in the Web” in less than week, and received fantastic feedback from my writing group.  It took me another nine months to revise it—actually eight months of it sitting untouched, followed by a few weeks of intense rewriting.  It made the rounds to a few places, and I was happy when Goldfish Grimm’s picked it up earlier this year for publication. 

If you haven’t read “Strand on the Web,” head over to Goldfish Grimm’s Spicy Fiction Sushi and check it out.  While there, be sure to check out Ken Liu’s short story, “The Illusionist,” with which I share the issue.  I hope you enjoy.

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Lightspeed to Publish “Dreams in Dust”

Posted on June 7, 2012 by D. Thomas Minton

I’m very excited to announce that Lightspeed Magazine has accepted my story “Dreams in Dust” for publication.  Lightspeed is one of my favorite speculative fiction publications (and not just because they bought my story), so it’s an honor to have a story in its pages for second time.  I expect “Dreams in Dust” will be available fall 2012.

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