Hooker and Brown

So it is on! The first En Vino Novellus in Canmore.

March 19th at Café Books in Canmore. & PM, open and free for all.

We have eight authors reading from their books, while sipping from eight wines. This should be very fun. Here are the authors:

• Karsten Heuer - Finding Farley - this is not available yet, as it has not been published. A work in progress and a real treat!
• Robert Sandford - Restoring the Flow
• Lynn Martel - Expedition to the Edge
• Stephen Bown - Merchant Kings - first reading in Canmore!
• Samantha Warwick - Sage Island
• Helen Rose - 53 Grove Road
• Jocey Asnong - Nuptse and Lohtse in Nepal
• Jerry Auld - Hooker & Brown

Might damn cool, eh?

The book is finally showing up in all Chapters stores, I guess it takes awhile to pass through the order-distribution system. I must say it is satisfying to walk in a see it on the shelf there between Margaret and Jane.

Getting drifted over with spam, so I’ll be blocking all comments for awhile. Things are too busy with the new book and Hooker & Brown promotion to do much blogging anyway.

The Vino Novellus is starting to shape together and look good - I have eight great Canmore authors and some real surprises. It will be held March 19th (Friday) at 7 PM at Café Books, and Brendan Glass of the Canmore Wine Merchants is starting to do the matching.

In other news, I will be on book tour, a short stint, out to Nelson and Fernie in two weeks, which will be fun. Must take my skis.

This report about Amazon trying to cornet the eBook market by going after the authors is wild. Not sure how this will all pan out, since I have written repeatedly that the need for good editors and peer-review by the publishers to weed out the crap is more necessary than ever, but it is telling.

I’ve reproduced the blog post in full:

Amazon Fires Missile At Book Industry, Launches 70% Kindle Royalty Option
Henry Blodget | Jan. 20, 2010, 6:55 AM

You could see this one coming.

Amazon is launching a new “70% royalty option” for the Kindle.

Under this option, Amazon will pay authors and publishers a royalty of 70% of the list price of Kindle books, which is a far higher per-copy royalty than most authors receive on physical book sales (including the standard Kindle book royalties).

This new plan will encourage more authors to “go direct” to Amazon (or at least force their publishers to sell ebooks at a substantial discount). This, in turn, will increase the pressure on traditional publishers to cut prices on wholesale Kindle books. And that, in turn, will transform the Kindle business from a big money-loser into a very profitable business for Amazon.

The new royalty plan comes with some strings attached, all of which are designed to further Amazon’s goals here:

The author or publisher-supplied list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99. This is designed to force a big difference between the physical-book price and the Kindle price, which traditional publishers are currently desperate to avoid (good luck).
This list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book. Ditto.
The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights. This gets around the typical regional royalty deals, putting pressure on publishers worldwide.
Books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices. This one is aimed at other e-readers, a slew of which have recently hit the market. Want your fat 70% royalty? Then you can’t go cut a sweetheart deal with Barnes & Noble for the Nook.

This looks like a brilliant play from Amazon. E-book prices need to (and should) drop substantially: When the cost of an incremental sale is near-zero, publishers have no business charging physical-book prices.

The traditional publishing industry moans that cuts in ebook prices will wipe out what little margin the publishers have left, thus preventing publishers from paying authors big advances and, thus (be afraid! be afraid) result in fewer good books being published.

Hogwash.

As ebook prices drop, unit velocity will increase. If Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big To Fail were priced at, say, $3.99, Sorkin would sell hundreds of thousands more copies than he will at today’s prices ($29.99?). If Sorkin gets 70% of the sales price as a royalty instead of the paltry 10% he might get now, he’ll do fine. He might even have enough left over to pay a publisher a nice fee to package and market the book for him.

This is where the book industry is headed, whether traditional publishers want it to or not. Amazon’s new plan should help shorten the time it takes to get there. The plan should also solidify Amazon’s already tremendous dominance of the ebook business, of which Kindle has an estimated 90% unit share.

…In wine there are stories…

That’s our take-off on En Vino Veritas (In Wine there is Truth). The Book and Wine pairing event in December in Calgary was so successful and fun that we’ve decided to do one in Canmore.

This is tentatively scheduled for March 19th, a Friday night, so stay tuned as we pull this together!

Just reading Alpinist 28 and marveling at some of the grades that guys were pulling down even in the 70s. Grades like 5.9 A4, which might go free at 5.12. Considering the harnesses back then I’m surprised these grades were even established, as even a minor lead fall on those look like they would push your guts into your legs or head.

Interestingly, even then there seemed to be a rancorous debate on standards, that continues today. However, reading about a modern alpine climb up Jobo Rinjang, Nepal (by Joe Puryear and David Gottlieb) done in alpine style (as opposed to siege, or expedition style - with a large team and carries of gear up to established camps) and in an area of the world were there are few maps and no routes, I come across one of brightest pieces of mountaineering writing I have seen in a while:

I wish I’d been born thirty years ago, so I could experience the great mountains before all the lines were drawn on them. But now I know, in fact, there still exist many large, untouched peaks in the greater Asian ranges. We are only limited by our own perceptions and those of others.
…I climb alpine style to climb as lightly as I can. …That way, the next climbers won’t even know that I’ve been there: they, too, can have a mountain without any garbage or old fixed ropes, without the human impact of long sieges. Nothing but pure ice, rock, and snow.
But that is just my way. It’s not a matter of elitism or of ethical judgement. It’s simply my own vision of beauty.

Contrast the feeling of Joe Puryear’s attitude with that of Marc Twight, speaking of one of his ground-beaking ascents near Chamonix, also in the same issue of Alpinist. The attitudes are identical at the core, but there is a huge difference in feeling:

We called it ED+, 5.9, A3, 90 degrees in the condition we had, but it’s a trade route now, and bolted by those without ethics.

Which is more persuasive?

Such a great year. Does any first-time novelist have any reckoning about what their first few month will really be like? It is hard to realize that Hooker & Brown has only been out for three months. It is like the birth of my daughter - it feels like an eternity since she was born (two years now) but it is all vivid.

So many ups and downs, but mostly ups. Even over the Christmas-party season here, I have been approached by people that I never would have thought would buy my book, and like it. But there it is… standing by a fridge (as you do) and hearing the softly spoken golden words .. “I love it, I can’t wait to get home to read more.”

I will say that I wish I could get more feedback, not only from readers (and I think I’ve made myself as accessible to them as I can, via the website and all) but also from magazines and reviewers. My publisher has told me that the Boardman-Tasker award proceedings actually have driven a lot of requests for review copies. Now this is to say nothing. The effects of this may take months. (No different from anything in the publishing industry!) But it will be interesting to see how that interest all pans out.

2009 was an amazing year for me. This time last year I was fretting over last minute edits, which would prove to extend into a four month-longer edit cycle. But for the best. The novel is all better for it, even though it predicted its almost death! And another, mostly solid, eight short-stories written. Considering that my goal is one solid a month, and I slaved over the novel edits so much, that’s not so bad!

And tonight I am sending off Christmas Presents - short stories, unpublished - to a select group of readers. It is a young but good tradition. Since I think that nobody reads this blog, post a comment and leave your email and I will grace you with my new work. Just like that.

The other thing about this year was getting dragged into the mill of publicity and publication, when really, we all want to stay writing. Gotta keep dreaming…

Alpinist, that fantastic magazine of the mountains, has honored me again with a great spot on their Christmas advertising campaign - suggesting Hooker & Brown.

I would suggest it for everyone, as well.