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To start, can you tell me a little about yourself.
I’m just your typical lazy hack, trading words for magic beans. I simultaneously believe my stories have a deeper meaning that will save the world and that they are self-indulgent fantasies designed to amuse myself and nothing more. All in all, I’d rather be gardening.
How long have you been writing and how did you get to this point in your career?
I had the typical author trajectory–crayons and comic doodlings, weird stories to amuse my classmates, obscure high school poetry, the serious literary phase involving lots of suicide and cigarettes, a rock career, college degree, journalism, and then writing a bunch of novels. And here I am, wherever that is. It looks suspiciously like the set of “Deliverance.”
You have a new book just out, The Skull Ring. Tell me what inspired you to write this?
I’d been reading about Satanic Ritual Abuse and False Recovered Memory Syndrome, and though the Satanic Panic was largely a phenomenon of the 1980s, I figured the devil never goes out of fashion. I’ve always been wary of shrinks or anyone who both has the desire to “help” you and a belief that they know how to do so. From there, I wanted the character of Julia Stone to take a journey of self-discovery and faith while fending off dimly understood evils.
I have a keen interest in dark fiction. Tell me how you would classify this book and what’s dark about it?
I’d say it’s a dark psychological thriller with a romantic element. While there are strains of mystery and crime fiction, it’s dark in the utter manipulation of Julia’s mind and the motives of the antagonists. Though Satan is largely off-stage, there are points where Julia wonders if some evil entity is twisting and shaping events on a grander scale.
Sometimes we have to be ruthless in writing/editing. We cut scenes, eliminate characters or even kill them off. Tell me what was the hardest of these in this book.
Julia is a bit annoying early on, simply because she is so vulnerable and damaged that she may come off as weak. She discovers inner strength but also becomes open to faith, simply because she has so little else she can trust. Balancing Julia’s weakness with a believable character capable of taking on the bad guys was a delicate process. I’ve read too many books where the women are “men with curves,” so I wanted to make her believable.
This blog is called Random Musings, so give me a random quote from the book – something you’re particularly fond of.
After Julia researches a few Satanic Web sites, she muses, “Someone who was filled with the power of the Master of the World should at least know how to run their text through a spell check.”
What other works do you have out and what can we expect from you next?
Though THE SKULL RING just came out, I am launching the supernatural thriller DRUMMER BOY on May 11. In traditional publishing, you want a big launch and a buzz because you only have a limited time on the store shelves, and your publisher drives you into a fearful froth in order to keep “good numbers.” In the modern environment, though, you may as well make everything available and then seek your audience in a slow and persistent manner. Coming this summer is the psychological thriller DISINTEGRATION, a modern retelling of Jacob and Esau from the Old Testament, featuring a cast of duplicitous, unreliable characters probably modeled after the author.
Where can we find you on the internet?
If you want timely industry and writing links, tweet me up at twitter.com/hauntedcomputer. If you want my wry brand of self-indulgent humor, then Facebook is where to get that side of the Scott Nicholson experience. For more in-depth writer and industry observations, try hauntedcomputer.blogspot.com, and if you want to flex your craft muscles, then writegoodordie.blogspot.com is an interactive manual. Obviously I have far too many interests and far too few skills to address them all.
Any final comments or thoughts?
I’m an acquired taste and I have become less interested in a populist appeal as I stack up more novels. And as I’ve learned more about the industry, I understand why it works the way it does, and where it’s broken. I also know where I’m broken. It’s somewhere between my ears, and if I keep jabbing a pencil in there, maybe one day I’ll root out the disease. Probably will take 40 more novels, though. Oh. And buy all my books, so I can sit at home in dirty sweat pants. People who say “Don’t quit your day job” are people with lousy day jobs who don’t want anyone else to have fun. I say “Quit your day job, and the sooner the better.”
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Scott, these books are right up my alley!! Congratulations on the new releases and thanks for taking the time to answer these questions. You have lots to keep you busy over the coming months! Best of luck!
To start, can you tell me a little about yourself.Sometimes we have to be ruthless in writing/editing. We cut scenes, eliminate characters or even kill them off. Tell me what was the hardest of these in this book.Where can we find you on the internet?
Those of us in the industry know it as the “agency model”. Publishers can sell ebooks at their preferred price and Apple simply takes 30% for making it available in their iBookstore. Publishers, agents, and authors all lauded this new model. Then publishers turned their gaze towards Amazon and forced them to take on a similar model. Prior to this Amazon had been using the “wholesale model”, where Amazon purchased the book from publishers and sold ebooks at whatever price they wanted. During the time that Amazon was using the “wholesale model” they were selling ebooks at no more than $9.99, and often at a loss. Their take, I assume, was that if ebooks were cheap more people would buy their e-reader, the Kindle. I get that argument. And quite honestly, if I’m going to spend a nice amount of money on an e-reader, the books shouldn’t cost the same as paper. They should be considerably cheaper. I had the same feeling about mp3’s and CD’s. If I am going to buy an mp3 it better be really cheap since I’m not buying all that packaging. Sadly, the music industry learned that lesson the hard way. So here we are today. Apple and Amazon are now selling ebooks using an agency model and if you look, you’ll find some paper books cheaper at Amazon than their respective ebook format. That’s a sore point with a lot of readers. So that brings me to this post. When folks in the industry were applauding the agency model of business saying this is good for authors, publishers and agents, nowhere did I hear anyone saying that this was good for the consumer. And quite frankly, as a consumer myself, it’s a little insulting. And at the end of the day, publishers are going to learn this lesson the hard way, just like the music industry did. As a result of all of this I decided to run my own poll around what was a factor for buying books. Surprisingly, price ranked third, tied with the author. Certainly something for publishers to consider, especially since their own “brand” is at the bottom of the list.
What are the three most important factors in buying a book?
Total Voters: 271
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Now, let’s move on to Digital Rights Management (DRM) since that comes up quite frequently around ebooks these days. DRM was something the music industry tried to implement and it failed miserably. Consumers don’t want something that limits their ability with something they own. I find that when it comes to consumers, their attitude is that if they paid for it with their hard-earned money, they own it. They can do what they want with it – end of discussion. DRM basically tells them they don’t own it and that they are limited in what they can do with it. So when it comes to books, when you buy an ebook that has DRM, the following will happen: – if you move from a Kindle to the Sony, you have to buy the book again. You don’t have the right to move from one platform to another. – if formats change in a few years and you want that book on some new e-reader, you need to buy it again. There’s a whole lot more, but what I’m trying to illustrate is that you technically don’t own it any more. Unlike a paper book, you can’t lend it, you can’t resell it, you can’t keep it for 20 years because no technology platform will last that long. Basically you’ve licensed the use of it for the life of the device that you’ve got in your hands right now. When you move to some other platform, that’s it. Bye bye book. And that’s just want publishers want. Buy, buy book. There have been a number of arguments around DRM and the protection against piracy, but you know what? They’re wrong. DRM doesn’t protect anything. There is, and there will always be, someone who will hack it. And they will do it because you’ve given them the challenge. And whether an ebook has DRM or not, those consumers that are determined not to pay for content, will find it free no matter what. So now the choice needs to be focused on the consumers that are not quite so willing to venture into the Darknet to get their content “illegally”. How can you keep customers buying instead of looking for your ebook for free? Make it cheap, make it easily accessible, and make it theirs. Let them do what they want with it once they’ve paid for it. It’s their perception that they own it, and they’re right. I ran a couple of polls over the last few weeks to get some feedback from readers. They are completely unscientific, but the results are below.
In regards to ebooks, how do you feel about DRM (Digital Rights Management)?
Total Voters: 157
Loading …Not only do readers prefer their books without DRM, but 26% of the readers who took this poll won’t even buy an ebook if it has DRM. That’s significant. The next two polls were on pricing. Because the respondents were from around the world, I couldn’t price things in US dollars. So I used a pricing structure relative to the cost of a trade paperback book. The first poll is what readers were willing to pay for an ebook if it had DRM. Most people were willing to buy the book at 50%-75% of trade paperback price if it had DRM. But again, 25% of the respondents would not buy the book at all.
What are you willing to pay for a newly released ebook WITH DRM (within the first 3 months of release of an original fiction title):
Total Voters: 106
Loading …In the last poll I removed DRM to see if the attitude would change when there was no DRM in place. The majority of respondents were willing to pay 50%-100% of trade paperback prices if there was no DRM. This is a huge signal to publishers that they should rethink some of their strategy.
What are you willing to pay for a newly released ebook WITHOUT DRM (within the first 3 months of release of an original fiction title):
Total Voters: 99
Loading …I wish Kobo had done some more research around DRM. My own polls are obviously limited, but I think they say something about the reading public and the publishing industry needs to pay attention to what they’re saying. There have been a number of complaints at places like the Amazon Kindle discussion groups and mobileread.com where consumers with e-readers gather en masse. Publishers need to drop in and listen to what their readers are saying.
In the meantime, go check out places like Smashwords. Their books are DRM-free. Once you buy the book, you can download it over and over again. And if you change devices, you can download it in the format for your new device without hassle and free of charge. And most of the books there are cheap. This is where ebooks should be. Rant finished.
Those of us in the industry know it as the “agency model”. Publishers can sell ebooks at their preferred price and Apple simply takes 30% for making it available in their iBookstore. Publishers, agents, and authors all lauded this new model. Then publishers turned their gaze towards Amazon and forced them to take on a similar model. Prior to this Amazon had been using the “wholesale model”, where Amazon purchased the book from publishers and sold ebooks at whatever price they wanted. What are the three most important factors in buying a book?
Total Voters: 271
Loading …Now, let’s move on to Digital Rights Management (DRM) since that comes up quite frequently around ebooks these days. DRM was something the music industry tried to implement and it failed miserably. Consumers don’t want something that limits their ability with something they own. I find that when it comes to consumers, their attitude is that if they paid for it with their hard-earned money, they own it. They can do what they want with it – end of discussion. DRM basically tells them they don’t own it and that they are limited in what they can do with it. In regards to ebooks, how do you feel about DRM (Digital Rights Management)?
Total Voters: 157
Loading …What are you willing to pay for a newly released ebook WITH DRM (within the first 3 months of release of an original fiction title):
Total Voters: 106
Loading …What are you willing to pay for a newly released ebook WITHOUT DRM (within the first 3 months of release of an original fiction title):
Total Voters: 99
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