By: Robin Brande,
on 5/13/2011
Okay, you have to act fast on this. My new novel DOGGIRL is available FOR FREE through tomorrow. So if you want it, get it!
You can download the PDF version, or a Kindle or other ePub file here.
Use coupon code KP65S to get it for free. Go!
.jpeg?picon=1058)
By: Kakie Fitzsimmons,
on 3/16/2011
(Share yours on Facebook and you could win an autographed Bur Bur and Friends multicultural children book of your choice!) Our Minnesota Governor has proclaimed the month of March to be nutrition month. Well, you might be thinkin’ that’s wonderful and all, but if a proclamation from the governor isn’t enough to get your kids [...]
.jpeg?picon=3626)
By: Aaron Polson,
on 3/15/2011
It's the anniversary of my birth, and I'm giving the gifts.
Well, one gift in particular: a Kindle copy of my new novella, We are the Monsters. (Well, it's a long novella or a very short novel...depends on your definition, doesn't it?) Don't have a Kindle? No sweat. You can download a free Kindle app for PC, Mac, iPod...etc. Yes, I know it's part of Amazon's evil empire. I just haven't had time to up load the book to Smashwords yet and my birthday (hence the gifting) is today.
About We are the Monsters:
While cruising a dark country road late one Saturday night, five high school friends accidentally kill an old drunk. Hiding the body is easy. Lying about what happened is even easier. But lies have a way of breeding Monsters in Springdale, Kansas, and the Monsters have come to play.
"Here’s the truth about growing up in a small town: you tell lies to survive.
I worked at a grocery store during high school, part time on the evenings and weekends. I saw plenty of strange things there: avocados stuffed in a barrel of fresh popcorn left to rot, a coworker who punched holes in the caps of beer bottles with an awl, pies marked “Verda’s own home-baked” which came frozen on pallets with the Sunday dairy truck. I found a body in the trash bin once, but nobody can prove who put it there. No one can prove it was there.
There were too many bodies for a town the size of Springdale. The name of the town is a lie, but the bodies aren’t. All of them. When you find a body lying with the outdated yogurt, wilted lettuce, and cardboard boxes, you make up stories to cope. You can’t process a body in the grocery store trash bin. A trick of the light, you say. The way the shadows fell across certain bits of debris like the coat hanger beast in a little boy’s bedroom. That head of lettuce, there, in the corner, looks like a human hand.
Bodies are bodies.
Dead is dead.
And lies are lies."
Interested? Either comment with email address below (you can use (at) instead of @ in the address to fool spam bots) or email me directly at aaron.polson(at)gmail.com.
Enjoy the Ides of March!
By: Jason Boog,
on 3/2/2011
Today the PEN/Faulkner Foundation revealed the 2011 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction nominees. Below, we’ve created a literary mixtape linking to free samples of all five novels.
The release has more information about the award: “The winner, who will receive $15,000, will be announced on March 15; the four finalists will receive $5,000 each. In a ceremony that celebrates the winner as ‘first among equals,’ all five authors will be honored during the 31st Annual PEN/Faulkner Award ceremony at the Folger Shakespeare Library, located at 201 East Capitol Street, SE on Saturday, May 7, at 7pm.”
If you want more books, we made similar mixtapes linking to free samples of 2011 Edgar Awards finalists, the 2011 ALA Youth Media Awards winners, the 2011 Book Critics Circle Awards finalists, the Best Translated Books Longlist, the Believer Book Awards shortlist, and the Best Books of 2010.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Add a Comment
By: Aaron Polson,
on 10/28/2010
By: Marley Gibson,
on 8/29/2010
Well...it's here! The big week of promo for my new book, GHOST HUNTRESS: THE COUNSELING. This is the fourth book in the Ghost Huntress series and I'm very excited that the time is finally here to talk about the book.
Kendall has just discovered who Emily really is, lost her boyfriend, and nearly died doing the thing she loves most–ghost hunting. It’s time to take a break and try to reconcile all the changes she’s going through. So Kendall heads to the Sierra Mountains, where there’s a camp especially for young people with gifts such as hers. It’s a time for reflection and self-discovery. But when she gets to California, she once again finds restless spirits–and the boy in her last vision. It may be the end of one chapter of her life and the beginning of a new one.
This week, we'll be talking about finding your own way in the world and making the best decisions for you. Each day, you'll be eligible to win not only copies of THE COUNSELING here on Books, Boys, Buzz, but I'll be offering a GRAND PRIZE on my website to be given away on September 15th. There's an awesome prize package on my website, so please be sure to check that out and spread the word.
To win a copy of THE COUNSELING, leave a comment in the trail about a huge decision you had to make that had a huge affect on you and your life. Again, those who leave a message (as many as you'd like), will be eligible to win a book.
Thanks for reading!
Hugs,
Marley = )
By: Wendy Toliver,
on 6/13/2010
Congratulations to the following Books Boys Buzz commenters for winning a signed copy of my brand-spankin' new book, LIFTED:
Steph & Bookaholic
Please contact me via my web-site, www.wendytoliver.com, with your full name and U.S. mailing address as well as who you'd like the book signed to, and I'll get them mailed off when I'm home next week!
Thank you to everybody for stopping by this week and thanks so much for participating in the contest! I hope you had as much fun as I did! :)
By: jeff,
on 10/28/2009
VS. 
Disney is now offering a refund to purchasers of the “Baby Einstein” videos. They appear to be doing so under a looming class action suit from parents whose children did not grow up to discover make historical impact upon modern physics.
Most analysts agree that this recall is a tacit admission that the videos do not improve the mental growth of infants. Some say that the videos may have even done quite the opposite. The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests no television at all for children under the age of 2.
The creator, Julie Aigner-Clark, still walked away with a cool $20 million from her deal with Disney. MJM Books is jealous!!! Our products are books, and books have been proven to increase cognition and intellect. Where’s our Disney deal?!
MJM Books recommends that anyone who has purchased a Baby Einstein DVD (or had one purchased for them), should return it for a refund and use that refund to buy a book. In fact, let’s make it official. IF YOU MAIL YOUR BABY EINSTEIN DVD TO US, WE’LL GIVE YOU ONE OF OUR CUSTOMIZABLE KIDS BOOKS, FREE!!!
By: jeff,
on 10/28/2009
VS.
Disney is now offering a refund to purchasers of the “Baby Einstein” videos. They appear to be doing so under a looming class action suit from parents whose children did not grow up to discover make historical impact upon modern physics.
Most analysts agree that this recall is a tacit admission that the videos do not improve the mental growth of infants. Some say that the videos may have even done quite the opposite. The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests no television at all for children under the age of 2.
The creator, Julie Aigner-Clark, still walked away with a cool $20 million from her deal with Disney. MJM Books is jealous!!! Our products are books, and books have been proven to increase cognition and intellect. Where’s our Disney deal?!
MJM Books recommends that anyone who has purchased a Baby Einstein DVD (or had one purchased for them), should return it for a refund and use that refund to buy a book. In fact, let’s make it official. IF YOU MAIL YOUR BABY EINSTEIN DVD TO US, WE’LL GIVE YOU ONE OF OUR CUSTOMIZABLE KIDS BOOKS, FREE!!!
By: Julia,
on 5/27/2009
Katie’s Bookshelf is a book review blog that focuses primarily on young adult books. The one thing we really like about her blog is the frequent author interviews and contests she posts. Right now she has an interview with Darlene Ryan, author of Orca’s Five Minutes More and an opportunity to WIN THE BOOK.
And thanks to Katie for having such a wonderful site.
.jpg?picon=980)
By: Cheryl Rainfield,
on 5/3/2009
Another free children’s ebook–again, for a limited time. Download Pendragon #1: Merchant of Death by D.J. MacHale in pdf format from Barnes & Noble. Treasures galore!
By: Cheryl Rainfield,
on 5/3/2009
Attention all children’s book readers and book lovers–Random House is offering a free digital copy of The Alchemyst: Book One in the Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel by Michael Scott–but only until May 8th, 2009. So get your copy now!
I think this is a fantastic way to help promote a book series. (Though I think the free ebook should be available longer.)
By: Cheryl Rainfield,
on 4/16/2009
Free Book Stimulus Plan
increase your karmic footprint
If you live in or are visiting the Southern area of the US (that includes Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia / West Virginia, and Virgin Islands) and you love books, you’re in luck. Buy a book at one of the participating Southern independent bookstores (online or in person), and you’ll get a free book. Just fill out the form and mail it in your receipt, and Wanda will ship you a free book from her personal huge library. The form asks for your favorite genre, author, and book, so it sounds like Wanda will try to match your likes to the books she has on hand–which is really cool (and generous) of her. The offer is only good for people living in the US.
I think this is a fantastic idea and a way to get more people buying books, especially when money is tight for many people. I love what Wanda’s doing! If you like it, too, pass the word along.
From her blog:
“What kind of book? you ask. Answer: A Free One. Wanda Jewell, Executive Director of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance for nearly 20 years, is overrun with books. All kind of books, galleys, advance reading copies, advance reader editions, paperbound and hardbound, slip-covered and not, limited editions, signed and unsigned, personalized and not; and finds herself overrun with books. Books here, books there, books, books, everywhere…and when contemplating the management of her extensive personal library, had her aha moment. How to weed her collection and support her southern indie bookstores at the same time? Thus was born the Free Book Stimulus Plan.
Here’s what to do:
1. Shop at one of these Southern Indie Bookstores
2. Fill out this form completely, print it out and mail with a copy of your receipt to:
FREE BOOK, 3806 Yale Ave., Columbia, SC, 29205
3. Wait for your free book and pat yourself on the back for shopping local.
The receipt must include the name of the store and Wanda will ship you a free book from her personal library. This is open only to consumers living in the contiguous United States. Completed form with receipt must be mailed to Free Book, 3806 Yale Ave., Columbia, SC 29205 and only while supplies last (consider this a challenge to deplete Wanda’s library – she doubts it can be done!) Wanda will pick a book for you.”
By: Neil Gaiman,
on 3/19/2009
By: Neil Gaiman,
on 9/23/2008
By: Neil Gaiman,
on 9/3/2008
For those people who grumbled about reading American Gods online, here's Neverwhere. You can read it online, and it's also downloadable. That's the good news.
The bad news is you don't get to keep it forever. It's yours for thirty days from download, and then the pdf file returns to its electrons. But if you've ever wondered about Neverwhere or wanted to read it for free, now is your chance. And free is free...
By: Neil Gaiman,
on 8/13/2008
Right. Tonight I'm home, sitting on a sofa with my daughters who are watching the Olympics. This morning I went out and bought lots of lightweight, quick-drying clothes and other useful travel things, with my assistant Lorraine. (At one point during the clothes-buying part of things Lorraine helpfully said, "Boss, you're still wearing their pants. Why don't you go and change back into your own?" Which seemed like a sensible idea, so I grabbed my jeans and headed back to the changing room, overhearing the sales lady saying, "Is he a professor?" and Lorraine's reply of, "He's a writer. It's the same thing.")
So I now have lots of new, light, easily washed clothes, many of them grey or white, which means I will spend much of the next four weeks feeling like I am in disguise.
I don't know if I'll be able to post while on the road -- I'm going to be very much off the beaten track doing research for the next big project, and a lot of the time I'll be on foot in rural China, so I hope that Dan Guy The Webgoblin will be able to post as things happen, and news needs to go up. And then there's always Maddy (or even Holly).
I've been talking to Harpers about the follow-up to Giving Away American Gods. The next plan is Giving Away Neverwhere, which will be done in some different ways to the way American Gods was done. I'm hoping it'll happen in September. More info, from me or thewebgoblin, as we get it.
It looks like there's already a serious giveaway going on at http://fashion-piranha.livejournal.com/23000.html
And I forgot to mention that it was indeed Béla Fleck who, reading on the blog that I wanted a Banjo-based Danse Macabre, recorded a version for Banjo and cello which is positively awesome, and which will be on the audio book.
Right. Bed.
By: Laurel Snyder,
on 8/13/2008
So I’m sitting her in a big pile of books, and I’m thinking I should give a few away.
Hmmmm….
How’s about this?
You’ll post a little story to your blog, about a task/ job/situation/role for which you are thoroughly unsuitable (the FULL title of my book is “Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains OR the Search for a Suitable Princess”).
For instance, if I were entering the contest I might say, “I would make a thoroughly unsuitable vow-of-silence-nun, because I never shut up. Also I am Jewish.”
In addition to this little post, you’ll also ou’ also add a link to this post (by way of explanation) and the cover of the book (see above).
Then you will scramble back here and post a comment, to let me know you’ve entered the contest!
In a week’s time I’ll select the most entertaining story entered, and the winner will get a FREE signed copy of my book (in which I promise to write something REALLY unsuitable).
How’s that?
Let the games begin!
By: Neil Gaiman,
on 7/11/2008
Dave McKean writes to let me know that,
Here's a poster for my show at The Merry Karnowsky Gallery.
The opening is on the evening of the 19th, it's open to public,
anyone can come, I'll be there.
and continues inexorably from there. I think of that short story every time I look in the fridge and can't see anything to eat.Catsup, mustard, pickle, relish, mayonnaise, two kinds of salad dressing, bacon grease, and a lemon. Oh yes, two trays of ice cubes. In the cupboard it wasn't much better: jars and boxes of spices, flour, sugar, salt—and a box of raisins!
An empty box of raisins.
One of the things he did extremely well was write from the POV of characters who aren't terribly bright, or who have limited worldviews. They're never aware they're in a story; and while the story may do terrible things to them, it never sides with the reader against them.Which did that thing of making me realise something I had observed a hundred times and never seen.
The Browse Inside Full Access promotion of American Gods drove 85 thousand visitors to our site to view 3.8 Million pages of the book (an average of 46 pages per person). On average, visitors spent over 15 minutes reading the book.
The Indies [ie. independent booksellers -- Neil] are the only sales channel where we have confidence that incremental sales were driven by this promotion. In the Bookscan data reported for Independents we see a marked increase in weekly sales across all of Neil’s books, not just American Gods during the time of the contest and promotion. Following the promotion, sales returned to pre-promotion levels.
Through an online survey, we know that 44% of fans enjoyed this browsing experience and 56% did not. Some of Neil’s fans expressed frustration with the Browse Inside tool for reading through a whole book. (This poor result is partially due to two problems which were fixed soon after the initial launch – mistaken redirect to the Flash-based reader and slow image load time)
As I said back when were doing it, to a bookshop owner worried that I was taking his livelihood away from him,
We also received some valuable insight from the 1k people who responded to the User Survey that Neil posted to his blog.
The vast majority of respondents had already read one of Neil’s books, but 20% of them had not previously read American Gods
41% were new to the e-reading format
Response to our Browse Inside Online Reader was mixed – with 44% saying they enjoyed the experience at 56% saying they did not. The chief complaints were that you had to have an internet connection to read the book, you had to scroll to see the whole page and that the load time was sometimes slow. 69% of respondents said that they would like to be able to download. Some people complained that since they couldn’t bookmark where they left off, they got lost between reading sessions.
Back to the 44% who enjoyed the experience….9% of respondents said that they read through 100% of the book and 30% of respondents said that they would use this tool to read the whole book.
In the comments section of the survey many people requested that more of Neil’s books be made available.
Anyway (it probably bears reiterating) this is an experiment. Harper Collins are going to be looking at the figures over the next month and longer. If sales of American Gods crash in bookshops -- or if sales of all my other books crash -- they won't be doing it again. If American Gods sells more, if my other titles sell more, on actual Bookscan sales, then I think we'll all agree that you and your fellow booksellers will be selling more books, and will thus have nothing to worry about.Given that Harper Collins sold a lot more of all my books while the free American Gods was out there, with sales of all my titles up 40% through independent bookshops, I think I can safely say that we'll be doing it -- or rather, something similar -- again. And that the 56% of people who didn't enjoy the online reading experience may be a lot happier with how we do it next time out.
Remember, publishers aren't making their money from free downloads or from free online books. Like you (and like me), they make their money from books sold.
By: Neil Gaiman,
on 3/25/2008
It's worth drawing people's attention to the fact that the free online reading copy of American Gods is now in its last six days online (it ends 31 March 08). I learned this from an email from Harper Collins, which also told me the latest batch of statistics.
For American Gods:
68,000 unique visitors to the book pages of American Gods
3,000,000 book pages viewed in aggregate
And that the weekly book sales of American Gods have apparently gone up by 300%, rather than tumbling into the abyss. (Which is what I thought would happen. Or at least, what I devoutly hoped would happen.)
The book is up at This URL, if you're interested, or want to pass it along to a friend.
By: Neil Gaiman,
on 3/5/2008
Today my assistant Lorraine is in the kitchen doing mysterious things to obtain beeswax from slumgum, and I am mostly on the phone copy-editing The Graveyard Book.
Anyway. Free books. I started thinking about times we've used this principle in paper books -- using the free thing to spread the author or the idea, and, if you ignore the five fingered discount (remember, in the UK you can add Terry Pratchett to the "four authors who are flying off the shelves and don't forget the graphic novels" list) then you still have things like Free Comic Book Day. And before there was ever Free Comic Book Day, there was Sandman 8.
It was 1989. I wrote Sandman #8, Mike Dringenberg drew it, and the editorial and marketing departments at DC Comics got enthusiastic about it. I went out and got three pages of quotes from fantasy and horror authors about Sandman, wrote a "The Story So Far". DC Comics overprinted Sandman #8 and sent each retailer an extra 25% above what they'd ordered, for free, and told them that they could do whatever they wanted with them.
Some stores simply sold them.
The smart stores gave them away. Some of the smart stores even went back to DC and asked for more. The stores that gave them away were the stores who, a year or so later, found it very easy to sell Sandman trade paperbacks to their customers. And then to sell Sandman hardcovers. And some of them are now selling the Absolute Sandmans.
(And a few people have written to let me know that ABSOLUTE SANDMAN Volume 3 is now up at Amazon, with the extra 5% discount for pre-ordering it bringing it to 42% off.)
Anyway. There weren't any grumbles that we were somehow devaluing other comics, or that this was Marxism in action, or that this was going to put comics retailers out of business or anything like that. It was about expanding the readership, about convincing people that it was safe to try something new.
(I just called Brian Hibbs at Comix Experience who put labels with his store's name and address on his free comics and then left them at barbers' shops and on buses and anywhere else he could, bookcrossing style -- he said he passed out about 400 copies of Sandman 8 and got 100 readers back, who bought every copy of Sandman, and the collected editions, and some of those people are buying Absolute Sandmans from him now -- and then he pointed out that it wasn't just Sandman that those people bought, but lots of them discovered comics and bought everything...)
...
Rachel McAdams says she would like to be Black Orchid on the screen -- I'd like to see that too. I didn't know what I was doing when I wrote Black Orchid, and it shows, but there's some dialogue I'm still really happy with, and a wilful attempt to avoid cliche that I'm still proud of. And Dave McKean created an entire school of realistic superhero art (one he's still apologising for). It was our first full-colour baby.
I wish her luck.
...
How does he come up with the cover images? Dave I mean. Does he just make it up out of his head like writing? Or is there a HarperCollins committee that says, "We would like a blue cover with a knife. And perhaps a black one with some mist...no no, more swirly please."
Can you ask him? And if he answers, can you post it?
Thanks Neil!
-Miriam
I can answer this -- I was there and watching it. The first cover Dave did was done to a Harpers request (they sent him a sketch of the kind of thing they wanted, and he painted that). With the more recent ones I posted, Dave had simply read the book (which I was still writing when he did the first one) and then sketched a bunch of potential covers and handed them in.
Hi Neil,
Can I ask what happened to the much more finished graveyard book cover that you posted a few weeks back? I have a feeling that Dave might be someone that hands in finished pieces on a whim sometimes, but had he just done that for promotion etc, or was it just an early version? I know what it is like to do covers several times, not just as roughs but also finished pieces, and I think the rough sketches you posted might be stronger than that one, but I just wondered...
-Joel Stewart
Well, it exists, and it might be used in promotion, or turn up in the back of the Subterranean Press Edition or as a colour Frontispiece to the Bloomsbury limited edition, but it probably won't be a book cover (unless there's a foreign publisher who wants it, I suppose).
It was done to order, but it really didn't reflect the book I wrote, which was why we went back to Dave and said, "you don't have to worry any longer about doing a book cover that looks like it's for young readers. Just do a book cover."
And yes, I think most of the ones he came back with are stronger than that was.
And yes, it's not at all unknown for Dave simply to do finished art and hand it in. On Sandman he did it after he was removed from the book, as we started The Doll's House. He was told that he was off Sandman so that he could concentrate on finishing Arkham Asylum -- he simply went home and did the next three Sandman covers and sent them off to DC...
...
Which reminds me -- it's been a very long time since I posted a link to http://gaimanmckeanbooks.co.uk/ -- there are some very wonderful Dave McKean screensavers and ecards and suchlike there...
Read the rest of this post
By: Neil Gaiman,
on 3/4/2008
Lots of people wrote to tell me that X-Rays were needed for TB tests, and some people suggested that they were in hand-baggage as they might be fogged by X-Rays in checked baggage, but no-one explained why there seemed no mechanism for anyone ever to look at the (quite expensive, and carried over in hand-baggage), x-rays until this arrived from Mr Petit...
Having been a commanding officer in the UK -- meaning I had to supervise
airmen and NCOs under my command when they wanted to bring their UK brides
back to the US -- I had to chuckle when I saw the note about the x-ray.
It's not required by the immigration folks (either Division 6, or anyone
else). Since it's a different federal agency, I'm not surprised that an INS
employee wouldn't know about it. It's required by the US Public Health
Service, for everyone, regardless of nationality, who is trying to immigrate.
And they do, on occasion, get checked, but only if there's advance reason to
believe there's "a substantial risk of exposure." For example, you can bet
that flights on foreign-flag carriers originating in, say, Nairobi get more
scrutiny than would a BA or AA flight from Heathrow.
The relevant statute was passed in 1938 (there may have been a predecessor,
but I doubt it) and hasn't been updated yet. What a surprise.
And this came in from my editor Jennifer Brehl at Harper Collins about the free American Gods -- I'm putting it up because she says it better than I could paraphrase it:
First of all, the online edition has been optimized and the embedded pages are moving much faster. I’ve asked that the widget confusion be fixed – i.e., open up widget to full book rather than older partial version.
We’re wondering if you might have some time tomorrow that we could call you and we could have a conference call to discuss things? We want your fans to know that we are responsive to their concerns and, although it’s painful getting the criticism, it’s also a good learning opportunity.
By: Neil Gaiman,
on 3/3/2008
Lots of lovely letters from people about where and how they found authors for free whose work they then went on to buy, although I was vaguely hoping someone would write a letter saying, "If you're so fond of Free, then why don't you write a book for free, that you don't get any royalties on, that could be given away or sold incredibly cheaply, just to encourage people to read? Yeah, what about that then, smartarse?" But nobody has.
"13 million school children in the UK will receive a World Book Day £1 Book
Token which can be exchanged for a World Book Day £1 Book, throughout March,
from over 3,000 participating bookshops and book retailers across the UK and
Republic of Ireland. The £1 Token can also be put towards any book or
audio book costing £2.99 or more. The World Book Day £1 Book Token is sponsored
by National Book Tokens and redemptions are funded by bookshops across the
country."
By: Neil Gaiman,
on 3/3/2008
This just came in, and I thought it deserved a long reply...
Hello Mr. Gaiman:
As a bookseller, I am a bit surprised by your recent comment about free books and the HarperCollins download. When you say, "the problem isn't that books are given away or that people read books they haven't paid for. The problem is that the majority of people don't read for pleasure," you seem to miss the point that all of us booksellers are hoping to sell your book to READERS as well as non-readers. Our situation improves as more non-readers become readers, but we can't survive when the readers go elsewhere. I am not at all against free literature--I firmly believe that the more people read the more people read--but somehow, if we independents are to survive, we need to be included somewhere in the formula. I also believe that we independents have no RIGHT to exist, that our time may have passed or be passing, but it would be nice if we could survive; I believe we can--and do--serve a very important purpose.Thanks. I don't sense that you have anything against booksellers--I do want to let you know how your comment might be interpreted by some.
Don Muller
Old Harbor Books
201 Lincoln Street
Sitka, Alaska 99835
Hi Don,
I don't see this as either they get it for free or they come and buy it from you. I see it as Where do you get the people who come in and buy the books that keep you in business from?
The books you sell have "pass-along" rates. They get bought by one person. Then they get passed along to other people. The other people find an author they like, or they don't.
When they do, some of them may come in to your book store and buy some paperback backlist titles, or buy the book they read and liked so that they can read it again. You want this to happen.
Just as a bookseller who regards a library as the enemy, because people can go there and read -- for free! -- what he sells, is missing that the library is creating a pool of people who like and take pleasure in books, will be his customer base, and are out there spreading the word about authors and books they like to other people, some of whom will simply go out and buy it.
If readers find (for free -- in a library, or on-line, or by borrowing from a friend, or on a window-sill) an author they really like, and that author has a nice spanking new hardback coming out, they are quite likely to come in to your shop and buy the nice spanking new hardback. You want that to happen. You really want that to happen a lot, because you'll make more in profit on each of the nice spanking new hardbacks than you will on the paperbacks (or, probably, on anything else in the shop).
I don't believe that anybody out there who can afford a copy of American Gods is going to not buy it (or another of my books) because it's available out there on line for nothing. (Not at this point, anyway.) I think it's a lot more likely that some of the people who read it will find an author they like, and buy more books. Which is good news for people who run bookshops.
(Remember: one in four adults read no books last year. Among those who said they had read books, the median figure — with half reading more, half fewer — was nine books for women and five for men. The figures also indicated that those with college degrees read the most, and people aged 50 and up read more than those who are younger. Which means you need to find ways to get young readers to read books. And means that if someone likes American Gods and goes out and buys my entire backlist from you, that's more books than most Americans read in a year.)
I think it's very likely that someone who reads American Gods online and likes it may decide, come the 30th of September, to go out to your shop or somewhere else like it and plonk down their $17.99 for The Graveyard Book in hardcover.
I don't see it as taking money from the pockets of booksellers.
(To steal a metaphor from Cory Doctorow, it's dandelion seeds rather than mammals. A mammal produces a few offspring that take a lot of resources. A dandelion produces an awful lot of seeds because the cost in resources to the dandelion is small, but those that sprout, sprout.)
Then again, I do not always understand the ways of booksellers.
Old Harbor Books looks marvellous -- http://litsite.alaska.edu/akbooksellers/oldharbor.html -- and looks like somewhere that's involved in creating readers and a reading community. My local bookshop (now deceased) was physically arranged so that finding a book and then buying it was harder than walking around around the shop and going back out again; the bookseller mostly sat at the cash register in the middle of the shop playing online chess, and he tended to be unhelpful, vaguely grumpy and to treat people who wanted to buy things as nuisances (he was nice to me, because I was me, but still); he didn't stock paperback bestsellers because "people could always go to Wal-Mart for those" and when the she shop closed its doors the final time they put up a note on the door saying that it was Amazon.com that had driven them out of business, when it manifestly wasn't -- it seemed to me that they didn't work to entice people into the bookshop (which is what those paperback bestsellers were for), and didn't give them a pleasant experience when they were there...
But I digress...
Anyway (it probably bears reiterating) this is an experiment. Harper Collins are going to be looking at the figures over the next month and longer. If sales of American Gods crash in bookshops -- or if sales of all my other books crash -- they won't be doing it again. If American Gods sells more, if my other titles sell more, on actual Bookscan sales, then I think we'll all agree that you and your fellow booksellers will be selling more books, and will thus have nothing to worry about.
Remember, publishers aren't making their money from free downloads or from free online books. Like you (and like me), they make their money from books sold.
What we all want to do is sell more books. To readers, to non-readers, to people who thought they didn't like that sort of thing.
Also, there are also a lot of posts coming in like this:
No question - just wanted to let you know, after getting your "American Gods" online for free and reading about 200 pages, I had to go out and buy the book. Great read!
which may make you feel a little better....
...
Dear Neil
You should be able to listen again on the BBC website. all the radio programmes have a seven day period of grace and you can hear them again. If I remember rightly, I thnk I caught the Lovecraft show this way. The Beeb are also doing their shows throught the iplayer (not yet Mac compatbale). I watched the Worlds of Fantasy series about child heroes, only two days to go. Two more in the series and I think worth watching.
Kind regards
Philip
Not Desert Island Discs or Pick of the Week though.
Mr. Gaiman - Congratulations on finishing "The Graveyard Book." Can't wait to add it to my collection. I have two questions, that are both tied together.
1) You grew up in England, but have moved to the US. How difficult / time consuming was the process (paperwork, etc.) at the time, and what prompted your decision to move here?
2) If someone wanted to reverse that, and move from the US to England, any suggestions on what websites would be good to start researching?I know you are a busy man, but I thank you for any advice you could provide.
1) Fairly time consuming, not that difficult. I think the fact that we had two kids made it fairly obvious that I hadn't married my wife to get to America, and the fact that I earned the majority of my income from DC Comics (at the time) meant that it wasn't like I was about to become a drain on the US economy. I still wonder why I had to get the X-Ray of my lungs and bring it to the US in my handbaggage, and still remember fondly the lady at the US embassy who called me back and told me, quietly, that I'd left originals with her when I should have given her the copies, and when I thanked her told me to shut up because if it was known that she'd been helpful she could be fired.
2) It's nice to think that I could do more than you with a quick Google, but I don't think I can. http://www.uk-yankee.com/ looks like it might be a fine place to start looking though.
...
Mr. Gaiman,
Since your love of libraries has been well documented on your blog I'm sure I'm not the first to alert you to the marvelous www.deweydonationsystem.org (tagline: helping books find libraries since 2003). Their efforts this year are aimed at the Children's Institute in Los Angeles which helps out abused children in a myriad of ways both large and small and the Rockhouse Foundation in Jamaica which serves impoverished children in Negril. The Dewey Donation System (which I'm not affiliated with except as a donor)is a grassroots campaign run simply for the love of books and with the sure knowlege that books change lives. As a librarian and veritable eater of books (yours and many, many, many others), I know that much is true.Thanks for your time and thanks for your much-loved books,
Stephanie Betts
Oddly enough, you were the first -- but thanks...
And this made me smile: http://cjsd.blogspot.com/2008/02/ten-simple-rules-for-graduate-students.html
This fascinated me: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080214114517.htm
This (via Cabinet of Wonders) is a Google Map of the American Gods-style holy places of America.
And for those of you currently reading American Gods, it's worth pointing you to http://www.frowl.org/gods/gods.html, and on Neilgaiman.com to http://www.neilgaiman.com/works/Books/American+Gods/in/183/ (the astonishingly incomplete bibliography).
By: Neil Gaiman,
on 2/29/2008
I'm currently talking to Harpers about ways we can make the American Gods online reading experience a more pleasant one. And about ways to give American Gods away that would make Harper Collins happy while also making, say, Cory Doctorow happy too.
I was surprised by a few emails coming in from people accusing me of doing bad things for other authors by giving anything away -- the idea being, I think, that by handing out a bestselling book for nothing I'm devaluing what a book is and so forth, which I think is silly.
I like giving stuff away. I think it's sensible. I like that you can read Sandman #1 on the DC Comics site, for example. (It's at http://www.dccomics.com/media/excerpts/1696_1.pdf. (Although for reasons known only to DC, they have put the last two pages of the story in the wrong order.) We've got five short stories up at http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool%20Stuff/Short%20Stories, and I just realised on poking around that I've put more essays and things up over the years on this blog than have ever made it into the essays section, and a lot more audio than ever made it to the rather threadbare audio section (although there's lots of free audio now up at http://www.last.fm/music/Neil+Gaiman)
During one of the interviews recently, a reporter said something like, "Of course, a real publisher wouldn't give away paper books," and I pointed out that 3,000 copies of The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy were given away by Douglas Adams' publisher, with a 'write in and get your free book' ad in Rolling Stone. They wanted copies of HHGTTG on campuses in the US, and they wanted people to read it and tell other people. Word of mouth is still the best tool for selling books.
This is how people found new authors for more than a century. Someone says, "I've read this. It's good. I think you'd like it. Here, you can borrow it." Someone takes the book away, reads it, and goes, Ah, I have a new author.
Libraries are good things: you shouldn't have to pay for every book you read.
I'm one of those authors who is fortunate enough to make my living from the things I've written. If I thought that giving books away would make it so that I could no longer make my living from writing and be forced to go out and get a real job -- or that other authors would be less likely to be able to make a living -- I wouldn't do it.
As I tried to explain in the Guardian interview, the problem isn't that books are given away or that people read books they haven't paid for. The problem is that the majority of people don't read for pleasure.
...If a kid picks up a candy bar and runs, you give him a warning before you cuff him. Same with those mindless teenyboppers who go to the Hickory Farms store, and then take double samples of fruitcake and cheeselog, you warn them that they will be charged with a felony(grand theft), and that if they attempt to fight and run, they will be, unfortunately, first tazered, and if they continue to resist violently with intent to maim, then wounded. Fortunately, wounding fire to suppress teenage kleptomaniacs is relatively easy, they all run in straight lines, and a hit in the knee will be relatively simple from the second floor. But they all get a warning first, we do not simply shoot shoplifters unless they resist violently.
Ah, the joys of the Mall-Ninjas. Click on the link for context and much, much more of the same. Really wonderfully, dreadfully, unintentionally, funny...
Read the rest of this post
Thank you so much, Robin. I can’t wait to read–I am an absolute dog lover.
Robin, I discovered you via Fat Cat this week, when I checked it out at our Azle Library. I’m immediately a big fan. Although I’m 74 this year, this book has inspired me in my own health quest. And it entertains me with delight. I love it and am recommending it. I downloaded Doggirl and can hardly wait to start the read! Thank you for the Free Friday download.
Tracee, yay for our love for dogs! Hope you enjoy the book!
Eileen, thank you so much! I really appreciate everything you said. Hope Doggirl will delight you, too!